Adv Log Session 47: The Catacombs

General Summary

Jyprasday, Colding 17

The Shardmeet was done, and people were going home. The day had been a pleasant early autumn day, a warmish 21°C, with scattered clouds and little, if any, wind. With the sun dropping behind the mountains and without its direct heat, the temperature was dropping.


Eykit had a long walk back to the Silver Blossom Caravanserai. He was hoping, like his friends, that he would be a target for the bandits that were mugging Shard holders.


Gods, that’s dark, he thought. Wanting to be mugged? My friends have better have my back, because this could be dangerous.


As he left the Shardmeet, he could see Ayya Reese and Sunim Mychele talking near the exit, by the road. He tuned his ears to listen.


“…Well, that was one of the biggest Shardmeets we’ve ever had,” Ayya Reese said.


“Yes,” Sunim Mychele replied. “The results were…less than optimal. People got hurt.”


“People died, Mychele. But yes, it wasn’t ideal. I would have liked it better if more frivolous effects had happened.” He sighed, and put his hand on Mychele’s shoulder. “But we deal with what we have. We had volunteers with medical knowledge standing by, ready to help.”


“I know, but still….”


“I know it’s hard. As Awakeners, we know that the Shards are…fickle. We can’t anticipate what they will do. But enough of that. We got what felt like most of the town—“


“Now you are exaggerating.”


“—Yes, I am. Still felt like most of the town. They were involved, and I’m sure the vendors had a good day. So despite the, how did you put it? ‘Less than optimal’? Events, it still scratched an itch that many people have had, for far too long.”


“I can only hope that next time, it will be better.”

“It will. What we had today was something of a low point. Next time, it’s likely that the results will be better. Don’t worry.”


As Eykit was walking away from them during this conversation, he couldn’t see their body language. But he could tell that Sunim Mychele was sounding distraught and worried about the people hurt. Ayya Ajahn Reese was doing what he could to comfort her, and trying to put a good spin on what will happen next time.


“I’m sure that the next Shardmeet we put on will be smaller,” Ayya Reese admitted. “But that is to be expected: there was a lot of pent up demand for something social like this.”


“I thought that holding it outside would be helpful,” Sunim Mychele said, “after what happened in Dain’s Shop. But maybe we need to make sure there is a ceiling to keep people from flying off next time.”


“Maybe. Having people fly off isn’t terribly common, though.”


“Maybe a warehouse. Something that won’t be too terribly damaged by falling rocks, or flying icicles.”


“Maybe….” Eykit had moved too far to hear the rest of their conversation.


Being the social animal that he was, he struck up a conversation with a pair of Humans that, judging from their demeanors, clothing, and accents, must have been caravaners. “So,” Eykit said, “did you guys get to participate in anything cool?”


The first, a middle aged man with a trimmed brown beard with flecks of grey in it, looked down at the Goblin. “I was close to the table of people that suddenly flew into the air. Have to say I was glad I was as far away as I was, though. I think I like my feet on the ground.”


The other chuckled, then said, “I almost got hit by a flying icicle, but I leapt out of the way. That count as ‘cool’?”


“Heh,” Eykit said. “Not getting hit is pretty cool, I’d say. Good job on your quick reflexes.”


A Dwarf up ahead had overheard Eykit talking to the two men. He turned, his yellow-dyed beard bright even in the twilight. “I was one of the people that went into that weird room thing, with no door out. I had been hoping for something more interesting, what with the glowing doorway and all, but once inside, I had no idea what was really going on. Have to say that I was a bit disappointed. Glad it spit me out, though. I was, uh, actually afraid that I would be stuck in there forever.”


“Does that actually happen?” Eykit asked. “Permanent effects, I mean? Don’t Shard joining effects expire after a little while?”


The Dwarf shrugged, and the two caravaners that Eykit was walking beside gave each other questioning looks. “I dunno,” the Dwarf said. “I’ve heard that sometimes the effects are permanent. I’ve heard stories.”


Eykit felt a chill. While the effects of joinings seemed random, with many fun or interesting effects, the Shardmeet they were all returning from had had more than its fair share of “bad” effects. Instead of people coming home charged with excitement and a sense of fun and entertainment, many people were trudging home wishing they’d not shown up in the first place. The day had been dangerous, with several people being injured or killed.


In fact, one of the tables had to be left in the meadow, as it was now a mass of saplings, bushes, flowers, and weeds, rooted to the spot. Those plants were still there, a seemingly permanent effect of the Shard joining.




He wanted to be one of the last people leaving, so he leaned up against a tree by the side of the road, and watched as the last few wagons, laden with cooking gear, unsold products, and empty kegs trundled past. On one of them, Ayya Reese and Sunim Mychele had hitched a ride.


Eykit drifted back onto the road as the last person passed the tree he was relaxing against, walking back towards town.


Taid, meanwhile, had finished his meeting with the Order of Aheru-Mazda, and was headed towards the crossroads just to the south of town, where the clifftop road met the Switchback Road. He knew Eykit would have to pass by there, and he wanted to make sure he could keep watch over him once he did. It was twilight, and the shadows in the forest were deepening, so he found suitably hidden spot and watched the road.


Almë, farther up in the line of people going back to town, stepped out of line and retied his bootlaces, keeping an eye on Eykit’s position. When Eykit had passed him, the tall Elf straightened, and rejoined the line some ten or so meters behind him. He wanted to be fairly close, but not too close as to seem like he was with him. His staff made tapping noises as he walked along the stone-paved road.


Ruby, along with Norolind and Mister Wiggles, had spent the day simply hanging out and being social, keeping an eye on everyone around the event, looking for anything suspicious. She hadn’t seen anything; it had seemed like a regular fair. There hadn’t even been any pickpockets, as far as she could tell. Everyone had been on their best behavior, or seemed to be.


If this had been Adayn, there would have been pickpockets everywhere. But apparently Dwarfchat didn’t have thieves’ guilds, and minor crimes seemed to be nearly absent. She made a mental note to ask the Civil Patrol how they did that sometime. Whatever techniques they used seemed to work. Perhaps Central would like to know how, in case they wanted to institute them elsewhere.


At one point, late in the day, a family of four walked up to her. The couple looked a bit nervous, or embarrassed, or both, but the two children, both girls, aged four and six, had eyes only for the two dogs.


The father, a Human, asked, “Excuse me, miss? My daughters really want to pet your dogs. They’ve been bugging us about it all day, and finally we gave in and had to intrude upon you, for which we apologize. But would it be okay if they petted your dogs?”


Ruby smiled. She liked people who liked animals, especially dogs. She put a hand out, patting the air. “Lay down, Nori.” The immense black mastiff lowered himself to the ground, his head at about chest level to the two girls. Mister Wiggles’ tail wagged, and he sniffed at first the younger girl, then the older. “Both dogs are friendly,” Ruby confirmed.


The two girls scratched and stroked the dogs, giggling.


Ruby addressed her next words to the two girls. “You know how to pet dogs? No poking or pulling tails and ears?”


“We had a dog,” the older of the two said. “He was old and blind, and died last summer.”


“Old Blue was a good doggie,” the younger one said. “What’s yours called?”


Ruby smiled and said, “The one you are petting is Norolind.” She turned her attention to the older of the girls, saying, “and that one is Mister Wiggles.”


“Mister Wiggles is a funny name!” the girl said. “It’s cuz his tail, huh!”


“Yes, I suppose it is. He’s usually a happy dog.”


“Why is he wearing a jacket? And why does Noramund have a saddle? Do you ride him?”


“I wanna ride him!” the younger girl squealed.


“I don’t think so, honey,” their girls’ mother said.


“But Mooooooom! He’s got a saddle!” Norolind chose that moment to lick her face, causing her to giggle.

“Is Mister Wiggles a war dog? He’s got metal on,” the older girl asked.


Ruby gave her another smile. “He’s more of a guard dog. He wears his mail for protection.”

“How come Noramund doesn’t have a jacket?” the younger girl asked.


Ruby shrugged, smiling at the child’s pronunciation. “He’s bigger, and doesn’t need it as much.”


The older girl looked over at her sister. “And he’s a riding doggie, not a guard doggie.”


Ruby didn’t bother disagreeing, letting the girl think what she wanted. She pulled out some pieces of dried meat, giving them to the girls to feed to the two dogs. The dogs, of course, snapped them up immediately. The girls went back to petting them.


The kids seemed to be behaving with the dogs, so Ruby turned her attention on the parents. They seemed to be in their late twenties, and while the mother appeared to be used to housework, judging from her hands, the father appeared to be some kind of merchant. His hands weren’t calloused enough to be a farmer or laborer, and in any case, the ink stains on his fingertips showed that it was more likely he was a scrivener or accountant.


“So,” Ruby said to them, “How did you like the Shardmeet? Win any Shards? Share in any of the excitement?”


The man said, “We don’t have many Shards. We mainly came out just to enjoy the Shardmeet and get out of the house.” He looked around, taking a deep breath of the late summer air. The wind was blowing from the mountains to the valley, taking the smells of the town with it, away from the meadows. “We didn’t win any, but we didn’t lose any Shards either. And we weren’t close enough to be part of any of the events, but the day was fun anyway.”


The woman spoke up, “I’m glad that we weren’t anywhere close to the events that did happen. Almost none of them were fun anyway.”


Most Shardmeets had few young children in attendance. They were more like gambling house events, so bringing children was rare. However, this one was different, for a few reasons. One is that a large social event, complete with food, drink, and entertainment, hadn’t happened in a very long time due to the curfew and restrictions. So everyone wanted to go, if only because it wasn’t just about gaming with Shards. Another reason was that this Shardmeet had had a lot of negative effects, whereas most Shardmeets had a higher proportion of “fun” effects.


But even then, when there were large Shardmeets that were more than just gambling events, there was often vendors of food and drink, and if children were brought to such an event, they were kept by the vendor stalls, out of the way of most if not all of the effects of joining Shards.


The Awakeners, having a lot of experience running Shard games and Shardmeets, learned quickly early on that the fastest way to lose a “customer” is to have their children get killed. So they would talk with parents who had brought children to keep them around the periphery, away from the gaming tables. For the most part, it worked, and no children had died lately.




Elitheris, upon seeing the crowds leaving at the end of the Shardmeet, climbed down out of the tree she had spent the day in, watching over the area and her friends. She dropped the last four or so meters to the ground, landing with catlike grace. Since most of the guests of the faire were leaving, most didn’t see her. She was keeping close to the tree line along the edge of the meadow, where it was shadowed. Those few people who did see her assumed she’d been a faire patron herself, likely a latecomer after a morning hunt. She was carrying her bow, after all, and that wasn’t something that a Shard game player needed.


She saw Ruby and the two dogs over by the road, leaving with the last group of people, followed by Almë and Eykit. Elitheris could afford to follow at a farther distance; her arrows could reach hundreds of meters if they had to.


When they reached the spot where the Switchback Road forked off of the road to Upper South Dwarfchat, Mr. Wiggles bolted off into the bushes by the side of the road. Elitheris was momentarily worried, but the couple of seconds it took the dog to go from the road into the undergrowth gave her brain the time to process the fact that his tail was wagging. What did he see, a rabbit? she thought.


Then she caught a glimpse of a Dwarf, a bit of filtered light glinting off of a breastplate. It was Taid, crouching in the bushes, waiting for them to pass by. After a few moments of Taid giving him some head scratches, Mr. Wiggles came bounding out of the bushes, rejoining the people walking back to the town, sniffing at their pant legs for a moment before moving on to the next person.


“Come,” Ruby called to him, and he stopped bothering the other Shardmeet participants and rejoined her side with Norolind.


They moved on, none the wiser that Taid was over there. Or, if they did know, they didn’t show it.


They passed his position, continuing up the road towards town. Behind them, sneaking through the undergrowth along the far side of the road, Taid saw a very familiar looking Elf woman. He watched her for a moment, but didn’t really see her again. She was good at sneaking, likely as good as Eykit. He was certain that none of the others in that crowd of people knew she was even behind them.


It wasn’t long until they got to the town proper; the fork in the road was at the edge of town. The crowd of people had thinned, some had gone down the Switchback Road to Lower Dwarfchat, and some filtered into town by the various side roads.


Eykit was walking as if he’d had just enough drink to make him happily buzzed, and every once in a while he sort of danced along the street, as one does. He wanted people to know he’d had a good day at the Shardmeet. He was, after all, acting as bait.




Eykit looked up at the sky, checking to see how much time he had before nightfall and the curfew. He was practically in sight of the Mountainstream Inn and a mug of good ale. “Well, shit,” he said to himself. “Better get on home, I suppose. No time for another drink.” He pivoted around, going back to the Switchback Road.


Almë saw Eykit coming back, so he stepped to one side of the road to re-lace his boots. When no one was watching, he stepped into the forest, disappearing into the shadowy undergrowth.


Ruby and the dogs saw him, but Almë didn’t care about them seeing. He knew that Taid and Elitheris were likely somewhere, but they weren’t his concern. Eykit was. He could see the diminutive Goblin striding down the Switchback Road, his quick little legs making good time. Ruby and two dogs went towards town, but the Hobbit stopped, pulled a ball out of her pack, and tossed it. Norolind charged off after it, quickly followed by Mister Wiggles, who wasn’t sure how this game was played, but he didn’t want to be left out.


Taid followed Eykit about a switchback behind him. He didn’t want to get too far behind, so being on the strip of road just above him would work nicely. He slid down the slope, cutting the corners as needed, keeping to the trees and bushes as much as possible.


Ruby and the dogs didn’t play for very long, just long enough for Eykit to get a switchback or two down the road. Then she gathered the ball, now covered in dog’s slobber, tucked it back in her pack, and she and the dogs made their way down the Switchback road. Every now and then she could see Almë and Taid, following Eykit up ahead of her. She had to give the armored Dwarf credit: he was developing some pretty good stealth skills, despite his armor and bulky halberd. She expected Almë, as an Elf, to be able to blend into the forest. She’d had plenty of experience with Elves, given her stint as a diplomat in Toinalomë, a tree-city of Elves in the more northern part of the Empire, not too far from Adayn.


She still had friends there. She fingered the embroidered collar of her silversilk, remembering the politically-motivated kidnapping incident that had been the catalyst for the gift. She was still in awe of it, actually. It wasn’t every day that the Elven Silversilk Enchanter himself made someone a suit of bespoke armor that cost the same as a modest cathedral. But she had saved his daughter, and he was grateful.


She made her way down the Switchback Road, with the two dogs at her heels. Norolind stayed there; Mister Wiggles had to be called back every so often, as he was the more excitable canine of the two. But Elitheris and the others had trained him well enough for her to use voice commands to control him, rather than a leash.


Eykit was two switchbacks ahead of her, which meant he was almost directly below her every time they reached a corner, so it was fairly easy to keep track of him. It also meant that she could order the dogs down the slope, and they would be there in moments, if Eykit needed any kind of help.




Eykit wasn’t hurrying. Up ahead, he could see some of the wagons and carts that had been at the Meadows. They were moving more slowly than he was, and he was slowly catching up to them. As he got closer, he could see the grill loaded in the back of the wagon. It had been one of the food vendors. He could smell the roasted meat aroma that still lingered on the wagon and its cargo.


There were two Dwarves on the cart, and they waved at Eykit as he walked past. “You at the Shardmeet?” the driver asked through his green and blue dyed beard.


“Yep!” Eykit replied. “Good times!”


“Yes, yes it was. It was…interesting.”


“Yeah, you could say that.”


The other Dwarf on the cart spoke up. “Well, it was a bit more frightening than I’m used to.” He tugged at the end of his black beard, the motion making the glass and metal beads woven into it flash in the twilight.


“But definitely interesting,” Eykit said. “I wouldn’t say it was fruitful.”


The first Dwarf spoke again. “Yeah, it wasn’t the best one I’ve ever been to.”


“But hey,” Blackbeard said, “we sold all of the pork, and most of the chicken. So we had a good day.”


Eykit cocked his head, which made his ears flop around. “What was the best one you’ve ever been to?”


“Oh, there were less damaged people and more fun stuff that happened.”


“What kinds of fun?”


The blue and green bearded Dwarf thought about it, then said, “I don’t know, just one of them was like this explosion of colors, that everyone changed into. Like they were all dyed.” He chuckled. “Those that had just had their beards done were right upset, until the colors faded! Had they stayed that way, their expensive barber bills would have been wasted!”


“Lucky bastards,” Eykit said good-naturedly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to one that was fun.”


“Really?”


“Yeah, there’s always been danger involved.”


The Dwarf shrugged. “There’s always the risk of that, yeah. But it’s not all danger, or at least, it’s not supposed to be.”


“Well,” Eykit said, “I guess I’ll have to keep trying, then.”


“Yeah, I’d suggest that. Keep trying to find one that’s a little bit more fun.”


The black-bearded Dwarf spoke up. “I have to admit, I didn’t like this one that much. There’s too many dead people.”

Eykit sighed in solidarity. “I hear you. Well, have a good night.”

“You too.”

And Eykit walked past them, patting their mule as he passed. Every now and then, as he ranged his hearing both in front of him and behind, he could hear something moving in the bushes. He surreptitiously glanced back occasionally, seeing either Almë or Taid sliding down the slope as they cut the corners in order to keep up with him. He didn’t see Elitheris, but suspected she was following as well, just more stealthily than the tall, skinny Elf or the armored Dwarf with the halberd.

