The dog hanging limply over his shoulder and the blood spilling down his back were still both uncomfortably warm. Though his expression remained a blank-faced mask of professionalism, Ber wanted to cringe away from the sensation. He had not thought this through at all. Over the shoulder like a sack had seemed like the easiest, simplest way to transport the dog’s body, but he hadn’t considered that the hole he’d slit in its throat would still leak blood until it was too late. He had so many regrets. They should’ve just burned the dog in the alleyway and risked burning down Skia.

Utterly distracted by the unpleasantness of it all, he followed Sliva to a small wooded area and collected himself enough to look around. It seemed fine, though to be fair, his standards for acceptable arson locations were very low and dropping further. They weren’t in an alleyway between two buildings, at any rate. With a foot, he started clearing away the loose leaf litter and flammable undergrowth that were the result of recent Autumna rains. “We should move this out of the way,” He explained himself a moment later. Then he paused as a thought struck him. “Do you think you could, I don’t know, blast a hole in the ground for the dog?” Burning the body in a little pit would allow the wet soil to protect against fire spreading - at least that was what he assumed - and it meant that he wouldn’t have to dig a hole himself to bury whatever didn’t burn.

If Sliva did so, he would turn away slightly and close his eyes to protect against soil that flew into the air as a result of the witch’s inherently destructive magic. He would put the body in the pit and step back, resisting the urge to tug the back of his shirt away from his body. If Sliva did not, then he would shrug and set the dog on the patch of forest floor that had been cleared of other debris. Either way, he stood there, waiting for her to light the corpse on fire and hope it wouldn’t take the whole city with it.

They were lucky - and likely didn’t even realize how lucky. Ber certainly didn’t. Recent rainfall had wet the ground enough that the soil itself, which was packed full of the nutrients and microorganisms and decaying organic matter that allowed the surrounding plant life to flourish, was no longer highly flammable. If Sliva had made the shallow pit, she had luckily avoided unearthing any of the extensive, flammable, arboreal root systems that mirrored the tree branches stretching out above their heads. Once the dog was alight in a small blaze that would burn itself out, the worst part was the smell.

With his nose wrinkled, Ber watched the dog burn. Nothing could beat the stench of a man who had spent the past week decomposing in a chest, but the aroma from this most macabre of bonfires was still far from pleasant. When the fire had extinguished itself, leaving behind charred bone and congealing flesh and ashes, he haphazardly kicked some dirt back over the mess in a lazy attempt at burying it. He looked at Sliva. “How badly do you want to find the other dogs?”

Technically, they had been told to chase the pack of dogs away from this neighborhood alongside killing the offending biter. Technically, they had only completed one of those tasks, so it would only be right to start looking for the other dogs, because that was what they had been told to do. But Ber did not want to go trekking through this part of the city in a bloodstained uniform, looking for dogs that could have been anywhere. Besides, Woodwick had no way of knowing whether they had done so because any future report of stray dogs in the area could be explained away easily enough: the roaming pack had simply returned after the soldiers had left.

Sliva would, though, and given that she seemed determined to be the best at everything, there was no way she would be willing to stretch the truth in order to slack off.

Dammit. Ber’s gaze shifted from her to the trees around them, as if they would reveal the location of the other dogs. “Fine,” He said. “But I think we should just make sure there aren’t any in this neighborhood and then head back to tell the others.” That seemed like reasoning she would agree to. Quite frankly, for him, the main priority for returning to the castle was getting dead dog blood off of him.

At her agreement, Ber looked back at the witch and crossed his arms, immediately uncrossing them again when his shirt ended up plastered against his back. Ugh. “Well,” He said, gesturing back the way they had come. “If we’re gonna go look for the dogs, let’s go find the dogs.” He wouldn’t start moving until she did. As far as he was concerned, she was the one that wanted to spend the time chasing a pack of stray dogs, so she could be the one to take the lead. “You know the area. Not sure where you think they might be.”

How long it took to find them and whether the time passed in anything more than a sullen silence was up to the witch. The young man at her side obligingly looked around as they walked, but he wasn’t particularly inclined to initiate any conversation on his own or put in any more than the bare minimum effort. Though it would only become clear upon finding the canines in question, there were two more dogs in the neighborhood. And one of them was unusually aggressive.

The directions from the strangers landed Ber and Sliva on the outskirts of Lady Johnson’s neighborhood, where the nicer homes of nobility began to give way to the more unpolished buildings of the common rabble who could not afford to spend so much money on aesthetic upkeep. Accompanying the increase in noise and stink of humanity were the mixture of shops and shared houses responsible for such unpleasantries. When the two soldiers found them, the canines in question had been digging through the scraps of whatever food waste had been tossed somewhat out of sight behind a tavern, and neither were pleased about their new company.

With only a few civilians who were quick to hurry along at Ber’s bidding, the side street was, luckily enough, emptier than the main road it led to. Sliva’s words drew his attention from the two dogs, one brown and one gray, and he glanced at her. “We see if we can scare them away,” He said, drawing his sword grimly, dark eyes drifting back to the gray one, whose hackles were already rising. “And if we can’t, then I guess we fight.”

Moving his sword to his non-dominant hand, he bent and picked up a loose rock then threw it at the dogs, shouting at them. They dodged the throw easily, though the gray dog stood its ground while the brown dog skittered away further down the street. Returning his sword to his dominant hand, Ber strode toward the two dogs with both arms held out to the side to make him look larger than he was. The brown dog disappeared around the corner, but the gray dog growled and lunged at him instead of retreating. Half expecting such an attack, Ber had stayed balanced on the balls of his feet, and as he backed away from the dog, he brought his sword down defensively in front of him. The dog followed him, and he swung at it, forcing it to keep its distance. “Can you do some sort of magic to attack it from further away? Or a summoning?”

It probably would’ve been smarter to start off with something like that, but Ber had never claimed to be a strategist. Only a soldier.

At Sliva’s words, Ber grunted his understanding, eyes fixed on the growling dog in front of him. It kept lunging, snapping its jaws with an unrelenting ferocity, and he kept dodging, forcing it away from him with swings of his sword. The witch didn’t need to worry about him being on his toes; he was already on his toes, trying his best not to get bitten before she could summon whatever creature she thought would help them. He would never make it behind her before she could start her summon. The dog was too aggressive. To retreat that far away would be to place her in the dog’s sights instead, so instead, he kept its attention focused on himself while she chanted and prayed that she could control whatever beast she brought forth.

The summoning in question was a disturbing mass of tentacles, horns, legs, and eyes. Had he not been expecting something suitably horrendous - as a soldier, he was probably more aware than most of the monstrosities the female half of the military could summon - he might have stared, but instead, he kept the sword raised in front of him while the monster charged the dog. As the canine in question turned to snap at his new opponent, Ber retreated further, taking the opportunity to catch his breath. Just in case. He watched dispassionately as the summoning gave the dog a far bloodier end than it would have met on the end of the soldier’s sword. Well. At least he wouldn’t have to carry this dog’s body around Skia.

After quickly wiping his sword clean on his already ruined clothing, the soldier looked at Sliva. She smiled, and he nodded his agreement, before glancing around them one last time. “Yeah, let’s head back.”