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The cliffhanger we left on last, wherein Claire Voyagira’s deception of Emily regarding her sacrificial butchery was at least revealed, will be continued… right now. Said continuation begins with Claire saying “Ok, I may have killed a few people in here…”
“For Christ’s sake Claire, you’ve got a giant corpse pit right over there!” Emily yelled, gesturing violently towards it.
“But there was a good reason for all of this!” Claire said confidently, lifting a hand in the air to signal her oncoming speech. “My good lord Nefuenidd needs these sacrifices in order to stay in business as the creator and manager of the universe! Without my killings, they would be completely out of luck! Do you understand now, Emily?” She turned to see Emily dialing Nefuenidd’s number on Claire’s phone and ringing them up.
“Hello? Is this Nefuenidd?”
“Oh my god you again? At least it’s not Claire but for god’s sakes I’m still in the middle of something!”
“Do you, uh, need human sacrifices to be able to continue managing the universe?”
“I’m gonna manage something about that fucker real soon, haha… but no, the answer is no, I don’t need those at all, and I don’t actually do anything remotely close to that. Alright shut up now.” They hung up and Emily looked towards Claire accusatorily. “Alright Ms Human Sacrifice, I think you’ve got a bit of explaining to do.”
“Oh my god…” Claire said, looking down at her bloodstained hands in horror, “None of that actually helped Nefuenidd… I’ve probably been missing what I actually needed to do to help them… oh dear lord…”
“I’m, uh, gonna get going now,” Emily said awkwardly as she shuffled towards the basement door. She had been trying to put on an air of disaffected smoothness, one she frequently carried, so as not to display her extreme fear on full blast in case Claire might catch wind of it, but her guise was starting to slip. She started to make a break for it out of Claire’s house but she rushed over to Emily and grabbed her just in time, dragging her back to the basement with an unusually strong grip (possibly being Nefuenidd-gifted). “You’re not getting out of here that easily, Emily… I know you’re just gonna go tell the cops about my heinous misdeeds, and believe you me, I am not going to let that happen. Nefuenidd’s prime disciple won’t be disposed of quite that easily, Emily.” Claire moved to fetch her sacrificial dagger.
Claire’s phone was still lying on the ground where Emily had dropped it, but it wasn’t the only phone in use here, as back over in that city over there near that ocean Cosma was saying “I swear, I’ll get back to you once I get back, uh, home, please just let me finish this meal…”
“Alright,” Ellen said, “I really don’t care about all this and also wish you would stop bothering Cosma, who really needs to catch a break, but can we please clear the air about what happened with that other lady? The one who loudly screamed ‘OH FUCK’ before hanging up? What was that all about?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Nefuenidd said, “I hear her voice in the background sometimes when that stupid Claire calls me. Why will she not just leave me alone, my god.”
“What?”
“Ok we got off topic, Cosma, do the-”
“No, I’m actually not going to this time.”
“No, you need to! It’s the only way you can clear up your insomnia, or whatever I said last time that made you want to do it!”
“I am not going to regardless of what you say right now.”
“Oh dammit. Fine. I’ll call you again later. We’re not done here, Cosma! It isn’t over til the universe ends! Ahahaha!” Nefuenidd hung up, afterwards placing their head in their hands and silently muttering curses for several minutes.
Back at Captain Beef’s, Ellen said “Y’know Cosma that’s really great of you to stand up for yourself like that. You’re making really great steps here, I’m glad this meal has helped you out so much!” She gave Cosma a cheerful pat on the back.
“Uh… thanks for that…” Cosma said, with a slightly warmer tone now in her voice. The two of them continued eating and conversing, with an altogether noticeable weight having been lifted in Cosma’s tone of voice.
Claire was still about to be killed though.