A pack of six Stitchwork Stalkers flew at him. Two Spiders were not far behind. And bringing up the rear was a howling brute with great clubs of bone for hands.

Redmane sprinted at them, past them. His claws scored through stitched flesh, shredding it open. Like a knight jousting on horseback he struck, dealing damage and sailing past, not standing still for an instant, his crimson hair and ragged cloak streaming behind him.

The hounds circled. The Spiders rotated in place, uncountable hands paddling them around on the cobblestones. The Stitchwork Sentinel met Redmane head on with wild blows, swinging its club-hands around as if they were wrecking balls.

Of them all, the hounds were the swiftest. And the likeliest to tie him down if they should get their jaws on his person. He could see the worst case scenario in his mind, three or four Stalkers leaping onto him, slowing him enough for the heavier hitters to close in and make quick work of him. And they could. A few gained levels and points or armor wouldn’t make much difference.

He’d have to be quick. Score wounds where and when he could, and remain in flight.

Unfortunately these Horrors seemed unaffected by Bleeding. It wasn’t registering, nor were they losing Corpus over time. Evidently they were bloodless things, fueled by naught but fell magic and malice from beyond the grave.

Redmane ducked and weaved through them, evading the snap of jaws, the crushing blow of a club-hand, the swipe of an axe, a scythe, a rusty blade attached to a spindly arm. He struck back when he could, and kept moving. It was an inefficient way to fight, not concentrating on one foe at a time, always responding instead of forcing responses.

But all was not panic and desperation. He found that he could make them get in each other’s way. The Spiders especially, because for all their freakish mobility and reach they could easily be made to bump into each other, to stumble and flail about in a tangle of limbs. Redmane already learned not to try and slide beneath those masses of hands they used for legs, but he could keep them turning, and if they were turning their strikes would not land with lethal power.

As for the brute and the hounds, he’d have to think faster.

Because no sooner did he stop to pivot and change direction did an unseen hound leap onto him, knocking him flat on his back. It growled and snapped at his face, weighing him down long enough for the Sentinel to land a vicious blow. It struck its own ally to do so, but the wailing brute appeared to judge it a worthy sacrifice.

It struck Redmane full in the gut, crushing his ribs, blasting all the air out of his lungs. He coughed a spray of blood up into the face of the hound on top of him.

The hound didn’t seem to mind, as it was dead.

Corpus: 3772

Redmane shoved the hound’s cadaver off of him, the movement causing a fresh bloom of pain in his ribcage. He was healing, but it would take a moment. Meanwhile the Sentinel raised its club hands high overhead for another smash.

He rolled out of the way before they cratered the cobblestones, spraying shrapnel like a bomb.

The roll put Redmane face to face with the dead hound again. Which gave him an idea.

He sprang to his feet and ran for the nearest Spider.

On his way he crouched under the swipe of an axe, dove to the right of a spike stabbed at him, and then leapt up onto its back. It reacted as he expected it would, bucking and shrieking and doing its utmost to throw him off.

Redmane dug a claw into its shoulder and held on tight. The other Spider, the hounds, and the Sentinel all came at him at the same time.

Hounds barked up at Redmane and snapped at the Spider’s hands-for-feet, and it tried to flick at them and shoo them off. One or two dared to try and leap up onto the Spider’s back, only to be reflexively bludgeoned by a dozen bony fists.

The other Spider took aim and struck with its weapon arms, and while it did manage to cut and gouge Redmane, it did equal or worse damage to its comrade.

Corpus: 3209

Then came those great clubs of bone, descending from above.

Redmane had his eye on them. He watched the Stitchwork Sentinel bound forward like a gorilla, leap and then slam down with its weaponized hands.

He pulled his claw free and dove off the Spider’s back before they landed.

The Sentinel blasted the Spider’s torsos apart. Its head went flying and its spines shattered, spraying flecks of bone in every direction. All that remained of it was a blind, flailing mass of hands.

Redmane ran past the Sentinel and struck its ankle with a claw on the way by. A trick he’d used on Lugoj the Lurker, another brutish monster. He felt something snap, but the Sentinel didn’t look hobbled. It rose to its full height and followed, howling its frustration.