Eykit passed the road that led to the Lift, going into Lower Dwarfchat instead. He strode towards town; the section of what now was First Street was a green tunnel, enclosed by dense woods for several hundred meters before the buildings of Lower Dwarfchat started appearing.

Almë scurried off of the road into the undergrowth. Elitheris did the same, then climbed a tree to use their branches as her high road. Taid went to the side of the road opposite where he saw Almë enter the woods, and used what cover he could to follow Eykit, keeping out of sight of anyone on the road itself. Ruby, and the dogs, followed along the road, at a fair distance from the Goblin.

By the time Eykit got into Lower Dwarfchat proper, it was dark. The sky was still a deep, dark blue, but it didn’t shed much light on the streets, and there were stars starting to appear in the sky. But the streetlamps were lit, so the town was decently illuminated. Even Humans would be able to see.

He saw several people on the street, going about their business, but it wasn’t anything like he was used to in Port Karn. There, nightfall didn’t really reduce much street traffic; it was a city that ran all day and night long. He would have thought that Dwarves, living underground like gophers, wouldn’t care too much about the day/night cycle. But they did, for reasons only the gods knew.

The noise of people talking and laughing loudly came from a side street in the direction of the wharfs; likely a group leaving either Yesterday’s Catch or The Drowning Fish, the pubs on the wharf. Dives, both of them, but good for a cheap beer and food that might not make you ill.

He turned down that street, heading for the tavern called Yesterday’s Catch, where he was thinking of popping his head into to see if anything was happening. Maybe get some food and drink.



Elitheris dropped down out of the trees when she reached where the buildings started. Dwarven architecture tended towards the geometric, rather than organic or floral, but that left lots of handholds on their buildings. Elitheris scampered up the side as if it were a ladder. Almë watched her go up to the roof, and, thinking it was a good idea, followed. He wasn’t as skilled a climber, but he’d seen which handholds and footholds she used, and he had little trouble making it to the steeply sloped rooftop.

Moving along the roof ridge was easy enough for them; they were Elves, and Elves had a preternatural sense of balance. However, were they to go downslope, moving would be more difficult on the slate roof, and would require careful movement, preferably with chimneys or other hand holds to keep from sliding off and falling four stories. But they could see Eykit walking steadily down the street, weaving between groups of people when necessary.

Taid reached the end of his bushy cover. He scanned the street ahead. There was still cover, barrels, crates, parked carts, and the occasional vendor stall, abandoned now as it was close to curfew. He could see Eykit up ahead, and he used what cover he could without being obvious about scurrying from place to place. He just tried to keep the covering object, whatever it was, between him and the rest of the street, all the while moving as silently as his gear would let him. Which wasn’t that silent, but there were still people, animals, and wagons moving along the street to help disguise his noises.

He saw Eykit disappear around a corner, and walked quickly to peer around it to re-acquire him. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, up high, and turned to look. Two figures stalked along the rooftop. It was Elitheris and Almë, keeping their own eyes on Eykit.

Good, he thought. If I lose him, Elitheris can tell me where he is with that Shard of hers.

Ruby, with the dogs, followed Taid, staying back almost a full block. Taid wouldn’t be too hard to follow, and if she did manage to somehow lose him, the dogs would be able to find him well enough.


The plan, as it stood, was to let Eykit get mugged or abducted, then follow the perpetrators. It was not to rescue him right away; that would short circuit the whole idea. Ultimately, they were trying to find the necromancer Kallia, and they had no idea where she was hiding. Following the muggers, assuming, of course, that they were in the employ of the necromancer, would hopefully lead them to her.


Eykit didn’t really like the part of being bait, but it was necessary. He didn’t mind, too much, if he got robbed. He did mind getting abducted though. The thought of ending up in Kallia’s clutches didn’t thrill him in the least. He still remembered the meat hooks in the manor basement that Herbert Vesten used to move bodies around his lab. He had almost been impaled on one of them, and it still sent shivers down his spine and caused his stomach to clench uncomfortably. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself, but they didn’t really work.


He walked down the street, looking into the storefront windows when he could. He knew his friends were behind him somewhere, and he figured Elitheris was up on a building where she could see him. Knowing his friends had his back, and would rescue him eventually made him feel a bit better.


Up ahead, a pair of Civil Patrollers came around the corner, doing their rounds. One held a lantern. While Lower Dwarfchat did have street lamps, they were few and far between, with what Eykit would term “useful stretches of shadow” between them. Those shadows would become deeper still when night fully settled on the town, something that would likely happen in the next half hour or so.


The fourteenth bell, which marked the time that the curfew went into effect, hadn’t yet rung. But it must be close to the time it would. Eykit wavered between ducking behind something, and brazenly walking past them. But they were too close; hiding would look suspicious, and the two patrollers had probably already seen him. He steeled himself, and chose to walk past them, hoping they wouldn’t do anything.


They did something. They stopped in front of him. “Hello, citizen,” one said, “what are you doing out?”


“I was at the Shardmeet,” Eykit replied, in his most innocent voice. “And I’m heading back to my caravanserai.”


“Uh-huh. Right. Which one?”


“Silver Blossom.”


“I see. Well, it’s the other way.” The patroller nodded his head in the direction of the Silver Blossom caravanserai. It was in the opposite direction from where Eykit had been heading.


“Is it? I’m sorry, I haven’t been here long, and got all turned around. Can you point me in the right direction?”


The second patroller smiled behind his purple beard with white tips. “We’ll escort you in the right direction.” Eykit didn’t really think it was one of those friendly smiles, where the person doing the smiling really wanted to help you. No, it was more of a spiteful grin, the smile of someone flaunting their power.


But the Goblin put on a game face, and said, “All right.”


The two patrollers got on either side of him, and marched him back up the street. Eykit caught a glimpse of Taid, leaning against the corner of the building, mostly in shadow. Taid ducked back when he saw the two patrollers; he didn’t want to get escorted anywhere.


The Silver Blossom caravanserai was only two blocks away from where Eykit had been accosted, which actually went a long way to backing up his story about getting lost amongst the twisting streets. It didn’t help that a lot of Dwarven architecture looked the same from street to street.


“Oh yes! Here it is! Thank you, patrollers! Thanks very much!”


The first patroller said, “Have a nice evening.”


“Thanks, appreciate it,” Eykit said, moving towards the courtyard.


Once Eykit was in the courtyard, the two patrollers turned and walked up the street, continuing their patrol.


Elitheris and Almë saw this happening from the rooftops, and followed the civil patrollers and Eykit to the caravanserai.


The fourteenth bell rang in the steeple. It was time for the curfew to begin.


Ruby and the dogs walked up the street, following Taid. As she got close to the corner, she could hear some people walking towards her from the side street. She got the distinct impression that it was probably civil patrollers. If she were caught, it was likely that she would be arrested. While that didn’t bother her too much, as she could likely arrange for her release, it would take time. And she didn’t want the hassle.


She looked around, finding a dark opening nearby. It was a tunnel that led from the street to the courtyard between the buildings on the block. She ducked in there, the dogs following. There was a low gate, but it was unlocked, and she shoved the dogs through before closing it behind her. She hurried them into the courtyard proper. Hopefully, the civil patrollers wouldn’t investigate the courtyard. Besides, wouldn’t the courtyard be considered “indoors”?


The pair of civil patrollers turned up the street, away from Ruby. However, it was towards Taid, and he heard them coming. Quickly glancing around, he saw some barrels stacked in front of a warehouse that might provide a decent place to hide. He ducked behind them, laying his halberd down in the deeper shadows of the building. Being blacked, it was hard for even him to see it, and his night vision was excellent. He crouched behind the barrels, making himself as small as possible.


He didn’t bother trying to peer around the barrels to see them; he followed their progress past his hiding place with his ears. He could hear them clanking by, and moments later he peered around the edge of the barrels at their retreating backs. He breathed a sigh of relief.


Eykit paced around the courtyard, waiting for his escorts to walk far enough away to not see him sneak out into the town. He popped his head out from between the stone gate posts, looking down the street in both directions. To his right, he saw the two civil patrollers that had accosted him walk around the corner, heading back along the riverbank, back into the town proper in the direction of the wharves. To his left, he saw two more patrollers walk past a warehouse with a stack of barrels in front of it, walking in his direction. They turned at the next intersection, however, away from the caravanserai.


It was his turn to sigh in relief. He emerged from the courtyard and into the street. He kept to one side, hoping to stay near enough the buildings that if necessary, he could duck into an alleyway. He did, however, stay out of the shadows. His job was to be seen by the bad guys; he was acting as bait, after all.


He was paying very close attention to his environment, especially the noises he could hear. He trusted his ears; they served him well. If someone was moving, he was likely to hear it. Besides, he knew that someone up above, Elitheris had his back. And while he didn’t know where anyone else was, he was sure they were nearby, somewhere.




Eykit basically walked around the block, Taid following him, and Ruby following Taid. The two Elves were up on the rooftops, following Eykit, keeping an eye on him from above. Eykit really didn’t have much of a plan for his path; he just kept going in a circle. This also kept the Elves from having to find a way to cross the street. Eykit, whether he did it on purpose or not, made their lives much easier.


Eykit, Taid, and Ruby all had to contend with the occasional Civil Patrol pair, as they did their rounds, picking up strays who’d violated curfew. Since all three of them were on edge, they were all very sensitive to footsteps, conversation, and the clanking and creaking of armor and equipment. They usually had enough warning to duck into alleyways, hide behind crates, or duck into the occasional deep doorway before being seen.


Taid was starting to wonder if the Civil Patrol was involved in the Shard thefts. After all, they could arrest anyone out past curfew, unless, of course, their perpetrator paid them off…in Shards. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but if that were the case, the Civil Patrol was in a position to gain a lot of Shards.


It was also possible that the Civil Patrol was trying to mess with him. They did a good job of not seeming like they knew he was there, but the frequency of the patrols made him question exactly how stealthy he was actually being. As a soldier, his job hadn’t required stealth. He was usually stationed with at least an entire centisenti, and there was no way of hiding that many soldiers. Battlefields were loud anyway. The only soldiers that needed stealth were the scouts and the special operators. And he hadn’t been a part of those groups.


Now, however, he was being forced to rely on being quiet and unseen, both of which were made very difficult by his armor and choice of weapons. No matter how carefully he moved, his jointed breastplate would scrape against itself, or the leather straps would creak. There was no way those Civil Patrollers couldn’t hear that.


So, he reasoned, they must know I’m here, and are letting me get away with this. Why, though? Bait? If they are in on the thefts, that wouldn’t make much sense….Unless they are setting me up for the thieves themselves? They probably get a cut, or a kickback. Or it could be as simple as them trying to keep us from being able to find the actual thieves! Oh shit, they are likely sabotaging the whole plan, just by being all over the fucking place! It would also explain the bribery about that so-called “weapons permit.”


“Gods damn it!” Taid muttered under his breath, after the latest patrol had moved far enough away from his hiding place. He’d have to pay more attention to them and watch them closely to make sure they didn’t do anything shady.


No one but Civil Patrollers seemed to be on the streets.




If this plan doesn’t work tonight, Taid thought, I’m going to go get my manticore head and turn it in. Maybe get that curfew lifted. Give us a bit more freedom to work at night. And to let the thieves have a bit more freedom too, I suppose. The curfew probably hit them harder than it hit us. No victims on the street, and more patrollers on the streets to catch them.


Almë, crouching on the roof, looking down at Eykit as the Goblin wandered through the streets, was frustrated. They had no clue where Kallia was, and no idea on how to find her. He felt that it would have been easier to find her had they come into town with great fanfare. That way, she could have come for them, instead of the other way around.


But that would have been dangerous, and stupid. There was no telling what kinds of things she could have done to them, except that they likely would have been nasty, brutish, and deadly. He did his best to ignore his sense of frustration. Giving in would cause him to make mistakes, and that would get him and his companions killed.


He knew enough not to screw around with necromancers. Well, mostly. Because here he was, screwing with a necromancer.


Eykit was getting tired of this as well. Walking down the same streets, dodging the Civil Patrol, then walking some more. He figured he’d keep it up for another hour or so, then call it done. He’d been thinking about the situation they were in as well, as he placed one foot in front of the other, over and over. He’d come to the same realization as Taid, that it was likely the curfew had interfered with the Shard bandits’ operations.


Another thought occurred to him: if the bandits were affiliated with Kallia, and had gotten her a bunch of Shards, how soon could she integrate them into her Shardzombies? How big of a Shardzombie army did she have now? And was there any chance that she had enough Shards? If so, she wouldn’t need to send out her bandits, would she?


She’s probably got a dozen Shardzombies by now, he thought. That’s not ideal.


Instead of following the same path as the last several laps around the block, he changed things up, and kept walking towards the wharf. He needed a change of scenery.


Taid and Ruby had little trouble following him, but Elitheris and Almë had to either climb down four stories then back up another four stories to get to the next group of buildings, or hunt around for clothesline strung across the street to run along. Fortunately for them, they found one, and it was only halfway up the street, strung between some cheap flats taking up the top floor above some warehouses.


Elitheris hung from the edge of the roofline, then dropped the remaining meter or so onto the rope. It sagged beneath her weight, and she had to stabilize herself as the landing shifted her weight a bit on the rope. She turned on the rope to face the opposite side of the street, moving out across the street for a couple of meters. Her weight would help stabilize the rope for Almë. She crouched on the rope, and gestured to her companion. Almë dropped to the rope like Elitheris did, landing on the line with more apparent grace, Elitheris’ weight keeping the rope from moving around too much.


That done, they both made their way over to the group of buildings on the other side of the street. They, like the buildings they’d been on earlier, were warehouses with apartments built over them. The windows were dark; at this hour, most people were asleep.


They hurried across, then climbed up the building’s face to the roof to continue following Eykit. They had to scurry quickly to make up for the time backtracking to the rope in order to be able to see Eykit again.


Eykit was walking along the wharfs. The only lights were the lamp posts; where there would have been light coming from the windows of the two taverns at night, now they were dark. There were no customers with the curfew in place, and no reason for the taverns to be open. Eykit was disappointed, and his mouth was dry. He’d have really liked an ale right at the moment.

He heard a noise, coming from the end of one of the docks, like a growling.


No, he thought, not growling. Snoring! Someone managed to stay out after curfew. Nice.


He couldn’t help himself, he had to investigate it. He turned and walked out onto the dock, past coiled ropes, fish traps, and rolls of netting. Narrower docks extended out to both sides, forming boat slips. As he got to the end of the dock, he could see a pile of crawdad traps, stacked neatly. Just beyond those, on the narrower dock that formed half of a boat slip, was a pile of netting, much more disheveled than the neat rolls he’d passed by earlier. From under it, snoring could be heard.


Whomever was sleeping had tucked himself away between two moored boats, under a pile of netting, likely to hide from the Civil Patrol, if any patrollers ever walked down the dock. The snoring would’ve given him away, had the patrollers come close enough.


Eykit crept around the pile to get a look at whomever was under it. All that was visible was a shock of shaggy white hair. It was a Dwarf, and as Eykit peered more closely, he could see twigs and leaves tangled in the mass of disheveled hair. As far as he could tell, that hair hadn’t seen a comb in longer than his lifetime.


Eykit smiled, then turned and walked back towards the shore. Heh, he thought. Go on and sleep under the stars, oldster. Screw those Civil Patrol thugs! I’m not sure I like any city guard that doesn’t allow proper guilds to ply their trade.


It was time to call this failed plan off. Eykit, avoiding the Civil Patrol, made his way back to the Silver Blossom Caravanserai. The others, seeing Eykit return to the caravanserai, made their ways back to the Mountainstream Inn and the Cellar Keg. Having a longer way to go, they had to wait for the Civil Patrol to go by several times before they could get back to the places they were staying at. But with patience, they made it.


The closest call came when they were on the Switchback Road, but by ducking into the bushes and lying prone in the mud, they avoided discovery. Almë did what Elitheris usually did: stayed to the rooftops as much as possible, ready to call out to Ruby or Taid that there were patrollers coming.


They made it back to their respective inns, which had their doors locked. But they rang the bells, which alerted the innkeepers that there was someone at the doors. The speakeasy window slid open, and they identified themselves, and the innkeeper let them in. As he did, he chastised them for being out after curfew, which they took with their usual grace. Which was that of a rebellious teen.

Velisday, Colding 18, 879 AFE

When Ruby woke, she gave Norolind a morning snack. She found something else in her treat pouch. Ruby examined the rolled up piece of paper she found. It looked like the kind of message found on a carrier pigeon, but apparently it had just been dropped into her pouch, likely during the Shardmeet. She hadn’t noticed it happening, and she checked all of her other pouches and pockets to see if anything was missing. Nothing was, as far as she could tell. She saw some words on it. She let it fall back into the pouch, as Almë was puttering around the room getting ready to go down to the tavern.


She yawned, then fell back into the bed. Almë looked at her, shrugged, and said, “I’m going to go get some breakfast. Maybe listen to people chat.”


“Okay,” Ruby replied. “I think I’ll get another hour of sleep.”


Almë left, closing the door behind him.


She pulled out the rolled paper, unrolling and reading it.


They reconvened at about midday at the Mountainstream Inn. Even Ruby was awake by then, and she was attempting to eat breakfast. She seemed to be in a very bad mood, and had a sour expression on her face. She wasn’t really eating, and when any of her companions came up to her and asked if she was all right, she gave a non-committal answer in a snippy tone.


