That Night...?

[Okor]

Saalras breathed heavily, deadened feet wrapped in rotting rags slapping against swampy earth, jagged roots biting into his festering flesh as he ran for what could only be generously called his life. His brothers, whether they were bound by their tainted blood or by birth, had rejoined the endless cycle behind him. His harrowed heart beat in his chest, pressing against his malformed, twisted ribs as he attempted to outrun the death and pain behind him. But not fear, no, never fear: they were reborn in the rot and ruin, bred among death and darkness, and sworn to stalk the shadows. They died with spite and hatred on their lips, he knew that much.

Saalras had no intention of joining their ranks this night. A blackened branch, wrapped with thorns, scraped across his side, drawing beads of pale blood that decorated its length. Blood. It always came back to blood. The Sanguine sacrament through his own veins, the potential that pulsed through the demiurge’s immortal bodies. It gave him life, but he knew that its sweet, sweet scent would call the scavengers; beasts and men less than beasts hungry for the flesh of men and whatever trinkets remained with the carrion left behind.

His kin ranked among the carrion now, broken bodies left in the dirt. His foot caught on a festering root, sending Saalras sprawling to the blighted earth, claws churning the corpse-fed soil as he struggled to maintain his momentum. He scrabbled against the dirt as he tried to rise, the the grave-dirt beneath betraying him. A low growl came from behind him, the stench of rotten flesh and fetid breath wafting over him. He cursed silently as he clutched at the earth, the breath of the beast hot on his neck.

He scrambled for the blade secreted up his mud-stained sleeve, the dulled silver knife having put an end to more than one were-beast. His fingers clambered for the hilt, tantalizingly within his grasp, but he could feel fangs digging into his flesh, damning their owner as tainted blood flooded the beast’s maw.

He was too slow. Too slow, too slow, and now he was going to die here, in the mud, with his warnings going unheeded. He had fail-

A crack echoed through the fog as a great weight was lifted from his back, black fur flying past the edge of his vision, the beast whining and whimpering as it clambered to its clawed feet, the once-man fleeing into the dark from whence it came. A gnarled claw wrapped itself around his shoulder, dragging him up from the muck. His battered and bloodied body slowly turned to face his saviour, his grey orbs staring into a ruined rag wrapped around empty eye-sockets.

“Well, well, well. What brings succulent little Saalras down to my neck of the woods? Looking to take another pound of flesh?” The Blind Beggar laughed, his scarred skin writhing from within as his host of parasites crawled beneath his flesh. The Swift gulped, the rancid memory of that first festering feast still fresh in his mind.

He stammered as hs struggled under that stygian grip, his pestilent patron raising him from the dirt, and towards a set of twisted teeth, riddled with cavities and crawling with the black carapaces of the swarm. “T-the runners and the kin are dead.” The seemingly eternally genial visage of the beggar fell into a frown lined with broken fangs. The pestilent grip ceased, leaving Saalras to fall to the muddy earth. “From one prime? She didn’t seem like the type to slaughter you and all your kin.”

The survivor shook his head as he pushed himself up off the mire. “Nay, she got a friend. Silvered steel crusader that went at the lot of us with lances of light and a blade. She didn’t have no compunctions ‘gainst killing. Put ‘alf of us in the earth ‘fore Gudrun took ‘em both on to buy us time to scatter.”

The beggar frowned as he turned, his gnarled wooden staff tapping against the barren path as he hobbled forward, a claw beckoning Saalras to follow. The hunter stumbled for a brief moment before following the mouldering missionary down the twisting path. “And Badrun?”

Saalras gave a shudder as he walked, cold seeping into his deadened flesh as his tainted blood fled it. “T-there was a third. We went to his homestead, t’give our sympathies. Aint nothin’ left in there but blood an’ slaughter an’ a monster, all claw and tendril shaped like a man. Others kept ‘em at bay while I went to get help.” The hunter shook his head. He could still hear the battle he abandoned behind him, rusted iron meeting chitinous claws in a raucous riot forged by primal instinct. “Only thing left was Jacob, an’ the little ‘un was all wrong.”

The Beggar sighed, hobbling forward, bent over his staff. “I’ll tell Keith. You’ll need some more blades if you’re going to cut apart an abomination like that, Huntsmaster.”

Saalras paled, stopped in his tainted tracks. The Blinded turned, empty eye sockets concealed beneath contagion-riddled cloth staring into him as a gangrenous grin spread over across a scarred and ruined face. “What? There’s not much competition for the position now, is there? You served Gudrun well, and I’m certain you will honour his memory and take up his torch.”

The blinded looked up into the cloud-choked sky, a green moon rising over the ‘verse this cursed night, a great gibbous eye staring down with cruel delight at those struggling for survival beneath its gaze.

“Nurgle knows the Moors needs every light in the darkness it can get.”

The two cultists shared a final look of mutual respect. Saalras turned back into the gnarled, wicked woods stalking their shadows as he sought out what little remained of Gudrun’s legacy; dead drops and moor-sign carved into rotting trees. The Blinded Beggar hobbled down the winding path, his strange senses sending him unerringly towards his destination beneath the battered and scarred walls of the city that had taken everything from him. Rag-wrapped feet carried him into the caverns beneath, traipsing down tainted tunnels carved by those who would have seen the city fell, now the refuge of Darkshire’s degenerate defenders.

Change, hated as it was, had come.