90th of Ashan
Jonathan had seen the posting in Ne'Haer. A woman who's brother had died from a drug overdose, possibly from fouled drugs. It was a story Jon had seen many times in his youth in Etzos. He'd even held down a few men who had gone into seizures from drugs. Hell, he'd been one of them. He'd snorted, shot up, and smoked his way through his youth into oblivion and he knew how dangerous that life could be. Pity had swelled in his heart reading the young woman's plea. If she was rich enough to look for an autopsy, the picture was already becoming clearer in his head. A rich young man driven to drugs, and being young not too discriminatory about the sort of man he bought his drugs from. Jon had been lucky the first time he'd bought corrupted drugs. A bad trip and a few trials of vomiting. Not death.
He felt bad for her, and so he had taken down the notice, folded it carefully in his pocket, and gone to the corner. In many ways Jon was the perfect man for this job. The Crazed Corner didn't scare him. Seeing drug addicts lolled in dark alleyways in the corners of streets, sleeping off a high or mumbling their way through it. Peeing themselves, fucking in trash heaps where the only thing someone could see was a bare ass and some legs in the air...it was all too familiar. He'd been all of these people at one point. All of them. He'd sucked men off for drugs, been sucked off for drugs, fucked his way through dealers and users. Pissing himself because he was too high to stand and vomiting (and being vomited on). These people he felt nothing but pity for. The stench in his nostrils, of urine, sex, vomit and drug smoke filtering up through the alley was a welcome sign home.
The alleyway was claustrophobic and badly built. The street seemed to lilt here and there with uneven paving stones, and the houses were stained with all manner of refuse. Many of them showed signs of abuse; shattered windows (if the houses had any to begin with), burned shutters, and some of the houses were out and out abandoned to the drug addicts within them. Some of the addicts were sprawled on staircases that bridged the second and third floors of the stacked houses. Here and there were bloodstains beneath some of these bridges; Jonathan imagined that addicts falling from their precarious perches and splattering themselves on the cobblestones wasn't uncommon. Some of the addicts peered down in hazes from their areas sitting and laying on the bridges like human vultures. It reminded him a little bit of Aberration. The addiction was a pair of eyes always watching. Always hungry.
'The addiction here is not like Aberration. I can feel you comparing it. Don't. Our relationship forges power and destruction. We can kill each of these men with a touch. If you made a bubble here you would kill half of the men in this alleyway before they could even rouse themselves or pull their cocks out of their whores.'Hob was more than mildly annoyed that Jon had even thought to compare the two. Jon sighed and pushed the Harvester away. He was right, of course. Aberration was beautiful. It was death but death wasn't always ugly. Death sometimes came in the form of rushing Harvester fangs and a pile of ashes.
Jonathan, much as he hated to admit it, fit in. He knew how to act. He knelt in front of the most lucid-looking man and snapped his fingers in front of his face. The addict's head rolled on his shoulders and he groaned, a belch vomiting up from deep in his throat and his hand loosely flapping in front of Jon to leave him alone. "Hey man." Jon patted his cheek. "Hey. I got some more rock for you. You're coming down aren't you?"
The man lurched up and looked at him with rheumy, unfocused eyes. The man grinned, showing cracked teeth and infected gums. He held up a hand, ready to take the offer of drugs. "Hey. You don't get this shit for free." Jon growled, putting a little steel into his voice. He seized the man's scalp. Lice fled from his fingers, crawling through the hank of hair in his fist. "You smoked my stuff last time. You owe me. Where'd you get that shit? Shit that makes your heart feel like you're fuckin dying?" He shook the man's head a little.
"Man...mmn..." the addict tried to pull away but Jon held him fast. Even though his skin was crawling at the feel of a fat tick under his thumb, somewhere on the man's scalp. "Nn...stuff's bad..."
"I don't give a shit. That wasn't my question." Jon snarled. "Who has it?"
"Badger knows, man...nahnme..." The addict pleaded. Jon released him and slapped him. The addict's head snapped to the left loosely, like he'd struck a corpse. The addict sniveled and tried to crowd a little further into his little cubby between two row-houses. He extended an arm withered by malnutrition and peppered with needle marks, and pointed. Jon followed the finger, and gently pushed on it. An old trick. If the addict swung back to the same spot his aim was true. If it stayed pushed, it was likely he was lying. The man's arm sprang back, and dropped. Good, he wasn't lying. Jon stood up and wiped his hands, sighing. These people truly were wretched. Sad. He might have turned out like one of these poor creatures if his father hadn't pulled him away from a ten man orgy and beat some sense into him.
