Chapter 3 - Misgivings (part 1)

1


            The weather worsened as they rode down the coast, but though the wind and rain picked up and lightning crackled across the sky above the bay, no more ghouls showed their pale faces.
            Once they left the road, the route leading out to Foxglove Manor was a three-mile hike along a narrow path that followed the Foxglove River from the covered bridge where it flowed under the Lost Coast Road to the dark sea cliffs overlooking the Varisian Gulf. Wild sea birds called out to a roaring ocean that churned hundreds of feet below. It seemed almost as though the farther they went, the more sick and twisted nature herself became. Nettles and thorns grew more prominent, trees were leafless and bent, and the wind seemed unnaturally cold and shrill as it whistled through the cliffside crags. The path slowly rose, bending around a steep corner in the cliffs, and then Foxglove Manor loomed at the edge of the world, the strangely cold sea wind rising to a keening shriek as the manor came into view.
            Devin was of towns and cities, not the country, and so always felt a little out of place without the background flow of people and the warrens of ways and buildings, but even his own jaded perception of the land as they'd progressed had degraded from prepared acceptance to ominous. Maybe even malicious. What wasn't poisonous or venomous anywhere else felt like it probably would be, here.
            The place had earned its local nickname of the "Misgivings" well, for it almost appeared to loathe its perch high above the ocean, as if the entire house was poised for a suicide leap. The roof sagged in many places, and mold and mildew caked the crumbling walls. Vines of diseased-looking gray wisteria strangled the structure in several places, hanging down over the precipitous cliff edge like tangled braids of hair. The house was crooked, its gables angling sharply and breached in at least three places, hastily repaired by planks of sodden wood. Chimneys rose from various points among the rooftops, leaning like old men in a storm, and grinning gargoyle faces leered from under the eaves.


            Here, Devin's experience spoke to him, of aging buildings and the effects of weather on things above ground or left forgotten pending rediscovery. Whatever part of the structure might still have floors and walls within it might be as treacherous as any engineered deadfall or covered pit. The gargoyles gave him pause, and from the distance he surveyed those he could see one by one, mindful if any movement was truth or trick of the light. Miserable as even the gargoyles seemed, none were so brazen as to move under Devin's suspicious regard.
            As they approached, they rounded the ruined servants' quarters; it was impossible to tell how many floors the outbuilding had once had, for all that remained were the sooty, scorched stones of its foundation. Only the partially-collapsed stone well still stood amid the ruin, crouched in a corner of the desolation like a mourner, or a ghoul. A few sickly-looking ravens were perched atop the foundation stones; as the party came closer, they flew clumsily away.
            Something about the birds bothered Bardek. Ravens, while not falcons, were still usually not clumsy in flight. He took a good look at them as they flew.
            Devin dismounted from his borrowed horse, and handed its lead to Rip to secure or lead away as he saw fit, with a succinct nod of thanks.
            "These crumbling structures might have cellars, like pits beneath weakened, rotting floors. I'd like us to check what's left of that one," he nodded to the remains of servants' quarters, "before we put it at our backs."
            "We should burn the whole place down to save everybody some trouble, is what we should do," Kamala grumbled as she looked at the depressing edifice.
            "No objections," Devin agreed, "though it doesn't look like it'll hold flame, I think we're short on oil... and we don't know if this is the place." Not that he could argue with the mood of nature about here.
            Devin drew his shortsword -- as much to prepare for what might leap out at them as to use to probe wood or loose stone -- and carefully stepped inside the ruined building's footprint.
            Bardek also dismounted, though he didn't hurry into the ruins with Devin. Handing his reins to Rip, Bardek first looked around, taking in the surroundings as best he could. Looking for likely areas of ambush.
            Rip hurriedly moved away with the horses, looking as though he'd prefer to move all the way back to the road.
            The big woman stepped up to the door and probed the doorframe with the tip of her dagger, looking critically at the way the wood flaked off.
            Devin took a careful look around, but he came to the same conclusion as Kamala - the ruins had long been abandoned.
            Devin shared a look with Kamala and a shrug; he hadn't found anything; the ruins looked unremarkable, if ominous, to him.
            Kamala sighed and frowned at the buildings. "Whether this is the right place or not, these buildings could stand to meet with an earthquake. I wouldn't mind having a nice strong elephant right now to knock both these places over."
            Bardek gave Kamala a disbelieving look. "Elephants? I've never seen one, but from what I've been told, an elephant would just step over this thing." He gestured at the remains of the outbuilding. "There's barely more that one or two stones still stacked on top of one another here." He gave the manor house proper a significant look, however. "That thing though. It could do everyone a favor and just finish its fall into the ocean, I think."
            Amrynn dryly retorted, “Maybe it can wait until we’re through here though?”
            Kamala grinned and nodded. "I'll bring the elephants through once we're done." She looked up at the house's gaping windows again and her smile faded. "Elephants and torches."
            Devin gathered up a loose stone from the debris with his off-hand and eyed the well warily for cause he couldn't quite name. Remembering the clumsy ravens, and not wanting a faceful of foul fowl, Devin pitched the stone into the well's ring, listening to judge either its depth or confirmation it was earth-full and unremarkable.
            Kamala turned to regard the well with Devin, looking just as unhappy with it as she did the buildings.
            For a long time he heard nothing, and he almost thought the stone had landed in soft earth, when he heard a distant, echoing plop of stone striking water. The well was deep, for certain.
            In the absence of a flurry of deranged birds or the ticking, low growl of something annoyed at its disturbed, Devin gratefully left the well behind and stepped forward to rejoin the group considering the dilapidated house. "Well is a well. Very deep. Water in the bottom," he succinctly reported.
            The cold didn’t seem to bother Amrynn overly much. She sat tall and lean in the saddle as they rode the coast, not deigning to hunker in against the bite of the wind. The corruption of the land did affect the pensive elf though, her face pinching with the passage of leagues, her eyes narrowing to assess the almost abnormal twist of the land as they drew nearer the Misgivings.
            Then the wretched place emerged into view, and Amrynn’s face actually took on a pained expression. That such a sore was left to fester upon the land struck her as abhorrent…and dismaying.
            ‘Had there ever been beauty here?’ she wondered. She could certainly grasp how such a den would call to dark denizens.
            “I was hoping Thistletop would be the bottom of Sandpoint’s barrel,” she said as she dismounted and thanked Rip for his willingness.
            While the others scoured the ruined outbuilding for traces of what lay ahead, Amrynn advanced a few steps and stood watching the great stone pustule that awaited. Her eyes roved the place for a time, and then she swung her crossbow around and ratcheted a bolt into place.
            There would be no warm greetings for them here.
            "What's Thistletop? There's a place around here as bad as this?" The tall woman gestured at Foxglove Manor with her hand. "I've seen the decks of slave ships that don't look this forlorn and godforsaken."
            “Thistletop was the goblin fortress of the clan that was raiding Sandpoint recently, before we dug them out,” Amrynn replied. “A rotten den, festering above a shrine to Lamashtu.” She paused, waiting to see if the name would conjure ill omen before continuing. “Sour and sallow and salty it was. We lost good people there.”
            "Something was off with those birds," Bardek said, "but I don't know what. I don't think there's an ambush here, other than the house itself, but we should still be careful. I'm not so sure it's safe to leave Rip and the horses out here."
            “I can’t imagine bringing him in would be wiser. Not in there,” Amrynn offered with a nod. “He knows his trade. Unless you’d rather send him back altogether?” Her tone was genuine enough, though there was a light lacing of the knowledge that the walk back to Sandpoint would be a long one indeed on foot.
            "I'd almost suggest that very thing," Bardek said, "but I'd not want him to get ambushed on the way back, just as easily as he would waiting outside of the house here."
            Bardek shook his head. "Perhaps we should ask the man his own preferences, and let him decide."
            The tall woman shook her head. "We've already seen one ambush today. He doesn't have to follow us around, but if we can clear out the first floor maybe he could come in and shelter in a secured room. That seems safer than him standing out here in the open." She reached up and pulled the war mask down over her face. She made the gesture the same way someone set their feet before trying to lift something heavy- serious, determined, ready to get down to business.
            She turned that intimidating looking demon mask at I'Daiin. "Ready to kick in the door, big man?"
            "Safer to have Rip at some distance. We might need to leave in a hurry." At seeing I'Daiin's intention to stay with Rip, Devin suggested, "Let's agree that we'll be out of here two hours before sunset. If that times arrives, and we don't, you and Rip should leave; report to the town. We may be barricaded in there, somewhere. At light, we can make it back on foot."
            Devin still had his shortsword drawn; he anticipated he'd have it out unless he needed to climb, work on something technical, or he was on a horse heading back to the town with all friends accounted for.
            At Kamala's suggestion of kicking a door in, Devin had to ask, "Is it locked?" He hadn't seen anyone try the door yet. Devin approached the house, approaching the northwest doors; what he took was intended to be the main entrance. He looked about the ground; he was no tracker, but he hoped if the doors had seen lots of activity and visitors, he could see evidence of it. He experimentally stuck his shortsword's tip into the door's wood, expecting it to soggily give from years of neglect and rot, making any effort to work the mechanism superfluous. If the door held, though he intended to sheath his shortsword and inspect the portal with a measured eye. Devin was prepared to open the door if nothing about it raised the hairs at the back of his neck.
            Kamala grinned under her mask. "Where's your sense of drama? A monster's door is for kicking in!" In spite of her verbal disagreement, she seemed perfectly happy to wait while Devin prudently checked for traps.
            “Sense of drama was one of the first things bled out of me. I’ll save bravado for when I know there’s nothing within a hundred yards waiting to slash, bite, poison, or otherwise put me out, or you all. Drinks while back safe in the inn, drama can abound.”
            Bardek cleared his throat, "Before we open anything - by kicking or otherwise - perhaps we should see what the windows can reveal?"
            He gestured to the numerous windows on the ground floor. "Let's start with the ones that look into the rooms the doors open into." The priest of Cayden Cailean moved toward the tree that split the two apparent entrances, where windows seemed to give a view into both of the foyer areas.
            Devin acknowledged the good suggestion with a nod. He didn't interrupt his inspection, however; it would take Devin a few minutes' work to be satisfied, and in that time, Bardek would be able to peer into the nearby windows.
            As Bardek faded to the right, Amrynn drifted slightly to the left, leaving Kamala and Devin directly in the door’s path. She uttered a few low words to coalesce the Weave, and white light flared in her eyes and then dimmed to a luminescent glow. Eyeing the weathered doorway carefully, she scanned for any traces of magic that lay in wait or perhaps lingered.
            The party went about their reconnoisance quickly. Amrynn spotted no telltale trace of magic, hostile or otherwise; Devin located no traps upon the northmost doors.
            The windows were shuttered and curtained, but time and weather had not been kind to the abandoned manor. Enough shutters and windows were broken and curtains made threadbare by the lash of rain and mold that Bardek was able to glimpse into the darkness within, though he couldn't fully view the rooms.
            The oak-paneled chamber Devin was checking the door to must have once been breathtaking, but now it was a sad sight, with floorboards warped with moisture. At the window near the other doors, he could see that likewise, mold stained the walls, floors, and furniture in pallid patches. What caught his attention, though, was the slightest glimpse of what appeared to be a crouching beast with the deformed face of a man. It didn't move at all, though he spent a few moments trying to see it more clearly.
            Completing his search, Devin tried the door handle. It seemed to move freely, but the door didn't budge - it appeared to be stuck in its frame, slightly warped.
            "Door's warped," Devin sighed. "Anyone bring an axe?" There were easier ways left into the house than breaking an ankle trying to kick the door in. At least the warped doors meant nothing had been passing through. He traversed from the north doors to the south doors, sharing looks with Amrynn, Bardek, and Kamala (well, through her mask) that spoke he'd yet to find anything interesting, and confirming they had nothing to report, either. They were all still just standing outside a very creepy, dilapidated mansion rotting on the ocean cliffside, attempting to break and enter.
            Perhaps with too little caution, Devin didn't undertake the same investigation for traps on the second set of doors, and instead just assessed the ground about them for sign of recent passage. He took a quick look at the handle, then set to attempting to opening these doors.
            Once it was clear that Devin was planning to open the Southern set of doors, Bardek hissed a warning. "There's a creature in there! Can't tell what it is yet, but probably a guardian of some type. Facing the door."
            Kamala nodded at Bardek. "We'll distract it. You go in the window when it rushes us."
            Devin nodded, and while he continued assessing the doors, he paused to ensure everyone would be able to complete their preparations and attain the positions they wanted. Before he tried to open these doors, he intended to have his shortsword back in hand, and he made a mental point to step outside and wide of the opening and be out of the frame of the door when the time came.
            As the approach shifted to the more southerly doors, Amrynn glided up to where Bardek had been spying into the manor, maintaining her light concentration. She leaned carefully around the jamb of the window and peered into the darkness beyond. With her magical elven sight, she hoped to build upon Bardek’s initial assessment.
            Amrynn then moved on to support the southern doorway, scanning the doorway quickly for any signs of the Weave at hand. Though her examination was careful, she found no trace of magic in what she could see - neither through the windows, nor at the door.
            "Devin, if they're stuck and there's a guard thing in there, it's not going to matter if it's an axe or a foot. Let's bash it in, make a bunch of noise. Just stand behind me." Kamala said.
            The door smashed in on her first kick, revealing the chamber within. As Kamala was struck by the damp smell of the place, the unpleasant tinge of mold lacing the air as surely as it stained the wooden floor, walls, and furniture in pallid patches. The sound of the house straining and creaking in the wind gave the long, high-ceilinged room an additional sense of age and decay.
            Moldering trophies hung on the far wall to her left: a boar, a bear, a firepelt cougar, and a stag - yet they paled in comparison to the monster on display in the center of the room. There crouched the beast Bardek had glimpsed through the heavy curtains: a twelve-foot-long creature with the body of a lion, a scorpion's tail fitted with dozens of razor barbs, huge batlike wings, and of course, the deformed face the cleric had spotted. The expertly stuffed creature crouched, ready to pounce, its face frozen in permanent malice.
            There was a door to her left; a staircase to her right, leading up to the next floor; and farther along the right-hand wall, another door. Two hearths stood empty and cold; once, they must have kept the entrance toasty warm. Beyond, darkness swallowed the room - or would have, but for Kamala's dark-attuned eyes. She could make out a length of hallway in the dark, with two doors. A rather gruesome antique - what appeared to be a mummified monkey head - hung on the northern wall of the passage, its tiny mouth gaping. A bellpull extended from its open jaws. A ratty throw rug partially obscured a foul stain of dark-colored mold on the floor.
            The cold, drizzling rain began to patter down with more strength. In the distance, over the bay, thunder growled.

2


            Devin considered the sky for a moment, with a glance. If Amrynn hadn't already affirmed the absence of magic, he might've associated the house's sense of its intrusion to the darkening of the local weather.
            Kamala bared her teeth back at the huge monstrosity as she moved further into the room. "Oof, you're an ugly bastard. Glad we didn't have to fight you." She tried to look past it into the gloomy corners of the room while she gestured to Devin. "It's stuffed. There's a lot of furniture in here to hide behind, though. Stay behind me a little while longer."
            The huge beast's eyes seemed to follow her as she entered - but careful study showed that it was only a trick of the light, and excellent taxidermy.
            Beyond it, at the edge of her vision, what looked to be a large dining room. A mahogany table surrounded by chairs rested before tall windows, tattered curtains draped before them - heavy, but damaged enough to give tiny glimpses of colored glass.
            Amrynn stiffened as she moved into the doorway. She stopped just across the threshold, a sneer licking across her top lip for a moment as she took in the flavor of the chamber.
            ‘If she found any inkling of a dragon amidst these trophies,’ she thought. ‘The price to be extracted from this Lordship just multiplied manifold.’
            Her eyes roved around the room in searing runnels as she waited for Kamala to give some indication that it was safe to continue on en masse. However, nowhere did she see any trace of a dragon that needed avenging. In fact, these trophies looked old - maybe decades old. But instead of dragon parts, she found something else - a trace of magic. She pinpointed it at the monkey-head bellpull on the wall near the ratty throw rug.
            “Call for light if needed,” she informed those who might require it.
            With a passing brush of his hand behind Amrynn's waist and off her hip, Devin stepped into the room behind Kamala, his step light and wary, and moved to the south if Kamala was circling north. Given the disconcerting quality of the taxidermy, he elected to not remain to the manticore's fore, and passed by the south hearth and foot of the stairs to move a bit further back to the room's southeast.
            Kamala bared her teeth at the monster dominating the room and flicked its nose with her middle finger. "This thing is a manticore, a magical beast from warmer climes that can shoot the spikes from its tail. Legend has it that it is a stupid but dangerous creature and speaks the common tongue. Supposedly they have a taste for human flesh." She shook her head as she turned back to the group at the door.
            "There's some mold on the floor over there, but I don't see anything dangerous," she said, tempting fate.
            "Haven't seen one, before," Devin commented back, regarding the manticore; his eyes drew in the details with an academic curiosity. "I think I've heard the tail spikes are valuable. Maybe not for as long-dead as it's been." He pulled his attention back to the room and its other trophies, his shortsword's point pivoting as he did.
            With a sigh and a nod, the cleric of Cayden Cailean ambled his way around to the doors. For a moment, he thought he caught a whiff of burning flesh and hair. Sniffing again, though, he didn't catch the smell again.
            "Sturdy," he said, one thumb pointing towards the direction from which he'd arrived. Looking around the shadowy room from beside Amrynn, he nodded. "Dark."
            "Light would help," Devin affirmed to Amrynn's offer and Bardek's observation. Not that he couldn't see, but keeping things bright often made it easier to spot fine details that otherwise would be too easy to miss.
            "Not excited about that sodden hallway floor; let's try the doors, first. That one," Devin suggested, indicating the north door in the center of the wall. "Bardek's already checked through the windows."
            Amrynn fetched around in a belt pouch and produced a glowing length of rod, which she idly offered to Bardek. “Permanent,” she said.
            After he took the light from her, she moved over toward Devin. She proffered a coin to him in the palm of her hand. A few sibilant words from her lips, and the coin began to glow feverishly. “Temporary,” she said with a wry smile. Then she moved off toward the edge of the chamber, better redistributing the weight of the party on the aged floor.
            Her ears would have pricked, had they been able - was that the faint sound of sobbing she heard from somewhere above? Surely it wasn't just the pained groan of the floorboards. A glance at Devin confirmed that he had heard something, too.
            “Don’t touch that bell pull,” Amrynn’s lean arm stretched out and pointed. “Magic lingers upon it.” Then she returned her attention to Devin, head tilting slightly.
            “You heard it?” she asked quietly. Her gaze flicked back to the stairway behind him in the middle of the southern wall.
            "Yes," he replied, equally quietly, as his eyes turned to follow the stairs upward.
            She gestured with her hands, indicating the preference was his as to how to proceed. Moaning prisoner or moaning ghoul…they had encountered plenty of both. She then glided back toward Bardek and Kamala.
            “Moaning…or sobbing from above,” she voiced quietly. She shrugged indicating it could be friend or foe.
            Devin was aware he'd not heeded Kamala's earlier request to stay behind her, and had opted instead to spread out about the room rather than stand at the manticore, so he deferred. "Creatures before rooms," Devin suggested, pointing to the stairs and upward, voicing his election as to where he thought they should proceed.
            "At your lead, or mine," he offered to Kamala.
            The Shoanti was there behind them, looking grimmer than before, having silently entered the house. He gripped the "love notes" that he had been given by the ghouls in one hand, and then stuffed them in a boot. Dark circles beneath his eyes betrayed his mood. He steeled himself and spoke in a low voice.
            "I was going to run, like a dog."
            "No running now." He looked at Devin. "If I turn to unlife, make sure I do not walk."
            Devin, gratified that I'Daiin had joined them in this leg, listened solemnly, and nodded to I'Daiin's request. Gods knew, Devin had done; someday, probably would again; his share of running. That I'Daiin had considered it, started down that path, then turned around and come back... threw a couple things into personal disarray that might come to mind later. When they weren't in a decaying house haunted by creaks and moans. Regardless, Devin was forthright in affirming I'Daiin would not be left to undeath, if it came to that.
            "No running, no walking," Bardek said, "so we aim for the legs, got it." He gave the big Shoanti an odd smile, raised his mug in salute, and took a sip.
            "Upstairs. Moaning things. Sounds like a solid plan." Bardek nodded, then fell into the middle of the group, ready to go along with the others.
            Kamala snorted and shook her head. "Grim, but understandable. But try not to get there in the first place, big guy." She nodded at Devin. "Zombie man and me up first." The tall, muscular woman gestured at I'Daiin and headed for the stairs. "Watch my back."
            "Mind the steps," was all Devin asked. With the state of the roof, he counted it likely at least a few of the stairs would be nearly rotted through. If he wasn't going to be in the front to check for trips and snares, he'd be at the far back, that Amrynn wouldn't need to be =the party's rear guard.
            Devin held position at the foot of the stair and motioned Amrynn to precede him.

3


            They moved up the creaking stairs, Kamala in the lead. A single window shone dim light onto the staircase, but above, all was dark. This didn't prove a problem for Kamala - she could see that the stairs led to a hallway that snaked through the house, with a door to her left, another ahead, and a passage to her right nearby.
            Barely a step or two up from the ground floor, Devin measured his pace as the ascent permitted progress, kept his back to the exterior wall, and his attention to the foyer and spaces he could see behind them.
            Kamala looked over her shoulder and whispered down the stairs. "Door to the left and another in front, hallway to the right. Devin, can you check the doors for traps while I look down this hallway?"
            The barbarian held up a hand for silence, then listened intently, wishing to know which direction the weeping or...whatever it was...came from. He tapped an ear for emphasis.
            Amrynn followed along up the stairs, cocking an ear at I’Daiin’s suggestion. She concentrated briefly, trying to help triangulate the sobbing they had heard.
            As Devin moved past to assist with detection of whatever nefarious machinations awaited, Amrynn gave him a knowing smile. They had often argued the point, whether or not she was capable enough to handle the rear guard position. His talents were more often than not needed at the fore, and she had argued the point enough times to have stopped trying.
            Still, she couldn’t help cocking a wry eyebrow at him on top of the smile.
            Devin smirked in silent reply, confident she'd throw hell at anything trying to come up behind them, but not overjoyed at the prospect of not being there to prevent dangers from closing while she did so. He trusted Kamala had spotted something that suggested there was a need for extra caution -- the state of the house interior wasn't suggesting to him they'd find traditional traps set, here. Just decay. And odd noises. He turned his attention back up the stairs.
            Schooled by experience in the benefits of instantly arresting noise in favor of stealth, Devin halted mid-step at seeing I'Daiin's gesture. Devin squared his weight carefully upon the risers but didn't advance further, not much up from Amrynn and partially adjacent to Bardek.
            There was only the soft clink of mail and creak of leather on top of the groans the old house made in the gusting wind for a minute as they all listened. Try as they might, none of them - even Devin and Amrynn - could hear the sound that had brought them upstairs to begin with.
            Bardek looked relaxed. Almost too relaxed. His free hand rested on the head of the cruel-looking morningstar at his belt (the other being occupied with his shield and the glowing rod Amrynn had given him to hold), and he looked around the room idly. He barely managed to stop himself from whistling.
            The barbarian shrugged, and pointed to the right-hand door. He looked up, then down, doing his best to imitate a thief, but after a moment, shrugged again.
            Devin sighed, "This house is messing with our heads. Could there be undead? Probably. But these phantasms will just wear us down, reduce our mindfulness. We can't stop for each; let it just keep us vigilant."
            Devin slipped back down into the rear guard position, shortsword still out. "Still clear down here. Go ahead and try one of those doors. I don't want to be in or anywhere near here when the day ends."
            Kamala nodded at I'daiin and went to try the door on the left. A quick peek down the hallway revealed a hallway full of doors and split into other hallways. Opening the door beside her, she found a small passage that buckled around on itself. Venturing in to peek around the corner, she found another stairwell, this one leading down.
            Spotting nothing more worrying in the stairwell than the dark corners of her own mind, Kamala entered the short passage on the right side of the hall, opening the door and entering with I'Daiin while the others stood ready outside.
            The bedroom within featured a child-sized bed, a chair next to a sad, abandoned toy box, and a looming stone fireplace big enough for a child to get lost in. I'Daiin checked behind the bed for anything lurking, while Kamala took a look up the flue of the fireplace.
            I'Daiin paused in his perfunctory search; he was sure he'd heard a child sobbing. It sounded close... it sounded like it was in the room.
            Kamala blithely carried on with her inspection of the hiding spots in the room, oblivious.
            I'Daiin stared at the child's bed; he had never had anything so comfortable to sleep on, growing up. Why was the child crying? His mother... his mother...

