The keep was in a poor state, the proud banners that had been displayed on the walls of the entry hall were eaten away and crumbling. The whole place looking as if it had been derelict for decades. A heavy pall lay over it, and silence reigned over these halls that had been so full of life just a single moon ago. So quiet that every movement of their chain and plate rang uncomfortably in their ears, their footsteps echoing fell on the moist flagstones. Every torch had been put out and all of the wooden furniture was gone. Torn free from their bolts and taken to parts unknown, the first sign of looting, only the nails of their construction left behind.

The windows... They were stained with a layer of dust and mud, allowing no light to reach inside. It was like they were entering a cave rather than the decadent keep that it was.

“Sense anything yet?” Willis asked, axe held low and forward in a ready stance.

“Nothing.” Lina whispered, dragging her finger along the filthy walls, left with a foreboding feeling in her gut. “Why were all of the citizens locked in the church? It's obvious that they were brought there, unharmed, too...” And all of them were humans, something she did not mention to Willis. He'd lived under the burden of belonging to a 'foreign' race his whole life. She couldn't know what that was like, but she'd seen the effects.

“Scarlet Heart, maybe?” Someone asked, feeling like an idiot upon doing so. The Scarlet Heart was a religious organization, a cult. They always left signs everywhere, practically begging for attention of real churches. And corpses too, taken apart and left splayed and open. They didn't do this.

Lina proceeded through the halls, holding a lantern in front of her to light the way. Water dripped eerily through the ceiling, building up in the corners and making the whole place humid and damp. She wanted to pick up the pace, until Willis needed a moment to rest as a new bout of hacking assailed him. The dry cough turning into a wet rumble in his throat.

Lina checked him with magic just to be safe. The parasitic nature of Hastur's spell only afflicted humans, so it stood to reason a similar magic could be developed to target other races. Nothing, though. He was completely healthy and no curse nor spell burdened him. No disease or sickness either, but she was no expert in the art of healing. They had Tual, one of the paladins in the rear who served as their field medic do the same, but he agreed with her initial assessment. He was in perfect health, considering his age. As 'healthy as a dwarf', a stereotype even Willis wouldn't argue against. They didn't get 'sick', not in the way humans did.

“It's fine.” He waved her away with a crack in his voice, taking another swing of the wine. The acidity of it helped with the onset of phlegm catching in his throat. “I'm just old. Too much dust in the damn air.”

“You're right, even with the humidity it is exceptionally dusty in here. So, what do you want to do?” She asked, entertaining his instinct. He'd always been good with that, ensuring that many of them had lived through many precarious circumstances in the past.

“We march on. We're almost to the reception, maybe we'll find some answers there – but I'd like to check the kitchens first.” Common sense after what they'd seen, to confirm the theory that whatever had come, had come for the food. And they had. The kitchen was bare and empty of anything but the metal tools, stoves of stone and iron, and the cauldron. Curiously, Lina observed, the wooden handles of knives and tenderizing mallets were gone. Leaving only their heads, cold and moist as everything else.

...Weird. Pulling at the handle of the sink once used by the cooks, all it did was rattle loudly. Nearly startling all the paladins half to death. “Er... Sorry.”

“Captain.” Tual, their cleric and field medic, groaned in exertion – shoving his shoulder against the only door that remained barred to them. “Thing won't budge.” He was a big man, short but stocky in the shoulders. Only inferior to Willis in terms of strength. It wasn't strange to see the door barred when official business was not going on, but these runes were eaten away like everywhere else, and the wrought iron latches were clearly unlocked.

“Something is blocking it from the inside. Maybe a statue fell?” Lina pursed her lips. “Let's go around, we can use the servant passages.”

“No need for that.” Willis replied gruffly, choking down another mouthful of the wine and hoisting his axe. His clan axe, bound with enchantments older than the city he walked through. Maybe older than humanity itself, if rumors passed down by his grandsire had any basis in reality. His tree-trunk thick arms, dense with corded muscle, exploded into action – swinging forward with a prayer to Nyx on his lips and a healthy infusion of earth magic, striking it with the blunt end. The door burst free from its hinges, smashed apart to reveal the web of fibrous matter that had bound it.

“What in the hells...?” Tual stepped forward to pick at the fibrous matter. Like a spiders web, but too gray and thick. Millions of tiny fibers bound into stalks that easily came free when he pulled at them.

“Don't touch that!” Lina rebuked, slapping his hand away.

“What is it?” Willis asked, eyeing the curious growths in interest.

“Plants.” Lina answered. “I think...?” Just normal life, she could feel the mana within and it was very different from any tree or plant she'd ever felt, in terms of how it transited mana. She'd never seen anything like it. Internally, it was like raw cotton, taking the appearance of thousands of tiny roots surrounding the door. Half of them smashed into a pile of fibers that lay at their feet and released that dust into the air. They all bound their faces with masks to avoid choking, clearly this is what had given Willis that itch in his throat.

