Chapter 4 - The Thing in the Attic

1


            The next day dawned on the first of Lamashan; the storm had passed, but clouds hung heavy over the sky, perhaps an omen of things to come.
            I'Daiin took his leave, grunting that it was time to return to his people. "May your ways be honor-bound, and may the fires never burn higher than your feet," he said by way of farewells. "I only hope that I run into more of those things. They will taste steel if I see them again. But I think not. They will not dare to touch me." His eyes flicked briefly toward the pile of drawings, but then he snorted and left the room.
            He left the serrated sword they had taken from Nualia on his pallet, the hilt wrapped in the Sihedron medallion he had worn - perhaps a sign that his conscience was not entirely clear as he left the party behind.
            Devin thought back to where he'd first seen I'Daiin crash into Ripnugget's thorny Thistletop great room, as part of the party interrupting what would've been Devin's imminent demise via goblin sport. I'Daiin's exit was as consistently terse as his entrance had been, his words succinct but full. Devin knew little of the Shoanti tribes and customs, but knew through the trials over the past weeks there'd been a measure of trust and comradery established between them all.
            "Fare well, cousin," Devin had offered, choosing his words tentatively. "May our spirits one day guide us together again."
            Kamala grinned and thumped the big Shoanti hard on one meaty shoulder. "You kill a few ghouls for me, alright?"
            I'Daiin had paused to clasp their arms for a moment, the gesture heavy with all the emotion a Shoanti could grant.
            Once they'd realized I'Daiin had left the sword behind, Devin suggested Cosmin and Bardek ask Bergi about it; Bergi would surely tell the story of that serrated bastard sword better than Devin could. "If it'd be of no use to you, Savah here in town would be happy to see it; maybe even trade us for like value of something else she may have in her shop. She still carries a balance for us in our favor, there." If nothing else, maybe she'd have an enchanted, returning dagger or two Devin could avail -- if they were to set out to clear the Road to Magnimar, any sharper edges would be appropriate to procure, now. He considered volunteering to Bardek and Cosmin that Savah came across both genuinely good-natured and smiling, and pleasantly flirtatious, but withheld that at realizing he'd only ever visited her shop by himself and was both uncertain if such was just her natural, friendly personality; and if he'd be relieved or mildly disappointed if it were.
            "I'm sure there's quite the story to tell. Definitely not my kind of weapon," Bardek said with a grimace of distaste, though the wicked-looking dark metal morningstar at his belt was a fair reason for someone to wonder just where the line was for the priest.
            "We should see what kind of return we can get for it, and maybe the razor, as well?"
            Amrynn, for her part, was feeling a bit odd - and shedding quite a bit as well, she found. She had an inexplicable urge for... maybe the bacon she could smell wafting up from the kitchen?
            At their rising, Devin had sensed Amrynn was somewhat out of sorts, but had placated his misgivings by reasoning her thoughts were full over recent events and her mind busy upon them. Now, observing her pull loose hair free and her own ponderment and weakened pallor, he convinced himself she could actually be unwell.
            Thoughts of how he'd seen the portraits of two members of Aldern's family die horribly, consumed by whatever it was growing in the caves below, caught his breath short.
            “I’m sure it’s--,” she started to say but stumbled and was grateful for Devin’s reflexes and arms stabilizing her. Her usual graceful demeanor was indeed sluggish and wan. “Just need some more rest.”
            "We are not traveling today," Devin stated. "That vial of antiplague, from after the fight on the road. Did you drink it? Do you still have it, to drink? I'll get more, in any case." At a reasonable level, Devin knew Amrynn was both far from helpless and may not appreciate being directed for her health, but such rationality was a whisper versus what he feared could be the risk to the woman he loved. Nothing in the haunted mansion had truly struck a chord of fear within him; he felt afraid, now. Devin's response to fear was resolute action.
            He sought Bardek and Cosmin's take on her condition, and was resolved to seek out Father Zantus and Durriken, too, if it seemed necessary.
            Bardek, upon Devin's request, gave Amrynn a quick examination. It didn't take long.
            "I don't know it's ghoul fever," he pronounced, "but I'd be surprised if it's not." He gave them both a reassuring smile. "Fortunately, I thought we might have to deal with that, and made preparations."
            The priest of the Lucky Drunk took a moment to pull his stole out of a pocket and loop it over his neck. Then he raised his flask, sprinkled a bit of the flask's contents on Amrynn's head, and intoned a prayer to his god, asking for the removal of disease from his companion.
            Amrynn didn't feel much different immediately... but because she was paying attention to it, she did notice that her urge to devour the bacon she could smell subsided at Bardek's blessing.
            Devin looked back and forth between Bardek and Amrynn, hoping one of them would affirm the result of the effort, and that Amrynn just needed some rest to recover fully.
            Bardek gave Amrynn an appraising look, narrowed his eyes, and then, after a moment, nodded. "I think the worst of it is gone for now. I can help with the healing, as well, if you're up for it?"
            “I don’t know as all of this is n--” she started again, but the reproachful body language which Devin exuded brought her up short. She arched a quizzical eyebrow at her protector, and then offered a demur smile and nod to Bardek.
            Bardek nodded, gave the elf woman a smile, and began praying again to Cayden Cailean on her behalf. He lay his hands on her head, and let the blessings of his god flow into her.
            Amrynn straightened to her full height and craned her neck in relief. Though her color was still a little peaked, her lithe strength was back, and she smiled at Bardek.
            “You’ll have to allow me to buy you a drink,” she said. She squeezed Devin’s supportive arm with her own in assurance and looked at the strands of hair in her other hand. The light on her face slowly curdled into fire, and her free hand rimed, turning the hair into brittle strands that she snapped with a clenching of her fist.
            “I seem to recall Bergi recounting us with tales of the Glassworks undertaken by the early Heroes of Sandpoint,” she said. “While they were hunting for the traitor Tsuko. So I don’t know if we need to revisit that particular den, though we could check.”
            The white haired, dark skinned Vudran woman came up just then, laughing as she overheard. "Don't let him con you into buying him a drink when he still owes me two!"
            She held up Tsuto's journal. "Thanks for letting me read through this stuff. This guy was crazy!" Kamala shook her head. "What is it about this place that drives these people insane? How many small towns have their own sanatorium?"
            At Bardek's reassurance, and supplemental aid, and Amrynn's change in presence, Devin finally relaxed with his own nod of gratitude to Bardek. He gently kissed Amrynn's brow; in contrast to the fire she'd drawn from within, and slipped his arm free to now let her be. "Ugh. Burning hair. Manticores," he chuckled, as the scent's hint would surely linger in the room for some time.
            "Let's go get the details about the quasit and what happened below the Glassworks from Bergi. If there's more to put right, there, perhaps we can do that today, and go smite ghouls tomorrow."

2


            Bergi's cheery demeanor darkened at the memory of the catacombs beneath the Glassworks. "The quasit was the worst," she shuddered. "Now we know its name was Erylium, but at the time it was just that damn devil!" She shook her head. "It turned invisible a lot. I had to throw a bag of flour on it. Headmaster Gandethus told us how to fight it. Quickfoot said he was also interested in the ranseur the weird angry lady statue was holding... I guess we never got around to getting it for him. Anyway, we did find a pool - the runewell, I guess? - and knocked Erylium into it. It didn't like that! Good thing more of those Mr. Biteys didn't show up, though. ...Or is it? Maybe that would have wrecked the runewell? We killed Erylium, but we never did anything about the well or the other weird room we found down there. Ameiko told me she had the passage from the Glassworks bricked up again, but I guess that doesn't mean it isn't still dangerous..."
            She flung herself at Devin, hugging him hard. The ribbons in her hair bounced cheerily, a contrast to her worried expression. "Whatever you do, be careful! This is like the Late Unpleasantness all over again!"
            Devin gratefully and reassuringly returned Bergi's embrace... but there was that phrase again. Combined with Kamala's apt questioning of why a small town the size of Sandpoint would have a feasible sanitorium nearby, Devin finally put words to what was troubling him.
            "Bergi -- the 'late unpleasantness,'" Devin didn't pronounce it with capital letters. "It was just the goblins, was it not? And Nualia's plot to take revenge on Sandpoint. Or was there more?"
            At understanding the runewell and the caves that housed it were likely still a danger, Devin sighed. Ameiko had bricked it back off, which meant ghouls were probably not coming and going to and from it, unless the cave Nualia had broken through was still open, down by the beach. Preventing the ghouls from increasing their numbers may be the more-pressing task.
            "Oh! Oh, no," Bergi gasped, pulling back and putting her hands over her mouth. "I'm sorry, I forgot you weren't here! People don't like to talk about it..." She glanced at Bardek, but went ahead. "But it might be important for you to know? Anyway, it all happened five years ago - nothing to do with the goblins at all. There was..." She swallowed, her voice unconsciously dropping to a whisper, forcing them to lean in to hear her. "There was a man, Jervis Stoot. Everyone loved him. He carved birds everywhere, on buildings, toys for children, ships, carriages, and everyone loved them. People were proud if their house had a Stoot. And he wanted to carve one on every building in town. He never accepted payment to do it. Just said there were only birds to set free where he saw them.
            "He lived out on an island, just north of the Old Light. People thought he'd break his neck, climbing up and down the cliffs. He said he wanted to be closer to the birds there. There are a lot of birds on the Old Light's island. So the carpenter's guild built him a staircase, free of charge. He lived out there for fifteen years, and as time went on, he came into town less and less. It was a real event when he came and chose a building for a new Stoot.
            "Then, five years ago, people started getting killed. All chopped up with an axe." Bergi shuddered, and whispered, "They were found with deep cuts in their necks and bodies, with their hands and feet stacked nearby, and their eyes and tongues gone. Over one month, they found twenty five people like that. They started calling the murderer the Chopper. He could avoid the town guard and traps laid for him, it was uncanny. The old Sheriff, Casp Avertin, finally caught him in Chopper's Alley, though. They fought, and Sheriff Avertin was killed - but he managed to make the Chopper bleed so much, the guards were able to track him down."
            "They tracked the Chopper right to the stairs of Stoot's Rock. At first they thought the Chopper was going to kill poor old Jervis... but when they got to his house, they found rooms carved into the rock, and there was an altar, a horrific altar..." Bergi paused, swallowing tears. "All the tongues and eyes were there," she said quietly. "It was an altar to some demon lord of winged things and temptation, I don't dare speak the name aloud. They found Jervis at the base of the altar, dead, with his eyes and tongue plucked loose in a final offering."
            "They collapsed the entrance to the chambers, burned the house, tore down the stairs, and burned Jervis on the beach and scattered his ashes, so his evil spirit would never return. You can still see the chopped places on the houses where all the Stoots were cut off. Everyone wanted to forget.
            "Only... a month after that, there was a terrible fire. The one Nualia started at the Chapel. Three homes, the White Deer Inn, and the North Coast Stables were consumed." Bergi clenched her little fists in fury at Nualia's treachery. "And the church burned to the ground... with Father Ezakien Tobyn and, we thought, his daughter Nualia in it. We thought that when the new Cathedral was consecrated, we'd put all this behind us... but Nualia was still out there, I guess. Who knows what else is, too? Why is this happening to us?" Bergi sniffled, looking dejected. "Ameiko's mom died, too. That's when Tsuto left. He always said their father killed her. There was no proof, of course. Everyone thought Tsuto was just mad because Lonjiku put him at the Sandpoint Academy to be raised. He's a half-elf, see, and his parents aren't. And now Tsuto's killed their dad, and been sent to Magnimar for trial. Her siblings are all Ameiko has left." Bergi wiped her nose, then amended, "Lady Kaijitsu, I mean."
            "Anyway, that's what we call the Late Unpleasantness. I guess we'll need a new name for what's happening now."
            "Nualia may have felt wronged by Sandpoint... but burning Sandpoint was a step, not her goal," Devin hypothesized, at hearing the fuller history of Sandpoint. "Something is or was here, twisting good people." Stoot, Nualia, maybe others.
            "Thank you, Bergi. I didn't realize what Sandpoint has been through in the last many years. Knowing some of this, now, puts more color on what may be happening." The ghouls, Aldern, the Misgivings, the Brothers of the Seven; Devin now doubted they could be successfully addressed as isolated, unrelated things, as he'd been thinking about them. They may not be able to know the 'why' of it all, but at least they would now be better prepared to interpret what they did find in a potentially greater context.
            "If it's known, how long ago did Aldern become the head of the Foxglove household? Five years? Less?"
            "After what happened to his parents twenty years ago, Lord Aldern was sent to live with relatives in Korvosa. I guess you could say that was when he became head of the household, as a child," Bergi recalled. "But he only returned recently, to restore the Misgivings, everyone said. About a year ago. A caretaker was managing it before then. Can't recall his name... Coresy? Crabsy? Oh, it was Rogors Craesby! One-eared man, doesn't tip for message deliveries - or for perfectly good performances at weddings! I can't believe what happened to poor Lady Iesha. Or Lord Aldern, for that matter." Bergi shivered.
            From whatever cause, Devin noted Cosmin's quiet exit from the crowded Dragon. In a pause in the conversation, Devin gestured gently to the party with a hand, "Perhaps Cosmin is going to find Bid'ja, share the progress in person?" At their last parting, Bid'ja had put her bow in service of the local guard. Maybe she would have additional knowledge of the ghouls' activities in the surrounding countryside.

3


            At the talk of The Late Unpleasantness, Cosmin had slipped away and made his way languidly through Sandpoint, taking it in.
            Sandpoint. His hometown. The little Varisian village that had seen enough horror for several Ustalavan lifetimes. The town where he had fallen in love and the Late "Unpleasantness" had ripped it from him in violence and terror.
            Unpleasantness. He did have to hand it to his peoples' knack for understatement.
            The others appeared to have more of a grasp of the ills afflicting his little town, more aware of the recent troubles that had plagued it. For Cosmin Strofa, it was like looking at a painting that he had placed the finishing touches on but upon reviewing, it was as unfamiliar as whatever lay across the sea. This was not the Sandpoint of his youth, nor the people he grew up with. Everything had changed.
            And not for the better, it seemed. Shelyn taught him to see beauty even in the darkest corners of the world, but Sandpoint.
            Sandpoint needed an entirely new coat of paint at this point, to cover what had come before.
            His boots carried him along familiar pathways, towards where he had grown up. His father had been a tailor, working alongside Rynshinn Povalli, while his mother went on to become a famous actress in Magnimar but she had gotten her start with Cyrdak Drokkus right in Sandpoint.
            He wondered what they were up to.

