Free A Tailor's Son (Valadfar) by Damien Tiller Page B

the recently deceased body of William, started the
moment the flames claimed their last victim at the Queens. William had
fled the scene of arson leaving Harold unconscious on the floor and he
had headed for the sewers. The fire had burnt away the herbs that Paul
had placed around his neck and had allowed the parasite to extend its
tendrils up into William’s brain. He had been a mindless zombie similar
to those raised by necromancers but with the herb gone the Rakta
Ishvara had been free from Paul’s control. It spread quickly and its first
instinct was to flee to safety. William had raised a sewer grate not far
from the burning building. He was driven by the urge to supply the
parasite with the moisture it needed to survive.
    The
sound of water running overhead had become familiar to
William in the days that passed. The darkness of the sewers was no
longer a problem for him as it would have been had he still been alive,
his eyes seemed keener. Now, much like the vicar who brought him
back from the grave, gloom was comforting to him. The only source of
light was a series of small dust flecked rays that fell in through small
slits high above in the city street. It was so dark that even a cat with
their shining eyes would have had trouble seeing but William could see
every crack in the slime-coated wall of the sewers under Neeskmouth.
The sewers were a new construction to the city and many broke off
into people’s cellars or led to unfinished tunnels that had been
abandoned after the funding was withdrawn for the ‘frivolous expense’
as Malcolm Benedict had called it. This almost total abandonment of
the tunnels had given William the perfect place to hide. In the days that
followed the fire William had rarely left the sewers and spent most of
his time in the dark. It had given him time to think and control the
urges. He felt strange in his own body, so much of his mind felt as if it
was missing. Memories and emotions had gone and in their place was
another consciousness, one whose hunger seemed to be getting worse.
William had to keep himself there in the filth that the rest of
Neeskmouth ignored so that he could fight what was inside him. The
strength the parasite had given him made it impossible for anyone or
anything to stop him, not even the fire in the cellar had killed him. The
parasite inside had begun to heal him before the flames even blistered
the skin. By the time he hid away with the rodents, his wounds had
vanished.
    He had wanted to go to his family to tell them what happened
and that he was still alive somehow, wanting more than anything to
hold his baby in his arms once more, but he dared not. William knew he
was only a passenger in his body now. Something in him had changed
and it was unsafe to go to them. His mind was fighting the control of
the creature inside him but he could feel he was already losing.
William’s teeth dripped red with the life fluid of one of his fellow
residents, as they pressed deeper sinking into the soft and quickly
cooling body. The rat’s head hung limply between his jaws like the prey
of the great jungle lion.
    In the silence, William watched as a raindrop slid down a
stalactite and fell to the floor with a splash. It sickened him that he was
feasting on rats, but the hunger in him never ended. It was worse at
night, William sat and dropped the rat’s carcass to the floor where it
bounced off the stone and fell from the upper steps motionlessly into
the small brown stream below. It floated along with the putrid waste of
the living city as it slowly sunk into the filth, the rats struggle for life
faded as its corpse disappeared into the darkness towards the canals.
Satisfied for now, William rested back against the wall but he knew it
would not last for long.
    A lot of Williams’ memories had been taken when he passed
into the spirit realm, but he could remember his family. He could
remember the smell of his newborns head. He could also remember
the fear as