The Creep of Carrock

Chapter 1

For the third night in a row, Reinhart sat exhausted on a side bench of the great hall. His arms ached from hours of battle and his plate armor was battered and filthy. His sword lay at his feet, chipped and bent from the countless hacks and slashes he'd delivered to the various forms of his foes. He looked up, not many were left. They'd been fighting the enemy from the North western mountains for at least a year now but something had filled it with a new vigour as of late and the attacks had grown more frequent and vicious. It assaulted the walls almost every night and the brave men and women of Carrock took to arms to defend their homes from this new onslaught of hatred, but people can only fight for so long.

This was no enemy of soldiers or of steel. It was The Creep. A blackish blue mass that spilled out of the mountain tunnels to cover everything in its path; slowly expanding with its viscous honey-like form. Everything it touched was consumed allowing it to grow stronger. The farmland and wilderness surrounding Carrock, once green and prosperous, was now a smouldering and desolate wasteland, greedily devoured by the Creep in less than a year. Nobody was quite sure where exactly the Creep came from or what it wanted besides destruction.

So night after night, the people of Carrock fought against the Creep. In the past they had always succeeded, holding the walls until day break when the Creep would recede for a day or two. It was different now, thought Reinhart. The army was made up of more militia and civilians than trained soldiers and every night, more were lost. Today was the third night of a continuous onslaught by the Creep. The curtain wall had fallen on the first night being quickly overrun as the Creep threw itself at the city like a vicious tide against a cliff. Tonight they had been forced to pull back from the inner rampart to take refuge within the keep. Hope was lost. Reinhart gazed longingly at the group of survivors, remembering the once proud fighting force that held fast against the Creep. Painfully slowly, Reinhart had watched the Creep cut down his friends and his comrades and now he sat alone in an echoey chamber with what could not have been more than forty survivors.

Sitting back, Reinhart released the latches on his armour and let his cuirass and pauldrons fall to the floor. Balancing his head in his hands, he ran his fingers through the sweat matted locks of brown hair that were caked in dirt and bits of dried blood. Amidst the fighting, he sustained a wound on the head when a hammer connected with his helmet, causing him to tear it off or be deafened by the clang. Letting out a shaky breath, he stood, adjusted his belt which now only held his dagger, and walked slowly to the centre of the room where the great hearth was lit providing some comforting warmth to his kin. The remaining Carrocks gathered in a solemn circle of recognition that they wouldn't see daybreak. Lips moved silently as some individuals offered silent prayers to the Elder Gods, or simply held each other to try and find some comfort.

The front door creaked. Everybody's head turned sharply to look terrified at the door. They watched as the windows of the hall were slowly masked by a dark form. As the Creep crept up the walls, the rafters groaned and dust peppered the survivors as it fell from the ceiling. The survivors looked around in fear as the building cried out in anguish with cracks and the grinding of stones. A thunderous boom climaxed the symphony of noise as the first stone fell from high on a wall and landed inside the hall. Not even the great oak rafters could hold, as it snapped into three pieces from the stress and the stone ceiling began to cave in. He ran. Terror filled Reinhart's every step as he sprinted to the back of the room to the downward stair. He watched as stones crushed the people he had known since childhood, and dodged incoming timbers and shards of glass. His ears were filled with the sound of screams as the Creep oozed its way into the hall from the holes it had forced open. Tears streamed down Reinhart's face as he reached the steps and bounded down them.

Reaching the bottom of the spiral steps he wrenched a torch from the sconce on the wall and ran down the corridor, away from the deafening crunching sound of the keep collapsing. He reached the entrance to the caves, a large cavernous system underneath Carrock which Reinhart had discovered as a boy. Searching his memory he rushed past the kegs of wine and storage boxes to find the escape tunnel which passed through the original mines of the city. Reaching the passage, he continued down for maybe four hundred metres before coming to a ladder up. He let the torch fall from his hand and hastily clambered up the rough, aged wooden ladder that creaked precariously under his weight. Pushing up on the earthen manhole, he felt wind on his face and felt the chill on his tear stained cheeks. He climbed the rest of the way up and stood to look back at Carrock.