4


            Brodert Quink shuffled into the Rusty Dragon at noon, edging into the taproom past the crowd - there were so many people in town who normally lived in the hinterlands (as well as a few merchants who no longer dared to leave) that every inn, and the cathedral, was packed. Bergi had told them that Ameiko was quietly letting those with little coin to spare stay for free.
            Quink was an old man, balding and careful in his movements, his face furrowed from a habitual frown, but his eyes were sharp, focused, and gleeful as he bore down on the party's table.
            "So you've come looking for an expert on ancient Thassilonian ruins?" he asked eagerly, and thrust out his chest in pride. The sunlight from the window glinted on his glasses and fringe of white hair as he pronounced, "Well, you've come to the right man! I spent twenty years studying architecture in Janderhoff, and another thirty in Magnimar at the Founder's Archive. I daresay I'm one of the foremost experts on ancient Thassilonian ruins. I've been studying The Old Light for years now! What is it that you want to know about it?"
            "Have you read about something called the 'Sihedron Ritual'?" Devin asked. "Involving the selective murder of individuals, each marked with a sihedron. Or runewells, or a cult named the Brothers of the Seven?"
            "What? What's this? You don't want to know about the Old Light? I am not a kook!" Quink blustered a bit, disappointed by this revelation, and cantankerous by nature, but eventually they managed to smooth out his ruffled feathers, and he grudgingly gave them some information.
            "I don't know about any ritual foolishness or cults. I am a scholar, not an acolyte," he grumbled, taking off his lenses and polishing them on his robe. "Nor do I know anything about any "runewell." What I do know about is the Sihedron star."
            "The seven-pointed star appears to be one of the most important runes of Thassilon. The star itself is known as the Sihedron rune, and signifies not only the seven virtues of rule - most scholars generally agree that these were wealth, fertility, honest pride, abundance, eager striving, righteous anger, and rest - but that it also signifies the seven schools of magic recognized by Thassilon. They didn't hold with divination magic. I suppose if they had, the empire might not have collapsed as it did. Not seven or eight thousand years ago, as less studious scholars may claim, but at least ten thousand years ago! In my research on the empire, I-"
            It took some nudging, but they were able to get the old man reluctantly back on track. "Much of what is understood about Thassilon indicates that its leaders were far from virtuous. Many scholars, myself included, believe the classic mortal sins rose from corruptions of the Thassilonian virtues of rule. Yet, much of the lore of ancient Thassilon has been lost. What does remain, we have scraped from barely legible carvings on the surviving monuments, or extracted from the myths and oral traditions of Varisian seers and storytellers. Shoanti barbarian tales, passed on by storytellers for thousands of years, remember the wizard-kings of Thassilon as the Azghat, a pantheon of war-bringers and punishers of the dishonorable. The Varisians remember them more as demons, and speak of them only in hushed tones. It takes a Chelish view to be able to cast a more objective eye over the legends. In any case, the sheer size of the monuments they left behind testifies to their power, and the unnatural way many of these monuments have resisted erosion and the march of time testifies to their skill at magic-"
            Quink began to warm to his subject as he guided it back around to the monuments again. It took some coaxing to get him back on track.
            He shook his head irritably. "So much about ancient Thassilon is unknown or is merely conjecture at this point. For all that their ruins dot this land, little is known for certain about the mighty empire upon whose bones all of Varisia is built. Our ignorance is, of course, fostered in large part by Earthfall and its aftermath... when an empire is collapsing in fire and blood few have the good sense to keep detailed records for future scholars like myself. Whether each of the seven Runelords gravitated towards the virtues of the Sihedron by choice, or had the virtues were assigned to them after the fact, is unclear, but what is clear is that over time, as they grew in power and wealth, they descended into corruption and avarice, and those cherished virtues they represented became perverted into what we now know as the seven great sins of the soul."
            "Our schools of magic were predominantly founded by what we learned of that age, each following the precepts laid down by one of the Runelords and the discoveries or advances each in turn had made. Now this isn't something widely discussed outside of magical academies - where such history is deemed both necessarily pertinent and potentially embarassing - but supposedly it aligns in thusly:
            Conjuration magic, attributed to Krune, the Runelord of Sloth, summons agents to serve a wizards will, allows one to travel great distances without taking a single step or fabricates some item or substance without the labor one would normally have to invest.
            Enchantment magic, attributed to Sorshen, the Runelord of Lust, focuses on subverting or outright dominating the thoughts and emotions - indeed the very will of others.
            Transformation magic is attributed to Karzoug, the Runelord of Greed, and pertains mostly to enhancing the value of items or individuals, subjective value that is, as the wizard himself perceives it.
            Necromancy, interestingly enough, is attributed to the Zutha, Runelord of Gluttony - perhaps because of his never-ending hunger for the pleasures life held, and his all-consuming desire to extend that life indefinitely that he might experience them all.
            Illusion is given to Xanderghul, the Runelord of Pride, as so often that's all pride is - self-deception and the consequrnt deception of others in order to maintain the facade.
            Abjuration magic was attributed to Belimarius, the Runelord of Envy as he sought to supress the magics of others, all others, except that of he and his agents.
            Evocation magic, the most overtly destructive of the schools, is naturally attributed to Alanzist, the Runelord of Wrath whom was known to have harnessed powerful energies, raw and unrefined, in order to wield it against others."
            "Now we know something of the Runelords themselves, but not much. The Runelord of Wrath - Alaznist - ruled the very land upon which we sit, once part of a nation known as Bak-ra-khan. Most of it perished beneath the waves - we are in fact just on what would have been its eastern edge. I suspect what you uncovered in the catacombs below the town would have been some sort of forward base, complete with stores for a siege and interrogation chambers for captured spies or enemies of war. In truth, that all but confirms my suspicions about the Old Light - collegues in Magnimar and elsewhere have scoffed, but I believe it used to be much, much taller, actually one of a series of flumes along the eastern border which served as a primary line of defense against Shalast to the east, capable of harnessing great energies and projecting them at range. Torabor is going to be absolutely livid when I prove it to him!" Quink slammed his fist on the table, making the clay mugs on it rattle.
            Kamala had listened attentively but was very cognizant of the fact that she was out of her depth. That said, the connections seemed obvious. "Brothers of the Seven- seven Runelords- this cult must somehow worship these ancient wizards. And Runelords- runewell- if Alaznist was the ruler of this area when the runewell was built, that runewell must have something to do with her." She glanced at Quink. "Him? It doesn't really matter; she's probably deader than a doornail."
            "Alaznist is said to have been a woman, if legend is true," Quink said distractedly, before latching onto his real interest. "I'd like to see this 'runewell'. Where is it? Is it beyond Windsong Abbey? My knees aren't what they once were, but I'd go to see that."
            In light of Bergi's information, Quint's postulation seemed particularly apt to Devin. Sandpoint's immediate vicinity was a fortified Thassilonian border outpost for the Runelord Alaznist?
            Devin's brow was furrowed as he absorbed what Quink had shared. More than anything he could say; which he suspected Quink would dismiss as platitudes; Devin demonstrated the weight he was giving Brodert's years of research and accumulated knowledge by placing a cloth-wrapped item about the size of Devin's palm upon the table. Devin's fingers opened the cloth and withdrew, showing the Sihedron medallion I'Daiin had been wearing, and that the party had recovered from Nualia, which apparently had been gifted to Nualia by the leader of the Skinsaw Men, which had at least dealings if not full conjecture with the Brothers of the Seven, who had purposes Devin couldn't yet understand but that were undertaking Sihedron rituals of some unknown purpose.
            Catching Quink's eye, Devin raised an eyebrow in inquiry, inviting Quink to comment if he'd ever seen or read about such a thing as the medallion before. Devin was not at all certain if Quink would scoff and dismiss the trinket out of hand; it was not a ruin, after all; or if Quink's jaw would drop at seeing something potentially from the very history he studied now resting upon the table.
            Quink's reaction was all that Devin could have hoped for. The scholar's jaw dropped, his eyes grew round, and he fumbled his mug onto the table so roughly his tea sloshed onto the wood. Ignoring the mess, Quink reached for the medallion, his fingers tracing over the Sihedron. "Fantastic," he breathed, "a relic of an age so ancient, it is nothing but legend. ...Unless you're trying to fool an old man?! You think what I do is funny?" He stared daggers at them all preemptively, to warn them off such foolishness.
            Once mollified once more, the cantankerous old man clucked over the artifact like a mother hen. "Not quite the same as architecture, obviously, but still an amazing find! A symbol not only of power, but of the entity of the Thassilonian Empire itself!" But in the end, the sage was unable to tell them more of it, other than that it was likely magical - which they had ascertained for themselves.

5


            "I don't see what all this has to do with ghouls, but from what Bergi said we should go back down and check on the runewell, that other strange room, and see about this ranseur and statue she said they wanted to go back for. And the Sanatorium, and the Hambley farm, and the lumber mill. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us right here in town." Kamala said.
            Bardek frowned. He'd been deeply unsettled by the news of Stoot's fate, but he didn't let it get in the way of what was going on. "'Personal' doesn't mean the same thing as 'Important,' " He remembered the words of a captain from a former life.
            "The ranseur and the runewell aren't going anywhere," Bardek said. "And more to the point, they're not making more ghouls out of innocent people." He shook his head. "I agree that it might not be time to head for Magnimar and leave Sandpoint unprotected, but I think putting down the ghouls is probably the first priority."
            "Agreed," Devin nodded. "The farm is spread out and harder to contain, the Sanitorium is fortified and harder to penetrate."
            Devin considered Amrynn's evident recovery carefully before suggesting, "Let's get to the farm this afternoon."
            "Tactics. Sheriff Hemlock may already be stretched thin, but we need at least six men; maybe two groups of three; to hold the road and river around the farm. Prevent fleeing ghouls from escaping while we're inside the farm. Antiplague may be in short supply right now, but whatever the town can spare, we should take with us; administer it to anyone ill there who can still be saved; secure them back here."
            Devin's mind reeled with the math of it -- one ghoul, unchecked, could attack and infect as many people as it could reach in a day. Three to five, maybe. If two of those succumb and turn in a week, in one week, you have fifteen ghouls. Two weeks, over two hundred ghouls. They'd be limited only by the number of new victims available, and that the ghouls didn't seem to heal quickly, and that they seemed to prefer to lurk rather than actively propagate. Without Aldern as an aggressive antagonist, maybe Sandpoint would be fortunate and the ghouls would revert to hiding until disturbed. He shook his head and tried to just focus on what was known, in front of them.
            "What do you think?"
            Kamala shook her head. "I think sending anybody we send out into those hills is going to be another ghoul we'll have to kill. I don't think three guards could handle one ghoul on their own, and every ghoul we've seen so far has been in a pack. If we ask them to hold the road or try to cordon the farm we're just making more of them."
            "Maybe- maybe!- if Father Zantus is willing to send out acolytes who can heal and channel Desna's presence, send them out in groups with guards, but I wouldn't trust anything smaller than a half dozen guards with a pair or more of priests."
            "The best thing to do is lock down the town while we go take out the ghoul nest at the farm as fast as we can, before they have time to learn about Aldern's final death. Load up with buckets full of holy water and douse everything we see out there. Hopefully we can catch them all at once."
            Devin shrugged, acquiescent, "Then let's go. Hambley Farm. Daylight's wasting."
            He stood up. They had one stop to make; Father Zantus; to find out if such reserves of either acolytes who could turn or holy water that could douse was available. If the acolytes were available, and they could get a half-dozen guards to accompany from the Sheriff, then the party had a cordon for the farm's edge. If not, the party was still going to break up the farm, even at risk of scattering some of the ghouls that may be lairing there.

6


            Unfortunately, the few acolytes under Father Zantus weren't strong enough in the faith to be of much use, even if they hadn't been occupied treating the sick and injured that had poured into the town. Worse, Durriken had moved on; he, at least, might have been able to do some good. But, anticipating their need, Father Zantus had seen to it that there was holy water available to take, for a symbolic tithe.
            The entire town held a sense of tension as the party went about selling the goods they had accumulated, and heading out into the open fields was no relief. The fields and farms were strangely quiet, deserted as rumors of the monsters in the night had spread.
            When they reached the accursed Hambley farm, a quick search of the farmhouse and the fields was equally unnerving. They found no ghouls - but there had been people strung up on the scarecrow posts, presumably to "ripen" into ghouls when they died. However, it was clear that they hadn't made it that far. Tattered rags and gnawed remains of bloody bones, some of them quite fresh, dangled from the scarecrow posts.
            The ghouls had eaten them.
            But where were the monsters now?
            Kamala shook her head. "Well, no one said they were stupid." She looked at Amrynn, Bardek, Cosmin, and Devin. "Can any of you track? I'm from the city. One piece of dirt looks pretty much the same to me."
            Devin shook his head, "Not my forte. Let's give the farmhouse a quick search; one half of an hour. Far from stupid, the leaders were intelligent. They may be something else, here; correspondence, notes, something."
            "Then let's head to the Sanitarium; we can get there and back to the town before nightfall."
            A thorough search of the farmhouse turned up no papers or notes, though in the master bedroom, Devin found a stout wooden coffer hidden under the creaking floorboard. Easily unlocked with the key they had found on the rotting carcass in the kitchen on their first foray to the farm, he found myriad pouches, each meticulously organized, filled with a hundred silver pieces each - there must have been thousands of silver coins hidden there, the Hambleys' life savings, no longer needed. It was curious that they had such wealth, when the farm was so shabby.

7


            "There will be tithes enough in the future, if Sandpoint still stands, but what kindness we show in this life is where true wisdom lies. Take it, with the gods' blessing. It goes to a worthy cause." Father Zantus sketched a butterfly in the air before them, granting them Desna's benediction.

8


            The shadows had begun to grow long as the party crossed to the lee side of the Ashen Rise, following Cougar Creek, where it seemed the town's nightmare had first begun. There, the Saintly Haven of Respite squatted, silent, at the foot of the escarpment. The three-story stone building with the stone-flagged roof was familiar to Devin and Amrynn, at least; as before, no one came out to greet them. They did notice that the grounds were not quite as trimmed as they had been on their last visit.
            "Still ugly. Maybe more. Let's check the river shore." Devin wasn't certain if he hoped they'd find an absence of recent ghoul tracks, or an abundance.
            "Sanitarium's the pursuit of Habe," Devin explained succinctly for Bardek's, Kamala's, and Cosmin's benefit. "Impatient and distemperate to interference within his lordly estate; straight-up it's-mutual hate-thing with Amrynn from that, in part; but has the good graces of the Mayor and the Sheriff. Sevilla was a madman patient, here; in retrospect clearly a ghoul-in-waiting under Aldern's influence; attacked I'Daiin when we came to ask him about what he witnessed regarding one of the murders. Habe has -- maybe had -- two brutish orderlies, Gortus and Gurnak. Ugly stick-beating recipients, both, but strong enough to wrestle Sevilla back under control after Sevilla ripped free of canvas-and-leather bonds."
            Devin considered the building's exterior. Looked climbable, to him. Asking for after they checked the river bank for signs of activity, he posited candidate tactics, nodding towards the building, "Knock, scale and scout, or break and clear?"
            Amrynn was keeping up, but she remained quieter than usual and more withdrawn in her activities. Devin knew this as simple conservation of her energies, perhaps was grateful for it with Habe’s abode ahead, but her color was still a little pallid. She didn’t complain when called to assist with the location of tracks, offering what insight she could, but neither did she jump to the front of the investigation.
            Such a font of power in such a fragile shell. Well, what appeared to be a fragile shell. Amrynn could draw upon reserves to fortify herself as needed, but even those with the blood of ancients had their limits. She strode up next to Devin and let out a long breath.
            “I’d rather not climb, if other options are available,” she said. A thin hand collected a few stray hairs and smoothed them back from her face. “We have some new faces among us. Perhaps words will serve better than overt trespass? Or are we completely satisfied that villainy is afoot here?”
            "Words are my specialty," Cosmin half-whistled, half-hummed, looking somewhat haggard but otherwise in upper spirits. Reckoning was to be reckoned, and Shelyn's Shield was prepared to do so with all the gifts the Songbird could bestow.
            His impeccable power of speech was not one of those, however - that was long before he ever knew the words of his Goddess.
            "I'd be more than happy to try and be convincing if we do not want to be confrontational."
            Bardek nodded. "We can always fight or break in if talking doesn't work out," he pointed out, "People never really seem all that interested in engaging in reasonable conversation when they find you breaking into their stuff. Or so I've been told."
            "Ghoul Abed insinuated they'd head to the farm, or here. Farm's empty," Devin cautioned. "Safer to presume villainy is rampant and act accordingly." As if his own words reminded him of the necessity of maintaining a state of vigilance, he drew his shortsword to hand, and palmed the tiny cold iron enchanted dagger with his other hand, thumbed out from the concealed sheath he'd worked into one of his belts, and absently set it to rolling with his fingers.
            At consideration of all counsel, though, he reluctantly conceded, "If the riverbank is clear, I'm open to knocking, first. But still with weapons ready." Devin chuckled and wagered to Amrynn, "If Habe is alive and is overrun in there, barricaded in some room, you know once rescued he'll still be put out that we helped. 'Interference in his work,' I'm certain."
            "It's easier to kick in a door than break down a wall, especially if they're already let us in to talk." Kamala smiled. "Come on, I want to see these two ghoul-wrangling orderlies. Let's go knock." She glanced at Amrynn and Devin. "You might want to hang back, though, if you've already had a fight with this guy."
            "But stick close at hand," Cosmin asked, nodding towards Devin and the assessment that this could all go sideways very quickly, "Kamala, Bardek, and I can see what we can do."
            Falling into step with his celestial-touched kith, one by providence as he was, one by blood as he was, Cosmin made sure his starsword was easily reachable, but did not set to draw it. The power of Shelyn was coursing through him this day - her guidance and blessings were all that were needed.
            He hoped.
            "I kowtowed fine. Amrynn doesn't do obsequious," Devin smirked. "Hanging back is fine; 's where I do some of my best work."
            Kamala grinned, her gleaming, inhumanly blue eyes flashing mischeviously. She nodded in Amrynn's direction. "I don't kowtow, either." The imposing woman dropped half an exaggerated curtsy. "I speak politely and ask nicely, then I kick people in the head until they give me what I want. It's a good system." The white haired Vudran laughed and shook her head, gesturing at Cosmin and Bardek. "Maybe we'll let these two silver tongues take the lead, though."

9


            However, when they scanned the riverbank, it seemed Devin's suppositions had been correct. Footprints, myriad footprints covered the muddy bank, bare feet all, large and small. Either the patients of the Saintly Haven of Respite had been on a late-year dip in the brook, or something other was afoot.
            Looking back on Habe's Sanatorium in the long shadow it cast to the riverbank, the silence, weeds, and unraked lawns seemed foreboding, now.
            The stout roof of the sanatorium was sloped, flagged in gray stone. There were small windows, no more than four inches wide, in the building's white walls, but mostly on the first floor - none they could see on the second floor, and only one on the third. Both the doors they could see were stout oak. There were indeed steps up onto a veranda, suggesting a foundation that might contain a basement, but there were no ground-level windows that confirmed that.
            Devin kept his shortsword out; the tiny dagger stopped twirling and went to a static, ready-to-throw grip. He divided his attention between the sanatorium and the river. The tracks on the riverbank spoke for themselves. If Habe was still in there, he was either trapped, complicit, turned, or dead.
            "They're going to have fortified the doors." The ghouls seemed at least that intelligent, or at least some of them were. If Devin were in there and expecting a siege, he'd have spotters on the roof or the small, upper windows. Probably a few ghouls in the river, too, as flankers.
            "Establish cover fifty feet from the front entrance, and yell for Habe, provoke a response? Make them come to us?" Devin had an everburning torch, and Dancing Lights. Yelling plus lights might get an investigation.
            Bardek frowned, thinking.
            "That'd definitely let them know we're here," he said, "but they probably already know that. If they're not watching us right now, they're not too bright. Still," he said, "it might make sense to let them think we're not as smart as we are. Maybe look to spring the trap. I can use that same prayer from yesterday, and Cosmin and I could still go knock on the door. If they surround us, I can give them the same treatment as we gave the birds, and he and I might be able to force the door open. Then the rest of you come running. If we have to fall back, the rest of you cover us?" He glanced up at the roof of the building, but was careful not to stare at it too obviously. "Either way, we should decide quickly, before they force us, somehow."
            Kamala shook her head. "No. That only flew because there was nothing I'Daiin or I could do against a flock of murderous birds. This time I go with you." She nodded and glanced at Devin and Amrynn. "Hang back, try to stay hidden but be close enough to cast if it comes to a fight, and the three of us will go knock."
            Amrynn’s face bore a sour smirk. She fished in her pack for a moment and straightened.
            “I do ‘hang back’ about as well as I do obsequious,” she said, but she nodded acquiescence just the same. She twirled the silvery tube they had found recently in her fingers with a comfortable ease.
            “This is a chime of opening though,” she said. “If it comes to that.”
            "Well," Bardek said with a small chuckle, "that could prove useful, indeed, depending on how seriously they've decided to lock that door."
            Devin quickly looked about for a branch or similar of a little less thickness than his arm. "If it's locked, give me first crack at the door before we use the chime," was all he asked.
            "Be right back." Branch in hand, Devin went to the rearward doors of the building and wedged the branch through the door handles. It wouldn't stop someone determined to get through, but it would slow them down.
            Devin came back around to the front and prepared his shortbow with a nocked arrow. "Hanging back; ten paces." Devin tried to locate a suitable position that both he and Amrynn could be reasonably concealed; or at least in cover; within that distance from the door, but still have line of sight to the interior.
            "Knock away."
            While the sanatorium grounds were fairly open and usually kept in trim, there were a few trees and bushes dotting the large lawn. Devin and Amrynn took cover behind these, some distance from the building itself.
            Kamala stepped up onto the creaky veranda, which groaned disproportionately to her weight as she moved up to the office door. Glancing in the small window beside the door, she found that it was curtained, which was no surprise. She raised her hand and gave the door a few solid thumps.
            There was no reply, but for the rattle of wind in the dying leaves, and the chirr of fall insects. Thunder rumbled over the bay, distant, but warning of rain to come.
            Trying the door handle, Kamala found it unlocked.

