(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

more academic side to me kicked in and curiosity bent me over to whisper
to Morte.
"What's wrong with her hands?"
"Eh... she's a tiefling, chief. They got fiend blood in their veins, usually 'cause
some ancestor of theirs shared knickers with one demon or another. Makes
some of 'em addled in the head... and addled-looking, too." A soft ripping
sound punctuated the last few words as the tiefling tore a hunk of liver from
the body and placed it in the urn beside her.
There was nothing to be done, then, and quite content with my luck I
motioned Morte to follow me away.
A clicking sound from behind me halted us in our tracks, "Hst! You!"
I turned around to see her pointing a bloodied talon at me, bits of gore and
bile trickling down her palms. She cocked her head as she took me in. If her
talons weren't odd enough, her eyes were a rotting yellow, with small
orange dots for pupils. Within a flash the look on her face turned from
surprise to irritation. She frowned.
"Uh- hi?" I said lamely.
She didn't seem to hear me, and instead leaned forward, squinting, as if she
couldn't make me out right. Mad and near-sighted, definitely to my
advantage.
"You," she clicked her talons, then made a strange motion with her hands,
"Find THREAD and EM-balming juice, bring HERE, to Ei-Vene. Go- go- go."
Her voice was a hoarse, moist hiss.
If she thought I was one of the zombie servants, I might as well play the part
for now.
Finding some thread and embalming fluid didn't involve much more than
sifting through the cupboards for a few minutes. When I returned to Ei-Vene
she was back at work slicing the corpses' chest open rhythmically, peeling
off strips of skin and stripping muscle from bone. Slice, strip, peel, slice,
strip, peel. The pattern was familiar, but I couldn't quite remember wha-
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