Page 56 of Claimed By Night

BARON

The journey to Grimreap is never an easy one. The road is peppered with thieves and dangerous beasts roam the forests on either side, looking to surprise unsuspecting passersby. The conditions become even worse as you approach the town’s entrance. From there, the town has a heartbeat of its own, kept alive by the collective souls that sustain it. Not fae nor mortal nor shadow, Grimreap is a melting pot of any and everything unsavory. It exists without law or master. It is, itself, an undead, a creature roused from the pits of despair just as I was.

It is mid-afternoon by the time I arrive at the city gates, but the clouds stay dark and ominous overhead, skewing all sense of time. They promise a storm that will never come. Grimreap exists in shadow, everything cast in a constant state of darkness.

The old city is the same dark gray as the sky above it. The stones of the city walls bear scorch marks from long ago, hinting at the battle that was waged here. A battle between light and dark… A day so violent, it has lived on forever… or so I am told.

The remaining stone-wall structure is impressive, with spires that rise one hundred feet into the air and an arch so high, you must tilt your head to see the top. The deathly spikes of the wrought iron gates settle like a guillotine over the city’s entrance. Aptly nicknamedThe City of Death, Grimreap sets off an alarm in the senses of all those who enter.

Within its limits, my instincts are suddenly on high alert. I feel the extreme need to flee, every fiber of my being warning me to the dangers that surround me.

The streets are damp and filthy, just as the people themselves, all bustling and unfriendly. Grimreap attracts all manner of creatures: deformed demons buying love from establishments that cater to their most carnal desires, escaped criminals, the banished insane, and black-market peddlers, to name a few. If you need someone killed, if you have a frowned-upon sexual fetish, or if you’re after a loan repayable with your soul, Grimreap is the place to come.

The main street, a dirt road, is alive with stalls and the hollers of those selling their wares. The town smells like shit, refuse building up along each side of the narrow road and streams of piss snaking through the rutted lane, fogging up the freezing air with urine ghosts. Feral creatures, both magical and not, wander the alleys, searching for food wherever they can find it. What buildings still remain are now just façades of crumbling stone, decimated so many years ago by the war that pitted light against dark—something that has come to be known as theSingularity.

Shrunken heads dangle from strings on a nearby cart. I watch the man selling them, an orc, as he places what look like dog teeth into the mouth of one of the heads, making it more grotesque than it already is.

Beside his cart are a few cages. Inside them are tigers, crocodiles, and apes. Behind these nonmagical beasts, in even larger cages, are all manner of monsters: a manticore, a sickly albino dragon, and two broken hippogriffs. All look extremely worse for wear. The manticore, usually a stunning beast with the body of a big cat and the imposing tail of a scorpion, appears blind in one eye. It suffers from mange and bears deep gashes from being whipped.

The hippogriffs are in even worse shape. With the body of an eagle atop the legs of a magnificent horse, these creatures are typically strong and proud. These specimens, though, reveal wings that are clipped. One of the hippogriffs has unnaturally bent legs, leading me to believe both hind legs are broken. Each is covered in scars; their eyes have the clouded look of something that has long ago given up. Their emaciated bodies are pressed tightly against the bars of their cells, where they lay in a bed of their own feces. The smell is vile, worse than a corpse left to rot,contributing to the overall smell of death that haunts the air in Grimreap.

“They have a taste for flesh,” says the greasy animal handler, an ogre who’s as tall as he is wide. He smiles at me with toothless, brown, infected gums. His hair is thin but thick with grease, slicked back to expose a high forehead and flesh filled with large pits fromAtacomiteoveruse.Atacomiteaddicts all look the same, with missing teeth, bulging veins, pits in their flesh.

With my highly-tuned vampire sense of smell, I catch a whiff of him. His blood is rancid, like meat or cheese left in the sun. He smells worse than his animals.

“Not in the market for what you’re selling today,” I tell him, my voice low as I don’t wish to attract attention.

“They won’t eat you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I’m not. But I don’t respond. Instead, I’m irritated with myself that I haven’t wrapped myself in shadows to avoid interacting with these lowlifes. It has become my custom to hide myself in darkness before I venture into Grimreap and yet, this trip, I’ve forgotten to take this precaution. I’m surprised—I’m usually anything but scatter-brained. Well, as far as my memory will allow me to remember, that is.

I can’t recall anything before the day I awoke in the graveyard and became what I am today. What I’ve been for the past one hundred years.

Yes, this is an odd blunder. But perhaps it’s notthatsurprising, considering there’s been something in the air for the past few days. I can’t quite put my finger on just what that something is, but I can feel it all the same: A certain portentous energy that wasn’t there before.

One of the first lessons I’ve learned as a master assassin is to trust my instincts, because they have never failed me. Andmy instincts have been on high alert recently, warning me that something is coming. Something significant.

The ogre fishes an item out of his pocket: a long, thin whistle. There are curious engravings on it.

“What’s that?” I ask, somewhat disappointed in myself. I know better than to engage while I’m here, but curiosity gets the better of me.

“Fear,” he answers with a cryptic laugh, then raises the whistle to his mouth and blows. The cages nearby rattle as the creatures within them shift uncomfortably. One moans, the sound reminding me of the banshees’ wail, the lingering melody that haunts the Raven Forest.

“They’re trained never to attack whoever possesses the whistle,” the ogre tells me. “Your enemies, however, they won’t be so lucky.”

When he moves closer to me, his stench is so strong I have to take a step back. I shake my head to let him know I’m still not interested. Then I wrap myself in shadows before continuing along the main entrance of Grimreap, passing a plethora of stalls selling everything from the illegal to the dangerous. I stock up on some secondary poisons:Draught of Living Death, and chloride which I can use to make a number of toxic concoctions. Explosives, too.

Before concluding my business for the night, I make my way into a crowded tavern called “The Sunken Sword”. Although I don’t thirst, or require use of the tavern’s facilities, I’m after information. And lurking in the corner of a tavern is one of the best ways to eavesdrop and learn news from around the realms.

I make it my business to know Variant’s business.

I walk up to the bar, manned by a particularly ugly troll. Half of his face is caved in, obliterating one of his eyes and dragging part of his mouth down. He has to ask me what I want three times, because it’s difficult for him to speak and even moredifficult for me to understand. I order a tankard of ale and when he hands it to me, I notice his hands are huge and his fingers are covered in hair. I pay for the drink and eye it warily; it looks like piss.

Then I find a small, inconspicuous table in the corner of the main room. I take a seat, being careful to wrap myself in shadows yet again. Leaning back, I listen.

There is endless conversation echoing around me. A blood elf informs his companion about a woman he found along the road and the sadistic sexual things he did to her. Listening to his story makes me want to subject him to the tortuous death ofRotting Worm Venom. The inky, black liquid rots away flesh and bone, melting sinew and boiling the blood.

But if I went after every rapist in Grimreap, I’d have a full-time job. Besides, it’s important to preserve my arsenal of poisons, which are rare and expensive. Perhaps it’s more fitting to say I’m no hero, nor do I claim to be. I keep to myself and that’s the way I like it.

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