10


            Kamala frowned and looked at Cosmin and Bardek. "That can't be good." She looked over her shoulder in Devin and Amrynn's direction and raised her voice. "This was locked last time you were here, right? I don't think we're going to have to talk our way in this time."
            Bardek stood beside Kamala, looking past her into the room.
            "This," he said, "does not look good." He gestured to the others to approach. "We may have to move quickly."
            Bardek spoke a blessing over them, and then they pushed open the door, and Kamala, Cosmin, and Bardek entered. It was a new sight to them; the small reception contained a desk and three chairs, one behind the desk and two in front of it. There were doors to the left and to the right, one behind the desk, the other beside it. A cord hung from a hole in the wall to the right, above a sign that read, "Ring for service."
            Devin moved back to the corner of the building, on the veranda, and kept a ready watch both around the corner to the south as well as sweeping back up west, minding the party’s collective flank.
            The boards groaned plaintively at his not-particularly-onerous weight, but nothing seemed to be approaching from either venue.
            Bardek motioned Kamala towards the door on the right - beside the desk, and Cosmin towards the left side door, behind the desk. He waited for each of them to check the latch on their respective doors before they decided which one to open first.
            Kamala silently went over to the door and checked to see if it was locked. She tried the handle, but it wouldn't turn - it seemed it was indeed locked. Cosmin shook his head from his side of the room - his door was locked, as well.
            Bardek looked over his shoulder at Devin. "You were here before," the priest said, keeping his voice quiet. "Pull the bell? Or through a door?"
            From her door, Kamala shook her head and gestured at Cosmin's door. "Let's clear that room all by itself first," she said quietly.
            Amrynn stowed the chime and moved quietly forward as the party began their sweep of the interior. She kept all physical weapons stowed for the moment, but her eyes darted cleanly around searching for trouble.
            There was neither the sound of creaking boards (other than those they stood on) nor the crunch of white gravel or brown leaves from without.
            The entire building was cloaked in heavy, dead silence.
            "Right," Bardek breathed. He caught Devin's attention, then motioned towards Cosmin's door, and made a gesture like turning a key. Trusting Amrynn to watch their backs - and the door Kamala had tested - Bardek moved to get into position with the others around Cosmin's door, ready to face whatever they found on the other side.
            Kamala remained by her door, just in case, but was ready to move across the foyer to the door Devin was about to unlock.

11


            It took more fiddling than he was expecting, considering his fine tools and nimble fingers, but Devin was able to open the lock soon enough. Standing back, he allowed Kamala and Cosmin to crowd into the little room beyond.
            It was a modestly appointed room, neat and a bit stuffy from lack of airing out; the curtains were drawn, leaving the room dim. There was a small desk, an armoire, a bed, and a chair; a small coffer sat on the headboard of the bed. It was clean, tidy, and impersonal. But what drew Kamala and Cosmin's attention was the way the armoire was open, just a crack.
            Before they could act on their suspicions, the doors to the armoire flew open and a man burst out - Cosmin recognized him from years back as Josky, a fellow who liked beer a bit more than was good for him, but who always had a smile and a story to tell if you wanted to listen.
            Now, he was sallow and glittery-eyed, cheeks sunken and lips drawn back from teeth that seemed too long. Still dressed in sackcloth and rags, like a scarecrow, he lunged at Kamala without a trace of his usual smile. His outflung hand clawed across Kamala's face, leaving deep scratches, but she kicked him in the chest, making his teeth snap shut on air.
            “Bedroom, modest; one ghoul,” Devin reported to Bardek and Amrynn, of what he could see. “Not a lot of room to maneuver.” Devin didn’t have a clear throw at the ghoul; it was tucked too far back along the wall. He considered moving to guard the room’s south door, but it was still locked and would probably hold its own. Between Kamala and Cosmin, he anticipated the ghoul would be downed in a few moments.’
            "Josky, what did they do to you," Cosmin growled in lamentation, furious that a fellow who enjoyed a good Cheers had been met with such a terrible fate.
            ”You knew this guy?” Kamala gave Cosmin a sympathetic shrug. In spite of the scratches on her face she was acting very nonchalantly about the situation. “Well, if it’s any consolation he’ll be dead soon and they can give him a proper burial.”
            Almost lazily, she threw a flurry of punches at the man who really should have known better than to attack a pair of well equipped strangers.
            Working in tandem with Kamala, the Aasimar slid to her side, starsword in hand and twirling before it lashed out in a furious rend, inspired by The Accidental God's luck.
            "Back everyone, one ghoul, we've got this!" he shouted in his musical tone, nodding at his fellow Celestial-touched companion.
            Josky blinked and glanced at Cosmin with sunken, feverish eyes when he heard his name; it was a bad time to be distracted. The instant he looked back at Kamala, her fists crunched into his nose, his throat, and his chest. He didn't get a chance to bemoan it - a moment later, Cosmin removed his head.
            Outside, Devin climbed up onto the broad admittance desk, allowing easier egress from the room.
            Kamala shook her head. “Poor guy. Sorry, Josky. You weren’t looking to be turned into a cannibal monster.” She brushed her fingers lightly over the new furrows in her cheek.
            “He almost got in a good one, though.” She nodded at Cosmin. “Let’s check the desk and move on.” Belying her words, she started murmuring the words of a spell. A moment later, a shimmering field of energy sprang into existence, covering her from head to toe in a suit of arcane armor.
            "Might as well search the whole place while you're in there," Bardek suggested softly. He nodded pointedly at the bed, his eyes glancing at both the coffer on the headboard and the space beneath the bed itself. "But quickly. It seems they're waiting for us."
            He held his position near the opposite door until the rest were finished and ready to move on.
            Not to waste time and cognizant faith had limits; or at least Good Hope prayers had effective durations; while Kamala and Cosmin quickly checked Habe’s room, Devin jumped down from the desk and went to work on the lock of the south door, to the workroom.
            “But one at a time?” Amrynn asked from the doorway. “That seems a little…sacrificial.” Her usually stoic face was more dour than usual as she surveyed the soulless nature of the sanatorium.
            She took a cue from Kamala’s efforts and enchanted some words of protection herself. Whatever else this madhouse actually held, ghouls in number were a likely outcome. Perhaps they would finally be able to end that particular threat, but she still had her doubts, even though Aldern Foxglove had been felled.
            "I think 'sacrificial' is not beneath them. I doubt the old man was seen as a contributing member of the group. And if he'd gotten lucky, or even if he was just to distract us..." Bardek trailed off, his mind going briefly to another place and time. Then he shook his head, his face grim, "They mean to bleed us, wear us down, and slow us. But remember the ambush at the wagon? They are devious and clever, but don't understand tactics or real strategy. Even Foxglove didn't know proper tactics." He grunted. "The world's best swordsman doesn't fear the second best. No, he fears the person who's just picked up a sword for the first time." He gave Amrynn a meaningful look. "Because there's no telling what the idiot will do next." The moral of the story was clear - they would have to remain vigilant.

12


            Devin took out his tools again, kneeling to work on the lock while Kamala checked in the closet and under the neat bed, finding nothing else threatening in the rather impersonal room. She tried to open the coffer on the headboard, only to find that it was locked.
            Devin, on the other hand, found that the door he was working on was no longer locked.
            "Grab what you can pocket. If it's locked, leave it, and we can get it on the way out, or leave it for whoever it belongs to, if they're still alive." Bardek's voice was pitched soft, but steady. Every moment spent in this room was time the enemy had to prepare the next ambush.
            Kamala experimentally tried to lift the small strongbox to see if she could just throw the thing in her backpack.
            She found it light enough to take, and put it away into her pack. It made a metallic sound as she did, as of coins sliding about.
            "Ready," Devin announced succinctly, rolling up and pocketing his lockpicking tools. He drew his shortsword and a dagger back to hand and crouched up on the desk to clear the path to the door.
            His first impulse had been to open the door to the workroom and push on, but he held to respect the tactics they'd worked out. He flicked the tip of his dagger impatiently twice towards the southern door, encouraging Kamala and Cosmin to do their thing, storm the room, get through and past the threshold quickly that they could all bring force to bear on whatever was inside. Crouched as he was, Devin pulled a deep breath and stared holes through the door, mentally playing through what he anticipated was beyond it -- large open room, obstacle tables -- probably several ghouls. Chessboard. Movement would be constrained; restricted; opportunities scarce. His eyes shadowed over briefly, his hands supernaturally still, his respiration even.
            Bardek nodded when Devin gave the alert, moving to the side of the door, ready to provide support to Cosmin and Kamala once they were beyond the door.
            Amrynn cocked an ear to the outside. She thought she could hear rattling, as of a door handle, if it was stuck and the person trying to get through was frustrated.
            Kamala silently moved over to Devin's door, taking up the spot right in front of it. She looked excited, rolling her neck and bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. Once Cosmin indicated he was ready, the big woman put her hand on the doorknob and threw the door open.

13


            The room beyond was large, with several worktabes spaced through it, and had an air of disuse. The walls were painted white, and there was a sour smell of incense in the air - which didn't cover the smell of death. There was a dogleg bend at the far end of the room, and several doors arrayed around it. The, to her, unnoticeable dimness of the room didn't do anything to hide the four people clustered closely around the farthest table, facing each other, their heads down, slowly swaying from side to side. They were dressed in simple, drab clothes, and didn't react to the door being thrown open.
            "At least one more waiting inside the door, or around the corner," Devin cautioned Kamala. "Let's go!"
            Devin judged his line of sight to the four as best he could; as soon as Kamala cleared the doorway and moved to go around the table, he was prepared to throw the dagger he had at the nearest of the four they could already see. Start whittling the numbers.
            Kamala grinned at Devin. "That's just one more dead zed. Whoever gets the fewest buys drinks." With that she murmured the words of a spell, making sparks leap from her hands. "It's not gonna be me!"
            Cosmin hesitated, just for a moment - perhaps remembering his life draining away under the teeth of the farm ghouls.
            Amrynn listened for a few moments longer, confirming what she had thought she heard. She shifted enough to get Devin’s attention, such movements to which he was well attuned.
            “Movement at the rear,” she said quietly, turning and slipping along the alcove to the corner. She pulled her staff free as she moved, the thin but dense weapon twirling lightly through the air. She pulled up at the corner and glanced down the long length of porch. Her free hand traced intricate patterns at her side as she watched for any sign of true escape.
            Seeing Cosmin hesitate, and knowing that being stuck in this room was potentially dangerous, Bardek slipped past Kamala and into the room. He kept himself to the far wall, away from the doors, and stopped part-way into the room. Clear of the others, but close enough to provide support.
            As soon as he stepped inside, Bardek realised their minor mistake. The four people standing in a huddle around the table were far too rotted in appearance to be ghouls.
            These were zombies. And they still didn't react to his approach.
            Cosmin followed Bardek into the room, but took up position by the door, gleaming star-sword up and ready.

