Starday, Desnus 7th, morning

Finding the Land Farm was a chore. If you have ever followed directions given to you by a 10-year-old boy, then you probably know what I mean, and it didn’t help that they were based on landmarks that were decades out of date. Fortunately, the copse of trees still stood, as did enough of the house, that we didn’t lose half the day literally wandering in a field before we came across it.

The grave markers sat at the edge of the crumbling ruins of the farm, each bearing the name of one of the Land family. Three of them were marked with an engraving of a four-petaled flower, denoting them as victims of the Red Death Plague. Unfortunately, they were also accompanied by mounds of fresh dirt and open pits, because someone had recently dug them up.

There were footprints everywhere. More than one person had been at work here exhuming the bodies. Prints ran between the open graves and what was left of the house, and as we approached the latter the trail devolved from orderly footsteps to the chaos of a battle. As if to emphasize that discovery, a low growl came from inside the remains of the structure.

We entered cautiously. The floor was splattered with dried blood, and in the corner of the front room sat the rotting remains of an owlbear and a severed human arm. The latter sported a tattoo, and when Zhog saw it, he said, “Oh, we are fucked.” It was the tattoo worn by Kullen’s crew.

I should probably say “gang” there, but I am trying to be polite.

“My uncle’s crew is down one member,” he added, underscoring the “we are fucked” part.

That’s when a second owlbear announced its presence. This one was obviously not a corpse like the first, but it had been seriously injured. Which is probably the only reason we got through this alive.

“I think this was a mated pair!” I said as I moved in to fight it off. Kullen and his crew are tough, but two owlbears defending their nest? No wonder it had gone wrong.

I sliced into the thing as Sera and Zhog moved in next to me. It lashed out at the three of us, landing savage blows over and over. Still, we managed to whittle it down, and I finally got in behind it and checked it with my shoulder. The spikes on my armor drove into it, and it dropped to the ground, dead.

We found an owlbear…chick? cub? (I am not an expert on owlbear vocabulary) in a nest in the far corner of the main room. So, not just a mated pair defending their nest, but one defending their offspring. Honestly? I’d be amazed if Kullen’s crew was only down one.

This did leave a problem of what to do, as the young owlbear obviously isn’t going to survive on its own. The thing is, wild animals literally cannot be tamed, so it’s not like someone could take it home as a pet. And while animals can technically be trained and, I don’t know, used as guards or something (as long as you are very careful never to forget that they are wild) that process still starts with raising one. And let’s not forget that owlbears aren’t just some normal animal, either: they are an ill-tempered abomination that, according to legend, were created by some ancient wizard that possessed more talent than sense.

As far as I’m concerned, owlbears fall into that category of “kill on sight”, but the others saw this as an opportunity—one with razor sharp claws, and a vicious bite, all of which we had recently become acquainted with—because they are either insane or greedy or both. So we took it with us, on the understanding that we’d find someone to take it off our hands as soon as possible so it could become their problem long before it became ours.

That, however, was a future concern. The more immediate one was Kullen. All indications were that his people had dug up the Land family, and if we wanted their remains back, we’d likely have to talk to him. Given that one of them died doing it? Well, talking to Kullen under ideal circumstances is mating fire and kerosene. Intruding on one of his jobs, much less a job where one of his own had died? I wasn’t looking forward to that. And from the looks of it, neither was Zhog.

(afternoon)

With all this on our minds, we headed into town. The first stop was to see Allustan about our owlbear problem opportunity. I guess he had been voted “mark of the week”.

Allustan: Diamond Lake’s resident wizard, and brother of our corrupt mayor. The mayor who oversees our corrupt constabulary, and keeps the corrupt mine managers in check, and who is so widely known for corruption that it doesn’t even qualify as an open secret: it’s just open.

You are probably sensing a theme here.

I am not sure what to make of Allustan. The rumor is that he and his brother were a lot alike when they were younger, but that Allustan has mellowed with age and might even qualify as being “civic-minded”. Supposedly, he helps reign in his brother’s worst impulses and serves as an effective barrier against a change in the balance of power between the corrupt city government and the corrupt mine owners. Personally? I find the whole political situation distasteful, but no one gave me a vote.

Allustan is also apparently Viktor’s mentor. Viktor is a pretty decent guy, and he speaks fairly highly of Allustan, so I guess that’s a point in his favor. Of course, Viktor’s hardly an unbiased source, but he’s been sharing some of our discoveries with Allustan and so far that hasn’t turned into an arrest warrant. So, carry on, I guess.

Allustan was willing to play ball on the owlbear plan, at least for now. He said he knew someone who knew someone, which I guess should not have been a surprise. “I’ll get in contact with him again. If he doesn’t want one, he will likely know someone who does. Even after a reasonable handling fee, your proceeds from the sale—if, of course, one can be arranged at all—would still be considerable.” For my own part, I just stayed silent and let them talk. There was nothing positive that I was going to contribute to the conversation.

Viktor showed him more of the rubbings he’d taken, which is probably why Allustan was willing to go along with this audacious owlbear plan.

“You must tell me where you found these!” he said. “They are tied to the most ancient histories of our world!”

Viktor looked at me and I just shrugged. May as well go all the way.

“There is an entrance to what seems to be an ancient, uh, building—”

“Cairn,” I corrected. All the way.

“Cairn. And inside, that’s where we found this.” He went on to describe the traps, chambers, and various passageways.

Allustan’s suspicion was that these were tied to the Wind Dukes, which our parlay with the earth elemental (before we smashed it to rubble) more or less confirmed. “What we are talking about are the movers of events that date back to the Age of Creation, when many of the deities of Golarion had not even yet come into existence. This information will help me research these glyphs. This could be the discovery of a lifetime! These look like they are of the language of the Vaati.”

I didn’t know what a Vaati was, but he did, and it sounded important, I guess? If he was willing to do some legwork here to figure out what, exactly, we found, then great. More free time for us. And as a bonus, we could spend it back at the house instead of choking on the air in town.

The second stop was the meeting with Kullen. We debated the best way to do this without involving his “associates”, and settled on catching him just after the lunch rush at the Feral Dog. And, yes, they serve food there. Don’t ask. After several days of trail rations pretty much anything is an improvement.

I worked as a server there a few years ago when I was a teenager, in a moment of what I would call desperation and character-building. Mom and dad were not happy about my choice, especially given the reputation of the place and what goes on there, and I wasn’t either. But let’s be honest: the family needed the money. Even the pittance I was bringing home with me was enough to make a difference in our lives. It was also one of the few places one could get a serving job without any experience.

Believe it or not, it’s a lot safer than it looks, and that is mostly because of Kullen’s management. Say what you will about the man—and there is plenty to say—but he keeps people in line. Kullen is loud, volatile, and borderline abusive, but when you work there you know he’s the only person you have to worry about. Only the craziest of crazy people cross him, and few go on to repeat their mistakes. I had to put up with a lot from the patrons there, but Kullen made sure they never crossed certain lines.

This may sound like I have fond memories of working at the Feral Dog. I don’t. The only good things that came out of it were the money and my friendship with Zhog. What I’m saying is, I really didn’t want to be back there—this made for twice in one week—but we weren’t exactly drowning in options.

Alas, Kullen wasn’t around. We sat at a table and ordered lunch, hoping he might come in while we ate. There weren’t many customers left after the rush, but we did hear a frustrated voice from a three-top nearby: “You said that cairn was full of treasure!” I turned to look that way and recognized the group from Korvosa we saw a few days back. I could practically script out that conversation. We’ve all heard it, so many times.

After the better part of an hour, we figured Kullen wasn’t coming back any time soon so Zhog suggested catching him at home. Pestering Kullen where he lived felt like a bad plan to me, but Zhog knows his uncle best and the list of alternatives was down to zero, so I didn’t object. This was basically the Zhog show, anyway. There was no one here better equipped to start this conversation, and my opinions on the matter probably weren’t worth anything.

We caught Kullen as he was coming out the door. Because we just have that kind of timing.

“And what’s all this?” he said, looking our group over and eventually setting his eyes on Zhog disapprovingly.

“We need to talk to you,” Zhog replied. “And I brought somethin’ to eat.”

Kullen relented with a grunt and showed us in. He sat at a table and glared at us. Finally, to Zhog, he said, “I didn’t know you had this many friends. Ever.”

“I got business associates. We are doin’ business together. And our business crossed your business and we need to talk about it.”

This was the part of the conversation that none of us were looking forward to. Kullen did not disappoint.

“Zhog, when you first came here, I gave you the best advice you were going to get in this town. ‘Keep your nose—and any other part of you that you want to keep attached—out of other people’s business.'”

So that was clearly not a great start. But, good news! It got worse. Zhog pulled out the arm and showed it to his uncle. “We found this. And, by the way, the owlbears are dead.”

“Zhog,” he replied, his tone getting increasingly threatening, “this looks an awful lot like stickin’ your nose in someone else’s business.”

“Look,” he says, pointing at the tattoo, “everybody knows what that means. If somebody else had found that, it would have been trouble for you. I’m doin’ you a favor by returning what’s yours.”

“What. Were you doing. In that house?”

And now we had to talk fast. We didn’t want word of the Cairn getting out, so Viore and Zhog were a little loose with the truth, and vague about where we had been, but stuck to the core of it. We needed the return the bodies to their graves, and bury the bones of the boy with his family. We had found the boy’s remains, and we needed to put his spirit to rest. Kullen knew about the marker with the empty grave, which confirmed to us that he had been there.

“This was a bad deal all along,” he said, borderline furious. “And it cost Skutch his life! So. What do you want from me?”

“We want to know where the bones are.”

“You’ve been in this town long enough to know that nothing is ever that easy. This puts me at risk.”

I knew where this was going, and figured it was my turn to talk. I asked, “What degree of financial risk are you facing?”

