Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kostya liberally poured gasoline over every ravaged body he encountered, keeping a sharp eye turned to the ground for tablets. Someone else - also in Death, surely - had already done a preliminary sweep, but better safe than sorry.

The place used to be one of the more staffed outposts in the Gobi Desert, but it was no outpost any more.

He stopped short as Syntax sounded a mental alarm, notifying Kostya that there was an intruder. Weapon summoned, he shaded his vision with it, catching sight of a kneeling figure in the distance.

With slow caution, Kostya proceeded, barrel aimed at his target.

Syntax thrummed with the desire to fire, excitable. But this was either a student far, far from home or a horseman, and the idea of facing a strange one of inestimable power, alone, was not appealing.

So Kostya kept his weapon summoned, but lowered the barrel.

"Am here to dispose of dead," He said. "Must burn corpse to prevent... Mishap."

Kostya gestured to where he'd left the tin of gasoline. The scent of it was heavy in the air where he'd spilled it, but it hadn't yet been carried this far by the breeze.

"Fire," he said, "is all that is require." For a time, Kostya did. It answer her question of the harvest, because sometimes he wondered as well. Death. Spies and secrecy, conspiracies and mistrust.

"Lives. And secrets." He pointed at the gem in her hand. "Your harvest?"

"It has no meaning. Is to avoid mishap, like say before." To Kostya, death was the end of a long march, an inevitable finale not worthy of fanfare, celebration, or condemnation. It simply was, because it meant that whatever died now was not.

"Body must be taken apart, or else can return. Turn back into Fear." He looked almost apologetic at the notion. "Am here to make sure our fallen from rank do not strengthen Halloween rank. Long term planning."

The Death hunter studied the gem, and consciously put his weapon away, the red and cyan glow fading from his now bared arm. "Can hold? Have glove if not want taint."

Unlike some of her pupils, Kostya listened to her words intently. It was clear now that she was a Jewelcrafter, capable of extricating something more interesting than maggots from a corpse. Even if her words did not apply to his rationale of the world, it did not make them incorrect in hers.

It would be a far stone to throw when he often felt like an angel of Death and reckoning when at work.

"My ritual," Kostya said, amidst the sparks, confessing to a horseman what no other human (save for Jane, but was she...?) knew, "I close their eye. If I am the end. And even if I am not. But not for all mission, only when the time is... Right."

When he was working for a different force than Deus Ex Machina. Offering the jewel back, he dug in his pocket for the one tablet he'd found earlier in the day. It held the engraving of a whip, and was heavier than it looked. Kostya held it out for her to take or inspect as she pleased.

"Vhen veapon live but hunter not, tablet is made."

"Do not be so sad. It vill go into room with other tablet and wait there for one day or month or year or decade. It wait in sleeping until a hunter bond with it. And then yes, it come back to life. Activate, like sprouting plant."

He toyed with the tamagotchi at his belt, but made no mention of it.

"When I am closing eyes, is when I am..." Kostya paused, struggling to find the words in English. "There is no life after death. But is important to acknowledge the end. Especially if you are one taking them to that point."

"Let me ask." Kostya probed at Syntax, inquiring with direct intent. Athe answer was slow, languid static, and sounded tamped down like he might be wrapped in gauze.

"No. Is like state of awake and dream, a period of waiting but not good sense of time passing. His answer is different, but that is vhat he mean."

Kostya did not comment on the advice, and instead pointedly stared at the dead bodies. "Da. Yes. It is horsemen that do this verk."