14


            Conflicted, Devin saw the party splitting up to fight two battles at the same time against creatures that could paralyze. Kamala wasn’t going to be able to get out of the doorway soon enough for Devin to get a throw in at any of the zombies he could already see, and Bardek, Cosmin, and Kamala were all pressing into the room. Devin knew that Bardek was the party’s primary weapon against the zombie numbers; as long as Kamala and Cosmin took up guard positions and kept Bardek on his feet, the zombies in the room were done for.
            That meant containment took priority; stopping stray zombies from fleeing the scene and continuing the plague, provided the party stayed within tactical distance and retained cross-support ability.
            “Preventing escapees and flanking; won’t go far and will join you in the workroom,” Devin committed to Bardek, Kamala, and Cosmin, and swiftly moved to the porch corner alongside Amrynn.
            The undead swayed in their silent communion. Those facing Bardek swung slow heads to look at him with blank, filmed eyes, and let out low groans, a parody of their human voices - but they stayed where they were.
            Outside, Amrynn saw the branch-blocked door handle jerk and bobble with increasing force.
            "Careful," Bardek said softly to Cosmin and Kamala, "those aren't ghouls. Just zombies. Resistant to punching and stabbing, but slicing and burning work just fine. Mindless though. Someone put them here for a reason. Distraction, probably."
            The priest of Cayden Cailean narrowed his eyes in thought. "If you two can clear me a path, I can see what's around that corner," he said softly, "and I might even be able to do something about whatever we find there."
            Kamala grinned back over her shoulder at Bardek. "Just follow me and you'll both be fine." She dashed toward the zombies, enjoying the boost of her new ring and leaping over the edge of a table as she went, drawing the big wavy bladed dagger as she closed in on the closest undead monster. The Vudrani woman slashed at the creature with an almost draconic hiss once she got in range.
            The dead woman collapsed with a sigh of relief, folding around Kamala's dagger. The foreigner ripped it free without a drop of blood spilling, only a smear of dark, rusty brown on her blade as the zombie fell.
            Amrynn did not hesitate as Devin took up position with her. She strode down the walkway, staff switching hands with twirling fluidity as she moved. She shied from the windows as she went by and spared each a brief glance to insure no immediate threat awaited her. When she reached the rattling door, she brought her staff around with a purposeful air and drove it between the handles and the piece of wood currently serving as a crossbar. Keeping one hand on the staff, she maintained the levering force as best she was able.
            Then she leaned into the crack between the doors and hissed with considerable fervor, announcing her arrival and her intentions. The door handle jerked and the door thumped once, twice more. Then it went silent behind the thick wood.
            Cosmin ran in behind Kamala, sword gleaming with the beautiful light. He practically danced around her back, the two of them a wonderfully choreographed ballet of slashing death.
            The second zombie fell as the first had, a haunting relief on his otherwise unexpressive face.
            "Now! Take their cleric!" A man shouted, appearing for a moment as the door at the end of the room swung fully open. He hurled an egg at them, and where it struck, a billowing yellowish-green cloud of noxious gas swelled out to fill the room, obscuring the man from sight, as well as hiding the room from those within it. The three in the fog managed to grab a breath before the cloud billowed over them - making each other nothing more than murky figures in the cloud, for those who could see each other at all.
            Then the ghouls came.
            As the strange man had commanded, they came for Bardek, slavering and leaping over the tables and benches, their unused lungs unhindered by the revolting yellow-green mist. With horribly familiar faces, but eyes that shone maniacally with unholy hunger, the people they had been was now obscured by their intent and the bloodstained scarecrow outfits they wore. He only just had time to react as they reached him...
            Meanwhile, a woman stalked Cosmin in the fog, leaping out to claw at him - but she was met by his guarding sword, and broke off the attack at the last moment, wary.
            Smarter, Bardek thought to himself, even as he raised the battered copper mug that was the symbol of his Deity, but still not *smart.*
            <"Imeacht gan teacht ort!"> The priest called out in a language even he couldn't have named. All he knew was that he'd learned the phrase from a Varisian Caydenite years ago. Loosely translated, it meant, 'may you leave, and never return!' Which was, quite frankly, exactly what Bardek wished for these blasted ghouls.
            Radiant energy caused that battered copper mug to shine like gold for a moment, before bursting forth as a wave of whiskey-hued light that spread throughout the room, the power of Cayden Cailean to wash clean the stain of undeath.
            The wave rolled through the room, passing through the cloud of gag-inducing vapor, and though the others in the party felt nothing more than a passing warmth, screeches of inhuman horror claxoned in the air. There was a thump as one of the women who had surrounded Bardek collapsed like a limp marionette, and the other townsfolk screamed as the damnation of Bardek's god struck them, blasting the animating force that gave them their unnatural life out of them. Yet, weakened though they were, most of those around Bardek still stood. Likewise, the one Cosmin could see was shaken, but not down yet.
            Devin rounded the doorway at the reception room to the workaround and drew up short; he grimaced, stepped in behind the two ghouls' backs he had present to him, and laid into them just as the whole room thumped with a warm burst from Bardek's call from somewhere within the noxious cloud.
            Though the sheer stink of the room caught him by surprise, throwing off his usual grace, neither of the dead folk glimpsed in the yellow-green cloud were able to bite him as he took up position behind one, to the side of the door.
            Devin's attack was quick and precise. He shanked the ghoul before him in the back of the neck, paying no heed to the billowing fog that nearly concealed it. Bardek, who had seen Tilly collapse, watched the unfamiliar man drop the same way, but with a gaping wound where his spine had been severed.
            Farther into the mists, the lumbering shapes of the zombies approached Cosmin and Kamala. One scratched ineffectually at his armor, but the other managed to strike him with a heavy hand, a dead weight that made his ears ring.
            Holding her breath, Kamala slapped Cosmin on the shoulder and pushed him toward the door. She darted around him, fast as lightning dashed for the opening where the gas-thrower had fled.
            At least, that was what she intended - but the zombies moved to block her path, pulling her back from the wall before she could bounce off it and around Cosmin. Her sprint ruined, instead she spund on her heel and threw a razor-edged knife hand at the nearest dead woman's head.
            The blow crunched wetly into the bones of her face (actually a bit less effective than Kamala had hoped, since it was still standing), but it was the claws that ripped her head off that dropped the zombie.
            Gods how Amrynn hated this place. She added it to her growing list of buildings to be eradicated and mused that perhaps most of Sandpoint’s outlying structures needed to be reimagined from the ashes up. Well there was time yet, and plenty of other work to be done. She gave the barred doorway before her a few more moments of study before slipping away to offer what support she could to the others.
            When she reached the corner, she called out to Devin, “The door holds for now.” Then she waited, looking back the way she had come to see if the dead would make one more attempt at that point of egress.
            The door handle rattled one more time, then went still.
            The blow to his head still ringing his ears, Cosmin wasn't nearly as dextrous as Kamala. The ghoul got in his way and he stumbled to a stop right before her. With nowhere to go, he slashed at the creature with his glowing rainbow blade.
            The girl screamed in sudden fright, but it was too late - Cosmin lopped off her head in a rainbow arc, sending it tumbling into the yellow-green fog.
            The portly woman trying to bite Bardek, flesh sagging from her bones in an unnatural way, fumbled awkwardly in trying to bite him - but her flailing claws raked his arm.
            The heavyset farmer (his flesh, too, sagging on his frame) across from him reached out to deal with him as well. He grabbed the unfortunate priest's mug-wielding arm and bit down - and he felt his muscles contract into rigidity, freezing him in place.
            The ghoul felt it, too. He grinned widely, drawing back. "Got one, Binna! You see any others?"
            "I don't see anything in here," Binna replied testily.
            "Well, go out then," the farmer drawled back, turning - and spotting Devin. "Ne'er you mind this fella, Binna - there's still a dangerous varmint runnin' around out there. Behind ya!"
            Devin had underestimated the ghouls’ ingenuity; whatever the stinking green fog was, it was effective at preventing him from helping much further into the room, and versus seeing how Kamala and Cosmin were faring. First things first.
            “Amrynn – they’re using choking fog, and basic tactics. Watch yourself. Bardek -- take out the one to your west; I’ve got this one.”
            With a meaty thunk, his dagger buried itself in the large woman's back; arm still outstretched from the throw, he watched her crash bonelessly to the ground, presumably near Bardek.
            Meanwhile, Cosmin fended off the clumsy attack of the last townsman standing near him. The dead man moaned, as though in protest of the thwarting of his perfectly reasonable desire to eat Cosmin's brain.
            “Two ghouls down,” Devin reported, since sight was limited, “one in sight at the edge of the fog. Bardek’s gone quiet in there. Grab Bardek; get back out here. There's no need to fight them in the fog; they're trapped in the building."
            Amrynn came gliding in on her long legs but drew up sharply at Devin’s side when the first pangs of the foul mist reached her. She reared back and placed a hand on Devin to steady herself, glancing into the chaos beyond. Her quick assessment and Devin’s called instructions provided her with ample information. There was little she could do here at the moment, the fog obscuring her ability to safely summon any destructive energies. Her hand traced up and tucked a few stray hairs behind one of Devin’s softly pointed ears.
            “Do yell if you need me,” she said, offering him a half-smile and cupping the side of his face for a moment.
            Then she was gone, flitting back the way she had come to stand vigil at the corner to insure none of the dead managed to flee from her flank. From this vantage point she could also offer the group support if they did pull back to regroup.
            Devin elected to not swallow the smile Amrynn's visit, touch, and words elicited. Fight or not, it was a reminder to not get lost in the moment or take the situation as dire; it all had an ebb and flow to it, and they all knew the dance.
            With fresh eyes Devin renewed his attention on the mists and reseated his grip on his shortsword.
            Cosmin swept his rainbow blade back at the zombie, wanting to keep his brain right where it was.
            Kamala choked out "Hold up, Cosmin. Let me kill this thing first."
            The zombie sagged to the ground, sliding off Cosmin's scintillating sword with a final, deep sigh.
            Kamala slowly paced through the greenish fog, coming upon Bardek, but with no one near his fallen form. Turning, she followed the table - and found the culprit standing on it. Before the farmer could so much as spin around to meet her, she reached up and snapped his neck. But in doing so, she accidentally took a gulp of the disgusting air, and her stomach lurched.
            Devin saw a woman step slowly out of the fog - and she spotted him at the same time. She rushed toward him, teeth snapping, but he simply stepped back, and she bounced hard against the doorframe, foiling her attack.
            "Who's still out there?" A man's voice sounded from near Kamala - it had to have been only a few feet away. "Binna? Turan?"
            "I'm here!" the ghoul in front of Devin called back, her belly distended with consumed flesh in a grotesque parody of pregnancy. "Near the office! There's one here!"
            But no others answered the man's call. After a moment, uncertaintly flickered on the woman's face. "Tilly? Hamos?"
            Devin stepped through the doorway and verbally riposted, "You mean me? Past this pile of fallen ghouls?"
            Devin's shortsword flashed out to drop the woman. With a grimace, he sincerely hoped her abdomen was bloated with decay versus a child she was carrying before the ghouls had taken her (and if so, hopefully it was now lost and still). He felt the continued presence of clarity and flow, and could already envision the path of the return stroke of his shortsword finishing the task if the first cut did not.
            But the woman's perception seemed unnaturally acute, for she leapt back, narrowly avoiding both blows. "Jhorshau! I need help!" she called, only now beginning to look afraid.
            Knowing there was at least one more ghoul in the fog, and that Devin harbored no desire to press into it to search, and that Kamala and Cosmin were both moving in there, Devin sought to get the next ghoul to come out to meet him. With fortune, the next ghoul would get flanked between them.
            Sick to her stomach but unwilling to give these monsters the satisfaction of hearing her throw up in the fog, Kamala reached down to grab Bardek's wrist and drag him toward the door she'd seen the egg-throwing man run through. She bumped into Cosmin in the fog and choked out "Keep moving, let's go!"
            Cosmin led her through the fog, though she was hardly able to concentrate on anything but keeping her lunch down. Cosmin stopped ahead of her, and she heard a rattling noise.
            Cosmin tried the door he'd stumbled upon, but found it locked. The stench was overwhelming; it made his eyes tear and his stomach twist. Bardek, dragged behind Kamala, found that while he still drew breath, that was not necessarily the best thing just now, either.
            The woman before Devin stepped into the fog for what little protection it offered, calling more and more stridently for Jhorshau. She managed to scratch Devin in a lucky strike, but he didn't feel the stiffening of muscles that his human friend had.
            Finally, through the fog, a voice answered her. "Sorry, Abie," the presumable Jhorshau told her. Devin could hear careful steps departing.
            "Jhorshau! You bastard, Jhorshau!" Abie screeched.
            “Two ghouls left,” Devin called out, and allowed, “Crafty,” which is as close to tense as he’d sounded, having missed what he’d felt would be two definitive attacks to add this ghoul’s corpse to the pile, and taken a significant wound to his arm for the trouble.
            Without letting down his guard or his attack, Devin sent his shortsword in again, but took an open, cautious tone with Abie mid-fight. “Abie, the ghouls killed you; you didn’t deserve it, but it is what it is. You want me to remember you as fangs and claws, or is there enough of you railing against the fever, still, for you to sit at that table,” Devin gestured to Abie’s left; at the edge of the table out of the noxious fog, “and tell us who and what’s happened here, and to you? We can’t put it right, but we can stop it from happening more.”
            "I seen what happens when you- HEY!" Abie protested as Devin plunged his sword into her chest. She scowled at him, but when he backed away, she didn't pursue. "You rotten... adventurer!" she spat with all the venom a small-towner's distrust of adventurers could muster.
            More than from a blow, Devin blinked, confused at Abie's retort. He wasn't an adventurer; he was just eeking out his own existence, and as of late trying to help out a bit where he could. He wondered if the bile from Abie predated and enabled her transition to a ghoul, or if the disease had found that dark bitterness within her and made it flourish.
            Kamala was about to throw up. "Move!" She shouted at Cosmin and threw her shoulder into the door.
            Solid though it was, the door smashed open under her superior strength, hanging askew from its hinges. The miasma appeared to end at the doorway, with (relatively) fresh, clean air awaiting her just a few steps away, incense-sour or not. That was more important at the moment than the stair leading down. Cosmin, for his part, realized there was clean air just a foot away from him, as well - in the direction of the inner sanatorium. And there, heading for an open door, was what must be Jhorshau.
            Just around the corner, Kamala heard quiet chanting coming from the stairwell. A moment later, she was blasted repeatedly by what felt like donkey kicks.
            "Ghouls! To me! Attack!" the man from before screeched from the stairs. Abie winced, then shook her fist at Devin and made her way back into the fog. Bardek watched helplessly as she stepped over him, a hand on the wall to guide her, and advanced on where Kamala had vanished in the reeking mist... which seemed to be beginning to thin.
            Wait... he could turn his head?! Bardek realized his muscles were slowly relaxing, coming under his control again.
            Jhorshau slowed, then halted, and turned, spotting Cosmin. His blood-flecked grimace turned dark, and he advanced on the holy warrior, feinting to one side, then latching his teeth into Cosmin's much-chewed neck. Cosmin managed to shake him off, but not without a painful chunk of meat.
            "The fight's moving deeper into the interior; the fog's clearing," Devin reported, mostly for Amrynn's benefit. He surmised and announced, "Two ghouls up, and a necromancer behind cover."
            Devin put his shortsword away and drew a second dagger, then stepped into the room, anxiously waiting the noxious green mist to settle and give him a line of sight to the fight.
            As he expected, the mist was slowly, slowly settling toward the floor; already he could see the white-painted ceiling of the long room again.
            Amrynn envisioned herself throwing open the side door, charging the enemy on a second flank with raging torrents of icy energy flowing from her hands. Then she recollected the paralyzing teeth of the ghouls, and knew that one misstep would allow them the exit they sought. That she could not allow. She turned from the barred door and darted back into the sanatorium proper, catching sight of Devin just moving into the gas chamber.
            “I’m here,” she said to him as she crossed the opening and took up position on the other side, glancing into the rancid mayhem beyond. She squinted her eyes, both searching and in defense of the stench.
            Though the fog seemed to be settling, it was not yet thinned enough to see through; even Amrynn's keen eyes were powerless to pierce the obscuring green mist.
            Kamala grunted under the donkey kicks but grinned blearily in the direction they'd come from. "Found you. Gonna kill you soon. Then I'm gonna vomit on your corpse."
            Cosmin, under assault, had no witty banter as he slid along the wall to cleaner air. Kamala moved to put her body in between the ghoul and Cosmin, though she was in no better shape than the holy warrior.
            Cosmin's first gulp of clean air was like ambrosia, but he didn't have time to enjoy it with Jhorshau threatening him as he carefully stepped out of the cloud. Kamala, gagging, followed close behind him. As she went, she got a closer look at the necromancer; the crowd that was all him wavered like a mirage, all of them sneering as she moved past the doorway. "Stop them, fools!" he shouted to the ghouls, unable to see that his minions were trying.
            Then, with shocking abruptness, the green cloud dissipated, the magic that had summoned it drawing it back to whatever noxious dimension it had been drawn from as it failed. Devin and Amrynn could suddenly see the lay of the land; Bardek lying on the wood floor by the wall, and Abie and Jhorshau threatening Cosmin and Kamala, who seemed preoccupied with their nausea.
            The necromancer stepped into view from the doorway, dark satisfaction spreading on his face as he saw the situation. The number of fallen ghouls didn't seem to worry him in the least. "You two! Go over there and take down those adventurers! I'll deal with these," he gloated. He had a dagger in one hand, but didn't use it - instead he reached out, intending to touch Kamala.
            His gloating grin turned sour as his hand skidded over Kamala's invisible armor. "What's this?!" he demanded, outraged.
            Abie rushed Devin, screaming in desperation, and Amrynn blasted her in the face with frost for her trouble, throwing off her attack. Jhorshau circled around the tables to come in at Devin from the side, or perhaps to threaten Amrynn.
            Bardek wasn't sure how he felt about his muscles beginning to regain mobility. His stomach roiled, and he was pretty sure his first actual movement would be to vomit.
            Nope. He was sure. This sucked.
            And Bardek felt the last of his paralysis release him, like a cramp mercifully vanishing.
            The abdominal cramps that immediately followed were much less merciful. Bardek curled into a ball for a moment, before forcing himself to sit upright (with a heave). Then, using the wall for support, he gradually pushed himself to his feet, where he stood, only somewhat unsteadily.
            Talking, he realized, was not in the cards. Not yet.
            Through gritted teeth, Devin ruminated as the ghouls crossed the room to engage in melee yet again, "Very, very annoyed." All in all, though, that was better than if they'd pressed Kamala, Cosmin, and Bardek, who weren't all quite themselves. Though he'd much rather send one or both daggers into the gloating necromancer, the ghouls demanded immediate attention. Devin flashed both daggers at the ghouls and slid into the corner to admit Amrynn and prevent either ghoul from flanking anyone.
            Abie was so off-balance from running at Devin that it was almost pitifully easy to put her down. One flash of his blade, and she had fallen, the unnatural life and hunger she bore draining away into the hands of Pharasma.
            Jhorshau was equally surprised, and failed to avoid Devin's lightning-fast second strike - and he hadn't counted on Amrynn providing much of a threat. He paid for that foolishness with a yelp as his pallid flesh froze solid in blotches when she commanded the elements to stop him.
            The crowd of necromancers abandoned their attempts to penetrate Kamala's magical armor, and ignored Bardek as they passed him to reach Cosmin, but the distraction of their ghouls being destroyed proved enough for Cosmin to lurch away. The necromancers refocused with a snarl.
            Amrynn commanded the air to draw away heat again, and the last ghoul groaned. For all that he seemed like he'd rather flee, Jhorshau reluctantly moved after Devin, apparently considering him a greater threat despite Amrynn's blasts of frost. Every step he took seemed forced.
            "Caizarlu! Please, let me go!" he yelled, even as he lunged for Devin.
            "Keep fighting, slave!" the necromancers snapped back. Jhorshau did so, managing to scratch Devin a few times, but still the half-elf felt no paralysis such as Bardek had suffered.
            Paralysis or not, Devin was starting to feel fatigue set in, and the accumulation of deflected gouges on his arms were starting to wear at him. He risked a glance to the other end of the room and saw it was all the others could do to barely hold their bile down and their feet under them at the same time.
            Nothing to do but to fight his way to them through this last ghoul, though. At least Jhorshau's attacks were half-hearted as he railed against Caizarlu's domination.
            "Lulu -- where's Habe?" Devin called to Caizarlu, kicked at Jhorshau to throw the ghoul off-balance, and lunged in with his dagger again. "And why'd you pick a girl's name? Is that supposed to be intimidating?"
            In a quick jab, Devin plunged his dagger into Jhorshau's eye, and the ghoul let out a long, rasping rattle as he slid off the short blade again. Never one to lose an opportunity, Devin immediately darted toward the necromancer.
            "You're a fool," Caizarlu scoffed as the mob that was him turned against Devin. "But your life will add to my power as well as any other's. When you feel the pressure of unlife rising through you, know who your master is!" The group of him seemed to waver and shift as though Devin had been the one affected by nausea - but he still stayed well out of reach of the necromancer's grasping multiple hands.
            “Are we wanting to take this lady necromancer alive?” Amrynn asked loudly enough for all to hear. “Or will we just burn her with the rest?”
            She wove her magic into a familiar pattern and sent her bolts of icy energy forth, slicing to the room to ram into Caizarlu.
            The icicles plunged into Caizarlu's body, and he gasped - but a moment later he straightened, not a drop of blood to be seen as he tore loose the icicles from the wounds they had made. The ice melted away, and he smirked. "A sorceror! You will make a pretty addition to my staff," he gloated.
            Bardek, from his position leaning against the wall, struggled to hold down his heaving stomach.
            Bardek wasn't sure what kind of threat he could provide to the apparent necromancer, other than potentially soiling his shoes - a prospect that trying to watch the shifting multiples of him seemed to make much more likely - but he knew that boxing him/them in might at least give Devin more of a chance of doing some actual damage. So Bardek pushed off from his trusty wall and staggered forward, towards the gang of Cairzarlu.
            Unfortunately, his nausea and lack of balance led him, instead of directly towards the wizard, on a diagonal path, where he nearly bumped into Cosmin. Managing to avoid that worthy - barely - Bardek re-focused, concentrated, and stepped up behind(ish) the swirling forms of the wizard.
            "If you can move," Devin asked of Bardek, Kamala, and Cosmin, "flank him; hem in in; limit his movement."
            Bardek waved to Devin, as he staggered into position, his shield held up to at least try to defend himself.
            The shifting multiples of necromancer were distracting; Devin tried to let his eyes stop trying to track Cairzarlu and take in the environment instead; the sounds Cairzarlu made, the shifts of current, the awareness of presence you can have of someone nearby even when your eyes are closed. He reached to and felt the edge of the shadows within himself for the insight they could bring to guide his dagger. Devin's grin was satisfied at realizing all they had to do was restrict Cairzarlu's movement for a few moments and Amrynn's magic would end this, undeterred by Cairzarlu's illusion.
            "He's infatuated with death; let's abide," Devin called by way of answer to Amrynn.
            Devin stepped over to the wall; taking away a whole series of angles from which Cairzarlu could now /not/ be, regardless of his imagery; listened, then struck with his dagger at where his senses took the necromancer to be. Cairzarlu's eager attempts to touch or claw at the party; and now, Devin; gave Devin cause to draw deep and strike again. This had to end quickly.
            In a blinding pattern of weaving attacks, Devin stabbed at Caizarlu - but when his blade connected, the necromancer vanished, leaving only three others behind.
            "Fool!" Caizarlu sneered, but there was a note of trepidation in his tone, one that translated to his eyes when Devin cut another of his crowd of selves away.
            Now only two remained.
            Cosmin and Kamala staggered closer, meaning to hem the wizard in as Bardek and Devin were doing. Realizing that his route would soon be blocked once the group had finished gagging from his magic, Caizarlu snarled and stepped around the worktable, lashing out at Devin again on the way with a spell - but in his ire, he stumbled over the words, and his magic failed. In growing frustration, Caizarlu screamed, "What do you think you're doing? Did Rachas send you?! You'll never get my research!"
            Then Amrynn sent another three jagged icicles corkscrewing into his midriff, and this time, when they melted away, he was bleeding. The two of him howled in pain and rage, shooting her a look nearly as deadly as her magic.
            Bardek focused on two things: keeping his shield up and between himself and Caizarlu, and keeping what remained in his stomach down and in his stomach. He held his ground - if somewhat unsteadily - making sure that the mage couldn't retreat past him.
            "Keep hitting him! We'll keep him pinned," Devin called encouragement to Amrynn; her missiles were reliably taking a toll on Caizarlu. Devin was also encouraged to catch hints of Cosmin catching his breath and constitution. While Devin recognized there'd be some advantages if he could wait for Cosmin to move into position to flank Caizarlu opposite Devin, the risk in holding position would be Caizarlu would be able to slip over the workbench and out of the vise they had him in at present.
            With some resignation to the practical, Devin slid east to keep Caizarlu square between himself and the bulkwark of the party still catching its breath. If Cosmin moved to continue the line east of Kamala, Cosmin would get a swing or two in and both Devin and Cosmin could prevent Caizarlu from easily trying to escape out and away into the broader room.
            Devin dropped one of his daggers and drew his shortsword for its extra reach, and lunged in at Caizarlu.
            "Don't even know Rachas. We just can't abide you 'researching' on people." While Devin really didn't want the logistical baggage of an affirmative, he couldn't help but feel Caizarlu may be part of some broader plot the party and the town should be cognizant of. "The mere consideration pains me, but you've a few moments left to surrender, if you're convincing."
            His enchanted sword whicked through the air, but Caizarlu proved too slippery to strike this time, at least with the table partly blocking Devin's agile attacks. "Surrender? We shall see," the necromancer sneered, though he seemed more alert and less arrogant than he had been - and he was no longer blurring about in that eye-bending way.
            As the nausea passed, Cosmin straightened up and drew his sword. "Well now you've done it," he said to the wizard. He moved around Bardek and Kamala to catch Caizarlu between himself and Devin, slashing at one of the wizards once he was in place.
            The last multiple of Caizarlu vanished in a shower of sparks, and the necromancer snarled, deperation beginning to leak into his eyes. Jabbing a finger at Amrynn, he intoned a word that hurt the ears to hear - and suddenly, she was plunged into utter darkness, her eyes useless.
            Then he tried to shove past Bardek, but even with his eyes still watering and his stomach lurching, Bardek wasn't so easy to avoid. Devin took a swipe at the necromancer, but his blade skirled across an invisible barrier - not so Cosmin's, which managed to jab the wizard in the leg. Caizarlu snarled again, desperation now plain on his face as he watched his erstwhile victims begin to recover.
            Amrynn rocked back and her hands flew up to her glowing eyes as a sibilant keen hissed from her mouth. She shook her head in vain against the pain and blackness which had swallowed her.
            Devin withdrew his offer to even consider Caizarlu’s surrender with a growled, “Your choice is made.” At realizing Cairzarlu now faced a near-solid wall of angry adventurers behind him, Devin’s eyes bored into Cairzalu from below a calm, calculating brow. He timed his shortsword’s next strike with Cairzarlu’s split of attention between the many threats he was boxed between, and drove the point in, hard and precise. “On whatever dark plane you next haunt, enjoy getting defiled, subjugated, dominated, and endlessly rended.”
            Amrynn distantly heard the words, but it was Devin’s lethal tone which cut through her haze of pain. When she lowered her hands and looked into the room, the glowing white of her eyes was gone. Only black orbs filled her eye sockets, swallowing whatever light tried to reflect off of them.
            “ALIVE!!!” she shrieked at them, her voice ringing with blood and ancient power. “I…want…him alive,” she reiterated as one hand groped for the door frame and the other for the door itself. She guided herself through the opening and slowly pulled the door closed behind her until it latched in place. She stood there, listening, getting her bearings again. Her hands were curled into delicate claws at her sides.
            “I’ll have your eyes for that < raucagul >,” she said through clenched teeth.
            More than anything Cairzarlu had done, Amrynn’s scream dropped Devin’s heart low in his chest, and the dust wafting down from the ceiling’s stone bracing and wooden beams in the echo of her rage paused time for his consideration of her demand. Before the first motes could settle out of the room’s lingering window-slashed light, Devin decided he’d rather have Cairzarlu quickly dead than enable what Amrynn’s fury might yield upon the helpless necromancer. It was no debate; it was staying the cold course he’d already firmly committed to; Cairzarlu would end, here, now. Devin’s shortsword struck in, now oddly-equal parts anger and mercy.
            Bardek winced at the scream, clearly the result of the wizard's magical actions. He wasn't sure what the man had done, but he knew how he would have done it.
            "Make him fix it," Bardek said, though he was interrupted by a gag. "Spell."
            “He won’t,” Devin replied in flat, determined resignation. If Caizarlu was still accomplished enough to throw spells about successfully while in the midst of a three-way melee, there was more risk in delay than in finishing this. Devin had extended an offer to hear Caizarlu out; Caizarlu had responded by throwing further harm. Far from permitting Caizarlu to leverage that as a stolen bargain versus the party, to Devin, Caizarlu had just proven there was no redemption in anything he could say. The fastest way to alleviate the pain Caizarlu was inflicting and could further inflict was to end him.
            Bardek’s suggestion that Caizarlu could undo whatever he’d done to Amrynn, if only Devin let him live, added a third layer of anguish to Devin’s sword strike.
            "Fools! Stay your blades, or let her suffer!" Caizarlu shouted, doing his best to avoid their blows.
            Kamala's eyes blazed white as she straightened up after one last dry heave. "It's fine, Amrynn can just have his eyes." She bared her teeth at Caizarlu as her fingernails grew into claws that glittered like ice. "You don't want to surrender, we'll just have to figure out what we can from your notes." The muscular woman threw a pair of blindingly fast slashes at the necromancer.
            "Don't worry, Amrynn, we'll get you cured as soon as we're done here." Cosmin piled on along with the rest, attacking the necromancer's flank with his longsword.
            "No! Idiots! No! Only I can- *glurk*" Between the three combatants, their foe could not hold strong. Blood splattered as the necromancer was beset on all sides, and a final blow from Kamala left him bleeding out on the pale floorboards.
            Devin left’s Caizarlu’s ultimate fate to Kamala; at seeing Caizarlu crumple, Devin arrested the swing of his shortsword with a whip and a snap to get the blood off it, rammed it home into its sheath, and moved north towards Amrynn.
            “Caizarlu’s down,” he stated, both to apprise her of the situation and announce that Devin was the one who was approaching her, holding one step outside arm’s reach. Her expression, and the sight of her darkened eyes, spoke volumes of the source of her pained, shaking rage. His only relief was that she appeared otherwise uninjured. He continued, purposefully practical to her present situation, “We’re all up. Here; hand on my shoulder.” She wouldn’t want sympathy or a shoulder to lean on, not right now, and he was uncertain how she’d accept the offer of either. They were all still in the moment, and the edge of battle would take minutes yet to subside. He could at least get her past the workroom tables to the party and where Caizarlu fell – her hand on his shoulder would let her safely navigate but give her the independence to separate or take alternate action at her exclusive discretion.
            Once they got back to the south end of the room, Devin paused to crouch and recover the dagger he’d dropped, cautioning first if Amrynn’s hand was on his shoulder, “Picking up a dagger I dropped.”
            The athletic warrior followed Caizarlu down to the ground, coming down atop his chest with her knees on his upper arms like she expected him to start wrestling with her. With her glittering claws poised to sink into his throat, she looked up at Amrynn. "I'd just as soon kill him. Father Zantus can see to healing your eyes. Is that alright with you, Amrynn?" She made talking about killing the man sound about as momentous as going to the market to see what they could get for dinner.
            “No!” Amrynn barked out, but whether it was in answer to Devin’s request or Kamala’s question was uncertain, perhaps both, though she snatched her hand back from any attempt to let it be taken. Clearly, though her eyes were dark, her ears were as keen as ever.
            “No,” she said again in clear, hard tones, though the manic rage had slipped away from her voice. “We need him alive.”
            She moved past Devin and towards the eastern wall of the sanatorium but had only taken a few steps before she ran afoul of fallen ghoul remains in her path. She stumbled and went down hard on one knee, her other foot slipping in the gore, but she stayed upright, catching herself with her hands. She twisted her torso in Devin’s direction, raising a finger to stop him.
            “No,” she said to him, then she turned southerly again and added, “Alive, Kamala. Gag him, bind him, but stabilize him, please.”
            Amrynn rose to her feet and moved with more studied care along the eastern wall, one delicate hand extended to it for guidance and talking as she walked.
            Devin smirked, satisfied, and walked back to retrieve and stow his remaining dagger. His hands were free again.
            Kamala quirked an eyebrow at Amrynn and glanced at Devin. "I'm not a healer, Amrynn. I break men, I don't fix them." She didn't get up, continuing to kneel on the unconscious necromancer's arms astride his chest. As a compromise, though, her razor sharp nails melted away and her posture went from imminently murderous to casual as a cat.
            “We cannot leave this unfinished here,” she said. “Every last corner must be checked. I will not let any stragglers carry this plague forward. He can undo what he has done…and likely has information on what has been happening. Of that we are in dire need.” She drew up and paused when she got parallel to the necromancer’s rough location, remaining near the wall.
            “Agreed?” she asked everyone.
            "Not agreed," Devin offered, just as calmly. "The severed heads of venomous snakes should be buried. Even defeated, they can kill. He will demand and try to barter for anything he gives, and -- as nothing will spare him -- we have nothing to offer. Trick him? Maybe. Torture him? No."
            Devin walked back towards the foyer, opened the door, and retrieved his dropped shortbow, which he replaced in the scabbard at the side of his pack.
            He came back -- shutting the door behind him -- to rejoin the party and sat upon one of the worktables, feet on the adjoining bench.
            "How do we force him to capitulate?" Devin asked, suggesting his agreement could be won. He looked to Kamala, to Bardek, to Cosmin, to Amrynn.
            "If we keep him alive, we can't leave him alone. Even unconscious, tied up, and gagged I wouldn't trust him to not be able to escape. And I'd prefer him unconscious until we get him in a cell. So who's going to carry him? I'Daiin could have done it." Kamala shook her head. "But I need my hands free."
            Bardek, who at last had managed to quell the storm in his stomach, let out a slow, careful breath. He stood to his fully upright posture, also carefully. The greenish tinge to his face was rapidly fading back to his normal color. So, of course, the first order of business was to open his previously sealed flask and take a strong pull therefrom.
            "That's better," he said. Then he approached Kamala and her fallen perch.
            "If I heal him," Bardek said to the room, though he was already kneeling down, "it's likely that someone is going to have to kill him again. Maybe that's the law in Sandpoint, maybe that's one of us. Devin's right, no torture. But nothing says we can't spin a tale or two.
            “I will never understand how one can rationalize the act of extinguishing life as less unsavory than using pain as a motivator,” Amrynn said academically, shaking her head. “Best we leave him unconscious for now though, or he very well may not survive to answer further questions,” she looked skyward and sighed.
            Lowering her head again, she said, “I can sit with him, while you four finish the sweep of this wretched place.” She glanced around at everyone in turn, roughly hitting each of their marks with her darkened gaze, and added, “If you feel you can trust him with me, that is.”
            "I'm fine with that if you are. Let's take him in that room up front. We can block the door with the desk to make sure none of his monsters bust in on you." Kamala stood up, ready to strike if Caizarlu showed any sign of waking.
            Devin considered carefully, calculating potential risks and benefit. He had difficulty imagining Cairzarlu being anything but a dangerous liability. But he trusted Amrynn.
            "Very well." Once they'd made certain Cairzarlu wasn't about to expire prematurely, Devin insisted on searching the necromancer for baubles and trinkets. While he didn't have Amrynn's sight for detecting enchantments, anything Devin had any cause to suspect was separated from Cairzarlu and set aside -- rings, jewelry, metals, braids, belts, boots, necklaces, pouches, et al. With Cairzarlu down to trousers, shirtless and shoeless, Devin had to be satisfied Cairzarlu only had left what he carried in his head, which could still be formidable. Binding hands, arms, and feet, and gagging would be seen to after they moved him to the private quarters off the foyer. Devin used kicks and slides of his boots to help clear said private room of the ghoul-corpse that had sprung from the armoire and opened the window to let some of the outside air in to the interior.
            Caizarlu was carrying two potions of varying shades of green, and one vial that appeared to hold a small cloud; he also sported two wands, two fine daggers, two key rings, and a handful of money.
            Opening the curtains of a window to improve the airflow also let in more of the dying light; it painted the escarpment behind the sanatorium with a hellfire glow of orange. That same glow, dimmed by the curtains, suffused the rooms that he entered off the side of the workroom; two simple living quarters, inhabited by men if Devin was any judge; the third was a storage room, stocked with dusty tailoring supplies, bolts of cloth, and boxes of sewing impements vied with untouched food and drink for space. Finally, around the corner, Devin found what he presumed must be the second entrance room - a worker's entrance with a few oiled raincoats hanging on pegs.
            Once they were ready to separate, Amrynn guarding the helpless Cairzarlu and the four off to clear this floor, the basement, and the floors above, Devin gave a parting kiss to Amrynn's brow and a slow sweep of his fingers through her hair. Below his breath he whispered words of magic, and his voice was in her ear, able to keep Devin, Amrynn, and Kamala in vocal touch as they minded their duties. If there was trouble and Devin couldn't move to assist quickly enough, he wanted Kamala to the other to know about it.
            "Rooms off the workroom, first," Devin suggested.
            Opening the curtains of a window to improve the airflow also let in more of the dying light; it painted the escarpment behind the sanatorium with a hellfire glow of orange. That same glow, dimmed by the curtains, suffused the rooms that he entered off the side of the workroom; two simple living quarters, inhabited by men if Devin was any judge; the third was a storage room, stocked with dusty tailoring supplies, bolts of cloth, and boxes of sewing impements vied with untouched food and drink for space. Finally, around the corner, Devin found what he presumed must be the second entrance room - a worker's entrance with a few oiled raincoats hanging on pegs.

