Rain. Out of all the different types of rain from the cold bone chilling rain of the north to torrential down pour of the southern forests the one that Hector hated the most was the gentle sprinkle of rain he was walking through now. Any other type of rain one would put on a coat but this kind of rain tricks you into think at any moment now it will stop and the sun will come out. Hector tugged the brown wool cloak tighter around his body trying to ward off the gentle onslaught of rain. But today the rain didn't bother Hector as much as it usually does for today was the day the Hector returns home.
For the past ten years the thought of home was always in the back of Hectors mind as he always compared every new goddess forsaken hell hole to home. How it smelled different from back home to how the food was better back home or the beds softer and other such trivial matters. For the past ten year Hector has been serving in the King Robert's army as a common foot solider fighting it seemed from everything from goblins to elves to other humans. Being a common foot solider meant that when the high and mighty knights clamed all the glory and went to go fuck there nice whores in their nice beds Hector was up at night on guard duty cleaning the bits of gory from his armour and war hammer. It wasn't all bad though there was always the camp whores that fallowed behind the army was always up for grabs and they looked nice sometimes at night went you squint a little bit when looking at them. Hector never laid with one for the fact that one, he most likely was the last in a long line of men to use them and two, he quite enjoy his cock and didn't want it to all off because of some strange disease.
Hector rubbed is stubby beard, his index finger tracing the scar from his cheekbone to his chin that he received from glancing blow of an orc short spear. He was never consider hansom but never that ugly either, with his brown hair that he kept short with his stubby beard of the same color. Like most Lowlanders Hector was of white skin with a body made strong from the long marches and heavy fighting he did in the army. He wore his standard footman gear which included his iron breast plate overlapping a stained red leather jerkin showing that he was of the king's army. His Kattle helmet with its metal brim and peaked top fit snuggly over his head as he readjusted his small wooden shield with metal bindings on his arm. The shield was at one point painted red but as time and swords took its toll from it looked more wine stained then painted.
Hector raised his head looking up from his ponderings to see an Inn just up the dirt road as his stomach rubbed reminding him that it was empty. He quickens his pace as he approached the slightly ramshackle building but stopped when he got near it. The inn was like most inns in the land, a two story building with the walls made of wood with a shingle roof and a small stable on the side for the animals. It wasn't what the inn looked like that made Hector stop but rather the smell that he got very a costumed to over the past ten years, the smell of rotting flesh.
He reached down and drew his trusty war hammer named "Sarah" and held it in his right hand. "Sarah" was three foot hammer with a blunt end on for crushing and a pointed end for piercing thick armour or a thick orc skull. He slowly walked towards the wooden shelter with wooden half walls that passes as a stable in these parts as the smell grew stronger and fouler. He edged around the stall keeping his distance from it when he spotted the rotting horse carcass lying in the old rotting hay. Its belly was torn open from stem to stern with its guts hanging out and as Hector spotted partly devoured by what looks like the teeth marks of a large animal he hopefully wouldn't have the misfortune to meet in the dead of night.
"By the gods why in the hell is this thing still here?" He asked himself as he surveyed the mutilated horse as he walked along the inn's walls towards the wooden entrance getting away from the horrid smell. The door was ajar as Hector reached it and pushed it open slowly with his hammer casting light into the darkness of the building. The smell of rotting flesh greeted him once again as he caution moved inside as his eyes adjusted to the dark room but when they did Hector wish they hadn't.
Over tuned tables and broken chairs littered the room as food and drink were left forgotten, moulding on the few plates that weren't smashed. A long counter was on the far side of the room were the bartender should of been when the inn saw better days with an open door leading most likely to the cellar. Hector walked about the main room noting a lot of old bloodstains and cracked table legs pulled off and used as a make shift weapon, which judging by the bloodstains round them didn't serve it's former owner well. Hector walked over to the open door behind the counter as the smell grew stronger as he raised his shield to his front just in case whatever did this was still around and still hungry.
Foots steps echo down the stone stairs as Hector slowly descended down to the cellar. Hector cursed himself as he reached the foot of the stairs as the light from the inn was very dim and he could scarily see a few feet in front of him. Pressing his luck and hoping that the gods above were watching over his worthless hide he inched towards the center of the room, his eyes scanning the darkness for any sudden movements of large toothy creatures. If Hector was watching the ground he would have noticed that the room had a set of steps leading to a lower portion of the room. Hector unfortunly was not as he tumble head over heels down the step making quite the racket and letting go of Sarah. Hector groan as thankfully his head landed on something very soft and cold. Moving up onto his knees something was caught on his pants was he pulled it off and held it close to his eyes. A short copper dagger blade which Hector was thankful that he didn't land on it was attached to a chain as Hector's eyes followed and in his horror found out that it was attached to a human female. That is if all humans were blue skinned, bald, yellow eyed, and wore outfits made out of copper chains with sharp looking daggers at the end.
