Bunny looked him in the eye for a moment before nodding.
"Right. Follow me."
It hurt his heart that he believed, just by looking Sam in the eye, that he'd seen enough in a mortal lifetime to be able to handle this alongside him. But unhappy as he was that Sam was so experienced, he had to admit, the children of the world, with this to face, had made the right choice in calling Sam to their aid.
They needed more heroes that could do this. That could turn a charnal house into a funereal mound.
Bunny knelt and picked up the rotten, half-person that had fallen into his tunnel when he opened it. The blood and offal of rot soaked into his fur, but he put his objections away in the same place that he was putting every one of his other feelings that got in the way of what needed to be done now and couldn't be done later.
Crying, being disgusted, were always things one could do later. But bodies had an expiration date.
He jumped from the base of the tunnel, body in arms, to land on the floor of the warehouse. If he'd thought the sight would be more awful than the smell - well, the truth was, he hadn't, and it was worse.
The rictus grins and rigged bodyparts stopped him in his tracks for a moment, his breath hitching as he saw the intricacy of the carnage. There was so much depth in the thought of how horribly to mangle these people, how much dignity to rob from their deaths.
"I was right," he called to Sam, dry tone a little strained in warning. "Not a single pretty thing."
There were children dismembered and re-posed with wire, mouths stapled into grins so wide their lips had split. Crying could always happen later.
Bunny laid the half-body - a woman, perhaps 25 - near to, but not quite in the center of the warehouse. He looked around and found the nearest pile of remains that was also a torso, picked it up, and laid it next to her. In life it had belonged to a teenage boy. A severed arm hung from a wire, and he sniffed it, identifying it as having belonged to the same teenage boy who'd also lived in that torso.
"Keep an eye out for traps," he muttered, keeping his bile down as he took the arm down and put the arm with the body it had belonged to. "Tell me if you see anything. I can keep an ear out during this part."
He loped to the next mostly-solid set of remains, smelling for the identity of the person it had once been, and laying it alongside the bodies he'd already begun to - barely - reunite.
no subject
"Right. Follow me."
It hurt his heart that he believed, just by looking Sam in the eye, that he'd seen enough in a mortal lifetime to be able to handle this alongside him. But unhappy as he was that Sam was so experienced, he had to admit, the children of the world, with this to face, had made the right choice in calling Sam to their aid.
They needed more heroes that could do this. That could turn a charnal house into a funereal mound.
Bunny knelt and picked up the rotten, half-person that had fallen into his tunnel when he opened it. The blood and offal of rot soaked into his fur, but he put his objections away in the same place that he was putting every one of his other feelings that got in the way of what needed to be done now and couldn't be done later.
Crying, being disgusted, were always things one could do later. But bodies had an expiration date.
He jumped from the base of the tunnel, body in arms, to land on the floor of the warehouse. If he'd thought the sight would be more awful than the smell - well, the truth was, he hadn't, and it was worse.
The rictus grins and rigged bodyparts stopped him in his tracks for a moment, his breath hitching as he saw the intricacy of the carnage. There was so much depth in the thought of how horribly to mangle these people, how much dignity to rob from their deaths.
"I was right," he called to Sam, dry tone a little strained in warning. "Not a single pretty thing."
There were children dismembered and re-posed with wire, mouths stapled into grins so wide their lips had split. Crying could always happen later.
Bunny laid the half-body - a woman, perhaps 25 - near to, but not quite in the center of the warehouse. He looked around and found the nearest pile of remains that was also a torso, picked it up, and laid it next to her. In life it had belonged to a teenage boy. A severed arm hung from a wire, and he sniffed it, identifying it as having belonged to the same teenage boy who'd also lived in that torso.
"Keep an eye out for traps," he muttered, keeping his bile down as he took the arm down and put the arm with the body it had belonged to. "Tell me if you see anything. I can keep an ear out during this part."
He loped to the next mostly-solid set of remains, smelling for the identity of the person it had once been, and laying it alongside the bodies he'd already begun to - barely - reunite.