Sigil: The City of Doors

She inscribed the name on the urn and when all was done, she deposited it in a niche in the main hall.

She had engraved: He knew love, may he know peace. The cruelty shall be forgotten.

/scene

It is indeed remarkable that the age of the bone does not shine through. One can only guess what is behind this, for the coin does not smell of magic, so something else must be degrading the information.

The machinery of the Dustmwn grinds into action, another name in the Dead Book, another swirl of ash for the sky.

From her experience the older the bone was the more informative it turned out to be, but perhaps she was too exhausted by parsing the victim's memories and the general exposure to the diabolical nature of the murder. Such cruelty struck too close to home to not elicit her own hidden traumas. She kept the coin though.

It seemed that she reached some dead end. Some ancient, infernal force seemed to be involved in the murders, carrying out some psychopathic plan replete with symbolism and hidden meanings that appeared inaccessible to her at this point. A feeling of helplessness set in against such fiendish deeds. The least she could do was to bury the remains with a proper funerary rite. Cremation seemed the most proper, to deny the murderer the satisfaction of his 'creation' lingering. This man had been loved, and his closest shall visit. Best they are not exposed to this ever again.

The coin is old. There is a richness to it's taste which only the ancient has. Odd half-formed impressions are given, tall towers, winged things with too many faces, the warmth of salted blood. It is too degraded to give away much more. It did not belong to the Kadyx's last victim, that is the only thing you can be sure of.

The grin itself is hard to place. A certain atavistic nature shines through, but it is without a doubt a very intelligent smile. Many teeth, and they appear sharp. Everything else is hidden in darkness and you couldn't extrapolate much farther from just a grin.

She nibbled on the coin, just to make sure the bone itself had no significance, but her thoughts were on the grin, trying to approximate the creature behind it. Back in Elirhondas, as a child, she used to suffer from dreams that admixed the seraphic and the hellish, she wondered if it could be a beast the like of which she had seen in the past, if only in a lithograph.

The chuckle was just a chuckle, though it did tell volumes. Someone had something they thought very clever on their mind. No words though.

The intoxication was most likely from the taverns the subject had been to before getting separated from their partner. No sign of anything else than ethanol.

The coin shines with banality. It could go for an official mint of some desolate kingdom, except there's No denomination on it. Only the grin, with too many sharp teeth. The memories stir in you again. It might be a self-portrait.

So the person had been drugged in some way or their perceptions and emotions tampered with to similar effect. Akh took a moment to shake off the diabolically morbid impression. She knew both Abyssal and Infernal, so she tried to fathom if the chuckle was actually any intelligible message.

Then, she would wonder what substances could have caused such an euphoria, and whether the head bore symptoms of their application. She looked into the mouth, on the tongue and palate, between the teeth. Her knowledge of medicine was significant after all.

The bone coin... was the next step.

No residue beyond the first acrid whiff of the infernal. But as you raise the head to inspect it, or to bite into it, something does fall out of it's mouth. It clinks on the floor, sounding like a piece of ceramic. It appears to be a piece of bone, shaped into a perfect disk. A large toothy grin has been carved into it with some skill. Nothing else can be gleaned from a surface appraisal of the coin.

As you take a bite out of the head, visions and impressions flood out into your mind's eye. Euphoria of intoxication, a grim chuckle from darkness, fear and apprehension. A horrible pain, the sound of flesh tearing. A gleaming smile in the dark.

She reviewed the head once more, looking for any detail she might have initially missed. Like residues of substances typical of Baator, or illusory scripts to which she was immune due to her glyphic resonance. But if nothing of this kind could be determined, the time would come for a reluctant bite and a leap into the man's last memories.

There's a faint whiff of sulphur and negative energy about the head, suggesting an infernal connection, but that tracks with what is known about the Kadyx. It seems that no actual magic was made of use with the killing though. Just muscle and sinew.