Richard Dickerson is experienced enough in the realm of carving into great, hulking corpses to have brought along a pair of spare boots, goggles, and treated leather gloves, the likes of which have not spared the uncovered parts of him any mess. He’s currently standing knee-deep at the beast’s hip, balanced on vertebrae exposed between slabs of muscle he’s filleted away from the spine.

His sleeves are stained a deep, ruddy crimson, rolled well back from his elbows in spite of the cold. He's streaked and spattered. His shoulders ache. He stinks.

There hasn’t been much of interest to find back here for hours, and it may be for that reason that he finds himself alone enough to take stock of where everyone else is at and what they are up to.

It could also be because he’s thinking very seriously about carving into the hard boulder of a cyst he’s found nestled against the ilium without consulting the rest of the party.