Slaughter
The sewers felt different on the way back down. No chittering. No skittering in the shadows. The tunnels that had crawled with movement before were empty now, like every living thing had pulled back into the dark to hide.
Bash found himself thinking about the Uploads in the cages. About the man on that table, cut apart like a specimen. About the NPC woman, dragged screaming into darkness while he chose to save someone else.
Days ago, I threw up after killing bandits. The thought surfaced unbidden. Now I’m cracking jokes over mutilated corpses and ranking lives.
He pushed it down and kept walking.
The first pack that found him was six goblins, standard variety, armed with crude clubs and rusted knives. Bash didn't even slow. He caught the first one mid-charge, drove his fist through its chest, and used the body as a battering ram against the next two. The remaining three tried to scatter.
He ran them down, broke them apart, left pieces scattered across thirty feet of tunnel. The whole thing took less than twenty seconds.
It felt good. He hated that it felt good. His eyes kept snapping to the numbers.
The tunnels twisted deeper. The air grew thicker, fouler, carrying hints of something beyond sewage. Rot. Decay. The particular stench of things that had been dead too long.
Bash found a chamber that made him stop. Crude tables. Benches. Scraps of food scattered across wooden surfaces. A goblin mess hall.
But the food... He recognized a hand. Human. Gnawed down to the bone but unmistakable. Fingers still curled, like it had been gripping something when it was taken. More scraps. A jawbone with teeth still attached. Something that might have been a liver, half-eaten, crawling with flies.
A child's shoe sat on the table. Small. Leather. Still laced. No foot inside, but the edges were gnawed, and there were tooth marks on the sole where something had tried to get at whatever had been wearing it.
This is what they do. This is what they are. This is why you're killing them. It didn't make him feel better. But it made the next pack easier.
Another chamber. This one had been decorated. Bones lined the walls in intricate patterns. Skulls stacked in pyramids. Femurs arranged in spirals. Someone, or something, had spent considerable time making this space horrifying.
And at the center, on a raised platform of stacked corpses, stood something different.
It was taller than the smaller goblins by nearly a foot, draped in a robe stitched from what looked disturbingly like human skin. Its face was painted with symbols in dried blood. Its hands clutched a staff topped with a skull that glowed with sickly green light.
But it was what the shaman was wearing under the robe that caught Bash’s attention. Silk. Pale blue with silver threading. Torn and stained but unmistakable. Richard's silk pajamas. The little bastard had dressed itself in the dead Count's clothes like a trophy. My trophy. Bash thought.
Around the shaman, two dozen goblins knelt in something resembling worship. They swayed in unison, chanting in that guttural language, eyes fixed on their leader with religious fervor.
Oracle flickered, the threat assessment climbing. The shaman alone registered as a genuine danger, even on a good day. And today was far from good.
Bash should have retreated, avoided the whole mess. Instead, he stepped into the chamber and cleared his throat. “Hey. Nice outfit. I knew the previous owner. Terrible person... you would have loved him.”
The chanting stopped. The goblins turned to look at him. The shaman raised its staff. The skull flared bright, and a ball of green fire erupted from its eye sockets, streaking toward Bash with a howl.
He dove sideways, felt the heat scorch past his cheek. The fireball struck the wall behind him and exploded, showering the tunnel with burning debris.
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“Shit!” Bash hissed, rolling to his feet, shaking embers from his hair.
The goblin horde charged. Bash met them head-on, fists sweeping through the front rank, sending bodies flying.
Another fireball. Bash grabbed a goblin and threw it to intercept the blast, exploding in midair.
Can't fight the mob and dodge fireballs at the same time. Need to shut that thing down. Bash waded deeper into the throng, taking hits he would have dodged if he had time to be careful. A knife opened a cut on his arm. Claws raked his back. He barely felt them, already numb from previous wounds.
A fireball grazed his shoulder, searing through what was left of his armor and skin, but he didn't slow down. He was almost there.
The shaman's eyes grew wide as Bash burst through the last rank of defenders. The creature backed away frantically, staff swinging wildly.
Ignoring the weapon as it bounced off his forearm, Bash closed the distance quickly and picked up the spell caster. The thing couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds as it squirmed in his grip.
Still moving, he forced the hand clutching the staff to point back at the oncoming horde. “Cast fireball,” he shouted.