“What are you offering?”

Unsurprisingly, the art of the bribe is not one of the skills you pick up in Abadar’s church. While offering money to a private party to get some information from them is a far cry from, say, paying off a government official, it’s still not something that is encouraged so I was out of my depth. In the end, it cost us 100 gold to get Kullen to talk. I have no idea if we overpaid, but that was not our chief concern.

The job, he explained, was a request from Balabar Smenk to obtain some bones for someone named Filge. Smenk is Diamond Lake’s resident creep—other than our mayor, that is—and arguably its most ruthlessly successful mine owner. He actually owns the Feral Dog, and in a way, that means he owns Kullen and his crew. So when Smenk said “dig up some bones for Filge”, that is exactly what they did. The problem, of course, was that this cost Kullen one of his men, and when Kullen angrily expressed his displeasure to Filge—he knew better than to complain to Smenk—Filge dismissed him out of hand.

And that is how you get on Kullen’s really bad side.

“You go get your bones if you want. I don’t care about that. But, in return, you bring me that thin bastard’s eyes.”

Well, crap.

(late afternoon)

According to Kullen, Filge is the latest in a long line of vagrants to move into the old observatory. I use the term “move into” loosely there because it doesn’t really have an owner, so they aren’t really tenants so much as they are squatters occupying the space. Since there’s no owner, there is no one to file a complaint against trespassers, and that makes it remarkably easy to just sort of live there for a while until what passes for the authorities in town figures it out. Keep your head down, and you can go several weeks before you’re arrested.

I’ve never been to a nicer town, myself, but we get visitors from them quite often, and I’ve read a few stories that take place in one. In a nicer town, the observatory would probably be what the locals call an “eyesore”. Pretty much everything in Diamond Lake fits that description, though, so we just call it “the observatory”.

Dad says there used to be an order of monks living there. He didn’t say who their deity was, but it was probably Desna or an empyreal lord since it’s way too old for Nocticula and way too public for the less savory faiths. He didn’t say how long ago, either, but based on the crumbling exterior of what is surprisingly quality construction, I’m going to guess it’s been a few generations since they left. It sits on this bluff—an important feature in an observatory—that overlooks one of the town’s abandoned mines. The mine is unimportant; it’s so old that no one remembers its name or who it belonged to, so we just call it “the mine under the observatory”.

Our first stop before going over to visit Filge was to The Captain’s Blade to pick up some weaponry. The way we figured it, Filge specifically needed bones for some project, which suggested necromancy, which further suggested we might be facing them as skeletons. I love my blade—I made it myself, after all—but smashing bones is not what it’s designed to do. A pronged hammerhead on the end of a seven-foot pole, on the other hand? The right tool for the job.

One Lucerne hammer and a 10-minute walk later, we were standing next to the narrow stairs that led up to the small landing in front of the entrance. Below the landing was a wooden door that looked like it would open to a little storage space. It’s the sort of thing that you’d call a shed if it was a free-standing structure, but since it was built into the side of the observatory we just called it “the storage space under the stairs”.

It was at this point that I stopped to think about what we were about to do. Specifically, we didn’t have any real authority to just barge in and evict Filge. Abadar is pretty clear on the point that he doesn’t care for vigilantism or any other action that can be summed up as “taking the law into your own hands”. That being said, there’s a rather long list of other things that Abadar has little tolerance for, too, and those include: corrupt government officials, squatters, and animating the dead. While we could go tell Sheriff Cubbins that a suspected necromancer was occupying the observatory and robbing graves, the problems with that approach ranged from “believing anything we said” to “getting him to care” to “doing something about it”.

You might think that this would put me in a bit of a bind, but here’s the thing: I took up this faith because I honestly believe it’s possible to govern people responsibly, and the way you do that is more or less the opposite of how things are done in Diamond Lake. Sometimes you just have to lead by example. If there’s a necromancer squatting in an abandoned building, animating the dead from corpses that he’s exhuming from peoples’ graves, then they’re kind of a danger to everyone, and maybe that’s something you should investigate sooner rather than later. If, in the course of this investigation, said necromancer were to start a fight and end up dead, then that’s unfortunate but also something of a time-saver.

Sera opened the door to the storage space under the stairs, revealing the storage space under the stairs and a tiny creature that appeared to be made up of bone fragments. It was not at all happy about our intrusion, and it scurried up to us and started biting at me. Someone called it a “mote”, which is apparently short for, “undead creature made of bone fragments”. Sera and I smashed it to even smaller bone fragments, and we more or less had our confirmation that this Filge character was a troublemaker.

The entry room in the observatory, proper, confirmed our earlier hypothesis. Three animated skeletons—two adults and a child—sat behind a crude barricade and they were armed with crossbows. They shot at us as we came in, and so we smashed them into fragments, too. A quick examination of their remains showed skeletal deformities consistent with the plague that claimed the Land family, so that was progress and more proof of our suspicions. Further examination revealed that their crossbow bolts were coated with some sort of poison, which is another entry on the list of things Abadar doesn’t approve of. It was also what some might call “antisocial behavior”.

Most of the rooms on the ground floor of the observatory were still empty, which made a certain kind of sense: Filge was only one person and probably did not need all of this space. He did, however, find a use for a rather large room at the base of the tower that was probably a former dining hall, and it was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. Nine decomposing bodies were seated, motionlessly, around a table, with dinner plates, silverware, and unfinished glasses of wine set before them. What was he doing with nine zombies at a dinner table? No idea. What was the point of all this? Didn’t care. They didn’t even flinch as we destroyed them, one by one.

Stairs ascended the tower to the room Filge was using as his bed chamber (the large bed in one corner gave it away). Continuing with the “I’m a psychopath” theme, a mummified figure about the size of a gnome or halfling, dressed in a black suit and tophat, stood against one of the walls. It was holding a platter with a woman’s severed head on it. A platinum piece sat on the head’s outstretched tongue. Another corner of the room held a statue of an angelic figure, and the base of it was inscribed with “Filge” in ornate lettering.

Someone clearly has a high opinion of themselves. And, also, very few ethical limits.

We left the head alone, because why would we want that? And also because it felt like an obvious trap. A small work desk contained a mess of notes and papers. Among them was a letter to Filge from Smenk, requesting his services. Smenk claims someone has been finding “green worms and unkillable zombies” in the southern hills, and they’ve been brought below the Dourstone Mine for study. Who is “they”?  And why would “they” be below the Dourstone Mine? And how does Smenk know about any of it? These were all good questions, and they suggested we had stumbled upon more than just a vainglorious necromancer with limited social skills and a penchant for grave-robbing.

We ascended the stairs to the top floor of the observatory. A long time ago it probably held a telescope for viewing the stars. Now, it hosted Filge’s necromantic laboratory. There were four glass cylinders spaced evenly around the room, each filled with a yellow fluid and containing a monstrous humanoid body within. Filge, himself, was in the center, doing something with the body of a blue-skinned humanoid creature as though he were a surgeon in an operating theater, with an animated skeleton following him about. It seems he didn’t waste any time moving in and getting to work.

Filge was displeased with the interruption. At his command, the glass tanks shattered and zombies emerged from each, three of them troglodytes, and the fourth a bugbear. These are creatures that are disgusting even when they are alive, so you can imagine how much more fun they are when they are dead.

Unfortunately, they also did their job of keeping us pinned down. We had to fight our way through them to get to Filge, giving him the time and opportunity to toss spells at us. Just as Sera was about to reach him, he did something that froze her in place and suddenly we had an emergency on our hands. I left the zombie I was dealing with to Zhog, and ran to her side.

Filge was holding a large syringe filled with liquid and was preparing to inject her with it. Snagsby and I arrived at the same time and managed to keep him away from her, so he stabbed Snagsby with it instead. Fortunately, Snagsby was able to shake off most of the effect, but he still did not look good as whatever was in there took hold.

As the others closed in around us, I used my polearm to trip Filge, and he fell to the ground. He tried to cast a spell while lying on all fours, but he lost his concentration and it fizzled out. At that point he yelled, “I yield! I yield!” and the fight was over.

Then Viore approached him and asked, “Do you repent? Are you willing to undo the evil you’ve done? Are you ready to worship Sarenrae?”

Filge answered the way any reasonable person would. “What?”

Which was not the answer Viore was looking for. He executed the man on the spot, saying, “He can go sort it out with the gods.”

I don’t feel good about that at all, and if I had known that this was where Viore was going, I would have intervened. This whole situation was a moral tightrope as it was, and one where I had to rationalize my involvement. But on the other hand, we were surrounded by mountains and mountains of evidence that Filge was animating the dead, stealing remains of those who had been properly and respectfully interred, using peoples’ corpses as playthings, and just being a generally awful person. But on the other, other hand, he had surrendered. But on the other, other, other hand, none of us put much faith in what passes for law enforcement and justice in Diamond Lake, either, so I can more or less see Viore’s point. Sarenrae didn’t have a problem with it, either, but it still felt wrong to me. This is the sort of thing that comes back to bite you.

A search of the floor turned up a foot-long tube filled with some chemical solution, and inside was a slim, green worm. Likely this was the worm that Smenk referenced in his letter to Filge. We agreed to take it to Allustan in case he could make some sense of it.

On our way out, Zhog stopped to pick up the mummified figure in the tophat and glasses.

“What do we want that for?” I asked.

“For my uncle.”

I decided to leave it at that.

Sunday, Desnus 8th (small hours)

The big question, of course, was “What next?” And if my faith hadn’t been challenged before, it was sure getting a workout now.

