The golden light snapped away like a severed cord, plunging me back into the frigid dark. The phantom chill of the alley rain lingered, colder, somehow, than the viscous sludge already soaking through the worn leather of my boots. I gasped, dragging in air thick with the cloying stench of rot and something else… something acrid and ancient, like disturbed grave dirt mixed with stagnant power exhaling from unseen depths below.

  Kingsley’s body lay nearby, a broken monument to hubris, his one remaining eye dark now, reflecting nothing of the low, dripping ceiling. His final words echoed, not as a threat, but as a grim, chilling truth. You haven’t even seen the surprise. The surprise wasn’t just his final, desperate madness, or the fall. It was the whole damn system, the casual cruelty baked into the very stone and the diminished souls clinging to life in this place. The Memory Core, its purpose served, pulsed once more with a fading internal light, then sank silently, swallowed by the muck, its light utterly extinguished. The weight of its revelation—the hidden truths of this pit—settled onto my shoulders, heavier than my sodden pack and quiver.

  Thumbs whimpered beside me, his small, furry body trembling against my leg. He’d finally found his voice again, though it was thin and reedy, barely cutting through the oppressive damp. “Rod back? Rod okay? Face… face was bad. Scared face.” He tugged weakly at my arm, his small claws scraping with a pathetic insistence against the wet leather. “We go now? Up? Please up?”

  Before I could form a reply, let alone a plan, a new sound joined the steady drip… drip… drip from above. A faint scratching, almost lost in the echo. Like one rat, maybe two, claws testing damp stone somewhere in the oppressive darkness ahead. It came from down the curved channel, where the light didn't reach. Then another scratch, closer this time, sharper. Then ten. Then a hundred. It wasn't isolated anymore; it mutated into a soundscape, a rising tide of tiny claws skittering across countless unseen surfaces, echoing unnervingly from the walls, the low ceiling, maybe even vibrating up from below the slick, treacherous floor itself.

  The air shifted, growing heavier, denser. The smell intensified—a sudden, suffocating wave of sharp, animal musk, the overpowering stench of too many living bodies crammed into too small and foul a space, layered thick over the existing decay. It coated the back of my throat, making me gag. The murky water at our feet rippled, not from drips, but from subtle, spreading movement within the channel ahead.

  The scratching exploded into a frantic, scrabbling cacophony, a million tiny needles scraping against ancient brick and stone. And then it came.

  Not a single creature emerging hesitantly from the dark, but a flood. Rats poured from unseen grates high on the curved walls, from gaping cracks in the ancient brickwork, spilling down like furry, black waterfalls that moved with unnatural speed. They surged into the channel, a living tide of slick, greasy fur, frantically whipping tails, and needle-sharp teeth glinting wetly. They flowed together, merging on the channel floor… congealing.

  The darkness ahead thickened, writhed with impossible energy, and then rose.

  It defied easy description, possessing no recognizable shape, just a shifting, undulating, blasphemous mass of vermin. A monstrous coagulation of bodies held together by sheer crushing pressure and some foul, unseen will that radiated cold intent. It moved on 'legs' – if such abominations could be called that – thick, unstable pillars formed from hundreds, maybe thousands, of crushed, mangled rat corpses, packed tight as gristle and bone, limbs jutting out at unnatural angles like broken twigs. They dragged the impossible bulk forward with a wet, tearing sound that scraped raw bone against slick stone, leaving trails of gore and slime in the already putrid water.

  And the eyes. Gods, the eyes. Not clustered, but scattered randomly, hideously, across the shifting surface of the mass – hundreds upon hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny, paired points of sickly green light. They pulsed with a faint, unnatural luminescence, like corpse-lights in a poisoned swamp, and they fixed on us with a cold, singular, collective hunger that felt like insects crawling under my skin.

  My blood ran colder than the sludge at my feet. A jolt, sharp and unwelcome, shot through me. Not a memory from the Core this time. This was older, buried deeper. Sewers of Aerlyn, first floor, a hidden passage I shouldn't have opened... the glint of those same hateful eyes in the dark before I slammed the rusted door shut.

  The Plague Bearer.

  It rushed forward, not walking, but flowing like a burst sewage main, a river of death and disease made physically manifest. Bile, hot and acrid, rose in my throat. It would have torn me apart back then, barely more than a recruit scrabbling in the dark. I was stronger now, better equipped, but staring at that tide of filth and teeth, the sheer biological wrongness of it… I wasn’t sure strength mattered.