Fortunately, there was no active mana in them. It wasn't a spell, certainly not a trap. “Yep.” She concluded. “Just plants.”

“Just plants.” Willis chuckled, his voice full of mirth. As if they were in in the midst of some cheery celebration rather than the gloomy confined of the keep kitchens. “Just plants. We're not plants.”

“...Sergeant?”

“Hmm?” Willis turned back to her with a raised eyebrow. He looked as fine as ever, the coughing had stopped and some color had returned to his face. “Captain?”

“Ah, nothing.” Lina patted the only father figure she'd ever had on her back. Her face was shrouded, but she couldn't help but smile thinly at him. Willis truly seemed to have recovered his earlier vitality and didn't look so tired anymore. His hazel eyes were clear and full of that cool purpose that defined his character. Dwarves were named so, but they weren't actually shorter than the average man. Willis was a bit shorter than Lina, who was rather long and tall, but twice as wide as a strong man, it was hard not to be confident when in his presence. “Let's find out what did this, shall we?”

He nodded sagely. “And so we shall.”

They stepped through the half-tunnel of roots to emerge into the reception where the marquis would hold court. Or, at least, that's what it had been. Tual repeated his curse, always foul of mouth, placing his shield in front of him in anticipation of danger. Before him and filling the room was a gigantic... Tree? It had the form of a tree, but it was comprised of the same fibrous roots they had seen early. Just healthier, not so dry, pulsing with such dense life and mana that Lina didn't need to cast any spell to feel it. It was clear that it was the source of the smell, and it was black as oil compared to the pale gray of the growth around it. The entire room was swathed in those roots from floor to ceiling, all around the tree at the center of it.

“A black tree...” Tual frowned, gripping his hammer all the harder in the realization that a higher undead was afoot.

No... Lina shook her head, this was no black tree of the dullahan. One of the rare variants of undead that could birth more of its kind. It wasn't a tree at all, the shape was only reminiscent of one. But what confused her the most was the flurry of activity on its surface. Insects of all size and shape covered in a strange layer of white fuzz marched to and fro beneath the chirping hoots of tiny red-capped creatures. The paladins approached and observed, but the creatures did nothing but tend to their various duties, whatever those might be. Even when Tual lifted one, it only squirmed free from his hand and returned to its place on the tree, otherwise unbothered by their presence.

Some carried small hammers and sharp splinters of bone, cutting free the unhealthy matter and making room for new growth. Even the largest of them were no taller than Lina's index finger. After a while, it was clear that they were no threat. Not an ounce of murderous intent was aimed at them, and Willis watched them with a mystified expression on his face, smiling dumbly.

“Beautiful. Isn't it?” He lowered his mask and grinned wide to reveal his pearly white, blunt teeth.

“It's definitely something.” Lina knelt down to get a better look. The insects marching in procession with little chunks of gray matter in their mandibles. The red capped creatures driving them along like slavers for some, and laborers for others. All of them were uniform in appearance, a wide brimmed cap dotted with white, a stilt stalk and tiny 'arms'. More like whips or tentacles. What kind of monster was this that didn't show any signs of aggression towards her even when she flicked one off the root and sent it flying with a squeal of discomfort. And still, all the thing did was right itself and march right back up the tree to return to its previous position.

“The gifts of the father are many for Us.” Willis grunted in satisfaction, crossing his arms and staring down at it with some odd sort of pride.

“Father Bumi?” Lina raised a brow at him. He was acting... Odd. Willis was quick to a grin in better times, but never so toothy a smile. Something about his manic gaze unnerved her, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Beyond that, he was the same stoic dwarf she remembered from her childhood, at least in appearance. The man who had taught her how to fight and live for the gods and her people. “I guess that's true. The earth is bountiful, but isn't this a bit strange?”

Willis snorted in contempt at her mention of Bumi. “They who kept us low have no place in Our hearts. Do you not see? Only the father offers these gifts. But you will. All will see Us.”

“What are you talking about, Willis?”

“Us?” Tual looked back with a skeptical twist to his blunt features. The normally taciturn dwarf had never smiled like that in the eight years that he'd known him. “Oi, Willis. You've got something in your eye there. Want me to get that...?”

“Yes. We do.” Willis chuckled again, high pitched and full of joy. One of the other dwarves in the rear began coughing as he had, harder this time. A half dwarf, she was a kind woman who cooked most of their meals. Lina offered her a wineskin but she refused with a word of thanks, stepping toward Willis and smiling just as brightly as he was. “We are blessed.”

He grinned that toothy grin again, staring at the others with maddened eyes and arms spread wide. “All of fathers children are blessed, no need for these... Things.” He whispered now, teeth grit in an expression of pain and horror as one eye spun madly in its socket while the other remained still and webbed over by the same furry mass covering the insects below. “You will see Us!”