15


            Through the door Caizarlu had come through, there were steps leading down into the building's cellar. Venturing down, Devin found what must have been the necromancer's laboratory. The large room combined the features of a laboratory and a catacomb - several tables bearing bodies covered by drapes dominated the room, while tools ranging from shovels to dissection implements sat on shelves against the wall. Oddly, despite the three bodies, there was no smell of decay. Devin and Kamala were 100% certain that the lab was used for necromancy.
            A search of the room led both Devin and Bardek to notice a strange misalignment of the leg of one of the tables; a closer look revealed a wand inserted into a slot in it. There were also a few piles of notes in a spidery hand, and a map of the Sandpoint hinterlands, with pins stuck in it, most of them in the southern farmlands and along the Foxglove River.
            There were two more doors in the room, and peeking behind the first revealed a cool, empty space, with a lingering smell of death. The other hid a stark bedroom, with a bed, a sturdy table, and a plain wooden chair. On the desk, a dark tome rested.
            Above, Amrynn sat in near-silence, in darkness. It was surprisingly hard to stomach. The smell of the room, no longer a vomitous stench of sulfur, but that same, sour incense she had recognized from her previous visit, failing to cover the smell of decaying bodies, some of which were in quite the state of rot, and, she surmised by the power of it, right nearby her. A nudge with her foot confirmed that at least one or two bodies surrounded the table where she sat watch (so to speak) over Caizarlu. Only the man's labored breathing and regular progress reports from Devin touched her ears, with the faint echo of his true voice below caught by her elven hearing.
            The rest of the building was hauntingly silent.
            “Cairzarlu didn’t just arrive. And no Habe, and no ugly-stick orderlies.” Devin wasn’t certain what to make of the sanitorium; was this how it had been even when they’d visited and talked to Habe? Devin felt a bit ill for walking away and not trusting their instincts, but Habe did have – had – the goodwill of Sandpoint at the time. Maybe the sheet-covered bodies were the self-same missing proprietor and staff. With a grimace of foreboding distaste, Devin checked one by lifting the sheet up from the head with the point of his shortsword.
            “Let’s grab those items of interest; drop them off with Amrynn; then check upstairs,” he suggested to Kamala, Bardek, and Cosmin.
            "I was going to ask." Kamala gestured in the direction of the necromantic ritual supplies. "Did Habe strike you all as the magical type when you talked to him before? Do you think he was working with the necromancer or do you think he was the necromancer?"
            “Definitely didn’t seem arcane,” Devin admitted after considering. The necromancer had been camped in the basement for some time, though, from appearances. “Probably an associate or specialist Habe invited. Ghoul fever isn’t something you talk someone out of.”
            "Before we go back up, wait a moment," Bardek said. Then he raised his mug again and called forth the healing energy of his diety. The whisky-golden wave of warmth spread through the room, leaving injuries healed in its wake.
            Devin nodded thanks, now feeling much more himself and ready for the next onrushing waves of ghouls.

