Realms of Shadow

9

The man awoke on the cliff top and picked his long way back to the sewers in a daze. The sewers had become home to him so easily…

In the days that followed, the woman did not return. Perhaps her evil deeds had finally caught up with her, or perhaps she had found a more suitable mate. The man made some perfunctory inquires about her in the town, but rarely did anyone know of her. Those who had heard of her grimaced as at a bad taste and would not speak to him. She had wanted to leave, in any case, and who was he to come upon her unwanted? He thought of the peddler-turned-cow and shuddered.

Days poured one into the next with nothing to distinguish them from those gone before or those come after, except that, on some days, he imagined he could sense the woman from whatever place she had gone to. What was he to do now?

He could not open the cages of her museum, since only magic could open them. Rather than leave the prisoners to wither, he slipped all but the newest member of their congregation poison purchased from a street vendor with gold coins he had found in one of the woman's robes. He told himself it was mercy-killing.

He attended to the newest creature's needs better than he attended to his own. He took violently ill, leaving trails of coughed-up blood on the cold floors. His disinterest in his own life might be conspiring to bring about his demise, or perhaps something in her final kiss…

As the lackluster days continued to drag, the stench of the dead in their cells grew thick, until the man thought sometimes that he must have fallen into the Nine Hells in error, the sole living being among the Hordes. Only his creature companion kept him from being alone-and one day it, too, died.