“And you’re warded against it? Yet you cannot kill it?”

He holds one arm out and uses his opposite hand’s index finger to trace a prominent scar from the forearm through the bicep. “I am resistant to any cut or strike. A blow will pierce the skin, but I will recover very quickly.”

Earlier this man said, what, something about scrubbing blood?

“The total destruction of my limbs might require as long as a day for me to wholly recover.”

Wait. Blast. How long was his body in the keeping of this tobacconist?

“I will say only that I have not killed it yet, though I have thwarted it in some of its desires, and that it has not killed me yet.”

The man nods.  

His gaze returns to his shop's window.  “And your enemy is shaped like a man.”  The inflection is halfway between a statement and a question.

“If it so chooses. There is useful information in that, in the shell that you perceived it to wear.”

He looks into the man’s eyes for a few seconds without speaking.  “I see that you are shrewd. I have been forthright with you. Will you speak freely now?”

“Forthright, eh?”  The tobacconist makes a slight, wry smile.

He walks over to his hound and squats to scratch its head behind the ears.  With his other hand he pushes back his hair again.

His voice recovers some of its lilt. “Oh, there isn't so much to tell, all things considered.  Any mischief done was already done when I found you.”

He opens with a defensive claim, does he.

"Tell it to me as a story, from the beginning. Leave out no details, no matter how trivial."

“The start of it is I was out collecting.  Me and my man.  He just got in from the outers, and we left here at first light.”

The tobacconist’s eyes soften as he continues to speak.

“Had enough bodies already, in the yard, to make it more than worth the while.  Five of them.  But I had the bell out all the same. There'll be some alms houses who'll leave their deaders on a stoop for any collector to take, and others'll have a night man call out to a body wagon if he hears it pass, so checking first thing in the morning is wise.”

“Anyways, we picked up two more deaders from the treadmills in Ginny.  And we were past the streets where we’re liable to find any more, but we kept moving with the clappers out and making a racket.  Somewhere along the way we heard a whistle from a boy child.  An urchin.  He came running right up and told us he’d seen a ripe body nearby, and would lead us there in exchange of coins.

“My man shook him down a bit and flashed a blade to see if he was keen to lead us into some dodge, and concluded in short order that he was earnest.  Truthfully he seemed quite shook up about it.  But as the lad was a milk sop, seventy pounds wet if he was a pound and with a rabbity look to him, I didn't think much of it.”

He exhales forcefully, and the hound nuzzles his hand.

“It was a hateful place.  Foul, and I know foulness. The reek of a corpse bowel, that’ll set you staggering.  Or the smell of an inner bleed in the guts.  I know those well - "

He interrupts, “When you encountered the boy, how much light was there about you? Could you see his face? Could you see twenty paces in front of you?”

“No lights on the streets.  Whole Hive's never had ‘em.  But it was bright enough by then to move about, sure.  No fear of bumpin’ in the dark.”

“What did his eyes look like?”

"Begging your pardon?"

“I want you to describe the boy's eyes.”

“Regular eyes?  He was a full-blood man child.  Don’t rightly recall what color they were.  Like I said he had kind of rabbity features, but he weren’t a tiefling or an aasimar.”

An initial probe. He observes the tobacconist minutely, monitoring any change in expression as the story progresses. 

“Thank you. Continue. Where did the boy in the street lead you?”

“Was in the cheap side of the Court by then.  There’s a bit of it that’s got an outer wall, and then some very narrow ways twisting about inside.  There's a hand pump right in the front where you’re liable to see some wretched woman in skivvies and her whole brood around her doing the wash, only just then it was empty.  We went inside and down the lane and turned a corner and saw it.”

He inhales sharply. 

“It was a nasty business…  The smell of it, it was like a butcher shop were set up in a foundry, and with a thunderstorm going on all round.  It was so unnatural-like.  There was a kind of blackness that stained the street and the walls in splashes that went up eight feet.  Looked like a body’d been stood up against a wall and smashed to porridge.  Only, the strength of a blow that could do that to flesh… looked more as if a watermelon had been struck by a hammer.”

The tobacconist looks up suddenly in response to the sound of loud voices in the street outside.  When, after several seconds, nobody enters the shop and the noise recedes, he continues.

“Anyway, there you were, lying in the thick of it.  I guess I must have swore out loud as soon as I saw it, and my man raised a hand at the boy.  Seemed certain no deader could be wanted by the dusties with it missing as much of itself as was plainly splattered about that place.  And I said something harsh to the boy to that purpose.”

“Only the boy stood up for himself then.  He said the body was whole, that he’d already checked it.”

Two or three times there, it’s been the unnamed companion, ‘my man’.  Is there some protectiveness going on there? Or is it pride of social distinction? Maybe his read on the situation is too paranoid, and he’s merely failing to make his person-understanding skills sync properly with the shopkeeper.

“How many other bodies were there?”

"Just yours."

So, his blood was spilled in large volume, but it replenished within him spontaneously, in the same manner as a Create Water spell. Does that mean he can cut off his own arms and endlessly regrow them? Is there use in that?

“Apart from me, what other shape did you see there?”