He had absolved himself once of the deed, had paid his penance, washed his hands free of the filthy act with offerings laid before the King in unholy reverence.
Now with the bitter tang of metal in his mouth and the streaks of crimson wet and sticky down his front, he had come to plea again.
The Rat King’s many voices carried down the forgotten tunnels and beckoned all the way.
he vagrant followed unerringly, unquestioningly, even as the air thickened with the cloy of rot and his feet slipped in substances best left unregarded.
The tunnel ended at a wall unweathered by age, absent the pungent slime that coated each immutable brick in the landscape around it.
Alb pressed an ear to the cold brick. Beyond the wall something suffered, roiling in malcontent that found no words beyond a cry, thrashing, biting, a pit of struggling frenzy that defied all sensibility. he harrowed chorus continued, long after he had pulled his head away.
