Windyshingles, 8th Malachite 899.The sun was rising in the eastern sky by the time the depleted group neared their destination. The small castle of Windyshingles laid in the south of the Realm of Silver, separated from the nearby hamlets by sprawling fields and plains.
The castle’s walls were grey-white stone, mottled with holes or subsiding into piles of broken rock around half-standing walls. The battlements and turreted towers were crumbling into ruin, the crenellations eroded to nothing or driven to collapse in a shower of rock and dust by the frequent rains and snows. A few stubborn lichens and ivies had found a home in the cracks, spreading across the quartzite to form a thin veneer of greens and yellows over the castle’s decaying façade; around the walls’ base, large piles of eroded stone formed a broad moat of debris. Nothing stirred as the septet advanced toward the rotting remnants of the gatehouse doors; even the carrion-feeders had seemingly abandoned the castle to its isolation.
Hathur slowed her pace, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling up. Her skin crawled as old, dark memories clawed their way back up to the surface of her mind; she forced them back down quickly, like stamping on a flame. Other thoughts rose to replace it: the strange lack of crows or ravens for a place supposedly fallen to disease or battle, the stark silence of the surrounding plains. It brought her suspicions to the fore, and she slowed her pace to a careful walk.
“Steel yourself, my friends.” Hathur murmured, voice grim. Her skin crawled strangely as she shot a look back over her shoulder, where Gasin was limping forward, pale-featured and jaw clenched. “There’s something strange going on here.”
Hands dropping to their weapons, the group began to creep forward at a slow, alert pace, eyes warily searching the fields as though expecting some Blight-infected creature to spring from ambush. There was nothing – not a thing stirred as they crossed the wet, grassy plain and reached the main gates.
Carefully, Hathur placed a hand on the soaked wood of the gates and pushed. They swung partly inward on rusty hinges with a squeal of grinding metal before halting, a few chips of rotting wood coming off with the motion to scatter across the grass. One by one, moving in single file to squeeze through the narrow gap, the party entered the castle.
The courtyard was deserted, beyond the bodies of the dead. Most were ages old, skeletonised or desiccated from decay; it looked as though they had been lying exposed for seasons before the group’s arrival, having been left to rot where they had fallen. Others were newer, bloating up with decay. Almost all bore the signs of a violent death – missing limbs, shattered skulls, or eviscerated chests. More disturbing than either was the
lack of visible influence from the Blight on the corpses; only a handful showed any sign of its distinctive marks, and those were generally among the most heavily decayed of those present.
“Bodies are badly decomposed.” Dubmith remarked, grimacing as she carefully stepped over one of the decaying corpses. This one was slumped on the ground with a spear driven through the spine, its half-legible features fixed in a look of muted shock or horror and one arm flung out ahead. She could well imagine the unfortunate soul scrambling across the dirt, desperately trying to reach a fallen weapon or comrade before being struck in the back by a flung spear or impaled from behind by a pursing foe. “These people have been dead for at least a few weeks.”
“Poor bastards...” Gencesh muttered, turning one of the bodies over with the head of his weapon. He stifled a shudder at the sight beneath - half the corpse’s head had been completely caved in by a blunt impact, exposing the decaying remnants of his teeth and tongue through the hole in his cheek. The motion dislodged a cloud of flies and a few off-white maggots from the open wound, followed by a wet slapping noise as the remnants of his jaw fell away from the head and joined the bugs on the ground. A few teeth skittered left and right, nubs of enamel speckling the grass white.
“Bloody hell!” Gencesh stepped backward, covering his nose as the stench hit him.
“Well,” Sizet deadpanned, looking down at the corpse. “He’s going to have trouble eating if he ever gets back up.”
“He won’t, Sizet.” He growled, giving her a sidelong look. “D’you need to be so crass?”
“Better crass than crunchy.” Sizet pointed back to the corpse with her spear. Much of her morbidity was a defence against the horror around her; a way of dealing with the sights and smells so common to the aftermath of a thrall attack. “Or crispy, I suppose, once we’re done here.”