  Thumbs screamed, a high-pitched shriek of pure, unadulterated terror that somehow cut through the deafening skittering din. "NO! NO NO NO! MANY BAD! BITE BITE BITE! ROD RUN! RUNNNNN!" He scrambled desperately onto my back, claws digging painfully into my shoulders, scrabbling as if trying to climb my head, seeking any purchase, any imagined higher ground.

  My bow came up on instinct honed by countless desperate moments, arrow nocked, string drawn taut against my cheek. But my hands trembled, the slick, algae-coated stone floor threatening to betray my footing at any second. There was no rusted door this time. No slamming it shut and running, pretending I hadn’t seen the impossible horror. No escape. Just the suffocating curve of the channel, the encroaching, multi-eyed nightmare, and us.

  Then the sound hit – a deafening, guttural blast, like an elephant’s trumpet played through a cracked pipe filled with broken glass and the dying screams of its victims. It slammed against my eardrums with physical force, rattling my teeth in their sockets. The Plague Bearer seemed to swell, its surface churning violently, like thick tar boiling over.

  And then it fired.

  Not magic, not some ethereal energy, but rats. Hundreds of them, launched from the main body in living arcs, sailing through the dim, fetid air like furry, chittering projectiles. They soared, squealing, teeth bared in tiny, vicious snarls, claws outstretched, aimed directly, unerringly, at us.

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  No time to think. No time to aim. Just pure, frantic survival instinct. I threw myself sideways, twisting desperately, hitting the slick stone hard.

  The impact slammed the air from my lungs again, a sickening echo of the fall from above, agony blooming fresh and sharp. Stone met bone through layers of sodden leather, and the slick, algae-coated curve of the channel offered zero purchase, zero mercy. Filth splashed, cold and thick, soaking into layers the previous fall hadn’t reached, clinging like icy death. Thumbs shrieked again, a sound thin and sharp against the sudden roar that filled my ears, his claws digging deeper, frantic points of pain in my shoulders as he tried to burrow through flesh and bone to safety.

  Where I’d been standing a half-second before, the world dissolved into a nightmare carpet. Rats, hundreds of them, landed in a squirming, snapping, writhing mass, a wave of airborne vermin that immediately flowed like black water back towards the greater horror surging down the channel.

  It didn’t slow. Calling its advance mere 'movement' felt inadequate. It poured, a relentless, viscous tide of fused bodies, grease-slick fur, and countless bare, needle teeth gnashing in the gloom. The legs—gods, those awful legs—those pillars of crushed rat corpses packed solid, dragged the impossible bulk forward with that stomach-churning sound like thick canvas tearing combined with gravel grinding under immense weight. Gore and slime thicker than the surrounding sludge trailed behind them, fouling the already putrid water, leaving shimmering, greasy slicks. And the eyes, hundreds upon hundreds of those tiny, paired points of sickly green light, swiveled fluidly in their shifting sockets, tracking my scramble with cold, unified focus. The pressure of its presence was a physical weight now, pressing down, making the thick air even harder to breathe.

  My bow was up before I consciously willed it, arrow nocked purely on muscle memory ingrained by years of fighting things that shouldn't exist. I loosed it, aiming by instinct for the perceived center of the undulating mass. The arrow vanished without a sound. No satisfying thud, no whisper of resistance, just swallowed whole by the shifting tide of bodies, like tossing a pebble into thick, hungry tar. I tried again, forcing myself to aim higher this time, desperation making my draw jerky, my release uneven. Same result. Gone. The creature—the entity—didn’t even ripple visibly. Panic, cold and sharp as a shard of ice, pricked at the edges of my focus.

  “NO HIT!” Thumbs shrieked, his voice cracking with utter despair. “ARROW GONE! IT EAT ARROW! TOO MANY! TOO BIG! SLICKY FLOOR BAD BAD BAD! ROD FALL AGAIN!” His terror vibrated through my back, a physical tremor throwing off my already precarious balance on the treacherous curve.

  I tried to backpedal, tried desperately to gain space in the claustrophobic confines of the ancient channel. My right boot slid out from under me on a patch of particularly greasy, invisible algae. I windmilled wildly, arms flailing, catching myself only by slamming my left hand down hard into the freezing sludge pooling thickest at the channel's bottom. The cold was shocking, instantly numbing my fingers, biting deep into the bone beneath the leather glove. This wasn't a battlefield; it was a death trap disguised as a sewer, actively working against me.