            His mother was wielding a torch, trying to kill his father, and his father, festering with tumors and wielding a long knife, meant to kill his mother. I'Daiin knew in his heart that whichever of them survived would be coming to kill him next. That certainty shook him to the core.

            The mind-numbing terror of the vision passed as quickly as it had come, leaving I'Daiin breathing hard, his face a rictus of anguish, his fists balled and cording his arms.
            Kamala stood from looking up the fireplace and shook her head, unaware I'Daiin had noticed anything. "Nothing so far," she said, loudly enough to be heard by those waiting in the hall. "I don't see anything up the chimney."

4


            The party moved on to the next set of doors on the right side of the hall, which creaked open to show colored light pouring in through stained-glass windows that had not been curtained like the others. Strange, for such windows to block what must have been a stunning view of the bay.
            The large room held two padded chairs, and a long couch faing a wide alcove where the windows stood. The windows depicted a diverse array of animals and plants - from north to south, a large, pale, ghostly scorpion; a gaunt man holding out his arms as a dozen bats hung from him; a moth with a strange skull-like pattern on its wings; a tangle of dull green plants with bell-shaped flowers; and a young maiden sitting astride a well in a forest, while a spindly spider the size of a dog descended along a string of webbing above her.
            Kamala gazed at the windows, her memory of dusty and illicit books, read furtively for their warnings, tickling her. Yes... yes. She was sure of it. All five of the subjects depicted in the windows were classic spell components for necromantic magic - scorpion venom, vampire's breath, the tongues of deathwing moths, belladonna, and the heart of a maiden, slain by poison.
            From the hall, Devin moved a iittle further down the hall to be able to see into the double-doored room they'd just opened, splitting his attention between that room and southward along the hall, to mind the party's flank.
            "Gah," he remarked at seeing the scenes depicted in the stained glass windows. He noticed Kamala's scrutiny of the images, "Significance? I mean, who would relax in here, with those over your head?"
            Kamala looked away from the windows, turning away from those memories, strangely reticent- an alien expression on the outgoing woman's face. "Whoever commissioned those windows was into dark magic. Those are all common elements of necromancy. And to spend that much money to decorate your study with it?" She shook her head. "That alone makes all these ghouls make sense." Kamala looked around, an unseen frown on her lips under her war mask. "But you'd think there would be some books nearby..."
            "Does suggest a Foxglove succeeded in something. Or failed," Devin concurred. The ghouls, the ghasts; with décor like that, this place could certainly be the nexus. "No animate threats; let's finish clearing this floor." The room certainly was on Devin's short list to merit further investigation -- there could be the books Kamala expected, or notes in one of the drawers, or even just valuables, marketable or insightful. But only once they were relatively assured nothing was going to come up behind them.
            "You still on point?" he asked Kamala and I'Daiin, only then noticing that I'Daiin looked a bit paler than normal, his skin a bit more sheened. "I'Daiin... you okay? You look like you caught wind of something unpleasant."
            In answer to Devin's question, Kamala nodded. "On to the next room." She looked more closely at the big Shoanti, too, when Devin turned to him. "Come on, big guy. Let's go find something to kill. It'll make us both feel better."

5


            Pushing open the double doors across the hall, their light fell on a chamber with a stone fireplace at the far end, beside another double set of doors. Paintings hung on the walls to either side, each covered over with a thick sheet of dusty cobwebs that obscured its subject from view.
            Peeking in from one side of the entry door, Bardek's face was thoughtful as he took the measure of the room. "Not great decorators, the Foxgloves, were they?"
            "Suggesting they decorated with cobwebs?" Devin asked Bardek to clarify the jibe. "It'd be a fine house. Freshly built. And without the necromancy." With line of sight still to the macabre windows of the other room, Devin had a curiosity as to what the paintings might depict, but anticipated more of the same. Staying true to the tactic he'd suggested, Devin remained in the hall, on guard. Nothing nightmarish had rushed forward to welcome Kamala and I'Daiin; the gallery could wait a few more cobwebs.
            Or maybe not. Maybe they weren't of the same theme, and that might be insightful by itself, if the dark overtones were limited to the room across the hall.
            "It'd be worth checking one painting, see what they're of," he suggested.
            Kamala thought the same, and was already reaching up to pull the shroud off the closest painting. Bardek wisely (he thought) stepped to the side, keeping the door frame between himself and the interior of the room, whilst still looking to see what happened.
            Brushing away the dust-thick cobwebs coating the picture frame, Kamala revealed an oil portrait of a young woman, her face serious as she gazed out at the observers. The plaque beneath the portrait, once rubbed clean, read, 'Lorey Foxglove.'
            Devin looked to I'Daiin, wondering if I'Daiin would recognize the portrait. No one else had met anyone in the Foxglove family.
            "Are any of them Aldern Foxglove?" Devin stepped into the room and looked more closely at the uncovered portrait of Lorey Foxglove, both trying to put her features to memory, but also trying to recall if he might've seen her before anywhere, including Sandpoint. If there were additional paintings to check after he was satisfied, he'd help search. He anticipated this was worth a few minutes' delay.
            The Shoanti squinted. "There were some Shoanti in town before me. I don't recall meeting Andern, but one borrowed his horse, I think. I don't know why this place would go to ruin so quickly; you'd think someone would have checked on these lords."
            He wrinkled his nose. "I dislike this place. It's another tomb, and a trap." He passed his sword from hand to hand. "I prefer seeing an enemy coming rather than walking into its den."
            The estate was alive.
            Amrynn had known it would be the moment she saw it, and she stalked through its shadowy halls feeling the blood, the generations of life and lore that still seethed within its walls. Dust motes danced in intricate webs, and the tall elven woman navigated around the more mundane obstacles of decay with poignant care. But the history of the place weighed upon them like a looming rockslide, it filled the air with its pungent intent.
            She stayed to the hallways, preferring the longer sight lines and the truer play of sound. If they had been lead, or lured, up here by a voice, then it might very well call out again. She reached back into her memory and harvested the core of a lullaby, the melody laced with both love and longing.
            The notes hummed in her throat with provocative ease, and her senses continued to rove the surroundings for any indication of a presence other than those that had come with her and intruded upon this haunted story.
            From examining the paintings, Devin paused and looked out to the hall as Amrynn's subtle vocalization reached his awareness.
            "I'm certain you don't intend that to be ominous," he grinned, but then asked, "All is well?" Remembering the environment, he amended, "As well as circumstances permit."
            Since nothing deadly had happened with the first painting, Kamala went over to the other painting to see who was in that one as well. One by one, they cleared the paintings of their cobweb shrouds. On the three to the right, named by the plaques on the lower edge of the frame of the paintings, were Vorel Foxglove - a tall, middle-aged man with long, dark hair, a clean-shaven face, and dark blue noble's clothes; Kasandra Foxglove, a stern-faced brunette woman with wisps of gray in her short hair, and a flowing blue dress; and the previously uncovered Lorey Foxglove.
            On the five to the left, they found Traver Foxglove, a man who was tall and thin, as Vorel was, but with an even more narrow face, and a thin moustache; Cyralie Foxglove, a bright-faced young woman with long, red hair and an impish smile; and in the middle, Aldern Foxglove, whom they had been seeking. He was a young man with dark hair and serious eyes. Clearing the last two revealed two even younger women, with similar features to Aldern, identified as Sendeli and Zeeva.
            Devin felt a sudden suction in the pit of his stomach - wasn't the room much colder than it had been a moment before? The others didn't appear to have noticed. But before he could react, the paintings... changed.
            Their breath frosted in the air as fingers of rime slithered across the walls. Kasandra and Lorey slumped into misshapen, tumor-ridden corpses, their eyes pleading with their audience from across time. Traver suddenly grew pale as a long cut opened in his throat, and blood washed down over his chest. He grasped at the wound, trying in vain to hold it shut. Cyralie blackened and charred, her arms, legs, and back twisting in wrong ways, as if broken in dozens of places. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, the flesh inside still pale and pink. Where Traver had grown pale, Aldern's flesh darkened with rot, his hair falling out as he hunched over, a rictus of pain and hunger on his face. Both Sendeli and Zeeva's portraits frosted over, though otherwise they didn't appear to change. But Vorel's entire portrait, frame and all, erupted into a sudden explosion of fungus and tumorous growth, a wave that washed over the entire room in seconds - and then the horrid vision was gone, as though it had never been.
            Indeed, to those outside the room, nothing but the demeanor of those inside had changed.
            Kamala cursed in a fluent mixture of Vudran, Taldane, Mwangi, and sailors' slang, but didn't move until Vorel's portrait exploded into fugus that took over the entire room. She leapt from the door, trying desperately to get away from the rotting wood. And then it was gone before her feet hit the floor.
            Devin completed his backwards stagger away from the fungal wave he'd just witnessed; that several of them witnessed, by the reactions he could observe. His boots found solid purchase on the decaying wood floor of the gallery. The familiar rush of adrenaline had his heartrate up; survival instincts at being surprised combating rational survey of the scene.
            "Phantasm?" he breathed aloud, as much supposition as inquiry as to what he'd just seen. "Biting cold, then..." he pointed to the portraits of Kassandra and Lorey on the room's north wall, "Infected, decaying, swollen corpses;" he pointed to Traver, "throat cut," and then Cyralie, "broken and burned," and Aldern, "turned to a ghoul," and then Sendeli and Zeeva, "escaped, maybe," and lastly Vorel, "exploded into a fungal cancer that enveloped the room."
            "Did you all see the same?"
            Kamala shuddered and she was gingerly looking at the solid wood under her feet. "No, these portraits are just so beautiful it moved me to sing and dance." She shook her head, visibly upset. The big woman took a deep breath and closed her eyes while Devin listed the effects, clearly needing a moment to get herself back under control.
            Devin felt like they'd gained valuable information about what may have happened in this house. Or, one twisted mind's interpretation of it, not yet validated. "Vorel got the worst of it, or the start of it. From their depicted age, Vorel and Kassandra are the parents. Traver, eldest son; Aldern, second eldest son; Sendeli, Zeeva, Cyralie, Lorey -- daughters. Cyralie may have been the eldest daughter, Lorey probably the youngest, if the gallery's order is significant."
            "Charming."
            "Interesting," Bardek said from outside the room, "We're fortunate that you got to see all of that, it would seem." Bardek raised his mug significantly. "I'd probably not've been able to so clearly spell it out to the rest of you."
            Kamala let out a breath and opened her eyes. "Sorry for overreacting. I've seen fungus eat a man before. It... I don't like it." She nodded at Bardek. "Agreed. That was very well noticed."
            "Wait -- you didn't see it?! Did you feel the chill right before it happened? Were you able to see us the whole time?" Devin asked.
            Amrynn arched an eyebrow and shook her head slowly. “I did not have full line of sight, but I saw nothing untoward,” she replied. Then she tilted her head again, as if listening for something, and her attention drifted away again.
            "So much for my blissful eukaryotic ignorance," Devin mused, glad for the warning about lethal fungi, and equally reassured the vision had vanished as quickly as it had manifested. "I'm tempted to check behind portraits, but let's continue clearing this floor, first. Those doors seem inviting; agreed? Same drill?" Devin indicated the double doors to the west end of the gallery.
            Kamala nodded quickly. "Yeah, let's go." She headed for the west end of the gallery.
            Amrynn watched them go, distractedly, and stepped lightly into the pathway aligning the double doors. The three sets of doors provided a long, flowing pathway throughout the second story. When all were open, she could imagine the sight lines and the glow of light and energy that would issue forth.
            She turned and stared into the stained glass chamber, almost transfixed, the tips of her boots even with the threshold of the dark study. The stained glass threw a murky but colorful light over the gallery, the clouds outside sprinkling the windows with rain.
            "It's an odd house," Bardek said to Amrynn. He was standing just behind her, looking over her shoulder, sipping from his mug.
            "Been here for 80 or so years, designed to be the 'family seat' of a noble line. Supposedly, some kind of tragedy happened a few decades back, and it's been empty ever since." He paused, taking another sip.
            "Well, except for the ghosts, that is." He flashed one of his oddly-timed smiles, before looking serious again.
            "The thing to remember is - it was designed. By people with money, and the leisure to have passions and hobbies other than mere survival. So any oddity you find in the architecture was probably intentional. Might not make sense to us, but it would to one of the nobles who built it."

6


            The others moved into the gallery of paintings, where Kamala and I'Daiin tried the doors on the far side of the room. It took three tries for I'Daiin to haul open the doors, warped and rotted as they were, like the other doors in the wreck of a manor. They groaned and screeched in protest, opening to reveal a bedroom. Dim light filtered in through the grimy windows, showcasing a pile of dead flies on the sill. Unlike most of the rest of the manor, the furniture within, while dusty and unkempt, did not exhibit any major signs of water or mold damage. The one exception was a dark stain on the desk, near the right-hand window.
            Thunder rumbled ominously outside, and the house sighed in the wind, the cracked plaster on the walls creaking.
            Kamala grunted. "Gods I hate this house." She nodded at the grimy windows. "Let me clean off some of that crap, get some better light in here."
            When he and Amrynn had finished talking, Bardek poked his head through the new set of doors, looking around.
            "It is kind of gloomy," he said, "here." He tossed Kamala the magically glowing rod Amrynn had given him, its light brightening the room a bit.
            "Just remembered," the priest said, "got one of my own." He pulled out a small, equally brightly glowing, multifaceted rock, then held it out above his forehead, closed his eyes for a moment, and let it go. The stone not only didn't fall to the floor, but began slowly floating in a circle around Bardek's head. "Found it in a pocket with some nuts," he said, holding up an empty paper packet, "got them on the boat ride from Cheliax."
            "Nice trick," Devin nodded to Bardek, at the drifting light-giving stone. "Bit creepy with the circling shadow it casts of your head, and all. Keeps drawing the eye like things moving about here."
            From the gallery, Devin's alert eyes moved across the paintings once more, considering. When it was clear Kamala intended to press further into the bedroom to clear some of the windows, Devin moved up to take her place just outside the now-opened doors, to better stay within reach and sight.
            "Cyralie Foxglove," he recalled, something clicking into place with the portraits. "The portrait -- burned and broken. I heard in town; rumors; she was caught in the fire that burned down the servant's building, but also fell off the cliff onto the rocks below. Doesn't sound accidental, all things considered. Traver cut his own throat in his own bedroom, by those same accounts. Aldern, Sendeli, and Zeeva; the children; were taken from here, raised in Korvosa. Distant family, or something."
            "All said, twenty years ago. Haunts and rumors, from the house to the assembly of caves below it."
            Kamala moved toward the windows, intending to clean them off. Lightning crashed outside, momentarily filling the room with white light. In that instant, Kamala noticed a dagger lying on the table. How could she have missed it? It was her last hope. She had lost everything, everything but the children... and she knew that it was only a matter of time until they were gone, as well.
            Unless she ended it. Her sacrifice could change the end.
            She reached for the dagger, intending to end her wretched life... but the dagger wasn't a dagger, she realized in the next flash of lightning. It was a jagged length of wood. Thunder growled outside as she looked up and saw that she wasn't alone... and remembered that she had lost nothing.
            The death wish she had felt dissipated, leaving her staring at the others with the "dagger" in hand.
            Kamala froze, hand open and halfway to the jagged length of wood on the table. "This gods damned place! These haunted paintings and shadowy corners! I've had it up to here with this house!" The big woman smashed a rigid, knife edged hand down onto the table to exercise her frustration. The old wooden table broke with a huge crack that rivaled the thunder outside, and Kamala stood there panting over the broken furniture.
            She turned back to the others. "I wanted to kill myself. Everything was gone but the children, but I could change it if I just killed myself." Kamala shook her head and pointed at the "dagger." "That was a dagger. Clear as day. I had to take it and plunge it straight into my heart. Wanted nothing more."
            The big woman shook her head again. "I was expecting monsters, not mental invasion. Are we sure we can't just burn this place to the ground?"
            "Maybe it's not the house," Devin sighed at hearing what had just nearly happened. Then he remembered the study window glass murals "Well, maybe it is. Or maybe it's the family, trying to warn us, or tell us what happened here -- what is happening -- so we can know how to stop it."
            "From the portraits, from what you've said; this must've been Traver's room."
            "Clues, but no threats; let's get through this floor. Doors down the hall to the north, outside the gallery."

7


            Shaken by the brief possession as I'Daiin had been, Kamala nevertheless led them back out and down the hall. The narrow passage to the door on their right was too tight for both I'Daiin and Kamala to squeeze into, so the big woman was the one who forced open the warped door.
            The entire bedroom beyond was caked with a thick, spongy layer of dark green, blue, and black mold. The foul smell of it wafted to her, making her want to vomit. There wasn't any natural way she knew of that a room could be filled with that much disgusting fungus. But then, there wasn't much natural about the Misgivings.
            Kamala turned away from the room, dry heaving and trying not to vomit. "Mold everywhere. The smell!" She moved to squeeze past I'Daiin back down the hallway. "I don't know a thing about molds, but it smells like death in there."
            The barbarian held his breath and looked into the room himself. He scanned it for some time. Then he withdrew.
            "Burning or killing mold will release spores," he said. "At least, that's the way it is on the Storval Plateau. Better to leave it be. Brush against it and it will spread as well."
            He looked at the retreating Kamala, then back at the rest of the party. "This place is full of forces designed to wear us down. The notes I was sent, the visions Kamala received. We cannot let our morale falter. They want us to run, to fear, to weep, to hide. They know we are here. There is no point in subtlety here. I will sing."
            He began a low, rolling chant in Shoanti, the sound dampened by mold and rot, some of it echoing down hallways. As he sang, he held his sword in varying stances.

            "I am of the Life-Giver, it is so
            I am of the Light-Bringer, it is so
            I am of the Life-Giver, burn my spirit clean
            Wash me in the fire, burn my spirit clean
            Go on up and pray at the mountain's edge
            I will tell you news at the mountain's edge
            Life-Giver, Light-Bringer, it is so
            Life-Giver, Light-Bringer, it is so "

            "Shut that door," Devin suggested to I'Daiin; and was willing to step forward himself to do so. He took full heed of Kamala's earlier caution of flesh-eating molds, and I'Daiin's spoken experience of similar dangers. "No reason to enter. Looks like that's where Vorel died. Or maybe Kassandra, or Lorey. Only two doors left;" Devin motioned down the hall to the west. "I suspect the worst of what we'll find is below the house, yet, if the rumors of the caves are true."
            A thought struck Devin, then. "No bodies. We haven't found any skeletons, even." He wasn't certain what to make of that, but believed they were still learning valuable information that might help them better know how to stop whatever was happening. Something would click into place.
            The overlapping stories and the energy of the estate was mesmerizing, especially to the long lived who cherished such lineage. Amrynn was listening, trying to hear the voice buried beneath the broken chains of memory. It was the Shoanti’s singing which finally broke her reverie. She glanced back over her shoulder with mild exasperation. There would be no hearing anything with that going on, but she knew the barbarian meant well. Every culture fought against the darkness in their own way.
            She turned from the stained glass panorama and rejoined the collective, at least in consciousness, and said, “Well on its way to consuming itself. Eventually it will succeed.”
            "Hey," Devin asked as he held again near Amrynn. "I'm worried about you. I understand, this place is not exactly a celebration of life, but we've delved nests of corruption before, and it didn't affect you like this. Resigned, saddened observation I can abide, but with what's happened so far, I want my own reassurance that whatever's in this house -- or the house itself -- is not in your head. Can you give me that?" Devin rested a hand on Amrynn's hip, "For if you can't, I'll be the first to suggest we leave, now, and take a different tact." Devin looked to Bardek, silently asking if there was some way to divine if something supernatural was intruding upon Amrynn's bearing, and if there were ways to shield her from it, if so. Maybe even some alcohol to spare.
            “So much history,” Amrynn said, her eyes and tone wistful and distant. “So many ghosts.” She turned her smile on Devin then, both genuine and feral. She reached a hand to his cheek in counterpoint to his touch.
            “Not to worry though, dear one,” she said as light flared in her eyes and along her fingers with a chilling crackle. “No one gets into my head uninvited.” The fleeting power faded from her swiftly, and it was just Amrynn smiling at him again. She was here and in the present.
            “Let’s keep moving,” she said. “Daylight is burning.”
            The flare in Amrynn's gaze was equal parts enticing and intimidating, reassuring she was herself but evocative of every likely-inaccurate story of possession Devin had ever overheard. He realized his first inclination; not acted upon; had been to retreat a partial step. He brought his hand up and wrapped it about hers, rolled the back of her hand to his lips, and kissed back it briefly with an added squeeze of his own fingers before letting it go.
            "Good; would hate to have to run you through," he smirked.
            Kamala glanced at Devin and Amrynn and shook her head. "A different tack? Yeah, I've got one. We go outside and set this whole damn place on fire." She nodded at I'Daiin from the end of the crowded hallway. "Hopefully a big enough bonfire will kill those spores you were talking about."
            The big Shoanti shook his head. "I am done with avoiding this 'Master', and there may be someone yet to save--or to grant the mercy of death--still in this place. Besides, any unlife worth their weight would have dug tunnels to escape any sort of raid or fire."
            He pointed his sword. "Onward."
            Bardek had opened his mouth to give Devin an answer of some sort, but had closed it again when Kamala and then I'Daiin had spoken.
            "Burning the house down and killing whatever pokes its head out of the hidey-holes isn't an unheardof tactic," he pointed out. "Though I'm not sure the wood would burn, at this point."
            The priest of Cayden Cailean gave Amrynn a close (but friendly) look. Not entirely sure what he was looking for, but with some experience dealing with folks controlled by otherworldly beings, he did his best to ascertain whether Amrynn was under any untoward influence.
            "The house is intimidating, but as long as we stay together and keep our wits about us, nothing has actually done us harm," Devin reasoned, perhaps on the edge of foolhardiness. "Even if we could get flame to catch, we don't know that burning it down will stop whatever's happening, and the clues to the source may still be in here somewhere. This didn't start with Aldern; even if he, and the siblings sent away; are the last survivors."
            "I'm for staying and continuing the search. There are only two or three more rooms to check on this floor, then we can work down."
            Bardek, where no one else but Amrynn could see, have the elven woman a conspiratorial wink and an open smile.
            "Sure," he said to Devin and the others, "lets keep looking. She," he hooked his thumb towards Amrynn, "looks fine."
            "Appreciated," Devin nodded, further reassured by Bardek's impartial assessment.

