Lygeia Uncovers Bannruod's Plot
The night was thick with fog as I wandered the wharves of Theriopolis,
where I was wont to go whenever I longed for home and the sea. The familiar
smells of fish and tar stung my nose, and were a comfort.
The docks were never quiet, especially when the tide was turning. Shrimpers
were casting off with their lanterns strung from the rigging to compete
boldly with the rising moon and tramps put in to unload their cargo while
the port master slept. Watching the stevedores bend their backs to the heavy
bales and crates, I paused to lean against a rail and listened to the
outgoing tide sucking at the pilings and moored ships. Across the way stood
a warehouse more decrepit than average, even for this part of the docks –
a derelict from some broken trading house. ‘The sea,’ I thought, ‘knows
many ways to be cruel.’
I shook my head quickly to rid my whiskers of the fog droplets catching on
and tickling my face with their weight, and caught sight of a hunched figure
slowly moving into the deep shadows alongside the warehouse. I sighed sadly,
and pushed myself away from the railing and towards the figure. Too many
furres were like that, homeless and without hope.
I thought only to lighten my purse and possibly this furre’s burden, but
as I entered the narrow alley, a jaundiced light flickered in the grimy
window in back of the warehouse. I stepped closer to investigate, and as I
moved into the unnatural glow my stomach heaved in naseous rebellion.
Dizzied, I stumbled against the side of the warehouse and knocked several
boards from their rusty nails in a clattering jumble of wood and furre as I
fell through the wall and onto the warehouse’s dusty floor.
Fighting the miasma filling my mind, I pushed free of the lumber and stared
at the cavernous room through the expoding stars in my eyes. On the floor
directly in front of me were the lifeless forms of two canines, their fur
matted with dried gutter slime and their bloodied teeth still bared in a
deathly snarl. The bodies were twisted and propped against each other in an
attitude of supplicants, their snouts almost touching the chalked circle
drawn about them and their vacant eyes staring glassily at the hunched and
wizened rat standing before them.
An iron brazier, supported on a tripod of mishapen skulls and held by a
fractured ribcage, rose before him and belched forth its sickly light through
jagged cracks. Hanging from the rat’s black robes, strands of knucklebones
clacked as he spun to face me and shouted a single, gutteral word. His tongue
flicked across his ruinous teeth as he leered at me before quickly returning
to his brazier, apparently dismissing my presence. As well he could for I
was again convulsed with nausea, unable to move. Not so the canines whose
lips twitched to the rat’s chanting and whose limbs jerked to his gestures.
Slowly, they rose from the floor and turned their vacant eyes toward me – the
eyes of the dead, their souls long since fled. I prayed for my own soul and
tried... tried desperately to summon the strength to resist the rat’s hold
on me. He laughed menacingly at my struggles.
“You, lover of light, are a most fortuitous omen,” the rat said, his voice
as cold and dry as tomb dust. “A gift I will offer Mirmoggin when I release
the Lord of Bones from the Vault of Dread. Before Mirmoggin devours you,
know that I am Bannruod and feel the power of my hunger.”
With those words, I was flung towards him by an unseen force and slammed
against the warped floorboards at his feet. The canines shambled forward and,
grabbing my arms with their leprous paws, jerked me upright. I closed my eyes
as Bannruod drew a short, sickle-bladed knife and laid it against my throat.
Feeling the flat of the blade circle my neck then move over my shoulder in a
demented carress, I clutched at the canines for support, silently begging
them for the strength I lacked to stand and face death bravely. The canine’s
flesh began to grow warm beneath my paws and I opened my eyes to see disbelief
and regret in theirs.
In that moment, Bannruod’s paw wavered and the shroud of weakness smothering
me was lifted. I broke free of the canines and slapped Bannruod’s knife away.
Grabbing the brazier, I dashed it to the floor where it expoded in noxious
vapors and a coruscating liquid which fell smoldering on Bannruod’s chest and
legs. He screamed in pain and anger as I was again brought my knees by the
vapors. The light fled from the canine’s eyes and Bannruod appeared to draw
on his pain for strength.
“You cost me much in time, child of weakness,” he growled through clenched
teeth, “but you have no power to stop me! For each night I am delayed from
releasing Mirmoggin, I will feast on a piece of your flesh. Pray to your
simpering Primes that I am not long in my preparations!”
Bannruod struck me with the hilt of his knife and I collapsed unconscious to
the floor. I awoke in a dank room to the hurried tugs and proddings of two
thieves searching me. They paused only briefly as I blinked unfocusing eyes
at them. Quietly, they fled with my purse and rings, but they had cut
my bonds and placed a wineskin next to my head. My shoulder throbbed where a
chunk of flesh had been cut away so, counting myself well repaid by the
theives, I made my way haltingly through the warehouse.
The stench of death still thickened the air, but there was no trace of
Bannruod or his foul accoutrements. As I stepped out into the bright sunlight
and bustling noise of the docks, I wrapped my arms tightly around myself and
shivered uncontrollably, knowing Bannruod was somewhere near – hunched in the
shadows and licking his ruined teeth.