They all sat at different tables, as was their habit in Dwarfchat. Ruby pushed the plate of half eaten food away, got up, and walked out.


The others saw her go out for a walk. Eykit walked past Almë, saying, “She wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued walking towards the jakes.



Rumors in the tavern were mainly about the Shardmeet that had been something of a disappointment. Lots of people got hurt, some died. There were few fun effects, although several people went home with magic items. It was, however, the largest Shardmeet that anyone had seen in ages. The general gist was that despite the less than ideal outcome, everyone was energized that a Shardmeet was held at all. And, to be honest, most people had fun while they were there. It’s just that the deaths and injuries brought everyone down just a bit.


But it was a different tale that grabbed their attention. A pair of old Dwarves in the corner were talking about someone who visited their ancestors in the catacombs, underneath the city. Taid was familiar with Dwarven burial rites, which usually involved stone sarcophagi, often in mausoleums or catacombs. That wasn’t what was interesting about this story, however.


This person, visiting their ancient dead, had seen someone in the catacombs that didn’t move right, and didn’t respond to hails. Then, all of a sudden, they got a bad feeling about the situation, and left, leaving their prayers for the dead unfinished.




Taid stood up and walked over to the two old Dwarves. They both looked like they were in their 300’s, and while he could see that their beards were white with age, one had his dyed a deep green with yellow tips, and the other’s was a bright pink.

“Excuse me,” he said to the two gentlemen, “I couldn’t help but overhear your tale. The one about the catacombs.”


“Kind of spooky,” Pink-Beard said.


“Right,” Green-Beard said, nodding. “Right strange. Probably just a drunk, though. Likely hung over.”


“When did this happen?” Taid asked.


“This morning, early,” Green-Beard said. “Definitely some hung over drunk.”


Pink-Beard laughed. “What’s the Human god? You know, the hangover one?”


“Ralph, the O God of Hangovers!” Green-Beard grinned.


Pink-Beard sobered. “But drunks don’t usually cause a sense of doom. According to Drenn the Grocer, the guy was really spooked by the whole thing.”


“I still think it was just a drunk,” Green-Beard said. “Drenn said it was a tourist, who came because he had some relatives from here or some such.”


“Where are these catacombs?” Taid asked.


“Under the city. The Walled City, specifically. You got dead there?”

“Probably,” Taid lied, “I don’t really know for sure. I’d like to find out, though.”


“Well, you’ll have to go to the House of Repose, then. They would have that information, and they also have access to the Halls of the Dead. The Catacombs.”

“Ah. Well, thank you. I’m glad you guys were here talking. And, uh, sorry for eavesdropping. Can I get you guys a drink?”

The two old Dwarves grinned behind their colorful beards, and each raised a mug that needed refilling.


Taid laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He turned and signaled to Malram, at the bar. He held up two fingers, then pointed to the two old Dwarves. Malram nodded, got two mugs, and filled them with ale, setting the two mugs on the bar. Taid walked over, got the mugs, and placed one by each talkative Dwarf. The small cost of the beers was worth it. Hopefully.


He went back to his table, finished his drink, then went upstairs and towards Ruby and Almë’s room.


The others glanced at each other surreptitiously, and started going up the stairs to the room as well, waiting several minutes between each person.


Ruby had left the door unlocked; what few possessions she had left in there were guarded by a huge mastiff. No one was going to be messing with her pack without her knowing it.


Norolind stood when Taid entered, his short tail wagging. He licked his jaws, drooling a bit. Taid smiled at him, and spent a couple of minutes scratching and petting him until Almë came in. Then it was both of them giving Nori attention.


Eykit was next, and he perched himself on one of the beds, leaning against the wall, his legs outstretched on the bedcover. Elitheris, with Mister Wiggles was next, several minutes after Eykit.

“Okay, we are all here, except for Ruby,” Taid said. “We have some planning to do. We’ll catch Ruby up when she gets back from her walk.”

“So, I heard something about catacombs,” Almë said. “Someone stealing dead bodies from graves again?”

“No, could be just a drunk. But it’s in catacombs, and there was a sense of foreboding, apparently. But we need to figure out a few other things. Like, I want to get that curfew lifted. As in, turn in that manticore head.”

There were nods around the room. There didn’t seem to be any reason to hold off on that any longer.

“And the next question is,” Taid continued, “do we want to keep up with the idea that we all don’t know each other?”

Elitheris said, “I’d imagine somebody has seen us together enough to know we know each other. Someone should have noticed, don’t you think?”

“Why?” Almë asked. “We’ve kept up the ruse by going into the rooms separately, without people knowing exactly which room we all went into. Unless they have someone spying on this room, no one should really know.”

Elitheris, and Taid as well, didn’t seem convinced. “I don’t know,” Elitheris said uncertainly.

“No one has contacted us, and no one has assaulted us. If they knew we were here, they’d have made some kind of contact by now. Probably with weapons.”

Eykit spoke up. “Herbert Vesten isn’t talking, and I doubt Nathan ratted us out. He didn’t seem the type, despite what Almë did to his stuff.”

“And Lennerd didn’t really get a chance to get a good look at us,” Almë added. “He got away, sure, but he was scared shitless.”


“So, no one should know who we are or what we look like. And even if Lennerd was here waiting for us, we haven’t matched his description.” Eykit looked at Almë. “Well, he might recognize bean pole over there, but Elitheris is “Elf lady with a bow”. That basically matches every female Elf out there. Taid might be noticeable, but he colored his beard, which likely bought us some time, at least. I’m a nobody, and while I’m not as adept as Wallpaper back home, I’m pretty good at fading into the background. And they don’t know anything about Ruby.”


“We hope,” Elitheris said grimly.


“Well, I think we could keep up the ruse that we are separate,” Taid said.


“Yes, that makes sense,” Almë stated.


“So that brings up the next question. If we want to get them to lift the curfew, we’ll—I’ll—need to turn in the manticore head. Does that mean that I take the credit for killing the manticores?”


“Yes, yes,” Almë said, nodding.


“It’s just—“


“It’s only you, and you are the Dwarf, right?”


“But is it believable that one Dwarf took out two manticores?”


“Yeah, you are a hero! The Hero of Ahawku-Mozzie. Whatever.”


Taid shook his head.


Elitheris said, “Hey, if you’re the guy who walks in with the head and says that you did it, who’s going to question it? You are walking in with a fucking head.”


“I mean,” Almë said, “technically you killed him on your own.”


“Well,” Taid riposted, “you killed the second one on your own.”


“Eh, no one knows that, though. You’ve only got one head? Who cares? Hand it to them and whatever, lift the curfew.”


Taid looked at Almë squarely. “I remember us talking about sending them to where we killed those manticores so they could go check everything out. And then they will find two manticore bodies there.”


“But separated, right? You drove one off the cliff into suicide, and then killed the second one in the cave. That’s fine.”


“I just want to be sure this doesn’t come back to bite us later if they find out a different story or something like that.”


“I think the story makes sense.” Almë seemed perfectly fine with Taid taking credit for killing the second manticore. “You can tell them about both.”


Elitheris agreed. “It’s our story, we modify it, it’s fine. Besides, you are the one going to the Civil Patrol to turn in the head. Tell the story as you see fit. All we need is what you tell them, in case they ask us questions, for whatever reason.”


“Alright. So I can just say I beat the crap out of one and then the second one threw me off the cliff. And then I killed it and chopped off its head. The story makes more sense this way.”


“Yes,” Almë said. The story wasn’t too far off the mark, really. “So, that’s settled. The question then becomes, while you are doing that, what are the rest of us doing? What’s our general plan of action? Do we want to monitor those catacombs?”


“Right. I think that while I am dealing with the Civil Patrol, you guys can be dealing with looking into the catacombs thing. Then I’ll have to take the time to do the other stuff, like the parade and posing for the statue they will make of me….”


That got a few laughs.




Ruby came back from her walk, seemingly in a much better mood. Perhaps it was hearing everyone laughing. “What’d I miss?” she asked.


They filled her in on what they had discussed, Ruby nodding along as she processed the information.


They had buried the manticore’s head outside of town, where it hopefully wouldn’t be disturbed. Elitheris chose to go with him. Mister Wiggles, his tail wagging happily, loved going on the adventure. He ranged ahead, sniffing at everything.


It took them a while to get out there, then had some trouble trying to find the right place. There were a lot of areas that looked something like the place they buried it, and it took longer than they would have preferred to find the right spot. Then it was a matter of digging. It was several hours before they got back into town, Taid with a makeshift bag over his shoulder made form the cloak of one of the manticore’s victims, laden with a vaguely spherical object that was about 60 cm in diameter. It was large, heavy, and bulky, but Taid shouldered it with pride, and couldn’t help but have a smile on his lips as they made their way back to town.


It had been almost two eightdays since they had killed it, and it was rotting. It stank, but the cloak helped to contain its stench. They’d still get whiffs of the stink when the wind changed direction, though.


“Is the state of that head going to cause any problems?” Elitheris asked as they walked back to town.


“Hopefully not,” Taid replied. “As part of the story I’ll just say that I wanted to really make sure that this was the solution to the problem of the disappearances before I gave anyone a false sense of hope.”


“Huh. Good point.”


Eykit, Almë, and Ruby, meanwhile had gotten some food. Well, Ruby had, Eykit and Almë waited for her to finish. Eykit waited impatiently, silently wishing that Ruby would eat faster. After a few minutes, he’d had enough, and went over to Malram, who was wiping down the bar after serving a pair of customers.


Almë, with his Elven sense of time, didn’t find Ruby to be taking up much time at all. From his perspective, it was like he looked away from her plate full of food for a moment, only to turn back and see that the plate was empty.


“Hey, Malram,” Eykit said, hopping up onto an empty stool at the bar. “I’ve got a question for you.”


“Sure, shoot,” Malram said, without stopping his wiping.


“I have no idea where the cemetery is in this town. I haven’t seen one, or any signs for one.”


“Well, there isn’t one.”


“What do you mean, there isn’t one? Where do the dead go?”


Malram smiled, with a twinkle in his eye. “That’s a question better answered by a priest. But I figure that depends upon whatever patron god you have.”


“Dumbass. You know that wasn’t my actual question.”


“Yeah, I know. Couldn’t resist, though. Actually, there are some catacombs, under the city. We put the bodies of the dead in there, in proper Dwarven fashion.”


“Are people allowed to go down there and check it out?”


“Sure. You can go down there to visit your ancestors if you have any, although mostly there are Dwarves down there. Not everyone chooses to put their dead in stone sarcophagi.”


“What’s it like? The catacombs, I mean.”


“Dark. I mean, the place is always a bit on the dim side. The fees they charge for visitors mostly go towards candles and lamp oil.”


“So anyone can just go in?”


“Sure. You have to register before they will let you in, though. The people that are interred down there are registered, and if you want to go visit them, you have to register as well. And sign again when you come out.”


The Goblin frowned. “Register again on the way out? Why?”


Malram raised a finger. “Just a sec,” he said, and got some drinks for a customer. He came back, picking up where he left off.


“There have been incidents in the past where some people got locked in overnight. It didn’t do them any favors.” He looked at the Goblin. “Do you have ancestors down there? I wouldn’t have thought Goblins had much truck with that kind of stuff.”


“Me? Probably not. I mean, I don’t know who my parents were. But I don’t think they were from here.”


“Hmm.”


“No, I was mostly just curious. Goblin funerary rites usually involve fire.”


Malram looked a bit uncomfortable. “Isn’t that kind of…tempting?” He blushed.


“Tempting? Why—Oh. Yeah, no. We don’t eat our dead any more. So no, not tempting. Besides, acrid herb bundles are used to make it not seem like a barbecue.” Eykit grinned, showing an impressive array of sharp teeth. “However, we often do have actual barbecue at funerals. As part of the ‘sending off’ of the dead. And likely ritualistic leftovers from when we did eat our dead.”


“Ah,” Malram said, relieved, both in knowing the Goblins weren’t eating people, and, more importantly, hadn’t insulted a customer.


“It’s always interesting to see what the customs are of different peoples.”


“Well, the folks at the House of Repose could tell you more, if you are into that sort of thing.”


“What’s the House of Repose?”


“Basically, a mortuary. They are the ones in charge of the catacombs.”


“Who’s the guy in charge of the House of Repose? The name of the mortician, or whatever.”


“Oh, there is a whole staff.”


“Ah. Thanks.”


“You’re welcome.”


Eykit hopped off the stool and went back to his original seat at a table. He was just in time, as the lunch rush was happening, and seats were becoming scarce.


He spoke softly to Almë, who was seated at a neighboring table. “Got the info on the catacombs. We’ll need to wait until Taid gets back, though, to sell it properly.”


Almë nodded. It made sense, given that this was a Dwarven town, Taid was the one who could say he wanted to visit his dead relatives. Elves buried their dead and planted trees on top of them, as memorial trees, which were considered sacred and never cut down for lumber. He passed the info off to Ruby, who sat at the next table over.


So they had to wait.


It took Taid and Elitheris about four hours to find where they had buried the head, then about an hour or so to dig it up, and then another hour to get back to town. It was late afternoon, and the sun was nearing the mountaintops. Soon the town would be in shadow.




As they walked into town, Taid asked, “Should I take this head and show it to my buddy Malram first before I go to the Civil Patrol? Get people excited?”


Elitheris looked at him, frowning. “Why? Why would you do that? The head is gross.”

“Just in case the Civil Patrol tries to cover it up or hide it. They might like the curfew. Gives them power. And they seem to type to want to hold onto whatever power over the people they can. I’ve seen them around. They like being able to force people back into their homes.”

“Well, I suppose….”

“This way, people will have seen it, and the Civil Patrol can’t deny its existence.”

“Well, if you are worried about the Civil Patrol, we could just go to the town square, pull it out of the bag, and go, ‘Look at what I’ve got!’ Everyone around will see it.”

“Yeah,” Taid agreed, “we’ll do that.” They came from the direction of the Meadows, and thus entered South Upper Dwarfchat. Elitheris let Taid get a short way ahead of her, just to not seem like they were together.

A short while later, Taid walked across the stone bridge that lead to the Walled City district. There were, of course, a pair of guards there, standing at ease with their partisans.

As Taid approached them, they crossed their polearms, blocking the way. “What’s in the bag?” one asked.

“It’s the head of one of the two manticores that have been plaguing the city for all this time.”

“Really.” The gate guard didn’t sound like he believed him.

“Yes, really,” Taid said matter-of-factly.


“Let’s see it.” The gate guard craned his head forward as Taid unlimbered the makeshift bag.


As he opened the bunched material of the cloak to show the guards the severed head, he said, “This is the cloak of one of his victims that I found in their cave.”


As the rotting head was exposed, both guards winced, moving their heads away from the reeking object. “Holy shit! So much for not believing you!”


“Yeah, that’s right,” Taid said. “And I’m going to let everyone know, and then I’m going to take it to the Civil Patrol office to let you all know that the terror has been taken care of. People won’t have to be afraid of being eaten any more.”


“Go ahead and please cover that nasty thing up again,” the guard said. “Go on in, then.” And at that, both guards moved their partisans out of the way and stepped back, letting Taid, and his rotting cargo, into the center of the city.


Elitheris started across the bridge when she saw that Taid had been let in. The guards stopped her too, asking her about her business. She told them she was out shopping, and heard that Ashjaw’s Weaponry made weapons of high quality. The two guards looked her over, made her unstring her bow, then let her in. She didn’t think she needed the bow in town anyway, and, even if she did, stringing it would only take a moment or two to accomplish.


She walked quickly, shortening the distance between herself and Taid. She wanted to be fairly close to him, just in case. She tried not to think about the narrow streets with the tall buildings on either side of her, threatening to fall upon her head.


She knew enough about Dwarven craftsmanship to know that the buildings weren’t going to fall down, but visually, the optical illusion of the narrowing sky made it seem that they would.


It was a walk of only about three blocks to the market square. And, while it wasn’t a market day, there were still a lot of people milling about, or going about their business.


Taid gazed around the market square, at all of the people moving around. He had no idea about how to address the crowd, usually he left that to Eykit, who was much better at telling stories and keeping people’s attentions. But Eykit wasn’t here, only himself. And Elitheris. He could see her standing several meters away. But when it came to addressing crowds, she was worse at it than he was.


There was nothing for it. He plowed ahead, trusting his instincts to choose the right words.


“People of Dwarfchat!” he said, as loudly as he could without actually shouting. He wanted his voice to carry, not become distorted into a scream. “Your long nights of terror are over!” He pulled the tattered cloak away from the head, and placed his foot upon it. The manticore’s face, frozen in a rictus of rage and pain, stared up at the sky, with Taid’s bootheel on its forehead. “I have defeated the manticores that have plagued the city for oh so many eightdays!”


At first, only a few people turned their heads to see what the madman was yammering on about. But as more and more saw the immense, toothy-mawed head, the number of people paying attention grew.




Soon, there were shouts and mutters in the crowd, and people jostling others just to see. Playing to the crowd, Taid hefted the severed head up above his head, turning it back and forth so everyone could see it. It looked like it was surveying the crowd.


Soon people were edging closer for a better view, and some even started to ask Taid questions. “What is it? How did it happen? What did it do? Tell us the story!” It was a cacophony of voices, all asking variations on those questions.


Soon Taid was surrounded by the crowd, the only thing keeping them from practically mobbing him was the stench of the rotting head. Elitheris was not part of that crowd; she moved back, letting the townsfolk flow around her towards Taid while she stepped back, out of their way. She had no interest in getting stuck in a crowd like that.

