Meat Points: Random Encounter

Artaud only got a brief look at the body before the others hustled him aside. That look was enough.

The cap of the skull had been removed with cuts more precise than anything Hipolito could achieve with his blades, no matter how obsessively he sharpened them. The arteries inside and the thin skin of dura mater delicately folded in a pattern like a star with greater care and attention to detail than Rakia ever showed him, undamaged despite their severance from the old master that once squatted inside the snug home of the skull. Like the brain might one day be returned to its home to resume where it had left off. The shining object clasped in the hand, left by the perpetrator, which portended a greater mystery than any of Pharnobal's jabbering about Wild Magic and Enlightenment and Great Work.

This is who I should adventure with, thought Artaud as he watched the door. This one is worthy of my loyalty. Whoever did this.

From the corridor, a buzzing sound. Shells rolling in the tide on an endless beach. The singing of sand before a flight of locusts occluded the setting sun. He clasped his ax in one hand and reached with the other for a potion, not trusting the others to abandon their endless fussing and buff him in time for the encounter. One hand, a flick of the thumb to remove the sealing wax. A swirling motion to send the contents spiraling down his throat in one smooth pull.

From the hall, a flash before his gaze. Real this time, yet containing all the colors his dreaming mind projected into the false terrain of his vision every time his eyes were scooped out. Metal and a bright flash that owed nothing to the light of day. The salivary glands burning the back of the jaw.

Then it came through the door and he had no more time to plot treason against his friends. Not a moment to savor the taste bursting on his tongue.