It was night. Dracina sat in the study of her private estate, Bosartig Manor, reading through this month's issue of the Oracle....or more notably, the front page....over and over again. She relished as she poured over each word that told the account of her twisted little display in the Rhy'Din Town Square....just in front of the Town Hall. The crucified man, being one of the guards who had attacked her a night earlier was felt adequate to be the centerpiece of her message to Rhy'Din.

Accursed Rhy'Din....how so much of it had wronged her in the past, and now she was back to prey on its innocence in revenge. Her annoyance with the town watch had grown; however, constantly patrolling the streets as it hunted for her....her....who should instead be hunting them. It was at least fortunate that they only had a very brief description of her that could easily fit anyone in this city, and thus no one really came knocking at her door.

She turned through the rest of the paper, and sneered at G'Nort's pointless little rant about "villains" and so forth. While she did not see herself as a "villain," she felt deeply insulted at the "any idiot with a knife" comment. That idiot would have to be given a warning of demanded respect soon enough....but at the moment she had to figure out how to toy with these Scathachian women that Nocent wanted to bring down to ruin.

It was then her sharp ears caught the sound of a merchant's wagon rolling by her manor outside. Curiously, she placed the Oracle to the side, stood up, smoothed out the elegant yellow mid-thigh dress she wore, and walked over to her study's window. Pushing aside the drapes, she looked out at the road that went past Bosartig Manor and saw the wagon rolling past. The merchant was driving the horse himself and was going against all advice about not travelling alone at night.

Dracina licked her lips....it had been some time since she last fed, and the sight of this lonely man steering his horse-drawn wagon through the streets made her hunger grow. It was a spur of the moment thing, and she would have to do something with the evidence later after she was done to lure suspicion away from her manor, so she opened the window and leapt out into the air like a a great hissing beast.

The merchant never saw it coming as she landed on him, and he didn't have time to scream when her ecstatic bite claimed him. The horse whinnied a bit while she fed on the man, its hooves clapping on the road as it moved about in confusion. Eventually, when she was done draining the man of his blood, she turned her attention to the annoying ruckus created by the horse. Not wasting anymore time to allow the dumb animal to alert authorities, she immediately reached over and snapped its neck. The horse fell dead.

Now she stood there on that merchant's wagon, contemplating on what to do with this damning evidence. Then....then a particularly twisted and cruel idea came to her mind. Something so horribly humorous and yet damning and cruel in the same. Nocent wanted to bring Scathach ruin, right' Well....this prank....oh this so delightful prank....it would be the best prank she had ever pulled in her unlife.

That morning, positioned just in front of the Scathachian Sanctuary was a truly perverse and yet comical sight. The wagon was there, and seated in the front was the horse's corpse as if the wagon driver itself, and in its jaws was positioned the decapitated head of the merchant. Along the side of wagon, painted in bright red paint was the caption: "FEAR SCATHACH!!!"

It was certainly very incriminating and bad PR for the Scathachians....

Eddie had just come off patrol, and had come in through the side entrance. She rubbed her weary eyes as she headed towards her room to clean the stench of the night from her, so that she could perform her Temple duties with the rising of the sun. Her frustration was plain as she unhooked her chakram from her belt - she spent every night out, and had absolutely nothing to show for it except dark circles under her light brown eyes.

She looked down the hall as she heard the unmistakable footsteps on her Elder, and hurried to meet her, the door still ajar. The shock - it was all so clear in Issy's eyes, and with a questioning glance, Eddie stuck her head out the door - and nearly fainted at the sight. She wasn't a queasy girl - her training took care of that. But she also had a tender heart, and seeing the abuse of the horse's corpse made her sick to her stomach - never mind the head. The scene looked surreal - the coach, the macabre coachman, and the words - why in the name of Scathach would someone do this to them' All they did day after day was help those who were weak, who couldn't defend themselves, and here - this was too much.

And all Eddie could do was turn to look up at her Elder, her eyes wide, and her color gone white, the freckles that sprinkled her nose standing out. She tried to speak, but couldn't make a sound. Diana, the fleet-footed youngest Judge, was truly speechless.

((OOC Note: This is just after Land of the Dead.))

He appears as the sun rises, walking up the road, a slow, deliberate pace, but - somehow - looking like he feels better. The scent of...whatever it is that is stalking the Sisters...had been bothering him, his worry about the effect it had been having on him weighing him down. He had worried that perhaps he didn't have the evil side of himself under as much control as he had thought. While it wasn't exactly a relief to know that he had his vulnarabilities, it did help to remind him that he had his flaws - something he hadn't been acknowledging for a while. He hadn't been accepting himself for what he truly was.

He is reminded of something someone once told him a long time ago. "Disillusionment is not a bad thing. It is literally a freeing from illusion, and such a thing should be looked upon as a gift."

He is contemplating this little bit of wisdom as he approaches the gates of the Sanctuary, and as he feels the magic of the place interrupt the flow of his thoughts, he looks up -

- and stops cold.

He is, at first, puzzled by the sight. He had never seen anything like it, and his first reaction is almost to laugh - after all, one doesn't see a horse driving a wagon every day - until he sees the head of what must have been the driver in the horse's mouth. His eyes move back to where the writing is on the wagon.

"Well...I think this definitely falls under the heading of 'perverse,' then."

He walks up to the gates, walking up to where the horse sits in the driver's seat, pacing carefully around it. Whatever did this was not only sick and twisted (not to mention original, he thinks), but incredibly strong. It takes a lot to snap a horse's neck - he can see the signs of broken bones under the flesh, the way the neck sits limply forward with an odd angle to the head as it hangs there. Stepping forward, not touching anything, he walks up to the detached head in the horse's mouth and samples the intermingled scents.