After the sixth or seventh time someone asked him for the story of the manticore’s demise, he relented, and told the tale. “I’m a wandering traveler, and when I came through Dwarfchat I heard about all of these things that had been going on. People being taken, deaths, flapping wings. And I heard all kinds of rumors about what the creature was: manticore, griffin, even a dragon.”


He decided to take a bit of advantage of the crowd. “Anyone got a beer? Lugging this thing around was thirsty work!” He heard some mutterings in the crowd, but couldn’t see that a spectator had sent someone to the nearest tavern to get the hero some refreshment.


After a moment, Taid shrugged and continued, “So I did some investigating, and found almost nothing the first few days. I got lucky one night, and managed to glance up into the sky at just the right moment, seeing a shape pass across the face of the moon. I followed it, and although it flew faster than I could walk I at least had an idea in which direction it was headed. It went southward, and so did I.”


By this time, there was a bit of commotion in the crowd, and Taid could see a frothy mug being passed through the crowd towards him. A Dwarven woman, her beard silky and decorated with ribbons and iridescent glass beads, handed him a mug of beer.


“Thank you, my good lady,” Taid said. He took a sip. It was good, and he actually needed it. His throat was drier than he had thought.


He went on. “Then I got lucky again, seeing a dark shape flying around a spire of rock. Then it disappeared. So, I figured there was a cave up there, where it lived.” He looked around at the crowd. They were rapt with attention, and now Taid could see why Eykit loved talking so much. There was a sense of power there. One that he’d never really thought much about before.


It was at about this point in Taid’s story when Eykit, wandering about the streets of Upper Dwarfchat, heard a commotion in the Market Square. It wasn’t a market day, but there was a big crowd listening to someone.


Probably an Awakener, he thought. Ayya Reese certainly likes to talk. I think he likes to talk even more than I do.


But as he drifted closer, he recognized the voice that was telling a tale, and it wasn’t the Awakener priest. It was Taid, telling the story of the manticores. The Goblin vaulted onto the bed of a nearby wagon, climbing up to stand on the seat. Now he could see over most of the crowd, and he could see the dark head of Maggie waving about over Taid’s head as he used it to emphasize his points. Eykit settled himself in to listen.


From his vantage point, he could also see Elitheris, with Mister Wiggles at her feet, standing away from the crowd. He nodded to himself. Yeah, I wouldn’t expect her to be in that mass of people. It would drive her crazy.


“Now, it’s idiotic to climb a mountain in the dark. So I tucked myself into a nook between some rocks at the base of the mountain. I figured that the last place a critter would look would be under his door mat.” That got some chuckles and laughs from the audience.


“The next morning, bright and early, I started my climb. It took me hours. But I knew I had to get up there before it got too late and the manticore woke up. I figured it was sleeping off its meal, and had been up all night, so the best time to climb was during the day.”


“There was indeed a cave up there. As soon as I climbed up into it, I got my halberd ready. And let me tell you, climbing a mountain with this thing strapped to your back is tricky. Gets in the way something awful. Halfway up I finally gave in, and tied it to a rope I dropped behind me. It made climbing much easier, although when I got up to the top I had to reel it in fast.”


He paused, and took another drink. “You see, once I was up, it smelled me, and roared. And roared again, and now I could hear it coming from deeper inside the cave! I pulled that rope up so fast my hands were a blur! I got Maggie—“ he wiggled his halberd to indicate what he was talking about—“ready just in time, for the manticore emerged from around a corner. It filled the cavern, its wings scraping the ceiling. It was huge, and the color of night. Black as pitch, it was, and it paced towards me, and I could see the glinting of light on its claws. They were twelve centimeters long, and now I knew what made all of the marks on the stone at my feet. Months…or years… of scrabbling claws on the outcrop of rock.”


He looked at the crowd, now even larger than before. Several people in back hopped up and down, trying to see. He tried harder to make his voice carry, so everyone could hear. “And then we fought. Me with Maggie, and it with its claws, teeth, and stinger tail. Well, it couldn’t really use its tail, being in the tunnel and all, which was lucky for me. My armor did its job, though, saving my life. That damn thing hit pretty hard. But I killed it.”


“But guess what? It wasn’t alone! It had a mate! And that one, angered at the death of its mate, charged out of the cave at me like an out of control wagon! It slammed into me, carrying both of us off the spire of rock. Into thin air we fell, but again Maggie came to my aid! I stuck the hook—“ he spun the halberd in his hand, rotating the hook to the front so people could see—“into its side, between the ribs. And then I hung on for dear life.”


“It tried to fly, and scrape me off, but I had gotten it in a spot it had trouble reaching. Holding onto Maggie’s shaft with one hand, I pulled out my sword, and stuck that into the beast to the hilt. Let me tell you, it didn’t hold as well as the hook did. But it certainly made a big gash! By now, we were getting close to the ground, even with the manticore trying to regain control of its flight.




“The manticore, tumbling through the air as we fought, finally got control of its flight just above the treetops. I could see the pines streaking past my dangling feet. I managed to strike the beast again with my sword, at the root of the wing. I must have hit a good spot, because the wing folded, and we crashed through the trees.”


“I took a pounding, and I think I hit every branch those trees had. But so did the manticore. Maggie had come loose, from both the manticore and my hand. So I had to find her first. The manticore wasn’t moving; the fall had finished it off. By the grace of Aheru-Mazda I managed to not have any broken bones. But boy, did I hurt. I limped over to the manticore’s body, and cut off its head. The other manticore was up inside the cave, and there was no way I was going to climb back up there. Not in my condition.”


He took a long draft of the beer, nearly finishing it. “I found a midden pile near the base of the mountain, scavenging this cloak, and used it to haul the severed head to a spot I could stash it. You see, I couldn’t just bring it into town right then. I had to be sure that it was the manticores that were taking and killing people, and not something else. When no one disappeared or were abducted over the last two eightdays, I figured that was enough time, and I had actually solved the problem! And here I am, with its head!”


There were roars of appreciation as the pent up tension, built up over months, suddenly released. There were mutterings in the crowd about how they were just realizing that no one had been abducted, and no flapping wings had been heard lately. Few people had noticed because they figured that whatever had been causing it had been taking people from the smaller villages nearby.


By now, the Civil Patrol arrived, and they pushed their way through the crowd to see what the kerfuffle was all about. They hadn’t been expecting the rotting severed head of a black furred manticore.




“What the hell?” the first Civil Patroller muttered.


“What’s going on here?” the second one asked. “Gods! What the hell is that?”


Taid told the story again, in a shorter form, leaving out any embellishments. Fairly boring, but to the point.


“Wow. A manticore. Two, actually. That would make sense.” The patroller waved his hand in front of his face, trying to blow the stench away from his nostrils. “How long ago did you kill this thing?”


“About two eightdays.”


The two Civil Patrollers looked at each other, and Taid could see the gears turning behind their eyes. “Well,” the first one said, “we haven’t had any abductions since then.”


The other one said, “Around about then. The last one was in Tahumzahar, I think. Yeah, I think it was there, and we haven’t had any since.”


The first patroller turned back to Taid. “So this was you that killed this thing, huh?”


“That’s right,” Taid said, humbly. He was trying very hard not to have a snide tone in his voice, or accuse them of something. Even if they were likely behind the whole thing, just to be able to wield power over the populace.


“Well, fuck me sideways. Nice job.”


“You guys have been asking me why I carry my polearm with me every once in a while, and I’ve been kind of coy about why, but this is why. I want to be prepared.”


The first patroller looked down at the head, especially its toothy maw. “If I were up against one of these things, I’d want a polearm, too. Nasty looking sucker.”


“I mean, you guys charged me for this halberd.”


The second patroller shrugged. “Weapon permits.”


“Yeah. ‘Weapon permit’.” Taid didn’t sound impressed. But at least he had a permit now. And his vocal affect was on purpose; he was trying to sound bigger than life, a hero able to take on vicious beasts solo, without any help. It was all bullshit, of course, and Taid knew it, but these two officers didn’t. The important part was to make it seem, to everyone in town, that he took on both manticores without the assistance of anyone else.


And it seemed to be working.


“Well,” the first patroller said, “let’s get this thing out of the marketplace. This is a place where food is served, and I don’t know of anyone else, but my appetite has been chased away and into a corner. We’ll take it to headquarters. Let them figure out what to do with it.” He turned to face Taid. “Uh, you weren’t planning on keeping this, were you?”


“Eww. No.” He wrapped it back up into the tattered and stained cloak, lifting it up over his shoulder. He followed the two patrollers, the crowd of spectators opening up in front of them.


The sun was setting, the tops of the mountains tinted orange in the last rays of the hidden sun.


The three of them walked to the Civil Patrol headquarters, past the street where Dain the Tailor’s shop was, taking the side street at Skadrel’s Alchemy Shop, and past City Hall. Elitheris followed discreetly.


Once there, the head was examined out in the back courtyard. Taid was examined inside an interrogation room. They took several hours getting all the information they could out of him about the manticores, what he did, how he did it, and, most importantly, where the lair was.


Taid gave them all the details that he could, keeping his story straight and keeping his friends out of it. Just in case. He didn’t trust these guys at all, but he tried not to let it show.


And once he explained to them where the lair was, the patroller in charge sent an underling to start preparing an expedition to check it out, document it, and retrieve any of the dead they could. It was going to take at least three days before they got back with the bodies and any news.


One highlight of the evening was that there had indeed been a bounty on whatever had been taking the townsfolk, and the Civil Patrol handed Taid a bag of coins, filled with 2000 marks.


Meanwhile, Eykit had spent the day walking the streets of Upper Dwarfchat, mentally cataloging what kinds of shops and services were in the town and where they were located. He even stopped at Borr’s Brewpub, and got a drink and a snack before continuing with his explorations. He had no agenda, except to see if he could find the Halls of Repose, but he didn’t bother to ask anyone any questions about its location. And as it turned out, he didn’t walk past it. It just wasn’t a pressing issue; he was sure that as soon as he asked where it was, someone would tell him. It wasn’t something that would be hidden. The most interesting thing he saw was the crowd around Taid in the Market Square.


Almë, Ruby, and Norolind just hung out at the Mountainstream Inn. They kept open ears about any scuttlebutt or rumors, hearing mainly the same things they’d been hearing for the past few eightdays. The main gist was that no one had stolen anyone’s Shards, and people were starting to really chafe about the curfew, and late in the afternoon someone came running into the tavern, shouting, “Hey! Some guy killed the manticores that were eating people!”


Several patrons were obviously excited by this news, and many got out of their seats to crowd around the person with the story, plying him with questions. Apparently, some hero had killed both manticores, and displayed its severed head in the market square, telling his tale of how he bested them. Then he and the head got taken to the Civil Patrol Headquarters. To hear the guy tell it, the hero not only killed the two manticores, but they were a mated pair, with offspring that the hero also killed. Also, the hero survived a fall from a tall cliff face, killing one of the beasts on the way down.


Almë and Ruby exchanged glances from their respective tables. They knew the real story, although the fall had actually happened. It was a miracle that Taid had survived it.


Once people heard that news, the general mutterings of the people in the tavern also included things like, “maybe the Civil Patrol will lift the curfew now.”


When the evening rush happened, Almë was able to overhear someone at the next table talking quietly. Apparently, they had heard someone who’d heard that there was some sorceress around raising undead somewhere.


He frowned. Sorceress? he thought. Why does that sound familiar? He wasn’t sure that he trusted the rumor, although he knew that somewhere, Kallia was out there. It’s just that he remembered that Taid had asked a tavern keeper if they knew of any sorceresses raising the dead. He had the feeling that the rumor that Taid had started was coming around again, and that this was likely another red herring.


He decided to sleep on it. He did not wake up screaming; his nightmares must have been sleeping as well.


Ralsday, Colding 19, 879 AFE



Eykit started out bright and early from the Silver Blossom Caravanserai. He’d known what Taid had in mind, and he didn’t waste any time telling anyone who’d listen that someone had killed the manticores, and that people would be safe now.


He didn’t know all of the details about what Taid had told the crowd at the marketplace, but he’d heard most of the tale. And he figured it was his job to spread that tale around a bit, and make sure as many people as possible heard about it.


As he made his way up the Switchback Road, he overheard two caravaners in a wagon talking. One was saying that he’d heard from someone who’d heard that there was some sorceress raising the dead. He hadn’t actually seen any, but he’d heard that they were out there, somewhere.




Taid had arrived at the Mountainstream Inn earlier, swaggering into the place. He set his halberd in the weapon and coat check area, then strode over to Malram, who was working at the bar. He grinned at the bartender, and leaned an elbow on the bar.


“Hey, did you hear that someone killed a couple of manticores?” he asked.


Malram nodded.


“That was me!” Taid said proudly. He then went on to recount the tale of his exploits, staying as true as he could to the tale he told the crowd in the market square.


By the time Eykit was up at the top, turning onto the road that lead into South Upper Dwarfchat, he was breathing hard, and his legs felt like lead. This is doing wonders for my ass, he thought, but gods, how do the Dwarves here do this every damned day? He rubbed his butt cheeks, trying to magically massage the ache away, but it didn’t do any good. He shook his head, as if to shake out the thoughts about soreness, and made his way to the Mountainstream Inn. He needed to talk to his companions about the sorceress rumor he’d heard. It was the closest thing to a lead they’d had.


Sitting against the wall of the inn was a disheveled Dwarf, sleeping on the street. He was old, white hair and white bearded, and looked like he hadn’t been to a barber in a generation or two. Bits of twigs and leaves, and few other things Eykit couldn’t identify, were scattered in his wild hair and messy beard. He snored loudly, the scent of alcohol noticeable from two meters away. Eykit frowned; the snoring sounded familiar. Well, he thought, I think it’s the guy who was sleeping on the docks! I’m glad he managed to somehow avoid the Civil Patrol. At least he isn’t in jail, or the stocks.

As Eykit went to open the door to the inn, he also detected the telltale scent of a Dwarf that hadn’t bathed in at least weeks. It was sharp and sour, and Eykit turned up his nose at the stench. He sped inside, closing the door quickly behind him to block out the odor.


He blinked a few times to clear the tears out of his watering eyes. It also gave him a moment for his vision to adjust to the dim interior. Malram, as usual, was tending the bar. Sheesh, he thought, does that guy ever sleep?


He saw Almë and Taid, sitting at different tables. Eykit gave them the thieves’ sign for “I’m going upstairs,” then did just that, heading to Ruby’s room. He hadn’t seen her or Nori in the tavern, so he assumed they were still up in the room.


Taid stood up, and leisurely walked upstairs as well, following about a minute behind the Goblin. Almë, for his part, wasn’t in a hurry, so he waited several minutes before following after Taid.


Elitheris had already been in the room, along with Mister Wiggles, Ruby, and Norolind when Eykit came in. He was excited, and had news to share. He practically hopped from one foot to the other as he waited for the others to arrive.


Taid came in rather quickly, but Almë took his own sweet Elven time. By the time he came into the room, Ruby was about ready for her next meal.


“I heard a rumor,” Eykit said, as soon as Almë had shut the door, “about some sorceress raising the undead.”


“Where?” Almë asked. “Did you get directions?”


Eykit shook his head. “No, sorry. Just that somewhere there was a sorceress raising the undead.”


Ruby frowned. “Sorceress? They didn’t use the term necromancer?”


“Definitely ‘sorceress’.”


“Odd,” the Hobbit said, thinking. Usually, mages that worked with the dead were called “necromancers”, or sometimes “necrothurges” by the pedantic. But sorceresses weren’t usually specifically associated with manipulating the dead. Although, she supposed, it was possible that a sorceress was “branching out”.


“Oh shit,” Taid said, his face reddening. “That sounds suspiciously like something I said to someone a little while back.”


Elitheris laughed. “Hey! I’m not the only rumor mill any more!”


“Damn it!” Taid exclaimed.


Eykit snickered. “Well, I thought I was getting something juicy. I guess not.”


“There may be no sorceress, but there is still the catacombs,” Taid said. “Who knows? I might have family there.”


“No kidding?” Eykit asked.


Taid shook his head. “It’s not likely. My folks are from an entirely different mountain range. But the folks who run the catacombs don’t know that. And I ain’t telling them.”


“We’ll all just have our own reasons for wanting to go in,” Eykit said. “Dwarfchat has a lot of non-Dwarves who live here as well.”


Elitheris frowned. “And I haven’t seen any cemeteries anywhere near town.” She paused, shrugged, and added, “Not that I’ve looked, but a cemetery is kind of obvious, you know?”


One question that went unasked was why no one had thought to check the local cemetery for grave robbers or other shady goings on?




“So, where are these catacombs?” Taid asked Eykit.


Eykit looked back at him. “What? How should I know? I suppose wherever the Halls of Repose are.”


“Fine. I’ll ask Malram.” He went over to the bartender, who was putting a couple of mugs of beer in front of a customer.


“Hey, Malram,” Taid said, “where are the Halls of Repose?”


“In the Walled City,” Malram replied, “by the riverbank, across from the castle.”


