It's Corps, not Corpse Or The Stumbling Undead

[Glenn]

Mary's nose was bleeding. It was rather lost in the mesh of her red hair and freckles, but her nose was definitely bleeding. It wasn't just her either. The crowd was shaken, staggering. Eyes were starting to turn upon the boy from who that noise had emanated. People were rising back to their feet slowly. A few had lost their lunch and one or two were even bleeding out of their eyes. Perhaps the one or two that scattered away back towards their home had soiled themselves. A hush had come over the crowd, but deep within it was a rising fear and fury.

The young lady of the Inquisitory owed everything she was to her position. She would just be another farm girl on a dead end track towards marriage to a drunkard and seven children she didn't even want otherwise. A nameless, faceless woman ostracized for the fact she could read, not rewarded for it. Instead, she was something else, and she took it as a grave responsibility. It meant that she'd go a long, long way for Myrken. Yes, her nose was bleeding. Yes, she was scared, but Catch was close to her, with an act and she might have been the only one there that could really stop him.

Did the boy's outburst make the madman pause? Hopefully, because she would attempt to place both hands upon his shoulders calmly, pleasantly, reassuringly. With a soft inhale she moved to play yet another role. "Catch!" If he didn't take her head off immediately with that axe, she would continue. Her voice was excited, earnest, young. "Oh Catch! I've been looking for you everywhere. My friends and I! We've found your spider friend! Someone caught it and it got stuck in a basket! It just looks like a normal basket. But we can't get it out! We can't open it! We think it's dark magic and only someone as strong and brave as you can help us free the spider! We have to go now though! It's been in there SO long and I'm worried about it!" Well, it hadn't been that long since Maxwell had tried to pummel him. He did have some idea how weak the people around her were. Probably not the best image to bring up though, so she left it vague.

Does she still have her head? Has she not been swatted through the nearest building? If she has, then certain she'd be screaming and bleeding more. If she hasn't, then she'd lean in to whisper just for Catch alone. "Marshall Renea just came back to life, so obviously she'll be okay whatever happens here. The spider won't. I've been looking for you everywhere!"

It was a terribly desperate gambit. It took for granted that Catch wouldn't instinctively chop her to pieces, that he'd be calm enough after the shout to even listen to her, that he wasn't somehow connected enough to the spider to either know that she had been the one to capture it or that it was relatively safe even if trapped and that he cared about the spider nearly as much as Renea. Considering the still being deciphered reports about how he reacted to the statue, there was just no telling, no telling at all! It was all she could do, though! And she had to get Catch away before the crowd started turning more fully on him, or even worse on him and that shouting boy. The Constables might be able to protect the boy on their own (if they didn't join in, of course), but Catch would just complicate things far too much!

So, if she was still alive, healthy, hale, and in one piece, she would look at him with her biggest, sweetest eyes, and await his response admist the groaning and recovering populace.

[BetaFlame]

Glenn speaks at Jarod, but the words don't see to affect him. After a moment, then tears stop and he stands.. slowly. Uncoiling from the ground, he glares at the man before him. "Yo-you are bad. You have nothing in you. Th-they say you.. you speak, but you-you have no meaning. You-you just hate and fear. A-all of you are no better than..than animals!" He snarls at the man. They were what caused him to be alone! Them and all that they are. Hatred and fear boiling over like they had nothing inside them. No empathy for the pain they caused.

"You.. you all curse and spit and hate and fear and you FEEL nothing of it." Feelings washed from the man. Feelings of being the outcast, of being the hated. Feeling of the rocks hitting skin, of words hitting brains. Freak. Freak. The word almost echos in the room. Freak. Freak.

"She--she's BETTER now! You hate her for being different! You are all different from me, and I don't throw rocks at you! Maybe I should!"

And with that statement, the madman reaches for any old object he can reach, in this case a book, and hurls it directly at Glenn's head.

[Glenn]

Oh, look, a flying book. Lovely. Burnie's reflexes have been honed in the pit of despair that is Underdark and before that with daily sessions with Jirai of all creatures. And lately? Well, no one entirely knows, but honed they are, and it is a slight tilt of his body to be out of the way. "That's a rather expensive tome. Do be careful."

And that's it, all he says, no retaliation, no screams or hairpulling, just a little smile as he sits back down and nods to a chair. "Please sit, if you will." He did not respond to the word Lamai and he does not respond here. There is WORK to be done. Though, perhaps one little comment, since those are very big words this strange, strange man is throwing. They impact far more than the books. "Do not say for a moment that they do not feel. They fear because they have loved and they have lost. Family. Friends. Dreams. They fear the different because the different has harmed them and they care only because they had opened their hearts and been duly hur..." Finally some reaction, a gritting of his teeth, pulling back on reins that are almost impossible to control. Glenn Burnie had to actively force himself from giving a lecture and it was, without a doubt, the hardest thing he had one all week.

