He hadn’t performed his task with any kind of joy or pleasure. The chickens, at least, had been easy - he hadn’t even needed Slaughter’s aid to wring their necks. There cows that milled in some of the fields outside of Scant, however, were far more difficult - Lairas had needed to spend almost half an hour sitting, meditating, to compress the haze into a cutting edge that he could use to cut their throats.

Then Slaughter had reminded him that the only way to actually make sure his scent was confused enough was to spread the bodies and the blood about the town, painting the walls and creating a scene of actual slaughter.

That had been tedious, more than anything.

He lugged the final cow carcass over to the pile of them he had created on one edge of the paddy, and dumped it half onto the others, then leaned over and panted in exhaustion.

His clothes were sodden with blood, and the awful screams of the beasts still rang in his ears.

Only half of them had been put to slaughter - Lairas didn’t want to actually impact the food supply of this town too much, so he had tried to pick the oldest and skinniest looking ones. Now that they were prepared, however, he would need to lug them back into the village and create some truly horrendous scenes.

From this field he could see that the town was much quieter now, lit only by the torches carried by two of the guards patrolling - different ones to those he had bribed earlier, he assumed.

Now that he needed to make use of Slaughter’s aither, of course, the spirit could verbally harass Lairas to its heart’s content.

“At most this will only delay those Hunters,” it scoffed, mocking. “All you’re doing is creating a stop-gap and harming these people. In the long run, the most efficient action would be to kill a few animals and a few humans, then mix their guts all together and spread them about. That might actually be more effective, since then the scent of human and animal would get all confused.”

Of course, by harass, Lairas meant ‘provide increasingly gruesome suggestions that served only to disgust and distract him.’ He simply did his best ignore the spirit and go about his grisly task.

“It will be far easier to cut the beasts up here, then take their parts into the town,” Slaughter pointed out with a hint of smugness. “I can show you the easiest ways to butcher the things, of course.”

Lairas ignored Slaughter’s offers of aid as well. He had nearly given in and followed the spirit’s suggestion on how to actually kill the cows, before the spirit had let slip that its method, while technically the cleanest, was also excruciatingly painful for the cows. That had been enough to resign him to the bloody clothes.

In this instance, however, Slaughter seemed at least partially correct, so Lairas closed his eyes and focused for a moment. Compressing the haze - the aither - was a vital aspect of an Enspirited’s journey through the Thresholds - it had more utility once compressed, and manifested its unique aspects more strongly.

Lairas suspected - but couldn’t exactly confirm - that one of the unique aspects of Slaughter’s compressed aither was an edge that cut more easily into flesh. His manifested blades had practically glided across the flesh of the cows, barely offering resistance.

Now, it took a few moments’ concentration to manifest the compressed edge again. It arose as a darker, gradated red appendage hovering about his hand. Lairas took to his grisly task with grim determination, grimacing as the makeshift blade scythed through skin and meat and bone.

It took a disturbingly long time to dismember and divide the cows, during which the blood seeped largely into the ground or, it felt like, his skin. He was practically stained crimson with blood, and the horrific scent of the cows’ stomachs pervaded his nostrils so intensely that he wondered if he would ever smell anything again.

After what felt like hours, but was probably in reality the work of a few minutes, a gag-inducing pile of animal parts lay before him.

Lairas gathered as many in his arms as he could, and jogged into the town, then tossed the limbs and chunks of flesh as far as he could manage.

He tried to go about his task as quickly and quietly as possible, but inevitably the guards caught up to him and stopped, horrified at the scene he had created.

“You!” One of them cried out, charging towards him. “Stop!”

He turned, keeping his head down in a vain effort to hide his face, and kept his ground. These guards were Unspirited - he had nothing to fear here. And perhaps if he scared them away, he could go about his unfortunate task with more privacy.

The other guard shouted after his companion, but didn’t follow. The wiser one, Lairas acknowledged. As the more eager, younger counterpart charged close, Lairas bulked his haze into a cloud around his body, attempting to compress the perimeter of the cloud into a shell that could repel them.

It half-worked - the guard’s charge was broken by the sudden interruption of the aither, and as they floundered in surprise, Lairas stepped closer, pressed his hand against their chest, and shoved them backward.

As he did so he pulsed Slaughter’s haze outwards, augmenting the shove and sending the guard careening backward several feet, until they tripped over the leg of a cow and tripped. Lairas stood still and watched them fall prone, until they scrambled back to their feet and retreated towards their companion.

He remained in that position as they hesitated, suddenly understanding of simply how outclassed they were. The people of this town would be aware of the Enspirited conceptually, even if they had never actually encountered one - Wellspring Barrow made sure to spread word of their enforcers to each of the satellite towns that constituted their revenue,

They hung backward, toward the edge of the gruesome tableau he had created. They remained there as he returned to the field three or four more times, bringing as he did so more of the cows’ limbs, spreading them through and about the town at random.

When he passed the chicken coops he had visited earlier, Slaughter chose to speak up.

“Simple murder won’t be sufficient,” it hissed at him, to shock and fear of the watching guards. “The point is to create chaos and terror - you need to bleed them and spread the carcasses.”

As much as the spirit seemed unwilling to actually support Lairas himself, it couldn’t help but revel in actual slaughter. As Lairas killed and dismembered and brought a hideous dawn to Scant, Slaughter became almost intoxicated.

“Yes,” the spirit said, practically purring now. “Paint the walls with their blood… create terror in your wake… show them what the slaughterhouse is truly like…”

Lairas knew that by participating in slaughter - the concept his spirit-bonded partner embodied - he was empowering it, and thus bringing them closer to the Second Threshold. In some ways this was good - in the long run, his abilities would be stronger, he would be stronger. In other ways, this simply reinforced Slaughter’s grip on his mind, his soul. Adhering to his spirit’s conceptual core would only serve to make his own more similar, which would make their bond easier… but would make preserving his conscience more difficult.

After almost an hour of coating Scant in his ghastly leavings, Lairas came to rest his head against the wooden board outside the town centre, where the ramshackle ‘courthouse’ stood.

The guards had remained watching, not interfering in his macabre business, nor alerting to the townsfolk to it. He had stopped paying attention at some point in the night, when he realised that they would only step in should he threaten an actual citizen.

Now, though, he simply felt tired. Bone-deep, muscle-achingly tired. He had taken no joy in his task, but now that he was done he felt relieved. And perhaps… satisfied, in that this was a step in accomplishing his ultimate journey.

He turned, pushing off from the notice board, and leaned backwards. He needed to rest, but he couldn’t do it here.

His eyes hung heavy with bags, but he blinked them open nonetheless, passing them over the brief set of listings on the cork.

After a once-over, however, they snapped to the pamphlet pinned front-and-center to the noticeboard.

There, a gaudy, colour-streaked poster hung beautifully on the sheet of wood. Lairas reached out and pulled it from its pinnings, marking the poster with his bloody fingerprints as he did so.

The poster read:

Travel to the Tournament

Held among the Inner Cities

Lailocen ensures safety of all participants!

And then, beneath, the stamp of the Inner Cities - a gilded, complex symmetrical glyph of sweeping lines and sharp edges.

In his half-asleep state, Lairas focused in on the one part of the poster relevant to him.

Safety, he thought. If I can just get to safety…

“Who in the fucking heavens is Lailocen?” Slaughter scoffed, its harsh voice cutting through the revolting night air.