The shaman gargled out protests as another goblin jumped into his path. Without better options, Bash hip checked it aside, taking another stab for his troubles.
Bash squeezed harder. “Fireball, or I pop your head like a grape!”
The staff jerked as its owner finally complied, and a ball of fire erupted outward, streaking into the goblin ranks. The ones nearest the impact didn’t even have time to scream. One moment they were charging, the next they were gone, bodies vaporized in a flash of green-white heat, leaving nothing but ash outlines on the stone floor and the smell of burnt pork.
The goblins at the edges weren't so lucky. The blast wave caught them, set them ablaze. They ran in circles, shrieking, flames licking up their bodies as their skin bubbled and split. One clawed at its own face, trying to put out the fire eating through its eyes. Another rolled in the sewage, which only spread the burning, the oily filth catching light and turning the creature into a thrashing torch. A third made it five steps before its legs gave out, tendons melting, and it collapsed into a twitching heap that continued to burn and scream until neither was possible anymore.
“Another one!” Bash barked, swinging the shaman toward a fresh cluster. “Fireball!”
The staff discharged again. Two more goblins disintegrated instantly, their bodies blown apart into charred fragments. A third took the hit to its midsection and split in half, upper body tumbling one direction, legs stumbling two more steps before collapsing, intestines unspooling in a steaming pile.
The survivors at the blast's edge caught fire and added their voices to the chorus of screams. One's jaw melted off, hanging by a thread of sinew as it tried to shriek through a mouth that no longer existed. Another's arms fused to its torso as the skin liquefied and ran together.
“Fireball! Fireball! Fireball!”
He wasn't thinking anymore. Wasn't planning. Just pointing and laughing as things died. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a small voice was screaming that this wasn't normal, that enjoying this made him something monstrous. He told it to shut up and aimed at another cluster.
Bash swept the shaman across the chamber like a flamethrower, cackling as he painted the room in fire and death. The creature's own magic turning its followers to ash. Goblins fled, scrambled over each other, trampled their wounded in desperation to escape. Some threw themselves into the sewage, only to find the muck was flammable too, and died drowning in liquid fire.
He hunted them down. One by one. Corners. Alcoves. Behind pillars. Nowhere was safe. The shaman cast until its voice gave out, until the staff's glow flickered and sputtered, until the chamber was silent except for the crackle of dying flames and the wet sounds of things that were still technically alive but wouldn't be for long.
When the last goblin fell, Bash looked at the creature in his grip. It hung limp, exhausted, throat raw from forced incantations. Its eyes had gone dull. Smoke rose from its fingertips where the staff had burned them. It made weak sounds that might have been pleas for mercy, but came out as nothing more than rasping croaks.
“Thanks for the assist,” Bash said. “But I think we're done here.”
He grabbed its head from both sides, fingers digging into the folds of warty flesh, and squeezed.
The shaman's eyes bulged, yellowed and bloodshot, as the pressure built. It made a sound, something between a wheeze and a gurgle, claws scratching weakly at his wrists.
Bash squeezed harder. The skull began to deform, bone grinding against bone. One eye burst first, spraying warm fluid across his forearm. The shaman's body spasmed, limbs jerking in random directions as its nervous system fired blind.
The skull collapsed, brain matter and bone fragments oozed between his fingers. What was left of the head hit the ground with a splatter, barely recognizable as something that had been alive moments before. Green-black ichor pooled outward, mixing with the filth already coating the floor.
Bash let the new levels washed over him, relieving some of the aches and pains.
The chamber stank of cooked meat and burned hair and something sweeter underneath. Smoke curled up from bodies that were still smoldering. Nothing moved except the shadows cast by the fires.
Wiping his hands on what was left of his armor, he kept moving. The tunnels grew wider after that, but the goblin presence thinned. The survivors of the shaman's chamber must have run, must have spread the story about the monster in the sewers.
Goblins now fled at the sight of him, scattering before he could even raise his fists. The ones too slow or stupid, died. One unfortunate goblin was uppercut so hard it stuck to the ceiling twitching. Bash watched it hanging there, thinking about modern décor.
At some point he couldn’t remember, the horror had become routine. Each kill was nothing more than progress. And progress felt good. He began to smile. A wicked smile that stretched his cheeks until they hurt.