#[...honestly just put all the gore and violence related cws on this one folks]

[halfdeadsacrifice]

The rhythmic scraping of Lalanika's knife against the sharpening iron provided a morbid percussion to the whimpers of the latest unfortunate soul to wind up on her table -- whose hand wildly grasped, and then closed in a fist around Vijay, the assistant's, wrist.

She spoke in the same aching whine that Vijay had heard way too many times. "Please, you've got to- you can't be-"

Vijay rolled his eyes, and didn't bother hiding it. This one would be dead within the month, just like every other victim not named Vayu, and everybody knew it. Vijay definitely knew it. Lalanika, no matter what outcome she hoped for, had to know it. Even the woman on the dinner table today had to realize her life was basically over. Keeping up appearances was as useless as begging the cannibal's assistant of all people for help.

With a sharp tug, he pulled his wrist out of the hold, and replied, "Hey, don't ask me for help just because you couldn't outrun a frail old dead lady."

The scraping of steel-on-steel stopped for a beat, and then resumed. But the victim was suddenly a lot quieter now, though still looking up with wide, despairing eyes.

Honestly? That kind of interested Vijay -- had he struck a nerve? Only one way to find out, he supposed, and that was to do it again. He loomed over the table, with a mocking grin on his face, as the woman flinched away from him.

"Ooh, how fast was she, actually? Because it takes her forever to get anywhere just in this house." He gestured to Lalanika's feet, twisted backwards, as was the case for many undead creatures. "There's actually a room upstairs -- you'll see it once we're done here -- but it'll take her even longer to get up all those stairs with her, ah... condition."

Vijay looked over his shoulder and called to the ghoul of the house, "Why don't you let me take her up this time? Get some rest, dida, have an after-lunch nap like us normal folks."

Without responding, Lalanika turned around, and lumbered to the table.

"See what I mean?" Vijay whispered to the prisoner as Lalanika approached, with a snicker. "That's how long a few steps take. Now imagine how long-"

Suddenly, Lalanika swung and stabbed the knife into the side of the woman's neck. With a single jerk to the side, she sliced the neck entirely open.

A moment of convulsing agony stretched on. Lalanika spared but a glance to the mess she'd made and stared, unblinking and unmoving, at Vijay and dissecting his reaction -- how he stood frozen in shock, how this was something he'd seen before, should have been used to, and yet the quiver at his fingertips betrayed how his animal mind was screaming to get away.

When he regained the ability to speak, Vijay babbled, "Wait, I thought we- you said were going to-"

"We will," Lalanika said in her hoarse, grasping voice -- she was talking about her constant attempts to recreate whatever accident of fate allowed Vayu to survive being carved up for months, but no-one else. "Another day. Today is... a day of impatience."

With another quick, jerky stab, Lalanika dug her blade between the ribs of the recently-deceased. She cut deep and wide enough to dig her claws in, and laboriously crack open the chest, revealing the flesh and organs within. Not a split second sooner was it all open to the air than did Lalanika dig her claws and teeth into it.

Vijay registered the corpse's blood dripping down his cheek, still warm, as he watched the gory feast unfold.

Lalanika lifted herself from flesh and blood with a heavy sigh, and a guilty expression. "No, no... cannot eat too much."

She pried herself away from the table, and dragged herself to her workbench, reaching for her bone-saw. She grasped it with both hands, and pointedly stepped towards Vijay first -- even hunched over, and not that much taller than him to begin with, she cast a shadow over the room. "When she is in pieces, help me carry her to the cellar."

As the adrenaline drained, her message became clearer. Remember that it could always be you on my table.

Vijay silently nodded, and watched her step back to her work.