8


            Closing the door on the unnerving fungus, they moved on to the next room. Forcing the door open revealed a washroom with an iron tub in the middle of it, the floorboards around it sagging with the tub's weight.
            "Well that looks dangerous." One hand gripping the doorframe, Kamala experimentally stretched out and put her foot down on the floorboards to see just how weak the wood actually was.
            The floor creaked slightly, but nothing worse happened.
            "Back," hissed the barbarian. "The floor will give way if we step in there. Or perhaps if we do not step in there. Close the door, Kamala. If something slithers out of the tub, I'd rather not give it an easy exit."
            Amrynn continued to keep her attention focused outside of the rooms being overtly searched by the others. She felt the presence of the estate itself, that it was sharing something of its history for their benefit. Almost as if it were creating the preamble to the truth of what lay below.
            “Almost as if we were called up here first so we could appreciate what we find buried beneath these stones,” she mused aloud.
            "If it's that close to collapsing, let me grab a chair from the room with the windows, toss it in. I'd rather we collapse the floor now than have that iron weight fall on us when we're exploring the ground floor beneath it."
            True to his own suggestion, Devin sheathed his shortsword for the first time in their explorations and stepped back into the room with the stained-glass windows to grab the remains of one of the solid wooden chairs. Back in the hall, he offered it forward to I'Daiin and Kamala. "Here; make it count."
            The floor creaked a bit more as the chair was hurled onto it, but the weight didn't set off a collapse. The iron tub rang as the chair smashed into it, reverberating in a dull tone, like the herald of doom.
            As if in answer, Amrynn could swear she heard that faint sobbing yet again, directionless and heart-rending. By the time the tub stopped thrumming, though, the sound was gone again. Had she really heard it at all?
            The silence extended a few moments longer. Devin nearly held his breath, waiting for the surely-inevitable groan and sodden sundering of the bath room's floor... and nothing. Well, if it had taken that much of a shock and held, he wasn't nearly as concerned about it spontaneously collapsing upon them once they were beneath that room. Devin drew his shortsword back to hand. He shared a quick glance with Kamala and I'Daiin, eyebrows raised in a question and his head ticked a bit to the left; two doors left on this floor. Ready if they were.

9


            Mold and stains marred the walls of the hallway in a strangely unsettling pattern, and the smell of decaying wood was strong. Like the other doors, the one to the right in the narrow hallway was wedged shut by dampness and rot, but with one powerful jerk, Kamala threw it open.
            The once-fine chamber beyond had been destroyed. The bed was smashed, mattress torn apart, walls gouged as if by knives, chairs hacked apart, and paintings on the walls torn to pieces - with one exception. A painting hanging on the far wall seemed to be untouched, though it hung backward, its unseen subject facing the wall. The grimy light from the window threw a depressing grey pall over the scene, the sound of rain hitting the walls loud and somehow even more depressing. Thunder rumbled in the distance, foreboding.
            The painting beckoned too easily, Devin thought. Either critically important and thus spared by whoever's mental anguish had demanded the invested destruction of the room... or the source of it, unable to be damaged despite all efforts. The house was telling a story, trying to warn them or share the pain. There realistically wasn't any way they could leave that painting unturned. Anxiety didn't dictate against logical discovery.
            Tired of the dim light, Devin sent four torchlike globes into the room, static and in a 10' diameter circle. The duration was short but would require only a few moments' thought each minute to refresh.
            "Could a Prestidigitation clear the windows without having to touch or breathe the grime?" Devin asked Amrynn.
            "With the room lit and windows clear, I'd like to check that painting." He did not push past Kamala and I'Daiin and Bardek to do so, however. They'd established a tactic for reasons, and as curious as Devin might be about what the master bedroom would contribute to the clues, he didn't presume to enter until the forward ranks determined it safe to do so.
            “The windows could be cleaned, but not from here,” Amrynn replied to the arcane inquiry from her position in the hallway. “The practitioner would need to be closer to the glass.” Her tone indicated she was fine being that practitioner, but she didn’t want to presume if others had intentions.
            “As to the potential release of grim into the air,” she shrugged, indicating she could not speculate on any potential effects.
            Kamala shrugged and headed for the window. "I'll do it. Just watch out if I start to look... stabby." The big woman advanced across the room warily, waiting for whatever mental assault was coming her way.
            With a murmured word, she swept her hands to the side, and the mold and grime slid off the window... like magic. The room became marginally brighter, though outside, dark clouds scudded across the sky, pelting the windows with rain.
            Bardek's revolving light-stone still made the disquieting patterns of mold on the walls appear to shift and move, though.
            "Bardek; in all seriousness; would you stow that stone for now? I'm worried I'll miss movement in the room, with the shifting shadows." Devin put away his shortsword. "I'll check the painting." He trusted his reflexes would get him clear if something about the painting or the wall it rested against was just waiting for the touch of the unwary, like a rabid manifested memory. He kept the four lights illuminating the room, and also brought out the coin Amrynn had imbued earlier for local details.
            While Kamala cleared the windows, Devin went nearer the painting and -- using the coin cupped in his palm to illuminate the detail to scrutiny -- checked the painting's perimeter and the immediate wall around where it rested. Speaking of luring the curious, Devin could well imagine someone putting something unhealthy between the painting and the wall that would either drop free or spring something once the painting was moved. With a dagger's tip, he carefully angled the painting away from the wall by its frame, and used the coin-light to scrutinize what might be revealed in the gap.
            Devin found nothing pernicious about the painting, and finally lifted it to see what it portrayed. That turned out to be a beautiful Varisian woman in a thoughtful pose... but when he saw her, Devin was struck by a wave of fear. It washed through him, then was gone, leaving only an elevated heartbeat behind.
            I'Daiin, too, was struck by emotion when he saw the portrait - but where Devin had felt fear, the big Shoanti felt a deep, welling sadness. It yanked at his heart, then disappeared, leaving him with tears in his eyes.
            Startled, Devin had let the painting loose as he jumped and crouched back with a gasp. Sweat broke out over his brow even as rationality pushed the foreign pulse of emotion from his mind.
            "Fear. I just felt irrational, overwhelming fear; not of anything, specifically. But it hit when I saw the portrait. I wonder if it's an echo of what she felt? Maybe in this room?" Devin went closer to portrait again and carefully lifted it from the wall, turned it around to face the room, and rested it back on the floor, leaning back against the wall. He leaned closer to examine the brooch she was depicted wearing, wondering if there was further detail within it.
            Devin rose back from a crouch in front of the painting to his normal, light stance. "She wasn't represented in the gallery; this is someone else. I can't tell if there's a family resemblance or not; maybe no eye for it. Thought there might be something about the brooch, but it just looks like typical jewelry to me, or artistic license."
            "One door left, this floor," he suggested.
            "Looks Varisian," Bardek said with a shrug, "but that's a complete guess." The cleric of the Accidental God sipped once more from his mug. He had taken down his floating torch-stone and tucked it back into his bandoleer.
            "Next door, I guess," he said.
            Amrynn backed away from the final doorway and moved back to the corner of the main hallway, glancing back the way they had come. If her mental layout of the floor was accurate, this last portal might lead to a stairway. Whether up or down remained to be seen. She didn’t relish the notion of further lofty chambers awaiting above though.
            Kamala nodded. "Next door it is." She headed for the last remaining door to see what horrors awaited them inside.

10


            The next horror awaiting them was of a rather mundane nature - the last door was locked. The entire house seemed to protest Kamala even touching the handle by shuddering and creaking in the wind. Lightning flashed somewhere outside, and the growl of thunder rattled the manor, as well.
            "Someone had the presence of mind to lock it in a dilapidated house. Let me try," Devin suggested before the door was broken down.
            After ensuring that there were no traps set on the mechanism of the lock, or the door itself, Devin paused. Taking out the flower-embossed key that he had claimed from Mr. Craesby, he tried it in the lock. He rattled it for a moment to be sure that it wasn't a fit, before putting it away and breaking out his specialized tools.
            It was the work of a mere minute for him to open the lock, despite its relative complexity. Opening the door revealed - just as Amrynn had predicted - another stairwell, this one leading up and around a corner. Grimy light filtered onto it from a window at the landing halfway up, the spatter of rain falling hard against it, and lashing the wall to the right.
            "We came upstairs, first, to find the source of the crying," Devin recounted. "Maybe it's the house; maybe it's more phantasms; but there's still some upstairs to clear." He fell back into his agreed position to let I'Daiin and Kamala take point up the stairs. These small scale of the stairs suggested these would lead to a storage attic or small loft tucked under the roofline, not main living space.
            "Wait a moment, if you would," Bardek said, hanging his mug from the hook on his belt and unstrapping his shield to set in against the wall. He then reached back and recovered the wineskin in one of the side pockets of his backpack. Deftly, he thumbed the cap from the end of the skin with one hand as he recovered his mug with the other. He poured a golden-colored liquid from the wineskin into the mug, recapped the skin, and tucked it back into the pocket of his pack. Then he carefully retrieved his shield and reset it on his left arm. When all of that was done - which took maybe 30 seconds - Bardek gave everyone a very pleased-looking smile and raised his mug in salute.
            "New floor," he said cheerily, "new drink." Then he took a pull from the mug and sighed happily. "Some of the last of my own mead from home. Not the best I've ever tasted, but there's a certain quality to be found in familiarity and pride in your own work." He gave the others a nod and glanced up the stairs. "Shall we?"
            Kamala grinned at Bardek. "It's as good an idea as any." She headed upstairs, bracing for something to take a swipe at her head as soon as she cleared the next floor.
            Amrynn cocked an eyebrow at Bardek and said, “Oh you must be a treasure in the desert.” He couldn’t tell by her neutral tones if she was being serious or sarcastic, though it likely could have been a combination of the two.
            She followed along up the stairs into the cramped upper floor, covering her mouth during a slight cough from some of the stirred dusts.
            Around the dogleg of the creaking stair, a door came into view as Kamala ventured up. Opening the door, she found a large number of wooden planks, rope, and other repair supplies were stored in the workroom it revealed. The ceiling above sagged noticeably; in several areas, patches of the grey sky above were visible. Rain pattered down onto the supplies, making the smell of mold stronger.
            Moving on, she rounded the next corner to find another passage, with more closed doors. Behind most of them was only old furniture, sheets and linens, boxes and crates, and other bits and bobs of manor life, but behind the last door, just by another corner, there was a loft room, the ceiling angled down steeply, leaving only four feet of headroom to the left. A low cot and dresser were the room's only furnishings.
            “Servants quarters?” Amrynn mused, the likely conclusion for some members of the service that had been assigned to this estate in its prime. “And storage. More ghosts and stories laying dormant.”
            Devin looked about, mentally recounting the layout of the floor below and reconciling it with what they’d discovered of this upper, under-roof space, and what little he’d seen of roofline from the outside of the building. If he was going to conceal something in the house, the attic might be an unassuming place to do so. Difficult to be certain. At the least, nothing was moving about up here other than the party. If there weren’t areas they could discern that they hadn’t yet cleared, Devin concurred with Amrynn’s assessment, “Indeed. Saw what we needed to. I think we need to continue back on the ground floor; we’ll find a route to the cellars, and from there, maybe a route into the rumored caves beneath the cliffs.”
            Bardek frowned back at Devin. The frown was clearly one of confusion, rather than any negative emotion, however.
            "There's still doors down that hallway," he said, "and we came up here to look for the source of the crying, didn't we? We've not found that, and we'd be leaving potential hiding spots unchecked. That seems tactically unsound - and you've been pretty tactically focused up 'till now. Wouldn't it make sense to finish what we've started, do a quick sweep of the rest of this floor, and then go back downstairs? Even if - especially if - all we find is more junk, at least we know. Besides," Bardek gave a half-smile, "we clear the floor now, we don't have to climb the stairs again later."
            Kamala nodded and nodded at the window down the hallway behind her. "Three more doors, at least. Probably junk, but could be monsters, too. We need to check."
            The moment that Kamala rounded the corner from the loft, a sudden and unmistakable shriek of pain echoed through the attic.
            Kamala paused; it sounded as though the cry had come from the far end of the attic, on her right. Grey light filtered in past the trickling grime and rain, showcasing a pile of dead flies on the windowsill, yet seeming to beckon her on.
            "Your call, but rushing into it seems... unwary. Let's check the other rooms, first. Make sure nothing lurks behind us. And I think it's worth clearing the windows as we go; no effort and a moment's work may pay off by being able to see better."
            The tall woman laughed and shook her head. "Nothing about coming in this house has been... wary. But we need to check them anyway, so let's do that." Still shaking her head, Kamala went to open the closest door instead of the one where the crying was coming from.
            Ignoring the heart-rending sobbing coming from down the hall, Kamala opened the nearest door and went in.
            What she stepped into appeared to be a defunct observatory. A desk and a chair sat in the middle of the drafty room; chimneys rose on either side of the door, while another two intricate stained-glass windows were set into the far wall. The one to her left depicted a dark-haired woman with pale skin, large green eyes, and a black-and-red gown; with both hands she wielded a jagged iron staff. The right-hand window's lower half had been broken and patched with canvas; what remained of its upper half depicted a handsome man dressed in regal finery and a crown of ivory and jade. Small scorchmarks marred the wood near the broken window. A battered and ruined telescope lay on its side near the desk, and a large trapdoor in the roof had been tied shut by several lengths of rope.
            The wind pulled at the building, making the walls crackle and creak in its insistent grasp. Rainwater dripped down in spots, and the smell of mildew was strong.
            Bardek, as had become his usual habit, peeked into the room from the side of the doorway, outside the room. He gave the stained glass a curious glance, then gave the rest of the room a quick look.
            "I don't see much in here," he said, "and that screaming and crying isn't for fun."
            Kamala looked at Bardek and shook her head, her expression unhappy but not as angry as she had been. "No, it's not for fun, it's probably a trap. I can't imagine there's actually a living person in here with the ghouls and the haunted rooms." She gestured at the trapdoor, looking from Bardek, who wanted to check out the crying, to Devin, who wanted to check the rest of the attic first. "Do we want to go up there or go see what this Abyss-blasted house is luring us into?"
            "Let's go find that sound first," growled the barbarian. "We can clear out ghosts later."
            Devin shrugged, not impelled enough to complete the search before investigating the noise if it meant having to dissuade I'Daiin and Bardek.
            "Let's go see what wants to kill us," he nodded, indicating no further objections to investigating the door from which the crying seemed to emanate. As they moved down the hall, he lingered briefly in the doorway to get a look at the glass windows' depictions to see if he recognized the figures from the portraits. The lady's portrait in the bedroom below hadn't been represented in the gallery; he wondered if she'd be represented here, or if these were yet more family members of negative circumstance.
            The people depicted looked nothing like the Foxglove family so far as Devin could tell. The images meant nothing to him. Peeking around the doorframe, however, Amrynn saw something the others didn't.
            “Lovely,” Amrynn said sardonically. When prompted with looks, she only shook her head and said, “A bit of sinister history, Arazni and Socorro. Bloody, ill-mannered, and utterly apropos.”?
            Devin didn't know the names, but once this present encounter subsided, he resolved to. Ancestors? Precursors? Patrons? Idols?
            Meanwhile, the others reached the end of the hallway. Everyone could clearly hear the chilling sobbing and wailing coming from the right-hand door. Kamala, who was in front, tried the handle, cold to the touch... but the door was locked.
            It was cold. The breath of those closest to the door steamed faintly in the air. A sense of unease touched them all, as though falling at speed, their stomachs left behind.
            “Locked door?” Devin asked. “Look like it’ll fit this?” he held up the key he had and offered to pass it forward if so. If not, he was prepared for everyone to step back a pace so he could slip forward to the door and clear the lock. He’d move back into regular rank and file before they opened the door – given the opportunity.
            The key did not fit the lock at all, and so Devin moved up to work his own brand of magic. This lock proved much more difficult than the last, but with time and patience, Devin slid the bolt inside it aside.
            All the while, he felt his fingers trying to shake, his muscles spasming ever so slightly in sheer disquiet. Every sound set his teeth on edge; every little motion from his companions a distraction. Thunder growled in the distance, and the slap of rain against the window was like a physical assault.
            Fortunately, nothing prevented him from taking up his position at the tail of the party once more. Kamala waited until all were in position, then opened the door.

11


            The room was cold, and damp; an old armoire stood near the far wall. The ceiling sloped down to only four feet high in the left corner, leaving little room for a small window. A full-size mirror in a dark wooden fram of coiling roses leaned against those bricks, angled toward the tiny window.
            And there, crammed into the corner as though hiding there between the window and the mirror, was a sobbing woman, her once-dusky skin a pale grey, her face hidden by her long, black hair.
            Lightning split the sky outside the window, rattling the windows and throwing the room into temporary sharp relief, every shadow a stark black line against the glare. The entire house groaned as it settled, knifed by the sharp wind.
            "Back up," Bardek said to the others, his voice low and urgent. "Back way up. If she's a prisoner, she might try to flee as soon as she sees the door open. Let's not get in her way. If she's something vengeful, let's back out to where we have room to tackle her together. Quietly. I'll stay here until we're set." He lifted his copper mug, face set, though not in anger. This was, for probably the first time anyone had seen, Bardek taking something seriously.
            Bardek's shift in countenance dissuaded any argumentative independence Devin might've otherwise defaulted to. When you had to decide to trust a group with your life -- to whatever cautious extent Devin could -- you didn't argue with a statement presented like that. Especially when the matter was some unknown thing with a proximate supernatural chill, and the urgent advice was coming from the priest.
            The hall was narrow for a long way back and down. But they could use the rooms to set up cover and flanking.
            Devin motioned to Amrynn that he was going to take a position in the loft bedroom at the south end of the hall, which would let him maintain a clear line of sight and fire from that corner.
            “I’ve never really minded the cold,” Amrynn said. Stepping forward as Devin vacated his piece of the hallway, she craned her head around the doorframe to at least get a look at what had them spooked. Her eyes narrowed in scrutiny for a few moments as she studied the presence.
            She looked at Bardek again, and the man’s countenance hadn’t changed. He offered her an affirming nod, and she withdrew down the hallway as well, turning the corner and waiting there to see what this chapter of the tale would tell.
            Kamala turned to look at Bardek and tapped I'Daiin on the shoulder. "Go be our wall just on the other side of that dogleg, big man. Make sure she doesn't get away from us." The muscular woman rolled her shoulders in anticipation and nodded at the Caydenite. "I'm with you til this pops off; you still owe me a drink bought with your own money."
            As the party strategized and took up positions, Devin remarked how odd it felt to have time to prepare. "It's not attacking," Devin stated the obvious, still with no idea what "it" was, as he hadn't taken a look in the room. "Maybe it's only dangerous if it's messed with. Undead insanity or something." Of course, insanity might mean it could suddenly decide to attack ferociously for no reason at all.
            I'Daiin drew his brows together. "Was that...Taldan? Dog leg? I'll move up." I'Daiin entered the room, sword in one great fist. He spoke quietly to the sobbing woman. "Why do you weep, lady?" Despite his words, his guard did not slacken in the slightest. Should she raise up a screaming skull-face, or worse, he would enter his battle rage instantly.
            "No!" Bardek hissed a warning at I'Daiin as the Shoanti brushed past him, but was ignored.
            The cleric of Cayden Cailean shook his head and readied himself for whatever was to come. "Be ready to run," he said softly to Kamala.
            Yet despite the party's open preparations for a fight, and Bardek's fears, and even being addressed by I'Daiin, the weeping woman never looked up, only cowering in the corner. Occasionally she let out a shriek of pain, though nothing was touching her.
            "I'Daiin; fall back; let Bardek handle this one," Devin called up, not as a voice of command, but as one of the fellows in this situation agreeing with a reasonable approach. Bardek was evidencing some sort of inside knowledge, or intuition, about what they were dealing with.
            Devin's eyes stayed up the hallway towards the room, but as Amrynn was near and also waiting for... whatever happened next, Devin asked simply, "Arazni? Socorro?"?
            Amrynn glanced in Devin’s direction, and then back down the hallway. Not exactly the venue for academic discussion, but in the stretching moments she spoke.
            “Bellatafor’s Compendium?” she inquired of her literary counterpart. Upon receiving a response in the negative, she continued on. “A ramshackle collection of grisly historical references. Don’t think you’d fancy it. Too…splintered.” She paused, finally finding the right word.
            “Depictions to mark the mind though,” she said. “Like the one in yon stained glass. Very likely Arazni, the Harlot Queen of Geb, and Socorro, the Butcher of Carrion Hill. The heart of the story escapes me presently, but the underlying tides of madness and blood do not.”
            She shook her head, “Nothing rings as directly pertinent, only thematically appropriate for the tidings of this graveyard.”
            Seeing the woman not responding, Kamala looked over at Bardek. "Maybe she's not really there? Not a ghost, but an illusion? Or maybe even... like a memory? Maybe she's not undead, is what I mean. Instead she could be something the house is showing us."
            The barbarian froze in his tracks and began walking backward, gritting his teeth. "When...do we get to kill something around here? I grow tired of riddles and ghosts." He remained near the door, ready to block anything--particularly if it was corporeal and understandable to the superstitious Shoanti.
            "Thank you," Bardek said softly to I'Daiin, "and the very same moment that we have a target for smashing, I'll support you in doing so." He didn't take his eyes off of the sobbing woman. "I... I don't know why, but I feel like this is not a "block the door" situation," he said, almost as if he was thinking out loud. "I'm going in."
            Bardek suddenly stood fully erect - almost as if he'd been surprised to realize he'd slipped into a defensive crouch. He walked forward, though to one side of the crying woman, and knelt to match her height, trying to see her face.
            Crowding under the steep angle of the roof beside her, Bardek bent until he could see under the lank, dangling black hair.
            Under her hair, her eyes were dark pits, glittering feverishly, rolling in their sockets; they didn't seem to note him at all. Seeing her face made his hair stand on end, all the same. This was not the sanguine presence of the living. Beneath the sheet wrapped around her, her greyed skin was bruised and torn around her neck - ligature marks, it seemed. Yet that didn't seem to be what was causing her pain.
            Waiting, and watching, he realized that though her sobbing was constant, she only shrieked and cried when she looked up and over his shoulder. Glancing that way, he was met with his own frowning reflection. The rose-coiled wooden frame of the full-length mirror was tilted against the bricks there.
            Bardek nodded. Then he carefully backed out of the corner, and out of the room, beckoning I'Daiin and Kamala to join him in the hallway. In fact, he caught everyone's eyes, and moved to the bend in the hallway, where everyone could hear him without raising his voice. Not that he thought the woman in the room would hear him - or care, at least.
            "Undead," he confirmed, once everyone had come close enough, "I think it's the woman in the painting - or what's left of her. I don't know what kind of creature it is, but for some reason, the mirror appears to be causing its unhappy state. I'm tempted to move the mirror, to see if that will let me converse with it, but I also think it could be safely left there for now. Perhaps if we cleared the rest of the house first, it would make sense to come back and interact with it. But it might also have information we need. I'm open to your opinions. But I will say that I think going in there trying to take it out is a bad plan. The room - this whole attic - is too tight of a space. I'd suggest that if we want to fight it, one of us goes in, moves the mirror - maybe even breaks it from the doorway, somehow? - and then runs down the stairs, where the rest of us are waiting to ambush it. The hallway where the two galleries meet, for example. We could open both of those sets of doors, and have a great kill area - IF we need it. It's possible the thing will want to talk."
            "If the mirror is holding it at bay, we might need the mirror later. I'll turn the mirror away from it and immediately fall back. You observe from the loft bedroom. Kamala and I'Daiin hold in the Observatory. Amrynn holds in the storeroom adjacent to the loft bedroom. When I get past, I'll get into the storeroom across the hall from Amrynn. From the loft bedroom, you'll be able to watch up the hall and see what it does. If it doesn't do anything, you announce intentions, and go investigate. Invite it to tea," Devin shrugged. "If it rushes out and attacks, it'll go for Kamala and I'Daiin in the Observatory, or you in the loft bedroom; in either case, we can close and surround it. If it just makes a run for it, we'll follow your lead."
            "Bardek, maybe try her name?" Kamala nodded at Devin. "I'm fine with that, but to get her attention, let's try the women's names we know from this family."
            Going from Kamala's suggestion, Devin offered to Bardek, "If you need the names again, I recall them." Bardek may well already have them in mind, himself.
            Bardek frowned in thought, then shook his head. "I don't think names will matter, so long as the mirror is there - assuming that the mirror is what is holding it. Let's go with Devin's placement, and see what happens. If conversation is a possibility, then we'll worry about names."