Gencesh did not dignify that with a response, instead digging his cane into the ground and beginning to stump away. The party had begun to spread out across the courtyard in the absence of an obvious threat, breaking up into smaller groups according to their loyalties: Gasin was lurking by the courtyard’s main gate, seemingly unwilling to go much further; Thadar was half a dozen paces away from him, keeping a wary eye out for any sign of danger. Sizet was beside the corpses as before, now joined by the dark-robed figure of Dubmith, who was looking over the bodies with an almost inquisitive gaze. Mori and Hathur were nearest to the centre, alternating between talking with one another and shooting glances toward the sealed doors of the stone keep. As he drew closer, he could hear the tail end of their conversation.
“-se, then we need to –“
The two of them stopped mid-sentence and turned to face him, expressions carefully guarded.
“What is it, Gencesh?”
“There’s something off about the boss.” Gencesh remarked, pitching his voice carefully low. “He looks… rattled.”
“Aye,” Hathur murmured in agreement. “Lord Crewcanyons seems disturbed by this place. Unnerved. Yet he led into and fought beside us in those pits without so much as blinking.”
“Thralls ain’t the same as goblins and trolls,” Gencesh suggested, but it rang hollow even to him.
“True,” Hathur nodded slightly. “But he’s battled them before. Went through them like a dose of salts, back home. Why’d he be scared of them now?”
“There’s something else about this.” Mori shook her head, grimacing. “Something ain’t adding up here. He didn’t look like this before, even back at your ha–”
A loud rattling from the direction of the keep interrupted her mid-sentence, followed by the thud of a heavy impact.
The group turned as one to face the source of the sound. One of the keep’s doors was shaking violently against its hinges, the seasoned wood visibly starting to splinter as something within rammed against it. Snarls echoed out through the cracks and gaps of the door, accompanied by a low, insistent scratching sound. Mori swore under her breath as the door leapt against its hinges again, bulging outward as more and more blows impacted it from the inside. An axe-blade broke through the wood near the handle, sending woodchips in all directions as its wielder let out a long, braying cry.
“Thralls!”
The doors burst open almost as soon as the words left her mouth, the horde contained within the keep spilling out into the dull morning light. They were a motley collection of humanity – armoured soldiers in rusting iron and bronze, regular tradespeople in tattered clothes stained by rotting blood and dust, a few unfortunate souls dressed in nothing but torn underclothes and the bite wounds that had infected them. Whatever their differences in life, they found a common hell in their infection. Blood and saliva frothing from their gaping maws and through bloodied ribs, they charged the party with a chorus of snarls and howls, breaking up into groups of three and four as the stronger thralls left their weaker kin in the dust in their haste to bury their jaws in new, warm flesh.
While there had been little in the way of thralls or beasts to bar their path, exhaustion had begun to take its toll on the gathered members in the face of the past week’s stresses. It showed in their postures, in their eyes, in the speed of their reactions to the oncoming thralls. Two of the first group of charging creatures went down - one falling with Sizet’s spear thrust through its skull and the other with Hathur’s axe splitting its head from crown to chin – but the last thrall managed to shove its way through the group’s defences and lunge at one of its members, teeth snapping furiously as it closed to striking distance.
“MORI!”
The hammerwoman staggered away from the thrall, slamming her hammer into its skull hard enough to cave it in partway. A second strike ripped the head from its shoulders entirely in a spray of blood and brain matter. Yet it was a blow too late – a quartet of side-by-side punctures stood in the crook of her arm, the skin already beginning to discolour and pale. Mori stared down at it in mute horror, all too cognizant of the wound she had been dealt as the pain began to spread and her head began to burn with sudden fever.