Control. A soft shutting of his eyes. "Three things, my friend. To save her. I would love some sort of explanation, but we just don't have time, so we'll have to make due with what limited knowledge I have on this entire situation and sort the rest out later. One, she needs a new face. She needs it this very second. Renea Sundance died the other day. People must think that. Or at least, they must suspect it, or assume the possibility of it. She will need a new face and to swallow her pride and take a new name. A new life. She can still live with her family if you can do this. She can have those things that matter to her, just not as she did before." One finger rose up in the air, followed by the next.

"Two, you must relinquish whatever hold you still have on her after you make this change. Her soul must be COMPLETELY her own. You must promise never to tamper with it again. If you love her, let her free and let her be whole and all that." He was banking very much on the fact that this creature was a selfish thing, that he would hang on however he could to his great work. If he didn't still have possession of her, he might not be able to make the cosmetic change necessary. And there was the third finger. "Three, at some point soon, I will send a few friendly men and they'll ask questions, and we'll get to the bottom of everything that happened. Then I'll best be able to craft a story that will ensure her safety and survival. it might be best for her if she were to leave Myrken but I rather doubt she will." Obviously she would have to go through a few tests to make sure she was neither zombie nor demon but this went without saying.

He clapped his hands lightly. "So, there we have it. if you can help, if you truly care for her, i need the first two things immediately. If not, please leave so I can do whatever I must to see to her safety and happiness without you." A pleasant smile. "I assure you throwing things at me will not help Renea in the least."

[Caile]

There wasn't much of a debate. Renea might have pressed harder had there been a chance of the public not knowing of her untimely death and subsequent undeath but that was rather obviously not the case. Brandon did not want her out of his sight and given the current mob situation outside he did not want her leaving the house at all. If Glenn Burnie wanted to speak with her he would have to do it in her own home at her pleasure, not at his. Connor had offered to open a portal to allow the governor to travel between the meeting house and Renea's so noone would see him coming or going but that was as far as the family was willing to compromise. Renea was not to leave.

Renea asked Marcus to let Mary and the brothers back into the house so she could deliver her reply, unaware of the chaos outside. The wall of force spell that Connor had erected kept out not just the rocks but sound as well so it wasn't until Marcus opened the door and stood, stunned at the sudden blast of screaming and terror and madness that those inside the house realized what was going on. Marcus shut the door, his hands shaking and breathing as if he had run a race. He paused a moment to collect himself and school his face before turning to address the room.

"Beg pardon Miss but Miss Mary and her escort appear to be occupied at the moment. Perhaps we should try again after dinner?" It took the combined efforts of Rhys, her ten year old son, clinging to her, Brandon holding her down with his large hands pressing down on her shoulders and Connor threatening to magically glue her ass to the couch to keep the formal marshall from wading into the cacophony to find out what was happening and put a stop to it. Instead she had to rely on Marcus to relay what he had seen.

"A very large man, Miss, with an...with an axe. He...he w-was chasing people and ch-chopping their..." As stoic as he tried to be this was still difficult for him yet he continued. "Beg pardon Miss. He was removing arms so they 'Stop throwing rocks at Miss Renea!' It is madness out there." She knew right away it was Catch but even a desperate, pleading look at her husband wouldn't move the man to allow her to leave. He didn't even speak a word merely shook his head once, definitively and kept his hands on her shoulders. There was no one else in the house she trusted the addled man to calm for, no one else he would listen to and if she could not leave to assist then the doors would remain shut and the situation would have to be resolved by another. She would not put her family at risk.

She would have fought harder to help but Brandon had been right, she had already given everything she had to Myrken and none of it had mattered, they still wanted her burned and trying to help them now would change nothing. She would not risk leaving her family again for the ungrateful mob, not when she still did not know what was happening to her. Could not know if the next death would be permanent.

"Leave it then. Let Burnie sort it out himself."

[catch]

There are screams, there is blood, thick and crimson, wet on his clothes, sticking them to his pale, pale skin, draggling his curls into his eyes. It is nasty, and foul, and Catch chokes on it, his swings more wild and erratic as it bloodies his eyes. The blows, with the wood-blunt axe, are not enough to sheer limbs from meat-torsos. There are no limbs, thankfully, to stumble and trip over as mob-cells scream and flee. But that axe, it cleaves, and snaps bone and shatters tendon. It does enough, so when Cherny speaks his words, Catch is, in a vague, thoughtless way, glad to stop, his great limbs shaking, his grizzled head shaking to sling blood and Words from his nostrils and eyes and mouth.

