Tales of Ruuin - Homecoming

Sins of the past

Somewhere in the Kingdom of Morgenheim

Central Scarred Empire

Fall, 8th Butchermoon, Year 1876

„Please, my lord, some food? I haven't eaten in days. Some food. Please?"

She was the epitome of starvation, a stick figure with hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and skin thin as paper stretching over a skull-like visage. How old was she? Ten? Twelve? She must have been a pretty girl once. Once...

Echser cringed away. "I'm sorry. I... I don't have any food."

"Please," the girl sobbed, falling onto her bony knees, claw-like fingers clutching at his robe with feverish desperation. "I'm so hungry, so very hungry!"

"I'm... I'm sorry," said Echser, almost choking on the words as he pulled away. "I can't help you. I simply have no food."

He bumped into someone, whirling around, recoiling from what he saw: skin and bone figures in dirty rags, dozens of them, all diminished by weeks of starvation and with the same desperate, hungry looks. Where had they come from?

"No food?" an old woman with patchy hair hissed in his face. She stabbed a bony finger into his ample gut. "No food!" she hissed again, this time with more venom. "Then why are so fat?"

"Yes, why are ye so fat when we have nothin'?" a one-armed lad muttered, pointing an accusing stump at him. The amputation seemed still fresh; the filthy bandages seeped through with blood.

"Look at 'im! So big."

"So fat!"

"A fat, long pig!"

"Pig! Pig! Pig!"

The accusing words seemed to come from all around. Echser turned in a circle, not knowing where to go, what to say. There were so many of them now. They came stumbling from the fog, shuffling from decrepit houses and rubbish-strewn alleyways. Why had he decided to visit the slums anyway? Did he really have to see their misery with his own eyes? What madness had ridden him? By Science, how many were there? Dozens? Hundreds? It was an army of starving wretches, eyes burning, teeth grinding as they shouted, "Pig! Give us food, pig! Food!"

"I'm sorry! I don't have any food! Nobody has!" Echser screamed, turning this way and that. The wretches were everywhere now, reaching for him, clawing feebly at his robes. Tears streamed down his face. "I... I'm sorry!"

"Sorry?"

"Why is the fat pig sorry?"

"Because he's so fat?"

"Because he ate all our food?"

"Ate our food... ate it all, the pig..."

The chorus built up again. "The pig... Ate it all! Ate it all! Ate it all!"

It was too much to bear. "Get away from me!" he shouted, pushing back. "I can't help you!" Echser was not a strong man, but he had bulk and size – yet they had the numbers. Try as he might, he was getting nowhere. It was like one of these nightmares where you cannot escape a terrible monster, regardless of how fast you ran.

"Pig. Hold the pig! The pig!"

"Unhand me!" Sweat ran down face, burning in his eyes, heart hammering in his chest. There was so much hunger in their eyes and every third of them seemed to be missing either an arm or a leg – all recent amputations, a grisly testimony to how far people would go to avoid starvation. "Un... unhand—" He choked on the word and knew they would kill him then, that all the rumors were true. They would kill him and eat him, just like they had been eating themselves. They were that far gone.