The crackling of the burning horse carcass and the occasional whimper from Françoise broke the silence on the dirt path. Thorne, Roderick, and the grieving widow stood huddled together near the overturned carriage while staring dead ahead at the forest.
"Do you think... do you think he's alright? That... creature was quite fearsome," Asked Françoise.
Thorne nervously fiddled with the broken flamethrower in his hands. "The Priest... he seemed capable enough. He'd probably toast that Tumor to a crisp, don't you think?"
Roderick, however, was less convinced. "But what about the baby? What if the Tumor got to it first?" He shuddered at the thought of the grotesque creature.
Françoise was concerned. "Oh, heavens! Do you really think so? We should go look for them!"
Thorne shook his head. "And what good would that do? We'd just be putting ourselves in danger! Besides, even if the Priest survived, who knows how long he'll be gone? We could be waiting here for hours!"
The thought of remaining on that desolate road, surrounded by the silent, watchful woods, filled Françoise with dread.
"You have a point. What if more of those… those Tumors appear? What if we're attacked again?" The memory of her husband's transformation sent a fresh wave of grief and terror through her. "I don't want to end up like Marcus!"
A thought struck her. "Roderick, your carriage is still intact. Couldn't you take us to the nearest settlement? Thorne is right. We can't stay here."
Roderick hesitated. Leaving the Priest behind, especially after he'd saved them from the Tumor, felt wrong. But Thorne's words and Françoise's desperate plea weighed heavily on him.
"I suppose… I suppose we could," he conceded and glanced nervously back at the forest.
"Excellent!" Thorne exclaimed. "Let's grab Françoise's luggage from her carriage and get out of here!"
The three of them hurried to the overturned carriage and carefully retrieved the scattered belongings within. As Roderick secured the last of the luggage in his own carriage, he paused, taking one last look at the path that disappeared into the dense woods.
"I hope you're alright, Father Zareth," he murmured, before climbing onto the driver's seat and urging his horses forward. "Yah!"
…
Zareth was moving swiftly through the woods while scanning the forest floor. He followed a faint trail of broken twigs and flattened grass, signs that the baby had passed this way. The trail was sporadic, making it difficult to follow, and soon it disappeared altogether.
"Blast it. Where could it have gone?"
Zareth stopped to catch his breath.
He stood for a moment, deep in thought. Then, an idea struck him. If the baby was indeed chasing the Tumor, as Françoise had suggested, then he simply needed to find the Tumor's trail, right?
Closing his eyes, Zareth inhaled deeply, his nostrils flared. He could smell the lingering scent of burning flesh and charred wood carried on the faint breeze. He followed the scent by pushing aside branches and ducking under low-hanging vines.
The smell grew stronger, leading him deeper into the woods. Finally, through a break in the trees, he saw a plume of smoke rising in the distance.
"Over there, huh?"
Zareth emerged into a small clearing. Before him lay the burnt remains of the Slack Jaw Tumor. It was a gruesome sight; charred flesh, twisted limbs, and a gaping maw frozen in a silent scream. The creature was undoubtedly dead.
Zareth approached the corpse cautiously as he searched for any sign of the baby. He noticed something odd; a large, ragged hole in the centre of the creature's chest. He hadn't noticed that before, had he?
He was about to examine the wound more closely when a twig snapped behind him.
He spun around hastily.
There, perched cross-legged on a moss-covered stump like a child waiting for bedtime stories, sat a naked boy who looked about seven years old. Skin pale, hair the same dark shade as the infant's had been, and Zareth's stomach twisted; a small, whip-thin tail ending in a delicate spade lazily flicked behind him. The only thing he wore was the same scrap of cloth Sister Blood had wrapped the baby in, now tied crudely around one ankle like an afterthought.
The boy's wide eyes were the exact same shade of blood. And on his lower lip, a single crimson bead trembled, then fell.
Zareth's instincts flared. "…You… You're the baby."
The child tilted his head, wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of a small hand, and gave a shy, almost apologetic smile, as if confessing he'd stolen an extra biscuit.
"This brat? Still hungry after that massacre?"
Zareth's gaze dropped to the Tumor's corpse. The hole in its chest wasn't burned or torn; it was hollowed, scooped clean, ribs folded outward like petals. Something small had eaten its way straight through to the core and out the other side.
'A human consuming a Tumor core doesn't mutate. They die screaming as the Sarx devours them from the inside. Yet this thing just… ate it. And grew.'
He took one step closer. The boy didn't flinch; the tail only curled happily around his own thigh.
"How is that possible? There's no residue. No black veins, no bone spurs. You're clean." He crouched, bringing his face level with the child's. "Sister Blood, what abomination did you birth?"
The boy blinked slowly, then yawned, revealing teeth already too sharp for any seven-year-old. "Papa," he said experimentally, tasting the word, then giggled and toppled sideways into the leaves, instantly asleep.
Zareth stared. Papa.
He wanted to investigate further, to understand what he was dealing with, but a distant sound reached his ears; the rhythmic clop of horses' hooves.
"Blast it!"
He cursed under his breath. They were leaving without him.
"Come here you!"
With a sense of urgency, Zareth scooped up the boy and dashed back towards the dirt road.
The boy weighed almost nothing when Zareth scooped him up. Warm, soft, smelling faintly of fresh blood. The tail looped once around Zareth's forearm like a possessive bracelet and stayed there.
Zareth stepped out of the tree line.
The road was empty. The overturned carriage sat like a broken toy, with only the burnt remains of the horses.
Roderick's carriage was already a speck in the distance, hurrying toward Nippledale without its passengers' saviour.
"Left me, did they?" Zareth snorted. "Cowards."
He shifted the boy higher against his shoulder. The child murmured in his sleep, cheek smearing a faint red streak across the collar of Zareth's coat.
Nippledale was still many miles off. On foot, with a monster that aged ten years in an hour nestled in his arms, that was going to be a very long walk.
"If the backlash from Pons De Flamontz wasn't chewing my bones like acid. I could have flashed us there in minutes."
He glared down at the sleeping face. Innocent. Beautiful. Terrifying.
The boy's tail tightened reflexively around Zareth's wrist, as though afraid to be dropped.
Zareth exhaled through his teeth. He could snap the fragile neck right now. One twist and the world would be safer. But the child had not attacked him. Had called him Papa. Had devoured a Tumor like it was candy and then curled up to nap.
Sister Blood's gift, indeed.
Zareth stared down the long, dusty road.
"…Fine. But the moment you bare those teeth at me, brat, I'll send you to meet whichever god you don't believe in."
The boy sighed contentedly in his sleep and nuzzled closer.
Behind them, in the clearing, the Tumor's hollowed corpse finally crumbled into black ash, carried away by the morning wind.
Ahead, the road stretched toward Nippledale; toward answers, toward Sister Blood, and toward whatever game the Convent's most dangerous heretic had decided to play with a retired Priest and the thing she called her son.
Zareth walked.
The tail around his arm flicked once, like a cat's, and held on.