12


            Devin balanced on the balls of his feet, hands steady as he cautiously reached out and turned the mirror away - then darted out of the once-locked room and down the hall at full speed, bounding off the wall to leap into hiding in a storeroom, just as the others waited in rooms scattered down the hall.
            Even as he rounded the corner, the sobbing stopped - replaced by a baleful shriek that seemed to go on forever, making the hearts of all who heard it thump faster. Then the shriek resolved itself into words.
            "Aldern! I can smell your fear! You'll be in my arms soon!"
            The sound of steps creaked over the warped floorboards as the woman stalked out of what had been her prison, face fixed in an unnatural glare of rage. Hands like claws raised before her, she came through the hallway, her barefoot steps determined yet swift, as she headed for the stairs, the bedsheet that had been her shroud abandoned in a tangled pile on the floor. Her clothing was fine, fine enough for a noble, but for that terrible wound on her neck.
            "That's convenient," Bardek said audibly from his position in the doorway - very carefully not blocking the "lady's" path. "We'd like to have a word or two with Aldern our own selves. If you know where he's hiding, we'll be happy to accompany you."
            The woman screamed, the sound one of pure, undiluted rage, but it was unclear whether it was in response to Bardek's offer, or whether she had even noticed him at all. She stomped on, moving fast.
            "Fine; we follow her!" Devin called back up the hall. The undead woman seemed relatively single-minded; she's presumably passed right by Bardek, so Devin risked calling aloud. "She's nearly at the stairs. Kamala; I'Daiin; beat feet and we can all fall in back into order."
            Amrynn watched the enraged creature slip by, and her first reaction was a wry smile at knowing her wrath, at what awaited the misbegotten soul on its receiving end. Then Amrynn’s delicate features hardened, because she was also keenly aware of what this banshee would do to anyone who interposed themselves between her ire and its target, wittingly or otherwise.
            That, and what would become of her after Aldern Foxglove had been dealt with. The Heroes had unleashed her, and they would have to manage whatever consequences might follow. A thought occurred to her as she began to give pursuit.
            “Did someone want to bring along the--” she suggested, not wanting to say the final word, but outlining the mirror’s rough shape with her hands as she went.
            "Got it," Devin volunteered. Stealth was out the window and the woman likely wouldn't be too slowed by traps or locked doors. Devin was least-needed.
            Mindful of being separated too far, he threw a quick Message spell, catching at least Amrynn and Bardek with whom he had line of sight, and encompassing Kamala or I'Daiin as well if he could as he passed them in the hall. Devin made his way back to the room that had been the woman's prison, hefted the mirror laterally under an arm (glass protectively inward), and pursued the line as fleetly as he could.
            Kamala ducked behind the doorframe as the woman sped by then quickly followed once she was out of arm's reach.
            The woman crashed open the door at the foot of the attic stairs, her steps quickening as she progressed, until she was all but running down the moldy, water-stained passages, the party in hot pursuit - all but Devin, who had gone back for the mirror.
            Following the ghost down a set of exceptionally creaky narrow stairs, Kamala paused in the doorway at the bottom. The woman had thrown aside the moldering rug that lay on the floor, revealing a strange, spiraling stain of fungus. Now she dropped to her knees, and began hammering at the floorboards. There was nothing ghostly about the solid impact of her fists on the wood. The shine of colored glass fell on her in spots from the shrouded windows in the dining room, oddly beautiful.
            /Gah,/ Devin exclaimed through the Message spell, /this thing is heavy . Getting there, but it'll take me a minute to get down to the main floor. Don't lose her; I can leave the mirror behind if I need to catch up. Leave me marks and don't go silent on me./
            Devin shifted his grip to carry the large mirror two-handed, one on each upright, bladed himself, rotated the top of the mirror slightly in his intended direction of travel to keep the base clear of his feet, and kept as best a pace as he could.
            "There's no hurry," Bardek whispered, expecting that Devin would hear him, "it's apparently trying to carve it's way through the floor."
            To the others, he cleared his throat, quietly. "Perhaps one of us should see what it's doing, and why? I'll go." He began to squeeze his way past those in front of him.
            The moment Bardek stepped onto the spiraling stain, the woman looked up at him and snarled, as though seeing him for the first time. "ALDERN, THEY WON'T PROTECT YOU," she howled, and brought her fists down in a mighty blow against the rotten floorboards. They buckled under her powerful attack, falling some distance into darkness.
            And the woman followed them, dropping into the hole.
            Bardek, who had been able to jump off the floorboards just before they fell away, stood at the precipice looking down together with Kamala. His human eyes couldn't pierce the gloom, but Kamala could see that about twenty feet below, there was a cellar room lined with piles of broken stone, dirt, and a few ruined pickaxes. The floor in the center of the room had been torn up to reveal an ancient set of stone spiral stairs, obviously of much older construction than the surrounding basement, winding deep into the bedrock below. The woman was disappearing down those stairs.
            Above, Devin laboriously hauled the long, ornate mirror down the stairs and, thanks to hearing Bardek speak, through the door that led to where the rest of the party waited.
            The tall woman grinned at Bardek. "You're a brave man. I know I wouldn't want to mess with a woman that angry." She nodded at the new hole in the floor. "It's about a 20 foot drop. Looks like somebody's been trying to dig up the basement. And she is... gone. In a hurry to get somewhere, for sure."
            "Have rope," Devin shared through the spell, his own voice also directly echoing down the narrow stairs near-simultaneously. "Mirror won't come with us, if so."
            Devin gratefully left the mirror at the top of the stairway hall and made his way down, using a practiced eye to find a sturdy anchor to affix rope to.
            The door handles and the railing on the stair they had come down both offered immediate purchase by the hole; a bit farther off, the dining room furniture stood, heavy and solid, cloaked in patches of color, and on the far side of the hole, the huge, heavy, stuffed manticore.
            "Houses with cellars have stairs to them," he commented as he worked, knowing it would take part of a minute to affix the rope. There were a few moments to spread out and check for easier (and more expedient) routes.
            "Who knows how many tunnels and passageways are down there? If it was half as deep I'd just jump." Kamala shook her head as she turned to Devin to help with the rope. "I feel like losing track of her is going to be bad for us."
            “Such access to the cellar is usually located closer to the kitchen though,” Amrynn countered as she held her position on the narrow stairs. “Although stairs do have a tendency to be built one above the other.”
            “You’d think if there were stairs close by,” she added in a grumble. “She would have used them.”
            "We shouldn't lose time searching," Bardek said, even as he tried to get to the closest door and open it. "I think losing sight of it could be bad for us. If it's going to attack our enemy, we should be there to follow up as quickly as possible. The last thing we need is to have it warn him we're coming and give him enough time to prepare for us."
            The nearest door did, in fact, prove to house a stairwell going down, when opened. Bardek was faced with a choice: wait for the rope to be affixed, and shimmy down it at what speed they could manage, or brave the downward stair.
            "May never get this chance again," Devin grinned as, surveying the options, his eyes alighted upon the taxidermied manticore. He pulled the end of the silk rope chain from the bottom pocket of his pack to start it loose, and -- with Kamala's offered aid -- affixed a couple loops securely around the manticore's hindquarters, knotted it, and stepped back towards the hole, letting the rope chain unravel and feed from the bottom of his pack. Every full arm's length, Devin quickly twisted and knotted a foothold loop, cinched it tight, and repeated.
            "Direct route; thirty seconds," he promised, working quickly.
            Fortunately, the rotten floorboards on the other side of the hole the woman had punched in the floor held, and Devin and Kamala had no trouble jumping across the pit.
            "We have stairs here," Bardek said, his voice urgent, but not demanding. "I can check them while you tie, but that hole looks deeper than a single story."
            "No one goes anywhere in this house alone," Devin cautioned, having just survived lagging behind alone with a heavy mirror. "Scared kid ghosts, exploding fungus, splinters to the carotid, haunted portraits."
            "Worth checking for a count of ten," Devin nodded -- maybe they'd need an alternate way back up. "With someone." From over his hands quickly working the rope, he inquired if Amrynn or I'Daiin would accompany Bardek for a quick check of where the stairs went."
            Bardek nodded. "Ten-count," he agreed, "maybe twelve. Big Man," he gestured at I'Daiin with a smile, "we go to the bottom of the stairs, look around, and come right back up. As quick and quiet as can be." Then Bardek darted down the stairs.
            Kamala nodded at Bardek as she helped Devin get the rope ready. "Hole's 20 feet deep. Ten count should be more than enough for the two of you."
            As it turned out, considerably less time was needed to reach the bottom of the stair - and Bardek and I'Daiin found themselves stymied by the lack of light. All they could tell was that the stair opened into a large space.
            Bardek rolled his eyes in the dark. Of course he had gotten so focused on getting down the stairs that he forgot to bring out a light source. Quietly, he pulled his glowing ioun stone from his pocket.
            A quick glance told him what he needed to know. The large open space was a kitchen, with a large oaken table in its center, its surface covered with moldy stains and rat droppings. Shelves lined the walls, and an oversized fireplace dominated the far right portion of the room. The shelves in the wall just across the open area before him were in a much greater state of disarray, and two foot-wide cracks in the wall near the floor led into the earth beyond the basement walls.
            There were doors in the walls to either side, and two in front of him.
            Having seen what he intended to see, he turned and pushed I'Daiin back up the steps, tucking away the ioun stone once more.
            By this time, the rope was securely fastened. Kamala and Devin tested it against the weight of the manticore, then set about tying loops for the trip down.
            In short order they were ready, and Devin tossed down the rope and the coin that Amrynn had enspelled. It landed on the stone below, spinning to a stop to shed light upon the strange stairs down.
            They climbed down, standing around the open stair-pit. A foul stink, like rotten meat, wafted up on a cold breeze from the darkness below. A set of stairs led from the room, heading up.
            Of the enraged dead woman, there was no more sign.
            "Looks like we go down further," Bardek said. He gestured at the twisting stairs that led downward, a gentlemanly wave of the arm. "Kamala, will you lead?"

13


            They had only gone down a few steps into the cold, reeking dark, when Amrynn, Bardek and Devin noticed a sudden increase in the stink of rotted flesh. Unaware, Kamala and I'Daiin continued on down.
            There was a sudden glow from behind the party - the quiet flutter of feathers and a prismatic flickering of warm light that faded away peacefully. "Careful. The stench says they're close."
            The words were like a song, the Varisian lilt to them made all the more musical by the natural warble to the voice of one Cosmin Strofa - Sandpoint native, Chosen of The Eternal Rose, and defender of beauty and love wherever it was threatened. He was clearly huffing and puffing, out of breath but still standing stoically tall. The curiously elongated and elegantly curved starknife at his hip shimmered with a rainbow of colors, energy coursing up and down its blades. He pushed his damp, platinum hair from his bronze face, nose wrinkled in disgust at the horrid, pungent assault he had detected.
            "The Prism called to me," he explained quickly, his tone apologetic while his jewel-toned blue eyes scanned the darkness with inhuman acuity, "This is a fight I cannot run from. I imagined Sandpoint to be a harbinger of regret, but grief shall not stay my blade. It sings once more with you all."
            "You look shiny," said the older gentleman in the middle of the party, a darkwood shield on one arm, a copper mug in the other hand. "Do we know you?" He obviously only paid the slightest of attention to the answer, however, as he raised his mug to his face and drank from it. The smell of mead was, alas, drowned out by the stench.
            Devin chastised himself for getting complacent, snapped back to the present by Cosmin's sudden reappearance accompanied by ominous reel of rotting flesh. He took the previous few moments he had to draw sword and dagger to hand again.
            Kamala, who clearly had a cold stopping up her nose since she didn't notice any smell, looked back up the stairs, amused. "Well, as long as you're not a ghost." The muscular woman in the intimidating mask grinned and turned back to the task at hand. "Let's go kill some dead people."
            “Cosmin has aided us before, Bardek, Kamala,” Amrynn said nodding to each and by way of introductions. “Devoutee of Shelyn.”
            She readied the lean staff in her hands as the tensions rose during the descent.
            “We freed a pinned revenant from the attic and pursue her as she seeks out Aldern Foxglove, her presumed tormentor,” she said for Cosmin’s benefit. “We will lose her if we must engage…and it smells as though we must.”
            "It's Aldern!" I'Daiin gasped, then let out a low cry, raising his lucerne hammer. Fortunately for those tight-packed on the ancient stairwell, he didn't start swinging it, but slowly lowered it once more, breathing hard. Looking into the darkness below showed no sign of anyone, Aldern or otherwise.
            The stink was reduced to its previous level of unpleasantness after a moment, whatever had caused it passing. I'Daiin was sweating, the huge barbarian's eyes darting all around.
            "Kamala is right. Let's kill something," he finally growled, pushing forward, forcing Kamala to move on or be trampled.

14


            The stairwell seemed to have no end, circling round and round down into the stone, a giant corkscrew path burrowing into the heart of the coast. It was a relief when it finally spilled into a large cavern, with several winding offshoot tunnels beckoning.
            The sound of breathing, amplified as of that of a titan, haunted the cavern as they came to a halt. There was no sign of the angry dead woman.
            "And The Rose let a single Petal fall from her hair, and its brilliance was as though the Sun."
            Cosmin let the prayer sing from his lips while he drew his starsword, a palm placed against its long, slender, curling blades. From his fingertips sprang a kaleidoscopic display, color and light engulfing the strange weapon and cutting through any darkness in the cave with luminescence that shifted softly between vivid hues. The spell showed that upon the sharpened steel was a prayer etched: I Am The Ardent Heart of Justice; I Am The Vigilant Flame of Love.
            Holding the newly created torch aloft, Cosmin took in the surroundings of the cave, nodding gently to Amrynn's introduction.
            "I caught the Heroes of Sandpoint on their way to a ghoul-infested farmhouse," he explained for the sake of Kamala and Bardek, "But news grave and tainted with ill-memory made me wander away from my duty towards The Incorruptible. May my own selfishness be absolved by assisting you all now in giving these dead the Final Rest they deserve." He gave a friendly nod towards the familiar faces - Amrynn, Devin, and I'Daiin.
            "A Revenant, you said? Then a tragic story this must be - whether we stop this woman or not, her very existence is born of hatred and vengeance - the two traits my Lady feels the most sorrow for," he noted morbidly, his Varisian accent practically singing the words in a manner that sounded far more natural than forced. His white brows lifted at Bardek, a small scrunch of his nose still making his features look as perfect as a marble statue.
            "You seem ... familiar," Cosmin realized, his head tilting left and right in the manner of a bird inspecting something curious. "Regardless. A path we must choose."
            He pointed his illuminated sword towards the west and began to stride in that direction, eyes and ears trying to pick up on anything that seemed out of place. "I suggest this way."
            "Wait," Bardek said, before Cosmin could get too far towards the opening towards which he had been walking. "Perhaps look down, first, and see if there are any footprints to follow?"
            “We’ve put some basic tactics in play,” Devin volunteered from the rear of the file, indicating Kamala and I’Daiin on point. “Suggestion for path welcome, but let’s hold the line, keep points distributed and eyes out.” Towards that point, as anything down here with a craving for flesh probably would see fine in the dark, would hear them or smell their blood from a hundred yards away, and wouldn’t be drawn or dissuaded from more light, Devin threw a handful of magical torches into existence about them, putting one near the mouth of the north passageway, one to the northwest, one to the southwest, and one last to the southeast corner. “If we’ve no tracker, I can do a quick survey for signs of recent passage. And gobbets of discarded flesh.”
            "No tracker? Hah!" I'Daiin slapped his chest. "You think the Storval Plateau is kind to those who cannot find their way? Let me look." Shouldering forward, he knelt by each tunnel opening, peering at the stone floor, sometimes grunting or picking up a pebble or bone to lick.
            The limestone walls dripped with moisture, and swaths of black and dark blue mold grew in spiraling, tangled patterns on the floor, ceiling, and walls. Rubble and broken bones cluttered the floor. In the meantime, Cosmin noticed that the marks of pickaxes and shovels on the walls' cracked and crumbling sandstone was only a few months old to the southwest.
            All the while, the rythmic breathing of some immense creature whooshed through the caves and tunnels.
            "She went that way," I'Daiin finally told them, standing and pointing down the middle tunnel.
            With Kamala taking the point once again, they headed into the tunnel - only to find the way branched once more. Kamala had just glanced back at I'Daiin to ask him to check again, when someone plowed into her from down the narrow tunnel - a woman, she realized. A moment later, a man slammed into her from the other tunnel as well - ghouls, by their cold, sallow skin and feverish eyes.
            Those two were immediately followed by two more - behind Cosmin. One looked rather Varisian, while the last was a thin, stern-looking woman - or at least, had been once. The stink of death hung over them all.
            The snapping woman struggling with Kamala managed to nip her, though a solid smack to the face drove the man off. The Varisian arrived too late to do more than surprise Cosmin - and while the stern woman was faster, all she managed to do was chip a tooth on his gleaming armor.
            I'Daiin let out a bellow of laughter, shocking in the claustrophobic, breathing tunnels. "This is what I've been wanting - a foe you can fight!" he cheered as he brought his hammer down on the man threatening Kamala - but the man may have been dead, but he was no fool. He used Kamala as a shield, and I'Daiin's growl rumbled in the tunnel.
            "Let the composition begin!" Cosmin swore, his blade lancing out to deliver a swift cut to the former Varisian. Rather than move, he placed himself rigidly between the ghouls and the rest of the party, making sure the creatures would have little choice but to focus on him instead. He trusted in the grace of The Eternal Rose to keep him protected, and put faith in his sword arm alone to take vengeance upon the the attackers. "Two back here!"
            "Brother, why don't you join-" the Varisian got no further before Cosmin plunged his sword into the ghoul's chest, ripping it free with a gout of black, clotted blood. The Varisian man gurgled in surprise, too dead to feel pain but not too dead to know it was in danger of ending.
            "Less talk, Miska, more doing as His Lordship bids us," the stern woman reprimanded him, testing Cosmin's defense with swipes of hands with the fingerbones protruding, and filed down sharp.
            I’Daiin’s enthusiasm was a bit infectious; Devin felt a half-grin creep onto his face at the promise of putting his blade into a tangible opponent again. Cosmin’s call and Amrynn’s positioning for spell only reinforced the familiar feel of the flow of the fight.
            Chancing that his read of the cavern’s space around the columnar stair was accurate, Devin broke south and circled behind the stairway to come up behind and flank the ghoul to Cosmin’s southeast. They were in two fights right now – Cosmin, Amrynn, and Devin to the rear, Kamala, I’Daiin, and Bardek to the fore. He was aware he was putting one of the uncleared passageways to his back by maneuvering to flank one of the ghouls they actually knew about, but decided to address the present problem as it was presented.
            With deadly precision, before Miska even knew he was there, Devin planted his sword through the ghoul's neck, severing his spine - and then his head.
            "You see what I mean," the stern woman told his corpse as it slumped to the stairs. Raising her voice, she called, "A little help!" Lifting the hem of her grey dress primly, she kicked away Miska's head, to menace Cosmin once more.
            The air around Amrynn dropped a few degrees as she spun to take in the assaults, front and back. Would they ever be free of these wretched smells? She incanted swiftly, her breath a frosty puff, and directed two fingers toward the ghoul at the rear. She was interested to see how some of her newfound energies would manifest and tax her, if at all.
            A slicing ray of cold arced across the rancid cavern toward the undead.
            The woman in the grey dress ducked out of sight behind the tunnel wall, letting the blast of frozen air sweep past her harmlessly. "Sooner is better than later," she told the other ghouls, unnaturally reflecting eyes narrowing at Amrynn.
            "You just hang on, Prudie - we're comin'!" the man facing off with Kamala yelled back, dusting his coveralls and smacking his meaty hands together. As he did, Kamala beat back the thin woman's reaching claws, but suffered a savage bite to her arm. Kamala shook her off, then cracked her foot against the man's jaw as he tried to imitate his companion's success - but he managed to scrape her leg with one black-clawed hand as he stumbled back, clutching his mouth with his other hand as he worked his jaw.
            Prudie raised her clawlike hands and frowned at Cosmin. "You're bright," she complained, squinting a bit as she went for his throat. It was a terrible deja vu for the angelic Varisian, and it spurred him to put his all into his defense.
            After a flurry of attacks, all turned aside, Prudie backed a bit off, lambent eyes flicking between him and Devin. "His Lordship has no place for you here, whatever Miska said," she warned them. "No one but his favorite."
            Kamala had echoed I'Daiin's earlier excitement at having a physical foe to fight, and the dead man's bravado just seemed to fuel her. "No, you're not." She rolled her shoulders and bounced on her toes, taking up a deliberately provocative fighting stance. The muscular woman's eyes glowed blue and the savage bite frosted over, the rime quickly melting away to reveal less-ruined flesh. "You don't know who you're messing with."
            She grinned at the confident man and her teeth grew into white fangs while silver claws pushed out of the tips of her fingers. "Say your prayers quickly, because you're leaving this world in the next few seconds." Without waiting for a response, Kamala lashed out with a series of blindingly fast strikes, the very model of Vudran martial prowess, though most monks didn't have saurian claws at the ends of their fingers.
            The ghoul gasped with horror and drew back, but the very fury of her attack made it a bit less accurate than it might have been under normal circumstances, and the stout ghoul was merely eviscerated rather than torn limb from limb. Still, he dropped to the floor with a rattling gurgle, no longer a threat.
            "It is rather crowded down here," Bardek replied to the undead woman's warning, "but don't you worry, we've come to thin things out a bit!" His tone was jovial, and his smile bright as he raised his mug in a toast, and slapped a hand down on I'Daiin's shoulder. "Get 'em, Big Man," Bardek suggested to the barbarian, even as the warm surge of strength flowed from his hand into I'Daiin's shoulder and through the barbarian's body.
            The Shoanti grinned a feral grin, raising his lucerne hammer with bulging arms. With a resounding yell, he brought his hammer down over Kamala's shoulder, planting it solidly in the ghoul woman's head. Thick and noxiously rotted chunks better left undescribed spattered Kamala and the tunnel surrounding.
            The sticky, black ichor dripping from the glowing sword of Shelyn did nothing to slow Cosmin's divine fury. Shelyn may have been a goddess of love and mercy but there was no room for such emotions towards the abhorrent undead, their minds lost to madness and hunger. The Warrior Poet felt pity for the futures stolen by ghoul fever but it did not slow his sword arm in releasing them from such torment.
            "Brighter than you know, Prudie," Cosmin retorted to the monstrous woman's complaints, "Bright enough to burn you, your Lordship, his Favorite, and any other foul thief of Shelyn's light! To The Boneyard with you and all your ilk!"
            Cosmin twirled with a dancer's grace into a spinning strike, the starsword a veritable whirlwind of razor-sharp steel as it sawed upwards at Prudie and sent a dazzling display of color across the cavern walls.
            Prudie pulled back, just as the other ghoul had done, with a quickness that should never belong to the dead. "His Lordship wouldn't like you," she winced, the bright display of color not stopping her from backing away, suffering only a minor gash. Devin noticed yellow dust on her clothes, drifting to the floor as she withdrew.
            “Fancy,” Devin offered by way of compliment. Devin considered drawing and throwing a dagger at Prudie; safe distance and out of bite’s range and all; but he was also confident Cosmin’s taunts and showmanship would draw the ghoul’s attention. Devin stepped up and took his own swipe at Prudie with his shortsword.
            Devin was correct in his assumption that Prudie's attention would be on Cosmin's flair rather than his own relatively more stealthy approach. He stabbed her for the mistake, making her hiss like a teakettle as she took the first few steps that would take her out of harm's way, back down the tunnel she'd come from.
            Amrynn shifted as the battle flowed around her, providing a little more mobility for those that needed it. Weapons and curses flashed among the combatants as she quietly inspected the tunnel on their flank.
            Whipping an arm back around, she prepared to reach out with her own icy touch toward anything that still threatened.
            The ghoul clacked her teeth shut in anger as she glared at Amrynn, parts of her skin gone black with cold. Then she ducked back down the tunnel behind her.
            But the party was given no respite. The sound of running feet echoed in the tunnels, and within moments more ghouls came pouring out of the stonework. Two came for Kamala once more, disregarding the fate of the last ghouls who had done that, and she and I'Daiin saw three more dart past, down the tunnel to the right.
            Somewhere in the dark tunnels, a woman's enraged shriek echoed, raising the hair on their napes.
            Kamala grinned her dragon-grin at the two newcomers and beckoned to them as she reset her stance. Covered in black, stinking viscera and too-thick blood, her eyes and teeth gleamed in the gloom underneath the leering demon mask. She looked ready to repel an army of ghouls. "Eternal life's not gonna be too eternal for any of you who come for me."
            "Now, don't get all upset at us," one of the not-men in front of her cautioned, a grin splitting his heavy jowls. "His Lordship commands us! Besides, how long can you hold us off?"
            "I could do this all day!" Kamala whipped another series of clawed strikes at the ghoul on her left, quick as a dragon's lashing tail.
            The oily-looking skinny ghoul was rent asunder faster than the other ghouls could react, spattering more rotten viscera and raw, chewed meat over the already-painted walls and floor. The remaining ghoul gulped anxiously, but after a quick glance in the direction it came from, shakingly advanced. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else, despite the hunger that haunted his jowly face.
            "I've heard that kind of shriek before," Bardek said to I'Daiin, his tone that of one noting something in passing, "whenever old Tunover's wife found her husband passed out of drink at the inn, and his week's wages drunk away instead of brought safely home to her. Prior to this day, I'd thought only an angry wife could make that kind of sound." The cleric of Cayden Cailean shrugged, the look on his face the one that was often seen on the visage of such priests when contemplating a man who'd gone well beyond the merriment of a good drink (or twelve) and into the realm of self-destruction. Then, after a moment, Bardek took a drink from his own mug, and brought his attention back to the matters at hand.
            "More coming," he said to the others behind him, his tone once again that of a man enjoying himself, "sounds like more than a couple. Apparently, our good friend Prudie has decided to help us out by sending the welcoming party to meet us here, rather than us having to hunt them all down individually. Very considerate of her, if you think about it."
            "I'Daiin," Bardek said, laying a hand on the barbarian's shoulder again, "I know Kamala can handle herself just fine, but we don't want to keep our host waiting while we dilly-dally at the door, so perhaps you should help her clear away the rubbish?"
            Once more, the warmth of ale-muscles flowed through the cleric's touch and into I'Daiin's body.
            "HHHHRRRRRAAAAAAAAA!" I'Daiin roared, and Kamala was treated to another explosion of stinking gore as he brought his hammer down neatly in the center of the jowly ghoul's head.
            "She'll bring more of them, by Shelyn," Cosmin swore, looking over his shoulder to see the fight play out between the other Priest and the fearsome warriors. He glanced towards Amrynn and Devin, giving his weapon a fine spin along its center ring.
            "We should let her go for now," he advised, "See if we can't circle around and cut these monsters between us and face whatever awaits ahead as One."
            With that, Shelyn's Thorn made to move North, creeping along the same path Prudie had taken. He kept his eyes wary for any traps or trickery that the Ghoul may have been trying to lead him into and looked for a way to circle around the attackers towards the West. If anything, he was prepared for another ambush, seeking to stop any further reinforcements from flooding the landing.
            The narrow, squeezing, and mold-caked passage was short, thankfully - but at the end of it, Cosmin's beautiful shimmer of swordlight fell on ugliness. There was Prudie, once more, with three other ghouls beside her - one in carpenter's garb with, curiously enough, half his skull staved in by what looked like a strangely shaped chunk of stone. The mold seemed to grow particularly thick in this wider portion of the tunnel, all brown, blue, green, and yellow in patches and swirls. Several pickaxes had been tossed into the corner of the room - one of which looked particularly well made... but the ghouls appeared to prefer to use their bare hands to claw at their food, for they didn't rush to pick them up.
            Having seen what he came to see, Cosmin retreated back down the squeezing passage, meaning to tell the others what he had found.
            Devin was about to call warning to Cosmin to not split too far, but there were sound tactics in establishing a second bulwark in the narrow passage to the north, though it meant Devin wouldn't be able to assist -- and Prudie, for one, had been strong enough to take sound strikes from both Cosmin and Devin, yet still escape. One lucky bite from a ghoul and Devin would have to pull Cosmin's paralyzed statue back from the fracas to prevent the ghouls from utterly rending him. He had to trust Cosmin's faith and divine favor would prevent that.
            "Yellow dust on Prudie; she was covered in it; be wary," Devin did note aloud, thinking there might be a vein of sulfur or phosphorous or similar down here that would react poorly to flame or spells, if they had any about them. Might be something they could use to their advantage.
            Devin tossed the lit coin he was carrying down the passageway to the north and drew a dagger to hand for something to throw if the opportunity arose. Speaking of which, anticipating he'd have to throw through whatever fleeting gap was to either side of Cosmin, Devin intoned a quick spell that swirled the shadows about him, sharpening his perception and slowing to his eyes all the movement about the party. Devin moved to follow behind Cosmin.
            “Dropping back to maintain sight lines,” Amrynn said to Bardek. Her thin fingers gripped his shoulder momentarily as she spoke to insure he was aware his back was exposed.
            She stowed her quarterstaff as she moved lightly back toward the stairs. Two fronts to support was not an issue, but her eyes flicked to the third tunnel and the descent of stairs from above as she spoke to Devin’s retreating form.
            “Maintain sight lines,” she said. Her words were for the benefit of the more zealous members of the party. She knew Devin wouldn’t stray from what was tactically sound. Her long fingered hands stretched at her sides, and she felt the fire churning within her, seeking release.
            “Good call,” Devin acknowledged. He’d split the difference of the narrow passageway to his northwest to hold up at a place where he could see to both Amrynn and Cosmin. If that didn’t prove possible because of a twist or turn, and the passageway stayed narrow, he was prepared to mutter a curse and stay ten feet behind Cosmin, unless Cosmin trudged onward into some sort of dusty mineral vein – something Devin would fathom a trap at first consideration. They wouldn’t get far up the passageway with the tight squeeze, and chances were Cosmin was going to encounter resistance in a moment anyway.
            Before he could take more than a few steps, Cosmin re-emerged from the passage, his once clean and bright clothing now smeared in fungus.
            Kamala saw the three ghouls hurry past, heading down the left passage. It seemed they were no longer so foolhardy as to assume that they had the advantage in the narrow passages... and would probably have to be dealt with in more open ground.
            Kamala flicked blood off her hands and knelt to wipe gore on the jowly ghoul's pants. "How'd that work out for you, big guy?" Her claws retracted and even as she grinned the fangs in her mouth receded back into normal teeth. She swiped the worst of the guts off her mask and wiped that on the ghoul's pants, too. Covered in ghoul blood, viscera on her hands and face, blonde hair damp with guts and with bits of meat stuck in it, the Vudran woman looked perfectly at home as she watched the three ghouls run past. "Running won't save you! I'm coming, and you're gonna die! Your Lord can't protect you! Say goodbye to your friends, make peace with your gods, because these are your last moments in this life!"
            Amrynn drew up as Cosmin returned, and the three found themselves in a tightly knit triangle. “I didn’t mean quite that close,” she quipped.
            The echoing screams reached them in the brief lull. She turned her head in the general direction and said with a small degree of frustration, “I believe we’re going to miss the show.”
            Finding Cosmin's new décor entirely too reminiscent of the fungus-exploding portrait, Devin took a cautious step back. "Upstairs, I saw fungus like that consume a man in seconds," he explained, but added, "The reality probably didn't really happen as fast as the echo. Probably." Regardless, that resolved Devin to stick to the main passageway behind I'Daiin and Kamala and Bardek.
            "Prestidigitation? Slough it off him without sending it into the air?" Devin suggested to Amrynn. The coin he'd tossed down the northern corridor was now lost to him; Devin split the darkness and conjured up four torches to follow along and keep the area lit.
            Devin was prepared to move to west as soon as I'Daiin, Kamala, and Bardek did.
            "There were four of them up that tunnel," Cosmin relayed, trying to not let the tale of the fungus that now covered him send him into a panic, "Including the one they called Prudie. Couldn't have held them all off at once."
            "Looks like they're trying to pull us into an ambush, or a fight where their numbers mean something. There's probably more than just the four." Cosmin kept away from the others, making sure he did not expose them to whatever spores now marred his beautiful appearance. He looked towards Amrynn as Devin suggested spellwork, shrugging.
            "I'd rather not be devoured by a mushroom, and I've no magic that can replicate the effect. But I think we've a moment to breathe - they don't want to engage us one at a time." The aasimar glanced towards the western end of the corridor with a smirk. "Not when our fellows can hold the line so well."
            Kamala stood up and rolled her shoulders, closing her eyes to roll her head back and forth. She turned back to I'daiin and Bardek and jerked her head in the ghouls' direction. "They're massing, and it's going to get messy. They figured out the bottleneck works against them instead of for them. They'll come at us from as many directions as they can, swarm us and try to pull us down through sheer weight." The blonde woman grinned. "We've got them right where we want them."
            Kamala slowly made a fist with her right hand, each finger cracking individually as she did. Then she did it again with her left, and shot her fists out- one, two- to clear the sodden fabric from her forearms. "Let's go get 'em."
            Bardek nodded, though Kamala wasn't looking at him. "I have a nasty surprise for them just as soon as they're stupid enough to surround us," he said, "Let's push ahead, and be ready for the inevitable ambush."
            "Let's just prevent that from happening," Devin requested, if they were electing tactics. He had visions of Bardek chortling overconfidently as feral ghouls rushed in from all sides, 'Mwah hah! We have them right where we want th...'
            "Aldern, and the revenant," Devin reminded the point. If they'd broken the line and the ghouls were actually fleeing for the hills, fine. Stomp out what they could, break through anything that got in the way, eye on the prize.
            "Aldern, and the revenant," Cosmin agreed, giving Devin a nod, "If the Ghouls cross us, we'll deal with them, but there's no sense in looking for a fight that may not arrive."
            He looked back down at his marred appearance again, frowning. "You uh ... How quickly does this fungus act, again ..?"
            "Moments," Devin reiterated, dismissing what he'd observed previously as not likely indicative of present timeframes. "We all may want to ward against maladies once this is over."
            “We may have a moment to breathe,” Amrynn said. “But I’d hold your breath for the time being, if I were you.” She spoke a few lilting words and approached Cosmin critically, beginning to clean him from the top down as carefully as she could manage without delaying their pursuit overlong.
            “I’ll try not to make you look too beautiful though,” she said wryly. “We wouldn’t want to overdue it.”
            In about a minute of enchantment, Amrynn cleaned away the mold that had smeared Cosmin's clothes, leaving them as pristine as when he'd arrived.
            "Be of good cheer," Bardek said, raising his mug once again, though his tone was oddly formal. Then he lifted that mug to each of his companions in turn, giving them a nod, and taking a sip of the contents. "Now," he said, as a wave of good feelings spread over the party members, "let's not dilly-dally. Only Gods triumph by accident."