Thicker tendons, Redmane supposed. More than one blow would do the job.

But perhaps he should make it clobber all its comrades first.

A hound lunged the instant Redmane stopped moving. He raised his arm, winced when the Monster’s jaws crunched down onto it.

Corpus: 3005

Then he twisted around and hurled the hound at the charging Sentinel, who knocked it aside with a blow of his club hand.

Two hounds and a Spider down, all thanks to the Sentinel. Splendid work. If it kept being this helpful, Redmane thought he might even invite it into House Redmane, though he doubted the creature would accept.

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when he was thinking he had things under control, the doors of the Undertaker’s shop burst open.

There stood a group of what appeared to be dead beastmen, their bodies stitched together. The feral light had gone out of their eyes, in its place were the gazes of cloudy-eyed corpses. There appeared to be some extra stitching around their bellies, which were curiously distended.

Stichwork Sapper

Monster Type: Undead (Horror)

Level 30

Half a dozen pairs of dead eyes zeroed in on Redmane, and the Sappers broke into a run.

then, another pack of Stitchwork Stalkers barreled around the corner, barking and snarling.

A trio of Stitchwork Spiders leapt down from nearby rooftops, their landing punctuated by the sounds of dozens of bare hands slapping onto the cobblestones.

And then, from the opposite end of the square, a guttural voice roared out.

“Fire!”

Redmane flinched from a barrage of pellets and musket balls. A bomb sailed over his head.

He crouched and hustled for cover against the wall of a nearby storefront as Pavel’s Powder Kegs joined the battle in full force. They had amassed on the far end of the street while he’d fought the guardians of the Undertaker’s shop, forming a line of guns with a second rank of bomb pitchers behind them.

Precisely the situation he’d been keen to avoid. But there was no time to worry about it. The Stitchwork Sappers were still coming right for him.

They were unarmed, and didn’t look especially strong. But as the one in the lead drew closer Redmane’s eyebrow rose when he saw its belly begin to glow.

Agneszka had taken the Powder Kegs’ own tool and used it against them.

Such cruel creativity.

In a moment, six running bombs would be upon him. The one in the lead leapt at Redmane head first.

Redmane turned to dive clear.

Too late.

His vision went white. There was an instant of deafening noise, then nothing, then a ringing in his ears.

He blinked his eyes open slowly, feeling dazed. There was a lot of smoke and debris floating in the air. It smelled like sulfur and woodsmoke.

The Sappers were gone. The storefront he stood in front of a moment ago was also gone. He was now inside the store, lying on his side against the back wall under a pile of rubble. The front wall, doors, and interior of the shop were obliterated.

Corpus: 1989

Ouch.

In a few moments his vision came back into focus. Outside the blown-open storefront, the battle between Agneszka and Pavel’s minions raged on. The cobblestones were strewn with the inert bodies of Stitchwork creatures blown apart by bullets and shrapnel.

The Stitchwork Sentinel looked to have been knocked over by the detonation of a bomb, there was a black crater on its torso which was nearly the full width of its chest. At the moment it was getting itself up off the ground, while musket balls pelted into its thickly woven musculature.

Redmane stood up, coughed out some dust. Directly ahead of him, across the battlefield this street corner had become, stood the open door to the Undertaker’s shop.

Four Stalkers ran by the Sentinel, in the direction of the Powder Kegs’ gun line. The Sentinel finally managed to haul itself to its feet, and it followed them. The gunners had to break and flee, which Redmane imagined would mark the beginning of a running battle through the streets.

Normally he’d have liked to get the minions out of the way before attending to the master, but the flight of the gunmen, and the pursuit of the stitchworks, gave him an opportunity. A chance to go right for that unprotected door.

As soon as the Sentinel bounded off in the direction of the beastmen, Redmane made a run for it.

A shot whizzed by his head and he ducked underneath, kept running.

