Chapter 3 The Town of A Thousand Deaths

Stepping off the carriage, we were greeted by a stench— so foul that it made my eyes watered and I felt the sudden urge to throw up all my stomach contents.

Struggling to control the wave of nausea, I tried my best to make out our current location. What was once the sprawling, bustling Town of Sitrom; famous for its beautiful canals and rivers, now lay in ruins. Home to tens of thousands of citizens in its heydays, it was merely an empty shell of its former self. Save for the occasional creaking of poorly-maintained hinges, only an eerie silence hung in the air at the moment.

“What h-happened here?” Closing my nose with a piece of rag, I asked Cassius.

“Something bad…” said Cassius with a frown on his face as he marched directly into the town.

“Wait up!”

Along the way, we passed rows upon rows of abandoned stores and dark alleyways. Rats and filth littered the entire streets, and what used to be the clear, translucent water of the Semaht River, once renown as the ‘River of Life’ merely held a murky, brown liquid at the moment along with the carcasses of dead animals.

After 10 minutes of walking, we finally reached the town centre, which was home to the mayor.

“You’ve come, Lord Cassius!” A man with a pot belly, who seemed to be in his mid 40’s cried out as he flung himself toward Cassius’s feet.

“Cut the crap, Alastair, tell me what’s going on,” said Cassius with a cold look on his face.

“Y-Y-Yes, of course,” Alastair stammered before he stood up gingerly. With a grave look upon his face, he began, “It all began with that stench. In the beginning we paid no attention to it, attributing it to the negligence of our night watchmen who had the job of removing the filth from our cesspools. However, the stench got worse and worse over the preceding months. It got so bad that travelers stopped frequenting Sitrom. Then, the deaths started to occur…” At this point, I could see Alastair shaking visibly from head to toe as his hands started to tremble.

“Initially, it was a random person or two who dropped dead. However, the death toll started to climb to an alarming number. Tens… hundreds and eventually thousands started to succumb. Their symptoms were nearly identical. Initially, they started to pass out pale, watery, white stools in large quantities. After several days, they were reduced only to their skin and bones with horrible sunken eyes, as if their life force were sucked out of them… and then the terrible THIRST will start… Oh you should’ve seen them crying out for water to quench their insatiable thirst. However, it was as if their bodies were cursed… The moment they swallow any liquid, their bodies would undoubtedly purge it over and over again. Their deaths were horrible…”

Alastair took a few gulps of water to calm himself down before rummaging around his drawers. Then, he produced several scraps of parchment paper before he continued, “Most of the victims spoke of an entity during their dying breath. They recounted how they saw the devil with red eyes before their deaths… A serpentine-like creature with fangs dripping in poison. They called it ‘Miasma’.

I peered down at the figure that was drawn on the parchment paper. It seemed there were several versions of it. Some drawings depicted it as a black cloud of gas with a serpentine-like body and ruby red eyes, while some depicted it as a slithery scale-like creature along with sharp talons.

“Y-You mean they were killed by this ‘thing’?” I stammered.

“Quite right, my Lady—“ began the mayor.

“She’s merely my servant. No need for formalities,” Cassius interrupted him with a wave of his hands.

I gave him a disapproving look.

Seemingly lost in thought, Cassius drummed his fingers upon the table, while the mayor sat down heavily on the moth-eaten couch and wiped the sweat off his brow.

“Tell me, Alastair, these deaths… where were they most concentrated?” Cassius finally asked.

“They are mostly centered around Strasburg Street,” said the mayor as he pointed toward a tiny place on the map, just southwest from the town center.

“Well, we had better pay them a visit then,” said Cassius with a chuckle as he grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me off.

Before we left, the mayor managed to grab me by the hand. With a haunted look on his face, he whispered, “Beware of the stench, for death comes to those who inhaled its toxic fumes…”