16


            Amrynn paid no heed to the items that had been recovered from the necromancer. Without her eyes, she would not risk the activation of a dangerous object or trap laying in wait. No. Without her eyes, she would simply wait for the opportunity to undo what had been done. What had almost undone her was not the loss of her magical aptitude and directive targeting. What had struck her with blind fury, quite literally, was realizing she would possibly never read again. That revelation had unhinged a part of her that she hadn’t realized possessed a hinge at all. That did not sit well with her, at all. She supposed she almost owed Caizarlu a bit of thanks for glimpse into her internal workings. Almost. And now, here they were.
            She sat cross-legged on the head of the table where Caizarlu had been placed. The stench of the sanatorium was despicable in its own right, especially now that her sense of smell was somewhat heightened. She shelved the stink for the time being and listened to the magical reports she received from the others as her mind wandered blind hallways.
            The necromancer’s head was in her lap, and it was still attached to the rest of his body for the time being. She had one hand cupped on either side of his face. She had caught fleeting, evasive glimpses of him, but her fingers now moved across his features with pristine care, tracing the features she encountered and memorizing them with calculated effort. As she worked, her fingers lengthened and hardened, the nails sliding with a meaty hiss into bone colored hooks. When she was satisfied with her digital mapping, she nodded to herself and smoothly stretched out each of Caizarlu’s upper eyelids in turn and sliced them cleanly off with one clawed finger. She couldn’t see the resultant blood pooling in his eye sockets, but she thought she could smell the fresh scent of the wounds. She let him bleed for a handful of heartbeats, time in which her mouth dipped into a growing frown. It wasn’t enough. No, the scales hadn’t been balanced. She dipped her left thumb into the bloody pool of his right eye and felt the fibrous resistance of the orb beneath on the pad of her thumb. With a deftness born of ancient blood, she scooped her claw into the socket and popped the eye cleanly out. A smile creased the corners of her mouth at the sound. Yes, one was definitely a step in the right direction, but two would be necessary to tip the scales.
            First though, she needed him awake.
            Amrynn’s eyelids fluttered over her useless organs as she returned to the present. Her slim hands were cupped on either side of Caizarlu’s unmarred face, and she smiled down at him.
            “All in good time,” she said, one hand gently patting him on the cheek.
            "Amrynn...?" Devin spoke through the spell, certain he'd heard her but uncertain if her soft assurance was directed towards the team in the basement.
            “We’ll get it all sorted out in good time,” Amrynn sent back to those affected by Devin’s magic. “First the ghoul fever, and then the underlying motivations. Do be careful in your search.”

17


            Soon enough they brought all their treasures back to where Amrynn waited, fingers curled along the Varisian necromancer's cheeks. Despite her condition, magic had not abandoned her altogether. She ran her hands over the items brought to her, and the sensation of magic tickled her mind at some, not others. The wand Devin brought her, yes; the map, Caizarlu's notes and tome, and the sheets that had shrouded the corpses on the tables in the cellar, no. Yet without her sight to allow her to examine them, she couldn't say more than that they were magical, none of them especially powerful.
            Her slender fingers traced the map, finding pinpoints all along what the others could see were the southern farmlands and the Foxglove river.
            "Well," Bardek said to the others, "We can wake him up and see if he's willing to fix Amrynn in exchange for handing him over to the Sheriff rather than killing him ourselves, I suppose. Or we can see what's in the book. Maybe that will tell us more. Otherwise," his deep baritone sounded unenthusiastic about the next option, "we could see what's upstairs while Amrynn waits here again."
            Devin wasn't of a mind to hear anything Caizarlu might have to say, nor bargain versus anything Caizarlu felt he might be able to offer.
            "Wake him," Devin conceded. The only way to resolve it was to get through it. "Amrynn can speak for my share of the group; the more focused the conversation and the speaker, the better, and none would be more so. Successful bargaining is not done by committee."
            Though Caizarlu was shirtless and stripped of gear save for the trousers he wore, Devin still considered the necromancer a grave threat to the party and Sandpoint. Devin bundled up the items they'd taken and the items they'd found, wrapping them up in a bag and set aside outside the room -- and well out of Caizarlu's environment, potential perception, and reach. If Amrynn needed any of the items, she'd ask, and they could be introduced to the conversation only if and as necessary.
            Devin pulled two items to hand -- his shortsword, and a scroll. "Sword's self-explanatory, I'm staying in the room and close at hand through this. This is a scroll of Charm Person. Back from Quickfoot. Not saying this is the way, but useful to keep in mind; we have options. I realize..." Devin added to Amrynn, "unless Caizarlu undoes what he did, you can't use it, yourself; not until tomorrow."
            “Wait,” Amrynn said. Not liking her officious tone, she added, “Please. Finish your search of the sanatorium first. I’m fine for now and would have all available information here before talking with him. If he’s awake, we’d have to bring him along for that effort. He’s easier to contain while unconscious, plus, there may be survivors yet, however unlikely.”
            Kamala closed her eyes, ran a hand through her hair and breathed out, her skin suddenly and briefly riming over with frost, performing a quick meditation to rejuvenate herself. Invigorated with the chill of her ancestral power, she smiled and opened her eyes, running back in her head what the others had been talking about.
            She looked surprised that waking Caizarlu had even been suggested and nodded at Amrynn. "Yeah. I don't want to wake this guy up until we're sure we've got a secure position. For all we know there are skeletons buried under the floor here he could animate. That necromancer's lab downstairs has been there for a while. No telling what kind of backup plans he has set up." She shook her head. "Amrynn's right. Well, except for survivors, there's no way there's anybody alive in here. But about Caizarlu, definitely. I'd be happy to hit him on the head again before we go upstairs, just to make sure, even," Kamala chuckled, only half-joking.
            "Glad to not have a fight over it; don't have it in me," Devin relaxed, relieved to have Caizarlu persistently unconscious. "Upstairs, then."
            Bardek nodded. "If Amrynn feels comfortable holding the fort down here, we can clear the next floor, surely," the cleric agreed. He stepped back into formation as the group headed for what had to be the stairs leading upward.

18


            The stairs led up to a guardpost, the door reinforced with iron bands. No doubt it had been kept locked, once - but now it opened to their touch. Devin's colored lights flew ahead to illuminate a cellblock, deathly silent, with smears of blood suggesting the fate of any inhabitants. A glance into the cells revealed pitilessly dark rooms with no window but that to the now-dark cellblock floor, barred. They held a spartan furnishing, and in two of them - plenty of stomach-turning carnage, seemingly not too old. A tuft of wiry white hair clung to the bars of one window, stained red at the end. The smell of death was strong.
            Opening the far door revealed another flight of stairs - and low, pained moaning that drifted down from above. Someone was speaking, the voice muffled by a closed door, but male.
            Devin stepped back, yielding the front rank, though he was prepared to step back in if the door at the top of the stairs needed his finesse to pass.
            "Second floor; cells; no windows; signs of struggle. Cleaned out; nothing moving. Third floor; something's alive," Devin reported quietly to Amrynn, then amended, "At least, someone or something's vocalizing."
            Devin already had his shortsword and a dagger out, and magnanimously gestured that'd follow whomever wished to take point in the ascent to the third floor. "Want the lights, or no?" he offered, the four torchlights steady about him, to be dismissed or sent forward at preference.
            Kamala shook her head as she took the lead. "I don't need them, thanks." The warrior woman was no scout, but she went up the stairs as quietly as she could anyway, no weapons in hand but never unarmed.
            "Kamala, wait," Bardek said. He pulled a flask from his bandoleer and tossed it to her. "Drink that first. Should give you some extra protection if it's ugly up there."
            Then he stepped up behind her, lifting his wooden shield. "I'll follow you up once you open the door. Devin, those lights'd be helpful for me once she's got it open."
            Kamala glanced at Bardek then up the stairs, then back at Bardek. Quietly, she asked "You think it's going to be worse in there than it was down here?" Regardless, she took the vial and gulped down the contents.
            While Kamala tossed back the contents of the vial he'd given her, Bardek raised his copper mug and said a quick prayer to his deity, calling upon the Lucky Hero for His blessing upon them.
            Once the prayer was done, Kamala advanced warily up the stairs.

19


            They crept up the stairs, pushing open the unlocked door to the attic. The garish, dying light of the sun splashed across an open space lined with doors, and a passage leading left farther into the room. The singsong man's voice and low moans of pain were coming from behind the door to the immediate left of the stairs; behind one of the barred windows in the doors across from the stairs, something moved, furtive and quick.
            "Check ahead," Bardek said softly to Kamala, "movement there." The cleric himself moved to the left, towards the door and the moaning behind it.
            Kamala nodded to Bardek and wordlessly moved to the window to look outside. The glaring rays of the dying sun made her squint, but she could see nothing of what had alarmed Bardek before. Glancing to the side, she realized her mistake - the movement must have come from behind the tiny barred windows in the doors, not the window to the outside world.
            "We're here to help," Bardek spoke to whoever was behind the door. As he'd discovered during his time in Cheliax, those particular words didn't necessarily promise safety to the person or persons behind the door, but they often tended to put people at their ease, all the same.
            For a moment the noises from within stopped; then a rasping moan for help made its muffled way out, along with a tittering giggle that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
            Cosmin moved up next to Bardek, ready to defend the Caydenite if it came to that. While he was there he looked down the corridor.
            Two more doors with barred windows lined the passage to his right, and the hallway ended in another door, though this one had no window.
            Devin reached the top of the stairs and held; the foyer he could see through the doorway wasn't that large and everyone might need some room to move. With little conscious thought, his fingers shifted and balanced the dagger in his hand to ready for a throw. With nominally more concentration he put the floating torchlights into the corners of the room to supplement the fading daylight from the small window.
            When no one directly answered his call, Bardek threw open the door, ready for trouble. In the windowless room within, the fresh light revealed a large operating table, on which a sallow-looking man lay restrained. A large flap of skin had been expertly sliced away from his back, and he gagged and moaned helplessly. A cabinet along the north wall was exceptionally well-stocked with all manner of obscure and frightening-looking surgical tools - supplies which to Bardek's eye appeared both well-used, and unnecessarily invasive for what should be a sanatorium.
            Besides the wretched man on the table, there was no one in the room... though there was a lingering smell of rot.
            "Great," Bardek warned the others, "we found the torture room, but I don't see the torturer. Yet."
            The creepy scene tugged at a vague memory. A story Bardek had heard from a rather scary woman he'd met in a bar on his travels, years ago. Something about a dream she'd had, waking up in a room like this, with a man screaming on a table while someone filleted him alive. The woman had seemed angry about it, and it had been a very creepy story, and Bardek couldn't remember how it had ended. Not that he had time to think about it much, here and now.
            In what was probably a terrible tactical decision, but one that would allow his friends to do more than just stand around and watch, Bardek raised his shield, took a deep breath, and bulled his way into the room, aiming to get to the far wall.
            The stink of death grew noticeably stronger as he strode into the room. Not quite enough to turn his already-residually-upset stomach, but close. The man on the table moaned. It sounded vaguely like, "Noooooooooo..."
            Cosmin grabbed for Bardek but was too late. "Wait! Wait, wait! Dammit." Cosmin followed Bardek into the room, blade held low and ready. "You. Who are you and who did this to you?"
            Kamala turned when she heard Cosmin call after Bardek. She glanced at Devin. "There's a man in there, looks alive. I'm going to stay out here by the door for now." The white haired woman took up Cosmin's former spot, where she could watch down the hallway and be in the room in a flash if necessary.
            Devin moved in through the door to the stairs and then to the side, keeping his back against the wall but not framing himself in the doorway (or limiting his movement, either). He held position near the door to the stairs, seeing no need to crowd the room or its under-consideration occupant.
            "Doesn't really sound coherent," Devin observed quietly, mostly to himself, at hearing both the delirious moaning underneath the parallel concerned and demanding questions.
            "Erin," the man croaked through dry, split lips. He sounded barely human, as though he'd been screaming until his voice shattered - and, as Devin had surmised, he seemed confused. "Grayst... here...! *gag* Hidden... the door..." He retched, bringing up nothing but spittle.
            The door at the end of the corridor slammed open, and a wave of nausea-inducing stench rolled out, immediately followed by a maniacally grinning man, still clad in the remains of a straitjacket. "I'm the Skinsaw Man now!" he crowed gleefully, rushing up to Kamala from the supply closet. But the woman's tolerance for stomach-churning stenches had increased since her foray into the wizard's cloud, and though her eyes watered, she stood fast - as did Cosmin and Devin. Bardek, to his fortune, didn't face the brunt of the stench just yet, though the man on the table gagged some more.
            A screech came from behind one of the barred doors, and a hurking sound.

20


            Well, that accounted for Erin Habe. At least the man wasn't turned, complicit, or fully dead. The orderlies weren't yet accounted for, but if anything would make a hurking sound, it'd probably be them, waiting an opportunity to make an appearance. Grayst looked considerably worse for wear -- if such could be possible -- since the party's last visit. Apparently the straightjacket hadn't been up to the rigors of a strong man in the throws of ghoul fever. If there were more threats, they had no time to waste dispatching Grayst.
            "Whooo, you stink!" Kamala drew up into a defensive stance as the dead man rushed her. "Gonna have to bury you deep to hide that smell."
            "Back up a step, draw him out," Devin asked Kamala, wanting Grayst in the foyer and out of the hallway.
            "His Lordship loved to draw, but someone drew him out, instead - was it you?" Grayst giggled, eyes rolling from side to side. "Was it you? Was it you? WAS IT YOU?!" The smile slid from his face as a horrible grief lit his expression, and he lashed out at Kamala with tooth and ragged claw. Yet Bardek's blessing was strong; despite being startled, the monk was able to ward off all his attempts to end her.
            "I'm the Skinsaw Man now!" he howled, reaching into his jacket to draw out a bloody scalpel and brandish it, utterly insane. Erin choked and wept, trembling in his constraints.
            Bardek's face was stern, but he put a surprisingly gentle hand on an undamaged portion of Erin's arm. "We will take care of you," he promised the man, though the content of the room reminded the warrior-priest that every scene had its backstory. "First, this ends. Now."
            Raising his shield, Bardek strode from the room with determination. Compared to the cloud from downstairs, the sickly and disgusting odor coming from the "new Skinsaw Man" was only a mild irritant, and Bardek was already more than irritated.
            "This. Ends. Now." Bardek's baritone voice rang with command. "The strength of the Gods of Light be with you," he said, and his touch on Kamala's shoulder sent a surge of mighty and divine strength into the white-haired monk.
            "You," he said, pointing at the deranged Grayst, "we will bury you."
            "You got it!" Kamala threw out a deceptively casual series of punches then stepped back, keeping her hands up to ward off return strikes.
            Kamala felt her muscles swell with magical might, and her punches hit with crushing force even as Devin stepped forward, prepared to slip behind the monster. Grayst's nose imploded into his face at the first hit, and the next few broke bones with overwhelming power.
            Grayst swayed for a moment, then collapsed to the floor, the glinting scalpel dropping from his dead fingers. The stink was still nigh-unbearable, but Grayst would otherwise trouble them no more. The pathetic, insane man's reign as the self-styled "new Skinsaw Man" was done.
            Yet, his legacy lived on in the sounds coming from the terrified Erin... and from behind one of the barred doors. In a way, the Foxgloves' legacy lived on in far too many.