Hector let out a shout of surprise as he quickly got to his feet and in a panic started to swing the metal edge his shied down on the creatures head. Once ,twice, three times the shield came crashing down on the blue skinned creature rewarding Hector with a foul smelling blood and bits of grey matter on him and his shield. Hector realized that it was dead as no creature would just silently lay there as someone bashed its skull in. Gathering his wits about him Hector stumbled around in the dark find his hammer near a wall a few feet away which he picked up hastily .Back against the cold stone wall he sidestep along the wall in till he found a torch stand jutting out. Pulling out his flint and steel and sticking one against the other Hector lit the torch lumminating the room. The cellar was bigger then what he first thought as both sides were lined with barrels of mead and other such drinks. The blue creature was still prone to Hector's relief with its heads smashed into the stone floor. Hector slowly made his was closer to the female creature and bent down to study it in a more in-depth and less panicked way then the first time.
To its credit the creature had a body that most women would die for, toned but not overly muscular, breasts that were the perfect size, and a slight hourglass figure. Yes besides the fact that its skin was blue, covered from head to toe with thin scars of various sizes, wearing a copper chain outfit the criss crossed its body covering the naughty bits but leaving nothing to the imagination, and had its head smashed in by a panicked footman it looks quite nice. In the center of the copper outfit attaching all the chains together was a small sliver replica of an Iron maiden coffin with a small latch on the side. His curiosity piped, with steady fingers Hector removed the latch and opened the top of the small box. Inside was a smaller metal figurine which he scooped up and held it closer to his eyes to inspect. It was of a woman with her arms and legs tightly bound to her body with iron chains forming an all encasing suit. Her coldly beautiful face is the only flesh visible on the figurine as it seemed to stare at Hector with little sapphires for eyes. One thing was for sure this was not made by Human hands as the unnatural detail from the cheekbones on the head to the individual chain links around the body was in Hector's mind impossible to make. Placing the figuring in his pocket Hector noticed that something was trapped under the creature's body forcing the body to arch its back. Leaning over the creature Hector reaches under, his fingers finding and pull out the hard object. It was a leather bound book with some sort of writing on the front.
Now Hector knew how to sign his name, or he assumes that the strange lines that a monk showed was his name, and he was practicing his reading from a noble child's book that he stole a few months ago but he could not make out the strange lettering on the front. "Well I hope it has pictures." He said to himself as he opened the book and scan through it. Oh it had pictures alright but not the kind Hector wanted. Pictures of a woman with no arms and snakes tail for legs, of bound men and women of what looks like torture to Hector with ecstasy on their faces, and of a towering, statuesque dominatrix, clad in steel and leather, with the joyous, rapturous souls of men and women hanging from chains binding them to the woman's multiple piercings. Under that picture a single word that looked like common was written. Ardarvia. With disgust Hector slams the book shut and throws it back on top of the creature. He rubbed his hands against his pants quickly as the book made him feel unclean just by looking at it. This was the one time that Hector was thankful that he couldn't read well as he was sure that what every was written down in the book should never see that light of day or by the eyes of good men.
Taking the torch off from its stand he headed back upstairs with touch and hammer in hand and looked around for the stairs to the second floor where travelers and merchants normally slept the weariness of traveling off. The light of the torch only revealed more broken plates and dried blood stains as Hector made his way across the barroom floor towards a second set of stairs leading up to the floor above. The wood groaned underneath his boots as he made his up the stairs and onto the second floor as the smell of rotting flesh grew stronger. A short wooden hallway with three doors to the left and three downs to the right with a final door at the very end greeted him. A pool of fresh blood was seeping underneath the wooden door at the end. Thighting his grip on the hammer he cocked his arm back in preparation to strike as he held the torch in front to fend off a blows, he made his way down the hallway. Not taking any chances with the door he gives it the footman's lock pick. He swings his hammer down on the door knob and with a loud craaack shatters it with a single blow and give the door a well-placed kick blowing it open. A humanoid shape lunges out of the darkness of the room and crashes into Hector knocking him prone. The touch is knocked out of his hands bouncing off the ground and coming to rest against the dry wooden wall of the corridor. The creature looks like a corpse with its gaunt pale skin stricked over a very starved body. Instead of hands the undead creature hand long claw like hands which were currently around Hectors throat squeezing the life out of him. Hector swings his hammer at the creature's body with his one hand hitting it in the torso. The sound of cracking bones echo down the hallway as the creature is knocked off Hector letting go of its grip on his throat and landing on its side. Not enough time or space to get to his knees and fight proper Hector improvises and moves up to his knees. With two hands on the hammer he swing down at the trashing creature, the flat side hit the creatures left shoulder and crushing it into a pulpy paste. The creature howls in pain and rage as Hector hit it again and again with the flat of his hammer in till he is pounding chunks of meat through the floor boards. "And that you son of a bitch is why you don't mess with a man with a hammer!" He spits on the twitching corpse as the smell of something burning drifts across his nose. Looking over to his side it seems the touch lit the wall on fire as the flames started to grow and travel up the wall. Quickly getting to his feet Hector ran out of the burning hallway and back down the stairs. Exiting with all haste and turning around outside just in time to see the flames glow in one of the windows. He kneels down placing the hammer in front of him.
"Gods of everything good and holy please cleanse this place and Sheppard the good souls that died here to your warm embrace." Hector wasn't much of a talker or a prayer but he meant every word he said. Giving the burning inn one last look Hector turns and continues traveling down the road and looks up. It has stopped raining attest.