15


            Kamala took the lead again, and didn't have long to wait for the anticipated ambush. The moment the tunnel widened, ghouls came rushing forward to surround her from the side tunnels. Devin and Amrynn, now smeared with fungus themselves from squeezing into the narrow, moldy tunnel, blocked any progress for Cosmin, though he could hear the fight commence from down another tunnel.
            Kamala bared her teeth at the ghouls as they rushed her. "So eager to die!" She threw a punch at the one coming up on her left, dancing right a little to give I'Daiin room to squish its head.
            The ghoul had the clothes of a carpenter, now stained with unspeakable things from its depredations - but also, apparently, blood from the strangely-shaped chunk of stonework lodged in its skull. The blood that had run down its face had dried, leaving it with a horried mask from which wild, glittering black eyes stared - but Kamala wasn't impressed with any of that. She punched the man square in the face, and he rocked back on his heels, reeling.
            "She blinded me!" he complained as he shook his head, baring teeth that, with the gums drawn back, seemed far too long.
            "Stop your whining, Goran, and do as His Lordship commands! Before you end up with another stone in your skull," a Varisian man ordered with a sneer.
            Another touch, and another wave of ale-muscles flooded through I'Daiin. "Knock them down again," Bardek murmured.
            I'Daiin laughed, a wild, joyous sound that brought to mind the mad winds of the Cinderlands and the war whoops of the Shoanti. He brought his hammer down on the top of the Varisian's head, which abruptly relocated to the pit of his stomach - at least, it looked that way, with the gore flying, for his head was gone when it fell away.
            Kamala bared her teeth at Goran and nodded at the now fully dead Varisian who had him to shut up. "Ouch, that had to hurt. You sure you still want to do this, Goran? Blind, hurt, hungry, you can still keep going. But you can still feel pain. And you're about to die, Goran. For real this time. Maybe you should run." She didn't look the least bit intimidated by the crush of undead. The gore spattered woman didn't give Goran a chance to answer or run, instead throwing another series of lightning quick strikes at the ghoul's head, hoping to finish what she'd started.
            Weighing the options quickly, Cosmin looked towards the the other tunnel and resolved himself. If he could hear the fight so clearly, the little passage must not have been very long - he might have been able to wind his way around and confront the Ghouls on two sides, turning the tables on their little ambush.
            "I'm going around this way," he told Devin, keeping his voice down so that hopefully the Ghouls would stay focused on the battle at front.
            With that, Shelyn's Shield darted south and tore through the passageway, his eyes glinting like jewels against the light of his blade while he kept aware of any dangers.
            "Agreed," Devin concurred, and moved to follow Cosmin. "We can hear the fight this way, too," Devin explained to Amrynn. "Breaking line of sight with you; picking it up with Kamala."
            Devin darted back around the corner to the south, following Cosmin and hoping to get a least a passing glimpse at a ghoul-like target.
            Cosmin saw nothing in the tunnel that raised any more worry than what lay behind it, so he squeezed through the end of it to come out by the punch-drunk ghoul. It snapped at him, but the flash of his sword held it at bay.
            Greatly daring, Devin ventured a spell through the narrow gap above Cosmin's head. It spattered against the far wall, the angle being too acute to strike the ghoul before him, but acid peeled away a sheet of fungus from the cave wall, revealing bare rock and dirt beneath. The acrid stink of burning fungus made Cosmin, I'Daiin, and Kamala's eyes water.
            The blonde woman grimaced and flinched away from the burning fungus. "Augh! That's worse than the ghouls! Gods, don't do that again!"
            Content to hold her position at the rear of the line while the muscle worked, Amrynn shifted slightly to keep a moving target as well as eyes on other tunnels.
            When the chunks stopped flying, she sent an arc of frigid pain forward to cut into whatever ghoul was still standing.
            Alas, the crowded and active tunnel gave her little room to aim her spell, and like Devin's, it blasted the walls rather than the ghoul she had been aiming for, coating the fungus in a layer of hoarfrost.
            She turned at a faint noise, only to receive a rush from Prudie, looking the worse for wear. The ghoul tried to bite her, but the shimmering, translucent armor she wore over her gown kept its teeth from her neck.
            The ghouls facing Kamala similarly had no luck. Her weaving footwork and sharp jabs and kicks left them sullenly lurking near her in the narrow tunnel, unable even to circle her.
            "We'll be done up here in a second!" Kamala sounded like someone just finishing up a laborious but not particularly difficult task- unloading rocks from a cart, maybe, or mucking out a stable. Kamala's voice didn't sound concerned about the pair of ghouls in front of her in the least.
            The carpenter was pummeled so badly by Kamala that it wasn't clear whether he'd survived her first punches and kicks, or whether she'd killed him with the first blow to the head and simply hadn't had time to fall before her routine was done. He fell over, rotting skin split and oozing sluggishly.
            "Threat to the rear," Bardek's baritone called out as he noticed Amrynn beside him, struggling with the thing that was once Prudie. His voice was clear, but calm and matter-of-fact. Simply informing his companions of the situation. "Shifting to counter," he said, letting I'Daiin know that Bardek was about to step away from the barbarian's back.
            "Amrynn," Bardek's tone sharpened, and it was clear he was giving direction now, rather than merely passing information, "step to your right, I'll pass on your left." He shifted his copper mug to his shield hand, while his right hand moved to grab the morningstar at his belt.
            "Let them come!" I'Daiin roared, slamming his hammer into the moldy tunnel walls, then swinging at the last ghoul before Kamala - but this time, he missed.
            Shelyn's Shield replaced Cayden's Called upon the battle line to the west, Cosmin surging forth with starsword aglow and vigor in spades thanks to Bardek's spell of hope. Despite the horrible burning of the spell chewing through the worst of the fungus, the aasimar priest wasn't about to let discomfort keep him from performing his sacred duty. His eyes may have watered and wept, but the grip on his sword only tightened.
            "Songbird, forgive these souls as you would your brother," he pleaded with a steely, singsong tone, "And grant me the fervor to release them from these ignoble shells!"
            Sliding up to Kamala's side, Cosmin's blade cleaved through the darkness, a wondrous and brilliant light that was sharp enough to carve through ghoul flesh as though it were paper.
            It had done so many times already.
            Trusting in the rest of the party to maintain the flank and deal with whatever was going on to the rear, Cosmin put his entire focus on the fight before him, standing side by side with the muscular woman that shared the color of his mane. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear that they shared a common heritage - touched by the Divine.
            Together, they would slay forth a river of black.
            He slashed with his shining sword, again and again, each cut slicing deeper into the torso of the ghoul that stood before him - another Varisian. Its fetid insides fell to the floor, swollen with the flesh of the innocent - yet still the thing that had been a man drove toward him, finger-claws reaching. "For you, Your Lordship!" he screamed.
            With the acrid smell of dissolved fungus heavy on the air, Devin grumbled, "Not enjoying tight tunnels." From his limited vantage, though, there was little he could do, and littler still that he needed to do. He had no doubt Kamala, I'Daiin, and Cosmin would readily rip through the remaining two ghouls, and was all the happier for having them all quite capably on an evolving front-line. He could make some desperate acrobatic attempt to throw himself into the middle of the fray, but such a stunt wouldn't improve the party's overall position and would more-likely just interfere with others more capable in this fight than Devin.
            Devin dropped back to the intersection to the east, sword out, and brought his Dancing Lights spell to three points about him, twenty feet out to the east, northwest, and southwest, keeping the area illuminated. He kept his attention eastward to guard one flank of the party.
            Amrynn shoved Prudie away and pulled back, rearing to her full, willowy height. “You must love your master very much to follow him so blindly, to risk so much,” she said, her words rife with power and command. Her flowing arms lanced out to the right, and bolts of searing white fire raced into the tunnels, shoom, shoom, shoom, disappearing into the darkness.
            “To risk your eternal life, carrying out his will,” she continued, her tone still powerful, but now with undertones of sadness. “That such potential is so misdirected.” She shook her head as light blossomed in the distance, and her three bolts of magic coursed into view at the other end of the tunnel.
            “Do you think he’ll forgive you?” she asked the ghoul, and then stepped lightly aside just before impact.
            "What can we do but love and obey him?" Prudie asked, her tone surprisingly bitter. But before she could elaborate, Amrynn's magic bored through her, leaving smoking holes three places in her chest. What had once been Prudie collapsed, finally free.
            Amrynn then gestured Bardek forward with a wave of her arm, as requested.
            Bardek stepped forward, morningstar ready, only to find that Prudie had already met her end. Behind them, another drama played out as the large Varisian man bit Cosmin with too-long teeth. Cosmin felt the horror of his muscles stiffening into immobility once more - how could this be?! But the ghoul felt it as well, and released him, focusing on trying to get through Kamala's defenses - all in vain.
            Kamala's next punch knocked him into the wall, which he slid down bonelessly, the feral glitter in his eyes replaced by the film of true death.

16


            Bardek looked down sadly at what remained of Prudie. He had heard the final exchange between the undead thing and Amrynn.
            "They are driven by the will of the evil that created them," he said to Amrynn, his voice heavy, "it is a bitter thing, with no good outcome."
            Turning to survey the battlefield, Bardek saw Cosmin on the ground, and hurried over, his morningstar sliding back into place at his belt. Kneeling beside the warrior-priest, Bardek examined the wounds near Cosmin's neck.
            "Never expected to feel a wisp of sympathy for a ghoul," Devin commented, regarding Prudie's last words. It didn't dent his resolve; the true crime and loss was when the ghouls had attacked Prudie and killed her; but that Prudie had enough of her own mind after rising again and to be trapped in service to Aldern... Devin shuddered once, sharply.
            "Theatrically done," Devin complimented Amrynn on the moments he'd heard of her rebuke, and her timing of delivery of the missiles that had finally dropped Prudie.
            "We're minutes behind the revenant," Devin advised Bardek, in that another minute for Cosmin to recover wouldn't matter much one way or the other, "but more threats could arrive at any moment. With a guard a few strides deeper into the tunnel, and you ready to clear up the paralysis early if threats do come, we can wait it out."
            Bardek grunted, then looked up. "He's already starting to come around," he said, patting Cosmin on the shoulder. "You can see his fingers twitching, and his eyelids trying to blink. Should only be a few seconds more, and we can go. But if you want to put eyes out up ahead, that's not a terrible idea. Just don't lose sight of us."
            One side of Amrynn’s mouth twitched into a smile as she moved forward to assist. Her mother would take great pleasure in the amount of ‘sweeping’ with which she was currently engaged. Her hands cut through the air just above flesh and clothing, sluicing off fungus wherever she went. Menial chores had never been Amrynn’s forte, and she felt a pang of homesickness as her mother’s voice echoed in her mind.
            “Please don’t strike the wall,” she said to I’daiin with reproach as she passed, assessing the shower of particles in the tunnel as she got to Cosmin.
            Her deft fingers swirled and plucked the worst of the filth from the iridescent man’s wounds. She shook her head and said to the stiffened man, “They’ve a penchant for the taste of Shelyn’s chosen apparently. They will continue to test her beauty if you let them.”
            "Better me than you," Cosmin strained out wearily, throat and lips barely able to move, the gape in his neck a searing pain that reminded him of the fight outside the farmhouse yet again. The paralysis was truly the worst part, though - the strangest sensation of feeling breath drawn in and out while otherwise being unable to move at all, your eyes locked in place as they dried out, the discomfort of impossible positions while being unable to correct them. Bardek was correct in his assessment that Cosmin was beginning to recover, but it still took a moment or two for the warpriest of love to flex his arms and legs. The strength in them felt horrendously sapped, but that would fade too.
            Clasping Bardek's hand, he nodded to his fellow divine-touched to get some aid in being hoisted back to his feet. He touched gingerly at his wound, wincing as his scarlet-hued blood once more ran down his outfit and armor, only to be wiped away in an instant by Amrynn's gracious touch.
            "Shelyn Saves, and if She does not, one of you will," Cosmin noted to the Sorceress, finding that assessment accurate, "I'd do the same for any of you, after all. Thank you, Amrynn and Bardek."
            He gave a small wave over towards the fearsome woman with the white hair as well. "And thank you, Kamala - a punch as yours is truly an artform: The Songbird would find such movement worthy of poem to record it for posterity. Remind me when we leave this place to begin the ode of our journey here."
            The woman in question had moved about 15' west to put herself in between the group huddled around Cosmin and anything coming at them. Facing down the tunnel with her back to the Heroes of Sandpoint, they couldn't see the way her eyes gleamed in the dark or the satisfied smile on her face. They could, though, see the way she was letting the black blood and worse remnants of her fallen foes crust on her hands, how she didn't move to wipe her face or clean her clothes. She wanted to show the ghouls what would happen if they faced her. She meant to give these monsters something to fear.
            The tall, muscular woman half turned to look back at Cosmin, her smile at being the victor multiple times over widening into a laugh. "I don't know if I've ever inspired poetry before, but I've been asked to pose for more than one painter. And a statue, once. I'll be happy to hear it once you're done."
            As he spoke, he reached to his belt and procured a wand that rested there, the wood beautifully carved and blessed by sacred hands. He touched the tip of the instrument to his bleeding neck, sighing in relief as the magic wormed its way into his blood to staunch the worst of the damage. He then offered the same to Kamala as well, unsure of how badly she had been touched. "We must keep at full strength for what is ahead," he reasoned, "And hopefully this will be over shortly."
            With care, Cosmin set aside a few more precious seconds for each downed ghoul, placing an obal in their bloodied mouths and then quickly severing their heads from their mangled bodies. With each he lifted a small prayer to that most brilliant and colorful Goddess, asking that the damaged souls be given a new canvas upon which to rewrite their sad fates. Once this was accomplished, the beautiful Varisian was ready to fall back in line and continue ahead.
            Kamala bowed her head to accept Cosmin's anointing. She looked up once he was done, a hungry smile on her lips below her fearsome demon mask, her face still spattered with blood and ghoul guts. "Just put me and the big man in front of them, it'll be done very shortly indeed."
            As Cosmin moved to mend their wounds, they could hear echoing screams of rage and other sounds that indicated that whatever the woman they had been following had found, she wasn't particularly pleased with. The echoes seemed to come from all directions in the winding tunnels.
            "We should move," Bardek said, once the healing was done. "Let's try to hit the enemy before he can recover, from his recent visitor shall we?"

