Chapter 46: A Walk Through Hell
Freya tried asking him questions several times as they navigated the small, slippery ledge through the vile sewers, but each time Simon shushed her. He’d already done his best to explain to her that these corpses weren’t zombies, but she obviously didn’t entirely believe him, and he didn’t have the time to explain it to her again. He couldn’t even hold her hand because he was carrying his crossbow in his right hand and his sack in his left.
It wasn’t that he wanted to blow her off, of course, but this was exactly the wrong place to get distracted. Even if that awful worm was almost always in its stack of bodies if it ambushed and paralyzed them, he would have to lay there for god knows how long and watch the vermin devour his girl.
He’d rather be a zombie again than be forced to witness that. Of course, he’d also rather not have to cast a fire spell if he didn’t need to. He’d already freaked out Freya enough, and the last thing he wanted was to send her screaming into the night at the first chance she had to escape from him.
Just before he rounded the final corner where he could usually see it, he whispered to Freya. “Stay calm. The thing I was talking about before? It’s right there.”
No sooner did he round the corner than he saw the pale wiggling thing gorging itself on the bloated body of a young man. It didn’t see him yet, so Simon carefully lined up his shot. That plan was interrupted when Freya took a look and screamed bloody murder as soon as she saw the slimy, tentacled thing devouring corpses.
It charged them immediately after that, and Simon waited until it was much closer than usual before he put a bolt in its belly just to be sure he wouldn’t miss. For a moment, that felt like a mistake as he thought the thing might just keep going, and he almost threw his crossbow in the water, so he could free a hand to draw his sword. Fortunately, that proved unnecessary, and with its usual screech, it turned and fled back into the pile of bodies it had built by the main sewer grate.
“No way I’m getting any closer to that thing! What in all the hells was that?” Freya asked as she resisted Simon’s efforts to drag her forward.
“It-it’s a carrion crawler,” Simon said slowly, wishing he could take the time to reload his crossbow, but he had nowhere to set down his bundle. For a moment, he really missed the fine backpack he’d had made the last go around, and he wondered how adventurers ever did without that sort of thing. “And it’s not really interested in us. It eats corpses.”
“So if it kills us, then it will become interested?” she asked skeptically.