As the observatory has no owner, that makes it the property of the city, which in turn makes its steward the Governor-Mayor. An upstanding citizen of a law-abiding settlement would, of course, immediately report all of this to the authorities and let them investigate Filge’s crimes. But Diamond Lake is far from a law-abiding town, and our raucously alcoholic sheriff?  When it was first announced that Mayor Neff had appointed Cubbin to the job, people literally thought it was a joke. And when I say “literally” there, I literally mean literally. No one took Cubbin seriously until he actually arrested someone. Like, for real.

And as bad as Cubbin is? His deputies are even worse, if you could believe such a thing is possible. The most upscale entertainment venue the town has—remember, this is Diamond Lake so the term is relative—is the Spinning Giant, and neither Sheriff Cubbin nor any of his deputies are allowed on the premises. At all. Not even in an official capacity (many of the Giant’s patrons hail from the Garrison, which is how they’re able to get away with that). That in itself says plenty about local law enforcement.

The general consensus was to consider our actions here a public service, one for which we did not require any official recognition. We also didn’t want to risk panicking the citizens by exposing proof of necromancy in their collective backyards.

And people wonder why I am having trouble sleeping tonight.

While Zhog took care of the “delivery” for his uncle, I sought out the city records for the mine office. It took a couple of hours of digging to determine that there was simply no record of it, presumably because both it and the mine pre-dated the current cadaster. We could put our own legal claim on the property by defining the plot and paying a small fee for the acreage. I added this task to my to-do list.

When I got back to the observatory, the rest of the group had finished erasing signs of Filge’s presence, and arranged his corpse and those of his zombified victims into a pile for burning later that night.

We (re-)buried the Land family first. There was no service this time as we were tired and just wanted to get all of this over with. Also, I wasn’t feeling so charitable towards Alastor after what he’d done to me. Any words I’d have been asked to say would likely have been south of polite.

We returned to the observatory to start the bonfire and then headed out for the house before it got large enough to attract attention.

Stars, what a day.

Fireday, Desnus 6th, morning

Viore, Viktor, and Zhog made a supply run to Diamond Lake last night. We needed to descend the pit to reach the newly-exposed passages below, and it stood to reason that more swarms of insects might lie within. While we could easily outrun them on foot, that plan would only work so long as there was somewhere to run to. Climbing a rope didn’t qualify, and that meant we needed to be better prepared, both with the right spells and more fire. Specifically, more fire than we could get from oil that is typically used to light a lantern. For that, we turned to alchemist’s fire. It’s expensive, and it apparently turned some heads in town since normal people don’t buy so much of it at once, but it meant we all had something we could contribute.

We stood over the pit, and estimated it’s depth at about sixty feet. The shaft had suffered enough damage both from the collapse and the swarm of acid-spitting beetles that one could reasonably climb down it, but we used a rope, anyway. It made the descent faster, easier, and safer. There’s no shame in not wanting to fall to your death.

We guessed that the chambers we explored yesterday had belonged to either the chief craftsman or the architect of this place. In the anteroom of that complex, the statues were carved as if in deference. In this anteroom, the androgynous figures were all glaring at us pejoratively. And from this, we guessed that this was the workers’ quarters, because people are pretty much the same everywhere, and if you have an ego big enough to carve stone worshippers to yourself then of course it’s big enough to carve a court of judgement for those that you think are beneath you.

We didn’t have to travel far before we heard the buzzing and chittering of thousands of insects. Though I was pleased to have been proven right, it would have been nice to have been wrong in just this one instance.

I have nothing against bugs. I recognize that they are part of the ecosystem, and fulfill important roles in nature. I do, however, draw the line at ones that are larger than me, swarming by the thousands, or trying to share my living space. The last one I solved more or less by paying a rent that most would consider exorbitant, and others might call criminal. Until yesterday, I had considered the first two concerns to be academic.

What causes insects to mass like this? I am no entomologist, but I bet that one answer is “lack of competition from an abundance of food”. In the other complex, we found a magic font of sorts that was continually producing an edible mush that both looked and smelled like gravy. The same thing was happening here, just on a larger scale, and the bugs had figured it out. I guess the folks who created this place forgot to turn all that off when they were done.

While the bugs were keeping themselves occupied, we explored the room across the hall. This one contained several stone slabs watched over by a large statue of a muscular being wielding an enormous club, a long-desiccated corpse, and a giant beetle.

What was the beetle doing over here? Who knows. Maybe it was tired of the noise next door. Regardless of its reasoning, we killed it because it was a giant beetle, though not before it could spray me with acid because that is what I needed today.

The corpse was spread out on one of the slabs, and the slabs had the right size and shape to suggest a bed of some sort. Stone beds aren’t particularly comfortable, so they were probably topped with a softer mattress back when this place was in use. What that didn’t explain is why someone would lie down on one now, when it’s quite obviously just a stone slab. Whatever their thinking, they got bludgeoned to death for their trouble, assuming their shattered bones were an indicator of their fate. It’s the sort of stage picture that said, “trap”.

We’ve gotten good at spotting these traps in advance, though admittedly we’ve been getting quite a few clues in the form of crushed and mangled bodies. It occurred to me that, perhaps, being the first person in line to explore an ancient burial cairn is maybe not the best idea. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s probably better to be fifth or sixth. Of course, two days ago we did deliberately walk into a trap that we even knew was a trap, but I like to think that we’ve learned a lot since then.

We found a ring on the corpse, and an insignia on their armor that matched the engraving on the ring. According to Viktor, this was the symbol of a group that called themselves the Seekers, which he described as an unscrupulous group of archaeologists and pseudo-historians who raided burial sites for their own gain. Which sounded an awful lot like what we were doing. I guess the difference there was that we weren’t pretending to be something more than just grave robbers. Not that this sounds any better, mind you, but honesty is important.

We still had to deal with the bugs, so we dealt with the bugs. The less said about that, the better. It was gross, and it smelled terrible, but through the cleansing power of fire we emerged victorious. Unlike the three additional Seekers whose remains we found in the sludge.

We followed the hall to stairs that descended into a flooded chamber. I think it’s reasonable to assume that people who worshipped the Wind Dukes would not voluntarily submerge themselves in water, so this must have happened sometime after the tomb was built. That didn’t change the fact that none of us could breathe underwater, which meant holding our breath and swimming.

Snagsby and I volunteered to scout it out. I left my armor on because I wasn’t worried about sinking to the floor—I wanted to walk along the bottom, not swim—and I didn’t want to be defenseless while I was under. It’s a lot easier to fight underwater when you have sure footing, and being weighed down to the bottom helps with that. Swinging a weapon while swimming is a good way to spin out of control.

Step one was entering the water. That’s when the water attacked.

I swear, I am not making this up. Something that looked like nothing surged at me, and then water erupted from the water. You wouldn’t think that you could fight water, but it turns out that you can. At least, you can when it’s an elemental. And as a bonus, there’s no mess to clean up afterwards, because it’s water.

With that out of the way, we tried this again. Snagsby and I each took a side of the chamber, which looked like some sort of communal shower, and walked the perimeter, swapping at the far end. There was a small room connecting on either side, and as I passed one I got chills as I sensed a malicious presence. A presence that seemed to be aware of us, because it was on the move.

We emerged from the water and discussed our strategy: make it come to us.

Back in the water we went, this time with more support. I crept around one side as the other half of the group took the other. I could feel the presence moving, and then I caught a glimpse of it around one of the pillars: a walking corpse with pale flesh and sharp teeth.

Ghoul.

I motioned for the others to retreat. I wasn’t worried about myself, but a ghoul’s touch paralyzes and that would be a death sentence here. They needed to know what we were up against. And then it came at me, and raked my flesh before ducking out of sight.

We backed up to the stairs, and I told everyone what I saw. Then it was back in the water with a new strategy: corner it and take it down. We advanced cautiously in a pincer formation, and when Viore caught sight of it he signaled its location. Slowly, we converged on it, and trapped it between us. There was nowhere for it to go, and in a matter of moments we cut it down.

It was wearing a ring with the insignia of the Seekers. So that would be Seeker corpse number five. This venture did not go well for them.

With the ghoul dead (again), we searched the rooms and found, among other things, Seeker corpse number six, and our missing red lantern.

We climbed back up to the main hall and hung the lantern on its chain. Confident that this would disarm the wind trap, we ascended the blue alcove, and approached the giant face carved in the wall. This time, the mouth opened like an iris, and we stepped through.

It led to a long, dark room with narrow plank suspended above a sea of metal balls, each about the size of an orange. We couldn’t see the floor, so we had no idea how deep it was, but it didn’t really matter. Like so many things we have run into here, this had “trap” written on it and no one thought performing on the balance beam was a good idea. I could just picture us trying to maintain our footing on that thing while dodging metal balls being flung around from who-knows-where.

We heard a young child’s giddy laughter from somewhere in the room. While we searched for its source, the voice said, “You didn’t die!”

I couldn’t see where it was coming from, so I just answered to the air. “We didn’t. Others that came before us cleared the way, and so we lived where they fell.”

“They sure did,” it answered.

“You didn’t die, either,” I replied, without thinking. I still couldn’t determine where the voice was coming from, and maybe that should have been a clue. “Or, did you?” I added, my voice trailing off as I realized how stupid that was.

No reply. I must have really touched a nerve.

None of us felt like falling to our deaths, so we ignored the beam and climbed down into the pit. The balls were not easy to walk across, but it was a stable enough surface. Or at least, it was, until the balls started shifting. Something was moving around beneath our feet. I had just called out a warning when a large, pallid worm erupted from the pit. It was covered in slime, and had a mouth with hooked jaws that was surrounded by a mass of tentacles. A grick.

Two gricks, in fact, one smaller than the other. Both were angry and attacked immediately, and they were surprisingly difficult to kill. My blade practically bounced off the big one, and Sera was not faring any better. Zhog was carrying the enchanted sword we found down below, but he got hurt bad and had to retreat before he could put it to use. Only Viktor, with his wand that fires magical bolts of force, was reliably having an effect.