His stunned, mismatched eyes turn to Cherny, so-visible above the crowd. He opens his mouth, unthinking; for here is the blood, here are the screaming masses, here are the Words, even if spoken by a young boy and not Another. His mind clicks, audibly, fatally.

Oh, I am so ready. I am not ready, he thinks, sadly. Accepting of it, as it happens, knowing that it must happen sometime, no matter that he himself had wished. He would have liked to see the Lady Lamai again, would have liked to speak with Airy Ann, had one of Genny's pies -

No. His mouth opens, and a vast, speakless nothing comes out. No, no, no, it wasn't time just yet. It wasn't - and to the further confusion, here is Mary, and she babbles at him, words steaming and streaming and pouring from her mouth, and he watches her, watches her words, spurt and quiver. There is no recognition in his eyes. He is somewhere else, far away, and it is a cold man that lurks behind those eyes, now, one that is betrayed, one that has been promised, by Cherny. One who is disgusted with these People, these worthless creatures so far below ants.

"Get away," he suddenly snaps, and - with the handle of the axe, bloody, blood-slicked - he shoves at Mary, trying to put her away from him, tears cutting silver rivulets down his blood-smeared cheeks. But now, he doesn't give a damn what Iron Shoes might say. "You, you, you - you g-g-get away. Miss Renea was sleeping, and, and n-n-now she's awake, and th-th-these - they wouldn't - " Wouldn't listen, wouldn't talk. They threw stones, like Stone-throwing Baies.

He walked as he spoke, agitated, jerking movements, pacing back and forth over the splattered ground. "... like Baies, you hear m-m-m-me! They hurt Miss Renea and th-th-they hurt poor Eater - " Here, Catch tries to find Cherny again, for he is convinced that the boy had only cried out thus because a rock had been shied at him. It made him angrier, and his bare feet stomp and champ at the ground, his words cut of by a low, animal growl, and a muttering of meaninglessness.

[Glenn]

Mary stumbled back. It was a hard shove, but just a shove. She looked to the Jacob Brothers, to the other constables. Speckles of blood were here or there on their lips and they seemed stalwart if not a bit spooked. Well, the younger Jacob brother looked more than a little spooked but still. If the crowd was about to turn on the boy, they would intervene, but past that, this was all extremely confusing and what had initially seemed like a rather simple situation was now anything but.

Mary, for what it was worth, looked on the verge of tears even as she held her quickly bruising shoulder. She turned and banged upon the door. "I need an answer!" She shouted. "Now, it's going to be too late soon." So soon. It was wildly obvious due to the escalation, due to Catch. Burnie had cared enough to try to save Renea, to try to preserve her life here in Myrken but at some point, the needs of the populace had to trump what he particularly wanted in this situation. Of course he wouldn't be coming to talk terms or try to work her way out. He gave her a chance to leave and then he gave her a MEANS to leave, and if she didn't take the latter now, then there was nothing to do but cut his losses, wash his hands upon her and work out the best, safest solution for the most people, she and her family not included. That was his responsibility and trust.

Even Mary could figure that out and she was somewhere between shock and tears. "Please!"

[BetaFlame]

Jarod stares at Glenn. "You..you will take her. Takehertaketaketaketaketaketaketake." He sinks to the ground, and his hands cover his ears, and Words are whispered from his mouth. "IhavetoprotectheryouwontIhavetoonooneelsewillCatchshowedmehowtoprotect..." He gets up, backing away from the man. His babbling as become incoherent, his mind rolling backwards. Regressing, Jarod is locked in his own mind. The only thing he can see is being trapped and beaten with sticks, because he dared tell people messages from their loved ones. Different. Freak. Monster. Witch. Kill him. Stone him. Burn him.

Myrken was the embodiment of all those things, and Glenn Burnie was their leader. "stopstopstopstophurtingusstopit." The white eyes were starting to change. To glow. They started to bleed. Blood filled the whiteness, and ran from the corners of his eyes, down his cheeks, to drip to the ground. Each drop hissing and sinking into the wood, rotting it and twisting it.

His mind it reaches out, trying to find his life, his love. His Lamai. But there is only darkness, and lonliness. Emptiness. She is gone. She promised, promised! He asked her when he got to this place, and she SWORE she would stay with him. Now. Now she is gone again. She hates him, and left him. And hurt him. He hurts, in his heart in what is left of his twisted soul. He's Cursed now, and there is nothing that can fix him, now that She is Dust and Wind. His mother fears him, and won't come back to his Home. She promised too. Promised to see him, to visit him. She lied. They all lied. They all hate him, and they all Hurt him.

