Aohdei crouched over the corpses of a trader and his assistants, only the tatters of ruined clothing to hide his indecency. He couldn't have cared less. Their blood dripped from his cracked lips, staining them and his hands as well. The warm, dark liquid became congealed in his beard and also pooled on the ground around them.
The sickening snuffling and crunching of his voracious chewing echoed off of the walls of the ruins of the castle in which these men had chosen to camp. They hadn't known about its previous inhabitant, however, and had paid dearly as a consequence. If any would stumble upon these people, they would find their throats bruised and cut, limbs broken, and bones fractured. All signs of a skilled fighter dispatching unskilled, perhaps unsuspecting victims. What would be out of the ordinary were the torn bites around the jugular veins, and the gaping holes where normally laid sternums. Aohdei had done this, this systematic slaughter of caravans over the course of the last month, and had thus killed and consumed the hearts of eleven men and women travelling through the ruins of the Fell. His beard had grown long and wild, his hair too, and he was lean, almost skinny in his build. But his eyes, they were another matter. Both because of his demonic heritage and also because of the many souls he had devoured over the last month, his amber eyes were luminous and shone with a dim orange light.
He now stopped his feast, the sounds of eating quietly reverberating and then fading. Voices had begun to echo down through the tunneling hallways and improvised passages created by the crumbling keep. Voices meant more people. Perhaps more food. Perhaps not. People going missing would eventually attract attention, he knew, but this was rather early. He knew as well, from the various scripts and possessions of the caravans and travelers he had slain that there had been disappearances in the Fell prior to himself, and of much larger quantity. Maybe that was the purpose of these voices. Bandits? Bounty Hunters?
Perhaps. Aohdei stood up straight, his joints cracking, then resumed his crouching, crawling movements and began to slowly wind his way through the constricting passageways to the surface. He would see for himself who these newcomers were.