Fanfic: The Smiling Death

Author's note: This is based on the Traveling Circus fanfiction, an ongoing project of five years. This contains no spoilers for either ingame or original stories.

Lionguard Captain Seska looked down at her desk, claws scoring grooves into the wood as she scanned over a report. It had been days since she last slept, and the charr was more than willing to gut the next person to point out the dull gleam of exhaustion in her eyes. She grimaced, thin black lips pulling over sharp teeth as her four ears flattened against her leonine skull.The paper in front of her was merely another promise of sleepless nights; a dismembered corpse had been strewn about very carefully throughout the city. It seemed too convenient that a merchant had been reported missing for only a few days prior. What remained of her was coherent with what Seska and the others had been able to find on a murderer whose escapades had brought about legends and inspired terror in both the local and underground spheres. Any sane person – though in this case, Seska’s definition of “sane” was becoming more and more questionable – would have perhaps allowed the city to recover from the assault on Claw Island before picking out another victim. But of course, as the Lionguard were already tense and spread thin culling what remained of the dead, the killer who had inspired a three-month curfew the past year had resurfaced in a trail of viscera and gore.
She glanced back up at the recruit who had given her the notice. “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, Darvis. It seems as though every time we start to relax around here, something goes wrong. Tell me,” she leaned forward in her chair, brow furrowing as she gazed intensely at the black-haired recruit, “what do you know of the local folklore concerning the Smiling Death?”
She saw his olive skin wax pale beneath his golden helmet. “I – I think I know enough, sir,” he said. “Some ghost of sorts, or maybe a monster. Folks say that she’ll lure you in with her appearance or her knowledge or something, and somehow before you know what’s going on…” He swallowed heavily. “Well, it isn’t pretty what she does, and that’s supposing you get found by someone.”Seska sat back and gave a grunt. “I wish she was a ghost. Those I know how to deal with.” She shook her head, lip curling in a low growl. “If we could get a pin on her, get more information, we could encourage the city and let them know that she’s no monster under the bed but something we can and will bring to justice. She has learned how to blend in with society, put on a mask that befits her required situations, and infiltrate where she has been warned against. She once seemed to have a pattern of execution, a sort of dark justice towards those who had harmed others, but for some reason she seems to have turned to indiscriminate killing.” She looked up at the Lionguard recruit, a wry smile twisting her lips. “Sit down, Darvis. Your knees keep knocking any louder, the Council’ll end up using you for the morning bell.”The recruit stammered his thanks and sank into a plush chair that had obviously seen better days.
“Where did you find the remains, cub?”“Well, sir, me and my patrol were just making our rounds around Zommorros’s forge, and we decided to take a detour to … ehm.” He cleared his throat, not meeting the gaze of his superior. “We – we went for a drink.”A low growl rumbled from the charr’s throat, raising gooseflesh on the back of Darvis’s neck. “We’ll discuss the temporary abandonment of your post later, recruit. The remains. Where did you find them?”“Well, after our drinks, we decided to take a back road back to the Lion’s Plaza. Thomas can’t quite hold his beer yet, being maybe two months out of the Grove, and he was kind of teetering. So we had a couple of men try shushing him up from his inane giggles and holding him steady, except they weren’t really watching where they were going, and one of them put his foot through the floor of one of the old dock-steps, but something there smelled like rotten meat, and it wasn’t the usual kind of rotten smell. It was like… like something had been burned, or tampered with, or just… it was just wrong.” He shuddered. “So the poor sylvari went sprawling and ended up staring at this… this part of a skull or something, but it had holes in it, like it had been melted with wax. He didn’t hold his liquor then, and we had Vrixxi guide him to the dock to vomit. Thomas was so shaken up that he couldn’t be dissuaded from inspecting it, and that’s when we saw the lines on the bones. Said it looked like it had been very carefully cut apart, like how Arette got her leg removed. But … you know those lines on the skulls? The natural ones?”“Sutures?”“Yeah, those.” He scooted forward in his chair, voice rasping in a shaky whisper. “I don’t know how, but … Vrixxi says you shouldn’t be able to cut between them, not so … precisely. It was like some piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and… and it was just…” His skin took on a faint green hue. The charr’s brow furrowed.
“Here.” She uncorked a small metal flask and passed it to him. He nodded mutely, raised it to his lips, and tipped it back. His eyes bulged a second later, and he thrust it back at her, coughing reedily, eyes streaming.
“Thank you,” he croaked. He cleared his throat again.
“Blood Legion whiskey.” Seska stood, prompting him to rise quickly to his feet. “You’ve said enough, recruit. I’m not surprised at the body’s location, but it’s the subject that concerns me. Bidhi was well-liked. That she was dispatched and dragged to the filthier corners of the city is very concerning.” It brought back memories of the last time she had seen one of the Smiling Death’s victims. His bloodless corpse had been skinned and butchered, a note tagged on a dangling, froglike limb declaring that his involvement in a plague of asuran scalebane had been repaid, retribution given to the sufferers in his own blood. Seska doubted that his demise would have been discovered without the murderer’s “you’re-welcome” note. The Smiling Death had been arrogant then. Now she was making threats, angry, taunting her and the Lionguard with bodies whose identities were slipping like gore into the writhing sea.

