Skulls crumbled, bile was displaced and boils ruptured under the weight of hulking, dripping creatures. Ichor and intestines sloshed to the corpse-covered floor with every lurching step the gory masses took. This torrent of plague coursed through the street infusing all remaining life with pestilence and decay.
Delphard stepped out of the downpour through the doorway back into his study. Or at least what used to be a study for it had become a haphazard armoury of sorts, weapon racks lined the walls and quivers, laden with arrows hung off cupboards and shelves swaying slightly as drafts snuck in through the door. A page boy stood by a group of quivers pouring an ochre liquid, bubbling gently, into each one in turn. The boy's hands were blue with cold and the glass bottle shook violently between his fingers. The honourable ideals of combat that Delphard values wouldn't apply today, not if they had resorted to poisoning their foe.
The battle outside was drawing to an end, the bulk of the renegade forces had been buffered and any stragglers were falling to the bowmen lining the garrison and balconies along the street. Pikemen clustered together marching back up the cobbles road reclaiming houses and and clearing the roads of upturned wagons, rubble and the dead. Delphard watched as bodies were slung into a pile and a guardsman overturned a barrel of black tar which looked under the mutilated mass of arms and heads whilst another readied a torch. The guards jumped back as the spark flames caught and the pile sunk gradually as bodies, already fragile from battle, disintegrated under each other.
Having walked down to the street Delphard was assisting a farm hand herd his remaining boars into a cart. Pausing for a moment he looked up the street at the carnage of the last few hours; crumbling walls finally gave in as their supports splintered, survivors crawled out of {priest holes} and blinked at the sun slowly rising above the walls of the town. An officer signalled for his men to assist the recently evicted residents and four men jogged over to them. As Delphard looked on something else crawled out from underneath a collapsed wall. Human in shape and size it lumbered towards the civilians being assured by the guards. As it drew closer a stench, so repugnant and intrusive pierced Delphard senses, he wretched and buckled at the smell and he heard swords and pikes clatter to the floor as the guards convulsed too. He raised his head and, through his streaming eyes, saw the figure burst in a glorious shower of flesh and blood. The impossible was left standing, a being, so large it cast an immense elongated shadow over all present in the street. The sun barely scraped past the creature to cast a now feeble pale light against broken door frames and shattered windows. All were silent, so horrified by the hulking monstrosity that even their retching had subsided. There was no way the creature could have resided within the fleshy lumps strewn about the street that had been the human form that had approached the guards. The being stood hunched over, swaying tendrils hung limply from its torso and a bulbous translucent sac where a head should have been. The guards began to edge backwards and began to run, abandoning the injured survivors. Their armour plates crashed together as they ran. The tendrils stiffened and the sac perked up like a hound at a scent.
"Hold fast!" Delphard's voice broke as he shouted his orders, he was terrified, they all were; pike blades jinked together as the guardsmen's hands shook with fear.
As if in slow motion, a fleeing guardsman tripped and fell and I the silence, the noise lasted for a second before a deafening groan emitted from the creature and bile spewed from its cavernous, dripping maw. Delphard's sword fell from his hand as a dozen more monstrous hulks bound round the corner, blocking out the sun, and engulfed the street.