A snarling hound, one of the stragglers from the first pack, came loping at him with its teeth bared. Redmane watched it out of the corner of his eye, so that when it leapt he could stop and strike it down with a swipe of his claw, and go right back into a flat-out run.

He made it to the door of the Undertaker’s, ducked inside and slammed it shut behind him.

It took his eyes a few moments to get used to the dark.

The first thing he noticed was the sickeningly sweet stench of overripe corpses.

The shop appeared to have been converted from mortuary to workshop. There were beds lining the sides of the room, rather than caskets. Beds upon which corpses rested, or parts of corpses. No single body was whole. Many had already begun the process of becoming a stitchwork creature of one kind or another. Overhead, hanging from the ceiling by meathooks on chains, were more bodies in various states of dismemberment.

“What’s this I smell…”

It was a woman’s voice, made guttural by the Blight of beasthood.

She emerged from the darkness at the far end of the shop. A tall beastwoman clad in a gown of what Redmane imagined was human skin. Its skirt was a patchwork of eyeless faces, stitched in various expressions, a smile, a frown, an angry snarl, much like the heads of the Spiders.

A single burning eye peered out at him from behind her curtain of ragged black hair as she raised her weapon, a long thrusting sword made of iron, with grooves along the center of the blade. Redmane couldn’t tell if it was actually a sword or some manner of oversized sewing tool.

Agneszka the Stitcher

Monster Type: Corrupted

Level 40

Agneszka sniffed the air emphatically.

Then she smiled, revealing rows of pointed teeth.

“I smell Divine Flesh. The gods must favor me, for it has walked into mine humble shop of its own volition.”

“I’m here to slay you,” said Redmane.

The room echoed with her coy laughter, as if he were flirting with her.

“Such spirit!” said Agneszka. “Such valor! What could I create with something so fine… A splendid dress, perhaps a guardian, a servant to attend to my every, every need…”

Redmane’s lip curled in disgust. Agneszka grinned.

“Come, handsome one,” she said, brandishing her weapon. “Become the jewel of my collection!”

Redmane barreled toward Agneszka, who awaited him with a smirk and a readied sword.

His flurry of claws swept through empty air, as did the point of her sword. Four strikes to one, his weapon was the faster but hers had the reach. Neither weapon found flesh in the first exchange, or the next one, or the next one.

“You dance divinely,” said Agneszka.

He growled and struck for her face, and she laughed and pirouetted away.

When he made to lunge in for more, he abruptly found the tip of a sword in front of his nose.

Redmane’s lip curled and he snapped at the point of Agneszka’s sword with his jaws, making her pull it away at the last instant.

“But you behave like a beast!” she said, in a tone that made her sound like she was chiding a suitor.

He gestured at the charnel house around them. “You have no room to talk,” he said.

As their weapons clashed, Redmane’s hardened claws ringing off Agneszka’s iron blade, he couldn’t help but notice he was having many more close calls than she was. And more than that, she was laughing. Jesting. Twirling around her abbatoir-like workshop as if it were a ballroom. Thus far, no beastman had been Redmane’s match for agility. Agneszka may actually have been more than a match for him in that regard.

He’d have to corner her. Force her to trade blows.

Redmane came at her from the right, then the left. Denying her space to move laterally as he advanced on her, swatting her sword aside with his claws and snapping at her so that she’d fall back and give ground. But she had a shrewd eye. She seemed to understand his motive, even as she allowed herself to be herded toward a back corner of the room.

“Yes, yes… Take us somewhere dark and private, so we may get to know each other better,” she cooed. “Should anyone catch us, they’ll see a beast with two backs!”

He did want to sink his teeth into her, but not for any reason she would enjoy.

Mostly to shut her mouth.

He threatened the thrust of her sword with a bite, cut off her retreat with a sweeping right claw, and at last she was cornered. Which made her smile like a maiden.

“Don’t fear, handsome,” she said, with music in her voice. “I’m an expert at matters of impalement.”

He growled and attacked again.

And there was a blossom of pain in his stomach.

Redmane looked down, realized she ran him through.

Blood bubbled up in his mouth, flowed over his chin and down his neck.