Zhog had dropped the sword where I could pick it up, so I did, and that turned the tide. Unlike our other weapons, this one was cutting into the gricks with ease, and while I didn’t care for fighting so close to my opponent, I preferred it to dying. Which is where this was headed otherwise.

When we were done and the gricks were dead, the ghostly figure of a young boy, barely a teenager if that, appeared before us. His neck had clearly been broken, which was probably a clue about how he had died. Before I could say anything, he rushed towards me and then the world went dark.

When I came to, the ghost of the boy hung in the air before me. I glared at him malevolently.

“Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again.”

I had been violated and I was livid. It didn’t matter that there was nothing I could do, that I likely couldn’t back up any threat with action so there was no point in issuing one, but it had to be said. Dead or not. Too young to understand or not. It had to be said. Not just for his benefit, but for mine. My friends needed to know where this line sat. Not because I thought they might cross it, but because someone else might. This thing we were signing on for? It wouldn’t work if we didn’t understand one another. If we didn’t know and respect each others’ boundaries. If we based our relationships on assumption. Sure, this was one that they could guess, but better to take the guesswork out of it.

Speaking of my friends, they filled me in on what I missed. The ghost was formerly one Alastor Land, who wandered in here over thirty years ago after running away from his family. Amazingly, he made it quite far on his own before the cairn claimed his life, and his spirit was unable to move on. He believes that’s because his remains must be laid to rest with the family he left behind, and so he made a deal with us: we bury him, and he will open the final chamber, whose only latch is on the other side of the door.

While I would prefer not to bargain with someone who used my body without permission, I didn’t see much choice in the matter. Not one that would see this matter to the end, anyway. So I agreed.

Reluctantly.

I fumed all the way back to the house.

Fireday, Desnus 6th, evening

We held a small burial service for Masi.

I attended her funeral years ago. I sat in uncomfortable silence while I listened to the service— there wasn’t a burial because there was nothing to bury—and the eulogies from some of her friends. None of those were Night Walkers, the only ones who knew what she had really done the night she disappeared. Not that anyone would have let one of us stand up there and speak.

Most everyone knew that we were all tied up in it together. We were those kids to them. Those kids who spent years recklessly flaunting the dangers of the wilderness and of the night, and it had finally caught up to them and gotten one killed. To many of them, and to her parents especially, we were to blame for her death. They weren’t entirely wrong about that, but they weren’t necessarily right about it, either. It also begged the question of where they were before, and why they hadn’t intervened back when it could have made a difference. They were questions no one asked because the answers were uncomfortably pejorative. It was easier to just pass on the blame.

Even my own parents had been shockingly negligent in those years. Maybe it was a form of denial. Or willful ignorance. There’s this malaise that drapes over the town, one that you don’t realize is there until you’re gone, and it presses you down and makes it hard to fight inertia. So if your kids found a way to cope with it on their own, then why not leave them be? Let them be kids. So long as no one was getting hurt.

We all know how that turned out.

So here I was, again, at a service for her. A burial this time. For remains, all we had was her old bed roll, but it was hers and it would fill that role.

I hoped it was enough.

Wealday, Desnues 4th, evening

The walk back to the house—it looks like a house, it’s functionally a house, and “house” sounds better than “mine office”, so ergo, it’s a house—seemed longer than the one to the cairn. In part that was because we were tired from the long day, but mostly it was the feeling of defeat. When we left in the morning, I was fairly optimistic about returning to a place that was, on some level, familiar. I was eager to explore, excited by the possibilities it offered, and confident in our skills. And why wouldn’t I be? Between us we could fight, overcome obstacles with logic and skill, perform wonders through magic, and call upon the gods for grace and mercies. And yet, despite those varied talents, here we were, walking solemnly and silently back, as dogs with tails between our legs, battered and bruised. And all we had to show for our efforts were a few trinkets, mostly taken from those who had tried before us, and failed more thoroughly.

And then there was the crumbling remains of Masi’s old bedroll in my pack. I had last seen it, what, five years ago? The last time I had seen her. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with it. There was no family to give it to, no grave for it to be buried in. Burning it or just tossing it out like trash felt wrong. Burying it in the wilderness would probably be the best way to honor her memory, but it would bury the answer to the question of what had happened to her, too. So what to do with it? Take it back to town, I guess. Give it to (as much as it pains me to say it) the Sheriff, so that the story her life wouldn’t end in a question mark. Of course, that would also open myself, and my companions, up to questions of our own and unwanted prying eyes. Knowing the Sheriff, it would probably also end in some form of extortion or blackmail.

The truth is still the truth, though, even when it’s inconvenient and poorly timed and it needed to be told. On the other hand, it’s also been five years, give or take, and there isn’t anyone still searching for her. Sitting on the answer to a question that no one is asking for a few more days or weeks would not do anyone any harm.

What it really comes down to, I guess, is that I don’t know what Masi really would have wanted for herself. Or what her parents would have wanted.

And what about my companions? As we learned today, what we are doing is dangerous. If something happened to one of us, what would we do? And that got me to thinking. While Snagsby and Zhog were busy using magic to make small repairs around the house, I pulled out some parchment—I never go anywhere without something to write on and something to write with—and worked up some simple legal documents, so we could all express our wishes in the event we don’t survive this. It’s an ugly subject, one most didn’t want to talk about, but given the realities of the day it was a discussion we needed to have.

Sharing a living space with a number of people you don’t really know all that well is an enlightening experience, whether you are seeking enlightenment or not. One of the first things Zhog did, for example, was string a hammock between two structural pillars on the second floor. Yes, that second floor, the one with the gaping holes in the roof.

“OK, I admit I am curious,” I said as stepped off the stairs. “Why up here?”

“I spend my nights in a brewer’s cellar,” he answered as he tied off the second strap. “Don’t want to sleep on the floor here, too. And I haven’t slept under the open sky since I came to Diamond Lake.” Right. Follower of Desna. And, nephew of Kullen, a man not known for the comforts of home.

After dinner (which sounds more formal than it was, which was us just eating whatever non-perishable rations we had brought with us), Zhog said some prayer to Desna and his bucket filled with two gallons of some sort of ale. I watched as he drank the whole thing down, spilling a bit here and there in his enthusiasm to finish it off. It was another reminder of why I don’t drink a lot. Abadar doesn’t forbid alcohol, of course, or even frown on it if it’s done in moderation, but the key words there are “in moderation”, and drinking is one of those vices that is prone to excess. This is especially a problem in Diamond Lake, where if there’s one thing we have an excess of, it’s excess. I find it easier just to abstain. More than one person has tried to be clever by pointing out that I used to work in a tavern. Yeah, well, what of it? A person’s got to eat, and there aren’t that many options for work in town, especially for a woman. While I never enjoyed dealing with obviously drunk patrons, I’ll take the tavern over the brothel any day.

The evening fell into a pattern of idle chatter, and this is where I am most at ease. The conversation broke up into small groups, as it invariably does. Viktor and Varin were talking magic and spells. Zhog and Snagsby spoke of making it to a real city (for reasons that should be obvious, Snagsby was of the opinion that Kaer Maga didn’t count), and all the things such a thing offers. If I believe half the things that were said, places like Korvosa are paved in gold, all manner of humanity is welcomed with open arms, and untold riches are to be had for those willing to work for them.

Color me skeptical. While there are likely kernels of truth in these fantasies, cities are still made of people, and people and are probably not that much different from one place to another. I imagine large cities simply provide more places for the worst of them to hide.

That being said, that is so far above where we live now that it’s hard not to indulge. Korvosa may still have its slums, but I am reasonably sure they don’t comprise the whole town.

Oathday, Desnus 5th (early morning)

Sera woke me early for our shift on watch. This was more or less like old times, except we couldn’t spend the two hours talking lest we wake everyone in the house.

Watch duty is pretty dull, which is of course how you want it to go. It’s a lot of standing around, walking around, sitting around, looking at nothing and hoping it stays that way. When I would camp out by myself a few years back, it wasn’t really possible to spend the whole night awake, much less awake and on alert, so I had to get creative. That mostly came down to finding a good, defensible location, masking my scent, and discouraging wildlife. In a group of seven you can watch for surprises. In a group of one, you don’t want them at all.

(late morning)

The day back at the Cairn started with a long, methodical search of every inch of the walls from the entrance to the sarcophagus. If you think watch duty is dull, try spending an hour around people who are caressing stone walls like they are rediscovering a forgotten lover. I get that all this is important and that we may have missed something yesterday, but some of what they were doing might actually count as foreplay. It was almost enough to make me uncomfortable.

When they reached the central chamber, Zhog had finally had enough and came over to me. “Let’s try pushing on that thing and see if it moves.”

I mean, why not? His theory was that either the head or the feet were meant to point in a certain direction and if that was so, then the sarcophagus might rotate. It was better than getting intimate with the walls.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s give it a go.”

We both crouched down to put our weight into it, and gave it a push. It took a couple of tries, but sure enough it started to give. We pushed harder and the sarcophagus swung 45 degrees counter clockwise before locking into place. The head was now pointing towards where the red lamp would have been if we had the red lamp.

“Look down the halls and see if anything has changed,” I called out to the others. They spent a few minutes searching each one, and as near as anyone could tell, there was nothing different about them.

“Let’s try again,” I said to Zhog.

We gave it another shove, and it rotated again so that the head was pointing towards the entrance. There was still no change that anyone could see, so we kept at it: there were still five more positions to try before it came back to its original orientation.

Two more rotations put the head pointing towards the indigo lamp, and then we heard a grinding sound from beneath us as the hall rumbled. A five foot diameter cylinder rose up out of the floor directly underneath the indigo lamp where the hall dead-ended. It was tall enough for a person to stand in, and based on the crushed bones and rotting fabric that was inside, someone had already tried to do so.