“K...kill me…” Mori managed to wheeze, head sinking down toward her chest. The skin of her face was already becoming mottled, the veins starting to protrude and darken. Her words slurred as she staggered toward them, saliva choking her mouth as she tried to speak. “Please…”
No sooner had the word left her lips, they were followed by a change. Her eyes became sunken and her mouth began to slaver like a wild animal’s; what little colour remained in her skin drained away to leave it a pale mask. When she looked up again, black veins now webbing her face, there was no humanity in her gaze – just the maddened bloodlust and mindless hunger of a Blighted Thrall. Mori Festivereigns of Channeltwigs was gone, and the monster standing in her place underscored that by letting out a rabid howl and rushing toward them with hammer and shield raised.
Stunned by the sudden transformation of their friend, the soldiers of Channeltwigs were slow to react as Mori’s corrupted form rushed toward them, the other thralls trailing behind her at a stumbling half-stride.
Cursing enough to turn the air blue, Thadar pushed her way to the front and barely managed to raise her shield in time to deflect the blow. Mori’s bronze hammer rebounded from Thadar’s shield with the screech of metal striking metal and sent the axewoman staggering backwards from the force of the blow, a deep dent the size of a human head pounded into the iron of her shield. She was already on the offensive again as the axewoman recovered, practically spinning away from Thadar to swing her hammer at Hathur with an ear-splitting howl. She barely dodged the blow, the bronze hammer whipping past her temple to destroy the face of a thrall that had been stumbling toward them.
Hathur scrambled away as the half-decapitated corpse of the thrall crashed to the ground, drawing her axe as she went. Another thrall reached for her with a lesioned hand, only to lose most of its arm to a blow of her axe; its head followed a moment later. She risked a glance past the tumbling body. Mori was still moving toward them, but much more erratically than before – every few steps she would stop mid-motion and stumble, convulsing, shrieking, her free hand clawing at her face hard enough to tear the flesh, then resume her charge against them. The infected hammerwoman’s jaw was working erratically, blood frothing out between the teeth with each motion; her bloodshot eyes snapped from target to target, before finally coming to a focus.
A group of the thralls rushed Gencesh from the sides, teeth snapping and weapons dragging across the ground behind them; Mori came headlong, hammer whirling around her as she charged. He managed to dodge the first thrall with a quick pivot on his undamaged leg, even taking a few of its teeth out with a lucky strike to the mouth. He wasn’t so lucky the second time. Gencesh went down in a spray of blood and bone fragments from his bad leg as the hammer made contact, Mori’s teeth already clamped tight around the flesh of his wrist. His screams as the other thralls joined in were loud, but brief.
Mori herself had broken away from the attack as soon as Gencesh had been hit, rushing toward the rapidly disintegrating group of her former friends. She practically vaulted over Gencesh’s collapsing form to lunge at Thadar, her hammer ringing off the side of the grizzled axewoman’s shield and sending her staggering backward again. The shield was barely holding its shape by this point, entire sections of it curling or cratered from where it had bent under repeated hammer blows. Thadar responded with a rapid swing of her axe that drew blood from Mori’s upper arm, cutting partly through the muscle before being forced to fling herself back to evade the hammerwoman’s retaliatory blow.
Thes situation among the rest of the group was scarcely better. While the thralls lacked Mori’s skill and even her strength, they had the advantages of surprise, exhaustion, and simple, ravening hunger on their side. With Gasin seemingly paralysed and the Blighted coming from every direction, their organisation was rapidly beginning to disintegrate as the horde’s surges cut them off from one another. Thadar and Dubmith were at his sides, slashing and stabbing at any thrall that dared to come too close; Hathur and Sizet were standing several meters apart, separated by the swarming infected and desperately trying to fight their way back through the horde to rejoin their comrades.
Sizet drove her spear through the throat of another charging thrall before kicking them off the shaft toward Hathur with a shout. The axewoman wheeled around and let fly withy her axe in reply, taking most of the thrall’s head off with a single blow. The half-headless body blundered past her for a few faltering steps before collapsing, to be trampled underfoot by the charging thralls that replaced it. She felt her throat run dry and tighten at the sight of the two leading them – Mori and Gencesh, weapons swinging in wide arcs at everything around them, snarling and gnashing at the air as the two of them half-ran, half-staggered toward the five surviving members of the party.