For now, Jon had a mission. The alleyway was straight but had many holes, little tiny side routes behind and around row-houses, and connections with other alleyways. It was like an infected wound; the worst of it is the rift where the skin was punctured but the redness and infection slithered through capillaries and veins until it petered out to healthy skin. Jon was looking for a man named Badger in one of these. Hopefully he wasn't dead. He cleared his throat, looking over the few little scattered druggies sleeping or sitting in one of these capillaries. Oftentimes they were dirt-lined because the cobblestones took such a rough beating. This one was practically mud. "I'm looking for a little shit named Badger that owes me fifty fucking gold nel." Jonathan boomed. He'd been the subject of one of these. Drug addicts were smart, when it came to survival. The addict in question would stand as still as a deer, or act like he didn't know what Jon was talking about. Until the "dealer" in question did something violent to make the entire herd bolt.
Jon was one such man. He held up a hand, and Brilliance flooded his arm. Low light made addicts scramble like roaches. Men who used torches were guards or dealers, or the bodyguards of dealers. Light in such a place was a bad sign. A few of them shrank from his softly glowing arm, and as Jon increased the light, more of them scrambled. One bolted, and Jon tore after him. He'd bet his eyeteeth that was Badger. He caught up with the malnourished, skinny man whose hair was falling out in patches and slammed him against the brick wall. He shoved his arm under the man's throat; he couldn't grab him by his arm or shoulder. Addicts bit, and being bit by one was going to turn gangrenous just based on what they shoved in their mouths.
"You Badger?" Jon hissed. "Are you fucking Badger? You know where to get the shit that pulls your heartstrings? Real good shit. Makes you feel like a thousand pound slut is squatting on your chest and taking a shit made out of bricks."
Badger tried to scream. A useless strangled noise that Jon ceased by another quick slam to the alley wall. "You're lookin for the Chamber...chamber sommat! S'a-a title them nobles have!" he squealed.
"Chamberlain? The Chamberlain? That's the dealer?" Jon demanded.
"Yeah!"
"Where does he sell? How much is it?"
"Costs an arm and a fuckin kidney!"
Another slam.
"Not the fucking question asshole." Jon hissed in his face. Oh, he regretted that. The smell from Badger's rotten teeth alone was enough to knock out the toughest mine mule. He eyed a streak of scar tissue bubbled up on the man's forehead. It was white. Huh, suddenly the nickname made sense.
"Five doors down!"
Jon dropped him, and the Brilliance faded. Addicts he didn't trust; he backed out of the little claustrophobic way. Turning your back on addicts, especially addicts with a nickname and a reputation to protect, was a very bad idea. He eyed Badger before he turned and went on his way. He still expected the little shit to come after him...but after wielding Transmutation in an alleyway perhaps the man was too smart for something like that. Attacking a mage, especially a mage looking to get high, was one of the more suicidal ideas in the Corner.
Five doors. Jon counted them. Dealers were usually easy to spot. They were vertical, first of all, not vomiting, and were generally smart enough not to be taking their own product. They were here to sell. Not to root into their own stuff and get robbed by more desperate addicts. Jonathan knew how to approach one as well. He looked healthy, so he didn't use often or he was a first-timer. He chose the former. He was too well-versed in this to be a nervous first-timer and didn't have anyone to introduce or vouch for him. So he adapted the walk. His head was down, his hands in his pockets, openly avoiding eye contact with the addicts as if afraid of the reminder that he could just as easily become one of them. Someone afraid of getting pick pocketed or touched by all the filth. The dealer, this Chamberlain, spotted him and knew him.
It was a little bit of a dance. He eyed Jon up and down to make sure he wasn't armed, and Jonathan approached him at a slow sidle to give him enough time to make that evaluation. He took his hands out of his pockets and folded them across his chest as if cold. Exposing his belly. Showing off that he wasn't the type to stab a dealer in the open. "You looking to party?" the Chamberlain was a thin man, well-dressed but not well-off enough to invite the wrath of a hundred nel-hungry addicts. Just enough to be comfortable in the chilly air. A thick knob of polished blackwood lay against the alley wall as a silent threat. Jon wagered he was probably well-versed in its use. Enough to bruise and bash in the skull of anyone who tried to cross him.