This is the sort of thing that says “obvious trap”. Our brief time with the cairn, though, has made us suspicious enough that we wanted to test the theory, because not all obvious things are obvious. Well, so far, the one obvious thing has been obvious, but “one” isn’t a big number, so it was best not to just assume. Since no one wanted to bet their life on it, we put a waterskin in there instead, and sent the cylinder down, then brought it back up.

Short answer: definitely a trap.

Two more rotations pointed the head down the hall towards the green lantern. Another cylinder started to rise under that one, too, but it didn’t make it far before it stopped. We heard a loud banging followed by repeated popping and what might have been straining and shearing metal as the ground in the hallway started to shake. Zhog and I quickly pushed the sarcophagus to the next position, and it all stopped as the cylinder sunk back into the floor.

“Let’s save that one for last.”

We were now pointing towards the hall with the yellow lantern, where a third cylinder had risen up from the floor. This one looked clear: no bones, no sign of any traps, just a human-sized chamber that was apparently some soft of elevator.

I’ve not seen many elevators, and none that looked like this. Some of the larger mines use them to take people and ore in and out. Around town, a few places have one for moving heavy loads up and down. All of them use ropes attached to a counterweight via a pulley system, and someone has to pull on the rope to make it go. This one had no visible mechanism of any sort.

With the experience of the last two elevators fresh in our minds, we repeated some experiments before stepping in ourselves. Once it was clear it wasn’t just crushing anything inside, or dropping it fast enough to cause injury, Snagsby volunteered to ride it down. He surprised us by coming back up on his own.

“There’s a button down there, and when you press it, the cylinder comes back up,” he said. Which was convenient, as we were trying to figure out how to go down without leaving someone behind. Or being trapped underground for the rest of our lives.

Details.

One at a time, we entered the cylinder and descended to the chamber below, exiting into a small anteroom whose walls were lined with bas-reliefs of human figures done in the same style of the carving on the sarcophagus. Each hairless, sexless figure was seven feet tall, and posed as though paying deference to us. Some of the carvings came far enough out of the wall to practically be separate statues, and several of these were missing their arms, heads, and any other body part that was easily broken off. More evidence that others have been here before us.

Why would someone steal a stone arm or head from a wall? I can’t imagine there is a huge market for statue limbs, so I figured it was done out of frustration. The only other exit from the room was blocked by a large, stone slab that was standing on its end. It looked as though it could be pushed over, but again, this seemed like an obvious trap. I bet most of the would-be thieves that made it this far thought the same, and decided that a stone hand was as good as they were going to get.

Fortunately, we have Sera with us, and she was able to disable a pressure plate that the stone was sitting on. She said it was set to trigger something when the weight of the stone was removed. With the plate disabled, we could safely, albeit very loudly, push it over.

Where Sera learned this sort of thing is a bit of mystery, and not something that she really talks about. After the Night Walkers disbanded, she put her skills to use by starting a business for herself, doing I’m-not-exactly-sure-what. She always spoke of it rather vaguely. “Sometimes, people need to have things done without attracting a lot of attention,” she said to me once. “I know the town, and I can navigate it in the dark. That lets me be discreet.” She never bothered explaining what “things” meant, or who “people” were, and why attention was an issue. I didn’t ask. The less I know, the better. But I am pretty sure it goes beyond her childhood pastime of picking the locks to the rooms of the inn that her parents manage.

The hallway beyond was lined with alcoves, each containing a statue of another sexless figure, their arms stretched outward and their hands cupped as if holding or offering something. We were giving them a closer look when I saw a pair of eyeballs joined by connective tissue float out into the hall.

There are a lot strange things in and around Diamond Lake. The lake itself has been polluted for so long that the only fish that seem to live in there are the gar, a predatory species with razor-sharp teeth that can be as long as a man is tall, and some longer than that. The hinterlands have their share of wildlife, including unnaturally large and aggressive forms of wolves, boars, and bears. And enough people have claimed to see ghouls that these stories are generally accepted to be true (though clearly they haven’t seen ghouls up close, since they lived to speak of it). What we don’t have a lot of is floating eyeballs. Or any. We don’t have any floating eyeballs. I am pretty sure I would have heard about something like that.

One eye looked at Sera, and she turned and bolted as if in fear for her life. I’ve never seen Sera afraid of, well, anything, and this oddity was more gross and curious than scary, so I assumed that magic was involved. Then the other eye tried to get a bead on me. I felt something try to take hold, but I was able to shake it off.

You would think a pair of floating eyeballs would be an easy target, but it was small and  surprisingly agile, and that made it difficult to smack the thing. Viore managed to hit it with a magical bolt of some sort, while slings and arrows sailed harmlessly by. I swung my blade twice and missed both times. Then it made the same mistake just about everything has made since our adventure began: it moved inside the arc of my horsechopper where it thought it was safe.

Surprise, Mr. Eyeballs! Have a good look at my armor spikes as they are slamming into you.

After that, Varin caught it with a crossbow bolt, the eyes dropped to the ground, and that was that. The spell that struck Sera apparently wore off in the meantime, and she got back just in time to watch us make sure it was dead. By squashing it under our feet.

The hallway led to a large room built around a huge, square central pillar of stone. The north end was bitter cold and the floor there was covered in a brown mold that I believe someone said was actually called brown mold. Other than the name, we knew nothing about it, but it seemed like something that we did not want to touch. The closer we got to it, the colder it became until it was so impossibly cold that it felt as though our flesh would freeze. Once again, we put it on the list to deal with later.

“Later” was shaping up to be great deal of fun.

The south end had more evidence that would-be grave robbers were here many years before us. A Large stone block had fallen and crushed someone next to the central pillar. There was a latch that reset the trap and raised the block back to the ceiling, and it revealed the crushed remains of a display case, and the crushed remains of the body that attempted to steal from it. The chainmail it had been wearing was completely unscathed, however, which suggested that it was enchanted. Sera disabled the trigger—again, don’t want to know how she knows so much about pressure plates—and we retrieved the armor.

It occurred to me that part of our success has been people dying before us. Were we looking at multiple individuals, or a group like ourselves that simply lost people as they went along, until the only one left alive was the one who had only stone limbs broken off of statues to show for their trouble?

While our group has been exceedingly cautious since yesterday’s events, there is no denying that it helps to have deadly traps pointed out to you in advance. I suppose one could say, correctly, that much of the challenge has been removed because of this, but I like living and prefer to spend a great deal of time doing that, so I don’t care. We are not here to feed our egos. The fewer deadly traps we have to find on our own, the better.

With a bedroom to the south, a dry fountain in the west side of the central pillar, and what looked like an old privy beyond that, this was starting to feel like it was someone’s private quarters. The only room left to explore was to the north, and required that we travel through the brown mold.

Snagsby threw some oil on it and used a spell to spark it to flame, and the mold almost instantly doubled in size. This was obviously progress in the wrong direction.

“I think it feeds on heat,” I said. It was a guess, but if you consider cold to be the absence of heat, then a creature that chills the air around it by drawing in heat, instead of living where it is cold, made a certain kind of sense. Varin took that as an invitation to hit it with a blast of freezing cold, and the mold died almost as quickly as it had grown.

The final room was something of a workshop, containing worktables, vises, a spinning wheel for cutting, and blocks of unfinished marble, among other things. Our theory is that the craftsman who made this place, or at least designed it, created this area as their personal space. Thinking back to the bas-reliefs in the anteroom, those figures were paying deference to someone, and that also suggested the builder had a rather high opinion of themselves.

We ascended back to the main level and considered the sole, remaining passageway, the one where the green lantern was hung. We now knew that there were chambers below, and we had seen the small elevator rise up, or at least make an attempt of it. The cacophony of metal, stone, and gears, lacked the subtlety of the rest of this place which suggested that it wasn’t a trap, but rather a legitimate mechanism that had succumbed to age.

Everyone backed away to a safe distance as Zhog and I swung the sarcophagus to the green light. The cylinder tried to rise again and stuck as before, only this time we let events run their course. The ground shook, and with a great sound of shearing of metal the stone cylinder dropped away, and the floor collapsed around it leaving a gaping pit tens of feet deep.

The dust settled in silence, but the calm did not last. A chittering sound of a mass of insects rose from the depths, and we backed away just before a massive swarm of beetles erupted into the hall followed closely by a giant eyeball walking on spidery legs.

Flasks of oil flew from behind me as I crossed over to Sera where she confronted the spider. Snagsby used a spell to ignite the slick into flames, and half of the swarm was caught in it as the other climbed the wall. With Sera’s help, I cleaved the spider in two but the beetles just flowed towards our friends. I saw Viore and Zhog get overrun, and each ran out of the mass, frantically swiping and swatting beetles off their bodies. Viore looked ill, and Zhog nearly so.

“This isn’t working!” I yelled as the implacable insects continued their advance. They were too numerous to die in the fire and too small to strike at with weapons. We were tired, and our spell casters were spent, so we ran for the exit.

The beetles surged out from the cairn far behind us, and quickly broke up into smaller groups that started feeding on the vegetation on the hillside. If we had been closer to farmlands this might have been a disaster in the making, but no one would ever confuse Diamond Lake and the surrounding landscape for anything resembling fertile soil. None of these beetles would live long enough to destroy anything of value.

For the second time, we walked back to the house in silence.

Wealday, Noon

I am not really a morning person. I spent nearly three years working as either a barmaid or server and—surprise!—taverns, pubs, and dining halls both open and close late. It was, in fact, the perfect schedule for someone who grew up spending more than a couple of nights each week staying out until the small hours. Though apprenticing for Osgood has forced me closer to what misguided people might call a “normal schedule”, I have so far managed to avoid getting up with or before the sun in my adult life. I am more than happy to keep it that way.