“We need to fall back!” Gasin was vaguely aware of Sizet’s voice, scratchy from exhaustion and the beginnings of panic. “They’re killing us a- AUGH!”
Her voice cut out in a shout of pain. He barely needed to look to know what had happened. The spearwoman was on the ground, pinned on her back by a trio of thralls – Mori kneeling on her chest, Gencesh and another two on her arms, all trying to bite through her armour and get at the flesh beneath. Sizet was struggling as best as she could, trying to wrench her arms free from the thralls’ death grip, head thrashing back and forth as she sought to avoid their flailing fists and fingers.
Hathur let out a sound halfway between a scream and a cry of rage, shoving past Gasin’s paralysed form and beginning to shove her way toward Sizet. One of the thralls broke away from the attack to charge her, only to go down in a spray of blood as she hacked it down with three hard blows – one to sever its forearm, the second and third to split the head in half down to the sternum. She was a dozen paces away when the thralls finally managed to tear Sizet’s helmet off. None of those present would forget the sight or sound of Mori biting down, tearing half of Sizet’s mouth and chin off.
Hathur shouted a denial as Sizet began to convulse on the ground, limbs thrashing about as her flesh began to rapidly discolour. Blood flew as they both struck at the thralls around them, one in a desperate attempt to reach her friend and the other in blind terror and fury. She was three steps away when Sizet bolted upright, blood and chunks of tongue frothing out between her torn lips as she snarled at her former friend. Hathur’s axe met Sizet’s spear with a shriek of metal on metal as the infected spearwoman lunged at her, trapping the shaft long enough to half-instinctively smash her shield into Sizet’s chin and send her staggering backward amid a welter of blood and spittle.
“Hathur!” Thadar roared, tearing her axe free from a dying thrall’s head. Several of the armoured undead had broken free of the main horde and were circling around to bar the castle’s gates. “What the hell are you doing?!”
“Go!” Hathur replied, snarling almost as much as the thralls around her. "Get the hell out of here!”
Not waiting for a response, Hathur plunged forward into the swarming horde. Her axe flashed out left and right, removing faces, tearing off limbs, and carving deep gashes through armour and flesh alike. She split an elderly thrall almost completely in half with a single horizontal blow as he lunged for her, dodged the swing of a second as they kicked the tumbling pieces of their compatriot aside before decapitating it on the return swing, buried her axe in the chest of a third before wrenching it free in a welter of blood and hammering back down, cleaving the thrall from shoulder to pelvis. More came and more died on her axe’s edge, until only her fallen comrades were left standing. Sizet, Gencesh, and Mori paced back and forth before Hathur like trapped animals, bloodshot eyes fixed on her.
“Come, my friends.” Hathur murmured. Her limbs were burning with exhaustion, but she only gripped her axe tighter as she stared them down. “And let us meet again on the Far Shore.”
Sizet had no such words, responding instead with a murderous howl and a thrust of her spear. It rebounded from Hathur’s shield with the shriek of metal on metal; Gencesh’s axe followed moments later, ringing off the side of her iron shield with enough force to chip the edges of both. Hathur retaliated quickly with a blow of her own, the force of the swing cutting partly through Gencesh’s right shoulderguard and into the flesh beneath before he lurched away. A second strike toward Sizet’s neck was narrowly blocked by the shaft of her spear, the blow visibly bending the metal inwards; it did nothing to stop Hathur’s kick from thundering into Sizet’s ribs, sending her backwards with the wet crack of breaking bone joining the thrall’s piercing shrieks.
Roaring with the rage of the fight, Mori shoved her way past Gencesh and Sizet to fling herself at Hathur, hammer already arcing toward her former friend’s head. Hathur staggered out of the way of Mori’s swing, the bronze hammer splitting the air a few inches from her head. Her retaliatory blow bit deeply into the metal of Mori’s right bracer and down into the flesh beneath before the hammerwoman bucked backwards with a howl, blood arcing from the deep cut in her arm. Gencesh and Sizet immediately closed the gap, the two thralls barrelling toward her at a run with their weapons raised and eyes ablaze with murderous light.