"Uh yeah, actually. I heard about this place from a friend." Jon smirked, a little nervously. On purpose. He didn't want to seem too comfortable. Oh just your casual once or twice a month user ducking the wife and responsibilities. "I mean he's...not with us anymore but I'm chasing his high. He had this stuff...would make you feel like you had a rockfall on your body. Like high above the ground and crushed into the soil man."
The Chamberlain gave him a side-eye. "Dead huh?" he sounded cautious now.
Jon chuckled. "I mean yeah, you take too much of that stuff. I don't know, went out the way he wanted you know? Riding the skies." That was the correct turn of phrase. The Chamberlain smirked back at him and shook his head. Maybe he thought Jon was a little foolish but he wasn't putting on that suspicious stance anymore. He was relaxing. Settling into the deal.
"Well I don't sell that shit. You sell one bad dose, kill the wrong guy, and you get all sorts comin' after you. I think one of the Bullyboys down the way might sell it. If you're still looking to ride." The Chamberlain shrugged and gestured down the street. Jon settled against the wall. He wasn't going anywhere, and he wasn't giving up that easily.
"Ah come on you don't sell bad doses. You don't look the type. Not like those skeevy Ratpunchers in Etzos." Jon sniggered. Again, the right thing. Rivalries among drug lords between Etzos and the other cities in Idalos were well known. Obviously the Chamberlain approved of this little nod to the hatred of Etzos drug dealers. He grinned openly, and Jon spotted a gold tooth in his mouth. An eyetooth by the look of it. How much drug nel had gone to that little vanity?
"I sold one or two." The Chamberlain said playfully. "There was this shit. He had a sister...started a lot of debts he couldn't pay and I wanted the sister to you know, even the score. I'd fuck her, sell her and whatever I'd knocked up into her to slave dealers. Debt would be clean. He refused. I slipped a little something in his dose."
Jon laughed with him then. "Oh shit, what did you put in?" he cackled. "Little fuck should have sold the slut to you."
"Little bit of Fuzz. Heart attack, no one's the fuckin' wiser." The Chamberlain grinned. "No one fucks with me and my profits. I'm a bad man to be in debt to. I'm guessing he learned that one the hard way when he was writhin' on the floor."
That was all Jon needed to stop laughing. "Oh hey, hey, I got something better." he grinned. Hob appeared behind him, right on cue. The nightmarish child of a Nightmare and a rabbit gone wrong. The Harvester was a never-ceasing horror of movement. Every muscle under his wormy fur slithered and shifted. He was white with long ears that hovered near his rear, muscles that seemed to flit from one side of his body to the next, and four long arms that faded the white fur into black. Slowly, flaps of flesh that served for his lips drew back impossibly far up the Harvester's skull, revealing black gums and long fangs. Slowly the Harvester's head turned, rotating with the sickening crackle of popping joints. As it rotated, it extended outward impossibly far, bending Hob's body forward toward the dealer.
"Hey now... don't lose your head." Jon chuckled. The Chamberlain's scream was cut off by Jon's gentle bubble brushing against his skin. Too distracted by the appearance of the Harvester, the dealer hadn't thought about the greater danger. Jon felt the power. It surged up through him as Hob reached into the Chamberlain's heart and tore his soul into shreds. Ether was his drug of choice and he'd found the right dealer. Hob was an artist. The man's head fell to the ground with a wet plop. It was perfect, frozen in a horrific scream, cut off neatly just above the collarbone. The rest of the dealer's body collapsed into withering ashes.
Jon knelt down and picked up the head, brushing off some of the mud. Hob tipped an imaginary hat, and vanished. Hm, it didn't quite look like a beheading. The Chamberlain's head was suspiciously clean. No blood. The neck was withered away into ashes like he'd been consumed by some wasting disease. He brushed off some of the ashes as he came back out of the alleyway. The drug addicts that might have seen and babbled later about a demonic rabbit weren't going to be believed by anyone. Not even other addicts. For once Aberration could help put the soul of a man to rest, and ease his sister's pain.
"Artistically done, Hob." Jon praised his Harvester. He admired the way the severed head's expression was perfectly frozen in a mask of pain and horror. "Bit grisly though."
'Oh I aim to please.' Hob chuckled.
