“What is that horrible smell?” My-re of the Health Alteration Squad asked and tried to turn her head away from the stench.
General Pol of the Skull Squadron covered his nose and shook his head in displeasure.
She would have covered her nose too, but she carried a crate full of mushrooms as they made their way from the market and back to the Broken Sword Tavern. The rocks on Willow Beach crunched under her boots as she saw a large crowd gathering a little ways down the shore. The stench got worse the closer they traveled towards them.
“Let’s take a look,” Pol muffled from between his hands.
My-re snorted out hard a few times to try and remove the stink, but it settled right back in as she inhaled. She gagged, as breathing through her mouth didn’t help either, as she tasted the rot. “No, thank you. That smell is terrible. Whatever it is, it’s likely dead and if not, it should be.”
“As a Lord Protector, don’t you think it’s your duty to investigate strange matters? If not, we can always go back to the bar where you can help me and serve customers,” Pol said.
She thought it odd that Pol was talking about the duties of a Lord Protector. All he carried about was raking in gold and the odd use of ‘help’ and ‘serve’ sounded too familiar. Maybe the kid in him just wanted to poke something dead with a stick, but that didn’t seem to be the answer either. She just figured it out.
“Did Corg say something to you?”
General Pol didn’t look at her and then said, “Nooo.”
“What’d Corg say?”
He continued to look away. “Nothing…maybe a bit.”
“What in the nine hells? He had no right to repeat words said between us. If that pompous sod thinks he can manipulate me, he’ll have to train his wit up a bit.”
Ssskah of the Castaways stable walked past them with a scarf over his nose and mouth. “Coming to see the whale washed up on shore? Torn to shreds from the sounds of folk’s tales.”
The two followed Ssskah and edged their way through the crowd to see the creature. The sounds of buzzing flies greeted them. Indeed, the Lake of the Mists had deposited the carcass of a gargantuan creature on the shore lying on its side. Small waves lapped up against strings of flayed flesh torn from it, while small fish with needle-like teeth nibbled at them. Several enormous round holes, which appeared to be bite marks, were all along the beast. Bones, both broken and intact, protruded from the wounds. When alive, the sea creature could have easily swallowed a person whole.
“Ya think a shark got at it?” someone commented.
“That’d be one massive shark, besides the lake is fresh water. There aren’t any sharks in there,” Ssskah answered. “It’s not a whale, from what I can tell, but what is it?”
My-re looked at the thing’s bloated body, black eyes, and multi-layered razor sharp teeth. While it was the size of a whale, she noticed it laid on a long appendage sticking out from its head with a bulb shaped end. From the conversation she had with Corg when they went night fishing two weeks ago, she knew what it was.
“It’s a lurker lure.”
Eyes turned to her and Ssskah said, “Impossible. Those things stay in the deep and are the apex predator of these waters. There’s nothing in there big enough to kill a lurker lure.”
“There is now.” My-re then spotted a craft filled with about ten Lord Protectors heading out from the nearby docks.
“They must be going to look for the monster that did this,” Ssskah said.
My-re glanced at the considerable size of the lurker lure, then to the protector’s smaller craft out on the water. She then said under her breath, “They’re going to need a bigger boat.”