THE SUNLESS CITADEL
Part 2: Tothla In The Ol' Boar
Gloom, shadow and silence hung heavy in the air of the Ol' Boar Inn. The place was full of townsfolk, but they sat huddled together in small groups as if trying to stay warm. There was some low, uneasy conversation, but Tothla had presided over more raucous funerals. Hundreds of them. Literally.
If the townsfolk had been perturbed before, they became even more apprehensive as one by one they took note of Tothla's entrance. The stranger was wrapped in a cloak the color of charcoal, but where it fell open they could see it had a deep red underlining, and the hem at the bottom was yellow. He had lank black hair that fell to his shoulders, high cheekbones, and angular, hawkish features. His face was smeared with some sort of gray ash, which was applied more heavily around the eyes to form dark black circles that called to mind the empty eye sockets of a skull. He wore a chain shirt, and over that a high-collared tunic. The tunic was gray with yellow trim, except for a large, coffin-shaped swath of red on the chest. Inside the red was the image of a skeleton in gentle repose, its head slightly tilted as if contemplating the single yellow rose it held in its bony hands. These were the vestments of a priest of Sheol, Lord of the Grave.
Their faces turned white as they stared at Tothla. One woman swooned, and the frail old man seated next to her barely caught her in his arms. The worship of Sheol was not widespread in this part of the world, and so these folk were largely unfamiliar with the garb of his priests. To most of them, it seemed as if the Reaper himself had just entered the inn, and in these strange times such an event certainly seemed possible. Only some of the old-timers regarded Tothla with curiosity rather than trepidation.
Tothla walked deliberately to the bar at the back of the room. The old barkeep nodded as Tothla approached. "Seen your kind before, priest. Once, many years ago. They came on the Old Road, and hailed from the Farsouth. Asked a lot of questions about the Sunless Citadel. They were missionaries, spreading the word about your god. Hard to sell death to folks, though, and they moved on without any converts." The barkeep lowered his voice. "They did put old Wyl to his final rest though, and for that this town was thankful. I'm Garon. What do you call yourself, stranger?"
"I am Tothla," answered a voice as deep and resonant as a tomb, and as mournful as wind through a graveyard. "I am in the service of Sheol, the Gardener, the Guide, the Guardian of Souls." Tothla looked back at the room and saw that all eyes were fixed upon him. Turning back to the barrel-chested barkeep, Tothla observed, "Your streets are empty, and it is not yet dusk. Why do these folk cower here like frightened lambs when a wolf is about?"
"These are troubled times, friend. The cattleherders don't graze their stock too far afield these days. They're frightened by stories of monsters that maraud by night. Not the goblin bandits of the Citadel, either, we have an understanding with those thieving buggers. No, something nobody has seen, creatures that leave no trail. Cattle, and even a few people who have been caught out alone, have been found dead the next day, their bodies pierced by dozens of needlelike claws. Oakhurst hasn't had a scare like this since old Wyl."
Tothla's eyes met Garon's and he lifted one brow quizzically. Garon lowered his voice even further. "Years ago, an addled old hermit lived outside of town. He kept mostly to himself, him and his daughter, in a little shack he had. He was crazy, a bent old man, always muttering to himself, but never hurt a soul ... not while he was alive, anyway.
"One winter came a storm the likes of which this town had not seen in perhaps a hundred years or more. Old Wyl and his daughter were snowed in up in his shack, and the crazy bastard hadn't put up enough food to last the winter. His daughter died up there, whether it was fever or starvation nobody will ever know, nor does it much matter. When the first thaw came and some herdsmen cleared a path to Wyl's shack to check on him, they found him curled on the floor wailing like a banshee, his daughter's body clutched close to him. She had been dead for a while, but Wyl wouldn't let her go. When the men finally wrestled him down and took the body, they saw that there was flesh missing ... bites ... something had been eating at her. Then they realized that old Wyl, already crazy and even more mad with grief and hunger, had started eating his own daughter.
"Old Wyl didn't live long after that. When he died we buried him on a hill, not in the little town graveyard, and we left seven stones as a marker. A few nights later, something started getting into the chicken houses in the farms outside of town. Not a fox. No, this was messy, blood and feathers everywhere, the whole coops destroyed. Some people talked about a strange figure lurking around the town graveyard at night. Some folks even said that it was crazy Wyl, cursed to rise up because he had tasted the flesh of his own daughter. Still, I didn't believe it until I saw old Wyl myself.
"My pap owned this inn back in those days, and I was in my youth. I was drinking with my friend Rowlan, and we were both deep in our cups. We were stumbling through town, singing tavern songs and howling at the moon, when Wyl came at us, or a creature that had once been Wyl. His skin had turned to gray, and was drawn tight to his bones. He was moving and looking at us in a way that was more like a wolf than a man, cunning and wild. His eyes burned like hot coals down in their sunken sockets. The worst part was that smell. He smelled like rotten dirt. Wyl stunk of the grave from whence he had crawled. I pissed myself then and there, right in the middle of the road. Wyl moved fast. He lunged at us, clawed us." Garon tugged his tunic down, revealing four long, hideous scars on his chest. "I couldn't move. Couldn't do anything. I could only watch while Wyl snarled like a dog and drug off Rowlan. But even as he was dragging Rowlan off, even then, Wyl had already started eating."
A tear welled up in Garon's eye, and it was a moment before he continued. "About that time those fellows showed up in town. The ones who dressed like you. Some folk blamed them for old Wyl rising up from the grave. But they explained that their god despises the undead, sees them as a mockery of both the living and the dead. Said that aside from guiding souls to their final reward, the most important thing for them was to make sure that the dead stay dead. They told us that Wyl had become a ghoul, but that they could put him to a final rest. And that night they went on a hunt, and I don't know how they did it, but we never saw old Wyl again."
