He never replaced them with any respect. He merely waved his hand and the skeletons shoved the caskets back into the pit, sometimes without even closing the lid.
Of course, Eva’s ritual had proved useful despite the obvious downsides.
When Sawyer had finally left the graveyard, Serena and Nel had been able to figure out exactly where he was and where his warehouse was based on Eva’s descriptions of the surroundings. There were three graveyards within the gap in Nel’s augur vision. Sawyer had probably picked the location specifically because of the close proximity to so many corpses.
She had managed to sketch out some crude blueprints of his warehouse as well. Every skeleton, zombie, ghost, or enigma that she saw, she noted down beside the sketch. Knowing that there were twelve enigmas patrolling the outside along with skeletons could save their lives.
“His hand,” Eva said softly. She didn’t want to speak too loud. Sawyer couldn’t hear her, but she could hear herself and that was bad enough. “I didn’t notice in the darkness of the cemetery, but it is discolored. There are stitches holding it to his wrist.”
Perhaps because it wasn’t a sense that Eva was leeching from Sawyer, watching her companions through her blood sight didn’t cause any extra sickness. She was free to watch Nel nod her head without any backlash.
“That makes sense. The girl was amputating his hand at one point. I didn’t see him reattach it, but given the state of the girl, I doubt attaching a new one would be beyond his abilities.”
Eva nodded, but did not respond. Unlike her blood sight, hearing Nel’s voice did cause some ‘double-hearing’ induced nausea. Instead, she just sat back and watched through Sawyer’s eyes as he went about his base of operations. She made notations where necessary. Anything that looked important or dangerous got marked on her blueprints.
She didn’t want Sawyer to get away, but he was the slippery sort. Destroying absolutely everything would be a suitable consolation prize. Especially if they then went to his Nevada home, either chasing after him or to destroy everything there.
“Hold on,” Eva said. “He’s leaving his warehouse.”
Sawyer hadn’t bothered to lock the doors on his way out. With all the skeletal guards and enigmas patrolling around, he probably didn’t need to. They would be more than able to handle just about any intruder. Especially ones that just happened to stumble across his hideout. Mundane police wouldn’t stand a chance.
Mage-knights of Genoa’s caliber or a group of Elysium Order nuns could probably get in. Neither of them would likely be stopped by a single locked door for very long.
“Where’s he going?”
Eva shrugged. “I see what he sees, not think what he thinks.” And wasn’t that a good thing. Peeking into Sawyer’s thoughts might give them insight into just what he was doing, but Eva doubted that she would remain all that sane. Serena and Nel would probably have had to restrain her.
“He’s headed towards his car.” A nice car. Eva didn’t know enough about cars to tell just what make and model it was, but it was nicer than Devon’s truck. She wouldn’t have expected a necromancer to drive around in a sleek sports car, yet there he was.
As he drove along the twisted roads, Eva called out his direction and any side streets that he passed by. Nel could write down any landmarks while Serena marked it down on their map.
“I think he’s headed towards the field he mentioned,” Eva said. “He’s pulling over to the side of the road and I can’t see anything around but wilderness. No buildings or lights. Not even a side road.”
His discolored hand twitched a little as Sawyer reached for the car keys. With his good hand, he clamped down on his wrist for just a moment before removing the keys from the ignition. In the same motion that dropped the keys into his pocket, he retrieved a syringe full of fluorescent green liquid.
Eva jerked back with a wince as he plunged it into his arm. The needle itself wasn’t the problem. A blood mage had to cut themselves far worse than the tiny pinprick.
The problem was the liquid. It burned. His pain came through their link loud and clear. And yet, he didn’t actually wince or anything to indicate that he felt the pain. Either he was much better at disguising the feeling than she was or he had a way to ignore it that didn’t prevent the pain from going to her.
“Are you okay?”
Eva started at Serena’s voice. She hadn’t even noticed the vampire placing a hand on her shoulder. “Fine,” she said without opening her eyes. “Just note down that Sawyer has problems with his hand. Twitches and loss of control. He takes some kind of injected potion for it that is not pleasant.”
Sawyer was moving again. Walking this time. There was a trodden trail through the sagebrush and dirt, so he had probably been this way a few times.
He crested the top of a small hill and looked down below.
“I don’t like the look of this.”
Skeletons meandered about in the shallow valley. Caskets and coffins were arranged into circular rings. Three in the innermost ring, five in the next, eight after that. The ring after that looked like it had room for thirteen, but four were missing. There was enough room for one or maybe two more rings of caskets after that, but neither had anything in them aside from meandering skeletons.
“It’s a ritual of some sort. Or Sawyer is just obsessive about how he arranges his bodies. I don’t have a clue as to what it could be for, however.”
“What kind of ritual?” Nel asked. “I’m no archivist, but I have been trained to recognize most common necromantic activities.”
“Rings of bodies. Three, five, eight, and so on. All centered around something in the middle. He didn’t look directly at it, so I’m not sure what it was.”
Studying through the necromancy books she had stolen might have been a good idea—even just bringing them along so that they could look things up. There was no guarantee that this particular ritual would be in any of the books that she had, but they would have been better than nothing.
Nel hummed in thought for a few moments. Eventually, she shook her head. “I would normally describe the more complicated things I see to an archivist to figure out what they are. Sorry.”
Eva just waved her off, though she kept that in mind for later. Maybe they could contact someone in the Elysium Order and ask. It wouldn’t be hard to claim that they were mage-knights on a job. Probably.
After surveying the ritual site for a few minutes, Sawyer walked down into the valley. He didn’t stop at any of the caskets. Neither did he stop at the center. He continued onwards until he had reached the top of the hill on the opposite side of valley.
Eva quickly counted up the caskets there were all lined up in a row. Twenty. Enough to finish the thirteen-ring, but not enough for even half of the first empty ring.
That was a relief. Whatever the ritual was for, it couldn’t be anything good. Eva decided to make the field a priority regardless of how anything else turned out.
She recognized a few of the caskets from the graveyard earlier. The rest might have come from the same place, but it was dark and she really hadn’t been paying all that much attention to the individual caskets.
He walked up to the first casket in the line and placed his hands on the lid.
Eva braced herself, preparing for the worst.
Once again, a stench belched forth from the casket that sent Eva’s head spinning. She had been hoping that she had gotten used to it, or that the casket might have aired out a little thanks to having been opened not long before.
That wasn’t the case. The fresh air in the interim just made the scent hit her tenfold as hard.
As Sawyer pulled out a set of tools, Eva stepped straight to her feet behind Serena and Nel. She rushed into the bathroom and proceeded to empty her stomach into the toilet.