Jonathan had seen the posting in Ne'Haer. A woman who's brother had died from a drug overdose, possibly from fouled drugs. It was a story Jon had seen many times in his youth in Etzos. He'd even held down a few men who had gone into seizures from drugs. Hell, he'd been one of them. He'd snorted, shot up, and smoked his way through his youth into oblivion and he knew how dangerous that life could be. Pity had swelled in his heart reading the young woman's plea. If she was rich enough to look for an autopsy, the picture was already becoming clearer in his head. A rich young man driven to drugs, and being young not too discriminatory about the sort of man he bought his drugs from. Jon had been lucky the first time he'd bought corrupted drugs. A bad trip and a few trials of vomiting. Not death.
He felt bad for her, and so he had taken down the notice, folded it carefully in his pocket, and gone to the corner. In many ways Jon was the perfect man for this job. The Crazed Corner didn't scare him. Seeing drug addicts lolled in dark alleyways in the corners of streets, sleeping off a high or mumbling their way through it. Peeing themselves, fucking in trash heaps where the only thing someone could see was a bare ass and some legs in the air...it was all too familiar. He'd been all of these people at one point. All of them. He'd sucked men off for drugs, been sucked off for drugs, fucked his way through dealers and users. Pissing himself because he was too high to stand and vomiting (and being vomited on). These people he felt nothing but pity for. The stench in his nostrils, of urine, sex, vomit and drug smoke filtering up through the alley was a welcome sign home.
The alleyway was claustrophobic and badly built. The street seemed to lilt here and there with uneven paving stones, and the houses were stained with all manner of refuse. Many of them showed signs of abuse; shattered windows (if the houses had any to begin with), burned shutters, and some of the houses were out and out abandoned to the drug addicts within them. Some of the addicts were sprawled on staircases that bridged the second and third floors of the stacked houses. Here and there were bloodstains beneath some of these bridges; Jonathan imagined that addicts falling from their precarious perches and splattering themselves on the cobblestones wasn't uncommon. Some of the addicts peered down in hazes from their areas sitting and laying on the bridges like human vultures. It reminded him a little bit of Aberration. The addiction was a pair of eyes always watching. Always hungry.
'The addiction here is not like Aberration. I can feel you comparing it. Don't. Our relationship forges power and destruction. We can kill each of these men with a touch. If you made a bubble here you would kill half of the men in this alleyway before they could even rouse themselves or pull their cocks out of their whores.'Hob was more than mildly annoyed that Jon had even thought to compare the two. Jon sighed and pushed the Harvester away. He was right, of course. Aberration was beautiful. It was death but death wasn't always ugly. Death sometimes came in the form of rushing Harvester fangs and a pile of ashes.
Jonathan, much as he hated to admit it, fit in. He knew how to act. He knelt in front of the most lucid-looking man and snapped his fingers in front of his face. The addict's head rolled on his shoulders and he groaned, a belch vomiting up from deep in his throat and his hand loosely flapping in front of Jon to leave him alone. "Hey man." Jon patted his cheek. "Hey. I got some more rock for you. You're coming down aren't you?"
The man lurched up and looked at him with rheumy, unfocused eyes. The man grinned, showing cracked teeth and infected gums. He held up a hand, ready to take the offer of drugs. "Hey. You don't get this shit for free." Jon growled, putting a little steel into his voice. He seized the man's scalp. Lice fled from his fingers, crawling through the hank of hair in his fist. "You smoked my stuff last time. You owe me. Where'd you get that shit? Shit that makes your heart feel like you're fuckin dying?" He shook the man's head a little.
"Man...mmn..." the addict tried to pull away but Jon held him fast. Even though his skin was crawling at the feel of a fat tick under his thumb, somewhere on the man's scalp. "Nn...stuff's bad..."
"I don't give a shit. That wasn't my question." Jon snarled. "Who has it?"
"Badger knows, man...nahnme..." The addict pleaded. Jon released him and slapped him. The addict's head snapped to the left loosely, like he'd struck a corpse. The addict sniveled and tried to crowd a little further into his little cubby between two row-houses. He extended an arm withered by malnutrition and peppered with needle marks, and pointed. Jon followed the finger, and gently pushed on it. An old trick. If the addict swung back to the same spot his aim was true. If it stayed pushed, it was likely he was lying. The man's arm sprang back, and dropped. Good, he wasn't lying. Jon stood up and wiped his hands, sighing. These people truly were wretched. Sad. He might have turned out like one of these poor creatures if his father hadn't pulled him away from a ten man orgy and beat some sense into him.