“Thanks.” He told the others, then went up to Almë and Ruby’s room. Once there, he set Maggie against the wall, then unbuckled his corselet and set that beside Maggie. He perched his helmet on the breastplate. He ran his fingers through his hair, doing what he could to fluff it up a bit. It was matted and sweaty from wearing his helmet. It wouldn’t do to show up armed for bear, and he should probably look respectable enough to visit any ancestors he might have. As he left, he looked at his gear wistfully, but left them there. If he met up with any undead, he’d just run. He went back downstairs, ignored the surprised stares of his companions, and walked out of the inn.


The rest of them filed out one by one, separated by about half a minute. Things were starting to happen, and it was looking like they might not need to keep up the ruse of being strangers. But they did it anyway, if only out of habit.


They made their way around the corner to the bridge that led into the Walled City, were ignored by the gate guards, and continued on into the old town. Down First Street, past the Temple of the Gods to the Market Square, then around it. Past Skadrel’s Alchemy Shop and Thandrim’s Pottery Studio. Two doors down, on the bank of the river, surrounded by manicured lawns, shrubbery, and trees, were the Halls of Repose.


It was a tall structure, made of stone like the other buildings in town, but of marble, instead of the granite of the other buildings. Light traceries of gold and bluish grey broke up the pale white stone like the veins of the earth. The front was a portico of columns, with decorated end caps. The twin bronze doors were three meters tall, and decorated with raised reliefs showing Dwarves performing their trades. Just about every trade was represented somewhere on those tall, imposing doors. There were no windows.

“Hey!” Taid said, craning his neck around the corner of the building, and looking across the river through the trees. “They’ve displayed my manticore head!”


The rest came over to where he stood, looking across the river towards Goldensand Castle. On a wooden stand was perched the head, right next to the bridge, where anyone could see it. The Baron, or Baroness, had decided to display it.


“It’s going to be used for my statue!” Taid said confidently.


“Right,” Almë said. He didn’t sound convinced.


“Come on,” Elitheris said. “Let’s go in.”


Taid pulled on the door. It swung open on silent hinges. “Huh,” he said, “I was expecting to have Eykit have to pick the lock.” He shrugged. “Silent doors for the silent dead.”


“Hopefully silent dead,” Almë added.


“Yeah,” Elitheris agreed.


Taid went in first; the rest stayed outside for the moment. They were still keeping up the ruse.


Once Taid entered, he could see a small lobby or office area, with a pair of corridors going off to each side. There was a desk, with a clerk. The Dwarf was writing something in a ledger. He looked up at the newcomer, put his pen down, and stroked his blue and yellow beard. He gazed at the visitor with warm, brown eyes.

“Hello,” he said, “how can I help you?”


Taid answered, “I’m just here to visit the catacombs. I’m traveling from afar and I’m curious to see if there is anyone in them who might be related to me out here.”


“Do you know the name of someone who might be interred here?”


“I know exactly what my family tree is, but I just want to go through and pay my respects, and see the catacombs that I’ve heard about.”


The Dwarf nodded. “Hmm. Okay.”

“It’s a respectful place, and since I’m traveling through, I figured I’d pay my respects in honor of the dead. I also killed two manticores, and I figured I could honor the victims.”

The clerk’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re the one who killed the manticores? Really?”


“Yeah. Figured I’d take a break, and come down here for some quiet, and be with my people.”


“Hmmm,” the clerk said. “Well, you do match the description. It’s hard to miss that beard, of course. Nice work, by the way.”


“Thank you,” Taid said. “You can check me in as ‘Taid’.”


The clerk opened up a second ledger book, flipped to a page with half the page lined with writing, and said, “Okay, you want to go visit someone?”


“They should be in there somewhere.”


“The catacombs are pretty extensive. Do you have any idea where you are going?”


“Not really.”


“You’re just going to go down there and read them one by one? You realize that there are thousands of people interred down there.”


“That’s fine.”


The clerk shook his hairy head. “Who am I to keep people from visiting relatives.” He took the ledger and spun it around so Taid could sign in. “Sign here, as well as your time of entry and current residence.”


Taid scribbled his name, and put in the time. The seventh bell had rung not too long ago. Then he put the Cellar Keg for his residence. It seemed like a lot of hassle just to visit a glorified cemetery.


“Then I’ll take you back and let you in.” He stood, and led Taid down the right side hallway. It turned to the left after passing a few closed doors, revealing a longer hallway that stretched down the length of the building. There were several doors along the length of the hall, and one at the end. Once they got to a door about halfway down the hallway, the Dwarf stopped, unlocked the door, and gestured for Taid to enter.


Taid entered a room that was simply a landing, with a set of stairs going down about four meters, with a door at the base of the stairs. The door looked like it had been, in a previous life, a bank vault door. It was one of the largest armored doors Taid had ever seen.


“Good grief,” Taid muttered. How often do they have problems with undead down there that requires them to have a door like that? How many necromancers are there here in Dwarfchat anyway?


The clerk followed Taid down the stairs, and when they got to the bottom, he pulled out a ring of keys. He used these on the four sturdy keyholes in the door, unlocking each one. He opened the door partway before asking, “Sir, do you have a light source?”


“Uh,” Taid said, “I could, I guess.” Taid could see that the catacombs were dim at best, with a faint lantern glow from a wall niche about eight meters past the door. It was pretty dark in there.


“Hmmm. A moment.” The clerk shut the door, then went up the stairs. He opened a cabinet built into the wall, and from a shelf he extracted a lantern. He lit it using the oil lamp that hung from the ceiling, came back down the stairs, and handed the lantern to Taid. Then he opened the door again. “Use the knocker when you want to come out.”


With the door open, Taid could see a brass door knocker on the inside of the door.


“The door is designed to amplify the noise of the knocker,” the clerk said, answering Taid’s unasked question. “It can be heard quite easily from most of the building.”


“Thank you very much,” Taid said.


“Try not to get lost,” the clerk admonished.


“I will do my best. I’m pretty good with directions.”


“Good.”


Taid entered, and the door closed behind him. He could hear a series of clicks and clacks behind him. It was the sound of the door locks engaging.


The tunnel stretched ahead of him some eight meters before a cross tunnel intersected it. He looked down at the oil lantern, glowing with an orange yellow light. Its light didn’t go too far, and Taid could tell that the oil used was of lesser quality. He cast the spell of Continual Light on the lantern, and its light output jumped to more than triple what it had been before. The area around Taid was lit up quite brightly.


The tunnel was about two meters wide by two meters tall. He could reach up and touch the ceiling. He had been expecting rough hewn stone walls, but what he saw was that the tunnels were lined with marble tiles, the same type of stone as the facing of the building above: white marble with gold and bluish grey veining. The tunnels were large enough to move comfortably in, but tall people like Almë or Elitheris would be banging their heads, and fighting in the tunnels would be difficult.

It smelled of damp stone, mineral and musty. He could hear faint noises, but the echoing of the sounds almost completely disguised what they were. He couldn’t tell if the noises were speech, or shuffling feet, or just his imagination. It was likely, he mused, that someone down here was going to be ambushing him.


He walked to the intersection. There was a lantern, set into a niche in one corner of where the two tunnels crossed, illuminating the crossroads. Looking down the lefthand tunnel, he could see two more lanterns in niches. From what he could tell, there were lanterns at spots where one tunnel met another. There didn’t seem to be any other lights, leaving most of the catacombs in either near or total pitch darkness.


Humans and Hobbits must hate it down here, he thought. Most of the other races had decent night vision, although that really only worked within range of the lanterns. Even Dwarves couldn’t see in pitch blackness; even their eyes needed some light to work with. Even Orcs, with their infravision, would have a hard time, since everything down here was as cold as earth and stone. Although they’d see living creatures just fine, and might be able to use their own “body light” as a kind of illumination source.


There were niches carved into the walls past the intersection, almost like inset bunk beds, each with a sarcophagus in it, often with decorative carvings on them. Some niches were carved so that the sarcophagi were slid into them end first, and Taid knew that those interred that way were always slid into the niches feet first. People wanted to talk to their ancestors’ heads, not their feet. Putting the bodies in head first would be disrespectful.


After they’d given Taid what they thought was enough time, Almë and Elitheris went in with Mister Wiggles,, leaving Eykit, Ruby, and Norolind outside, waiting their turns.


By that time, the Dwarf had gotten back to his desk, and had just flipped open the ledger he’d been working on when Taid arrived. He’d just picked up his pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and was poised to start writing when the two Elves entered. His eyes flicked up, and he sighed silently and put the pen back down.


“Ah! More visitors,” he said, smiling. “Hello.” He wasn’t sure what he could do for the two Elves; Elves buried their dead under trees, not in sarcophagi in catacombs. From what he remembered of Elven burial practices, no Elf would want their body separated from the land and buried in stone. Something about the Eternal, which seemed to be mostly about the cycles of life, or some such. He’d been trained in the various funerary practices of all the races of the Empire, but the ones he dealt with on a day to day basis, and thus actually remembered, were mainly the Dwarven and the Human. And Humans were all over the map when it came to dealing with their dead. Some buried the dead in coffins, some burned their dead on pyres, some just chucked them into the sea. Some of the Humans that lived in Dwarfchat actually did inter them in the catacombs. Many of them even visited their dead, just like Dwarves did.


“Hi,” Almë replied.


“What can I do for you guys? I can’t imagine that you have a relative that you need interred. Did you lose someone and need some services?”


“No, I don’t need to buy any coffins or anything like that. I’m just here to visit the catacombs.”


“They seem to be popular today. All right, sign here in the ledger.” He got the other ledger that Taid had signed not long ago, and put it in front of Almë and Elitheris.


Almë signed, noting the time and his current place of residence, which was the Mountainstream Inn. Elitheris did the same, but putting the Cellar Keg down as her current residence.


“Come with me,” the clerk says, and he leads the two Elves down the corridor to the door and the stairs. He takes a lantern out of the cupboard, lights it, and hands it to Almë. “Here you go,” he said, “you’ll want that to see where you are going. It’s dark down there.”


He then went down the stairway, unlocked the door, and opened it for the two Elves. “Use the knocker when you want to come out. If you aren’t out by sunset, we’ll be coming through to find you and lead you out.”


“Thanks,” Elitheris said. “Hopefully we won’t be down there that long.”


They went in, and the clerk shut the door behind them. Like Taid, they could hear the locks engage. The only lights were the lantern Almë carried, and some lights up ahead, one much brighter than the other. There was also a squat shadow up ahead, vaguely Dwarf shaped.


The Dwarven clerk sat back down at his desk, put the registration ledger back in its place, then opened up the records ledger he’d been working on. The ink on his pen had dried too much to use, so he wiped off the sticky residue, used his fingernail to scrape it out of the channel of the nib, and dipped it back into the inkwell. He had gotten three words down when the door opened and a Hobbit and a Goblin walked in.


Gods, what now? he thought. But what he said was, “Hello, how may I be of service?”


Eykit said, “So I have a question about burial or interment.”


“And I think I may be able to answer it.”


“So, I lost a friend at the Shardmeet.”


“Ah, yes. We heard. It was very tragic. I suspect we will be seeing some new…clients…soon.”


“Yes. I was wondering what it would take to have my friend interred here.”


This pleased the clerk. He smiled sympathetically and said, “Well, you pay for the sarcophagus and the space in the catacombs.”


“And you have available space?”


“Yes. We try to stay ahead of the demand. Your payment for the space is not actually for your space, but to pay people to build new spaces and keep this place running.”


“Would it be possible to see the location of the spot where my friend might end up?”


Ruby watched the exchange with interest. Eykit would have made a good member of her guild. He’s got the devious mind necessary to get ahead.


“Sure,” the Dwarf said.


“I would love to do that. If I could get in and you can just give me a map of wherever the new places are.”


The clerk shook his head. “We don’t have maps, but I can give you directions.”


“Directions would be great, sure.”


“So, go straight.” The clerk watched to see if the Goblin was writing it down or memorizing the path. The Goblin had pulled out a scrap of paper and borrowed the pen off his desk. He hadn’t noticed when the Goblin had done it. But he continued, “At the first intersection, go straight. Then take a right, and then take the first left. Follow that one for three turns, and you should be in the area where there are some empty niches.”


“Is that, like, the new wing?”


“Yes, that’s where we are constructing new areas.”


“All right. Well, thank you so much. I’m really interested to look it over. My people believe that somebody should check in to where they’re going to be buried before it happens.”


“Right,” the clerk agreed. “Makes sense.”


“Thank you.” Eykit indicated the ledger the clerk had been writing in. “Sign there, I assume?”


“Ah! No,” the clerk answered, and got the registration ledger out and turned to the correct page. Eykit could see the recognizable signatures of Taid, Almë, and Elitheris. He scribbled the name of one of the informants he knew, glad the members of his guild had made him learn his letters and taught him to read.


The clerk turned to the Hobbit. “Are you with him?” he said, indicating Eykit.


“Yep,” Ruby said.


The clerk eyed the dog, thinking about having to go down into the catacombs with a shovel and a pot. “Uh, ma’am, please make your dog do his business before entering the catacombs.” Pets weren’t commonly brought into the catacombs, but they weren’t barred from entering. But he really didn’t want to have to clean up any messes, especially from such an immense dog.


“Sure, sure,” Ruby said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” She led Norolind outside, and a couple of minutes later returned. “Okay, we’re ready.” She looked around. “Where are these catacombs?”


The clerk stood, muttered, “Man, busy today,” and led them down the corridor. He went into the room with the cabinet and stairs, took out a lantern, lit it, and handed it to Ruby. Then he unlocked the door that Eykit would swear wouldn’t be out of place in a bank.


Eykit frowned. What is a door like that doing in a place like this? What is this being protected against? What’s down there? Are they keeping things in, or keeping things out? The fact that he’s letting us in there armed only with a lantern implies it should be safe enough. Okay, I’m officially confused. He didn’t ask the clerk, though. If someone he knew was going to be interred down here, he’d know why the door was there, right?


The clerk unlocked the door, and opened it. “Use the knocker when you want to leave.”


As Eykit and Ruby passed through the doorway, they could see the large brass knocker on the inside of the door. Eykit tried it. It boomed loudly enough to make him wince. The clerk winced as well.


“It’s designed so we can hear it just about anywhere in the building,” the clerk said, with a pained expression on his face. He’d been on the other side of the door, where the sound seemed to be louder.


Maybe there was a built-in megaphone in that door or something, Eykit thought.


The door closed and locked behind them. Up ahead, though, they could see their friends, waiting for them.




Taid chose to walk in the back, with his extra bright lantern. He was thinking he could walk in front, but from the way everyone was trying to shade their eyes from the bright lantern, he could tell that with that in their field of view, everything else would be pitch black, and they wouldn’t be able to see very much. He also noticed that Almë kept hitting his head on the ceiling, even though he was trying to walk stooped over. Elitheris fared only slight better; and only had to keep her head lowered a bit. Although using her bow in the catacombs would be difficult. She’d need to hold the bow at an angle, and wouldn’t be able to raise it up very high, and she’d be in a position where she wouldn’t be able to apply her full strength to the draw.


Almë squatted down, trying to control his breathing and get into a meditative state.


His companions waited patiently for Almë to go through his ritualistic breathing. It took less than a minute, and he stood up, focused. His staff, he noticed, was too long for the corridor, and he had to tilt it a bit to keep it from banging on the marble tiles. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up damaging the decorative metal ends. He hadn’t been expecting the Dwarven tunnels to be so small.


Ruby considered casting a spell of Bravery on Eykit. Her keen eye had noticed some telltale expressions when Eykit thought there might be danger around. She surreptitiously cast the spell on the Goblin.


Eykit all of a sudden felt an odd sensation, as if he was being manipulated somehow, but that feeling disappeared almost as soon as he noticed it. Replacing it was a sense of being able to do just about anything. The tunnels seemed a bit brighter, not as dark, and being surrounded by the dead was no longer a problem. Even if the dead came back to life, he could handle it.


“Which direction should we head?” Taid asked.


Eykit gave a quick summary of the directions he was given. “That seems to be the direction to go to get the place where the freshest corpses are going to be. There are a bunch of open niches for sarcophagi there, apparently.”




“Lead on, Eykit,” Taid said.


Eykit started following the instructions he’d been given, followed by Elitheris, Mister Wiggles, Almë, Ruby, Taid, and finally Norolind. The big dog was guarding the rear. If something came up behind them, they would have to face a very large canine.


The tunnels were narrow; they had to move single file for the most part, although with a bit of maneuvering, they could move past each other. Visibility was a bit difficult, since the main light source was at the back of the group, and everyone’s bodies were casting shadows in front of them. But Eykit had a lantern, as did Elitheris, so navigating down the dim corridors wasn’t too much of a problem.


As they moved down the marble hallway, every now and again Almë would bump his head, resulting in a softly muttered swear. He was wearing a gambeson helmet, so he wasn’t being injured, but it still hurt a bit. Elitheris, when she wasn’t careful, would do the same on occasion. The hallways had been built for Dwarves.


“Taid, are all Dwarven towns built with low ceilings?” Elitheris asked after she had whacked her head.


“No. Even the underground cities have high ceilings and expansive spaces. Most of the time. I’m sure there are some places that have low ceilings, although I suspect those are special cases.”


“Good. Walking in here hurts my neck, and maybe I might like to visit a Dwarven undercity someday.”


Eykit led them down the hallway. It twisted and turned, then came to a T-intersection. A lantern sat in an alcove across from the opening, which was the usual place for a light. While they had been twisting and turning, however, there were no lights, except those that they had brought. On both sides of them were niches filled with sarcophagi, which, presumably, held one of the dead.


