This choice: Ask around in town some more. • Go Back...Chapter #7A Town Full of Eyes by: Wuff Fox   Jane held the statue in her hand… not liking the way it felt in the slightest. She was beginning to regret her purchase, not only due to the bizarre and disgusting subject of the sculpture itself, but also because it felt that, despite the hooded statue’s lack of eyes, that the tiny Lipomancer was watching her intently.
“What’s with this guy and fat women anyways…?” She asked nobody in particular before stuffing the disturbing idol into her pack with a grimace: She didn’t really want it, but after paying that much gold for so little information she wanted SOME form of compensation.
“Mmm…? What was that you said…?” Marcus asked, tilting his head to one side quizzically while once more leaning against his paw.
“Nothing at all Wolf, I won’t be needing anything else, thank you…” She said, bowing slightly before swiftly leaving the shop.
She began to make her way back through town, hoping to find at least another lead before she set out. It had begun to snow now as she made her way through a twisting, yet deserted alleyway, and she still could not shake her sense of discomfort. Finally she stopped, pulling the marble statue from her pack before tossing it into a snow drift.
“There… that feels a bit better…”
She continued on her way, but did not get far before she felt a strong, firm grip on her shoulder, stopping her dead in her tracks. Was she that distracted that her keen senses hadn’t warned her of somebody else in the alley…?
“Excuse me miss…” A deep, but calm voice said from behind her before the hand on her shoulder withdrew itself.
Jane turned around, looking up slightly to see a rather large, black furred bull man standing before her. He wore a dark green robe, but this did little to hide how spectacularly obese the beast man looked. Yet he had a kind expression on his face as he looked at her, “I believe that you dropped this…” He said before presenting her with the statue.
The rogue was quite shocked, she was almost certain that nobody had seen her disposing of it, yet here it was again, “I… I don’t know what you mean… that… that horrid thing doesn’t belong to me!”
The bull merely smiled before gently, but firmly placing the statue in Jane’s hands and cupping them forcefully around it, “You should be more careful with these things…” He chuckled before moving past her to walk out the mouth of the alley.
Jane’s eyes were wide with shock as she looked at the statue she once more held in her trembling hands, and then to the street that the bull man had disappeared to. She considered once again trying to throw the thing away, but she knew that somehow it would find its way back to her. She just shoved it into her bag once more and turned right at the street ahead, the opposite direction that the bull had left through.
She walked down the street, trying to think of other ways to be rid of the creepy object. Perhaps she should drop it down a well? Or sell it to some other vendor… As she was thinking to herself, she once more felt as though she were being observed, though not by the statue this time. She stopped and looked across the street as she noticed a rather mangy looking young wolf man staring at her, but as she tried to catch any more details about him a horse-drawn carriage interrupted her line of sight. When it had passed, the lupine was nowhere to be seen.
The pervasive sensation of being spied upon, however, remained.
She quickened her pace down the busy street, slowing only when she had neared a blacksmith’s open air shop. She looked around, being certain that nobody she could see was looking before she snatched one of the small, but sturdy hammers from a table before moving on.
She turned into the next alleyway, following its passage until she found almost exactly what she needed: A nice, secluded place to smash the heinous idol into oblivion. Sure, it was a crude solution, but it seemed to Jane to be the simplest and most effective. She soon came to a quiet hidden little courtyard garden with a lone tree stump in the middle. There were windows looking out from the posh looking residences onto the courtyard, but Jane made sure that nobody was looking before she laid the statue down upon the stump.
Grinning, the rogue pulled out the hammer, raising it high above her head before bringing it straight down through the statue. The thing seemed to break all too easily, but Jane ignored this oddity, glad to be rid of the accursed object as she kept striking it, pulverizing the idol into dust.
She panted a bit from exertion as she let the small hammer slip free of her grip to the cobblestone path of the garden, giggling a tiny bit out of ecstasy, “I knew I’d be rid of that stupid thing soon enough!”
She paused for a moment, goosebumps sprouting across her fair skin.
She must have been too excited to have felt it before, but her keen instincts were telling her that she was being watched once more. No, not just watched, examined. As a rather attractive woman, Jane had felt the gaze of plenty men over her slender, exquisite body… but this felt even more intense than that. She looked about herself, checking each branching alley, each shady window until she caught sight of a gaunt, reptilian face staring out at her from a second story flat, just moments before it retreated into the darkness.
Jane made her way out of the courtyard as soon as she could.
The feeling of being observed wherever she went on the city streets continued to follow her, but the rogue kept looking for hints and leads about Little Silverhorne or the Lipomancer. She was more than a little put off by what was happening so far in her search, especially by the statue that still seemed to haunt her mind even after its destruction, but her greed for treasure and wealth kept her going.
She had checked in various pubs, taverns, and even some libraries for information on the town, but all she could gather about the Lipomancer was that he hoarded more riches than could be imagined, and all she found out about Little Silverhorne was that it was simply a rather small, normal farming community.
Finally, as the sun began to set on the cold, large city of Greatmanor, Jane decided that it was best if she got some rest at the inn and set out on her journey the next day. She passed quickly through the bar, making her way past the mob of patrons who were too busy singing to notice her before she had reached the stairs. She entered her cozy little room, flung off her cloak, and collapsed upon her soft, comfy bed.
She had to try her hardest not to scream when she saw the marble statue waiting for her on top of the dresser.
Yet she quickly noticed that it wasn’t the same one as before. The figure that the Sitharli held in his clutches was different, most noticeably fully clothed and thin. Yet he held her arms firmly in his grasp, his tongue still snaking out from beneath his shadowy hood, but instead of slithering down his victim’s throat it ran down her exposed cleavage, slipping between her ample breasts. The victim’s eyes were squeezed shut, a grimace of disgust and terror upon her face.
And to her horror, Jane recognized the face, the clothes. They belonged to her, sculpted perfectly in tiny marble form was a tiny marble Jane held helplessly in the clutches of a tiny marble Lipomancer.
She glanced at the door. She should lock it, stay inside until the sun rose and it was safer.
But then she thought about who might have done this. It was quite obvious that it was either a cult, a lone worshipper, or… she shuddered to think, the Lipomancer himself.
Whatever was the case, somebody must have told them that she was searching for the Sitharli, somebody had talked.
And Jane was almost certain who it was.
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