Blood. It was everywhere. The Shambles was coated in it, rivulets of thick, congealing life's blood trickling between the cobblestones, diluted to a pink flood by the falling rain. And here and there, left like in a storm's wake, pointing the way to the devastation that had passed by, were bodies.

They were men, mostly - just the hard working men who scrouged day in and day out to provide for their growing impoverished families. Or they had been men, before the storm had passed their way. Now they were little more than mangled piles of flesh, bone, and gristle, bleeding out the last of what once made them fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, onto the cold, unforgiving streets they had once called home.

He could smell the blood even before he'd entered the Shambles. He did not need to see the destruction to know what had entered ahead of him. A drow - even one who has not seen the Underdark or heard the hated call of the Spider Queen for many years - knows when his own kind has surfaced. And he knew where the trail was leading him.

Where does a killer go, a killer trained to hate without thought, to be cruel and malicious as second nature; where does he go when he knows nothing of the world he finds himself in? To the weak; to the helpless; to those who cannot defend themselves or those they love from the horror he can inflict upon them.

He did not need the screams to know that the end of his hunt would bring him to the place he had worked so hard to build. The Clinic, the centre of this poor, forgotten community, was under attack.

He broke into a run, discarding the fine wool of his coat in a filth-laden gutter, the expensive leather shoes to the outstretched hands of an abandoned whore, the silk-lined design of a tailor-made suit jacket to the open sewer. Barefoot and gathering moisture from the thick fog that blanketed the streets, he ran home.

The street outside the Clinic was teeming with people - patients who had managed to escape the death that came at them, cloaked in unnatural darkness; staff who tried to care for them in the open, unprotected alleyways; relatives, locals, even merchants trying to peddle their wares to a newly formed crowd. They all turned as he approached.

Most drew back, terror showing in their eyes. He was one of them, like the one who had visited this pain and torment upon them, like the one who even now held their Clinic, their place of refuge, in his thrall. But those who knew him, his staff, his friends, they called to him as he ran past, beseeching him not to enter.

He was unarmed as he passed from their sight, into the silent, deadly halls of his place of work. There was no sound from within for long minutes, during which speculation rippled through the crowd. He was dead; the attacker was dead; they had joined forces and disappeared from this world for good; they would burst from within and destroy them all.

"Whol l'ib'ahalii d'Lolth!"

The sudden scream was cut short abruptly, and again long silence filled the street, settling over the crowd in a thick, choking blanket. Was there movement inside? What had happened to lend such despairing fury to the one voice they had heard cry out?

The doors opened. He stepped through, barefoot, sodden. Uninjured.

A cry went up from the staff gathered nearby, a cheer of relief to see him safe and well, an explosion of triumph that the Clinic was safe once again. It would take time and work, but the halls could be cleansed anew, and the people would return to their refuge once more.

Mataru Frondaya, for all his drow blood, would not see it fall to the insanity of the Spider Queen.