When Eykit got to the T-intersection, he said, “This is where we turn to the right.” He led them onward, until they got to a hallway that branched off to the left. There was a lantern here, too, illuminating the intersection.


“We turn left here,” Eykit told them, before going that way. “Next I was told to go down this hallway for three turns. No mention of turning down any intersecting tunnels, though. So we continue onward.”


The tunnel stretched out in front of them until it disappeared in the darkness. The lights they had didn’t go that far, although they could see another lantern up ahead of them, presumably lighting up an intersection. Eykit led them past it, and ahead of them they could now see that the tunnel turned to the right, and a slight amount of light was visible from around the corner. There must be an intersection just past the corner.


There was. Eykit, following the instructions, ignored it. The noise of their passage echoed around them, although it didn’t seem to disturb any of the denizens laying quietly in their stone coffins.


The tunnel turned another corner, and although they could see a light in the distance, it was too far away for them to see any detail. As they neared the light, it resolved into another lantern in a niche, just before the tunnel turned to the left. Some of the lights were candles, rather than lanterns, and their light wasn’t as strong.


“That must be the third turn,” Eykit mentioned. “There should be some open niches shortly after that.”


The Goblin strode forward, past the light, which showed a side tunnel that was dark and longer than their lights could illuminate. He could see a faint light far down it, however. He turned the corner, the rest of his band following behind.


The instructions given were correct; after about eight meters or so, he saw some empty niches, tiled in marble. Farther down, even the faint light, he could see that some excavated niches hadn’t been tiled yet. At the far end of the tunnel, a light could be seen, some fifty meters away.


Rock chips, dust, and debris could be seen in the corners of the niches, and along where the floor met the walls. The area, still under construction, hadn’t been fully cleaned yet.




Now that they were here, they stopped moving. And beyond the sounds of their own breathing, and the slight rustling of clothing, they could hear faint tapping noises, echoing from the distance.


Ruby told Almë, “I’d like to cast the Spell of Fire Armor on you.”


“Won’t that be dangerous to anyone around me?” Almë said, looking around to see where everyone was.


“Yeah. That’s why you’ll go to the front. You’re big, and fill the tunnel. Nothing can get past you without getting burned.”


“Uh, okay.” Almë shifted past Eykit, who’d moved aside to let him pass by.


Once Almë had moved the two meters or so away from everyone else, Ruby cast her spell on him. He erupted into flame. He, of course, was immune to the flames, but that immunity didn’t apply to anyone else.


He started down the corridor, heading towards the intersections up ahead. No one could really see past him; he and his flames filled the tunnel from top to bottom and almost side to side. He looked like a walking campfire.


He came to a side tunnel going to the left. Up ahead was a T-intersection, with a lantern marking it. He moved to the T-intersection, trying to puzzle out where the tapping noises were coming from, but the roar of the flames around him made him unable to hear very well.


Almë went to the right. About twelve meters ahead of him was a candle placed opposite a side tunnel, and the tunnel he was in disappeared into the darkness beyond it. The flames roaring in his ears made it impossible for him to detect the direction of the tapping noise, so it was up to Eykit or someone else to discern a potential direction. All he could do is step far enough away to not interfere with their hearing.


He turned down the side corridor; there didn’t seem to be any lights down this direction. There were empty niches along both walls, all rough hewn, and without marble tiles dressing them up.


Eykit was straining his ears, trying to determine where that tapping sound was coming from. It seemed to be behind him; turning down the dark tunnel apparently was the wrong direction. “Uh, I think we’re going the wrong way.”


They reversed direction, letting Almë get back in front at the intersection by shifting to the left first, then letting him go to the right. They followed him, staying a respectable distance away. Eykit could still feel the heat radiating off of him, even at that distance. Every time Almë would bang his head on the ceiling a jet of flames would puff out like a crown.


The tunnel turned to the left, leading to a tunnel that stretched far into the darkness ahead of them. They could see three faint lights ahead of them in the distance, likely marking intersections. They moved on.


They passed the first light, a candle, with a tunnel going off to the left. When they got to the second light, another candle, there was a tunnel going off to the right. The tapping sounds seemed to be coming from there.


Almë, hearing the tapping noises above the roar of the flames, turned down the right side corridor. It went straight for about eight or so meters, then turned to the left. On both sides were rough-hewn niches in the walls, empty and untiled.


Turning the corner to the left, the hallway stretched ahead of them. The tapping noises were louder now, and as they moved closer they could see a pair of Dwarven stone carvers plying their trade to shape the walls and niches.


So engrossed in their work they didn’t notice the increasing light until Almë, the bonfire man, was within ten meters or so. They both scrambled to their feet, the faces twisted in rictuses of fear as the fire demon approached them. They held their picks in front of them, defensively; they weren’t sure if their tools would make good weapons, but they weren’t going to just die without a fight.

“Hey guys!” the fire demon said jovially, as if everything were perfectly normal. “How’s your day?”


The two terrified Dwarves backed up, away from the fire monster.


“Oh, hey, chill!” the fire demon said. “It’s just we overdid it on the light source a little bit! We are actually here to investigate—”


One of the Dwarves managed to find his voice and said, “Why…why are you on fire?”


Almë stopped moving towards the two frightened Dwarves. “I’m on fire because of my friend back there and we didn’t have a good light source.”


A frown creased the Dwarf’s face, visible behind the beard and the glasses both of them wore. “Your friend set you on fire? What a nice friend that was,” he said sarcastically.


“Yes, yes, it’s actually quite nice. Nice and warm. It’s a bit chilly down here.”


Neither of the stone masons could really wrap their minds around what was happening. They could see movement behind the hunchbacked flaming man that filled the corridor, and the only way out. The flaming man didn’t seem to be threatening, but the closer he came, the less room they had to back away. As it was, if he stayed there too long, all of the air in this section of the tunnels would be used up.


Almë could see that the two Dwarves were wide eyed and looking at him funny.


“So,” Almë said, his voice altered slightly by the roaring of the flames, “have either of you seen anybody suspicious down here?”


“Besides you,” Ruby said, smirking.


“Besides me, obviously,” Almë added. He saw the two workers trying to look past him. “We have a whole investigation battalion here. So, um, see anything suspicious?”


“No?” one of the Dwarves said. The quaver in his voice made it come out sounding like a question.


Almë looked at them contemplatively. Should we kill them? he thought. They saw us all together, and will probably spread rumors about the burning Elf group. But really, they only saw me, and, he straightened up, whacking his head on the ceiling again, ow, dammit, so maybe they didn’t see all of us. I am glowing fairly brightly, and I don’t think they can see very well past me. Good. I don’t have to kill them. Extremely lucky for them!


“Well, guys,” he said, “have a good day. Sorry for scaring the pants off of you.” The flaming Elf turned around, making shooing motions with his hands so his friends would reverse their course. They went back around the corner to the intersection, where they let Almë lead again.




Ruby decided that the flame armor was no longer necessary, and ceased to maintain it. It flickered out shortly thereafter. The way ahead was a bit dimmer, with only their lanterns to light the way, but the only person who had difficulty in dark places was Ruby, and she was just ini front of Taid, who had the lantern with the very bright light spell cast upon it. She had no problem seeing the area around her.


They moved down the hallway, niches on either side, filled with stone sarcophagi. They were out of the areas where new niches were being built. Turning a corner, they moved on, coming to an intersection that lacked any light at all. They had passed two intersections without lights before, as they followed Eykit’s directions. But for the most part, all intersections at least had a candle. This one, however, did not. The side corridor was fully tiled, and lacked any niches at all.


Almë led them down the side tunnel. After about fifteen meters or so, they came to a large, locked door similar to the one they first entered through. It was covered in cobwebs, dusty with age. It didn’t look like it had been opened in a long time.


Eykit noticed that Almë had been leaving footprints in the dust on the floor. There hadn’t been any dust anywhere else in the catacombs. But this hallway didn’t look like it got used much. He wondered how often the Halls of Repose sent janitors in to sweep the floors. He made a mental note to let them know that their cleaning crews had missed this section.


Almë tried the doorknob. It was locked, and the door was solidly set into the framing. It didn’t budge at all; an example of precision Dwarven craftsmanship.


“Eykit! We need your expertise here!” He flattened himself against the wall to let Eykit pass by.


Eykit pulled out his lock picks, and started on the top lock. It took a couple of tries, but he unlocked it. He moved to the next one, and the next, and the last, although that one seemed to take quite a while to get through. Four locks, just like the other door they entered the catacombs through. It took him about two minutes to get through all the locks, and he was pretty fast at picking locks. These locks had been rather complicated, and difficult. And likely more expensive than “regular” locks. They weren’t the hardest locks he’d had to pick, but they were up there in terms of difficulty.


Eykit opened the door, very slowly. There was a slight creaking noise, but it wasn’t very loud. He peered through the crack between the door and the jamb, not wanting to expose himself to whatever might be not the other side.


The door opened on a wide cave or tunnel, with scattered mushrooms growing haphazardly all over the floor and up the walls. There were multiple types of fungi, many of them bioluminescent, which provided the only light in the area besides their lanterns.

Eykit noticed that he had to exert a bit of effort to keep the door open. It seemed to be weighted in such a way as to naturally close, or had springs in the hinges. He also noted that there were mushrooms growing on the other side of the door, giving it a bit of camouflage. He wasn’t actually sure if that was intentional or not.


Almë got impatient, and reached over Eykit’s head to grab the edge of the door. He heaved back on it to pull it open. The movement of the door made the bell attached to it ring out. The jingling echoed throughout the cavern complex.


The group moved out into the tunnel. It was larger than the catacombs, and was about eight meters wide and six or so tall, encrusted with mushrooms. Taid noticed that all of them were edible varieties.


Taid slipped his crossbow off his shoulder, stuck his foot in the stirrup, and crouched down to grab the string. Straightening up, he pulled the string back until it engaged the latching nut, and placed a bolt on the stock. He was ready.


There were two directions they could go: left or right. They could see a curve to the right; the left seemed to go straight until the haze of spores in the air obscured their view.


“Is this stuff safe to breathe?” Ruby asked.


“Yeah,” Taid said. “It’s common in mushroom farms. It’s actually a sign that there is some ventilation. If the air were still, there would be nothing to cause the mushrooms to spray their spores.”


“The air smells fresh,” Elitheris added. “Fungusy, but fairly fresh.”


“Safe to eat?” the Hobbit asked.


“Most of them,” Taid replied. “Some need to be cooked first. Got the nibblies?”


Ruby shrugged, smiling. “Any of these safe to eat raw?”


“Yeah, that one,” Taid said, pointing to a cluster of orangish cream colored mushrooms.


Ruby broke a hand-sized piece off, and started chewing on it. “Not bad.”


“They taste better cooked with garlic and a bit of salt.”


“Most likely. Maybe with a bit of butter, too.”


“We’ll go this way,” Almë said, turning to go down the left hand passage. The rest of them followed, the two dogs sniffing at the bases of mushrooms. Mister Wiggles lifted a leg on one of them, leaving his message.




After about twenty or so meters, the tunnel opened up into a huge cavern. There were mushrooms everywhere, clustered into areas of like types. Some of the mushrooms towered over the floor of the cavern, but most were no more than thirty centimeters across. They grew thickly, in fecund clusters. Hanging from the four meter high ceiling were glowing strings of bioluminescent growths, providing much of the light. It wasn’t very bright, but it was enough to navigate the room by without bumping into too many things.


A susurration of noise echoed throughout the caverns, an odd mix of shuffling and what seemed to be distorted voices.


There were several pathways between various groups of mushrooms, or at least places where no mushrooms were growing. Most of the cavern seemed to stretch out in front of and to the right of the tunnel entrance they were exiting. The cavern was immense. At least as large as the catacombs were, if not larger.


And now that they were in the cavern and past the entrance, they could see that some areas where mushrooms grew had been cut or broken off.


Alme and Eykit said it almost at the same time. “This is the Mushroom Grove!”


Eykit said, “They have tours for this thing. Now we can say that we broke off from our tour group by mistake, and we ended up somewhere. We got lost and had no idea how to get back.”


He looked around at the extensive areas of fungus farms. “The big problem that I foresee is that five people registered to enter the catacombs. What happens when zero people come out?”


Almë shrugged. “They’ll search for us, maybe.”


“And a big open door,” Taid said.


“The door closed,” Eykit said. “It seemed built to close automatically.”


“Right.”


“But your point is well taken. The fact that the dust on that floor was disturbed will show anyone down there that the door had been opened, despite the truly obnoxious number of locks on it.”


“Yeah, Eykit, you took a long time on that door. I thought you were supposed to be good at that.”


“Shut up, Taid. Those locks were of high quality.” Eykit grumbled something in Mekiitagi. Then he continued, “I’m just saying that someone will notice.”


Almë started wandering amongst the mushrooms, making his way across the cavern using the pathways. It was actually a beautiful place. Not the kind of garden he was used to, but gorgeous nonetheless. He appreciated the subtle variances of biolumenescent colors, all in soft, pastel shades.


The rest of the group followed him. In the distance, dozens of meters away, they could see the far side of the cavern, along with what appeared to be openings into other caverns, similarly filled with fungal growths.


It was, indeed, a fungus forest.

“There are a lot of mushrooms down here,” Elitheris said, remembering the mushroom sampler plate she’d be given when they first got into town. “And no weather to ruin crops.” She stopped to look more closely at a mushroom. “Still have bugs down here, though,” she said, gazing at a a few albino insects. She couldn’t tell if they were just living on the mushroom, or eating it.


Taid gazed around. “Depending upon how many more caverns like this one there are, it’s probably big enough to feed at least most of the city, all year long. With some extra to export. Mushrooms, while filling, aren’t the most nutrient-dense things you can grow.” He leaned down, taking a look at the base of the mushrooms. They were being grown in a pile of wood chips, compost, and loam, likely brought in from the surface by whomever did the farming in the Mushroom Groves.


The Dwarves, while big fans of mushrooms, knew that mushrooms alone couldn’t support a civilization. They still relied on surface farms, hunting, fishing, and gathering, although they did consume more mushrooms per capita than any other race.


The sounds they had been hearing sounded like they were getting closer. It was also starting to resolve into something that they could actually recognize and categorize. Movement, and voices.


Taid whispered, “I think it’s a tour group.”


By now, they could hear people chatting amongst themselves. Whoever they were, they were still hidden behind the cavern walls, the stands of mushrooms, or both.


Almë hushed everyone, and gestured for them to hide. There were lots of places to crouch between the taller stalks of mushrooms, and, for the most part, everyone found a hiding spot that seemed to give them enough cover not to be seen.


Elitheris grabbed Mister Wiggles, telling him “Quiet,” while holding him on her lap. He was a bit big for that, but the alternative was worse.


Ruby found a place behind a row of tall and squat mushrooms, and had Norolind lay down behind them. Then she scurried to find a place to hide herself.


They didn’t think that the voices coming towards them were a physical danger, but if they were discovered, it might cause some problems, especially if they were accused of theft, since they didn’t pay for tour tickets, or, worse, trespassing. S


Either way, they would have to deal with the Civil Patrol, which could get sticky.


Around the corner emerged three Dwarves, each with a huge basket on their backs, and machetes in their hands. They seemed to be headed towards the middle of the cavern, which was more or less in the direction of the group. Suddenly, they stop. They’d seen Elitheris and Mister Wiggles.


“Where is your group?” the first one asked. “What are you doing down here?”


Elitheris didn’t answer. The three Dwarves, still a dozen meters away from her, whispered amongst each other. They’d seen her holding a nocked, but undrawn arrow, and didn’t want any trouble. They backed away, back around the clusters of mushrooms, and when they couldn’t be seen, broke into a run. They didn’t need any deaths from some hooligan in the groves.


Moments later, shouts could be heard, warning about an intruder in the caves.


Once the mushroom harvesters had run away, the group moved back the way they came, before reinforcements or Civil Patrollers showed up. Back into the tunnel. Ruby was the most sure that the tunnel they entered had been the one they’d come from. It was sort of hard to tell, with all the mushrooms in the way.


Almë wanted to check the tunnel in the other direction, where the curve was.


“People are going to coming in here looking for, well, me, probably,” Elitheris said. “So you’d better make it fast if you want to do any more exploring down here.”


They passed the door, closed now, although Eykit saw four keyholes, just like on the other side. Getting into that door might take a while, he thought.


The continued onward, mushrooms growing on either side of the central pathway. The tunnel curved to the left up ahead of them, and once past it, it opened up into another cavern. Smaller than the previous one, but still large in absolute terms, being in excess of seventy meters across. The floor sloped down; the whole cavern was like a shallow bowl.

Like the other cavern, it too was filled with mushrooms. Around the edges, where the cavern floor was the most sloped, were orangish mushrooms that had a very savory scent, almost like that of meat.


Unlike the previous cavern, this one was mostly filled with bluish mushrooms, growing on logs laid out in rows taking up most of the center of the space. Many of the logs, obviously rotting, were picked clean of mushrooms, leaving only fibrous scabs of fungal material behind. This area was harvested too.

Seeing only more mushrooms, and no evidence of rogue necromancers, they went back to the door leading into the catacombs.


Eykit pulled out his lock picks again, and set to work on the door. He kept his hearing ranging towards the first cavern, trying to hear if anyone was coming for them. But it was a long way away, and the mushrooms tended to dampen out sounds.


This time, he only took about a minute to get the door unlocked.