21


            Kamala gestured down the hallway at the barred door with the noise coming through it. "Who's with me? Somebody should stay with him," she gestured at the still restrained Erin. Cosmin nodded, drawing his sword. "I'll stay. No one will get to him."
            Kamala nodded at Bardek and Devin. "Let's go see who's knocking. Thanks for the assist, by the way. I like it." She flexed a somewhat larger bicep at Bardek and winked.
            The roiling stink was hard to stomach, even now, but Kamala did her best to ignore it. Starting at the end of the hall, she confirmed that somehow Grayst had emerged from a supply closet, with tools, straitjackets and other accoutrements on shelves and hanging from the walls. To her right, the unlocked high-security cell was in shambles. The padding on the floor, door, and walls was shredded, and smears of dried blood painted the cushioning and door.
            The middle cell was also empty, and in much better shape than the last. But in the final cell she looked in, the iron door was locked. Peering in through the barred window, she saw a huddled figure in the dark, facing away from the door. Soft crying came from within... and it looked like the figure had a long, pale... tail? Vomit, both new and dried, coated portions of the padding, though she couldn't smell it over the stench of Grayst's corpse.
            "Let me go," Erin sobbed from the other room, pulling weakly at his restraints. His voice was nothing but a cracked whisper. "Don't... he'll come...!" He seemed semi-delirious.
            "This door is locked. There's... something? In here. Has a tail." She looked back at Devin. "Think we should try to open this?"
            "Ugh." She grimaced at Grayst's stench. "And maybe we could break a window and throw that thing out. It's going to suffocate us all."
            The sole window was, unfortunately, as narrow as the other windows in the sanatorium - far too narrow to push a body through, by design. Still, opening it gave them a breeze, which offered a tiny bit of respite.
            Kamala kept looking in through the bars, trying to puzzle out what the thing was. "It looks like a rat? But it's wearing clothes. What do you think, Devin?"
            Wordlessly, Devin stepped up to the door and -- Kamala permitting -- considered the interior of the cell, and its occupant, from through the door's narrow barred window.
            "The ghouls had their wits; they'd only keep someone here if it were a threat or taunt." A third possibility entered Devin's mind, that maybe the ghouls couldn't open the door, but front the strength and ingenuity they and the necromancer had exhibited, Devin didn't count that likely. He stepped back and surveyed the door for signs someone had unsuccessfully attempted to force or breach it. Iron or not, Devin anticipated it would swing outward into the hall; the hinges would be accessible on this side even if the lock was broken.
            "Bardek; Cosmin; can you mend Habe's body? If his mind quiets by doing so, he might know who or what is in here. For readiness' sake; we'll open it before leaving, regardless."
            Devin cast a final appraising eye to the lock and keyhole, relatively confident he could bypass it. The fingers of his right hand absently drummed the leather pocket on his thigh, within which his tool wrap waited. If the creature within was a threat, better to end it quickly than let it starve unattended or turn into something worse, if the ghouls had diseased it. If the soft crying huddled figure was not a threat, all the more reason to get it out of here and to help.
            Bardek, once the ghast that once was Grayst Sevilla had fallen, turned on a heel and went back to the room in which the broken form of Habe was cowering on the table.
            "Calmly," he said, his baritone voice softer than it had been when addressing the undead in the hallway, but not as soft as one might expect when addressing a trauma survivor. In fact, the priest of Cayden Cailean drew his wicked-looking morningstar from its ring on his belt. He closed his eyes for a moment and, even with the stench, took in a breath. The smell of freshly spilled blood, radiating - as it always did - from the flat, near-black metal of the weapon, filled his nostrils, drowning out the putrid stench of the fallen ghast in the hallway.
            Habe's eyes widened at the sight of the weapon, and rolled as he tried to keep it and Bardek in view. "What... what are you...? He's here! You can't... no!"
            When Bardek opened his eyes, his face was calm. He looked down at Erin Habe and shook his head. Then he lifted the morningstar, reached forward... and placed the weapon so that the metal extending down the shaft touched Habe's bare skin. "That should help to calm you," Bardek said. Then he sprinkled the man on the table with some of the alcohol in his mug and laid his hand on the man's shoulder.
            "I'm giving up a gallon of decent ale for this," he said to Habe. Then Bardek bowed his head, spoke a brief prayer, and let the healing energy of his god flow through him and into Habe's body.
            Habe stilled as the iron touched his back, some of the worry in his creased face easing. He did wince as a few stray drops of alcohol landed on the skinless patch of his body, but then he let out a long, shuddering breath as the grace of Bardek's deity repaired the wound, smoothing the skin as though it had never been peeled away.
            "Thank you... thank you," he wept, spit bubbling from cracked lips. "Please... he's here, let's go.. he'll come back... He's the one, he's from the source... Get me out! Please..."
            "Let him loose," Devin suggested. Habe was still Habe, but had been through an ordeal.
            "Habe -- we've been to Foxglove Manor; Aldern is destroyed. The necromancer who took over the basement here is destroyed, too. Is there another 'he'? And who is in the cell in the hall?" Anticipating fear may still grip Habe, "Stay with us; we'll get you safely to Sandpoint."
            Bardek was loathe to release the man just yet. "Answer Devin's questions," Bardek suggested to Habe, "and while you're at it, perhaps you can explain the purpose of this room in a facility dedicated to healing broken minds."
            "Let me out, let me out, he'll come back," Habe sobbed, twisting weakly in his restraints. He didn't appear to be in the right frame of mind to answer questions - too sick from dehydration and terror. "Sandpoint, yes, please! Let me out!"
            From the door, Kamala sighed. "Knock him out? We've already got one dangerous crazy to transport back to town, I don't like the idea of making it two. We can always come back to talk to the rat in the cell later after this guy tells us who that is."
            "What?! N-no! Don't leave me here with him!" Habe's raspy voice rose an octave, his terror intensifying.
            "Leave Habe bound for right now; let's open that cell. I don't want to come back here. Ever."
            Devin set to work on unlocking the occupied cell's door. He wasn't certain if they'd be rescuing or just dealing with / putting down the cell's occupant, but either way, no loose ends.
            Habe continued to beg, weep, moan, and choke and gag on the stench of Sevilla's body as Devin worked. The lock was intricate, but Devin's methodical skill was great, and after a bit of fiddling, the heavy reinforced iron door swung open.
            "Calmly," Bardek said to Habe, while Devin worked. "We'll not let anyone get to you who shouldn't." He kept one hand on Habe's shoulder - in easy reach of his morningstar - as he listened for the telltale sound that would indicate Devin had opened the door.
            "Can't you smell, he's here, he's coming!" Habe raved, his dry throat clicking.
            The room was a mess of scratches, spatters of dried blood, and vomit. A frightened squeak came from the rat-man in the corner, and he huddled into an even tighter ball in his simple patient's clothes, shivering as Devin's orbs of light flooded the room.
            "No! D-don't hurt me!" he cried in a voice muffled by the corner. "I'm w-warning you! Stay away!"
            Kamala nodded appreciatively at Devin's skill. "You'll have to teach me how to do that one of these days," she said as she passed him to enter the cell.
            The muscular and frankly, rather intimidating woman held up her hands. "Hey, we're not going to hurt you if you don't try to hurt us. Alright? We're cleaning this place out. Who are you?"
            "I suppose there's good reason for everyone in this place to be anti-social," Bardek mused, guessing, based on what he could hear of Kamala's words, that the cell's occupant hadn't greeted her with a joyous welcome.
            "You have this," Bardek said to Cosmin, acknowledging the other holy warrior's earlier statement. "I'll see if healing is needed in the other room." He gave Habe another reassuring pat, then, after a moment of hesitation, left his morningstar resting against the bound man's skin and walked from the room to see what was going on in the other cell.
            The rat-man cautiously poked his snout out from the corner where he'd hidden it, regarding Kamala with one beady eye. "Y-you're not them. You're not them! A-are you here to save me?"
            Unfolding himself from the corner to stand cautiously hunched, clutching his tail in ratty hands, he turned to regard Kamala, curious. "I'm Pidget, Pidget Tergelson. Who are you? Who's that behind you? Where did they go? Did you kill them? Can I see?" His manner seemed manic, but not threatening, and he didn't appear to be hurt, though there were bloodstained rents in his patient's robes.
            "Aldern, the ghouls, and the necromancer are all destroyed," Devin nodded, cautiously speaking into the room from the hallway, cognizant Habe was alive and restrained nearby and omitting that until they knew why Pidget was here. Had Devin been in the cell, and had he been the one to pose the question regarding his captors, he'd be of little mind to share anything until that matter had been settled. "No, we're not them, Pidget; we wiped them out for the good of Sandpoint."
            A humanoid rat; a lycanthrope, maybe. Devin didn't hold any prejudice against Pidget for that, but he was more cautious that Pidget was confined here, and behind a fairly robust door. If Pidget had been a threat to Aldern somehow, that would be interesting. If Pidget was an insane murderer remanded here by the law in Sandpoint, that was another thing entirely, but it wouldn't make then sense the ghouls would've kept him alive in the interim.
            The last unusual creature the party had found in captivity was a murderous soul-rending demon-beast ill-gods-favored thing still pacing under Thistletop.
            Pidget sagged with relief when Devin told him they'd destroyed the ghouls. "Good good good! Back to normal! No more things coming to bite and to claw," he sniveled, pointing to the bloody rents in his clothes, though he didn't appear wounded. A moment later he confirmed it with a cheery, "I'm okay! I'm okay! Are you okay? What did you use to kill them with? Was it... swords?" He shivered a bit, his voice dropping dreamily. "Can I see?"
            Kamala hooked a thumb back over her shoulder in Devin's direction. "This place is done, Pidget. We're not going to hurt you. You don't want to hurt us, right? We're all friends here. Can we let you out?"
            "...Out?" This stopped Pidget in his jittering and fidgeting. He gazed at them with dawning hope. "You'll let me go? But what about..." His eyes darted to the sides, and he pointed in the direction Habe was whimpering from. "The Doctor?" Pidget whispered, hunching a bit more.
            "Pidget..." Devin looked askance, squinting to recall the memory, halfway framed outside of the cell's doorway. "I've heard of you, from the folk in Sandpoint. Not much minded for the presence of edged steel, if I recall; everything's sheathed; we're good. But I imagine you tossed a tavern or two over the glint of cutlery and got locked up here once you calmed down." Devin wasn't at all certain how local law would contain much less subdue a capital-C Crazy wererat, but it had happened, apparently.
            The timeline posed an issue when combined with the man the party was intending to escort safely to Sandpoint.
            "I didn't mean to kill them!" Pidget protested, wringing his paws. "It wasn't my fault! It wasn't my fault! They wouldn't share! Everyone knows you're supposed to share. Everyone! They were so shiny!"
            "Habe kept you here." It was a statement, as much to see Pidget's reaction to Habe's name as for the party's benefit of Devin's caution. "From the lock, it wasn't cordial. My name's Devin." Not overt, but not exactly subtle, either; if Pidget's instincts dictated a roguish living, Devin had just confided he himself walked in similar circles. "You okay?"
            As Bardek had pointed out regarding the room and table Habe was now restrained upon, Habe's methodology may not have always been focused on the productive healing of minds. Pidget might be holding quite the grudge.
            "I'm okay! Yes, okay!" Pidget turned a circle to show how okay he was. His naked tail dragged along the floor after him. His voice was a high-pitched whisper. "I'm cured! The Doctor cured me! I've been here a long time! Years!"
            "He did? Oh, that's good. Great! That's great, Pidget." Kamala eyed Devin and nodded out at the hallway. "We're just gonna talk for a second, okay Pidget? We'll be back in a second. We're gonna close the door, but we don't have the key so it's not going to be locked, alright? Just stay here for a minute. We're not leaving you here, I promise."
            "Devin, let's go talk to Bardek for a second."
            "D-dont tell the D-doctor! I'm fine, I'm fine!" Pidget pleaded nervously, spinning a few more times - "manic" seemed to be his default state, but Kamala's calm manner seemed to ease any doubts he had about the door being closed.
            Devin waited for Kamala to exit the cell, then pulled a flask of water from his pack and offered it. "Pidget; here; can't imagine the ghouls saw to it you had clean food and water over the last few days. Will get you more."
            Pidget perked up immediately, snatching the flask from Devin. "Good good good!" he chuckled gleefully as he popped the cork, then guzzled it down. To Devin's watchful eye, the holy water he had given Pidget had no deleterious effect upon the wererat. But then, stories did say that they recovered quickly from wounds; perhaps that healthy constitution protected them from other maladies, as well. Such as ghoul fever.
            "More?" Pidget exclaimed, holding out the flask hopefully. "I'm so hungry, so hungry! And thirsty! They didn't give me much, no no no. Too busy with..." He gulped. "The D-doctor. Don't tell him! I'm cured, I'm fine, all good! It wasn't my fault!"
            Devin was curious what Kamala had in mind, so stepped back and away after that, letting Kamala close the door if she saw the need to, though Devin helped mind Pidget's reaction during that process and would accept leaving the door open a crack as a show of goodwill if PIdget broke manic.
            "Pidget's hearing is likely as astute as mine. What are your thoughts?"
            Kamala closed the door without responding, then nodded down the hallway. "Let's go tell Bardek what's going on." She started down the hall toward the room where Bardek, Cosmin, and Habe were. Once they got there, she gestured for Bardek to come over.
            Bardek was just coming out of the room, but turned around again seeing Kamala's intent.
            When the three of them were together, she gestured back in the direction of Pidget's cell. She spoke quietly, hoping to not be overheard by either Pidget or Habe. "There's a wererat locked in there. From his own words it sounds like he's killed people in the past and he doesn't seem like he has much impulse control." Kamala glanced at Devin to see if he disagreed with her assessment.
            "We can't leave him here, but we can't just let him loose, either. So. What do we do? If we take him to the sheriff he'd be dangerous to any deputy who was responsible for guarding his cell."
            Bardek had raised an eyebrow at the mention of the word 'wererat.'
            "Unless the priests at the temple are more powerful than I think - and given the people of Sandpoint's willingness to consign him to this place, the evidence is against it - there is really no safe place in the town for him." He shrugged, "I don't really know anything about the condition, but what I've heard isn't good. Is there food here? Could we leave him with rations and have Father Zantus send an acolyte or two out here to take over the place - or at least to keep him alive until they can make proper arrangements for him in the town, or maybe in Magnimar?"
            Bardek sighed and shook his head, then shot a dark glance at Habe's restrained form. "I hate to leave anyone who has suffered as these people have stuck in this place, but the town has also seen enough horror recently. With so many of their own having died or been turned against them... I don't think it's fair to them to bring another such danger into their midst again. If it helps, I can leave him with wine or ale to drink with his rations."
            "He's not murderous, but he'll cross someone by trying to steal, they'll fight, and he'll kill them. But it's been years. Maybe Habe really has helped him." Leaving Pidget here, locked up, would be a death sentence, which apparently the town hadn't thought Pidget's actions years ago had warranted.
            "So we let him go. Before we do, we give him a dagger; it'll be his. If he keeps his wits, he's free to go, with counsel to let people's things be if they fight back, and not harm people, or he'll be back in a place like this again, or worse. If he loses his mind at the dagger, well, we'll have our answer, and our course."
            "Amrynn; counsel?" Devin asked through the Message spell, anticipating she was piecing together events through the conversation.
            Amrynn listened as the majority of the details were relayed to her regarding the nature of the prisoner found on the floor above. Her lips pursed further at the inclination of Habe helping Pidget. Such help had come at a steep price, if there had been any help at all. Plus he was still alive. Madness wouldn’t be enough punishment for him if he was at all responsible for the horrors here.
            “Despite the fact that I am exceptionally cross at present,” Amrynn replied. “Without a better moral framework for Pidget’s circumstances, we haven’t the right to pass judgment on him. Especially if what he says about the length of his stay is true. We do not even know if he originally contracted the disease against his will. We cannot kill lycanthropes wantonly. The disease is curable, though messy and challenging at this stage in his life. We need to seek counsel from the sheriff and the clergy in town. Likely they will still be unable to offer what is needed to remedy the situation, based on Pidget’s imprisonment, but this is their jurisdiction before we can act.”
            Devin could almost hear her mental sigh as she continued to postulate.
            “Ideally, if the ghoul menace really has been managed, we could escort Pidget to Magnimar to be treated,” she said. “We could also stand to fence the mephit’s dagger there and gather some needed supplies that exceed Sandpoint’s stores. I shudder to think of leaving Sandpoint without its heroes for a few days, but we may not get another chance like this anytime soon.”
            “I’m not thrilled about attaching Pidget’s fate to ours,” Devin sighed. “Whether by escort or hope we’ll pass word, or return.” Devin wasn’t certain if it was the implicit responsibility that sat poorly with him, or the commitment, or the deferral. Probably some combination of all three. “Could we compromise by leaving him food, water… and his cell unlocked? And whatever advice we impart, either to wait here for word; maybe clean the place up in the interim; or to head north when he felt ready.”
            “If we truly are uninterrupted getting to Sandpoint and back, and no priorities conflict, great. We take him with us to Magnimar. If Sandpoint wants to keep him tended, great, Sandpoint can choose to. Otherwise, Pidget’s his own man for the first time in years.”
            Kamala grunted. "If he was just infected, I'd say maybe. But he admitted to killing someone. I'm not comfortable leaving him to his own devices if he's already told us he can't control himself well enough from killing someone over a minor argument." She shook her head.
            "Pidget's reputation in Sandpoint isn't that of a murderer," Devin contributed. "But if it were me, I wouldn't permit you to lock me up here and leave, promises notwithstanding. Too much risk. And I /did/ kill someone in the last hour."
            "I'm sure I've killed more men than you or Pidget." The muscular woman shrugged. "The difference is there has always been a need for it. I've never killed someone because they wouldn't share ." Kamala shook her head. "Look, if he was only locked up in here because he's a wererat I'd lean toward letting him out. But if he's... unpredictable that way, if he might easily hurt people, I don't know." She nodded at Bardek. "We need to talk to the sheriff and the town's priests."
            Cosmin spoke up from just inside Habe's room. "I can stay with him. Leave us some food, something to drink, I'll make friends and we'll keep each other company. Go talk to the sheriff, see what they want us to do with him."
            "That seems a decent compromise," Bardek said. "Pidget doesn't have to stay locked up alone, but he isn't just wandering free, either. Especially since, if we just let him go, he's got no clothes besides that gown, no food, no supplies, no money. No, it's better that he stay here with a new friend until we can send help. And if we don't manage that, for some reason, Cosmin can travel with Pidget. Whether to Sandpoint or Magnimar, or somewhere else."
            The priest of Cayden Cailean nodded. "I've got a few days' rations, and plenty to drink. But," he tilted his head in the general direction of the dead ghoul, "probably don't want to leave food up here just now. Let's get the body disposed of, clear the rest of the building, and see about setting you both up with some supplies before we go."
            "Agreed," Devin nodded on all fronts.
            Kamala made a face and went to go figure out how she was going to carry the ghast's corpse out of the building without throwing up every other step, while Cosmin went to introduce himself to Pidget and try to calmly explain the situation.