17


            They pushed on, Kamala at the fore once again. She quickly reached a branch in the tunnels; to her left, another tunnel led away, while to her right, the tunnel opened into a huge cavern, from which the "breathing giant" they had all heard in the narrow, fungus-lined passages resolved itself into the heave and surge of water, coming from the cavern.
            Kamala looks back over her shoulder past I'Daiin and gestures at the cavern with the water. "Stay behind me. I hope you can all swim."
            "If necessary," Devin acknowledged, not looking forward to the idea -- undead attacking from underwater would be a distinct possibility. "Lead on."
            "I only dog-paddle." As Bardek followed Kamala and I'Daiin into the cavern with the pool, he took a brief glance down the tunnel that continued to the left, just to make sure nothing was coming to ambush them. He also took a look at the floor, to see if he could see footprints.
            Neither ambushers nor footprints made themselves known to him, though he could see the tunnel widened into another cave not too far off.
            Cosmin touched light to his blade again, making sure there was no darkness where the foul undead could ambush them. He moved with Bardek to investigate the western passage, nodding in agreement that crossing the water may be an eventuality.
            The left-hand side of the foul-smelling cavern was heaped with bones, each scarred by the scraping of teeth. Most of the bones had been cracked open for the marrow within.
            Kamala, venturing to the mouth of the cramped main tunnel, saw that it opened into a vertiginous gulf, a cathedral-like cavern with a roof arching thirty feet overhead, and dropping into a sloshing pool of foamy seawater fifty feet below. A steep stone ledge wound down to these surging depths, its slope glistening with moisture and mold. There was a stone door about halfway down the slope, smashed apart by some powerful force. The sounds of a terrible fight echoed in the vast cavern.
            "I don't think there's anything worth finding in there," Bardek said to Cosmin, looking over the latter's shoulder. "Let's go." He turned to join the others in the tunnel to the right.
            "Looks steep," Bardek said, looking at the ledge. "Tie off?"
            For himself, Devin's rope was still the knotted lead back up to the house; the pocket at the bottom of his pack that would otherwise have a rope coiled and ready to feed out was empty. "If we have rope quickly at hand, yes. Otherwise, let me go first, check the footing, have a chance to catch anyone that slips."
            Kamala shrugged out of her pack and started digging. "I have rope." She gestured at the door halfway down the ledge. "Make sure they don't bum rush you when you clear the door frame." The muscular woman grinned at I'Daiin. "Big man, try not to kill everything before I get there."
            "I make no promise," I'Daiin grinned, the light of destruction back in his eyes.
            Devin eyed the distance and the rope. "Rope won't be long enough if we secure it, here; it'll barely span the gap, side to side." Instead, Devin grabbed one end of the rope and wrapped it twice about his hand so he could grip it in his fist. He held up the example for others to follow. He sheathed his shortsword, sent his Dancing Lights out to illuminate the slope, and took a few steps down the slope, minding his footing and looking for spots to wedge his boots against. The path was clearly traversable and meant to be, given the door.
            "Play it out, be ready to brace, let each person grab a loop like this, and follow me."
            Amrynn grimaced at the physical need ahead and said, “I would rather avoid swimming if at all possible.” But she allowed the others to determine the best means of forward progression.
            “How difficult is it to carve some stairs once in awhile? Does every dungeon have to be so wretched?” she mused aloud. She secured her loose gear and grabbed a hold of the rope as instructed. Her delicate frame hardly looked up to the task, but she had evinced deep enough mettle thus far.
            Devin had made it about a quarter of the way down the slope, the others a short distance behind, when the sounds of fighting echoing in the cathedral-like cavern culminated in a woman's furious, drawn-out scream, reverberating in their very bones. Moments later, goblins emerged from the doorway halfway down the ringed slope - pallid goblins, more gray than green, long tongues dangling from their bulbous heads; their clothing filthy even for goblins. On spotting the party coming down, they dropped to all fours and climbed up the slope, cackling in the goblin tongue and clambering over each other like a horde of rats. A foul stench came with them, stronger than the smell of death in the cavern full of bones. The putrid stink wasn't quite enough to make Devin sick - but then, they hadn't reached him, yet.
            "Well, that doesn't sound great for-" Bardek had started to say, but he cut himself off when he saw the goblin-things.
            "Devin, fall back," Bardek called out, "don't let them surround you!"
            At the top of the slope, anchoring the rope, Kamala cursed loudly in Vudran. "Hold on!"
            "Well... shit." The situation demanded no less base nor succinct an evocation. Devin sized up the situation quickly, and dismissed the two most-flamboyant options; jumping over the goblins to hold in the door or intentionally dropping and sliding into them to knock the lot of them down into the pool, expecting Devin himself could grab the door and arrest his slide before joining them; as far-too-likely to result in his own paralyzed, tumbled-down, moss-covered drowning. Either attempt had a modest chance of success, but the stakes didn't merit the odds.
            Consideration over before it began, in one motion Devin swept his free hand up past his belt and flung the dagger he'd drawn at the lead goblin. Supernaturally-fast, about the same moment the dagger disappeared into the crawling mass of goblins he flexed his forearm and sprang a second dagger to hand, which followed with a throw right after the first.
            Devin then turned and sprang up the narrow slope, seeking to double ranks with the party and expecting they could drop these things down the rocks from range.
            Devin's two daggers took the lead goblin's eyes, and it slid bonelessly down the slope, trailing bits of noxious remains of animals and scraps of "interesting things" (to a goblin) as the jagged rock slope sliced the body, before falling into the churning water below. I'Daiin snarled, drawing Nualia's serrated longsword, but not giving in to rage yet. He let the goblins come to him.
            Two of the stinking goblins rushed at I'Daiin, and suffered for it as his growl rose to a roar and he dealt both of them cuts that should have proved deadly, had they still been alive. Their gaping wounds didn't bleed, but only oozed thick, black semi-liquid. Their overpowering stench, made worse by the open wounds, rolled over I'Daiin, Bardek, Devin, and Cosmin - but only Devin was forced to involuntarily relinquish his lunch.
            The last goblin turned and slid down the fungus-slimed slope, catching hold of a rock opening farther down, and disappeared into it with gleeful goblin giggles.
            From the broken stone doorway came grief-struck sobs.
            Spitting over the edge of the pit to clear the last of the bile from his mouth as if it could also clear the pervasive stench from his nose, Devin held his wits enough to pull his shortsword to hand, prepared to lay into either of the two goblins below them through watering eyes.
            He gave a moment's thought to the goblin that had slid down the slope and ducked into the gap further down, and called caution, "Kamala; Amrynn; you may have one coming from above you in a few moments."
            The strong woman stayed where she was, holding on to the rope to help her companions, but looked up and over her shoulder for the threatened undead goblin. "From above? Where?"
            Amrynn shied from the stench but masked it well as she scanned her surroundings, looking for telltale signs of a flanking maneuver.
            "We've no time for this," Bardek grumbled. With an almost offended glare, the cleric of Cayden Cailean tossed half the contents of his copper mug over I'Daiin's shoulder at the goblins. As he did so, his baritone rang out with the force of his righteous indignation - buttressed with the power of the Divine being whom he served.
            "Begone, released from the power that unseemly animates you, that your spirits leave without returning!"
            The droplets of mead gleamed in the air, before atomizing into a wave of golden energy that cut through the stench - and the goblins themselves.
            The reeking goblins shrieked, an unholy cacophony as the rotting flesh was blasted clear off their bones. Their skeletons hung on the ramp briefly, before tumbling down to splash into the surging surf below.
            Teetering on the edge of the steep slope, Devin released the rope and drew his bow, setting an arrow to the string even as he turned to look around. There was no sign of further trouble - simply the dwindling sobs of a man, nearly drowned out by the rush of the tide in the vent.
            "Enough of this caution. We are not milk-whelps, to be frightened from our path," I'Daiin growled, sheathing his sword to climb down the slope, though he prudently kept hold of the rope.
            As the party handled the goblin threat with amazing ease - Bardek especially proving that Accidental did not mean Without Conviction - Cosmin continued moving towards the broken stone doorway, sword held aloft as best he could while the rope was gripped in his other hand, shedding light within the cavern.
            Bardek moved down the slope with the others, keeping his hand on the rope and his eyes peeled for that last goblin. "The longer we stay out here, the longer whatever we're facing has to prepare for us. But when we get to the bottom, wait a moment before we go in - I have an idea for an unpleasant surprise for our enemy."
            Everyone's progress required Devin's, as well, or he would have to relinquish at least his hold on the rope. Devin wasn't as concerned for his own footing so much as forfeiting the opportunity to brace and help others to keep theirs, should they slip. I'Daiin, then Cosmin, then Bardek all made short work of the remaining slope. Devin moves with the group, still minding his footing, to the doorway halfway down the slope that the goblins had burst out of and that the party was now entering. He was further towards the back, now, and was down two daggers, so kept the shortbow out for some ranged flexibility. Easy enough to drop to redraw his shortsword when the time came. There was still at least one stinking goblin about in addition to whomever or whatever was sobbing through the doorway.
            Devin blinked his eyes a few times and spit to clear his mouth; that damned stench from the first goblins still sat in nose and gnawed in the back of his throat like a faceful of putrid grit.
            "Bah. I care not for all this waiting," I'Daiin growled, but paused grudgingly outside the doorway. Peering into the darkness within as he drew his serrated sword again, he rumbled, "Is there truly a threat within? I hear naught but weeping, like a child." His tone indicated what he thought of men weeping, whether they were in the bowels of a ghoul nest or not.
            Braced against the edge of the door's frame at the lower portion of the slope, Devin could only observe what I'Daiin did, in the darkness within; for the moment, Devin saw no further detail, but it'd take a few moments' thought to bring his Dancing Lights into the next chamber's interior...
            Then the last goblin came barreling out of the bone-filled cave, screeching as it launched itself at Kamala - not to bite, but to shove her down the slime-slippery slope. She reflexively kicked it, but it didn't knock the creature off course.
            Despite her normally excellent balance, both bracing the others and standing on such a steep and slippery slope while defending herself while a goblin rammed into her proved too much, and Kamala went sprawling as the goblin rebounded off her in a cloud of reeking air. The sudden slack made everyone else holding it have to check their footing as well, as the bracing hold disappeared. Amrynn lost her balance as Kamala slid into her, and they both went spiraling into Bardek, who crashed down and slid into Cosmin. Despite the pileup of sliding companions, Cosmin was able to brace himself and stop their swift downward slide.
            The goblin whooped and shook its fists in the air, hopping up and down with typical goblin exuberance and narrowly avoiding slipping and tumbling down into the group itself.
            The Light of Shelyn, as always, held up even within the darkest of places. With his companions hurtling towards him in a loss of balance, a tumbling of pebbles, and the hollering of a goblin that thought itself a mighty ruiner of heroes, Cosmin had dug in his boots and, with all the strength of The Songbird holding back Zon-Kuthon himself, had managed to find purchase onto the earth and the means to stop three of his companions from falling off into the waters below.
            Cosmin was not a strong man, but for a singular moment he appeared to be made of the stout marble his appearance gave the impression of. With his allies relatively unharmed, Cosmin kept his blade in hand and marched up towards the Goblin, the sword's rainbow light being a prismatic display that held swift death in gorgeous vogue.
            "Well, shit." Bardek muttered, his baritone colored with disgust and annoyance. The cleric of the Accidental God began to get to his feet, glaring at the remnants of a once-living goblin.
            Surprised and annoyed - that she'd been snuck up on by a dead goblin, that she'd fallen at all, that she'd had to be caught by someone instead of catching herself - Kamala did the same. She bared her teeth at the goblin.
            "Come down here, you little shit!" To her companions, though, she muttered "We need to get off this stupid slide."
            "Agreed," Cosmin said over his shoulder, "Make for the door. I shall cover you."
            "Right," Bardek said, "but we really don't need it hitting us from behind while we face whatever's in there. Amrynn, could you kill that thing from here?"
            Amrynn rolled uncomfortably apart from the tangle of limbs, crawling away and retching briefly. Her wiry frame arched and convulsed to the point of being painful to watch. She wiped the back of a hand across her mouth as she stood. Her eyes blazed with defiant, barely-checked anger.
            “I could do a great many things,” she replied, her gaze finding the cackling undead offender. She saw Cosmin’s advance on the creature and approved of the action, though she didn’t know how well Shelyn would protect her devotee from the awaiting stench.
            “But give the Shelyte his chance,” she said, nodding. “I fancy that thing’s reaction to such beauty.” She coughed and sneered lightly to one side, still trying to draw a clean breath.
            “I will finish what he begins, if necessary,” she said.
            Since he already had his shortbow ready, Devin quickly sighted at the goblin cavorting on the upper slope and loosed.
            "Go; right behind you," he nodded to I'Daiin.
            As soon as I'Daiin was through, Devin stepped into the doorway and off the slope, but kept his shortbow out and his attention split between helping each member of the party into the doorway -- should they lose their footing traversing the last bit of slope to it -- and the goblin's imminent demise.
            "Don't ascend to it," Devin advised everyone, "The slope's too treacherous. It has to come down. Get through this door. Whatever's through here went toe to toe with a revenant, and while I'Daiin will likely do a bit better than that, he'll need us."
            "I need no one," I'Daiin growled, but added, "But it is foolish to make a raid into the unknown alone, and I am no fool. Forget the stupid goblin. Let us see what fresh madness lies within, without these childrens' games. Bring your light, Cosmin, that I may extinguish whatever lurks in the dark here."
            Steady though Cosmin's faith was, the footing nearly betrayed him as well - but with a steadying hand on the fungus-slimed wall and the fire of divine hope in his heart, he walked back up the slope with firm resolve, his sword casting a bright glow on the scene as he took up a guard position above Amrynn, much to I'Daiin's disgust.
            Bardek, unfortunately, slipped again as he tried to move down, but I'Daiin caught him, hauling him to a halt before they went spiraling down the slope. Kamala made it to the doorway more readily, but hesitated to enter; a sudden, freezing sense of foreboding gripped her.
            Devin's arrow pierced the goblin's eye, a strike that would have killed it were it not already dead. It ceased its cavorting and screeched, curling up to mourn its lost eye.
            Amrynn rose, feeling unaccountably woozy, which only spurred her rage. Thrusting a hand out, she summoned magic to her will, and with a dragon's roar, it whirled down on the goblin and erased its existence.
            Once Bardek had picked himself up and Cosmin and Amrynn had carefully joined them, Devin summoned his floating colored lights again, and sent them into the now-quiet tunnel beyond the door.
            “Points for style,” Devin chuckled shortly to Amrynn as the missile’s roar faded and the sparse mist of splattered undead goblin settled out of the still air on the upper slope. The lingering effects of the nauseating goblin stench still kept threatening to convulsively rise up his throat.
            Once everyone was gathered at the door, Bardek pulled his wineskin from the side of his pack. Intoning a prayer to Cayden Cailean, he let a little of the wine pour into his hand, then turned and flicked droplets of the wine at each of the others - though not I'Daiin. The droplets atomized into the air, and none of Bardek's companions felt liquid strike them. Instead, there was a shimmer, and for a moment, they each felt their vision swim - much as it would to look through the bottom of a clear glass bottle. Then, the sensation was gone. Lastly, Bardek flicked wine at himself. Then he nodded and spoke softly.
            "This will prevent any mindless undead from seeing us - in fact, even if they hear us, they will not notice we're there. The intelligent ones - ghasts and ghouls included, unfortunately - they may resist the effects. So it is not foolproof. If any of us attack - even with magic - it will end the protection for us all. If we touch an undead, it will end the protection. But it will give us a chance, if our enemy is in there, to maneuver to advantageous positions prior to the fight. Do not attack the foe unless he sees us, or until I signal." He made eye contact with all of them, to make sure they understood. Then, he looked at I'Daiin, and his grin was wolf-like.
            "You, big man, are different. This magic does not protect you, so you will be seen immediately. But that means that you can attack immediately, and it will not affect the protection the rest of us carry. You are the vanguard, and the distraction. But we'll make sure that your distraction is... pointed."
            With that, Bardek poured a bit more of the wine into one hand. He intoned another prayer to his Accidental God, and then clapped I'Daiin on the shoulder with his wine-holding hand. Strangely, no wine spilled forth, but I'Daiin felt that familiar warm feeling spread through his limbs. This time, however, the feeling did not wash through him and pass in mere seconds. I'Daiin felt his muscles burn with a righteous might that rolled from his shoulder into his torso and down through his thighs and calves, and across his neck and shoulders, until the mighty barbarian felt power thrumming through him from toes to fingertips to the roots of the hairs on his head. His every movement radiated strength and righteous might.
            "Now," Bardek said, "you're ready to smash."
            "Oh, and just to be safe, we should probably make sure that he's the only obvious light source. Let's not give the enemy any reason to be looking for us."
            Devin debated what preparations he might make for what was beyond. He’d heard sobbing; something humanoid, then. Probably alone. Maybe Aldern, maybe something else, but from the revenant’s overheard rage, Devin favored Aldern was near. Devin nodded to Bardek’s instructions – and caution – that the ward he placed on them all (save I’Daiin) from detection by undead would end at the first aggressive action by any of them. Would have to make that count, then.
            He kept his shortbow in hand, but expected they’d be in close quarters; and if was Aldern, Aldern and I’Daiin would be locked in melee shortly enough. Shadow flowed out of Devin as a subtle fog-like mist. This fog coalesced from a haze into a collection of raindrop-like points, which fell back into Devin with definitive purpose. The bow felt like an extension of himself, and all about, each place he looked, Devin could well imagine the grooves through the air between the tip of his arrow and the potential targets.
            The party had arrayed itself nearly back into its previously-elected order, with Kamala at point, then I’Daiin, Bardek, Amrynn, and Cosmin. That’d suit. Devin would take up the rear again through the narrow passage inside the door. “Let’s go.”
            Kamala grimaced and put a hand on her stomach as she stepped through the door. "Give me a second. All of a sudden I feel like losing my breakfast." She leaned against the wall to take a few breaths, looking sick. The tall woman grinned weakly at I'Daiin. "Nice job so far, big man. Let me get up there with you."