It reeks of the undead.

It's a scent he's intimately familiar with, having slain enough of them. "Fantastic," he breathes, stepping back. "As if there aren't enough problems."

He paces around the wagon, slowly, looking every inch over carefully. Oh, he knows the others are there, all right - his senses are filled with the feeling of their reactions, shock and disgust and - in one case - an almost perverse urge to laugh. Of all of them, it is that one he understands the most. He is not shocked or disgusted - he has seen too much over too long a period for something like this to affect him that way. The thought flickers across his mind to wonder who would be able to think up something this grotesque.

He steps back again, looking at the ghastly tableau before him, focusing his attention on it as a whole rather than in minutiae. And suddenly he can't hold it back anymore - he chuckles. Partly it is in reaction to this, for itself and its perversity...partly because the sense of the one he could almost call a friend, lurking back there in the shadows, a sense of humor as morbid as his own, if not more so...but mostly, it is because he has just answered his own question.

The perpetrator of this little...joke...is - while somewhat original and without a doubt twisted - still as simple-minded as any of the undead that he's ever dealt with.

As soon as Issy alerted them of the situation, Mirage headed out of the hallowed Sanctuary to view the twisted spectacle. Her jaw quickly tightened when her eyes bore witness to the ruthless and sick display so irreverently placed on their holy grounds.

Unquestionably, unlike some others present, she found no humor in this. No humor in the irony of it, none in the manner of the execution, and definitely not in its implications. Her nausea and shock quickly turned to intense anger. Direct war had been declared on the Scathachians of RhyDin several months ago, and this hideous display only served to remind everyone that very little had been done about it.

Very little done; and certainly not for a lack of effort.

Who was this insane individual or individuals who were hunting the Scathachians and their friends so ruthlessly' And why them' The Sisters of Scathach only set up grounds here to help the people of RhyDin remain safe. Likewise, their noble and just allies were all doing their parts as well to make this land a much better place to live. Without a doubt, evil had taken very powerful roots here.

Darkness comes in all shapes, sizes and shades. A corporal monster was roaming this land, leaving trails of blood and brutal murder in its wake. Thus far, they had all been unable to do anything to finally put the thing down and slay it. Mirage silently blessed herself and briskly moved back indoors.

"Illea....Diana...", she said in her best calmed tone, "After we clean up this mess and consecrate the remains, I suggest that we all intensely hit the streets and talk to everyone who might even be remotely linked to this chaos. No more kid's gloves. Tonight, we shake them all down hard until someone spills. Somebody in this goddess-forsaken place has got to know some information about this lunatic....or lunatics. I for one am tired of being stalked."

Eddie barely heard Mirage and Reeni approach, the blood pounded in her ears so loudly. She had led such a sheltered life on the Isle - nothing, there was no shred of schooling, no instruction - no nothing that could prepare the young Judge for what greeted her this morning. Her throat was all closed up, and her mouth was dry.

When Mirage spoke, Eddie looked up at her, her light brown eyes wide, and a little wild. With a little nod, she padded off to her room to change, as she was still wearing her robe. If Mirage wanted the West End shaken down, Eddie would shake it down personally. As she passed her Elders, she wiped at her eyes. All of the stress and strain was deeply affecting the young Judge.

"S'what I got, too. 'Sides...it ain't the same style as the presents we got before. Less guts an' gore. More of a j—-"

The Harlequin stood, now a tall, artfully sculpted statue on the roof of the SHQ. Her voice carried easily enough through the air, only wavering on the last word. She'd stopped herself from saying "joke". She knew her Sisters did not find this amusing, even if Wolfe would understand where she was coming from. His chuckle before was not lost on the sharp eared McAllister.

Her eyes had finally parted from the gruesome display, resting first on Big Bad, and then slipping down to her Sisters, who stood closer to the building. Her expression, thankfully, was hidden from them, since the dim light only provided for a nice silhouette, forgetting all the details. They would not have been comforted if they saw the smile dying to be unleashed.

She bowed her head down for a moment, then lifted it up enough to look to the youngest Scathachian, who's frantic heartbeat had miraculously ended the battle between dueling natures, seating loyalty in control once again. She tried out her best sisterly tone for the calm instructions she passed on to the girl, knocking it clean of all the residual humor her previous words had held.

"Calm down, Eddie. It's gonna be okay."

She hoped her Sister's tail-end would take that to heart.

Trixie's words to the youngest among them - the one whose scent and body language, despite being much like that of the other sisters, still speaks of nearly pure innocence - is what pulls his attention from his own dark thoughts and the display of cruel and twisted humor before him. He turns away from the wagon and looks around at the gathered Sisters of Scathach.

His eyes travel along the assembled, noting their faces and scents individually, registering them in his memory as allies, if not exactly friends. The only one he might call by that term is standing on the roof of the Sanctuary, and even that is still somewhat questionable, despite the curious sort of kinship he felt at their first encounter.

He directs his attention to the youngest of them, a girl who looks to be too young almost to be here...but in her eyes, despite the look of shock and fear and innocence, he can see the same ferocious determination the rest of them display. He has no doubt she will fight through this, and opens his mouth to say so, before stopping himself. He is not really a part of their group - he is an outsider who has offered what aid he can, and it is not his place.

Besides, the Sisters are doing it well enough - anything he has to say will only be redundant. Instead, he nods to them and turns back to the carriage.

"If I may so suggest, if you do intend to start 'shaking down' the criminal element...you might start with some of the undead. I'd bet that they have an idea of who could have done this."