Exhaustion weighing her movements down, Hathur barely managed to stagger to the side as they closed in. This time, it wasn’t enough. Gencesh’s axe struck the metal of her right-hand gauntlet hard, the much-abused metal and its straps finally shearing apart under the force of the blow. Sizet’s spear found a gap between the plates of her armour and penetrated the mail beneath, its point ripping through her side in a red-hot bolt of pain. A punch to her face sent her staggering, head ringing with pain as blood gouted from her nose, vision flashing white from the impact.
“GRGH!”
Hathur felt the teeth closing on her arm before she saw them. She wheeled about to face the source, hammering the blade of her axe into the side of her attacker’s torso, but it was already too late. Mori was at her side, her teeth sunk into the bare flesh of her arm where the bracer had broken away, and the axe buried in the plates of her armour hadn’t drawn so much as a blink from her. A cold, numbing pain began to spread from the bite, rushing up her arm and down her back, spreading through her body with every beat of her heart.
Hathur shrugged Mori off with a cry of pain and effort, staggering like a drunkard as the world lurched and roiled around her. The rancid stench of blood and decay was suddenly that much stronger in her nostrils, and the cacophony of battle hit like a hammer, forcing her to her knees. She tried to stagger to her feet, saliva frothing out of her mouth and dripping down her chin, but her legs refused to obey her command. Hathur tried to push herself upright with nerveless fingers, straining with every muscle in her body to move. All she succeeded in doing was causing her head to explode with a spike of pain, driving her back to the ground as the world around her greyed out.
Through her rapidly dimming vision, she could see Mori in the corner of her eye; she was circling around her, almost like she was waiting for her to succumb to the Blight before moving on, relishing her victory. But that couldn’t explain the muted horror in the infected hammerwoman’s eyes, or the liquid trickling down her cheek. Another spike of fire drove itself through her skull, hard enough to turn her vision white and send her convulsing to the dirt. Dimly, she was aware of someone screaming her name.
“Hathur!”
She managed to force her eyes open long enough to catch sight of Dubmith looking toward her, the priestess of Bikda’s black robes now drenched in scarlet and her eyes wide with horror. The ground around her was wet with blood and thick with severed bits of thrall-flesh.
“Fly, you fools!” Hathur had no clue if the priestess could read her lips from that far, even without the saliva choking her mouth. “Run! Go… Now…!”
Her vision went black.
The party was shrinking rapidly – by now, fully half of the company had fallen to the Blight, joining the ranks of those already corrupted by the infernal plague. Those who remained untouched by the Blight were being gradually driven back toward the castle gates as the group surged and swelled around them. Gasin seemed barely sensible, his eyes fixed on some point a thousand yards away. Thadar and Dubmith were barely holding the line against the attacking horde of thralls, particularly now that their infected comrades had begun to reinforce them.
Hathur was still on the ground in the last agonies, her body still convulsing weakly as the Blight finished spreading through her veins, but Sizet, Gencesh, and Mori were all storming ahead of the crowd with their weapons raised and shields at hand. Behind them trailed a handful of mutilated, limping figures – the few thralls that Hathur’s last stand had not bought down, dragging themselves forward on their tattered limbs.
Cursing aloud, Thadar shot a look back at Gasin. The inquisitor was still frozen in place, his arm hanging limply at his side, completely oblivious to his allies' pleas and the horror unfolding around him.
“Well, this is a right bloody mess.” Thadar spat.
“What do we do, then?!” Dubmith snapped back in response, twisting about to slash a charging Gencesh across the right shoulder. He pulled back, to be immediately replaced by Sizet, her spear meeting the black-robed swordswoman's blade with a clang.
“Get the boss and run.” Thadar replied, jaw grimly set. “I can buy you a few minutes. Long enough to g –” Thadar’s eyes shot open wide in horrified shock. “Watch out!”
