Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-A-Villain — Villain who makes lanterns from skulls
"I'm not," Trickster Rhabash says piteously, "a terrible person."
Umbra grunts. Umbra very much doesn't fucking care whether Rhabash is a terrible person. Umbra neither trusts nor understands the basis on which non-orc peoples determine that kind of thing, but also, Umbra doesn't care. What Umbra cares about is the small mountain of money that people will give her for handing over Trickster Rhabash, alive and complaining, for them to pull pieces off until Trickster Rhabash stops complaining rather permanently. Or whatever it is they intend to do; though Umbra would place some small wager on the pulling-off-of-parts. It's traditional.
"I'm not though," Rhabash whines.
Umbra points at Rhabash's lantern. "What's that," she says flatly.
"It's a portable light source," Rhabash says, and Umbra gives them a look. "...Made out of a skull, fine, yes. It's not as though I killed someone for it!"
"Killed someone for it, or killed them at all?"
"I didn't actively kill them," Rhabash mutters. "This is a hostile environment. I suppose they were here for me, and weren't quite so good at it as you, so I suppose some people would say it's my fault, but I didn't murder them."
Umbra grunts. "Just took their skull."
She doesn't care about that, either.
"It's a thanatrophic ecome right on top of a hot geothaumic upwell," Rhabash says, sounding a little testy. "You can't — you know what happens if you make anything out of wood here? Bone? Hide? Anything organic that's from the zone itself? It auto-raises itself as some kind of thanatic construct! Bones from outside are relatively safe, as long as you get to them fresh and boil them or something. What's actually worse, orc? A skull lantern, or a living skull-lantern-creature that mutates scuttly bone legs and dances around, attracting bugs with its light and eating them?"
Umbra grunts. "You had one of those?" she says.
"I've been hiding here for six years," Rhabash says. "Learned a lot of things the hard way. I made a lantern like that; but goodness knows I never managed to tame it. Haven't seen it in years, now. Either it died properly or got eaten by something worse or — still out there, maybe. Growing bigger and weirder." They shudder a bit. "Couldn't you just leave me here?" they add plaintively. "Exile here is the only thing keeping me alive, and it's miserable, just miserable."
"I need a lot of money," Umbra says indifferently. "They'll pay me a lot for you."
"I'm not a terrible person!" Rhabash exclaims, and Umbra breathes loudly through her nostrils. She doesn't care. Why must these people insist on talking to her as if she cares, or would if they pelted her with enough detail.
"They said," she says, boredly, "that you magically cloned someone, then fucked, murdered, and ate the clone."
Rhabash makes a noise like a wounded air-filled bladder. "That rancid-pantied harlot," they say in a strained voice. "So that's how they spun the story."
Umbra mentally recalculates. This was a mistake. The bounty is going to insist on telling her about it, now.
"Technically," Rhabash duly begins, "the fucking and the eating were at least two different clones, and the whole thing was the original's idea — she's an artist—"