Session 15 - The Rust That Hunts
The Lake Turns to Rot
The morning was bleak when Torvin, Aran, Hyrne, and Galivan gathered on the rocky shoreline of the lake. They had lingered too long in the abandoned house, resting, healing, hoping for respite after breaking the curse of the spectral wolf. But the world does not grant such mercy in the Forbidden Lands.
The lake had changed.
Where once it had been a lifeless but unremarkable body of water, it now festered. The surface, once murky but clear, had taken on a sickly, yellow-orange hue, like the runoff from a rotting wound. The dead fish that first appeared on the shore were an ill omen, but the carcasses were growing more numerous. Then came the animals—foxes, wild dogs, and great carrion birds—all of them bloated, lying stiff and lifeless near the water’s edge, their mouths agape as if gasping for breath that never came.
Something was poisoning the land.
The group stood at the river’s mouth, where the slow-moving current carried the taint downstream. The poison was not spreading from the lake—it was being fed into it from the southwest, where a river wound its way toward the Hollows.
It did not take long for them to decide. They would follow the corruption upstream.
Smoke and Vultures
The sky darkened as they traveled. Thick clouds, stained with the last embers of the dying sun, mirrored the sickness in the land below.
It was Aran who first noticed the birds.
Dark-winged carrion creatures wheeled above the treetops ahead, their sharp cries cutting through the growing silence. Smoke curled from the land beyond, thick and acrid, carrying with it the unmistakable stench of burning flesh.
Then they saw it.
The remains of a village—twisted timbers, shattered homes, and the gutted remnants of lives that had been violently cut short. It lay nestled against the river like a corpse, its streets blackened, its buildings torn apart as if some great beast had raked its claws through the heart of it.
Nothing stirred. No voices called out.
Only the wind, the birds, and the silence of the dead.
Hyrne’s hands tightened around his weapons. “This wasn’t a raid,” he murmured. “This was a purge.”
Aran’s stomach twisted. He reached out with his magic, calling upon the ancient sight of the hawk, and in that moment, his vision stretched across the village like a ghost flitting between ruined homes.
What he saw made his blood run cold.
Bodies, but not intact ones. Torn flesh, shattered bones, streaks of blood smeared across doors in crude, blasphemous symbols. No signs of battle, only slaughter.
And not a single corpse lay untouched.
They had taken the people.
His sight pulled toward the longhouse at the heart of the village, and there, nailed to the great wooden doors, was a message.
Four words, scrawled in human blood.
"BRING US THE OUTSIDER."
The moment his vision ended, Aran stumbled back, his breath ragged. “We don’t camp here,” he said quickly. “We don’t go inside. We find shelter elsewhere.”
Torvin frowned. “Why?”
Aran shook his head. “There’s something waiting for us there.”
That was enough.
The Horror Within
Despite Aran’s warning, the group made their way into the village, weapons drawn, eyes darting to every doorway and shadow. The stench was unbearable—death, rot, and something worse, something that clung to the air like rusted iron on the tongue.
Torvin moved ahead, his boots squelching in the blood-soaked earth. He had been in battlefields before, had walked through the wreckage of butchered men, had breathed in the reek of burning flesh—but this was different. This was ritualistic.
The symbols, jagged and crude, covered the walls in dark red smears. Some were familiar to him, twisted variations of old glyphs of worship to Rust. Others were meaningless, except for the violence they carried in every stroke.
His stomach clenched as he reached the longhouse.
The great doors were slightly ajar, just enough to beckon him in.
Steeling himself, he pushed them open.
A wave of putrid air rushed out, thick with death. He staggered for a moment but pressed on, stepping into the darkened hall.
The pillars ran in two lines toward the raised platform at the far end, a sight he had seen in many village halls before. But here, the pillars were not bare.
They were adorned.
The villagers—what was left of them—hung in rusted chains, their bodies twisted and contorted, rusted iron spikes driven through wrists, ankles, torsos. Some had been flayed, their skin peeled back like parchment, their exposed flesh blackened by decay. Others had been stitched together, mockeries of human forms, bound with chains and left to dangle like grotesque marionettes.
