Knight’s city had a castle on one side and its main gate on the other, and its populace was broken into four separate parts.
The nobles, magicians and knights lived in the upper district around castle Lorenth, then the craftsmen, brewers and tradesmen made up the merchant district that formed a barrier between the nobles and the commoners.
The commoners who had jobs made up a large district in the middle of the city, and finally there were the slums that were closest to the main gate, situated on the opposite side of the city to castle Lorenth, where the undesirables operated and the scum rotted.
All of these parts had their own dangerous, prosperous and peaceful areas.
From the main gate to the castle, the classes ascended from filthiest to fairest. From poorest to richest.
The slums had their role to play within the city - it was a place to escape through, hire assassins, find drugs, buy curse magic and other types, launder money, access the black market, and other unmentionable services.
This dark underbelly of the city was where every watchman was hesitant to tread, and hence was hardly ever patrolled.
The peace was instead kept through the slum lords, who kept the riff-raff in line, in exchange for their questionable ‘businesses’ being overlooked. Yet there were still some areas considered no-man’s land, where no one ruled and no guard ever went.
In fact, the homeless man Kai just killed would probably only be discovered after the rock rats picked the flesh from his bones.
Kai kept running, passing over ruined streets and through more winding alleyways in the drenching rain and the darkness, hoping to find the wall of the city which he could follow until finding a gate.
Kai ran by houses and taverns, some filled with laughter, others silent, and a few filled with muffled screams.
Yet he kept running by all the same.
“I’m not your hero,” he thought, his heart sinking as he ran past more buildings filled with pleas for help and tortured groans.
Something seemed unsettling about the buildings around here too - none of them had lights on inside, no torches or anything.
There was only darkness inside, and most windows were smashed. He had not seen a single other human since the man he killed either - yet sounds kept coming from these seemingly empty buildings.
“Is this world always filled with so much torment and pain, or is this just a really horrible city… are those voices even real?” Kai wondered, ignoring more screams as he ran, and instead hoping to hear cheeky laughs of the random taverns he ran by.
Yet something felt so wrong about the sounds coming from these buildings as they all looked like ruins.
Finally he passed into a silent area, and he felt his stomach begin to grumble.
“No food, no shelter. I’ll be dead from hypothermia by the morning if I don’t get out of this rain.” he thought.
Despite it being freezing he cupped his hands and sipped the rain as he wasn’t sure when he would get another drink.
Kai ignored the hunger pains and pressed on, trudging through the growing muddy puddles in the dark city. His chest was no longer bleeding, but his arm was still red as the rain was stopping his blood from clotting and sealing the wound.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I just need to get out of this rain for a while, at the very least.”
Soon enough he felt like things were looking up as he came to the underpass of a bridge. It didn’t cross any river, but instead crossed over the slums.
The slums were the closest to the main city gate and in the event of a siege would be the first to be attacked, but in times of peace, the lofty and rich could pay a small fee to pass over the slums without seeing or smelling their unpleasant scents and sights.
Passing into the dark shadows under the bridge, it at least sheltered him from the rain, but in these dark and grimy gutters of the city, only the most opportunistic and vile creatures could hope to survive.
Kai carefully looked at a trash pile, which lined the supporting wall of the bridge. It was filled with small agile creatures which he guessed were rats.
Kai had no clue about the wildlife of this world, and as the first rat ran towards him, he jumped and kept picking up his legs to stop it touching his ankles.
“Eugh, disgusting” he thought, seeing a strange growth on the rat’s back.
Soon enough, he decided to kick it away.
It squealed painfully as its body curved around his boot and then crashed into the trash pile, a wriggling urchin.
Some wooden boxes suddenly collapsed, and Kai’s quiet presence here had been revealed as the noise echoed along the wall.
Suddenly, hundreds of shining hungry eyes appeared from the darkness, and before he knew it a large black shadow was moving towards his feet.
It was a horde of these rats. A whole swarm of them.
Finding prey stray into their territory to seek safety from the heavy rain, they immediately charged.
Yet before any of them could sink their teeth into Kai’s soft flesh, he had already run back into the pouring rain.
*Scree!~*
Another rat cried out.
It was the one Kai kicked - it was injured.
The horde of tumor-covered rats found a new target and quickly descended in a blind gnashing of teeth as they tore their own kin apart until their bellies were full, and the flesh-plaques stopped pushing them to cannibalistic insanity.
Not that Kai heard it - he had already disappeared and was well into the winding alleys once more.
They were rock rats infested with flesh-plaques.
The flesh-plaques were remnants of a vile contagion made from a detestable hexamist who fused skin magic with a plague.
The remnant contagion was no longer dangerous to humans, but it did cause the rats to be abnormally aggressive; the flesh-plaques needed flesh to grow, and they drove the rats into savage rages of hunger.
“Damn freaky rats. I need to get out of this rain.” Kai thought, his teeth beginning to chatter in the chilling rain again.
“Either blood loss or the cold will kill me, but I’ll bet on the cold,” he thought.
Unfortunately he had no street smarts, not in his old life which he was slowly forgetting, and definitely not in this one, in the middle of these gothic slums.
Little did he know that if it were not for the rain driving most petty criminals and muggers indoors, he would probably already be dead.
Since coming to this world, Kai had been kept within the safety of a cult. Looking back on it now, he realized they had actually treated him really well, giving him warmth and safety, food and a bed - and he didn’t even need to do anything for it.
Well, except to be a sacrifice eventually.
Yet that one little detail didn’t sit right with Kai, and he was now at least going out on his own terms.
“1.82 meters tall (5.97 feet) tall, dark brown hair which is almost black. Brown eyes. White shirt, black pants with a long gray coat. Nearly eighteen years old. Slender build, but not skinny. Name is Kai.” a woman in a black robe whispered, her face covered by a veil.
“We’ll find him, but you know the price. Mark the blood contract. One-thousand gold and he is yours.” Nodded a sly smile, which was all that showed from under a hooded cloak.
The woman called another person over to sign the blood contract, who was wearing a white shirt and black pants. He also had a gray coat, a slender build and dark hair too.
The bounty hunter, Parker, gave them both a strange look, wondering why he almost matched the description of the bounty - but he didn’t say anything as he watched the young man pledge his blood, binding his life to the blood contract. They would either have to pay up or his life would be forfeit.
“We’ll be in touch.” Parker smirked, quickly adding the contract to his inventory.
“How do we find you?” the black-robed woman asked.
“We’ll find you, when the payment is due.” he said slowly.
With the contract signed and the details gathered, Parker left to report the details of the lucrative new bounty to his guild leader - or at least that was what he was supposed to do.
“I wonder how long this kid lasts.” he thought, leaving the warmth of Two’s large stone building, exiting through their gates and disappearing into the winding streets and alleys of Knight’s city.