The heavy stone door ground open, the gears shrieking in protest.
It wasn't a monster that stepped out of the darkness. It was worse.
First came the smell. A wave of stench hit the dungeon chamber. It was a thick, suffocating stench of weeks of unwashed sweat, rotting teeth, and dried blood.
Then, they stepped into the flickering torchlight.
Ten men. Men who had forgotten what it meant to be human
These were not the elite Blackfang Bandits. These were the Dregs. The bottom of the barrel.
Ones the mightiest who lost their sanity and forgot they were ever humans.
The ones the Bella kept in the back to dig latrines, butcher carcasses, and dispose of bodies.
They were massive, hulking brutes covered in grime, their skin scarred and pockmarked, their eyes yellowed and filled with a starving hunger.
They shuffled into the room, their boots squelching in the damp filth.
They looked like a pack of starving dogs looking at a fresh side of beef.
