At first Pilgrim took the shapes extruding from the archway as the emergence of some many-tentacled beast, another monstrosity from the Mad God’s menagerie. But then he saw that each appendage featured a hand, the long-nailed fingers clenching repeatedly like the claws of a hawk. They would occasionally jerk back into the recess of the arch whenever they caught the merest flicker of sunlight, but as the seconds ticked by they did so with markedly less frequency and more and more emerged to claw at the air. Pilgrim looked up to gauge Priest’s progress, seeing the cleric reach the narrow opening and begin to haul himself inside.

An upsurge in murmuring drew his attention back to the arch. As the sunlight dimmed to a faint glow a head emerged amongst the mass of clawing hands. Pilgrim thought it might once have been a woman, but it was hard to tell. The face was desiccated, the skin ragged and fallen away in places to reveal bare bone. Tendrils of black hair hung down from a denuded scalp to frame a face riven with boundless hunger, the jaws opening and closing to clamp together what few teeth remained. The eyes were the only feature that could be described as alive, the pupils shrunk to mere dots in greying orbs that nevertheless shone with a vibrant hate.

Dritch-wight, the voice said. It appears the Mad God didn’t just curse his pets.

The creature pulled itself free of the wall of flailing arms, Pilgrim seeing that it wore threadbare rags that did nothing to cover the flaccid dugs of its breasts and distended sex. He wondered if his disgust showed on his face for the wight became enraged then, its hungry groan abruptly shifting to a shriek. It lunged towards him with a speed he wouldn’t have thought its stick-like limbs could produce, the clawed talons of its hands reaching for his throat.

The hard snap of a crossbow’s lock sounded and a bolt appeared in the wight’s forehead. It tottered for the space of a heartbeat, the hate fading from eyes that rolled back in their sockets before the thing collapsed into a bundle of rags and withered flesh. Black ichor leaked from its forehead and mouth, the stench of it causing them all to move back several paces.

“You can thank me later, sir,” Player told Pilgrim, raising his crossbow as he inclined his head.