Dubmith turned just in time to catch sight of Mori’s twisted features and bloodshot eyes before she was bowled over by the thrall’s charge. The air rushed out of her lungs in a wordless
woof as the infected hammerwoman drove her fist into the armour covering her torso with enough force to dent the metal. Questing fingers reached forward, scraping against the metal of her helmet before locking around the gaps and tearing it free with one smooth movement. Sucking in great lungfuls of air in a desperate attempt to breathe, Dubmith awkwardly bent her arm to stab at Mori’s side with her sword; while it pierced the armour and drew blood, it only seemed to enrage the thrall further.
Snarling, Mori lunged downward toward Dubmith, her teeth snapping shut with deadly accuracy and force.
“My… my lord…” Dubmith managed to choke out. Blood bubbled between her lips as her already-pale skin began to drain of all colour, Mori sinking her teeth deeper into the side of her throat. “Why…?”
“’MITH!”
Thadar screamed and wheeled around, swinging for her transforming comrade’s neck with both hands on her axe. She was merely a second too late – the ghoul that had once been Dubmith lurched to the side as the infection finished consuming her, and the axe’s blade barely clipped the side of her shoulder. Dubmith answered the failed attack with one of her own, flailing her shortsword in a dozen different directions as the enthralled priestess’ consciousness struggled to control her newly-infected body, nerves misfiring and muscles convulsing wildly. Her head lolling on a boneless neck, she stumbled drunkenly toward her former comrade.
The other thralls had no such weakness. They closed the distance between them in a few swift strides, and set about their deadly work.
“Gasin!” Thadar roared, slamming her armoured head into Gencesh’s face as the thrall tackled her to the ground. Gencesh pulled back with a snarl of shock, blood streaming from his newly fractured nose, to be replaced by Mori and the freshly turned Hathur. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Your retinue.” The High Priestess’ voice was cold. “You have taken them too far into your confidence. You risk… exposure, of yourself and of us. They must be removed before this comes to pass.”He felt his head snap up, fast enough to put a painful crick into his neck. “They are my most truste-!””They are a liability in their current state. Once remade, they shall serve my – and your – purposes much more effectively.” Seeing him raise his head to protest, she fixed him with a bleak stare, bluish-white light flaring around her skeletal fingertips. “Will this be a problem, Gasin Crewcanyons?”Hastily, he bowed his head, trembling slightly.“No, Elder. As I have served, so shall I be of service to you.”
“Gasin!” Thadar howled, wrestling with the snarling figure of Mori. The fallen hammerwoman’s jaws were snapping an inch away from her neck, her hands wrapping around her limbs to try and pin hert to the ground. The others were closing in the corners of her vision, the ghouls that had once been her comrades hastening forward to join the attack. “Help me!”
But Gasin did not respond. He merely stood there, numb and calm as a drugged statue, watching her struggle as the tide of thralls closed in with something between detachment and restraint. Not one thrall touched him, flowing around the inquisitor as though he was not even there.
One last scream echoed, among the pitiless stones of the castle.
And then there was silence.
Gasin closed his eyes, letting out a slow, shaking breath as he tried to steady himself. What was done, was done. The painful roiling in his gut, the leaden weight in his chest – they would pass in time. They would have to. His nails bit into his palm with enough force to draw blood as he took another deep, slow breath, forcing himself to step forward toward the broken gates of the castle.
The forms of his companions trailed behind, their heavy, plodding steps ringing in his ears. Their silence was an unwelcome presence after becoming so used to the idle chatter of the members and the clink of their armor.
Unconsciously, Gasin’s hand fell to his sword. He was halfway to drawing it from his sheath when he forced himself to stop, making his arm fall limp at his side.
No, Gasin chided himself, sternly.
What you have done cannot be undone. A tainted tool cannot be cleansed again. You belong to her
now.Perhaps if he repeated those words enough times, he would truly come to believe them.
…And that’s it for turn 92’s story. (Well, almost.) Time to start writing the next couple; hopefully I’ll get them out before the third millennium rolls around
.
(I’d like to be put back on the turn list, by the way.)
Author
Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 409712 times)