I was concerned the half-day’s hike to an abandoned house that I’ve not seen in several years would threaten that stance, but it turned out that there was not much enthusiasm in the group for an early start. The idea of having someplace close to the cairn that we could use as a base of operations meant that we didn’t have to plan for a round trip, so leaving early morning instead of stupidly-early was fine, as there would still be plenty of time left in the day. Granted, this was something of a gamble since we didn’t know what condition it would be in, but I was willing to take that chance.

We set out individually and rendezvoused just outside of town before making the hike. The idea there was to not make it look like we were planning something. One of the downsides of a town as small as Diamond Lake is that there aren’t many secrets, and seeing our group of seven leaving for the wilderness, carrying gear-laden packs and weapons, would likely attract the wrong sort of attention. And by “the wrong sort”, I mean “any at all”. This half-baked plan of ours would only work if we didn’t attract a following.

When we got to the house three or four hours later, it was pretty much as I remembered it except for the gaping holes in the roof. I could see the tattered remains of the tarps I had helped put in place seven or eight years ago.

Stars, had it really been that long?

We had actually done some upkeep on it as Night Walkers, with a large part of that being keeping the weeds in check. What we saw now was a good reminder of what happens when there’s years of uncontrolled growth. The fence had gaping holes, much larger than I remember, where roots and brambles had split the wood and dirt had rotted fence posts. The yard within was severely overgrown as well, and getting a foothold on the building itself.

Those issues aside, the structure still looked pretty sound. The upstairs was sure to be a mess, and there was likely water damage downstairs, too, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. We were just getting ready to have a look inside when we heard buzzing noises coming from around back.

The source of the noise became apparent very quickly: four mosquito-like things the size of a house cat converged on us. Stirges. Vicious, blood-sucking pests that prey on just about anything that’s warm-blooded, and if enough of them get to you they can bleed you dry.

Just to be clear, these weren’t around the last time I was here.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to come across stirges since this isn’t their typical habitat. You tend to find them in the same place you’d find mosquitos, which usually means around stagnant water of some sort. There’s a huge nest of them not far from the Stirgenest Cairn—we don’t just make up these names, you know—which is closer to the southeastern shore of Diamond Lake (the lake, obviously, not the town that’s named after it).

Regardless of whether they should be here, they were here, and that was no good. I sliced two of them in half with my horsechopper. Viktor blasted another with magic. The fourth turned out to be a tough little bugger but it pushed its luck going after Sera and she skewered it in response. The whole thing was over in less than half a minute.

And then the front door, which was hanging slightly ajar, slammed shut.

Well, crap.

The whole point of this excursion was to claim squatter’s rights on the property, but that was not going to work if someone else was already there. So we did what any reasonable group of people would do in the same situation: we knocked on the door and announced our presence.

The answer came in a raspy draconic. “Go away, humans!”

I’ve spent the last couple of years getting combat training from anyone at the garrison who would teach me, in exchange for a small fee (well, it was a large fee relative to my income, but no one was getting rich off of it). Sometimes that came from commander Trask. Sometimes it was one of the holy knights that sporadically visit from Korvosa. Usually it was from one of the Korvosa Militia soldiers on duty. It was an agreement I made with the commander that, more or less, kept me out of trouble by redirecting my frustrations in a direction less likely to antagonize the Sheriff and his cronies. It also gave the militia a bit of spending money, and a way to break up dull routine. Osgood also encouraged his apprentices to actually learn how to use the weapons we helped forge. So other than keeping me mostly broke, it was a win all around.

You can’t spend that much time around a group of soldiers—I would add “surly” as an adjective there, but it’s more or less redundant—without learning a bit about their duties. Everyone in Diamond Lake knows there’s some tension between us and the lizardfolk that make their home in the marshes to the southwest, for example, but I had learned just how often those tensions turn into pissing contests with the militia. It also occurred to me that this, here, was way outside their usual territory. Enough that the commander would elevate its status to “incursion”.

I honestly didn’t want to start a fight with lizardfolk. Even given this little territorial matter, I see no reason not to live and let live, and try a diplomatic approach. I pointed out to them that they shouldn’t be here, and they answered with an insult followed closely by a javelin, tossed through one of the many gaps in the mostly boarded-up windows.

Well, okay, then. Pissing contest, it is.

Raiding a house is not an easy task, even one that is in severe disrepair. They were outmatched, but had an advantage in that we had to break our way in. Fortunately, the house was not able to put up much of a fight so all it did was slow us down. Viore and Zhog knocked the front door down going in, and Sera squeezed her way in behind them. They ended up face-to-face with three lizardfolk, and a fourth in reserve.

I stayed outside, and moved up to the windows. Two of them were tossing javelins through those, and I answered by stabbing one with the horsechopper. They went down and did not get back up.

Spells went off inside, sent by Viktor and Varin. Two of the lizardfolk in the front room collapsed. And then Sera got stabbed. I watched it happen through a window on my right. She was hurt bad. Really, really bad.

“Sera!” I cried, half in a panic. “Get out of there!” Though I think she had already figured that out on her own.

The remaining javelin-throwing lizardfolk appeared at the window in front of me, and I punched them with a spiked gauntlet. After seeing Sera get hurt, you might say I was in a bit of a mood.

Snagsby did something and I saw some of Sera’s wounds close up, but it wasn’t enough. Zhog and Viore distracted the lizardfolk in front of them by killing them, though, and that allowed Sera to back out of the fray. Zhog got in behind the one I punched, and then it was all over.

Almost over. During the fight, they called out to someone for aid and that aid never came, so we assumed it was still somewhere inside. Viore opened a door next to the stairs, and got it in one. This last lizardfolk was a bit tougher than the others, but had made the mistake of waiting until he was the only one left. I admit that I didn’t understand the point of that. We taught him a lesson in tactics that would last a lifetime: all 10 seconds of it.

This was my first time killing someone. The stirges didn’t really count, because it’s not like there’s a lot of love in the world for giant mosquitos. The lizardfolk, though, were sentient beings. They had lives, friends, maybe families. I don’t really know much about lizardfolk culture, but they operative word there is culture. When the fight started, adrenaline kind of took over and I didn’t think about it much, especially since I was trying not to die or get any of my friends killed. But afterwards? I don’t know. I don’t feel bad exactly, but I don’t feel good about it, either. It feels like the sort of thing that will stick with you.

I’d also never really seen much magic before. Sure, Varin uses little spells to cool drinks at the Rusty Bucket, and that’s fun and flashy, but to see spells cast in anger was a much different experience. Even Allustan, who is Diamond Lake’s resident bigwig, doesn’t go throwing it around. Based on what I saw today, presumably that’s because he doesn’t have to. If people know what you can do, you don’t need to go out of your way to give demonstrations. It also probably explains why his brother, Diamond Lake’s governor-mayor and chief pervert, is able to hold onto power. A little nepotism obviously goes a long way.

There was a surprising amount of stuff inside the house, much of it courtesy of the now-departed lizardfolk, which suggested they had been here for a couple of weeks, at least. The most grim discovery was a set of armor and weapons that came from one of the Korvosa Militia. I didn’t look forward to delivering that news. I don’t know everyone there by name, as the soldiers rotate, but I do know that every now and then one or two don’t come back. Like, for good.

Some magic scrolls, potions, and some coins suggested that more than one person had been using the house in the intervening years, and that not all of them had made it back, either. As Night Walkers, we never bothered to go down into the cellar—kids and cellars don’t really get along—but we’re responsible adults now, so nothing was off limits. There was a bunch of old mining equipment and a few odds and ends down there that were probably older than I am.

The rest of the house was much as Sera and I remembered it, just with a bit more water damage (gross), more snakes (also gross), and more giant rats (really gross). The upstairs was all but a total loss, but we could probably tarp the roof again to keep things from getting worse. It doesn’t rain much this time of year, so we have some time to get that done. For now, it would be fine.

The cairn beckoned.

I just hoped we could find it again. It occurred to me that I’ve never actually been there in the daylight.

Wealday, Afternoon

It took maybe ten or fifteen minutes to make our way to the cairn. Finding the entrance was a bit tricky because it was more overgrown than either Sera or I remembered, though I suppose that wasn’t surprising. Given how large the mouth is you wouldn’t think that weeds, vines, and brush would be enough to hide it, but six years is a long time and the vegetation here has always been thick.

We cleared away the worst of the thickets. People may have forgotten this place, but the wilderness certainly hadn’t. There were lots of animal tracks leading in and out, so many that they ran together, obscuring any obvious signs of what left them, and what, if anything, might be lairing inside. As we studied the entrance, a light breeze rose up and the cairn breathed out a long sigh, as if registering its opinion of our long-delayed return. Oh, you again. Believe me, I was having the same feeling.

The long hallway stretched into darkness. We could see a band of geometric shapes on the walls at waist level, or what remained of it. Most of it had either eroded away or, in some cases, been scratched off deliberately. Just inside the entrance was the graffiti from the kids that used to come in here: initials, faded names, drawings, and the like. These were the marks of those just seeking bragging rights for being inside the cairn, maybe trying to impress some girl or boy. They’d worked on the kids who didn’t ask too many questions, but didn’t stand up to real scrutiny. It just didn’t take much bravado to walk 10 feet in, where the sun was still shining, and ink your initials. This was the toddlers’ playroom.

We slowly made our way in along the dust-covered floor. It was a strange feeling retracing my old footsteps. I’d been in here maybe half a dozen times, and all but one of those was alone. And for all that time I was in here, I never really bothered to actually look. Probably none of us did, because the point was to be here in the dark and say you’d done it. So in a way, I was really seeing the cairn for the first time.

