Greig stared in horror at the bloodied remains not nine inches away from the toes of his boots. There was a footprint in the semi-congealed circle of red that surrounded the body, where he'd stepped before realising what it was, and there was about to be a slightly more disgusting stain off to one side just as soon as he could move.
Beside him, Brody was already puking against the tunnel wall. The combined scents of copper and... Xanth knew what Brody'd eaten for breakfast... assaulted Greig's nostrils and he was finally able to move, pitching a hand against the rough-hewn rock and retching.
“Who is... Who was it?” Brody's voice was shaken, just like Greig's hands were shaking. Just like his whole body was shaking.
“Teague.” Pushing himself upright, Greig wiped his hand on his pants, wrinkling his nose as he tried to figure out what was sticking to him and how to get it off.
“How can you tell?” asked Brody quizzically, no doubt looking too hard at the remains instead of using his nose. Not that Greig could blame him; he wouldn't have been able to detect the intricacies of Teague's scent when he was Brody's age either, not over the smell of blood and vomit.
“His scent. And the ring.” Gesturing with a tip of his chin towards the thick Celtic knot banded around the man's skeletal wedding finger, Greig almost threw up again at the thought of having to tell Teague's wife and cubs he wouldn't be coming home. “We need to inform... someone.” Anyone.
When they reached the lit tunnels, they took off their helmets. Greig was still trying to scrub off the stickiness attached to his hand and now his pants leg as they described what they'd found to their boss.
The Sentinel's response was swift but the sniffers he sent into the tunnels could only find where the creature had been, not where it was. Soon, most of the searchers gave up and the community settled down, waiting with bated breath to see if it would happen again, hoping the culprit was only passing through.
As it turned out, it wasn't.
“That's the fourth body, if you can call what's left "bodies", that we've found in a week, sir. All in the deeper tunnels, all of them unrecognisable, and all with that sticky residue. You have to do something, sir.”
The Sentinel sat back in his chair with a sigh, obviously at a loss. “Close those tunnels down and post patrols. I don't want civilians down there until we can figure out what's doing this. I'll put word out that we need help with this, but it means opening our Sanctuary doors - to the deeper tunnels, at least - to outsiders. I'll have notices put up around the towns, too. I'm damned if I'll lose more of our people to this beast.”