18


            The icy unease that Kamala had experienced gripped all of them as they moved into the tunnel, making some of them short of breath, and hesitant to proceed, but they forged on. Devin's lights bobbed ahead of them, spreading light onto a strange scene.
            The damp air reeked of a horrific stench - a foul combination of decay, brine, and mold. A rickety table stood cluttered with all manner of what appeared to be garbage: empty bottles, bits of clothing, crumpled bits of paper, and more - all lying in neatly organized rows. A painting leaned against the far side of the table, facing a large leather chair that sat nearby. The chair's high back and cushion were horribly stained by smears of rotten meat, and its arms were sticky with blood. A smaller table sat against the far wall, its surface heaped with plates and platters of rotten, maggot-infested meat. The horrific stench in the room seemed strongest to the right, where the cave's wall had been overtaken by a horrific growth of dark green mold and dripping fungi. At the center, a patch of black, tumescent fungus grew, its horny ridges and tumorlike bulbs forming what could almost be taken to be a humanoid outline. What appeared to have once been an exquisite puzzle box the size of a man's fist lay smashed on the ground at the fungoid shape's feet.
            Devin thought there were distinct markers of necromantic magic about the smashed box.
            In the midst of all the mess, kneeling on the floor with the horribly mangled body of the dead woman they had been following in his arms, was Aldern Foxglove. He wept tearlessly, his own extravagant noble's outfit rent and torn, with gaping wounds beneath. Once a handsome man with a way with the ladies, he was now gaunt and haunted, his hair all but fallen out, his glittering eyes staring and his face twitching fearfully. "I'm sorry, Iesha," he cried softly, rocking the woman's body. "Forgive me!" The nearer the party got, the thicker the choking stench became.
            He looked up as I'Daiin trod into the cavern, and his face transformed in a mixture of fear and delight. "No! You were supposed to die! You still live!" He hunched over Iesha's body, wracked by sobs. "Please, save me! He's coming! I'll do anything, tell you anything!"
            "What madness is this?" I'Daiin growled, looking at the table of garbage and trinkets. "I recognize some of this. It was mine!"
            "I'm sorry! He made me do it!" Aldern wailed, cowering over Iesha.
            I'Daiin growled, moving closer with murderous intent, but his movements were nonetheless hesitant to those who knew him. He paused, towering over the cowering noble with his sword raised.
            "No!" Aldern cried, raising his hand in defense. It was clutching something... something that looked like a mask, made of a patchwork of unsettlingly pale leather.
            Aldern's mental state, and his choice of refuge and company, and his proclamation to I'Daiin, and the contents of the notes left with each of the crimes, were all enough to convince Devin that regardless of any other threats that were here, the thing in front of them that was once Aldern was lethal and needed to be destroyed. Devin had no interest in any ramblings it might spew. He only hoped everyone would give him a few precious seconds to position himself and ready an opening arrow shot before Bardek's concealment was broken.
            The moment Devin began his incantation, Aldern's expression changed - and his whole manner. He rose from his crouch, revealing a war razor bared in his other hand. He bowed flamboyantly, a wide grin splitting his face. "So you did not come alone! I wonder how your deaths shall affect your friends." Even his voice had changed, from frightened and whining to low and thick.
            He slipped on the mask, a hideous, patchwork thing with a flattened nose and what looked like real teeth dangling where the mouth should be - and slashed at I'Daiin's throat. The Shoanti managed to interpose his arm, but suffered a nasty gash in return.
            "What things might you have done that will go unfinished?" Aldern asked in that new, gravelly voice. "What will those broken promises spawn? How will your murders shape the world?"
            The sight before them was a sorry one indeed - two lives broken by the same curse. Cosmin nodded to Bardek's suggestion, noting that the powerful stench from the room ahead was similar to what they had encountered before. Such evil could be suppressed, however, and the aasimar touched his silver songbird to his lips. "Merciful Rainbow, shield your servant from that which pollutes the beauty of this world."
            There was a small shimmer from the amulet as Cosmin felt the protection of his blessed patron wash over him, helping to push the stench away through the divine power of Shelyn. Blade grasped tightly, the Songbird's Aegis brushed his bronzed fingertips over the sword to dim the light that he had cast upon it. When the others moved, so too would he to flood the room quickly and dispatch with the wicked form that once was Aldern Foxglove.
            Amrynn glided into the lair, for what else could it be with such a stench? She filed in with silent grace as the party fanned out to deal with this next threat to Sandpoint. She bore no weapon, save that which burned within her. She drifted away from the putrid smell and the mold, eyes finding the painting and wondering at its allure to hold such a position of honor.
            The reek in the air was quite nearly unbearable. It permeated the very stonework. Everything would need to be put to the torch, and even that would only shorten the considerable length of time necessary to wash such a place clean. If ever.
            She tried to get a better view of the artwork as she watched the morbid scene unfold. There was little remorse in her eyes for the man who had just butchered the woman that he had once loved.
            The portrait was undeniably that of the woman they had followed below, whose corpse now lay still on the floor - Iesha Foxglove, an open window over her shoulder showing a portion of a city skyline. However, it had been daubed with blood and bits of rotten, runny flesh into a caricature of a large, muscular man, bald and carrying a serrated sword.
            Looking over the others' shoulders, Bardek whispered, "Get around him. I know it's disgusting in there, but we cannot give him room to move." Then he began to intone another prayer to his deity.
            Shaken by Aldern's threats, I'Daiin's face contorted in rage. He lashed out with his sword, but Aldern was far too slippery, and dodged the blow easily.
            What he did not dodge was the arrow that Devin planted in his eye.
            Disbelief briefly crossed the noble's face as he swayed, the red-gleaming war razor dropping from blood-crusted fingers. Already horrendously wounded by Iesha, he staggered, and his head slowly tilted back with the weight of the arrow...
            And he fell to the floor beside Iesha, one arm flung out near hers, but not quite reaching her... both now finally free of their curses. Iesha's face smoothed, even in true death, from a grimace of searing rage to a final mask of peace, her staring eyes still turned toward Aldern.
            The horrid sense of unease they had felt slowly dwindled, becoming no more than what reason would bear for being in so accursed a place.
            I'Daiin stabbed the body a few times for good measure, snarling like a wild beast, before slowly regaining control over his temper. "I was expecting more from him," he growled, panting. "More than him proving himself nothing but a thief!"
            Devin relaxed his pull on his shortbow and the next-readied arrow's tip slowly lowered. He felt the quick-paced hungry edge of adrenaline fighting with the lingering stench of the room and the rational reality that Aldern was destroyed. Devin forced himself to blink and take in the room, pivoting slightly, breaking his focus away from what was left of Aldern and where his next arrow would be placed to take in the room about them. His shoulders rose with a drawn breath; stench notwithstanding; then relaxed with effort, though his pulse still blurred in his ears.
            "That can't be it; something was in his head," Devin thought to Aldern's initial fear, then radical change in countenance. What would possess a ghoul? The mask, maybe? "That box..." Devin indicated the smashed, fist-sized puzzle box near the wall of fungus, "Necromancy."
            "Kasandra and Lorey; rotted away. Traver, cut throat. Cyralie, burned, broken, crumpled. Aldern, ghoul. Sendeli and Zeeva, frozen. Vorel, exploded into fungus." Tumorous fungus. "I think that's Vorel Foxglove, the family patriarch, or what's left of him," Devin indicated the diseased, black, humanoid shadow in the midst of the wall of fungus. "Aldern was here because Vorel was controlling him; it was Vorel that was coming, and an aspect of Vorel that we just dropped. Maybe?" Devin backed away from the wall of fungus, back towards the doorway passage.
            A shiver ran through Devin; a shiver from remembering the chill and being overwhelmed by the fungus reaching out from Vorel's portrait; and it eventually prompted Devin to test his theory. Worst case, the fungus wall would get a little damper than it already was. Holding his arrow and shortbow with one hand, Devin pulled a vial of holy water from his belt and hurled it at the wall, aiming for the humanoid shape, curious if it would dodge away, or burst into flame upon the water's contact, or something equally dramatic and conclusive.
            “I don’t know,” Amrynn said as she approached the painting. She tilted her head slightly in pitying admiration. The woman had been stunning once. Amrynn glanced around, thinking no doubt that the entire Foxglove legacy had once been marvelous until-- She glanced back at the bloody rendering.
            “I’m thinking this bald fellow with the big serrated sword might be our puppeteer…or pack leader,” she added, turning the portrait for those who wished to see. “Who else, why else, would such artwork be defaced?” Seeing Devin’s intended action, she reflexively stepped behind the painting to afford some splatter resistance from any fungal retaliation.
            The vial shattered against the stone, spraying blessed water across a patch of the fungus... there was no violent reaction, though part of it melted down the wall where the water had soaked it, the black fungus curling in on itself and dropping away.
            "I don't know," Bardek disagreed, while also pressing himself against the wall outside to avoid splatter, "I think it looks a bit like I'Daiin, really. Especially with the sword."
            "Bah. Shoanti do not need false images of themselves to prove their glory," I'Daiin muttered, poking through the things on the table and fishing a few up to put into his pouches. It seemed Aldern had stolen a number of trinkets from him. He held up a fistful of charcoal drawings and grimaced. "We have the tales of our deeds to bring us all the glory we need." Now that attention had been drawn to him, though, the smeared painting did look a bit like him and the sword he'd taken from Nualia - it even had an approximation of his tattoos, if inexpertly drawn.
            “Mmm, I don’t really see it,” Amrynn said, tilting her head and still studying the impromptu artwork. “Maybe if the image were snarling or growling.” She cocked a whimsical eye at I’Daiin for a moment before returning to the painting. She took a care with her delicate hand and the magic which flowed from it and began to clean the filth from the original painting, shucking the viscera into the general muck of the chamber itself.
            "The holy water harmed the fungus; curled it back and cleared a small patch of it. Stay clear of that wall," Devin reported, though as his actions had prompted at least Amrynn and Bardek to temporarily ward themselves from the effects, he counted it likely they'd already observed the same thing.
            Devin put his drawn arrow back in its quiver and tucked his shortbow back in the sheath alongside his pack. He took the last dagger from his belt and reloaded his wrist sheath; fastest place to draw from if the situation required.
            “Much better,” she said, admiring the quality and potency of the original piece. Once she was satisfied with it, she incanted quietly under her breath and began scanning the room for anything which radiated a magical signature. Twice she had to stop for a moment to steel herself, the back of one hand coming up to cover her mouth against the stench.
            To her surprise, however, the smell was quickly becoming less obnoxious - something the others didn't appear to notice. Really, it was mostly the brine and mold that stank.
            The painting, cleaned with extreme care, proved quite lovely, the colors beautiful and Iesha splendid in life.
            As she searched for traces of magic, she found that there was something under the mold by the wall - something so encrusted with fungus that its nature was unclear. In addition, Aldern fairly glowed with enchantment, if such a word could be used on such a disgusting wretch. His leather armor, the war razor he had held, the flesh-mask he wore, and two of his rings all radiated that certain something she identified as unnatural power.
            "I don't understand how he'd collected those tokens," Devin noted of the items I'Daiin was sifting through. "It's not as if you leave small things about. If they were stolen from you while I was near, add my guilt for having been oblivious." Devin could scarcely believe the amount of sly pickpocketing that would've needed to have happened over the span of days to accumulate such odds and ends from I'Daiin. Ghouls weren’t exactly subtle.
            "Most of it is just junk. Some I recognize - a special flask given me by the brewer, a note from one of the townsfolk, a token from a child; things I probably left behind, or left in the Rusty Dragon. But I've been looking for this dagger, and my belt, and Raz's bridle, for weeks," I'Daiin grunted, patting a blade in his (new) belt and a bulging pouch. "Good thing I drank the brew before that thing got ahold of my bottle." He considered. "Not sure if I'd drink anything he had his stinking paws on. But I don't know how he got ahold of any of it without us knowing."
            "Save the drawings," he asked of I'Daiin. "If it's like the portrait, he made have made the drawings on repurposed materials, which might be anything from journals to something important about this place."
            Devin took a short survey of the room, including stepping by to see the Amrynn's progress on the aforementioned painting, and its subject, but didn't linger. For all the things Aldern had collected, here, Devin anticipated Aldern would have anything most important on his person. What was left of his person. Devin pre-emptively retched at the persistent stench and the thought of what came next, but there was no other due.
            He used a boot-tip to pull the dropped razor-weapon further aside, clear of Aldern's reach. Cocking one elbow across his nose and mouth to ineffectively ward at least some of the reek, Devin crouched down next to what was left of Aldern. Devin roughly snapped off the protruding arrowshaft from Aldern's eye and used the feathered remnant's splintered tip to carefully search Aldern, starting with extracting that hideous flesh-colored mask and setting it aside, then probing the former noble's clothing, checking for pockets and items, flipping and cutting layers aside, adding his dagger when needed.
            The painting gave him a moment's pause; it was definitely the skyline of Magnimar in the background. On Aldern, however, he found the most things of use. The armor, the war razor, the rings and a cameo; even the mask. The noble was also wearing quite an extravagant outfit over the armor, though now it reeked of ghast. But amid the rotting meat and charcoal drawings on the table (which also resembled I'Daiin, in rapidly degrading quality of work from the bottom of the pile to the top), there was a letter addressed to Aldern, and a small silver key ring with two keys. The first was a tarnished iron key set with a round opal, and the smaller was of bronze, its head resembling a roaring lion, its tang unusually long, and ending in a set of three notched blades.
            “That’s Magnimar,” Devin shared, at catching sight of the painting. He indicated the skyline and a one of the background gaps and implied open spaces with a fingertip, “Starsilver Plaza, or near there, by the spires; Triodea.” He caught and cut his recognition short, dismissively. “Maybe.”
            “The house might burn, but this area down here won’t. These caverns likely harbor the source of the ghouls, if we’re not looking at it. Bardek, Cosmin; is that,” Devin nodded towards the unholy fungus wall, “something you can put to right, whether now, or if we come back to see to it?” If either answered yes, they could, the party would be here for a while, yet, working its way through the caverns, then back up through the house, ending the haunts they’d encountered. And probably recovering a few additional valuables like these along the way.
            Bardek had taken to helping with the search of the room, and Aldern, in particular. He turned his face to examine the fungus on the wall, but even as he did so, he shrugged. "I don't know a lot about this particular story," he said, "but generally speaking, if necromancy is involved, it can be countered by the efforts of one strongly steeped in holy powers."
            Sick as she was, things had been over before she'd even been able to jump in. She shook her head and went over to clap I'Daiin on the shoulder. "Nice job, big man." Kamala jerked her chin at his things. "What did this guy want with you? Are you related to these people?"
            I'Daiin turned a glare on Kamala. "No Shoanti would ever be caught dead in a blood relation with the Chelish." He paused, considering. "Well, no Shoanti that wasn't soon to be dead."
            Kamala returned I'Daiin's glare with a cocky grin. "Well why does this guy have all this stuff of yours?"
            "He was a thief. A thief of garbage." I'Daiin frowned at Aldern's reeking remains. "Typical for his kind to steal, but to steal garbage? I cannot say why. Look at these drawings - they are of me! He was insane."
            Kamala laughed. "Come on, big man. These are pretty good!" She gestured at the drawings. "Don't sell yourself short. I know a few sculptors at home who'd probably love to have you pose for them."
            I'Daiin muttered something under his breath about the Chelish, and balled up the fistful of drawings, throwing them at the wall.
            Anticipating the drawings may be upon something of more value, Devin wordlessly and unobtrusively retrieved the wadded drawings, smoothly tucking them into a pocket of his pack.
            Cosmin had studied the painting of Magnimar over Devin's shoulder. He had lived in the city for quite awhile, after his family had left Sandpoint. The City of Monuments. It was where his connection with Shelyn had truly manifested, and the five districts of The Shore were more familiar to him now than the hamlet he was born in.
            "No, no, you're right," Cosmin chimed in as Devin dismissed his own knowledge on the city, hands upon his hips as he studied it in kind.
            "Keep wondering if I should have stayed," he confessed quietly, before looking over at the dismal scene they had left behind. "But I know I couldn't have."
            Devin shrugged, "Cities. They get in your head."
            At the mention of the fungus that had been made as unhallowed as possible, Cosmin moved to work with Bardek, putting their knowledge together to try and ascertain what prowess they held over such foul spores. In the midst of their deductions and discourse, Cosmin found the time to approach Amrynn as Bardek worked out a theological theorem that the Varisian was convinced was actually just an allegory to a recipe for a harvest ale.
            "Blessings of The Eternal Rose upon you," he offered to the sorceress, a solemn dip of his head greeting her, "Restoring that painting was unnecessary given our situation, but appreciation for the artist's hand - despite the fate we have witnessed - is a venerated act. You've my utmost thanks for doing so, as my Lady has granted me the ability to create with my hands, but not the ability to restore with the arcane arts."
            It was clear she had earned his admiration and respect tenfold for the simple act.
            A ticking noise made Amrynn and Kamala look around, before they realized that the shards of the smashed puzzle box were rattling on the stone floor.
            Kamala reacted without thinking, leaping to smash her foot down on the largest concentration of puzzle box shards. "Oh no you don't!"
            “Something’s mo--” Amrynn started to say then drew back a few steps, more from Kamala’s radical intervention toward the odd occurrence than from the rattling of the shards themselves. Her eyes snatched a glance at the box, but she didn’t know if there would be time enough to ferret out any information before it was mauled by the bellicose woman.
            There was only a moment before Kamala brought her boot down on the shards of the puzzle box, crunching them underfoot, but in that moment Amrynn spotted no magic in the shattered remains.
            The moment Cosmin had stepped close enough to see it, he had been sickly fascinated by the thick, humanoid-shaped blot of dripping green and black fungus on the wall. It was so loathesome, so ugly, that he was tempted to puke. But it also seemed... familiar.
            It was his shadow. The fungus had stolen his shadow!
            With a start, Cosmin stopped himself. He had found himself approaching it to... do something. His mind shied away from exactly what.
            A quick glance confirmed that his shadow was where it belonged.
            Amrynn glided quietly over toward Cosmin, noticing his intentness on the fungus.
            “You see it too?” she asked him, then clarified her own sightings for the others. “There’s something magical within the fungus, a glow I detected but could not identify,” she added and pointed to the general vicinity of the fungus. “Right about there.”
            Still feeling sick to her stomach, Kamala went over to grimace at the fungus, too. "There's something in there?"
            "Something ... maybe not in, but within," Cosmin answered Kamala's question in agreement with Amrynn's assessment, not entirely keen on being close to the decay.
            "It felt ... It seemed like the fungus had taken my own shadow from me," the priest explained uneasily, brows furrowing at noting what lunacy he must've sounded like. It was a line a bad poet would have written. "That the outline was no mere facsimile of humanoid shape, but my silhouette. And I felt compelled to approach, to ..."
            The Aasimar frowned, a beautifully chiseled pout that still reflected his own confusion and dourness at the situation. "I'm not sure what I meant to do, only that I meant to interact with it. And I don't think that is a good idea, not at all."
            Cosmin shook his head. "This is most certainly not of Shelyn. It warps minds and turns the stomach. We should destroy it, with haste."
            "Anyone gets glassy-eyed and approaches the wall, we all agree to jump in, grab an arm and pull them back," Devin proposed of the indicated danger.
            Cosmin glanced over at Amrynn, tanzanite eyes shining. "You said you felt magic within this? It might be whatever pulled me closer, some sort of charm, or lure, perhaps. Whatever it is, will it burn?"
            Bardek squatted on the floor, near the body. He watched everyone, their actions and reactions, and eventually cleared his throat.
            "There's a lump of some kind," he said, pointing at it. "Just under the fungus. I don't recommend touching the fungus, but maybe you could pour some holy water over it, and we can see what's under it."
            He sighed and stood up. "I think this place will need the help of a more powerful servant of the Gods than I am. It needs divine cleansing. We can pour holy water all over every last bit of fungus we find, but I suspect it'll just come back in a few days. Consecrating the place, on the other hand, I think that would clear out the source of... well, every bit of trouble that's coming from it."
            "Let us do it and be done," I'Daiin grumbled. "I take it we must return to Sandpoint to find some priest? Or must we go farther?" He scowled. "Maybe the fungus will not burn, but we should burn down the rotten house above. Nothing good could live here, anyway."
            Devin retrieved one more vial of holy water from his provisions and carefully poured it over the fungus lump Bardek had indicated, anticipating the fungus would die, blacken, and fall away as the impact to the wall had done. It did as he had expected, melting away from what appeared to be a gleaming silvery tube, about a foot long, untarnished by time and unharmed by the fungus. A pattern of striations covered it.
            "I think it's a scroll case. Nice one." Devin picked up the now-cleaned metal object to examine it more closely. If the striations didn't seem anything other than cosmetic, he intended to determine if the tube could be opened and checked for contents.
            On closer examination, there were no plugs for the ends of the tube, nor was it wide enough to indicate anything might be stored inside it with any ease - indeed, the inside was empty, once looked through like a pipe. He suspected the striations were stress patterns, but they didn't appear to have compromised the structure of the thing. There were two small holes at one end, where one might conceivably attach a cord or chain.
            “A wand perhaps,” Amrynn suggested. “We’ll look at it more thoroughly once we get clear of this haunted mess.”
            "Hollow tube, metal, only one or two finger-widths inside diameter, a foot long, and with a couple of holes at this end, maybe to thread cord through it. Maybe it's a chime?" It hadn't tarnished with age; he presumed that meant it was magical. Striations, like stress fractures. Maybe ringing it inside a cave would be a bad place to test his theory. At Amrynn's advice to examine it later, Devin packed it with the other items they were taking.
            Bardek grunted as he stood up. "This place is home to more evil than good," he agreed, "but I don't know that it cannot be salvaged. Eventually. But yes, I'Daiin, it will need a priest. Possibly more than one." He looked around and grimaced. "And I suspect we'll need to search it more thoroughly before we go. There is some mystery here than wants a solution."
            "Does Sandpoint have such a priest? Or could you collaborate with one to do what is needed?" Devin asked of both Cosmin and Bardek. The house felt like a very big loose end to leave to its own devices for weeks or months. "Durriken is probably the strongest Sandpoint has."
            "I don't know," Bardek said, his tone frank. "I know I don't have the ability. Not now. Durriken..." Bardek shrugged. "I suspect the entire place would need to be Hallowed, and I don't know if he is capable of that. It's possible he knows of someone in Magnamar, perhaps."
            "What would happen if you unleashed that righteous blast at the wall of fungus?" Devin asked Cosmin. The question was plain and experimental; Devin was no expert on such things.
            "I've lost track of the day, storm-wracked as the weather turned as we approached. If we can't expunge the taint, now, we should climb back up to the main floor, give it a short search, then make our way back to Rip. If we're not equipped to handle this," Devin indicated the fungus, "anything else we do here is pinpricks to the house, and the risk of night falling on us."
            Bardek nodded. "Being caught here at night seems...unwise. But giving it only a quick scan seems also less than a great alternative. I would not suggest that we overnight here, but perhaps coming back - properly equipped - to give it a proper clearing and thorough searching, would be wise." Bardek looked around the small, squalid "room" they stood in. "At the very least, we should probably go through everything in here before we go."
            Amrynn took in a deep breath and let it out. She immediately regretted the action as the air had not cleared nearly enough. She coughed lightly and cleared her throat. Then she went over to the Foxgloves and began cleaning them up a bit as she addressed the items of worth. She used her magic to clean away the worst of the filth, and she spoke as she worked.
            “Places such as this call to like minded things,” she said. “And there may be more of his brood that return in the night. It may do to lay in wait for them, though I concur the estate itself may prove a challenging environment to hold for any length without divine intervention. I am satisfied either way.”
            She removed the gruesome mask and the two rings from Aldern, stowing them in a pouch of her backpack. “These radiate magic and warrant further consideration…or destruction,” she added, grimacing at the mask.
            “His armor and razor also radiate with imbued energy,” she said, beginning to remove the armor.
            Devin suppressed a quick emotional battle between disgust, greed, and practicality -- would anything worn by Aldern ever /really/ be clean of the taint? Dead ghoul bits, and that /smell/. Ugh. But magic was magic and would probably fare better and outlast all of them; better to put it to greater uses.
            After Cosmin had shared his insights about the wall, Devin hrmed. The party didn't have the wherewithal to purge the fungus. Devin doubted any priest in Sandpoint was strong enough to do so, either. Nasty stuff. If it was the source, left to its own lures and devices it was likely going to rebuild an army of ghouls, and would continue to threaten Sandpoint just like it had just tried to take over Cosmin and pull him in.
            "These rituals that'll be needed... realizing they're involved and demanding, is that something we could all help with, somehow? Make it possible to accomplish? Hate leaving this behind, but we can come back soon if there's nothing we can do, now. In that case, we should gather what we can from here and get back to Sandpoint."

19


            Having decided there was nothing they might do about the fungus at the moment, the party returned to the manor proper; it was a relief to leave the stinking, dank caves behind, and not only because of the smell. The ghoulish display below was hard to put out of their minds.
            Yet, there was still a sense of something wrong about the house... a sense that was amplified when they climbed back up the rope tied to the manticore in the foyer. Whatever it was, it raised the hair on the backs of their necks and arms... and there was a strange stink in the air. Like burning hair.
            “Is it wrong that the smell of burning hair is somewhat welcome after the stench from below?” Amrynn asked aloud, as much as in warning as true inquiry. “The estate doesn’t seem finished with us yet.”
            She infused power into her eyes once more in an effort to get a better sense of what was coming. Scanning the room, she waited for whatever malevolent force was at work to more fully manifest. To her appraising eye, there was no magic about the stuffed creature, though the others in front of her in the party were carrying magical trinkets, much as she was herself.
            "Haunt," Devin cautioned, having experienced at least one directly with the portraits, upstairs. The sense of foreboding, like an imminent storm's ozone preamble. At least it didn't smell like ghoul or ghast, Devin had to nod and agree to Amrynn's observation. Burning hair? These rooms didn't show signs of damage by fire. What did that portend? Do manticores smolder? None of the party seemed to be in distress, and the manticore otherwise had the most hair nearby. Devin dropped his last dagger from his wrist sling and threw it into the manticore's flank just to reassure himself it was stuffed and static.
            Kamala groaned and shook her head in frustration. "By everything holy, can we just burn this damn house down? I'm all for getting a priest to bless it and cast out the ghosts, but setting this whole place on fire can't hurt anything, can it?"
            Sawdust puffed out of the manticore's thigh, drizzling to the floor. As though summoned to life by the attack, the trophy lurched into sudden action, turning to look at the party - not with the slope-browed, yet manlike face it had shown before, but with the unmistakable face of Cyralie Foxglove, her expression one of searing pain and terror. Her flesh charred even as they watched.
            The manticore's fur erupted into flame, and its stinger-tail struck at Bardek, punching through his armor like a red-hot poker, setting him aflame. A blink later, all was as it had been, right down to the dagger sticking out of the sawdust-filled manticore's thigh... all except for Bardek being on fire. The flames ate at him like a living thing, excruciating in their hunger. The house creaked and moaned, the wind ripping at the eaves as the walls rattled from the storm outside.
            The priest of the Accidental God screamed in pain as his whole body seemed to burst into flame. Searing, soul-cutting pain overwhelmed him. He pulled the quick-release frogs on his backpack, and even as it fell away from him, he collapsed to the ground, rolling and flailing in an attempt to put out the fire. While he fell to the side, the backpack hit the floor with a solid thud, the wineskin strapped to the side sloshed heavily, and the neck of a clay jug poked out of the top flap. Even in his agony, Bardek's right hand didn't relinquish its hold on his copper mug.
            Startled by the manticore's reaction, Devin leapt back, and instinctively raised a hand to shield his face against the expected heat. When the phantasm dissipated and the manticore was static again, Devin did what he could to help extinguish Bardek, but quickly realized the flames didn't respond normally and didn't burn anyone but Bardek, though they could all see them and their effect on Bardek's flesh.
            "They're not real! How do we put them out?" Devin yelled in the moments' chaos. Even if the flames weren't real, maybe they were causing harm because of the expectation they were, and so taking actions that would normally help could still help against these. Devin swept off his cloak and threw it around Bardek for what good it could do in smothering the effect.
            While Devin rushed into action, Cosmin took a fraction of a second longer beseeching Shelyn for the gift that kept her roses in bloom, that brought forth the beauty of life itself. Holding his holy symbol forwards, a burst of water came from the amulet to douse Bardek.
            "By The Rose, this evil shall end," the aasimar declared firmly, his other hand already reaching for a wand with which to administer Bardek's burns with.
            Devin caught some of the splash as Bardek was drenched in water that appeared from thin air, a deluge that snuffed the flames that only Bardek could feel. Yet the burns they had left, and the red-hot stab wound he had suffered, remained quite real.
            Cosmin drew out a wand of carved wood, and used its magic to ease Bardek's pain. Sweet relief flooded the priest's tortured flesh, and soon the blistered skin was merely an angry red.
            I'Daiin scowled at the now-innocuous manticore, hand on the hilt of his sword. "What evil sorcery is this? It had the face of a woman, but now it does not? 'Haunts,' pfah. The spirits of the dead have no power here!" he insisted loudly, in the face of all evidence. Yet Amrynn had found no trace of magic about it.
            "Let us be gone before it wakes again, unless you see fit to burn the place as Kamala and I have suggested. Or maybe I should just cut it apart, anyway." I'Daiin drew his serrated sword and brandished it, taking an angry step toward the stuffed trophy.
            Looking behind them, Amrynn noticed something curious - the hideous stuffed monkey-head with the bellpull dangling from its open mouth had the aura of magic, though the manticore had not.
            Amrynn had recoiled from the blaze which spontaneously consumed Bardek. Whether surreal or not, her instinct drove her from the flame, and nothing she had available in her arsenal could offer aid. She stared in gape-mouthed horror for a moment but regained her composure with Devin and Cosmin’s sure and swift assistance. Alarm bells clanged in her head, bringing her mind back into focus, and she swept the chamber looking for other threats that might be using this distraction to draw near or attack.
            Her sight found the bell pull once more, and her mind fixed there for a moment. She blinked, and her eyes shifted into the far seeing reaches of the arcane. Her interest piqued now that the lord of the manor had been dispatched, and she studied the monkey mechanism more thoroughly.
            With Bardek breathing easier, Devin recovered and wrung out his cloak before throwing it back around his shoulders, little minding that it hung damp. It was a cloak; a thing.
            "The house won't let us burn it," Devin recounted. "Not until we put out its diseased heart, which we cannot do this day... and, of course, loot what we can, for our troubles." Devin couldn't recall if the dagger he'd stuck in the manticore's flank had moved with the events of a moment ago, but on the chance it really did animate and was part of the cause, Devin drew his shortsword and severed the manticore's tail, kicking the desiccated barb aside and clear. He put the tip of his shortsword against the manticore's ribs as he extracted his dagger, then stepped back and reset the dagger into his wrist sheath.
            "Sandpoint," he reiterated. He had no doubt they were leaving valuables behind, much like the large mirror still on the landing adjacent to them, but there was nothing here worth dying over from attacks from haunts they couldn't see or avoid or stop. He harbored a nagging feeling they may be visiting Magnimar before they could return here to put an end to it; from the portrait, this house was but one of the possible Foxglove holdings. Aldern was not housebound as a stinking ghast full-time, not within the last several months.
            Amrynn squinted at the bell pull, something tugging at her, but Devin’s voice decided it for her. This estate and its inherent evils could wait for now. She left the faint aura of magic around the bell pull alone and turned back to the others. She moved with her typical lean grace, but her tone and stance were still amply taut.
            “Then let’s be about it,” she said. “Rip still awaits outside with the mounts.”
            Bardek, simultaneously looking both drenched and singed, also looked a bit wild-eyed as he got to his feet and reclaimed his pack.
            "That was," he started, his voice raw from the ordeal, "that was unpleasant." The priest of the Drunken God drank deeply from his waterskin, before pouring more mead from it into his copper-plated mug.
            "Yeah," he cleared his throat and swallowed another drink from the mug, "if we're not staying, we should get going."