Torvin swallowed bile, his hands trembling. He had faced monsters, but this—this was the work of men.
His gaze moved to the far end of the hall.
A single figure, lashed to a thick post, loomed above the rest. The village elder, or what remained of him. His chest was bare, ribs cracked open like a hollowed-out husk. A single iron spike had been driven through the side of his head, pinning him to the wood.
Torvin felt something deep in his chest. A slow, seeping cold that was not just fear, but something worse.
It was familiar.
His breath hitched. His vision blurred. And then—
He turned and left, his steps unsteady, his hands clutching the doorframe for support.
Galivan looked up as Torvin emerged. He took one look at his face and knew.
“What’s inside?” Galivan asked.
Torvin shook his head, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“No one should go in there.”
The Rust Rides
The storm broke as night fell, rain beating against the land like a thousand whispered warnings. The group had camped beyond the village’s reach, hidden in the underbrush, but none of them truly rested.
When the hooves came, they were ready.
Hyrne’s scouting was keen. He heard them before he saw them—five riders, clad in rusted iron, emerging from the western woods like specters from a nightmare. Their horses, armored and masked in blood-red cloth, snorted and stamped as the figures surveyed the ruins.
They did not seem surprised by the carnage.
They were expecting it.
The leader, taller than the rest, his armor filigreed with dark etchings of rust and decay, dismounted before the longhouse.
Aran breathed deep, sending his mind to the wind once more, drawing their words to his ears as if he stood among them.
“He is not here,” the leader said, his voice like iron grating against stone.
“Should we wait?” one of his men asked.
“No,” the leader replied. “He will come to us. The rust spreads. The next village falls at dawn.”
Aran’s heart pounded.
Then the leader turned to his men, raising a rusted gauntlet to the heavens.
“The Rust is coming.”
The others echoed back, their voices like a death knell.
“THE RUST COVERS ALL.”
They rode south.
Torvin stared after them, the cold still clenching in his chest.
That message, nailed to the longhouse.
It wasn’t for any outsider.
It was for him.
The Survivor
She was barely more than a shadow, darting between broken buildings, the rain turning her into a smear against the ruined village. But they saw her.
And when they found her, she wished they hadn’t.
The woman, gaunt and hollow-eyed, shrank back into the remnants of a collapsed shop, her breath ragged, her hands trembling against the splintered wood.
“You brought them here,” she whispered. “You brought them here.”
Torvin stepped forward. “We—”
She recoiled. “They hunt the outsider. They hunt the marked man.”
The words sent a shudder through him.
Aran pressed her. “Who is the outsider? What do they want?”
She shook her head violently. “I don’t know! We didn’t know! We couldn’t help them, and they tore us apart!” Her voice broke. “I hid in the fields. I heard the screams. I saw them drag the bodies away!”
Then she stared at Torvin again, her eyes filled with something that was not quite hatred, but close.
“Leave,” she whispered. “You’ve doomed enough.”
Through the Trees
They left the ruined village behind, but the Rust Brothers’ words followed them.
“The Rust is coming.”
A weight settled over them as they forded the river, the waters still tainted with the remnants of slaughter. They had taken the longer path through the forest, moving slower but unseen. The woods swallowed them, thick and oppressive, a world of shadows where every broken branch sounded like the footfall of something watching them.
It was Aran who saw it first.
A massive figure, taller than two men, loomed between the trees. A crude club rested in its hand, thick as a fallen tree trunk.
His magic flared, sight sharpening, cutting through the gloom.
A troll.
His breath caught. His vision wavered. His body faltered.
The exhaustion, the horror, the ceaseless march of death and rust—it broke him.
He collapsed, his vision flickering, his voice barely managing to croak a single word before unconsciousness took him.
“Troll.”
Resting in the Shadow of Stone
The troll did not move.
Because the troll could not move.
It had stood there for decades, maybe centuries, petrified by the sun, its massive form now little more than a statue draped in moss and lichen.
It became their shelter.
They camped at its feet, weary beyond words, the creeping dread still coiling around their hearts. The Rust Brothers had already decided. They had left a warning, a promise.
They were being hunted.
And the hunt had already begun.