Riloth the 19th the 347th

“Why?” Dagmar asked.

“I think I found Bearskin,” I said, hardly believing it.

I read her the line, and she grew as animated as I had.

"That could be your beef cake friend!"

"Yeah I—how much did you talk to Trish?"

"Enough to know not to trust you to watch the horses," she said with a knowing smile.

"Yeap. I definitely don't like this dynamic."

"Don't be a baby. Let's go find your friend."

We gathered our weapons and I put my hand on her shoulder and Teleported us to the secret tunnel. The building hadn't completely collapsed from the fire, the majority of the exterior being made out of stone. I'd yet tried to Teleport into an occupied space, but it was on my to do list of things to test before death became permanent.

The Teleportation succeeded without losing a limb, and we appeared in the dark corridor thick with the smell of smoke. I cast Light on myself, and examined the tunnel. It was crudely bricked and stairs led down in a windy manner.

We descended in such a manner for eighty feet until the crude stairwell opened into a fissure that had a wooden floor in an attempt to make it traversable. Looking back at the stairs, we saw that they'd once been a narrower section of the crack that had been widened. The wooden floored fissure continued at a slight incline down until it too ended, but this time in a much more familiar tunnel.

The Kituh—well, the shattered wreckage of what had once been the Kituh. My light revealed that the walls had crumpled, littering the floor with rubble in which a small path had been cleared. I dismissed my Light before moving any further, and turned on my Willsight. The black void of nothingness resolved into a slightly less black void. In the darkness, with my Willsight turned down to only show the auras of living creatures and magic items, mundane items were faintly visible by their residual gray Will signature.

“I thought you said the Kituh under the city would be impassible,” I chided Dagmar.

“It’s called being wrong,” she said in a flat tone. “Some of us are okay with it and don’t feel the need to always be right about everything all the time.”

“Ouch.”

Dagmar led the way, better able to navigate the uneven floor with her natural ability to see in the darkness. A wooden staircase was built to descend into the Kituh, and we climbed down and crept through the tunnel. Only one direction was available. The event that had caused the fissure also collapsed the tunnel in the other direction. Dagmar still had no idea how these cracks had occurred all around the area, but her best guess was blaming it on the resident dragon with a grudge.

"I think we are under the market," Dagmar whispered after a short trek.

The Kituh tunnel was heading west, from the eastern part of town where the hotel lay, towards the trade district.

Shortly after that, Dagmar stopped suddenly and pointed ahead. Faintly in the gray haze that made up the edge of my vision the faintest hint of color. Dagmar pointed to her eyes and made a waving away gesture.

Taking the hint, I disabled my magical vision and with the gray haze removed, I could see the yellow flicker of candlelight far down the tunnel. We moved on in silence, my Willsight active once more, until we could hear a discussion up ahead.

"—fires all around. You think they're related?" came a voice.

"No. I think the Den just happened to catch on fire the same day the forest did. Totally a coincidence," said the second and very sarcastic voice.

"Yeah, crazy coincidence."

When we got into range for Mind Spike, I targeted the sarcastic man first. He collapsed with a slight moan and the dumb voice cried out, "Colin! What's wrong?"

He knelt down to lend aid, but my spell struck causing him to stumble and fell.

"What the Flood?" he shouted in confusion.

How did the stupid one resist?

I cast the spell again as he stumbled to his feet, searching the darkness with the panicked swiveling of his head

Once he was down, I cast a Light and ran ahead with Dagmar now trailing. Cages of all sizes lined the tunnel, from small wooden boxes to great iron bars set floor to ceiling. In one such cage lay the unconscious form of Bearskin.

Dagmar let out a whistle from behind, "Torc's blessings, Trish didn't lie. He is a big one—if you're into that kind of thing."

Tables, beds, and shelves laden with manacles, vials and crude cutlery lined the wall opposite the cages. On one desk sat a ring of keys. The cage that held Bearskin had a lock significantly larger than the rest, and it was no matter to find the key.

Inside, he lay on the straw strewn floor. The smaller man-sized cages were equipped with crude sleeping pallets, but Bearskin had been too large for those and had been thrown in this cell meant for great beasts. The bars were nearly two inches thick and rings were set into the wall. Bearskin lay near the wall, legs manacled and chained to one such ring.

"Bearskin!" I shouted as I slapped his face.

It was not the first time I failed to rouse him, but this time it was different. He reacted slightly to my slap, whereas he was completely dead to the world in his magical hibernated sleep.

"I think he's been drugged," I called back to Dagmar, who was heading down the tunnel.

"There's another set of stairs here," she called back. "See if you can find what he was dosed with. I'm going to see where this leads.

I looked through the supplies and found a few empty vials, but nothing that looked to serve as a sedative. There was no sign of Bearskin's weapon, but I did find some more papers.

Most were receipts that aligned with the ledger I'd read, but from the seller's perspective. The Den appeared to be the middleman for a variety of slavers, and this tunnel was used to get the "product" in and out.

One letter caught my eye.

