Revolting Rose

Chapter 3/Part 1 - Masterful Deception

Pagne collected his bedding and returned it to its rightful place, but even after the sheets had been smoothed out on the bed, they had a discarded look about them—and not entirely because he did not know how to make a bed. The Wyverkiiri did not keep servants for that kind of thing, so he did what he could before heading out.

He pondered where he might find Saloonka as he wandered the musty halls of the Academy. It was a loud place, full of sounds that he would rather not understand. There was also a lingering gloom to some parts of the Academy. Walls seemed to be drooping with despair and the carpets were maroon with melancholy.

Pagne followed the unhappiness, choosing dim passages over those brightly lit by oil lamps and eventually he was led out into the courtyard behind the Academy. There he followed a path of forlorn flowers, passed under willows that wept and hopped across a stream which showed no signs of flowing anywhere aside from one abysmally unhappy fish that drifted along with the last traces of the current.

An owl sounded Pagne's arrival at the end of the trail with a blargh from the roof of the ogre stables, then threw itself off. It landed in a splayed position on his head with its wings hanging around his ears. As much as he did not like it being there, he was unable to muster the motivation required to nudge it off.

Self-pity had so consumed Pagne that he failed to notice the ogre wallowing beside a pile of rocks and barely cared when he tripped over its hand and fell against another of its kind. Too miserable to clamber from the melancholic mud pit, he slumped against one of the massive monsters' warts.

Pagne blarghed like the buzzard on his brain box. Life was too horrid to bear. Wart-juice dampened his back, the owl had tangled its feathery talons in his hair and his coat was spoiled by the stable mud. There was a warm, red glow behind another ogre which he focused on putting out with nothing but his malice, but he did not have enough energy left to fuel his hatred.

Just as Pagne began to debate whether breathing was more effort than it was worth, his backrest rolled away and left him lying in stable filth. Then, from a beam above, the cause of all his woes dropped and landed like a wet sock beside him.

"This is all your fault and I will never forgive you for ruining my favourite coat," Pagne grumbled.

He did not know how or why Saloonka had caused such wretchedness, but he was certain that the fiend was entirely to blame for it. If only he could hit the blighter without putting in the effort required to lift his arms.

Saloonka pulled himself up into a squat and fixed his eyes on Pagne, hopping closer like a bogjumper. Once he was beside him, his hand shot forward and latched onto Pagne's face. He could not tell which were sharper, the nails of the fiend's fingers, or the bones inside them.

Not in the mood to be fondled, Pagne made a pathetic attempt to flop away. But it was no use. Saloonka hopped onto his chest and grabbed more. He picked at Pagne's hair until the owl was plucked free. Still very much alive, the feathered victim was stripped bare of its feathers, then its flesh was delicately flayed by the fiend's spindly digits.

Pagne was most disturbed that the bird seemed to enjoy the ordeal, watching as the poor owl's still-beating heart found its way into the jaws of the fiend. At least it was not a messy affair, in fact, Saloonka was quite mannered and meticulous in his mutilation of the meal.

"Why did you follow me here?" Pagne asked, unable to take his eyes off the hollow hooter.

"Why did you follow me here?" Saloonka laughed and patted his head with a bloody hand.

"I couldn't sleep in sad sheets, if I can sleep in those sheets at all," Pagne huffed. "I need you to return everything to the way it ought to be."

"Return? You are a silly one, aren't you?" Saloonka stroked what was left of the owl, then set it down in the mud.

It waddled off like nothing had happened.

"The way things ought to be has never been, but don't fret, I will make the world into what it ought to be once I have conquered it," he said with an irritatingly optimistic grin.

"Good luck with that," Pagne replied and oozed deeper into the mud.

"Now, are we going to sit around in this pile of mud until the worms eat our legs, or are you quite recovered from your little crisis?" Saloonka flicked a worm onto Pagne's face.

"My little crisis? You—"

"Shhh," the fiend hushed with a finger stuck in Pagne's mouth. "Cheer up, Cherry Tart."

Pagne pulled the poker from his pucker. "Seems to me that my crisis is not going to clear up as soon as I'd like," he said as he got to his feet. "I suppose I have little choice in letting you share my carriage, lest you try to wear my skin or whatever else it was that you threatened to do."

"Are we leaving now then?" Saloonka said with an eager bounce. He probed around the ogres until he found Duskerro in an ear cavity. With a squeeze, a squeak and puff of flame, he lit a new cigarette.

"We have to stay here for the week, then we can leave," Pagne replied with a hand extended toward the fiend. His clothes were already soiled from the ogre mud, so Saloonka could not do any more damage. "You won't be staying out here. There's far too much filth, and I know you'll bring it inside with you later if I don't make you clean yourself up."