The thoughts of Jarod drift, the looking for the only thing left to him. The only comfort he knows in the sadness. Catch. They seep toward him, thoughts that are full of pain and whimpering, full of visions of a towering Glenn Burnie, seen through the terrified eyes of an eight year old boy. A boy beaten bloody his entire life.

helpmeIhurt.. is all they say to his friend. They carry another image. The image of Jarod, pinned to a wall by knives. How Catch found him before.. the last time he hurt like this.

[Cherny]

It's only after those terrible Words are loosed that he understands - only when he sees the crowd between himself and Catch lurch and stagger, hears them cry out in voices that seem small and faint after what went before. He understands and his hands fly up to clamp over his mouth, thin fingers pressing tight beneath stricken eyes. He'd promised. He'd promised. He'd failed.

And that gaze, that glare makes it clear that Catch knows. Bloodied and furious, surrounded by a choir of the wounded and maimed, he is terrible; the boy can only shake his head helplessly, the tang of blood in his mouth, mute bewilderment and regret and fear in his gaze. The crowd shrinks back as the madman stamps and stalks, and Cherny too retreats before that presence, that cold glare, an instinctive step back...

...his foot finds nothing but air beneath it, and there's a wide-eyed instant in which he realises his mistake before he falls in silence, hands still pressed to his mouth .

[catch]

He is not cross with Cherny. He is not. And though he had snapped at Mary, he was not very cross with her, either. The sheer, crippling sadness of him made it so that he could feel little else, room inside him for one emotion at a time, the way they raged inside. The blow to his mind staggered him, threw him from his reverie - and again, and again, each and all more terrible than the last, vision and image and - was this his mind? or did it show true-things, and not just a seeming meant to hurt? There was no Cloud-hair. Catch could not taste his apples.

Then, a second shock. Cherny is gone from the wall, suddenly, terribly. A wonderful thing happens to Catch, as Cherny had once been there, and then he is not there. A wonderful thing, for he did something that he did not have to think about. He made a sudden, good decision. Still weeping, the addled man hurls the bloody axe to the ground, breaking like a pro upon a ship against the still-fleeing masses that tried to run at his approach. But he had no eyes for them.

Cherny, Cherny is snatched from the ground by powerful limbs, cradled against a broad chest. Again, into the fray and confusion he himself has added to. He strides past the Jacobs brothers, a Master, and with another, rough Mary-shove, Catch bursts upon the door, all the stones of him crashing inwards through screaming wood and wobbling hinges.

He will stand there, bloody, terrible, wide-eyed but firm-eyed. He will look on those in the house, with Cherny, and though he has Mastery, he must clear his throat, loudly, before he could safely speak.

"Ser Glenn may, m-m-may b-be hurting Jarod," he says, all very calmly. "And all th-these people are bad people. I th-th. Think we should go and h, help Jarod."

[Dulcie]

"Let me through. Please, let me through." Janessa's voice was practically a whisper against the noises of the crowd, despite the fact that she was being as loud as her quiet voice could let her. A body had gotten up and walked out of the Rememdium, and she certainly couldn't let that just go. She was dressed in her healer's gown, a simple white cotten dress that was belted at the waist and stood in stark contrast to the bright red hair that hung down to her waist. She continued to weave her way through the crowd, dodging elbows and waving hands, nearing closer to the door as she held onto her little bag of things.

She eventually worked her way to the front of the crowd only to realize that it was shrinking back from a man swinging an axe, and there were people then between her and the door. She held tighter to her bag of things and began to back up with the others, her gaze darting from one direction to the next, trying to figure out who was injured, where they were and how she could best help. She had come to verify the existance or non-existance of a zombie, but this was something else entirely.

[Glenn]

"Yes, yes, hurthurthurthurthurt." Burnie rubbed at his left eye. So, apparently, there was no reasoning with this colossal moron. Lovely. He wasn't about to coddle him either. He spent two years, three years? coddling Catch and he actually LIKED Catch. He wasn't about to start over now. Instead, he rose up from his feet and left the room, just like that. He'd bill someone for the damages eventually when he figured out who to bill. Maybe Cinnabar could work it out. There was a nagging urge to either punch the manchild in the groin or slit his throat as he passed but the Governor was the perfect picture of restraint. "I'm oh so tired of other people dumping their problems on us." Lamai, huh? As far as Glenn could tell this was just another bit of Thesshole passive-aggressive dickery. If it wasn't a magic book with six-titted demon whores in it it was a weirdo hermit goofball with magical powers.