  A guttural blast, that horrifying parody of a trumpet call, echoed wetly off the low, sweating ceiling, seeming to vibrate the very air around us, shaking loose drops of foul condensation. The Plague Bearer’s surface churned like boiling pitch disturbed from below. Another wave launched—wider this time, faster, a constellation of squealing, furry projectiles arcing through the dim light like a shotgun blast of living shrapnel.

  I threw myself sideways again, sliding uncontrollably on the slick stone, slamming my shoulder hard against the cold, unforgiving curve of the brick wall. Rats rained down around me with wet, meaty thuds. One landed heavily on my boot, sharp claws scrabbling instantly for purchase, needle teeth sinking deep into the thick leather before I could react with a violent, reflexive kick that sent it spinning into the muck. Too close. Way too close.

  Arrows vanished. Standard tactics were worse than useless against that sheer, regenerating mass. Brute force wasn't the answer. Precision, I thought frantically, a vulnerability... something vital I can't see. Or maybe sheer explosive force to tear through that living tide—but my reserves of specialized arrows and the mana to empower them were critically low after the fight with Kingsley. The environment wasn't just cover; it was an active antagonist. This wasn't a fight; it was an extermination, and I was squarely on the wrong end of the spray nozzle.

  Think. Breathe through the stench, ignore Thumbs’ panicked whimpers escalating into choked sobs against my neck. Eyes. Maybe the eyes were a weak point? Hundreds of them, yes, but maybe they were linked, vulnerable? I forced myself steady, planting my feet as best I could on the treacherous curve, willing my trembling hands to obey. Drew the bowstring taut, the familiar tension a small anchor in the chaos. I led the undulating movement, picked a dense cluster of the baleful green lights near the 'front' – the leading edge – of the mass, and released.

  The arrow struck true. A wet, squelching pop echoed weirdly in the confined space, distinct from the constant skittering. A localized spasm wracked the creature, a ripple of disturbance. Maybe a dozen of the sickly green eyes near the impact point extinguished instantly, leaving small, dark patches on the shifting surface. The Plague Bearer gave a low, gurgling hiss—a sound like a drain backing up with gravel, bones, and something liquidly foul—and its relentless forward pour stuttered for a bare fraction of a second.

  {Damage: 74}

  A hit! A real reaction! Hope, sharp and startling, flickered in my chest.

  But even as it bloomed, the surrounding rats flowed over the damaged spot like liquid shadow pouring into a void. New pinpricks of green light ignited almost immediately in the darkness where the others had winked out. The stutter passed in less than a heartbeat. The relentless advance resumed, maybe even a fraction faster now, fueled by a cold, collective anger. It was temporary. Annoying it, perhaps, but not stopping it. Not like this. I couldn't possibly sustain that kind of precise fire while dodging projectiles and slipping on this damned floor.

  What about the legs? Those grotesque pillars of fused corpses holding it aloft. I shifted aim lower, firing again, this time into the thickest part of the forward-most leg-pillar. The arrow punched deep into rotting, compressed flesh, burying itself almost to the fletching. A few loose, half-dead rats clinging precariously to the surface fell off, twitching feebly in the sludge below. But the leg didn't buckle. It didn't even slow. The sheer, unholy mass pressing down from above kept it moving, dragging forward with that same wet, tearing, grinding sound. Useless. Utterly useless.

  {Damage: 28}

  The Plague Bearer paused then, maybe ten yards away. Close enough now that I could smell the individual rot of its components beneath the overwhelming musk, see the twitching whiskers on the faces crushed into its surface. It seemed to contract slightly, drawing the filth and sludge around its base inwards, the surface churning faster, becoming almost hypnotic. The trumpet sound gargled deep within its unseen core, building like pressure behind a dam.

  Then it pushed.

  Not rats this time. A wave. A literal wave of thick, black, stinking sewage surged down the channel towards me, moving faster than the creature itself. It wasn't just water; it was a viscous slurry of indescribable muck, sharp fragments of shattered bone, dissolving rat carcasses shedding fur and flesh, and pure, concentrated filth scooped violently from the channel floor and propelled with terrifying force. And it was headed right for him.

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