Wanting to stay in the newer, more recent area, they went back the way they came, going to the left. They turned the corner, and were faced with a long, relatively straight tunnel with three lights denoting side passages. The second light lead to the pair of masons that Almë had terrified with his fire demon impression. As they passed that side tunnel, they could hear the masons, hard at work, their mason’s chisels tap tap tapping away at the stone.


They moved on, past the third light and around the corner. Ahead of them, they could see a pair of lights, a candle and a lantern.


“Are we at the spot of the three turns?” Eykit asked.


“I’m not sure,” Almë responded. “It’s hard to tell, but I think it’s that lantern up ahead. But I think we should go back down the tunnel where that candle is.”


They filed down that tunnel. In the light of their lanterns they could see that the tunnel went straight for about thirty meters or so, with a series of side tunnels branching off of it. It didn’t take them long to discover than none of the side tunnels went very far before ending. They found nothing but mostly empty niches. The few sarcophagi that had been interred had dates that were mostly dated from the month of Colding, 879 AFE.


They filed back out, and went to the lantern. When Eykit had led them to this spot, following the directions given to him, he’d checked the names carved into the sarcophagi. He recognized several of them, so he knew he was in the right place.


They went down the side corridor marked by the lantern. They passed a side corridor off to their right that had no light at all marking it, choosing to go down to the end of the tunnel and make the right turn. Six meters ahead of them was a lantern, and a side corridor going to the left. They went that way.


The dead interred here were also relatively recent; they didn’t see any dates older than the last four months or so. They passed a side corridor marked by a candle, but found that the niches, while marbled, were empty. The tunnel didn’t go too far before turning to the left, but every niche they saw in that tunnel was vacant.They moved past it, and turned a corner. There was a fairly long tunnel, with side corridors to the right. Nothing to the left, just niches.


Ahead of them, the tunnel turned to the right, then after thirty or so meters, to the left. In some of the niches they passed they could see wilted flowers, offerings left by the loved ones of the dead.


They walked up to an intersection marked by a lantern. Branches went off in all four directions. They did seem to be near the edges of the catacombs, judging by the branch directions.


Eykit checked his list of instructions. “Guys? I am going backward from my list of instructions. But now it seems different than when we took it the first time. The corridors don’t match up with the description. I have no idea where we are.”


“Múco!” Elitheris muttered.


“Well,” suggested Almë, “just pick a direction, then.”


They went to the right, away from the edge of the catacombs. With all of the twisting and turning and sloping tunnels, they had no idea what cardinal direction they were going in. And this tunnel didn’t help; it twisted and turned back and forth several times before they got to a branch unmarked by a candle or lantern. They could go to the left or straight. The tunnel to the left turned again, while the one going straight dumped into a T-intersection, also unmarked by a light.


“Go straight!” Taid called from the back. He didn’t know where he was going, and couldn’t really see past all of his companions. But it didn’t matter, they were lost, and if the other Dwarven catacombs were any indication, and everything about Dwarfchat’s catacombs made him think so, there were multiple ways to get where one was going. They weren’t in a true maze, with a single true pathway, although they could definitely feel like one.


At the T, they went to the right. They stared down a long, dark corridor. They went almost the entire length of it before getting to a lantern. They could go left, or straight.


Eykit, watching nameplates as he wen’t down, recognized one. “Hey! I know that one! We’ve been here before.” They were back at the area where there were those new niches. “It’s a little twisting maze. Anyone have any way of marking where we’ve been?”


“I’ve got some chalk,” Almë said.


“Okay, I think I know where we are,” Eykit said, looking around at the names on the stone sarcophagi. “The instructions said: straight, right, left, follow the tunnel for three turns, then right. I’m pretty sure we are in the tunnel just before that final right turn. So, we follow this tunnel back for three turns, then right, then left, then we should be out.”


“You da boss,” Almë said.


They followed Eykit’s instructions, past the three turns, took a right, then a left. There was a tunnel that snaked around several corners in different directions, and turned into a straight tunnel some forty meters in length before it got to a lantern-lit four way intersection. Directly ahead of them, some twenty meters or so away, was a solid looking door with a large knocker.


“Thanks the gods!” Eykit exclaimed. “No offense, Taid, but this place is depressing.”


As they approached the door, they saw a sign on the wall. The words carved into it were “Halls of Repose”, in various scripts and runes.


“Are we leaving?” Taid asked. “We haven’t found anything in this place that we were actually coming here for.”


Almë shrugged. “I have no idea how to search for it. I thought we could monitor it or something, but I’m out of clues here.”


“Well,” Ruby said, “it’s not like cemeteries are usually crowded, even when important people die. Except for funerals, cemeteries are usually pretty quiet. Maybe someone should play dead and just hang out here, waiting for something to happen.”


“I don’t think this is a place where we can just camp out until something happens,” Almë said.


As they were deliberating, the door opened, and two Dwarves walked in. The door closed behind them, and they moved towards the group of people filling the intersection. They had a lantern, and looked like people visiting their dead, not workers coming to do some stonework.


“Uh, hello!” the first one called out, a Dwarf with a beard striped with green and black. “We’re going that way,” he said as he pointed to the right.


Elitheris and Ruby moved the two dogs out of the way, and Eykit flattened himself along the wall to let the two Dwarves past. They walked the sixty or so meters, their light receding and growing faint, before turning the corner at the end of the tunnel.


Almë was getting frustrated. Had he been an Orc, he would have torn something out of the walls by now. Instead, he showed his frustration only in the tone of his voice, which got a bit whiny. “Does anybody have any idea what we should do with this whole thing?”


“No,” Elitheris said.


“I don’t know either,” Ruby said, giving Nori a scratch by reflex.


Almë continued, “Should we just…I don’t know! Burn down the palace and scream Kallia or something?”


“Sounds reasonable to me,” Ruby said. She must have been frustrated too, even to joke about burning down a noble’s palace. The backlash from that would be…difficult to handle, and cause some major problems. She’d likely need to watch this Almë person. He could be a potential threat. He wasn’t all that dangerous, a Central removal team could take him out no problem, but he was just clever enough to potentially do some damage first.


“Cool,” Almë said. “Then Ruby and I have a mission to do. Burn the shit down! Technically, I only need Ruby since she is a fire mage, but do you guys want to join and create a mess and see what happens?”


“I’ll leave that to you,” Elitheris said. She had little interest in burning anything down. She’d been there and done that already.


“I mean, if anyone has any better ideas, I am open to anything. I have no idea where to go from here.”


Ruby watched Almë with a practiced eye. She had trouble figuring out if someone was joking or not, and Almë seemed sincere, so she wasn’t entirely sure how serious he was about attacking a member of the nobility of the Empire. Nobles attacked nobles all the time, but Almë was a commoner. He’d be attacking someone above his station, which would make the nobles—even nobles with hate-ons for each other—band together to take out the common threat.


She closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of Norolind’s fur beneath her fingers.


“I have no idea about what we are supposed to be doing here,” Elitheris said.


“I was expecting that we might at least find a clue,” Eykit commented, in a tone that sounded vaguely disgusted.


Almë strode to the door, grabbed the brass knocker that was shaped like a fist, and used it to knock on the door, twice. The door, with its built in sounding chamber, boomed. It was very loud.


A few moments later, they could hear the sounds of a key in locks, and the clerk opened the door.


“Oh, hello!” the clerk said. “Coming out?”




“Uh, yes,” Almë said. The clerk held the door open while everyone and the two dogs came out.


“Please tell me those two didn’t leave a mess down there?” he asked.


“No,” Elitheris said, “they were good doggies.”


“They didn’t desecrate the dead or anything,” Ruby added.


“Well, the cleaning staff will appreciate that,” the clerk said, as he let the door close, then locked it.


“How has your day been?” Almë asked the clerk.


The Dwarf replied, “A bit busier than usual, but not a bad day. You guys managed to lead each other out of there fairly well.”


“The Goblin over there had some instructions. Came in handy and we managed to find the exit. So, there aren’t that many people that come in here every day, right?”


“Correct. Except on holidays. We seem to get more people visiting their dead on holidays.”


“Were there any non-Dwarves in the last few days that came to the catacombs?”


“Yeah. There was a Human.”


“A Human. Can you describe him to me?”


The Dwarf fingered his yellow and blue beard. “I don’t know, he looked like a distraught father and middle aged, I guess, for a Human. Blonde hair, clean shaven.”


Almë tried to remember what Lennerd Fountainsmith looked like. Human, middle aged, bearded, brown hair. Not blonde. Damn, he thought. I guess that would have made it too easy.


Taid was thinking ahead. If we want to get back into this place without suspicion, we just gotta figure out how to take the mushroom grove tour so we can come in through the back door. He also wanted to talk to the clerk.


“Hey,” he said, “I’ve got a question for you.”


“Okay,” the Dwarf said, with a hesitant smile.


“I heard someone talk about seeing some weird guy in the catacombs, who didn’t respond to their hails, and for some reason scared the shit out of them.”


“There was some talk about that, but it was probably just someone lost in their own world, mourning their dead. And they just didn’t hear or respond or whatever. I don’t know why anyone would feel fear about that.”


“Do you know who it was?” Elitheris asked.


“Um, I can go check and give you the list of names.” He walked back to his desk in the lobby, the group of people following behind him.


He opened up the registration ledger, and rattled off eight names of people who’d been into the catacombs in the last three days. They were all male.


“Only men?” Elitheris asked.


“Well, no, I assumed you only wanted the male names, since your friend there mentioned that someone had seen some guy.” He turned back to the ledger, and read off another six names, this time all female. In all, there had been thirteen people who visited the catacombs in the last three days. “Also, that’s not including you all, or the two who entered just before you left.” He showed them the ledger. All thirteen of the names had their residence as “Dwarfchat”, so it was all locals. Some of the names listed inns, or caravanserai, and some had other towns like Lytan’s Mill or Sheepshear.


“I did get kind of lost down there,” Taid admitted, “because as you said, it’s a little crazy maze down there.”


“Yeah,” the clerk agreed.


“I got pretty far in there, and there was this big door. Kind of like the door at the entrance. Where does that go to?”


“The Mushroom Groves.”


“Oh, the Mushroom Groves! Is there a reason it’s locked?”


“We don’t want anyone coming into the catacombs and getting lost and then dying. So we want to make sure that we control who goes in or out.” He didn’t add that the main reason for the security was to keep thieves from stealing grave goods. No one knew the amount of treasure down there, but often times people were buried with their favorite weapons, armor, and jewelry, for use in the afterlife. But there was no reason to mention that and spark any greedy desires.


“Why was there a door there in the first place?”


“It’s just an emergency access in case something happens to the door here.”


“Cool. It’s an impressive door.”


“I hope so. It’s built to keep people out. The catacombs can be a dangerous place if you don’t know them very well.”


“Yeah, I can see that.”


“I don’t even know them as well as I wish I did.”


They left, and started on their way back to the Mountainstream inn.


“Why don’t they have a map of that fucking place?” Elitheris asked. “Wouldn’t that make sense?”


Taid considered. “They might have one, but they obviously aren’t sharing it. Or they want to keep the spirits confused. If the spirits can’t find their way out, they can’t disturb the living. There are tales of such things, and the spirits of the dead don’t think very well anymore, so it’s easy to confuse them. So they make it confusing. And they also want to fill the space fairly efficiently, while leaving room for the sarcophagus niches. So the paths double back on themselves, and branch, all to fill the volume with places for the dead.”


Almë was thinking about the names. “We’ve got the names, but even if we managed to find the people, what would they tell us? ‘Yeah, I saw something weird.’ We know it’s likely a zombie already. Then what? Where was it? ‘In the catacombs.’ We know all that already.”


“Then do we camp out? I don’t know about the other side. The Mushroom Groves side. How do you get into them normally?”


Almë shrugged. “Just take the Mushroom Groves tour. We can take the tour and, I don’t know, escape them and go wherever. But we also don’t know what we’re looking for.”


“We spent several days camping out on the road looking for people carrying bodies,” Taid pointed out. “If we think there are zombies being made or something down in there, maybe we need to camp on both sides of this thing. Two on the Mushroom Grove side, and two or three topside.”


“Yeah,” Almë agreed.


“Just to see if there’s any weird stuff coming or going. It might work.” Taid was unsure, but unwilling to give up and he had no other ideas.


“The manticores are gone,” Ruby said, “and we announced that. And no disappearances have happened since. So probably the guards and the curfew will get removed, and then we should wait an eightday or two to see if it starts happening again. Then, if necessary, we can set up another trap like a Shard game or something.”


“Well,” Taid said, “when I brought in the manticore head, the Civil Patrol had said that there hadn’t been any abductions.”


“Yeah,” Ruby said, “but probably there were no disappearances because the guards were out, and no people were out.”


“Ah, right.”


“That’s actually a bit worrisome,” Almë added. “Let’s say they had to use the catacombs to get more bodies, and because we killed the manticore, it cut off their source of bodies. And now we are reenabling the source of bodies, and we are sitting in the catacombs at the wrong time waiting for them while they are up in the streets abducting people again.”


Ruby maneuvered her way through Almë’s confusing explanation. “Yeah, you have a point.”


“And they start stealing people outside again, right?”


“Yes, yes. I mean, we can still wait outside, and watch for a couple of eightdays or something. It’s a nice city. We can wait here.”


“The joke about burning the palace down was only half a joke. I mean, I wouldn’t burn it down, but we could just go there and openly talk to them. We could tell them that we know about Kallia and this necromancy shit, and do you want to help us? If not, we will likely create chaos here. We can just be open about it, get it out into the public, spread some more rumors about the necromancer. We are good at spreading rumors.” He nudged Elitheris, and winked at her. She just rolled her eyes. “Maybe it would draw her out or something.”


Almë seemed to get more excited. “Then she would probably send people after us. We kill them, except for one, and interrogate him, and ask where is your hideout. Then we find her and kill her. Fuck her up.”


Taid nodded his head slowly.


Almë wasn’t done yet. “We just go to the Mountainstream Inn, as one big group. And we spread the rumors that we are looking for her and that we are there and whatever. And we wait for her to attack us and then figure it out from there.”


“Or,” Taid countered, “we could say we found some writing in the catacombs with her name on it. Like in blood or the dust or something like someone wrote her name before they died or whatever. We can make some really crazy shit up.”


“Sure! It just has to reach her that we are in the city. That’s it.”


“Right,” Taid agreed.


He didn’t say out loud what he really thought of the idea of baiting a powerful necromancer and having her and her unknown number of minions come for a violent visit. There was a high amount of risk involved.




“So I guess we are going back to the Mountainstream Inn, and just get a second room or something.”


“As a group, or separately? If we group up, it will definitely let her know we are here.”


“Yeah, yeah. Just draw her out and let her take us.”


When they got back to the inn, Taid went over to the bar, and Malram. There weren’t a lot of people in the tavern at the moment, being between the lunch and dinner rushes.


“Hi, Malram,” Taid said, “I need a beer.”


Malram smiled, and got him one, placing it in front of the Dwarf with the skull patterned beard. Taid looked a bit uncomfortable.


“Okay,” Taid continued, “we were in the catacombs, and we’ve been hearing these stories about people seeing things they don’t understand. And I’m gonna be straight with you.”


HIs tone of voice made Malram pay a bit more attention. He stopped wiping the bar, and looked directly at Taid, nodding in acknowledgement.


Taid said, “We’ve been tracking necromancers for a while, right? I mean, me and umm, all these fine folk behind me.”


“Ah,” Malram said. “Explains why all you guys kept coming in here.”


“Yeah,” Taid admitted. “So we did kill the manticores. Not just me, but all of us were actually involved in that. It was all kind of a ruse because we’ve been trying to like, keep our heads low because we believe that there is a necromancer here, of great power, whose name is Kallia. And we don’t know if that’s just an alias, or her actual name. We have some clues about where she’s at, but nothing’s been working. So we are coming out of hiding a little bit here and trying to figure out where she is, because this network of friends she’s got has been reanimating people with Shards.”


“With Shards?” Malram asked. He’d just been given a large amount of information, and, if true, meant that the town wasn’t as safe as everyone assumed. If true. It did sound a little…paranoid.


“Yeah, with Shards. They’ve been reanimating people, and we won’t go into the details, but it’s not good. It’s actually really, really bad. These people have been just not doing good things with the dead and the living. We suspect that she is probably fairly high up in the town’s political structure. But we don’t know how high up. So does that name ring a bell for you at all? Or do you know if there are any kind of ‘hush hush don’t talk about it’ things in the town that everyone just sort of looks the other way on? We’re willing to investigate it all. We took out the manticores, and we’re not afraid to go after this necromancer and her minions.”


While Taid had been talking Ruby surreptitiously cast the Spell of Loyalty on Malram.


The magic energy flowed from her fingers and entangled the bartender’s brain. He suddenly shook his head, saying, “What was that?”


He had resisted the effects of the spell.


“I’m not sure I like what just happened here,” he said, giving the group of people in front of him a glare.


“What just happened?” Taid asked, confused. He wasn’t sure what had just happened here either.


“Someone just tried to cast a spell on me!”


Thanks, Ruby, Taid thought. He wasn’t sure what kind of spell it was, but it it didn’t involve a plant, so it wasn’t Almë, and Elitheris didn’t have the spell casting ability or the subtle spells required. Whatever goodwill they’d had with Malram was, at least for the moment, gone.


Damn it, Ruby thought. He’s got some willpower. That should have overwhelmed him.