Colin,

There is an opening bounty on children—non forsaken. The thieves guild are acting as an intermediary for a new player on the scene. I know it's not your typical quarry, but they are paying for bulk. Keep it in mind if your crew stumbles across an orphanage or easily orphan-able group of kids.

The letter was unsigned. It reminded me of the letter from Edgewater that had given Dagmar hope. And when she returned, I handed it to her.

After reading the short message, she crumbled it in her hand and glared at the unconscious pair.

"I wish we had that pain dagger. I have some questions."

"Go ahead, I'm going to get Bearskin to Daulf and see if he can wake him. What was up the steps?"

"Another crude Waatin excuse for a stairwell. It led to a cellar of some inn, but I came back before exploring."

"Good call," I said. "But, you should explore the rest of this tunnel before beginning your interrogation."

Ever the pragmatist, Dagmar agreed to delay this new outlet for her grief, we dragged the two men into a human sized cage, and locked the door.

She ran down the tunnel and I moved to Bearskin's side. Placing my hand on his arm, I Teleported us to the market square where Daulf had set up his healing tent. We arrived on the ground, amidst the cots, our arrival pushing some of them away.

That's good to know. What happens with heavier objects?

"Theral?" came Daulf's confused voice. "Bearskin?!"

I looked up to see Daulf and Levar staring at me in wonder.

"I found him in a tunnel under the city. He's been sedated. Can you heal him?"

"I can try," he said uncertainly, "my magic is not well suited for this if the drug was alchemical."

Daulf placed his palm on Bearskin's temples, and they briefly glowed with light before fading. Bearskin lay unaffected.

Daulf looked at me, shaking his head, and said, "I'm sorry, we'll need to wait it out."

Levar turned away at the pronouncement. He'd been helping at the tent, administering his own remedies when suited and acting as an assistant to Daulf in my place.

"Levar!" I shouted. "Can you wake him?"

The disheveled man turned back and examined Bearskin more closely.

"I'm afraid Daulf is right. It's best to wait it out. If the drug was alchemical, anything I give him is as likely to kill him as wake him. Potions are very dangerous if mixed incorrectly."

Don't I know it.

"Could you perform any tests to figure out what he was given?"

His face took on his thinking look. The one he got when contemplating some ridiculous "hypothetical" question I'd asked.

But after a moment, his eyes turned down and the light left his face as he said, "It would be a waste. He'd wake up before I found what dosed him. It would take days to figure it out, unless I had Riloth's own luck. The best thing to do is keep him hydrated and wait."

Days you say?

"Alright, thank you for your advice. I will leave him in your care."

Before they could ask any follow-up questions, I Teleported back to the tunnel.

I love this spell.

Back underground, Dagmar had not yet returned. I looked through the shelves in search of something to eat, I'd not eaten much that day. It was normal for us to forgo meals if time didn’t permit them, but today had been long and all I'd eaten in the morning were the same sugary pastries we'd paid Rail and Gil with.

A basket of bread sat on a table, but the bread was rock hard, likely days old. The basket though, seemed familiar—not that I was a basket expert or anything. It was mended in a dozen places, giving the basket a multicolored look.

Where have I seen that before?

It came to me quickly, though the information was no longer useful.

The bakery! That's the basket the boy used to buy all that bread. Wow, I really should have followed up on that.

After another ten minutes of waiting, I sent Dagmar a Message, I'm going to inspect the cellar.

The stairwell was of the same construction as the one we'd descended, only this one never opened up into a wide fissure. I dismissed my Light at the top when I saw the tunnel end at a wooden door.

I looked through the cracks in the door and saw the room beyond was dark. The door opened with a loud squeak that put my nerves on end, but nothing reacted to the sound. A Glow in my cupped hand confirmed it to be a cellar. I heard some shuffling beyond the door at the top of the steps. Once again I looked through a crack and this time saw a well lit kitchen, full of human staff busy at work cooking large pots of what smelled like stew. All the kitchens in the town were busy working to feed the influx of refugees and workers digging the fire break. I couldn’t tell what inn it was from this perspective, but when the door to the common room opened as a worker entered the kitchen, I cast Blink and appeared on the staff side of the bar in a low crouch. The room was packed, and my appearance went unnoticed in the chaos.

I pushed my way through the crowd and went out the front door. Tacked to the door was a familiar sign that read, “no occasioncies.” The sign above the door signified the inn as The Clipped Ear tavern, with a carved sign showing an ear, a bed, and a foaming mug.

Well, that takes on a much more racist tone in light of recent discoveries.

I Teleported back to the wrecked Kituh and waited for Dagmar to return. When she did, I shared my discovery and the details of my interactions with Levar and Daulf, then she shared her own findings.

“The tunnel is intersected by another one of those fissures, only this one opens up to a cave and has been widened to accommodate a wagon. I followed it to the surface, where I found two more guards. They didn’t know anything about the open bounty on children. The cave entrance was covered with an illusion. Quite a good one in fact, I couldn’t tell the illusionary stone from real, and it takes a lot to fool a dwarf in that regard.”

By then, it was late, and we waited for the reset while planning our next day.