The wind kicked up, and a chorus of almost human sounds rose around us, and I could feel the goosebumps on my skin as chills ran up my spine. This was the cairn I remembered. Just being in here for a few minutes was one thing. Spending the night was another. Every breeze, every shift of the wind, sent new voices, sometimes even amusical tones, echoing throughout. It was not easy to stay calm. You couldn’t tell what sounds were real or just in your head, and of the former, whether they were the cairn or something else inside there with you. It drove more than one kid to panic and an early exit.

I remember my overnight stay in here vividly. Unlike Sera, I couldn’t see in the dark yet, and I was sitting in utter blackness for most of it. I was young, and Sergiu was still riding me, so I purposely chose a windy night because, paradoxically, that impressed the others more. It ended up working in my favor: the noise was nearly constant, and though the sounds rose and fell, I could still filter them out. Breezy nights, where the winds died entirely, were worse. The sounds would kick up with the wind just as you relaxed. You were always on edge.

Now that I had the time and inclination to explore, I could see where those sounds came from: small, metal tubes, hundreds of them, built into the walls. Some were broken off on the ground. The builders spent a lot of time trying to create this weird and unsettling effect. Given how long this must have taken, I had to wonder if they built this cairn first, and then decided “Let’s not do that again” before working on the others. Such a mundane source kind of ruined the magic of it, but knowing the cause didn’t change the fact the effect was still eerie.

Sera and I pointed out our names when we reached the alcoves. If you made it this far in, you were probably spending the night, and that meant you had a lot of time on your hands. It was the only time I used Sergiu’s red lantern, as it provided just enough light to slowly etch my name in the stone. It took a couple of hours, but it made me a proper vandal.

The second set of alcoves was just beyond. The short hall between the two was as far as I’d ever gone. When we reached it, a very human scream rose around us as the temperature plummeted.

I knew that voice. So did Sera. She called out, “Masildi!” and her name echoed within. Unsurprisingly, there was no response.

And then it was gone.

Snagsby had asked me yesterday if the cairn was haunted. I would like to change my answer.

We never really knew what happened to Masi. She went in, and she didn’t come back out. Sergiu and Alina went in the next day and found no trace of her in the first alcoves. That is, however, as far as they looked. There was this unspoken agreement that you didn’t go past the first junction. When Sergiu deliberately tried to wash me out at my initiation, his stone sent me maybe ten feet beyond, but I’d never been that far since. To my knowledge, neither had anyone else. The mental barrier of the first junction was just too much to overcome.

We’d just sort of assumed Masi had died that day, and I guess this was proof that we were right. I didn’t want to imagine what she ran into that caused her to scream in terror like that, but the problem was that I could imagine it. Very easily.

The guilt was overwhelming. Her parents knew she had gone out that night, believing she’d be spending the night out in the woods. It was something a lot of us did, so it wrung true. But I don’t think anyone ever told them the whole truth. They moved away a couple of months later, and we lost our chance. I can’t say that I blame them for leaving. Would you want to stay?

We found Masi’s old bedroll in the second set of alcoves. I don’t know if she had actually come in this far, or if it had been moved in the intervening years. There’s no way to know. It was behind a weird, marble platform, that had what looked like a fragment of a giant mirror frame sitting atop it. The base of the platform had some runes that we couldn’t make sense of, but Viktor said he had seen something similar before, so he made a rubbing of it for later study.

We could make out a faint, green glow in the distance. That was new. What wasn’t new was the sound of a canine growling. I had heard that sound during my initiation nine years ago, and it’s one you don’t forget: wolves. Back then, I was on my way out and admittedly I got lucky. This time, we’d have to face them if we wanted to keep going.

I didn’t enjoy fighting wolves. But we did it, and I’m here to talk about it, so I’ll leave it at that.

There was a third junction just a little farther in. The wolves had made their den to the right, among a pile of debris. It looked like there might have been a chamber beyond, but the structure had collapsed, filling the passage with rubble. This gave me the chills, too, as it was an uncomfortable reminder that caves collapse, especially man-made ones. Mom doesn’t say it, but I think she worries every day when dad goes to work. Cave-ins in the mines are rare, but two have happened in my lifetime and I am not exactly old. I try not to think about it.

We dug through the rubble and found a pack, an armband, and an old lantern with indigo glass. It reminded me of Sergiu’s lamp, only a lot fancier. Oh, and also a stone finger, like it had maybe been broken off a statue.

The other side was intact, and had an enormous mural wrapping around the wall at the end, in faded colors. If you stood there, the effect was one of standing in a room with seven passageways leading away from you. In the image, each hallway ended in a colored lamp hanging from a chain, with the colors arranged in the order of the rainbow. The lamps in the painting looked similar to the indigo one we were carrying, which felt too much like a coincidence to be a coincidence. I mean, I am new to this line of work, but it felt like one of those obvious clues you hear about in stories.

The main hallway continued deeper into the tomb, but it was filled with webs from who knows how many spiders. The green light shone through them from beyond, giving it a haunting appearance. Snagsby and I looked at the webs, then at each other. He nodded and then used a spell to create sparks that set them alight. The webs directly in front of us burned away quickly, but so did the fire before the rest could catch. It was apparently something he could repeat, though, so he ignited the next layer, then the one after that. We moved ahead cautiously, burning the webs as we went and sending hundreds of spiders scurrying into the holes and cracks in the stone. It was slow going, clearing what must have been a hundred feet of web-choked hall, but it was better than cutting our way through it and being swarmed by arachnids. I kept waiting for a larger spider to drop on us, but mercifully that wasn’t on the day’s agenda.

The passage opened up into a large, central chamber with hallways radiating out like eight points of a compass rose. The hall we came from was “south”. At the end of the others hung a lamp on a chain at roughly eye level, the scene nearly identical to the painting we had seen just a few minutes ago. The light came from the green lantern that was hanging straight ahead in the northern point, the only one that was lit. Two of the seven lanterns were missing: indigo, which we seemed to have in our possession, and red.

The ceiling above rose to a dome. In the center of the room sat a sarcophagus. Or what I assumed was a sarcophagus, since I had never actually seen one before. Again, it’s my first day. The lid was carved into a statue of a man lying flat on his back, eternally asleep. One of his hands was outstretched, and Sagsby noted that a finger was broken off. He pulled out the one we found, cast a spell, and it reattached as if it were whole. Neat trick.

Zhog and I each grabbed the lid to lift it off. This was a bad idea. Flames burst out from it as it opened, and in our surprise we both let go. The lid slammed back into place and we checked ourselves for serious burns. I was singed a bit and it hurt like made, but not as badly as my pride did. We tried again, only this time from the sides. Again, flames shot out, but this time we weren’t where they were and no harm was done. We set the lid on the ground and we were feeling rather clever until we discovered that it was as empty as it appeared. Raiding an ancient tomb was turning out to be a lot more complicated than I had thought.

We turned our attention to the other halls. Each went a short distance and dead-ended at the lantern hung from it’s chain below a low, domed ceiling. Taking a cue from the mural, we lit the remaining lanterns, and hung the indigo in its rightful place. Below the blue lantern in the northeast hall, though, we saw someone’s skeletal remains. Several of its bones were broken. Looking up, we saw the ceiling was quite higher than the others, and there appeared to be a passageway there.

“Looks like they fell to their death,” Viktor said. It seemed reasonable.

Several of us set our heavy packs down, and we all climbed the chain, one person at a time, to have a look. Viktor and Varin needed a little help, but we weren’t too worried: Varin said he had spells that could arrest a fall, just in case someone slipped. We emerged in a small chamber with a short hall leading away towards a giant carving of a head at the end, with a mouth several feet wide, open in a raging scream.

Everyone agreed this was some sort of wind trap because what else could it be? Sera and Snagsby pulled out sets of climbing pitons, and started driving them into the cracks in the walls on either side. Viktor, Varin, and Viore—the “V” club—stayed behind as the rest of us worked. Sera and Snagsby tied the ropes to the pitons, and we advanced along the hall, pounding the metal spikes in every few feet, forming a safety line that we all could hold on to. As Sera neared the face, the eyes began to glow red, forming swirling, mesmerizing patterns. Sera and Zhog couldn’t tear their gaze away. And then the wind began.

It was a stiff wind at first, like you might find in a summer storm. Sera and Zhog regained their senses in time to grab the ropes and hold on, and resumed their advance. The wind steadily picked up, growing fiercer and fiercer until it was so strong it was like a solid force, pushing us away.

“Let’s do a controlled retreat,” I called out, realizing I couldn’t hold on for much longer. That was easier said than done. The wind was a force so strong we couldn’t easily control our movements, which meant we couldn’t hold on to the ropes. One by one, we peeled away from the wall and tumbled down the hall towards the pit. I bounced hard, barely managing to stay conscious as I was blown backward. If it wasn’t for the spells, we all might have plummeted to our deaths.

We stood safely on the ground, the wind still buffeting around us from the hall above. “That would have hurt,” Varin said, unnecessarily. We were all thinking it.

Again, my pride took a heavier beating than the rest of me. The wind continued to rage for several minutes, and it was clear that we were not going to be able to brute-force our way through this. Much more complicated, indeed.

“We’re missing the red lantern,” Snagsby said.

Yeah. You think?

This sort of thing—finding clues and solving puzzles—was just not my thing. Once it’s clear what needs doing, I am there to do it and I won’t look back, but working out what to do? I’m not dumb, but this is a little byond me. Logically, I know that’s why we are doing this as a group, so that our collective strengths can cover our individual weaknesses, but it still stings.

“Let’s get back to the house and call it a day,” I said. I was tired. I could see the others were, too. “We can think on it tonight.”

And start fresh in the morning.

Toilday, Mid-Day

It’s funny how some things always stay the same, until one day, they don’t.