20


            Yet, leaving was not so simple as all that.
            They returned to the door I'Daiin had kicked open, only to find that they were not alone.
            Hundreds upon thousands of ravens were perched outside in the rain, watching them. Cloaking the trees, on the well, thick on the ground, and clustered on the roof and eaves of the house itself, so many that there were low creaks from the protesting wood, audible even over the wind howling in the eaves.
            The ravens were silent.
            The ravens were watching, their eyes inscrutable.
            The ravens were waiting.
            "Well," Bardek said, after having looked outside, "that's a little unnerving. But at least they're not ghouls...right?" The priest of the Lucky Drunk gave the ravens he could see a very close look.
            "Remember how they flew? Sickly. And /this/," Devin gestured towards the thousands of birds staring attentively at them, "is not natural. I say hit them with positive holy energy; we can try that, first. If there's no effect, fine. We create several oil-soaked torches as wards, one in each hand, and we hold them off as we move through." He wondered if they'd be discomfited by an Everburning Torch in the same way. Devin could always try Dancing Lights in a tight swirl about the party, see if that worked. "This house leaks; they can get inside, once they want to. The gallery upstairs is the largest interior room we've found without windows; we can retreat there if we need to."
            “Mmm,” Amrynn murmured as she stepped up beside Bardek and cast her own gaze into the distance. She was searching beyond the birds, however, for any indication that Rip and their steeds had made contact with the considerable unkindness of ravens. She assessed quietly for a few moments before taking in the thousands of eyes staring at them once more.
            Amrynn then withdrew and said, “I believe there are other spaces within the estate which we have not seen. Perhaps we could find further clues or items of use there?” She worked her way around to Devin as she spoke, extending a slim hand toward him.
            “May I examine that ‘chime’ we found?” she asked him. “If it has musical properties, it may be of service against this many animals.”
            “Then I just need a decent place to work,” she said, glancing around with some distaste. “One that’s less, monster-stuffed.”
            Devin shifted his pack, retrieved the cloth-wrapped metal, stress-fractured cylinder from his pack, and handed it to Amrynn, surplus fabric wrap and all.
            "Bah. They are only birds," I'Daiin muttered, his grip tightening on his sword. "How dangerous could they be?" He took a step forward, about to shoulder the others aside, when he paused to hear Cosmin speak.
            "Carrionstorm. They might as well be ghouls," Cosmin identified the winged terrors in his sing-song voice, gripping his blade tightly and muttering a brief prayer to Shelyn.
            "They've fed on infected flesh, and become like them in turn," he explained, "There's only the befoulment of un-life in them now, but they'll attack as a pack."
            "Ghoul birds," I'Daiin grunted in disgust. "What next? Ghoul chipmunks? Ghoul fish?" He eyed the lurking ravens with a scowl, but in the end, he didn't charge out to meet them. "If I became undead from some bird-peck, I would die of shame, not sickness," he grumbled.
            Cosmin gave Bardek a nod but ultimately frowned. A few hundred might have been manageable, between the arcane and divine powers present in the party. Thousands however ...
            "The blessings of our gods should make short work of them, if they were in smaller number. As is, we may be overwhelmed quickly if we do not end this fast." Taking a deep breath, Cosmin touched a hand to his starsword.
            "Songbird, let your radiant cry outshine these black-hearted jackdaws," he asked, and so did his blade begin to glow with a kaleidoscope of iridescent colors.
            "Gods Willing," Cosmin offered Bardek, "I shall try and draw them to me. Get them all in one spot. Then, you unleash."
            "Right," Bardek said, his tone grim, but with a touch of... was that satisfaction?
            "Right then. The rest of you, hang back here. We'll need you to come drag us back if this doesn't work out the way I'm thinking. Cosmin, we'll do this together. Back to back. Get them surrounding us, and take them down. Quick and efficient."
            Bardek pointed to a spot about 30 feet beyond the front door.
            "We'll run to there, get back to back, and let them come for about a 5-count. That should be long enough to let them get in close enough."
            While he was speaking, Bardek dropped his pack, dipped his fingers into his mug, and flicked a few drops of mead over himself. He spoke a quick prayer to his god, and a shimmering field of golden light began to pulse from his skin. "If they try to come in through the door, blast 'em with something."
            A few more moments of preparation, and then Bardek nodded to Cosmin and the others, indicating he was ready.
            Amrynn accepted the metal artifact from Devin but paused when she heard other opportunities arise. She cocked an eye at Cosmin and then swung it over to Bardek.
            “Carrion storm?” she said. “Lovely. Who wallows in this kind of necromancy?” Her tone was largely redundant disgust, and she slipped the metal item into her belt as she positioned herself at one edge of the door frame to offer what ranged support she could.
            “Are they,” she pondered her word choice. “Collectively intelligent?”
            "They ate bits of undead and got turned into zombie birds," Bardek said to Amrynn, "doesn't seem very intelligent to me. Collectively or otherwise."
            He managed to hold the straight face for at least a couple of heartbeats. Then he winked, before looking serious again.
            "We probably want to kill all of them individually anyway," he said. "They get away, who knows if they'll create more."
            Kamala groaned and shook her head. "Bleeding hells. Is that true? Any of them get away and they'll make more? What is wrong with this place!?"

21


            The murder of carrionstorms watched as Bardek, Cosmin, and at his insistence, I'Daiin, ventured out of the dilapidated mansion. When they started down the path toward the road, the birds rose into the air like a black, writhing blanket, first a few at one corner, then the rest in a rippling wave, until the stormy sky was dark as night with the cloud of their bodies. They circled, like a whirlwind of death, around the three - and then suddenly the blanket contracted to what looked like a solid mass, churning around them. In the sussurrus of wingbeats, their croaking cries seemed to form words in some unspeakable tongue, their meaning lost to those listening, if ever they held any. Some of the birds seemed to be trying to flee, as though some spark of life still clung to them, only to circle back into the morass, drawn inexorably toward the living.
            The moment the first birds closed on them, I'Daiin and Cosmin started swinging their swords. I'Daiin swore as his blade did little to deter them, while swaths of birds dropped from the sky as Cosmin's shining sword raked through them, but there were so many, and it was so hard to strike them individually with all of them flitting about, crowding each other as their wings battered him from all sides...
            Bardek had only been waiting for them all to get close enough. When they converged, closing around the two like a heavy curtain dropped over the light, he raised his mug by the scintillating light of Cosmin's sword and intoned a prayer.
            In a rippling ring moving outward from the two, the birds froze and fell from the air, sprawling lifelessly in a thick carpet upon the ground all around them. Their wings and voices stilled, they lay unmoving in the rain that soaked the three men.
            "As I said," I'Daiin grunted with satisfaction. "Nothing but birds. Come, let us go." He turned and began stomping back toward the road, hundreds of tiny bones snapping and crunching beneath his boots. Thunder growled, and the wind howled in the eaves of the Misgivings, mourning their safe departure as the party headed back toward the road, where Rip and the horses awaited.
            "THAT was amazing to see," Devin congratulated the three, stepping forward out of the house as the last stray black feather finally hit the ground in the agitated gusts that hung over the property.
            While I'Daiin stomped away, Bardek dropped to one knee and bowed his head.
            "My lord god," his rumbling voice intoned, "we foolish mortals give you thanks for your protection, and for raising Your hand to put to rest these creatures, and end their unlife." Then the cleric stood, raised his mug to the heavens in a toast, and declared, "to the fallen - may their souls find what peace they can." Then he drained the contents of the mug in a single gulp.
            With a tired smile, he looked to Cosmin. "My god is not one to stand too deeply on ceremony. Thanks also to you and your goddess. You cut quite the figure, my friend."
            Cosmin panted slightly, having been in a melee with a murder that had been all too keen on Not Dying again, but the warrior of the Goddess of Artistry knew a pun when he saw it.
            "I cut many things," he replied, his celestial blood keeping his voice singsong whether he wanted it or not, "Though a chisel was never my preferred tool for sculpting."
            He frowned slightly at his glowing starsword, the strange weapon covered in prismatic, captivating light that flowed along its glorious curves. "Neither is this, to be frank. But the beauty of this world must be defended, with ardor and vigor alike. Unlife mars that which was once beloved - it is my sacred vow to set such right, in sanguineous display, if absolutely necessary."
            He brought his curious sword up in a salute to the Accidental's Pick, acknowledging the brewmaster. "Ceremony does not always get results. I can appreciate a well-choreographed play, but all the pompous costumes and fancy steps in the world do not a good actor make. There's artistry in efficiency too, Bardek."
            "I need to get my pack," Bardek said, "and then let's get out of here. Maybe we should put up a sign?"
            "Varisians are not ones to put much faith in warnings on placards," Cosmin chuckled wearily, "But it may do well to keep some away from this place. At least until we can inform the local guards what we've found here - they'd do well to post a soldier here until we can return and end the horrors we've seen, permanently."
            "Beware -- Cursed, Haunted, Lethal, Hungry -- Not worth your life," signmaker Devin suggested. "Inquire with Sandpoint Sheriff." Devin dug around in his pack and found a bit of wrapped charcoal, and between that and a sharp stone, carved and inlaid the words on a cleared section of stone of the ruined servants' outbuilding, on the remains of wall facing the approach, after using a few conjured washes of Acid Splash to clear the chosen section of stone of weathering and detritus. The resulting contrast of the cleared stone versus the surrounding debris pleased him, and the trickling tendrils of cleared space below the words where the acid had run down the wall before completely dissipating added an apropos ominousness.
            "Good idea," Devin concurred with Bardek and Cosmin.
            Kamala laughed as Devin wrote his warning. "With the ghouls, people are barely leaving town as it is, much less investigating creepy looking abandoned manors." She shook her head and looked at the others. "Unless they're too dumb, curious, or helpful for their own good, eh?"
            The big woman laughed again and went over to grab Bardek's pack. "That was damn impressive," she said as she handed the Caydenite his gear. She smiled at Cosmin. "So's that pretty sword of yours."
            "I guess I'll just hang back next time we get swarmed by ghouls, let the gods sort them out." Kamala laughed again and shook her head.
            "I read a work of philosophy once," Bardek replied, as he shrugged into his pack again, "I forget who it was, but he said that most of the time, if someone has to do something that looks impressive, it's because they messed up in the first place. Actually, it touches on what you said, too, Cosmin. The conclusion in the scroll was that it's better to do whatever it is you're trying to do as simply and efficiently as you can up front - that the most impressive thing is not having to do things that look impressive to cover for mistakes."
            Bardek smiled, lifted his (now refilled) mug, and gave a small chuckle. "On the other hand, I believe another great philosopher once said, 'If the world was perfect, it wouldn't be,' so I'm OK with occasionally being impressive if it's needed." He nodded at Kamala, "The gods help those who help themselves. You're pretty damn helpful up front, too."
            Kamala laughed. "I'd like to take you back home and have you talk to a few men I know. 'You only had to do something impressive because you messed up in the first place'- I'm going to remember that one!"

22


            The Mayor and the Sheriff listened with grave attention as the weary party explained what they had found at Foxglove Manor. "A terrible fate," Mayor Deverin murmured, shaking her head. "So much evil, but what did it spring from? How could this have happened?"
            The Sheriff grunted, laconic as always.
            Bergi was busy scribbling the tale into one of her journals, her inkpen scratching swiftly as they spoke. "I don't think anyone ever really went up to the Misgivings a lot before, either... now I can see why everyone thought it was haunted. It is!"
            "People are terrified to return to their farms," Deverin said grimly, leaning forward onto her desk, fists clenched on the smooth wood. "There are still ghouls out there, if the accounts I've heard have any truth to them. They must have another nest, but where?"
            Devin sat back, arms crossed and a little dour. They'd just gone into a gods-honest haunted mansion, survived it, took victory over its ambulatory denizens, and brought back more insight into what had happened than anyone had suspected. Congratulations were true but short, giving way promptly to more questions and more work to be done. The countryside /still/ needed saving.
            "Aldern was part of it. The House itself is a source. Maybe there's more," Devin admitted with a sigh. "If new reports come after what we've done today, share them?"
            "I will," Sheriff Hemlock said with a nod.
            "What will you do?" Mayor Deverin asked, her forehead creased with worry.
            The tall, white-haired woman snorted from where she stood, leaning against the wall. "We're not even done with the house yet. Maybe if we finish cleaning it out, that'll be the end of them." She sighed and uncrossed her arms, rolling her muscular shoulders. "I don't look forward to combing the hills looking for them, but if that's what we have to do then that's what we'll do."
            "Thank you, again," Mayor Deverin said gravely. "I know you haven't all been present from the beginning of this mess, but you have all earned the title of Heroes of Sandpoint. We haven't seen trouble like this since... well, since the Late Unpleasantness. Though bad as that was, this seems worse."
            Something about how Deverin paused and brought forward the phrase, "late unpleasantness," stuck with Devin. He couldn't put words to the feeling quite yet, though.?

23


            Father Zantus was ashen-faced at the retelling of the horrors they had encountered at the dilapidated manor. The cathedral bell tolled the evening then, giving him a chance to compose himself before answering.
            "I'll put in a request for aid from the temples in Magnimar," he promised, as the last reverberations of the bell faded. "But I fear no one dares take the Lost Coast Road while the ghouls are out there. It's too dangerous. If you could do something about them, we could send the needed messengers."
            "We can get to Magnimar," Devin concluded. "Carry the message ourselves, maybe make the road safer as we go." He was not eager to travel to the city, but it seemed a direct course to both getting the aid needed to put the House to rights, luring more ghouls and gathering more information, and reopening trade.
            Kamala nodded. Her bright, ice blue eyes gleamed even in the well lit room. "Let's get out there and ambush some more would-be ambushers."
            Bardek quirked an eyebrow. "We'll probably get a few of them, sure. But it's going to take some concentrated effort to clean out the infestation completely. Getting help from Magnimar will be important, I think, and probably not just for the mansion.
            Then his grin returned. "Turning the tables on a few would-be ambushes along the route will be fun though," he admitted.
            Kamala's grin widened. "Maybe you can convince a bunch of your fellow priests to come up and have some fun with us? A convention of Caydenites celebrating a desperate victory against an army of ghouls sounds like a good night, to me."
            "I fear the town will be left in dire straits if you leave now," Father Zantus told them. Lowering his voice, he continued, "If they've taken everyone who hasn't come in from the hinterlands, and if they're deliberately turning them... If you go before their power has been broken, I fear there may not be a town to return to. The tales I've been told by those seeking comfort... it chills the blood."
            The cathedral bell tolled the evening hour, mournful and ominous. All the many people who had sought refuge in the grand building looked up, conversations stilling until the reverberations died away.
            Struck silent by the poignant fear and hopelessness of those gathered in the cathedral... so many... Devin felt ashamed for even having ruefully thought of the additional work to be done here in Sandpoint to permit these people to safely return to their homes. Their need didn't fabricate a debt upon the party, but Devin couldn't argue with Father Zantus' conclusion of what would happen to Sandpoint if the party left, now. His expression tight, Devin looked across the faces of those gathered.
            He reassured Father Zantus quietly, "We'll stay; we'll see this through; see Sandpoint through."
            "Desna bless you," Father Zantus sighed in relief. Catching himself, he quirked a half-smile. "Or any other god you please, of course."
            “I know Desna has lent a hand or two in my travel, Father; thanks, for the blessing of continued freedom and fortune.” While Devin may not devotedly venerate any particular diety, Desna was certainly one whom he appreciated for her influences on her followers and people.
            Looking tired, Bardek nodded. This, it seemed, was not going to be an easy-to-fix situation. It reminded him of Cheliax.
            "Finishing off the house will almost certainly help, but as long as there are ghouls out there to spread ghoul fever, there's no telling how many clusters will need to be rooted out - or how many good people will be lost to them."
            Kamala nodded wordlessly. The man was right and there wasn't much more to say. The ghouls would just keep spreading unless they were found and destroyed, every one of them.
            "We left ghouls -- scarecrows -- at Hambley Farm. Abed, at the ambush, mentioned there were a dozen there, still, plus more 'ripening.'" Devin winced. "As well as Habe's Sanitorium." Devin grinned, for Amrynn's benefit; she'd get to put a fist or spell through Habe's nose, after all.

24


            As they settled into the Rusty Dragon once more, Ameiko having kept their room ready for them and even changed the hay in their pallets, they looked over what they had found at the Misgivings by Cosmin's scintillating light.
            The charcoal drawings Aldern had made began as quite good, but as they became more recent, his skill deteriorated, and the medium became more and more spotted with what could only be dried blood on the water-damaged parchment... but there was no question he had been overly obsessed with I'Daiin. Pictures glorifying the Shoanti were the main subject in almost every drawing.
            "More garbage," I'Daiin had commented, before laying down on his pallet and starting to snore.
            Setting them aside, Bardek skimmed the letter they had found along with the sketches. It was written with a graceful hand.

            While Bardek perused the documents, Devin, Cosmin, and Amrynn examined the rest of what they had found in the ghoul's nest. They determined that the armor they had taken from what was left of Aldern resonated faintly with abjuration magic, but could tell no more than that, nor could they fathom the use of the abominable flesh-mask - though it undeniably oozed evil, it seemed to have something to do with illusion. They had better luck with the rest; the war razor, rings, and the tube they had found - in fact a chime, as they had suspected - were all magical, and they were able to narrow down the possibilities of their powers considerably, with a bit of work.
            By the generosity of the town, Devin had restocked his arrows and daggers back to his normal carry, and so considered what they found with an appraising eye.
            "Once cleaned and scrubbed five times over, I can put that armor to use. Get the ghoul-bits out of the seams and the stink out of the leather." Devin anticipated that the leather armor was salvageable with some significant handiwork, as it appeared to be intact. If he could don it without shuddering, himself, and if it's latent miasma were exorcised to not clear rooms, using it to kill more ghouls would be worthwhile. "And as to any, either ring would be useful, but I defer."
            "The mask goes into a bonfire, safely away from buildings and people. Rynshinn the seamstress might make some use of the fine clothing; soiled as it is, it might be cleaned or repurposed, her discretion."
            Kamala frowned and shook her head. "It's just a tool, no better or worse than that wicked looking sword the big man carries." It was perhaps telling that her own frightful-looking mask rested on a table near her hand. The demonic face leered even from where it sat on the table. "Frightened enemies fight worse, simple as that. Even ghouls aren't immune to being scared out of their wits."
            "There is such a thing as pure evil," Bardek interjected. "And some things are too close to that to be made use of for good purposes - no matter how well intended we may be." He glanced at the mask, "I don't know if this is one of those things or not, but it doesn't seem good."
            Kamala sighed. "What's good is killing ghouls, and I'd guess they'd be scared to see this mask take the field against them for a couple of reasons. Let's show them that even their Lord couldn't stand against us."
            "I have a bad feeling about that mask. Like Aldern was possessed by it. 'He made me do it,' one moment, scared and wailing, then just before he puts on the mask, flamboyant and malevolent. Who was, 'he'? Fungus Vorel, or mask-thing?" Devin said.
            "If Amrynn and Bardek say it's not going to poison your soul, fine, but I still think it's stomach-churn disgusting."
            At hearing Bardek's report of the letter's content, Devin nodded, "Magnimar it'll be then." He knew nothing of a Sihedron ritual; but the association back to the evil temple below the goblin keep was fresh in mind; nor could he readily tie the name Xanesha to anything he'd heard of. Necromancer or ghoul herself, probably, having orchestrated Aldern's turning, or participated in it beside her 'master.' "Seven. Sihedron star points." Devin considered the materials they found again in light of the information that Aldern knew of or was preparing to help some ritual.
            Kamala nodded. "Seems like the obvious next place to burn down." She looked at Bardek and Amrynn. "Do either of you know anything about this Sihedron ritual? Or what caverns she's talking about? Do we think she means the pit under the house?"
            "Well," Bardek said, his voice wry, "if we're really unlucky, she means the caverns under the house, and the 'delivery' she mentions is more of that mold. I get the feeling that having that stuff spread through Magnimar isn't going to be a positive for the city, overall."
            Belatedly, Devin also recalled aloud, "The body in the lumber mill. It had a sihedron star carved into its chest. Post-mortem, Durriken had said. So not 'marked' before he died, if that's what was meant."
            "Ominous," Bardek noted. "It sounds like there are a fair few loose ends to be pulled at, perhaps we can unravel a few things before we get to Magnimar. That might give us an advantage."
            "Brodent Quink. Here in Sandpoint. Sage; runes. We've heard of him; haven't spoken with him, yet." Devin said.
            Kamala looked from Bardek to Devin. "Which way's the lumber mill? Is it on the road to Magnimar?"
            On clean parchment, with the painting of Iesha propped against a wall, Devin scrutinized its background and sketched out the major features of Magnimar it displayed. He had an idea what district the portrait represented; in Magnimar, they may need the reference to find the townhome, and a sketch would be easier to carry than the portrait.

The Second Cycle