“I believe you guys can go now,” Malram said, still with that firm glare in his eyes. He didn’t like unknown spells cast upon him, and he wasn’t even sure if the spell had been successfully cast or not. For all he knew, he was growing a third arm out of his back, or maybe the spell had done something to his brain, and made him a slave. Would he know? How would he tell? He watched as the group went upstairs to their room.




Once there, they decided that it might be better to all move down to the Silver Blossom Caravanserai, where Eykit had been staying. That would give Malram a chance to calm down. There was no guarantee that Malram could pin the magic on them anyway. He hadn’t seen anyone casting it, and Taid’s reaction had been genuine, and no one else copped to being the perpetrator. They could easily deny having any part in it, whatever “it” was.


Eykit went on ahead, to arrange for a large stateroom that would support them all. As he entered the courtyard, a caravan was leaving, which was convenient. Surely there would be a room available.


There was one, and the Goblin secured it, then went up the two flights of stairs to the third floor, where it was located, and chose the bed in the corner, away from the window and door, tossing his pack on it to claim it.


He met the rest of the group down in the tavern, leading them up to the room, where they made themselves comfortable. They discussed the next steps of their plans.


“I’ll go to the Civil Patrol tomorrow,” Taid said. “They sort of like me now, and I can go out and say, ‘hey, the real reason we’re in town is that we’re looking for this person named Kallia.’ And even if I think the damned Civil Patrol is in on it with her, then maybe them putting two and two together might get Kallia to attack us or something.”


“A desperate plan, and dangerous,” Elitheris said, “but I’ve got nothing better.”


The rest agreed as well.


That night, Almë woke them all up with his screams. Eykit, thinking quickly, hopped out of bed, grabbed Almë’s staff that lay by Almë’s side on the floor, and hit him over the head with it. Not too hard, but hard enough to make a ‘throk’ sound and wake the screaming Elf to full consciousness.


Almë sat up in bed, rubbing his head. “Ow!” he said. “You know you can just shake my shoulder to wake me, right?”


“I’m not touching you,” Eykit replied. “I don’t want whatever you have that causes that.” He dropped the staff and hopped back into his own bed. “Try not to have any more dreams,” he said, rolling over.


Everyone else went back to sleep as well.


Almë did not give the others any details about whatever it was that had woken him up. He got up out of bed, and padded down the hallway to the washroom. He poured water from the pitcher into the wash basin, and splashed water on his face. He wasn’t planning on going back to bed, or to sleep. There were horrors there that he didn’t want to revisit.


When he got back to the room, Elitheris asked, “What kind of dream were you having there, buddy?”


“The shocking kind. I can’t even talk about it.” He saw her nod of acceptance of his answer, and told her to go to bed. He would take the remaining watch shifts. He had no intentions of sleeping.



Starsday, Colding 20, 879 AFE

Shortly after dawn, Taid went to the Civil Patrol headquarters. He went alone, and in full armor with Maggie. The gate guards stopped him, but only momentarily: they seemed to recognize him even before he grudgingly pulled out the medallion that gave him a weapons authorization. He strode past them, mumbling under his breath.


The Civil Patrol headquarters was next to the City Hall building, overlooking the lake and the waterfalls from the top of the cliff.


Taid walked in, hoping to see someone he recognized from before. Alas, while some of them might have been familiar, he couldn’t recall any of their names. It was likely too early, and the shift that was on duty wasn’t the same shift as the people he’d met before.


There were a few people in the office, and the supervisor sitting at his desk. Taid walked over to the desk sergeant, the other people’s heads rising and following him with their eyes as they noticed his armor and weapons. The medallion hung on its chain around his neck, openly displaying his weapons permit.


The desk sergeant, a Dwarf with a beard dyed in black and white tiger stripes, watched him as he approached, eying his polearm and breastplate with a mix of curiosity and concern.


“Hello,” Taid said, as he stopped in front of the desk. “As you might know, I was involved with the manticore. The one on that pike out there.” Taid pointed a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the location the Baron had perched it on a sharp, pointed stick.


“Ah, yes,” the Dwarf said, scratching an ear. “I heard about that.”


“The reason I came to town though, is because I’ve been looking for a necromancer. I’ve had some dealings with some necromancers along the way, and some of the clues have brought me to this area. And then I heard rumors the other night of weird stuff going on down in the catacombs, like people seeing things they didn’t quite understand or recognize. I’ve dealt with several of these necromancers across the Port Karn area. And I’m just looking for clues about any kind of problems with necromancy or sorcerers, or anyone else doing shady things that you guys know about.”


The desk sergeant gazed at Taid, frowning in thought. “Necromancy? There really hasn’t been anything necromantic happening as far as anyone has been able to tell. But you mentioned something about the catacombs?”


“Yeah. It was vague, though. No specifics.”


“Well, someone told us about something yesterday. They found an arrow, scrawled in blood, down in the catacombs.”


“An arrow in blood?”


“Yeah, like they got lost or something, and lacked anything else to leave as breadcrumbs. But it seems rather strange, because, you know, that’s not something that usually happens. The folks at the House of Repose go down there all the time to make sure no one is running around lost down there.”


“Huh, I was down there yesterday. I didn’t see it.”


“Apparently it wasn’t too far from the entrance, either. Which sort of makes the ‘lost’ idea even more odd. Whoever did it must have been absolutely panicked, not realizing that they were right there at the entrance and could have gotten out easily had they kept their wits.” The Dwarf shrugged. “Perhaps the folks at the Halls of Repose should give all visitors a questionnaire to ensure no one who might get too scared can go down there. Anyway, I don’t know if that has anything to do with anything, but you had mentioned that some people had seen some odd things in the catacombs. And I consider that kind of odd.”


“Yeah, it is,” Taid replied.


“No one, as far as we know, is even lost, and everyone has been accounted for. It’s why they have that register.”


“They keep records over there?”


“Yeah, who goes in, and who comes out. To make sure that no one gets lost in there.”


Taid stood in thought, silent for a few moments. Then, “So, nothing going on that resembles necromancy?”


“No, there hasn’t been anything. No exhumations out of the catacombs, and there’s been nothing about anyone seeing dead people running around.”


“Does the name Kallia ring any bells?”


“No, not at all.”


“Damn Kallia, she’s like a fucking ghost,” Taid muttered fiercely. Then, to no one in particular, he said, “She’s got to be around here somewhere. Someone has had to have seen her.”


The Dwarf at the desk shrugged. “Sorry,” he said.


“Alright,” Taid said, “that’s interesting, and good to know. Thanks.” He turned to go, but then stopped. “I’m staying at the Silver Blossom Caravanserai. If you run into anything like any other clues or anything regarding the undead, let me know. I’d really appreciate it. Look, these people I’m after are not good people. I’ve come across letters that led me to believe that this Kallia person lives in the area.”


“Okay.” The desk sergeant didn’t think any of these so-called clues would fall into his lap, but his job often involved mollifying the populace in one way or another. It calmed the populace to think he’d actually do something, even though he found it unlikely that he actually would.


“These people are definitely deep into the necromantic arts. And I’ve seen some of the outcomes of these peoples’ works and it’s not good.”


“Oh yeah? What kinds of things are we talking about here?”


“Reanimation of children, of Orcs. People stitched together into a single creature.”


“Uh,” the Dwarf looked a bit paler, “is that a thing now? That sounds like a new kind of necromancy.”


“That’s what I’m here: to try and understand what’s really going on here. So I can put a stop to this before it gets worse.”


“Okay.”


“And so the manticore was just a side effect of me being here, and you know, running into it while I was here. Because of course I’m going to run into a manticore while looking for a necromancer. It’s why I tend to carry this halberd around with me all the time. You never know when you’ll need it.”


“Do you think this manticore was the necromancer’s pet?”


Taid shrugged. “It could have been. Anyway, if you see me walking around with Maggie, here, now you why. Because I tend to run into things. Or things just find me; I don’t know why.”


The Dwarf nodded.


Taid continued, “They said it was originally a dragon, and I was like, oh no, I don’t know if I’m prepared for that. Even me, Taid the Mighty. But you know, fortunately, it wasn’t a dragon. That would have been just freaking terrible.”


“Yeah, it would have.”


“And you know, beards are not good with fire.”


“No they are not.”


“So anyway, if you have any stuff, if you have any information, I’d appreciate it getting relayed to me. I’ll share whatever I find with the Civil Patrol.” It kind of hurt him to say that. He didn’t trust them, and he expected to actually have to fight his way out of the building. So far, none of them had made any moves, but it was only a matter of time. They were likely having more patrollers flank the building and cover the exits so he couldn’t escape. He eyed the narrow windows. He could fit through them, but it would be tight, and he’d need to climb through them, not just jump. No, if it came to it, he’d need to fight his way towards a door.


The Dwarf nodded, and said, “If I hear anything about necromancy, I’ll definitely let you know. Where are you staying?”


“Silver Blossom caravanserai. The name is Taid Lasu.” He paused, then said, “Maybe I’ll go check out the catacombs and see if there is anything happening there. Hey, did you send anyone down there, when you heard about this arrow of blood?”


“We sent a person down, but they didn’t really find anything. They didn’t even find any bloody arrows.”


“They didn’t find the arrow in blood? Interesting.”


“Although, oddly enough, there was a dark smear. Maybe someone tried to wipe it away. Wasn’t too far from the entrance. But that is all they found. A dark smear. Hardly anything to send a patroller to look at.”


“Thank you for the info,” Taid said.


“You’re welcome.”


He hiked all the way back down to the Silver Blossom Caravanserai to talk about the new information he had.


“It’s not a ton of information, but maybe we can head back to the catacombs and look for this dark smear.” He paced around the room as he spoke. “See, because when we went down there, we just followed the instructions Eykit had. Maybe we can take better records this time.”


“Yeah,” Elitheris said.


“When we went down there, there were tunnels heading left, straight, and right. The left had lights, and neither the straight or the right tunnels had any. We went straight, following Eykit’s instructions for how to get to the newly interred area. We never went right, or left. So we should look near the door for this smear, and go at least a bit down the right and left to find it. And that might be the right path to take.”


“Right,” agreed Elitheris.


“I don’t think we covered more than ten percent of what’s down there. We just found the door and split. I’m sure there are a lot of winding tunnels that branch and split, but reconnect somewhere. And we just haven’t been down most of them. And we should at least try to make a simple map. I don’t want to measure anything out or take a lot of time, but we should be able to make a simple map to help us not get lost.”


“So, we go back to the Halls of Repose?” Almë said.


Taid nodded. “The bloody arrow smear thing is the only clue we have. I say let’s check it out.”


They walked all the way through Lower Dwarfchat, up the Switchback Road, through Upper South Dwarfchat, across the river to the Walled City, and eventually go to the Halls of Repose. It had been a long walk, in the warm mountain sunshine.


They entered the lobby, as a group this time. There was a clerk there, a different one than the day before.


“Hello,” Taid said. “We spoke to the clerk yesterday, and he was kind enough to let us in. But we didn’t find what we were looking for. We’d heard about some stuff going on in the catacombs, like someone saw something they didn’t quite understand.”


“That’s what we’ve been told, yes. But we didn’t see anything when we went down there.”


“Yeah. And we didn’t see anything when we were down there yesterday either. But I’ve since spoken to the Civil Patrol and they talked to us about a smudge or an arrow that was written in blood. So we want to go down and check it out. Do you know anything about that?”


“No,” the clerk replied. “Something was written in blood? An arrow?”


“Yeah. So the Civil Patrol came down to check it out, but all they found was a smear. And so we want to go back and try and find this thing. I’ve got plenty of light, but we’ll take a lantern. I’ve got my own light source.”


“Ah, that explains the glowing lantern that is currently everyone’s favorite, because it’s so bright.” The clerk smiled.


“Actually, I don’t need it to be a lantern,” Taid said, as he cast the spell of Continual Light on the tip of his short sword. “If something comes at me, I’ll just stab it. I’ll see it coming.” The tip glowed brightly, scattering shadows around the room as he waved it about. Then he sheathed it, and the lighting levels in the room returned to normal.


“Are you ready to go into the catacombs now?” the clerk asked.


“Yes. We’re ready,” Taid affirmed.


The clerk led them down the hallway, then down the steps to the locked door. He made quick work of unlocking all four locks, and let them in, closing the door behind them.


Taid was in front, Maggie held horizontally in his right hand, the glowing sword in his left. He’d need to be careful; the tunnel was too short and too narrow for him to rotate her around. He was only able to thrust in the direction of the tunnel. He noticed that he couldn’t really get a good swing with her either. There was just not enough room to maneuver.


Almë and Ruby were having similar problems with their staves. Both kept scraping and banging them into the ceiling and walls when they weren’t careful.


They moved to the first intersection, not having found any smudges in the section that led from the door to the intersection. The first intersection was marked by a lantern in a small nook in one of the corners.




The left hand tunnel had more lights, so they went that way first, figuring that if the Civil Patrol came down here and actually found something, it must have been the most well-lit section.


They moved to the second lantern, looking for the smudge. Farther down the hallway was a third lantern. The side corridor went straight for a short ways, then turned to the left. They continued down the hallway to the third lantern, which also marked a side corridor. Like the previous one, this one went straight a short ways, then turned to the left. Niches for sarcophagi lined both sides of the hallway, as they did all throughout this area. On each sarcophagus were carved the names, birth dates, and death dates of the interred.


In front of them, the long hallway turned to the right about twenty meters past the third lantern.


They kept on, following that same hallway. Taid’s short sword, giving off nearly daylight levels of light, illuminated the hallway and niches well enough for him to see a hand-sized dark splotch on the wall between a pair of sarcophagi niches about six meters ahead of him. It was on the left side of the wall from their perspective. Just up ahead of them was the corner; the tunnel turned to the right.


The smudge, theoretically, could have been blood. It was hard to tell, most of it had been wiped off or smeared. It was definitely a blemish on the nearly pure white of the marble tiles that lined the stone walls of the catacombs. It certainly wasn’t part of the patterning of the stone.


The smear didn’t look like an arrow, but it really didn’t matter. There were only two ways it could have been pointing, and one of those directions led back to the exit. They continued on, turning the corner.


Far ahead of them they could see a faint glow from a lantern. The dead flanked them on either side, most of the niches being dug along the direction of travel, although they did pass a couple of sections where the dead had been interred feet first.


They walked to the lantern, which, unsurprisingly, denoted a side corridor. Taid held out his sword, illuminating the tunnel as much as possible. It went as far as their eyes could see, and had multiple lights far in the distance.


Taid shone his sword down the hallway they had been following. Now that they were past the lantern and its glow, they could see that the tunnel ahead of them was dark, with no lanterns or candles showing. There was an unmarked tunnel going off to their left only about five meters ahead of them. There was a niche for a lantern or candle across from the opening, but there was no light within it. Wax residue indicated that there had been candles there before, even if there was none at the moment.


They hadn’t seen any other smudges, or arrows drawn in blood. They kept moving straight, past the lantern, past the unlit hallway.


As Eykit passed the unlit hallway, he heard a moan. Or, at least, he thought he did, over the racket that he and his friends were making.


“Guys!” he whispered. “I heard something. A moan, and not the sexy kind!”


“Where?”


“I think down this side tunnel.”


The group of people and dogs backed up, allowing Taid to stay in front. He was, after all, the most armored, and had the weapon with the longest reach. Taid, Maggie in one hand, bright sword in the other, looked down the hall. He could make out a distant candle about thirty meters away. The tunnel was dark beyond that.


They proceeded down the tunnel. Taid, the rest of his companions following behind in a long line, got to the intersection with the candle and looked down the side corridor. It was maybe twenty meters long, and there were two candles. Beyond that, the tunnel turned to right not to far past the second candle.


Ahead of him, the hallway turned to the left about six meters ahead of him.

There was another moan, and several people heard it, not just Eykit. It didn’t sound too far away, either. It was dry sounding, with a bit of raspiness, and somehow weak or lazy somehow. It had sounded like it had come from up ahead of them, from around the corner.

They all exchanged silent glances. Taid got a series of nods, indicating that they all wanted to move forward to investigate the moan. He led them around the corner.

Up ahead of them, the tunnel stretched some twenty or so meters. There were two candles, one not to far in front of them, and the second at the end of the passage, where there was a T-intersection. They continued onward, past the side corridor, and approached the T.

Taid looked both ways when he got to the intersection. Neither hallway went more than about six meters before ending in a dead end. But in the right side hallway was a hunched over figure, dressed in rags.

The figure turned its head toward Taid. In the light of the glowing sword, Taid could see that its face was a mess. It only had one eye, no nose, and half its mouth was missing. Taid could see most of the teeth on one side of its ruined face.

It stood up from its crouching position. Taid could see that it didn’t have the reddish, wet, crawling skin of a Shardzombie. It had the dry, sunken skin of what he could only call a “regular” zombie, unenhanced by any Shards. It was dressed in an old, tattered coat, with a separate hood. One hand had a glove on, the other was bare, its bones nearly visible through the torn skin and muscle.

It seemed to smile.

“Are you lost?” Taid asked. He was sure he knew the answer, though.

It moved towards him.

Rewards Granted

3 cp
They found a zombie!

Report Date

17 Aug 2024

Primary Location

Dwarfchat

Secondary Location

The Tondene Empire

Related Characters

• Almë
• Elitheris
• Eykit the Eel
• Mister Wiggles
• Norolind
• Ruby Smallburrow
• Taid Tehoredor Lasu