He stepped out of the room, activated a few wards that would hopefully prevent the meetinghouse from being destroyed (again) and walked outside to get some actual information on what was going on. "So, no new face for Renea," he shrugged to the sun itself. "Nothing is ever easy."

[Cherny]

Behind the wall, a rose-garden; lovingly-tended, nourished with manure, pruned according to methods handed down from gardener to apprentice for generations, their glorious sweet-scented blooms a joy to experience.

So it's unfortunate when young Cherny crashes into the middle of a bush of Old Rasazan Gilt, prized for its delicate golden flowers and pale yellow-green foliage; even moreso when Catch charges in to retrieve the boy, which also tramples the neighbouring stand of Sweet Felicity, whose exquisite scent often earned it a place in fine porcelain vases throughout the house.

The boy is stunned, or insensible, or something of the sort; half-curled amid the ruined canes, eyes tight-closed, hands still pressed tight to his mouth as if in mortal dread of any sound that might treacherously allow those Words loose once more. Tense, shivering, livid thorn-scratches overlaying the slowly fading marks of his fight with Cat; he huddles deep in his coat against Catch's chest, stick-thin and frail, every effort focused on willing himself to silence.

[BetaFlame]

Something snaps. He has know violence and pain all his life, and now the man, this Governor has become the focus for it. His mocking voice and the dismissive way he walks past him. The tear drops stop andthe eyes fade from red.. to black. Slowly, silently, the large man raises from the ground. He doesn't say anything.

His thoughts roll. He is not weak anymore. Catch's Touch and Word's have made him strong. They have made him better. They have stopped screaming at him. They have stopped fighting him. His hands flex, powerful muscles flexing in his arms as he stares at Glenn's back. Glenn Burnie would kill everyone. He was the focus for all the hate in Myrken. It was him that created this.. aura of pain and hatred. He fed it. He fostered it. He brought out the worst in all the people here.

He rejected everything that was Good. Emotion. Acceptance.

Yes.

This would be better.

Much better, once it was over.

And so, the barbarian turned shaman, turned Catchtouched man slinks up behind the Governor with all the practice of someone that wants to not been seen or noticed, and moves to wrap his hands around his throat. Hopefully choking the life from Glenn Burnie would make everyone love each other again.

[Jirai]

Cherny's Words. They came before the urchin had quite escaped the press of the crowd. The little waif has a moment to think that Next Time, a Cat must do a better job of Biting-Off-Cherny's-Face. Then there is just hurt. And blood.

Ow.

[Glenn]

Glenn Burnie may have been occasionally unbalanced but he was not an idiot, and it would take an idiot to walk out of a room with a hostile, tantrum throwing, presumably quite powerful manbeast without at least having some sense of what was going on behind him. So when the man was close enough for the choke, Glenn was darting forward. He whipped about, eyes narrowed, sword leaving its sheath with a less than pleasant and highly overdramatic noise.

"How is it that you utterly and absolutely fail to understand that I was trying to help Renea. How do you fail to understand that from that moment you took her in the woods and changed her, that started all of this, she was no longer in control of her life. Yes, I don't know the whole story, but it doesn't matter. What matters is the RESULT, is HOW you did things, is what that meant for HER.

"What I Was trying to tell you before was that these are good people. They're brave people and strong people but they have been through so, so much. They wear their hurts openly. They wear their fear. The difference is that they don't have your power. You have the power and look at you, your actions, how you've reacted. Either you're a monster or you're simple, a child in mind like Catch, but Catch TRIES. He tries so hard to walk amongst us, to care about us, to be cared by us. You lashed out when I was trying to HELP the person you wanted to save. You have all of the power but none of the sense of responsibility. And that means it is MY responsibility to protect my people from the likes of you. No matter what." And there it was. The governor was going to strike forth, to cut down this dangerous beast. Man vs magic, man undaunted in the face of dark power and hatred. The prey striking back against its predators once more. He raised his sword in a salute and tensed his body. And then he took four steps backwards as Constables wielding bludgeons filled in the gap between them and a runner whispered a few words in the Governor's ears.

"Unfortunately," he began, "there are more pressing concerns. People could be hurt at this very moment, and I have a responsibility to the many in the immediate. Go." Yes, you tried to choke the Governor. You burst into the meeting house. You made your threats. And Burnie is saying go freely, for the second time. "I'll do my best for her, even now, but it could be far too late. Your delay has been costly for her, I'm afraid."