Words: 557

The butterfly closures were gone, the skin was mostly healed over and the wound was memorialized by a thin, barely paler line that crossed from just inside his illiac over his flank to the top of his gluteous. The ghost slick feeling of blood coating his hands hadn't gone away, nor memory clean as a photograph of the boy's face fading from a scout to a civilian- the loss of one name to another, then both altogether. Quenton set his copy of The Ashley Book of Knots aside, open on the corner of his bed to entry #1119.

It was a surprisingly involved science- the estimations of a prisoner's weight in comparison to the gauge of rope that was going to be used to hang them and the drop they would take. It had taken more searching that one would initially think, considering the plethora of historical examination of capital punishment and how often and long gallows had been in use. He'd finally found the information and the right mathematical equation from the British government. If the calculations were off too far, the head was snapped clean off. If they were off the other way, the prison could take hours and hours to properly strangle. Or worse it woudl break their neck in a way that wasn't lethal and then drop them out of the noose entirely to lay like a string-cut marionette where they fell.

The general's small frame was clear in his mind- the ridiculous bow as though for fashion, the high, heeled boots adding height where there was obvious lack of it. The The eyepatch and black hair swept across brow. The green, hateful eyes. Standing straight, those eyes probably would have been around Quenton's own collar, which meant the General was somewhere around 5'4"? Shorter? As Thraen he wore fairly robust boots himself. The glamour and sense of the auras they all gave off tricked the mind into adding presence and weight were there was none as well. The little worg had felt enormous in the moment, and the mark of his passing contact supported the mental conflagration.
Weight? The general had been slight- almost womanish. The female average weight for that height bracket was 108-121 on the low end, 118-132 in the middle. As a general, it was fairly safe to assume that he was often working out, slight as he was, and muscle weighed more than fat- so upper low end or middle then. Around 118 to 124. It's a natural rope, so traditional wrapping...it won't be greasy. It might be wet if there's snow or trouble of some sort...seven loops? Seven loops should be enough to be good knot friction and not so much it take his head off when he reaches the end of the slack.

The sculptor carefully wrapped the line, pulling it taught once experimentally before loosening it again. He set it down on the chair so that it didn't vanish in the transformation magic as he became Thraen.
It was time to hunt the dark forests. It was time to bring that one down, if the power was in him. He would not stop for lesser signatures- there was one murder that required justice more than anything this night, and that one called for the death of the sable and vert general.