In the Valley of a Thousand Footprints

[xvi] Life and its Freedoms - |part 2|

The streets were dark as Ellian raced along the roofs above. There was scarce moonlight that barely showed him where the right tiles were to leap to. Many ledges and overhangs had already been jumped and Ellian was starting to get tired. Down below on the street, the captain of the city guard, Winfraeid, was galloping at speed. Ellian bypassed a few of the turns and bends by quickly swinging on cloth lines that stretched across sides. 

Arms tired from swinging and legs tired from crashing into things, Ellian was thoroughly exhausted by the time he caught sight of the sewers. He had barely taken his eyes off the captain for a few seconds, but that was enough to lose sight of him. Shit, where'd he go? Swinging his head around, he gave up trying to find him and just made a beeline to the sewer entrance he had seen earlier. I'm guessing that's the place they were talking about. 

As he descended to the ground level, he started taking in the layout of the area. There was a decent sized canal running at a lower elevation than the rest of the town and raised dirt banks on either side. The large tunnel through which the canal flowed down and into the city was dark and incredibly ominous, even from afar and especially in the night. The buildings and structures receded away as Ellian slowly walked his way forward towards the tunnel. 

The first thing that hit him was the abhorrent smell. Putrid and rotting, it wafted its way from the canal water to his nostrils. He gagged and pinched his nose shut with his fingers. Accursed as it was, it didn't come close to the horror that awaited him.

Continuing his slow march onward, Ellian noticed a slight discoloration to the water in the canal at a certain point. As he got closer, the reason for the discoloration became evident. It was blood. Lots of blood. A steady stream of it was dribbling into the canal system. As the clouds parted slightly and allowed more light through, he made out the source.

Lying in a pool of blood was the severed head of a man wearing a helmet. His eyeball had popped out of his socket and hung by a piece of flesh. It appeared that his neck had exploded at the shoulder which would explain the absence of a body and—as Ellian noticed further—the vast area over which the blood had splattered.

Similarly, another corpse, this one impaled through the abdomen was laying on the ground with the large metal skewer still in his body. Intestines had burst out of the hole through which the rod had gone, and the already pooled blood stayed still, nary a ripple save for the one-off wind. 

Ellian had seen a lot of death; nothing quite this bad. He had killed a fair few men, he had witnessed blood spurt from gaping wounds. But something about the eerie scene spread out in front of him in the waning moonlight chilled him. The lifeless strewn around on the canal banks were to his eyes, a horror. 

Bodies. They lay everywhere, adding morbid décor to a bland patch of dirt. His slow watchful walk brought him to another dead, this one wasn't wearing a helmet. He bent down and examined the body. Around the man's neck was a broken amulet. His body was in decent condition and so too were his clothes. Ellian unclasped the fastening on a dark green poncho and pulled it off the corpse and onto his shoulders, draping it over his head. It was supposed to be a waist length poncho, but it fit him to the knees. This'll do.

After adjusting a few things, Ellian's eyes drifted to the ground where he saw a bloodied footprint in the scarce moonlight. It faced towards the tunnel. Ellian jogged towards the tunnel, trying his best not to look at the dead and attempted to find Winfraeid's footprint trail. In doing so, he followed after it, stopping just before he went into the pitch darkness. The tunnel loomed ominous in front of him; behind him were the souls of the dead. A shiver ran down his spine and he turned back to stare at the solemn carnage scattered around the canal bank.