“Jewel.” Mero repeats what Lyssa said. “That’s a cute name. I for sure thought you were going to call it Ruby or Sapphire. Wasn’t sapphire your favorite gemstone? Probably suits him better than Jewel, don’t you think?”
She scrapes her throat in protest.
“Jewel is a she, not a he.” She rolls her eyes. “And most sapphires are blue. I know some of them are red, but everyone’s going to ask me why I gave my bird a stupid name and I don’t want to keep explaining myself over and over again. So… Jewel it is.”
Dargothoth hisses, accepting that his allies will just talk about anything in a time when they should only talk about his new befallen ailment, but that doesn’t mean he has to do the same. That doesn’t mean he has to play along nicely with the small talk.
“You truly believe that whatever is sitting on your shoulder is going to survive our stay here in Abaddon?” The sivak laughs sarcastically. “The bird won’t last a day.”
“Shut up, blind lizard.”
Lyssa angered expression makes way for a caring one. She looks at the stycha. She stares back at the siren with her bright yellow eyes. All her feather are deep red, except for a few black ones that are scattered throughout her wings. Her head has no feathers to cover up her white skull-like head. Her dark ochre beak is short and sharply crooked so she will have no problems tearing meat off of bones. Lyssa thinks a fully matured blood vulture must look terrifying, but at the most her new pet is mostly cute.
“Who is my precious Jewel?” She talks with a high-pitched voice, like she speaks to an unintelligible baby. “You are! Yes, you are!”
The bird makes a bit of a clumsy step sideways, moving across her shoulder towards her face. The siren doesn’t know if she understood what she said, but she doesn’t care. The bird strokes her head across her cheek a few times and the captain’s heart melts.
“I’m going to protect her with my life”, she says sternly. “She’s part of this weird family now, just like you, Dargo, and-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“And we take care of each other. You won’t admit it, because that takes away all the grittiness and the evil aura you’ve built up, but you care for us as well. You fight for us, you heal us, hells, I think you even trust us. Protesting is futile, Dargo. We’re in this together and we will be until the bitter end.”
The cleric remains silent.
“This is it”, Bruq says. “The Silent Stone. It doesn’t look like a funeral home to me.”
Mero turns to him.
“And what would a funeral home look like?” He sounds genuinely astonished.
“Well, I don’t know.” The satyr rubs his goatee. “We did not have one in the Echoing Grove. We just buried our dead, give them back to nature.”
The building looks like any other, made of the same stones as the homes to its left and right. The only significant difference is the big gravestone in front of it.
“The door is ajar”, Oslando states and he gets closer. “It’s clear how we are going to do this, right? Bruq and I go in first, Mero in the middle with Dargothoth and Lyssa in the rear. We’re going to talk to them, negotiate, but keep your weapons ready.”
The draconian grouches.
“They don’t deserve to talk”, the cleric pleats. “They deserve to suffer for what they have done.”
“If we do that, we might lose the only chance to give everyone their eyesight back. We should-” Oslando stops shortly and tilts his head a bit. “They? You think her sisters are there as well?”
Dargothoth curses inaudibly and clenches his fists. He can try to lie himself out of this situation, but why would he? They should now that his patron deity is present and observing their actions.
“The Faceless God told me. The Blackstars were his worshippers. They won’t pose too much of a threat, but you should be on your guard.”
Lyssa’s mouth falls open.
“And when were you planning to tell us this?”
Dargothoth turns around, staring into her general direction without making eye contact.
“Right now.” His smile is sinister. “As you mentioned before, captain, we’re in this together to the bitter end.”
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