Michael winces and looks quietly through his healer's kit. Some of the preparations in there might ease someone's passing, if they prefer it.
He thinks about that. Someday, very soon, he's going to have that conversation.
Belladonna, aconite...he knows those drugs, all of them.
Michael shudders.
That's not a good way to go.
Hanging?
Jumping?
None of them do any good, though.
The prospect of going mad and eating people, like a Baney...
Michael shudders some more. He can't imagine anything worse.
Can he?
Horribly tortured and murdered...
Michael considers torture.
He considers sharp knives slid under his skin, peeling back the skin and flesh to reveal white bone and gray-green nerves pulsing through a red slick of blood.
He considers fire...the prickling of heat deadened, the sizzle of fat cooking through the skin.
He considers pressure: bone splintering, blood splattering, jellied muscle bursting through the skin.
He considers losing his immortal soul, frail and unimpressive thing as it is, in a greedy orgy of flesh-ripping cannibalism.
It's not that hard a choice. He's going to have to die anyway. At least this way, his death will have some meaning.
And if he's really lucky, he'll lose his mind, change into a ravening cannibal beast, and eat the priestess of Amphousa before he dies.
Michael takes out the holy symbol of Amphousa and sets it on a flat rock.
I wonder if Aglaia knows the expression 'Hoist in her own petard'?
*CRUNCH*