22


            Pidget, like most people Cosmin met, was quite charmed by the warrior. He did keep glancing toward the door as they spoke, but never quite dared to approach it - Cosmin had the impression that Pidget thought the Doctor would pop out of the woodwork at him.
            As for the Doctor, Habe calmed down considerably once they'd cleared the reeking corpse from the attic. While Devin and Kamala stripped the ghast of its stolen belongings below, Habe ceased his whimpering, gasping for air for a bit before asking for water - and his freedom.
            "I'll admit... I had my... doubts about you, when I... heard of "the Heroes of Sandpoint"... but you've truly... proved your... reputation." Habe's throat made a dry clicking as he swallowed, and as he haltingly spoke, but the half-delerious man summoned a weak smile for Bardek. "Can you open these... manacles, please?... I've been restrained here... for days!"
            Bardek gave Habe a dubious look, then frowned, sighed, and collected his morningstar. Once that was safely attached to his belt again, he gave Habe another look.
            "Right. Only someone with a warped and twisted mind would think it OK to restrain someone on a table like this and use surgical implements to torture them. Right?" He locked eyes with Habe, and waited for the doctor to respond.
            Habe showed a bit of the reason for Amrynn's dislike of him, then. Even in his ruinous state, he summoned a bit of arrogance, telling Bardek stiffly, "I realize... that to a layperson... my work might seem that way... but these are tools... of medicine! I have the... education... to use them correctly. ...I seek to free... tortured minds! From their pain. ...That is a task... even magic is not... suited for. They... are not tools... of torture! Though that is... what they have... been used for, by that maniac... Sevilla. No... there may be pain... but my work is for... the greater good."
            Finally, Bardek relented and moved to free the imprisoned doctor. "Am I going to need keys for these?"
            Habe's expression soured again. "That villain! My lodger. He... he did nothing!... The traitor! ...Sevilla told me... he gave Zerren the keys. ...Did you kill him... too?" He looked up at Bardek hopefully.
            Kamala grunted. "There were a lot of ghouls downstairs, doc. Most of them didn't introduce themselves. What'd this Zerren guy look like?"
            Devin retrieved the keys they'd gathered along the way from his pack, including from The Misgivings, and eyed them relative to the lock on the manacles. If one appeared to be a match, he intended to open the manacles.
            "Indeed," Bardek mused, "do tell us what the person you kept as a 'lodger' in a mental asylum looked like."
            Bardek did not, as a general rule, enjoy seeing people locked up or restrained any more than was absolutely necessary - even those who might have deserved it - but this place, and this man, were frankly astounding to him, and testing his patience. As Devin pulled out his keys and picks, Bardek stood aside. He needed a break from this... from this whole situation, frankly. For now, though, it would be enough to just stop talking directly to Habe.
            "Water, please," Habe asked Devin as the rogue opened his manacles with one of the keys they'd taken from Caizarlu. Indeed, the Doctor went on to weakly sit up and describe Caizarlu, and to remove all doubt, finished with, "Caizarlu Zerren is a... fiend and a monster... and I say that with... an intimate knowledge of such creatures, now! ...I had no idea of his... true nature, before." He rubbed his wrists, and chafed his bare overarms, then nearly collapsed again.
            "Help me to... my room, if you... please. I need to... lie down. Did... Gortus and Gurnak... escape the invaders?" Only then did the thought seem to occur to him. "The patients?"
            Habe's brief recount to Kamala's query at least satisfied how Caizarlu came to be here. Caizarlu and Habe had some sort of working relationship that predated all this.
            "Lot of that 'true nature,' going around," Devin mused, though he anticipated the barbed observation would be lost on Habe. "We'll get you to Sandpoint." Not a point Devin was willing to debate with Habe; Habe was coming to Sandpoint even if they had to carry him; some accounting was due. Devin handed Habe a waterskin. "Nothing survived here, save you and Pidget; both barely." Devin spared a glance towards where Bardek had stepped away, and added to Habe, "Our goodwill is strained. You may not have been complicit, here, but the consequences of your choices and approach brought harm to many. That you don't take that to heart or mind, well, thus the strain."
            Kamala nodded at Devin. "I think you're probably going to be resting in a jail cell tonight, doctor. The sheriff can decide what he wants to do with you from there. We'll make sure you get back to town safely, though. Lots of ghouls in the hills recently."
            Amrynn listened intently to her environment and to the bits and pieces of information shared with her from Devin. The buzzing of insects coming to feed. The rustle of fabric as she shifted position. A distant dripping, one drop every eleven or so heartbeats. The loathsome breathing coming from the mouth of the still living creature in her lap. She had alternated covering his mouth and nose, each in turn, registering the changes in his inhalation. Only once did she cover both orifices at once, and that for barely any stretch of time at all. And there were the echoes. The stonework ricocheted all sounds in a wondrous and deep fashion.
            The thought gave her pause.
            ‘Devin,’ Amrynn thought to him. ‘Two things. One, bring those shackles down for the necromancer. The other is that this place likely has a lower level, though I imagine it’s an abomination to nature. Someone should take a look.’
            The bitterness of that last sentence in her mental tone was not lost on one who knew her so well.
            ‘Then I’d like to get out of this pit of despair.’
            Once prompted, Amrynn nodded to herself in recognition.
            ‘Caizarlu’s lair,’ she whispered. ‘That’s right. Thank you for the reminder. My mind has been wandering unusual avenues of late.’
            One hand reached out and touched the objects that had been brought up from the cellar. They still bore the chill of the darkness inherent in such locations and despite the power they carried. She had only examined them, was it minutes ago? It felt as if days had passed since her blindness.
            Taking Amrynn’s earlier suggestion with due regard, Devin recovered the manacles and casually held them quiet in a fist. Caizarlu seemed a fitting recipient.

23


            When the party insisted on taking Habe to Sandpoint with the intent of throwing him in jail, he put up quite the fuss, but there wasn't really anything he could do to stop them in his feeble state. Pidget proved less understanding than he had been once he knew they were taking the Doctor away; the reason for the iron-reinforced door of his cell became apparent as he raged about, demanding to be let out. Cosmin promised to take care of him here at the Sanatorium for the time it took to see what to do about him.
            Devin asked Cosmin as an aside, "I am curious at Pidget's anger -- that Habe won't be here to help Pidget further, that Pidget likes Habe, or that Pidget won't be able to revenge upon him?" Perhaps Cosmin could determine the answer in their absence.
            "I'll see if I can tease it out of him," Cosmin promised. The Shelynite was looking as bedraggled as a Shelynite ever got; he seemed weary of all the death, or at least the undead.
            Devin secured the manacles upon the unconscious Caizarlu's ankles, and bound the necromancer's hands with finger intertwined and immobilized.
            For Caizarlu's part, the party had trounced him thoroughly, and he didn't wake as they dragged him back to Sandpoint in the dead of night, moving slowly to accomodate Amrynn's lack of vision. At one point, a mob of frightened, angry farmers with sharp farm implements surrounded them on the byways of the hinterlands, suspecting them of being ghouls, but the fact that they were alive, and their claim to be the Heroes of Sandpoint, saw them through peacefully enough. It was just as well that they had quelled the ghoul threat; else the farmers might have bitten off more than they could chew in the dark.
            Vachedi, the jailor, locked up both Habe and Caizarlu on the Heroes' say-so, the huge, scarred Shoanti telling them that they could make their case about the two when the Sheriff came in the next morning.
            With that, they retired to the Rusty Dragon, whose door was always unlocked to welcome tired strangers.
            Bardek, for his part, retired to his room with a jar of whiskey and some of the notes they'd recovered from Habe's office. What he read made him glad of the whiskey - and that they'd put the man behind bars.?
            In no condition or spirit to commiserate, Amrynn retired almost immediately as well, allowing some assistance as was necessary to guide her to the chamber that served as her quarters. Once there, she was able to navigate the ordered assembly well enough from memory. She cleaned herself as well as she was able and meditated throughout the evening.
            The fury within her swirled unabated.?
            At leading Amrynn to the room with the least guidance feasible, Devin acknowledged some things went beyond words' ability to soothe or mend. With only a touch on her shoulder, Devin stepped out of the room and left her to her focus for the evening.
            With nobody to drink with, Kamala followed the others upstairs after a brief mental conversation in which she debated the benefits of going back to the House of Blue Stones. But she finally came down on the side of sleeping in a bed instead of on a pallet. She was a monk, but she wasn't an ascetic. Anymore, at least.

24


            “I hope you chose something with smooth teeth,” Amrynn said the following morning. The nervous laughter in her voice was evidence enough of how her evening had gone.
            Bardek prayed to Cayden Cailean, and touched Amrynn's eyes with whiskey. Though they burned from the alcohol, Amrynn's eyes tingled with a warm glow, and then returned to sight. The first thing she saw again was Bardek's face. He smiled, though she could tell he had something else bothering him, and he smelled a bit more of whiskey than usual, though he did not appear drunk. He nodded to her, then stepped back to give her room.
            “Ssthhh,” hissing breath escaped Amrynn as she first closed her eyes against the burning and turned her head. She returned face forward after only a moment though, eyelids fluttering as her eyes watered.
            “Not quite the same bouquet as when imbibed,” she said in a strained soprano.
            Bardek saw the blackness in her eyes recede from the corners inward, and for a few terrible moments the irises remained reptilian crescents, too large for her eyes and deepest jet. He saw something there. Something old, no something ancient, and born of a cold that burned more deeply than every forgotten grave. He saw that, felt that, and for one frozen heartbeat, those eyes saw him as well.
            Then Amrynn’s eyelids fluttered, and those eyes were gone. Her steely gray irises were there instead, and she saw him. Her face lit with a radiance that was almost painful in its elegance.
            “Thank you,” she said. “And my thanks to Cayden Cailean as well. Your generosity will not go unrewarded.”
            She looked at her hands then, backs then fronts, and shook her head in amazed relief. Then noticing her state, she raised her hands to her face and hair and said, “Oh, I must look a travesty. If you’ll excuse me, I should clean up properly before we reconvene.”
            At the door, well out of the way of Bardek's delivery of healing prayer, Devin granted a tight smile and a nod to both; Bardek in appreciation for the aid provided; Amrynn for her recovery from the ordeal they'd been collectively unable to prevent. It /was/ a little unnerving how Amrynn's inner strength had manifested to carry her through it; most of the veil Amrynn wore through discipline and practice and patience had faded with the shock of the blindness. Something primal and imminent had seethed at the injury, at being weakened, slighted. Her words to Bardek after her recovery almost sounded shaken to Devin, as if Amrynn herself -- her full self -- was frightened at her own recognition of the state of mind that had come forward and held her for the past half-day. The overly bright and polite social dismissal wasn't undue. But it felt brittle, and he felt more pain for her now; empathy, not pity; than when she'd been blinded. The only guide Devin had was Amrynn's earlier insistence to navigate this herself. That had been the rising blood's insistence. But that was as much a part of her as anything. Whatever she needed to reconcile, he anticipated she still needed space to do so.

25


            Amrynn rubbed at her eyes with all the study of energy signatures and then smiled like a cheshire cat. Her eyes! Her gaze swept the array of items they had retrieved from their recent endeavors. Most were of useful function, and she was pleased that she could again see into their depths. Tickled she could see anything at all!
            Then her gaze shifted to the dark book that Caizarlu had kept. She knew what horrors it likely held, considering his chosen profession. Their meeting with the sheriff was soon, and she didn’t know if she should dive into that darkness beforehand. Then again, it might possess important clues to what else might be waiting for them down this sinister road.
            A knuckle's rap upon the door, twice, to announce entry without alarming, and it opened from the hall into the room. Devin stepped in and stepped carefully, shutting the door again behind him. The small collection of items was arrayed about in a semblance of order, in some pattern or set not immediately apparent -- things categorized and examined, things bearing further investigation, things not yet considered, perhaps. Devin found a clear space of bedding and wall and sat down.
            His eyes drew across what they gathered, pausing briefly on the pair of fine daggers Cairzarlu had carried, and again at the array of potions -- a reminder he'd used some of the vials of holy water he'd carried, and would need to ask Father Zantus for more if he could spare it -- and once more at the tome, but only for its merits of academic knowledge. He otherwise couldn't tell at a glance the properties of the potions or the wands, or any of the items for that matter.
            Devin waited for a pause in Amrynn's present focus before asking succinctly, "Success?"
            “Mmm, unfortunately,” Amrynn replied, waving her hand at various items as she spoke. “False Life, Gentle Repose, Gaseous Form, spells as you’d expect from a twisted passion, but I’ve only started in on those. Overall not much applicable to the shining light brigade, and less than delicious content for starving eyes.”
            She offered him a weak smile, collected a few items and rose, distributing them with a brief description of function to those around the room. To Devin she proffered a Cure Light Wounds potion and the Gaseous Form potion. She offered Bardek the wand of Gentle Repose, as he might have the knowledge to wield that particular sphere. She handed Kamala the Cure Moderate Wounds potion.
            Putting the gear to the party’s use seemed the best course. Devin accepted Amrynn’s suggestions, shuffled items a bit, fit the masterwork dagger into his wrist sheath, and pocketed the potion vials on his belt.
            She began to turn away and then paused. Turning back, she tapped a finger on her lips and brought out the wand of False Life, offering it to Kamala or Devin.
            “I was thinking to use this as emergency healing,” she said. “But it only serves the wielder. So best if it is used preemptively. Either of you interested?”
            Kamala nodded at Amrynn and looked at Devin. "I could use that, if you don't mind. Preemptive healing sounds pretty good to me."
            Devin nodded, “Yours.”

26


            Later, Sheriff Hemlock listened to their account of the asylum's state with grim mien (though that was normal, for him). "Caizarlu Zerren needs to be taken to Magnimar to see justice. Thanks to you, we should be able to get him there without more deaths," he said, ignoring Habe's pleas to let him out in the background. The jail cells were otherwise empty; usually used to house drunks sleeping it off and local rowdies, they'd seen a lot of use for more serious crimes lately. "I'll see to it that Erin Habe is restored to health, but if he's responsible for a crime, you need to name that crime. Your word goes a long way, but I can't send him to trial for having been captured by ghouls."
            Kamala had woken early- ascetic or not, that was a habit she couldn't get rid of- and gone for a run before going to work out with Sabyl Sorn. Their light, simple breakfast afterward was a good way to start the morning, but she unfortunately didn't feel like she had time to take the sand bath that she really wanted to take. Next time, she promised herself.
            At the Sheriff's office, she had let those more familiar with the situation take the lead. Right up until the Sheriff said he didn't know what Habe had done wrong. "Well, he rented out his basement to a necromancer. And it wasn't like Caizarlu was making any secret of what he was doing down there- you should go see it yourself, there was clearly dark magic being worked there." She gestured at the walls, indicating all of the Sandpoint region. "And maybe these ghouls aren't Habes fault directly, but he was at the least a knowing conspirator."
            "There is quite a difference, Sheriff," Bardek said gravely, "between being 'captured by ghouls,' and deliberately letting a man in your care fall prey to ghoul fever. In my books, that might be considered murdering him yourself. The additional torture Habe inflicted on his 'patients' is..." Bardek stopped talking and shrugged. "I don't have words for it. But here are the man's own words, which should condemn him well enough." Bardek held out the notes he'd been reading the night before. Habe's patient notes.
            "That would definitely bear consideration," Hemlock agreed, turning his dark look on Habe, who was cowering miserably in his cell, as far from Caizarlu as he could get. "He'll go to trial in Magnimar for that, if these notes tell the same story you just told me." The Sheriff shook his head in grim disgust.
            "I didn't torture anyone!" Habe wailed from his corner. "My research can't be understood by anyone without the education to comprehend its methods and purpose! I did what I could to help my patients!"
            "Well, if your own words exonerate you, so be it," Hemlock said, glancing at the sheaf of notes and journal pages Bardek had given him. "If not, I don't think you should complain."
            Habe subsided, avoiding the gaze of Caizarlu Zerren, whose head was bandaged, but whose fingers were still bound. The necromancer glared at Amrynn, seeming offended that she had somehow broken his curse.
            Amrynn stood motionless, eyes fixed on the necromancer.
            “He rose above his station unchecked,” she said. “He should not be permitted to do so again, or others will again suffer his arrogance.”
            She fell silent again, apparently having had said enough to satisfy her where Habe was concerned. Her eyes continued to scour Caizarlu though. The necromancer met her flat gaze with his own. Whatever could be said about him, he had more spine than Habe.
            Devin huffed one short chuckle; Bardek's review and production of Habe's notes was a brilliant move, and one certain to make a better case than any other could. Still, Devin contributed, "Whether those notes mention it or not, Habe harbored and conspired with Caizarlu. Symbiotic. Mortality occurred in Habe's care, perhaps encouraged or accelerated by Habe's methods of 'science.' Caizarlu dwelled below, receiving a supply of corpses. Caizarlu's nature is plain; Habe chose to disregard and support it for convenience."
            "I'm sure the Justices will know what do do about these... people." Sheriff Hemlock's dark gaze condemned the two; the noose hung unspoken behind his words.
            Hemlock shook his head when they told him about Pidget. "A wererat? Pidget Terkelson wasn't a rat when he was committed. That was back in Casp Avertin's time. He caused a lot of harm, but the court ruled him too insane to stand trial. Now that you menion it, there was a spate of lycanthropy at the time, and it seemed to dry up around the time he was put away. If he was the source, he fared better than those of sound mind." Sheriff Hemlock grunted, folding his arms. "The only cure we have in Sandpoint for lycanthropy is silver. If you want to cure him of the rattiness, they might be able to do it in Magnimar, but he'll still need to be put in an asylum of some kind, unless you cure his madness at the same time."
            "I don't have the ability to cure either one," Bardek sighed, shaking his head. "Nor the first clue about how to try. It sounds like once we've finished dealing with the Misgivings, we may need to escort a number of folks to Magnimar."?
            Half under her breath, Kamala muttered "The only way to deal with that place is with fire."
            "What did Pidget actually do?" Devin had to ask, curious if Pidget had snapped and hurt or even killed someone, or if he had just been a raucous violent handful until subdued.
            "It was before my time, so I'm not familiar with the details, but I do know he attacked a number of people. It's what he was committed for." Sheriff Hemlock nodded to them. "If you can cure him, you'll do what years of treatment under Habe couldn't."

The Second Cycle