106 Blood echoes (1/2)
Surgit urged his weakened feet to move towards the door from which the two kidnappers came. He dreaded finding more of them in there as he had no more blood vials. He cursed himself for not taking more with him from the dream. The last vial he had moved had the effect of the blood he consumed from the crows earlier.
He shouldn't have filled it from the kidnapper's corpse. After he'd seen how corroded his vertebra was, he understood why he didn't heal completely. Surgit stood by the door and leaned on one of the walls to help support his own weight. He looked at what lied in front of him.
He saw a large avenue, a cobbled road and many lamp posts on the side. He also saw a multitude of horse drawn carriages parked on the sides of the road. All of them were empty and devoid of their horses. Buildings rose up and made to touch the sky. From where he stood, Surgit felt that this place had something majestic and frightening at the same time.
It didn't feel like he was in the Cathedral Ward anymore. He wasn't in that area underneath the tower either. Those two areas didn't have an entire choir singing in the background and giving him goose bumps every time they increased the volume of their voices.
The sky was dark, decorated with faint distant moonlight. The moon was rising but the stars were nowhere to be seen, a strange thing that Surgit had just realized. He could see clouds obscuring the sky even further. But those little distant dots in the air were not visible at all.
That starless sky and the darkness that subsequently fell on the city because of it made the streets even more perilous. Surgit had to observe his surroundings harder and make sure that no one's lurking in some corner, with the help of the shadows. As much as he liked using darkness to his side, he wasn't willing to let it be used against him.
Surgit was still leaning on the door, assessing whether or not it was wise for him to explore the place even more when he heard a strange noise. Among the violent chants that could be heard even clearer outside, came the growling and sniffing of some strange animal. It appeared to be big, too big.
Just its steps increased in sound as it approached and Surgit slowly started realizing what those sounds meant. Right in front of the building laid the end of the main road. A gigantic roundabout signaled the end of the avenue, or at least Surgit thought it was a roundabout.
Beyond the circle, stairs led down towards another neighborhood as far as Surgit could tell. The stairs were hidden from his sight by elegant stone railings which demonstrated the intricacy used by their maker. From the space between each of those small pillars that decorated the railing, Surgit started seeing a shape, climbing up the stairs and accessing the main street.
He went back inside and hid behind a wall, observing the creature with just half an eye. The bloated pig came at the level of the roundabout and stopped. It turned towards the stairs and made to climb them back down.
Surgit knew that he had to kill that beast, at least to fulfill his promise to the little girl who had died because of his cowardice. But he couldn't move properly, not because of fear, but because of weakness. During all his previous fights, he had managed to kill stronger foes and bring the toughest of prey down to its knees.