Arc 5: Chapter 2: Costs
This ugly hunt had been a distraction. And a message.
For two weeks the Hammer Ward, a poorer district mostly populated by lower tier guild houses and workshops, had been inundated with cases of murder and arson. The court had suspected the Carmine Killer returned after weeks of silence, or perhaps more rioting from Priory sympathizers. I had investigated, and soon realized what we were dealing with.
My leather boots slapped at the slick stone of the sewer tunnel as I moved fast as I dared, trying to remember the proper path. Karog lumbered behind me, his gait making me think he instinctively wanted to drop to all fours. With his cleaver in one hand and the big lantern in the other, he could not.
Neither of us spoke, our pace too quick and the treacherous tunnel occupying all our attention. Once again, Karog spotted the threat before I did.
“Something ahead,” he huffed.
I heard it a moment later. Claws scraping on stone, along with the sound of harsh, squealing voices. Like pigs, or…
Their shapes coalesced ahead, lurching, shaggy and course, with bright red eyes bloated into tortured looking spheres.
Rats. Woed rats.
Each was half as large as a full grown man, mangy and gaunt, covered in cancerous protrusions of sharp bone. They swarmed forward, letting out eager cries only superficially like the creature they resembled as they spotted us. They crawled over one another in their fervor to get forward, their scabby mouths foaming.
The nearest leapt, moving with uncanny speed. I sidestepped, almost going into the stew as the slick stone betrayed me, and fouled my cut. I took one of the woed’s twisted forelimbs instead of cleaving its skull, sending a spray of blood in an arc across the floor.
Karog finished it, ramming his machete into the huge rat’s gut while it was still airborne. It scrabbled, enraged and snapping. The ogre sneered before hurling it into the sewer water.