From publisher blurb:
A Scavenger God
The cave is lit by phosphorescent green lichen all over the walls and ceiling, growing all over the stalactites. It makes everything seem otherworldly, phantasmagorical. Inside this vast, cavernous space there is a pool of fresh blood — impossibly large — with a stone spire rising out of its centre. You can taste the bite of a coppery aroma in the damp air.
With a rustle of feathers, a figure descends from outside and above your field of vision, even though there are no passageways above you, no way out to the surface. But now he is there, lounging on top of the spire: Hessarach, a petty god of refuse and scavengers. He has the head and wings of a gigantic vulture, and no skin covering the other parts of his body. He has brought his golden battleaxe, the symbol that his followers revere.
And why did those followers bring you here? Are you a captive, meant for sacrifice? You will be drowned in the pool of blood, your body consumed by it. Perhaps your ghost will find respite in the “heaven” that Hessarach controls, or perhaps it will be claimed by the necromancers that so often plague these lands. Of course, there is no escaping now.
Have you come, instead, to supplicate yourself? A new initiate, devoted to returning this god to prominence? It will be a long, hard road to walk, but the rewards are plentiful. For Hessarach demands only the sacrifice of detritus and cast-offs. That which has served its purpose and been thrown away is what belongs to him. Artworks ruined by a hand that slipped, old tools no longer of any use, the gristle and cartilage that can neither be food nor glue. The sick and wounded, the old and senile, the filth you recoil from.
But that which is new, which gives succour and brings one to power — these are what is left for his people to claim. The freshest of fruits, the fairest of youths, the choicest pieces of meat from the hunt — the cream of the crop is set aside for the most faithful of Hessarach’s followers, those who cast down the gods that rival him and the kings who deny his power.