To walk hand in hand across the Moureau-De Challette bridge is to assure a long and fruitful marriage

-an old wives tale of the city

Gaspard eyed the great arches of the bridge from a distance, and considered a detour.

The sprawling expanse of the Moureau-De Challette bridge was his quickest route to his next destination, but that did not make it the best. It was one of the city’s great landmarks, and would therefore have been a popular destination for the festival goers. Though they were now faded, tattered, and turn, Gaspard could see remnants of the Lunar Carnival decorations drifting in the breeze. Such a crowded locale would have been a breeding ground for monstrosities.

A shame, as Gaspard had once enjoyed the occasional stroll across the famed bridge. Built more than a century ago, its construction entirely funded by two courting scions of wealthy houses who lived on opposite sides of the river, the Moureau-De Challette bridge had been designed to speed the travel of the two lovers, that they might see each other more often. It had become a famed destination for romantics of all sorts, and newly-wedded couples would walk across the bridge, hands clasped tight together, thinking such an act would impart a measure of the devotion that had existed between those two young lovers.

Gaspard had occasionally indulged himself in such romantic sentiments, idly daydreaming of a day he might walk hand in hand with his beloved. No such dreams drifted to his mind today. Gaspard stepped past a pile of rotting offal and made his way across the bridge.

True to his expectations, the bridge was littered with decaying festival remnants. Wilted flowers lined the bridges expanse, their crumbling petals blowing across the dried-out faces of paired corpses who clung tightly to one another in death. Even to the very end, the bridge had attracted lovers proclaiming their devotion, facing the end of the world together. A lovely sentiment. Gaspard wondered if the beetles feasting on the flesh of the lovers could taste the devotion.

To satisfy his own curiosity, Gaspard stepped towards the edge of the bridge, stepping in a narrow gap between the paired corpses, and peered over the side. The water below flowed slow and thick, black with rot and choked with bodies floating in the current. Even the bodies that drifted below seemed to drift in pairs. Gaspard nodded to himself and stepped back.

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He stepped away just in time to see a corpse shift out of place below. Gaspard froze, glanced briefly at a set of blood-stained initials carved into the stone of the bridge, and then cautiously peered over the edge once more.

The water that flowed below was black as midnight, but within, an even darker shadow shifted. Something below the water’s surface -something massive- drifted through the rot-choked river, its mass shifting the corpses that bobbed on the surface of the water. Gaspard watched the tar-black water lurch as the bulk of the leviathan passed through, and then stepped away from the edge. He backed away until he stood dead-center in the bridge, and drew his sword.

It was perhaps a result of Gaspard’s carefully overgrown sense of paranoia, but he would swear he could feel the mass of the creature shifting underneath him. Even through the stone, he could feel the weight of the leviathan passing through the water. Gaspard took a deep breath, gripped his sword tightly in both hands, and waited.

Whatever he was waiting for never came. Gaspard stood alone on the bridge, the lone living figure amid a horde of paired corpses, and stood in anticipation of a threat that never came. When Gaspard dared to move again, he moved slowly, taking careful steps towards the opposite side of the bridge.

Gaspard took a vigilant glance to the left, and saw, upriver, the shadow of the leviathan passing through the water. As it came closer and closer to vanishing across the horizon, it also drew closer to a cluster of corpses tangled together on the water’s surface. Gaspard bit his tongue.

The hide that emerged from the water was slick and black, though marred in places by odd, bony growths. Gaspard was not close enough to see in detail the jaws that opened wide, and for that he was grateful. He was left to imagine the rows of teeth that opened wide around the tangled flotilla of corpses, swallowing entire corpses whole, and then disappeared below the water’s surface again. The leviathan’s back, black and rubbery, cut through the water briefly as it descended, and the last thing Gaspard saw of it was a broad, fluked tail.

Gaspard had heard tales of massive creatures which dwelt in the deep, but to his understanding such massive beasts lurked out at sea, not in rivers. Gaspard did not know whether it was a misshapen version of some whale or undersea beast, or merely an amalgam of humans fused into the image of one, and Gaspard had no desire to know. All he thought, for now, was that he would not be going swimming any time soon.

Gaspard turned on his heel and continued on his way, crossing the bridge alone.