Villians, Part 9

Morgan sopped up the blood with the altar cloth given to him by the faceless man.  Runes of some sort were sewn around the edge.  Shotty work.  Looked like a child's rag playing at evil.  A man and a boy hung over him with their throats slit, hands tied behind their backs, slaughtered like pigs.  Hardly his concern.

When the altar cloth could hold no more blood, Morgan left the cabin with it balled in his red hands.  He held it in front of him as he walked carefully along the path only he knew towards the small cave where the faceless man lived.  The winter wind chilled his blood soaked clothes, but the fresh air removed the coppery stench from his nostrils. 

The cave was small, he'd walked past it hundreds of times through the years never paying it much attention.  Nothing adorned the entrance.  Morgan didn't know how the faceless man moved around inside.  Didn't care.  Give him the cloth and get back to work.  He wasn't one to indulge in bullshit spiritual matters.  Or matters of any kind except those that put food on his table and coin in his pocket.

He stood outside the cave aggravated and cold.  He held the cloth near the entrance hoping the faceless man would take his damn relic and never appear again.  The blood began to freeze on the hair of his arms and hands before he heard a rustling sound from inside the cave.  Morgan scowled and said nothing.  His words meant nothing.  Why waste the breath.  His time had already been wasted.

The faceless man's elongated body contorted out of the small cave entrance like an large thin insect.  It's head looked like a bag of skin.  No features.  It crawled forward then stood to its full height which was two heads taller than Morgan who was considered a large man by most.  The skin around its head vibrated slightly as it bent closer to the clothe.  Morgan would have guessed it was pleased, but who the fuck knew.  It reached out with elongated fingers that had extra joints and grasped the cloth delicately and draped it over its head.

Morgan grimaced.  He turned to walk away, but he only got a few strides when he heard the thing hiss, "Wait."

His hand went to the long knife at his side.  Enough of his time had been wasted and he wasn't about to play servant to some faceless cave dwelling god.  He'd take his chances with filleting the skin from its body.  Old gods tend to have an inflated sense of power and importance.  They were scattered across the land always scrapping for any crumb of awe.

"Your payment," the thing said under the blood soaked cloth.

Morgan snarled, "Payment is you fuck off and stay in your cave."

One of the creature's hands reached into the darkness of the cave and brought out a long golden chain.  Morgan's attention strayed to the golden chain that looked to measure the length of a horse.  It coiled the gold chain around it hand and offered it to Morgan.  "Payment."

His hand stayed on his hilt and he snorted.  Morgan reached for a dangling loop of the chain and pulled it towards him.  He braced himself for the creature to pull him closer and shove him into the dark of the cave.  Instead the creature let it fall to the ground as Morgan collected his reward.  The boy and his father from over the ridge whose blood soaked that cloth ended up being his richest victims.  Morgan figured with just a section of the chain he could buy a new horse, buy a keg of ale from the market, a woman for a few nights and a new knife.  A new knife made from Scarred Steel. 

Morgan looked up after a short while of thinking of all the things he could buy and saw the creature completing its transformation.  He knew the old gods could change their form.  Their original forms always seem so horrific.  It changed in size and looked human as it stood naked in the cold valley.  When it removed the cloth it appeared as the boy and began walking toward the ridge where the boy's family lived along with ten other families.

Morgan shoved the gold chain into his vest and walked toward town deciding what to buy first.