I stared into the open metal door with anxiety and excitement. Owl held it open for me, holding a glowing storm lantern and one of his black arrows.
"There's something you must know before you go in. The scavengers we've been eating are just spawn—children. The adults lurk in the sewers; they are much larger, but they shouldn't go past your waist in height. They tend to avoid people, but if they are hungry enough they will attack. You should be ready for that. They will try to bite and claw at you; you should avoid getting hit, but if you do, make sure to clean your wounds quickly. They won't infect you with madness, but they will give you some nasty, normal infections." He sighed. "There are also stray husks in there, so be alert."
I stared at him for a while, thinking over his words.
"Thank you for the help so far, Owl. I wouldn't be here without you. And don't worry, I'll be back before dinner!"
He gave me a short nod, extending the lantern and arrow to me. He grinned.
"I don't imagine you can see much in the dark with those small eyes of yours."
I chuckled, taking it from his hand.
"That I can't."
"You can use the arrow to carry the carcasses. Good luck, Boy."
I nodded. Walking into the darkness, it gave way to the lantern like parting curtains before the main spectacle.
°°°
It smelled like crap. Literally. Old, moist air hung there, and a mist condensed on the bottom half of the passageway. Owl had warned me not to breathe that in.
Slowly but surely I made my way deeper into the depths. It was cold, making my skin prickle with discomfort.
Curiosity and excitement repressed the primal fear of the dark that still resided within me. The storm lantern could illuminate only so far, and the darkness at the very edges of the light seemed to twirl with the mist.
As I made my way deeper I followed a marked path; on the walls, Owl had carved arrows.
They always pointed toward deeper parts of the sewers, set so that if you followed them in reverse you could always find your way back.
He had learned the hard way that getting lost in the sewers was almost a death sentence, thankfully whatever he went through down here meant I would be spared of it.
Eventually I found myself in a medium-sized chamber; it was barely tall enough for me to stand in, with a domed roof. Metal bars on the floor separated the stone bricks into four paths; slow-flowing sludge of all sorts of waste flowed under them.
Owl had instructed me to set up some bait—use the grain I had, hang the lantern by the hook on one of the side walls, and stand just at the edge of light. It wasn't the fastest way to get scavengers, but it was the safest and most assured one.
So that's what I did. I picked up a handful of the grain in my bag and sprinkled it over the stone bricks of the floor. Setting up the lantern, I went into the darkness of a path. Crouching with my slingshot at the ready, a stone already seated, I waited. All that was left was for my prey to show up.
°°°
'What a strange feeling. To sit here in the dark waiting for some unfortunate critter to fall for my bait.'
I felt like a hunter, like prehistoric men on the edge of darkness, stalking, calculating...
I pulled taut the band of my sling. A solitary scavenger scurried closer to my bait. It was smart, waiting at the edge of light, looking around, sniffing the air. It was afraid, but also terribly hungry. One, two minutes... Hunger won over caution. It approached the grain. It took one in its small mouth, munching on it. And a stone hit its head—swift, merciful. Darkness embraced it.
'I did it!' I ran up to the critter, using my knife to bleed and gut it, like Owl showed me. I lacked practice and ended up wasting some meat, but that didn't do anything to abate my triumph. This was the first step I took by myself in becoming stronger, and I savored it.
I should have felt revolted; the thought of doing something like this less than a week ago would never have crossed my mind. But I didn't. I felt accomplished—prideful, even.
Spearing it through its lower jaw, making it hang from the arrow, I stuck it in one of the cracks in the wall. I went back to my spot... and went back to waiting.
The high of adrenaline was addicting. I had never colored myself a hunter before, but I felt like I was a great fit. The following lull in the darkness settled my heart; I was ready for more.
And more did come. Before long I had two more dangling from the arrow. Following Owl's advice, I moved to another spot. The scavengers, impatient as they were, were also smart. If many died in one place, they started to avoid it.
I moved in the dark, with the lantern dangling by my side. The hunt continued in silence.
After two more spots I had nine carcasses with me. Hours had already passed; I was used to the smell of the sewers by now—it wasn't so terrible anymore.
That is to say, when the smell of rotten, decomposing flesh hit my nose, it was startling. It was much, much worse than the rest of the sewers.
Caution told me I should go back; this was enough. Curiosity pulled me in, and I walked closer.
Turning around a bend, a large underground room extended in front of me. A singular ray of red light illuminated the ground below. It was covered in putrid flesh; scavengers of normal and much bigger size crawled on top of it.
The magnitude of the smell and the visage of the mountains of flesh took me by surprise, making my stomach turn. There was just so much; it was worse than any movie I ever saw, and it was just in front of me.
I snuffed out my lantern, hoping none of the dozen adult scavengers had seen my light. Thankfully they didn't, too busy gorging themselves on the remains of hundreds—thousands.
It took my brain a few moments to start working properly again, to try and work out what I was seeing—where so much meat came from. But then it all made sense.
The husks had skin and bones, but no meat. This is where it all went. Where skinless retained their strength and muscles because of the power of their flesh, the husks didn't. It slid off their bones and was discarded. Down here.
In the depths of this pit, I realized I was seeing a glimpse of hell—of what inspired the depictions of all religions. They were images of madness, connected together by ethereal strings between worlds by the very nature of what they represented.
The dark side of all things sentient—the lack of all reason, the putrid corruption of flesh and thought. Abandonment of a higher power, and of all that had meaning. If there was a God—a true god, not a god of something, but of all—this was where they refused to look. The blind spot of their grace.
It was in this dark, reddened abyss of flesh that I realized how far from home I was.
My face was moist with tears. I didn't know if they were born of sadness or horror—maybe of something that had broken within my human self. They could also have been the product of the putrid stench, of the acidic smog drifting in the air, poisoning the walls and the city above, blinding the rays of light in the sky with its red carnival of death.
The very sky I fell from was a product of this poisoned earth. The fortress was a spear poised against the heavens and the madness coated it with a toxin powerful enough to slay gods.
One spear would never be enough, but this was just one of many. One den of evil in a sea of madness. The implications were enough to weaken my legs, sending me falling to the ground. My lantern clattered against the ground, no doubt alerting all in the expansive chamber.
Seeing the source of the fortress' madness was only the first mistake I made that day—the day that would dictate the rest of my journey to its very end.