A tin throwing dart, driven into the dense wood by the staccato force of a small hammer, transfixes an unusually large rodent ear and, beneath it, a sheet of common birchpulp paper. The ear is larger than that of a dire rat, yet the dense clumping of its fur suggests that the ear had shrunken from an even larger state upon separation from its vessel. Two rivulets of dark blood rolled downward from the ear before clotting and drying, partly obscuring the ink-scrawled message with their sanguine trails.
"Anonymous,
By my count, this gory remnant represents the eighty-ninth wererat felled in my repeated culls against the blossoming
wererat population.
And, by my count, I harvested this ear eighteen wererats ago, as I returned to leave this note.
Yet even after one-hundred-seven dead wererats--including one of their gigantic kings and thirty-three great wererats--
I have come no nearer to finding the source of the sudden wererat infestation.
You, however, suggest that you can delve directly to the heart of this 'vileness therein,' if you but receive a band of
warriors to guard you.
What do you know that I do not?
--Viorica the Green"