The Wandering Witch VOL. 1 - The Prelude Arc (COMPLETED)

3.4| A Thieving Crow

    It was, without doubt, a genuine human skull.

   At a first glance, the item's curved and ashen-colored surface looked both extremely brittle and delicate, like a fragile piece of glass that could crack at any given moment. With careful care, the skull had been wedged inside the satchel, taking up most of its available space together with a few papers, transparent bottles of herbs and multicolored liquid, and a single, fat-looking pouch that seemed to contain what Noct had been after this entire time—gold. However, all thoughts of greed had momentarily escaped him as he stared at the gruesome image of the skull. It had been faced upwards, so that its eternal blank expression was eerily directed at Noct's. The skull's pair of hollow, dark sockets seemed like a dangerous abyss, an endless pitch filled with an unseen, dark despair. It's jaw, without any skin to cover its teeth, seemed to form a perpetual creepy grin that sent uncomfortable chills down the thief's spine. The more he stared at it with his hands slightly shaking, the more he realized that as much as he wanted it to be, he wasn't having a bad dream or a hallucination.

   Noct thought to himself, This is a real human skull.

   No one could argue about that. He simply knew right then and there that he was correct with plain certainty, and it was more than just a quick observation on his part. For some reason, something told Noct that the skull between his grasp was a real thing, that, it had originally belonged to a living human being, once. Which meant, naturally, that he was holding a dead person's head in his hands.

   That sudden realization caused him to abruptly collect himself, and Noct remembered where he was and what he had been doing in the first place. Wide-eyed, he looked around on instinct in case someone were to see him, making sure that he was, indeed, still alone at the alley. After all, the thief was in no position to explain himself if someone suddenly discovered him together with the skull. Murder was a capital sin among the entire continent, and the punishment was none other than death by hanging, something most sane people tended to avoid.

   Carefully, Noct breathed out, steeling his nerves and straightening his thoughts. He tried to think rationally. There is no help gained in useless panicking, he reminded himself. For a moment, he stared again at the dreaded skull, studying it in the overwhelming silence. By that time, all thoughts of his big steal had disappeared completely. After a few more moments, Noct finally raised the most important question to himself.

    ...What in the name of the gods is this kind of thing doing in here?

   The thief had no idea. How could such an innocent-looking girl be carrying this kind of unlikely thing inside her satchel?

   He sighed again, this time much more slowly, his face morphing into different expressions of deep confusion, panic, and slightly, fear.

   No, of course there might be some kind of reason.

   Perhaps the girl was a scholar, studying human skulls for her research. Perhaps she was simply just delivering the skull to a twisted person who collected them as trophies, like a necrophile, for instance. Perhaps she was a murderer, and was about to hide the evidence of her crime. Perhaps she had picked it up somewhere and decided to bring it along. As Noct thought about this, each scenario seemed more and more unlikely than the last. His mind was overwhelmed with confusion. In the length of a second, a much, much more horrifying suggestion came to him, something he would have preferred not to consider. However, his mind could not block out the thought.