17
Unexpected shock
When a child first sees a cat
Hiss and bare its claws
Inazuma face-planted onto a very familiar scroll. Disoriented, she tried to stand up, only to bump her head against the underside of a wooden table.
"Oof!"
She heard a chair scuff against the floor and moments later, a pair of feet appeared in front of her face.
"Is that you, brat?"
She crawled out from under the table, rubbing the top of her head and dragging the scroll with her. She looked up.
There he was, hair practically dripping with blood as he towered over her, black cloak flowing endlessly from her nose to the sky.
"Hi!" she squeaked. He snorted.
"Come here, I need you to organize these poisons and their antidotes, based on their potency and composition. The vials have descriptions on them, you just have to match up the labels and put them in their proper places." He gestured to a pile of boxes overflowing with notes and various vials.
"Uh, okay…" she mumbled.
He nodded, and picked his way over to the other side of the room, where he sat down and positioned a lamp over his work. He picked up a thin, silvery scalpel and began carving. At first, Inazuma immediately assumed that whatever he was carving was some kind of wooden puppet, like the one she'd seen last time in the gorge.
But then Inazuma's eyes widened to the size of saucers when she realized that what he was carving was oozing blood. Dark, black blood that shined red where the light of a table lamp hit it, spreading thickly against the stained wood of the table.
She suddenly felt torn between nausea and tears, and turned quickly to the vials of poison that were waiting to be sorted.