Seska locked her office door behind her and sighed deeply beneath the diamond-starred canopy of the night sky. Lion’s Arch had already seen so much. It didn’t help that Lionguard forces were still lowered from the losses at Claw Island and from Pact recruitment, though she was proud of the sacrifices made by all. She dragged her hand down her face, shaking her head and blinking sleep-fog from her eyes. A scratch behind her made her ears twitch.
“Office hours are from noon until sundown,” she growled, hand on her sword as she turned around. “If you have an emergency, I’ll see what I can do, but if you’re just here to beg for money – ”“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that,” came the quick reply. Wide green eyes glowed softly in the dark. A sylvari stepped into the light, pale skin gleaming dully under the lantern-light. She smiled charmingly.
“What is it you want?” the charr asked gruffly. The last thing she needed was some moon-eyed tree-child asking her about her race or the city or scourge-knew-what else.The sylvari’s lips curved into a pout. “So curt. Is something the matter, Lionguard?” Seska’s eye twitched in frustration. The woman raised a single finger as if recalling something. “Oh! I found a body.”
“What kind of body, ma’am?” Seska could feel the stress of the past week crawling into her throat, twitching her fingers at the hilt of her holstered sword. “Was it a butchered body? One in the meat markets, perhaps?” She couldn’t help the cynical curl of her lip. “I don’t know if you’re new here, cabbage, but most races have an omnivorous diet, so it’s not uncommon to see animals being killed for food.” She wasn’t entirely proud of herself, but she did see something flicker briefly over the sylvari’s lily-leaved face.
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that.” Her voice faltered briefly as her fingers fiddled with what looked concerningly like a human skull at her hip. “I mean, I understand that in a big city people tend to go missing and whatnot, but…” She bit her lip, looking through curved green leaves up at the charr’s leonine face. “He wasn’t sleeping; I checked,” she added quickly. “I’m a necromancer. I know these things.”Seska sighed. “He may have been old, or he may have died of – ”“He died of blood loss.”
Something in Seska’s blood chilled. “Where did you find the body, Miss…?”Pale green lips parted in a wide grin. “Nettle. Nettle Viridia. I didn’t move the body. I found it over by Diver’s Ledge.”So close to the Vigil headquarters and the Lionguard training grounds? The charr felt her hackles rise. “I’ll gather my men and we’ll go inspect it. Show us where you found him.”

Seska stared down at the ragged corpse of the old man. Were it not for the dagger in his throat, she could have dismissed the beggar as another harmless drunk sleeping off his poor choices. Nonetheless, her frustration had reached a snapping point.
“Blood loss,” she said slowly, turning to the sylvari. “You said he died of blood loss, not a knife to the flaming neck!” Her fangs were bared, sword drawn as she glowered furiously at the necromancer.“Well, he did,” Nettle protested. “Just in a very roundabout way. I mean, he was old and sick, and he drank too much alcohol, but he did have a faint inkling of magic in him. He tasted like he once may have been a farmer or something, just enough magic in the water to make crops grow better. Probably got kicked off of his land by centaurs—”“Tasted? What do you mean, tasted?” Seska’s eyes bulged. “Did you eat this man’s blood?”“Well, yes, but now you know about him, right?” Now Seska could smell the crimson ichor on her tongue, on her breath as she stared up at her. The sylvari’s gaze no longer seemed innocent, instead seeming to pry the very flesh from her bones, inspecting whatever fabric made up her soul. The cold calculation in her eyes was inhuman. “How many men did you bring, Lionguard? The city has been getting rather dangerous lately, hasn’t it?”“Burn me, you aren’t as stupid as you seem. Who are you?” Seska hissed. Her guards stood at her sides and surrounded the slender woman with their weapons drawn.
Nettle Viridia smiled as she slipped her dagger out of its sheath. Glowing green flames burned in her skull’s empty sockets.“I believe you have a name for me. Rather crude, though, isn’t it? Inelegant. I am no butcher. Everything I do is for the progression of knowledge. Nonetheless,” she said casually, rotating her wrist and flexing her fingers around the eelskin pommel, “you have been an irritant for a while. I’m so glad to have finally caught your attention.”
She ran the blade down her flesh, binding Seska and the guards in place with golden chains of blood.
“Adam hates charr,” Nettle hummed, tapping the point of her blade against the skull’s brow. “He’s given me some particularly fascinating ideas on how to properly vivisect you. As for your companions, I believe I will deal with them later. Oh, do cheer up,” she said and tilted her head at her charmingly. “It has been an absolute pleasure playing this game with you.”
Nettle’s dagger glided like a spectral blade through her armor and coldly, lovingly carved the final breath from her lungs.

Wow! Nice writing. Did not expect Adam to make appearance! Nicely done!

Thanks, Yereton! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)In-game, Nettle is known to often use a dagger and focus as a weapon set, second to her staff. She found Adam near the grave of Eve, apparently yammering on about how she kept telling him of her adventures in the Underworld while he was still stuck there with knowledge and power and no one to use it. Nettle, being drawn to both knowledge and power like a moth to a flame, was more than happy to take along the ancient bone and use him as he once had been in centuries past.