For now, Jon had a mission. The alleyway was straight but had many holes, little tiny side routes behind and around row-houses, and connections with other alleyways. It was like an infected wound; the worst of it is the rift where the skin was punctured but the redness and infection slithered through capillaries and veins until it petered out to healthy skin. Jon was looking for a man named Badger in one of these. Hopefully he wasn't dead. He cleared his throat, looking over the few little scattered druggies sleeping or sitting in one of these capillaries. Oftentimes they were dirt-lined because the cobblestones took such a rough beating. This one was practically mud. "I'm looking for a little shit named Badger that owes me fifty fucking gold nel." Jonathan boomed. He'd been the subject of one of these. Drug addicts were smart, when it came to survival. The addict in question would stand as still as a deer, or act like he didn't know what Jon was talking about. Until the "dealer" in question did something violent to make the entire herd bolt.
Jon was one such man. He held up a hand, and Brilliance flooded his arm. Low light made addicts scramble like roaches. Men who used torches were guards or dealers, or the bodyguards of dealers. Light in such a place was a bad sign. A few of them shrank from his softly glowing arm, and as Jon increased the light, more of them scrambled. One bolted, and Jon tore after him. He'd bet his eyeteeth that was Badger. He caught up with the malnourished, skinny man whose hair was falling out in patches and slammed him against the brick wall. He shoved his arm under the man's throat; he couldn't grab him by his arm or shoulder. Addicts bit, and being bit by one was going to turn gangrenous just based on what they shoved in their mouths.
"You Badger?" Jon hissed. "Are you fucking Badger? You know where to get the shit that pulls your heartstrings? Real good shit. Makes you feel like a thousand pound slut is squatting on your chest and taking a shit made out of bricks."
Badger tried to scream. A useless strangled noise that Jon ceased by another quick slam to the alley wall. "You're lookin for the Chamber...chamber sommat! S'a-a title them nobles have!" he squealed.
"Chamberlain? The Chamberlain? That's the dealer?" Jon demanded.
"Yeah!"
"Where does he sell? How much is it?"
"Costs an arm and a fuckin kidney!"
Another slam.
"Not the fucking question asshole." Jon hissed in his face. Oh, he regretted that. The smell from Badger's rotten teeth alone was enough to knock out the toughest mine mule. He eyed a streak of scar tissue bubbled up on the man's forehead. It was white. Huh, suddenly the nickname made sense.
"Five doors down!"
Jon dropped him, and the Brilliance faded. Addicts he didn't trust; he backed out of the little claustrophobic way. Turning your back on addicts, especially addicts with a nickname and a reputation to protect, was a very bad idea. He eyed Badger before he turned and went on his way. He still expected the little shit to come after him...but after wielding Transmutation in an alleyway perhaps the man was too smart for something like that. Attacking a mage, especially a mage looking to get high, was one of the more suicidal ideas in the Corner.
Five doors. Jon counted them. Dealers were usually easy to spot. They were vertical, first of all, not vomiting, and were generally smart enough not to be taking their own product. They were here to sell. Not to root into their own stuff and get robbed by more desperate addicts. Jonathan knew how to approach one as well. He looked healthy, so he didn't use often or he was a first-timer. He chose the former. He was too well-versed in this to be a nervous first-timer and didn't have anyone to introduce or vouch for him. So he adapted the walk. His head was down, his hands in his pockets, openly avoiding eye contact with the addicts as if afraid of the reminder that he could just as easily become one of them. Someone afraid of getting pick pocketed or touched by all the filth. The dealer, this Chamberlain, spotted him and knew him.
It was a little bit of a dance. He eyed Jon up and down to make sure he wasn't armed, and Jonathan approached him at a slow sidle to give him enough time to make that evaluation. He took his hands out of his pockets and folded them across his chest as if cold. Exposing his belly. Showing off that he wasn't the type to stab a dealer in the open. "You looking to party?" the Chamberlain was a thin man, well-dressed but not well-off enough to invite the wrath of a hundred nel-hungry addicts. Just enough to be comfortable in the chilly air. A thick knob of polished blackwood lay against the alley wall as a silent threat. Jon wagered he was probably well-versed in its use. Enough to bruise and bash in the skull of anyone who tried to cross him.
