Bartholomew sprinted down the road in his civilian fineries. He had had to leave his armors back at the Garrison, as the weight might’ve slowed his pace and inevitably made him miss his opportunity to stop Petrus’ investigation. With the full force of his lengthy legs, he had sprinted from the Garrison- through the city and out into the mid-periphery, where he found the easily recognizable, timbered tavern. Outside, he saw Barrel and Ellie resting on the grass, but he could pay them no heed. If they were still here, it meant Petrus had yet to discover their secrets. Barrel peered up at the heaving, sweaty, wide-eyed, terrorized General whose frantic mouth moved to ask questions neither of them could understand. Seeing the driver’s confusion, Bartholomew decided that he could not wait for his breath and instead pushed through the door.

A loud roar of pain sounded from beneath the floorboards as soon as he stepped inside- meaning... he might’ve already been too late. In which case, he would be dead either way. He leapt past the bar, through the kitchen and flung the hatch open- grabbing a sharpened kitchen-knife from Kester’s countertop before descending the stairs in a sprint.

Nothing might’ve prepared him for the sight that met him. Asrael sat at the table- looking at his arm as a sobbing, panicked desert wildling sawed through his shoulder with naught but a jagged, rusted bread-knife and tears. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, please-, please!” She screamed and paused to look at her pale, agonized associate. Asrael rounded on her- his eyes blood-shot with the pain and roared: “You did this- you finish it!”

Neda ran the blunted knife over his brachium- nauseated with the sensation of his splintering humerus against the dull blade. Another roar from Asrael later, she paused to cry once more. “K-K-Kester, help!” Bartholomew turned to look beneath the stairs, where Kester sat atop a small stool- leaning against the wall while eating an unpeeled potato with a satisfied grin. Asrael protested: “No! That psychopath butcherer would enjoy this too much! His clumsy hands would also damage the glenoid cavern and as opposed to you, it would greatly inconvenience me if I had to kill him for ruining my shoulder!” Bartholomew beheld the spectacle and fought his budding arousal.

Asrael’s pale, naked body had been splattered with something that had cooked boils on most his torso and face. Neda seemed mostly unharmed, save for the psychological trauma and Kester-… well, Kester had become something far darker in the short time they had been acquainted. Bartholomew stepped down to replace the metallic tinge in the atmosphere with his own reek of red-onion sweat. He was rigid- Asrael and Kester could both see it, but Neda struggled to look anywhere but inside the wide-open gash on Asrael's shoulder, where something white peered back at her from deep within the wound.

Flabbergasted and oddly aroused, Bartholomew attempted to piece together what might’ve happened... at least until he saw the feminine hand on the table. He raised his hand to his mouth and spoke a sullen: “Oh no...” through his fingers. As Asrael was in too much pain and Neda likewise, it befell on Kester to question from beneath the stair: “Why’s that an ‘oh no’? That fella tried to kill ‘em. I’m told he almost made it, too.” Bartholomew gripped his chin with a stern hand and dragged his fingers across his face.

Asrael looked up from the brutal surgery and hissed: “That little goblin burnt my hand off! A little warning about his magical potency would have been swell, Bartholomew- and you keep sawing!” He ordered the yelping Neda whose efforts only brought her to saw in a single motion more- working the saw towards the inner core of the bone. Neda spoke through her tears: “H-he ruined our relationship!” Asrael looked at her with dumbfounded confusion, before turning to scold the silver General.

“I do not know what you have done to delude her into thinking we have ever had a relationship to begin with, but I will see you undo it! She has become a pervert ever since the two of you began your training-” Bartholomew rubbed his temples and interrupted his associates’ criticisms with a: “I... I need you to understand how thoroughly fucked we are. Petrus was not only my brother’s right-hand-man, but he was also his only friend for most his life and his very subservient lover. When Titus finds out about this-… I shudder to think of the consequences...”

His grave warning fell on deaf ears, as all were too preoccupied with either suffering from unimaginable pain, enjoying the sight of said pain and lastly; dreading to inflict this agony. Bartholomew bit on his thumb. There could be no worse timing for this-… As soon as Ingvald would come to the city, Titus would likely have him and his capable army of psychomancers and Purged burn it to the ground, as they saw this. He began pacing as Neda returned to sobbing and dragging the knife across Asrael’s arm once more. “Can we make it appear as if Petrus died in an accident? A cave-in, perhaps?” If Neda hadn’t known better, she would have said Asrael had a passing look of guilt about him- one that passed as soon as he assumed his arrogance once more. He shook his head as the knife came to a halt and bit back the pain to say:

“It would be difficult to explain his injuries. The fiend was an extraordinary magus and I had to explore his flesh. I made several discoveries- amongst others, that his skin has an astounding number of pores-” Realizing that the fury had faded from his voice as he spoke of his fascinating findings, she dared hope they would be fine- that their relationship could be salvaged. A strict look from her associate told her that, although there was a hope... it would still be a while before she could even think about earning her undeserved forgiveness.

Bartholomew continued to rub his temples in his pacing back-and-forth. “S-so you... cut him open?” Asrael glanced down at the arm atop the table and grinned. “More or less... mostly more.”

Far below the city’s surface- deep within the musty, old mineshafts, Kester and Bartholomew stood above a sight most gruesome. With their torches raised up high, they suffered in the atmosphere of soot and cooked flesh to look down on Petrus’ mangled body. Every bone in his corpus had been broken several times over where he lay atop a perfect circle of rubble. His face was unrecognizable to any save Bartholomew and, as the wayward son imagined, Titus. The mangled mess had been cut open to bare his organs, before the madman had taken them out to study them and leave them there- half-attached to vascular plexuses and nerves. Kester had seen butcherings more merciful than the treatment the corpse had received from his desecrator and, despite his disdain for the Purged magus, Bartholomew found himself silently wishing the man had been dead before the cruel treatment had commenced. The tavernkeeper and the General turned to meet one-another's eyes and shared an unspoken agreement.

Titus could never find out about this.