As Richard stepped down into dark and damp of the sewer, he saw several pairs of eyes flutter about before sweeping into an even lower grate. The inability to see fully made him almost too confused to traverse the slick bars of piping and grates.
"Come this way." Whispered Altraz the Slimy. Obediently he followed without much thought of why he was actually doing this.
"Where are you taking me?" Richard asked in an anxious and rushed tone. But there was no reply. The longer he held the hand, if you could call it a hand at all, of Altraz the Slimy the more uncomfortably comfortable he became. Richard's hand had been sinking into the goblin esque creatures hand and was now surrounded by it like a chain link. Richard felt in the pit of his stomach and the hairs of his nose that something was not what it should be. He felt as if a figure was drifting swiftly on his shoulder but of course when he turned around there was nothing to be found, that he could see anyway. Among the darkness he could hear nothing but the wet steps of his guide and himself on the mixing metal and concrete steps.
"Sorry friend," Altraz tongued slithering the "s" as he slipped a sleek heavy bag over Richard's head. Richard figured that either Altraz thought he could see in the preceding darkness or that they were about to enter a more well-lit area that he was not yet permitted to see.
After walking for what seemed like hours, but was actually only a matter of 15 minutes or so, Richard was pushed to his knees and the bag removed from his head. The blinding light stabbed at his eyes and when everything came into focus he saw that he was kneeled before Sawbane, the herald of the Lord Combol, the Lord of all Underdwelt Rats. Richard of course did not know these beings before hand but he was told in their conversation which I will not bore you readers with intimate detail due to the long and confusing translations that entailed because Richard of course could not speak Rat, and Altraz continued to lose focus and had to have everything repeated at least once in order to translate. So let us just skip to the end.
"You have been warned many times," pronounced Sawbane in Rat speak but even I do not know that language as this story was told to me in translation as well, "whether you knew it or not, you have been warned. The Shadows have followed you for many moons and We do not wish to get involved. The only way to keep Them out of our affairs is to remove their subject of interest from this realm." Richard heard every word in rough translation and with every word he became more and more docile, like a cow brought unknowingly to the slaughter. Just as weight and pressure it applied to the cow in order to keep it comfortable and still, every word issued by Altraz from Sawbane added more and more pressure upon Richard. "I am sorry that it has to be like this, but also I am not sorry. This is not the end as it would be if one of Them killed you. They would extinguish your existence in any realm, but I simply am removing you from this one, onto the next plane of-." But just as Sawbane was about to order the execution a darkness moved over his belly and blood seeped from an unknown opening. Altraz quickly drew his blade but to no avail, he fell dead without the last of his green light leaving his eyes. Now Richard was afraid. He knew what hunted him, and having Sawbane just explained that this would remove him from all life and levels of being, he stood and made one quick step to the exit. The figure that was not there cut Richard down without emotion. The blade entered and burned Richard from the inside. He could feel his soul screaming out to him, and then silence. Richard lay empty, the shell of a person, and as his last few beats of life issued from his now hollow existence, he saw the Shadow glide over the lighted stone floor back into the darkness.