"Uh yeah, actually. I heard about this place from a friend." Jon smirked, a little nervously. On purpose. He didn't want to seem too comfortable. Oh just your casual once or twice a month user ducking the wife and responsibilities. "I mean he's...not with us anymore but I'm chasing his high. He had this stuff...would make you feel like you had a rockfall on your body. Like high above the ground and crushed into the soil man."
The Chamberlain gave him a side-eye. "Dead huh?" he sounded cautious now.
Jon chuckled. "I mean yeah, you take too much of that stuff. I don't know, went out the way he wanted you know? Riding the skies." That was the correct turn of phrase. The Chamberlain smirked back at him and shook his head. Maybe he thought Jon was a little foolish but he wasn't putting on that suspicious stance anymore. He was relaxing. Settling into the deal.
"Well I don't sell that shit. You sell one bad dose, kill the wrong guy, and you get all sorts comin' after you. I think one of the Bullyboys down the way might sell it. If you're still looking to ride." The Chamberlain shrugged and gestured down the street. Jon settled against the wall. He wasn't going anywhere, and he wasn't giving up that easily.
"Ah come on you don't sell bad doses. You don't look the type. Not like those skeevy Ratpunchers in Etzos." Jon sniggered. Again, the right thing. Rivalries among drug lords between Etzos and the other cities in Idalos were well known. Obviously the Chamberlain approved of this little nod to the hatred of Etzos drug dealers. He grinned openly, and Jon spotted a gold tooth in his mouth. An eyetooth by the look of it. How much drug nel had gone to that little vanity?
"I sold one or two." The Chamberlain said playfully. "There was this shit. He had a sister...started a lot of debts he couldn't pay and I wanted the sister to you know, even the score. I'd fuck her, sell her and whatever I'd knocked up into her to slave dealers. Debt would be clean. He refused. I slipped a little something in his dose."
Jon laughed with him then. "Oh shit, what did you put in?" he cackled. "Little fuck should have sold the slut to you."
"Little bit of Fuzz. Heart attack, no one's the fuckin' wiser." The Chamberlain grinned. "No one fucks with me and my profits. I'm a bad man to be in debt to. I'm guessing he learned that one the hard way when he was writhin' on the floor."
That was all Jon needed to stop laughing. "Oh hey, hey, I got something better." he grinned. Hob appeared behind him, right on cue. The nightmarish child of a Nightmare and a rabbit gone wrong. The Harvester was a never-ceasing horror of movement. Every muscle under his wormy fur slithered and shifted. He was white with long ears that hovered near his rear, muscles that seemed to flit from one side of his body to the next, and four long arms that faded the white fur into black. Slowly, flaps of flesh that served for his lips drew back impossibly far up the Harvester's skull, revealing black gums and long fangs. Slowly the Harvester's head turned, rotating with the sickening crackle of popping joints. As it rotated, it extended outward impossibly far, bending Hob's body forward toward the dealer.
"Hey now... don't lose your head." Jon chuckled. The Chamberlain's scream was cut off by Jon's gentle bubble brushing against his skin. Too distracted by the appearance of the Harvester, the dealer hadn't thought about the greater danger. Jon felt the power. It surged up through him as Hob reached into the Chamberlain's heart and tore his soul into shreds. Ether was his drug of choice and he'd found the right dealer. Hob was an artist. The man's head fell to the ground with a wet plop. It was perfect, frozen in a horrific scream, cut off neatly just above the collarbone. The rest of the dealer's body collapsed into withering ashes.
Jon knelt down and picked up the head, brushing off some of the mud. Hob tipped an imaginary hat, and vanished. Hm, it didn't quite look like a beheading. The Chamberlain's head was suspiciously clean. No blood. The neck was withered away into ashes like he'd been consumed by some wasting disease. He brushed off some of the ashes as he came back out of the alleyway. The drug addicts that might have seen and babbled later about a demonic rabbit weren't going to be believed by anyone. Not even other addicts. For once Aberration could help put the soul of a man to rest, and ease his sister's pain.
"Artistically done, Hob." Jon praised his Harvester. He admired the way the severed head's expression was perfectly frozen in a mask of pain and horror. "Bit grisly though."
'Oh I aim to please.' Hob chuckled.
