Dirk left his hometown of Wittingheim in search of fame and fortune. Head for the big city, the people had said. So he did just that. But rather than find streets paved with gold, he found himself working as a butcher’s apprentice. The hours were long, the work hard and bloody, but there was food and a roof over his head.
Despite this, he got very little sleep—because every night, the rats came. They scurried, they gnawed, they nibbled—at meat and butcher’s apprentice alike—until Dirk could take no more. On his afternoon off, he set out in search of a cat.
After a frustrating hour of trying to catch a stray in the narrow, filth-encrusted alleys and passageways, he was ready to give up—when he came across a fine specimen, sitting in the middle of a particularly foul thoroughfare, staring at him with piercing yellow eyes. Readying his sack, he cautiously approached the feline, noting its tar-black fur and unusually robust build.
As he raised the sack, the cat approached him, rubbed itself against his leg, and started walking back the way Dirk had come. Reasoning that the closer the cat got to the butcher’s, the less time he’d have to struggle with a sack full of teeth and claws, Dirk turned and followed, keeping the sack ready for when he’d need to pounce.
Weirdly, however, the sack wasn’t needed at all. The cat padded all the way to the butcher’s and waited silently at the door for Dirk to open it.
With the cat installed, the rats didn’t last long. In gratitude, the butcher even gave Dirk a sack of straw, with which he was able to make a more comfortable bed.
Although Dirk was able to get a better night’s sleep, his troubles were far from over. With the rats gone, the cat was hungry. Dirk reasoned that it was still a fair deal for the butcher if he sneaked the cat some meat in exchange for keeping the rats away. Dirk might have gotten away with it—if it weren’t for the sheer volume the cat seemed to need before it curled up in front of the fire and slept.
A small piglet a day seemed to be the minimum the cat was satisfied with, and this soon drew the butcher’s attention.
“Get out—and take that mangy thing with you!” the butcher shouted, pointing at the cat with a filleting knife.
“Kill him,” said the cat, in a high-pitched, otherworldly voice, staring at Dirk.
Without hesitation, Dirk picked up a poker and began beating the butcher with it before the man could react, until his head was indistinguishable from some of his wares. As the cat scampered over to the corpse and began licking at the butcher’s ruined eyes, Dirk noticed its form begin to change.
The fur seemed to melt back into its body, revealing peeling red skin. Its front legs shortened, its belly distended, and its teeth multiplied until there seemed to be too many for the lipless mouth. Turning its strange new head toward Dirk once more, it said in that queer voice:
“We go North.”
Then it returned to its feast.
Under the guidance—or power, as many would later say—of his strange companion, Dirk headed North, killing many more innocents and encountering other strange beasts along the way. With every murder, he seemed to grow stronger, and he began to attract followers he believed he could command.
Or perhaps it was the creature who was really in charge.
He even managed to slay an ogre in single combat and fashioned the brute’s face into a grim, leathery breastplate that he wore over his armor.
Once he had gathered a whole regiment of foul murderers like himself, the familiar high-pitched voice came again, close to his ear, from the shoulder where the creature liked to sit:
“Now, we go South.”