Empire of Night (Age of Legends 2)

Tyrus banged on the wooden door and announced himself. Sounds came from within, but no one answered. After being in there a fortnight, any survivors would be much weakened. Tyrus tried again, and Moria did the same, telling them who she was, that she'd been here with her sister, that they'd come back to rescue them.

"We'll need an axe," Tyrus said, stepping over the strewn bodies.

Moria pushed on the door. It moved a crack before banging shut again.

"Something's against it," she said. "But it's not properly barricaded. Help me push."

He did. Daigo came closer, but only to supervise. As soon as they got the door open a couple of handspans, he leaped through.

"Daigo!" Moria cried. "Don't--"

A hiss. A scrabbling. A shriek. Moria shoved the door wide and burst through, ready to calm the frightened--

The smell. By the ancestors, the smell. It sent her back out that door, propelling Tyrus with her. She pulled her tunic up over her nose. He did the same as he heaved breaths through his mouth to calm his stomach. Inside, Daigo hissed and spit. Enraged shrieks answered, so shrill that Moria's first thought was Children! It's the children! Then she caught the smell again and thought, No, please don't let it be the children.

Stepping back through the door, Moria saw what Daigo was chasing. Rats. That's what had been making the squeals and the skittering. The only people in there . . . Moria saw what had been stopping the door. Bodies.

When the killing had started, townspeople had fled in here. And then they had died, not because they'd run out of food or drink, but because there were men with them, and the shadow stalkers had sought out and possessed them. Then those who'd barricaded themselves inside had found they were trapped here.

Moria thought of those dead outside the door. Had they known what was happening within? Had they heard the screams and been trying to help? She squeezed her eyes shut and wished she'd not been blessed with such a vivid imagination.

After she surveyed the carnage, she turned to Tyrus. "There are no children. It is like Edgewood. No one under twelve summers remains." Which was not entirely true. They'd seen babes in arms, as in Edgewood, but she'd not think of that.

"They've taken the children again," Tyrus said. "As hostages."

That, then, was all she could take from this. A spot of hope. The children lived.

"We should go," Tyrus said. "The others can make the accounting here. It does not help to linger."

She was about to call Daigo when he let out a snarl, and she spun to see him facing off with . . .

It was a rat. Yet it was not.

In the Forest of the Dead, they'd seen a twisted creature with quills. Gavril had said it must have adapted to the conditions of the forest. She looked at this rat, up against the wall, and she knew he'd lied. Whatever magics Alvar Kitsune had been working in that forest, preparing to raise the shadow stalkers, they had warped that beast.

This rat was nearly twice as big as the corpses of the others, swollen and bloated, with huge patches of angry pink skin showing through its coarse fur, as if it'd been stretched almost to the bursting point. Its eyes were lost in the lumpy, bloated mass that had become its head. Only the tips of its ears and nose protruded. And teeth. The swelling seemed to have pulled its lips back, its pin-sharp teeth exposed all the way around. A creature in transition, bloating and swelling as it metamorphosed into something else.

"It's sick or poisoned," Tyrus said. "Daigo! Away!" He turned to Moria. "Call him off."

Sick or poisoned. Yes, perhaps that was it. Her imagination was getting the best of her.

She did not command Daigo to leave his prey, though. It would be an insult to call him off. She threw her dagger instead. It caught the rat-thing in the side and there was a grotesquely wet popping noise as the beast shrieked its last.

"Or you could just kill it yourself," Tyrus said.

"That is the advantage to thrown daggers," she said. "No need to get close enough to be attacked."

"Just wash the blade well. Please."

Daigo was looking around, as if for more enemies to fight. Tyrus bent and pulled out Moria's dagger. When he did, it seemed half the rat's insides bubbled out of the hole, like an overstuffed sausage roll.

"Well, that's disgusting," said a voice behind them.

Moria turned to see Ronan. He stood in the doorway, and his gaze was no longer on the rat-thing, but sweeping the room, and as it did, any glimmer of humor fell from his face.

"It's all disgusting," Moria said. "Unspeakably disgusting."

Ronan nodded soberly. Moria reached for her dagger, but Tyrus was cleaning it and ignored her.