Case in point. I was visiting Sera and we were talking about basically nothing, and out of the blue I said to her, “I need to get out of this place.” It is a familiar refrain. She got real quiet and we stared at the wall for a while before she said, “You and me both”. And then we lamented the fact that it took quite a bit of money to strike off on your own, and that was something neither of us had. It’s a conversation we’ve had dozens of times, and it’s like we’re reading off a script.

Diamond Lake isn’t a strike-it-rich kind of town: it’s more of the your-dreams-have-died variety. If you’re lucky, you can work and make enough to stay afloat until you get sick and die. If you’re really lucky, you can do that without resorting to living at Jalek’s. For most folks, that means earning enough to stay trapped here. Getting out is so far out of reach that most don’t even talk about it.

Sera and I like to buck the trend.

At least she’s got an excuse for being an optimist: her family is better off than most. They’re not going to give her money just so she can leave—family businesses are their own sort of Diamond Lake—but they could all go if they wanted to. Mine’s not like that and there’s never been an option other than funding my own way, and that’s not exactly panning out. Apprenticing for Osgood has paid okay (no one gets rich on barmaid money, and I certainly didn’t), but there’s not really a lucrative future there. I mean, I’m no genius when it comes to figures, but even I can see that seven apprentices to one smithy is not great math.

So it’s an old conversation, one that dates back a couple of years, with the same beginning, middle, and end. At this point, I think Sera and I have it just because it’s familiar and there’s a twisted sort of comfort in the familiar.

And then it changed.

I don’t like visiting The Feral Dog. For one, I used to work as a server there and going inside brings back memories that are better off repressed, and for two, it’s run by Kullen, who somehow manages to be sleazier than the tavern. But his nephew Zhog works there, and I was dropping off a kukri for Zhog, so I was visiting The Feral Dog. And we got to talking, like we do, and it was like deja vu: I was having that same conversation again, only substitute him for Sera.

Like his uncle, Zhog is a half orc, but that’s both the start and end of the family resemblance. There is not much love lost between the two, either. Kullen has taken care of Zhog since the latter’s parents died, and while I am sure he feels a familial obligation there, I don’t doubt that his loyalty is influenced by having access to cheap labor. Kullen has what you might call a “transactional” parenting style: as long as his nephew works in his tavern, Kullen provides a roof over his head and enough food to eat. Zhog wants to get out from under his uncle, but that takes money which he doesn’t have, and isn’t going to make by working for just food and lodging. So it’s the same story, just with different actors.

Unlike Sera and I, Zhog actually had a shot at it, but he ended up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He received some sort of inheritance from his parents when he turned 17, and spent it getting equipped to get out of Diamond Lake and see the world. Zhog has been an acolyte of Desna for as long as I’ve known him, and “see the world” is one of those Desnan things where you take a pilgrimage without a destination. Unfortunately, math wasn’t his strong suit, either, and he spent his inheritance on the “getting equipped” bit, and there was nothing left for the part where you “see the world”. And thus, he’s still here. So, that’s only mostly the same story, I guess. I’m calling it close enough.

One of the few things I miss about being a barmaid, or working in a tavern in general, is that you overhear a lot. People are pretty interesting, and by extension, taverns are interesting places—even the seedy ones. While Zhog and I were bemoaning the state of our finances, our ears picked up the conversation at a three-top that was a group from Korvosa. I don’t know why, but adventurer types from out of town always seem to end up in the Feral Dog, despite it being, literally, the worst of their options. It’s like a magnet for people who like to complicate their lives. We could tell they were adventurer types because they were talking loudly and indiscreetly about exploring the Stirgenest Cairn. Typical.

Diamond Lake is surround by ancient burial cairns from some long-dead culture, the kind that built enormous and elaborate tombs to prove their greatness. All of them have been raided by explorers since their discovery decades ago, and consequently emptied of valuables because who doesn’t love a little grave robbing? And yet, for some reason, every year people from out of town—most seem to hail from Korvosa like this bunch, but we get treasure hunters from all over Varisia and beyond—get the idea to come and explore the Stirgenest Cairn, with dreams of looting it’s hidden riches.

There are no riches, hidden or otherwise. Like the others, it was bled dry years ago and there’s nothing left of value inside. Listening to tourists dream about scoring it big in the Stirgenest Cairn is what passes for community entertainment in Diamond Lake. Like, there are several factions in town that do not see eye to eye on hardly anything, but one thing they will all agree on is that tourists who don’t do their research are endless sources of both amusement and money. Which is probably why we don’t, as a community, correct this public misconception. Admittedly, that’s not particularly virtuous of us, but the way most people figure it: treasure hunters are here to exploit the town, anyway, and their money is good, so why not exploit them first? Also, Diamond Lake is one of the last places you go when seeking virtue.

“Too bad all of those cairns are empty,” Zhog said.

I almost agreed as an automatic response, but I cut myself off and just stared at him. Were they all empty?

Zhog was looking at me funny. “You okay?” he asked.

I’m not normally known for sitting quietly with my mouth gaping. The opposite, really. I feel like mom is being polite when she says I have a way of “filling the gaps in conversation”.

“Yeah. I Just…I think I have an idea.” I told him I’d be back in a couple of hours, and left him standing with a puzzled expression while I went to find Sera.

When I was twelve, I started hanging out with a group of teens that called themselves The Night Walkers. Sera was one of them, and also the one who encouraged me to join. We did all sorts of crazy, irresponsible things that only teens would do, and that only parents from Diamond Lake would ignore. It was more than just irresponsible, really. It was, like, irresponsibility taken to staggering heights. We ran around in the night, literally, like a cult of survivalists. The group was actually quite fun, even exhilarating at times, and a good diversion for a town that’s all dead-ends. I learned a lot of useful stuff that is not so easy to learn on your own, but we should still call it what it was: a bunch of kids being reckless in the dark. We navigated the hills, learned how to hunt for food, even played field games, all by moonlight. Sometimes by just the light of the stars. We had initiations, rituals, you name it.

And we also visited a little-known and well-hidden cairn that became an open secret among the Night Walkers and other kids in town. At the time, it probably wasn’t known to anyone over eighteen. We all called it The Whispering Cairn, named after the strange sounds that echoed inside when the wind blew in just right. We even spread rumors that it was haunted (an easy sell just on the sounds alone) which both elevated it to legendary status among Diamond Lake youth, and kept the casually curious ones away.

I am not sure who discovered it—probably Sergiu or Alina, our de-facto leaders at the time— but regardless of its origins, the Night Walkers kind of claimed it as our own, and we used it for our initiation ritual. A brave or foolhardy few, like Sera and myself, even spent the night in it as a test of our mettle. But what we didn’t do was explore the thing, because we all knew at some deeper level that it was dangerous. You could see animal tracks leading in and out, and sometimes footprints from something larger and bipedal. You went in not knowing if you would be alone, or if you would stay that way.

About five years after I joined the group, our collective luck ran out. A friend of mine, Masildi, went in to spend the night and she never came back, and that was the end of the Night Walkers. A couple of years later, another idiot kid tried to do the same thing, because one disappearance wasn’t enough, and Alina found out about it and we went to pull him out. He was attacked while he was inside—by what, we don’t know, and we didn’t wait around to find out—but we got him out before he could bleed to death. As far as I know, no one has been back since.

No one has ever talked about the Whispering Cairn outside of that group of friends. The Stirgenest Cairn was emptied years ago and people still can’t shut up about the thing. If the Whispering Cairn had been explored and looted, you would think we’d have heard about it. We’d probably never stop hearing about it.

What if it hadn’t ever been explored? What if it wasn’t empty, like the others?

I needed to talk to Sera.

Toilday, Evening

There were seven of us in all. Sera and I have been friends for practically ever, and I worked with Zhog and Snagsby back in my serving girl days. As for the others? I had seen them around, and no one is truly a stranger in a town of a thousand people. Snagsby works with Viore, and also knows the newcomer Varin. Most of us probably knew Viktor at least casually.

“For those who don’t know me well,” I said, starting us off, “you can call me ‘Bel’. Seriously, just call me ‘Bel’.”

I always need to get that out of the way, because while I don’t ever use my full name it’s far from being a secret. I want to say that my parents have a sense of humor, but I really think they were being serious when they named me Belessandralena, especially since they use it all the time. They never shorten it: not out in public, not in private with friends and family, and not even casually at home. Never. Most kids’ names get longer when they get in trouble with their parents. Mine just got more enunciation.

Dad has labored in one of the mines for as long as I can remember, and he’s always been close with the local gnome community since several of them are in his same work crew. That is the super-abridged story of how I got my name. Once, when I was younger and feeling particularly feisty, I argued that it’s gnome men that have the long names, while the women’s names tend to be really short. Dad just said that I was missing the point. I was so vexed by this response that I didn’t even think to ask what that point would be. I still haven’t, under the theory that some mysteries are maybe better left unsolved.

“We’re all here for the same reason,” I continued. “The ‘why’ is different for each of us, but we all are looking for something that is outside of Diamond Lake. A better life. A chance to see more of the world. Connecting with our past. But getting out, and staying out, takes money, and none of us have enough of it to survive for long on our own. Sera and I have an idea that might just change that.”

My “why” fell into the last category. A few months after I turned seventeen, I started developing the ability to see in the dark. By “in the dark”, I mean, “in the complete absence of light”. At first I thought it was just getting more sensitive to dim light, but it didn’t take long to figure out that light itself just wasn’t a prerequisite. Once I was done having a panic attack—I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and it’s pretty terrifying the first time the lights go out and you realize you can still clearly see the room—I went to see Sera. She’s been able to see like this since, I dunno, the womb, I guess, and I thought maybe she could help me figure out why it was happening. She suggested that there was something in my ancestry that wasn’t human.

Once I built up the courage to talk to mom and dad, they suggested I write to Aunt Esma, who is the family historian. And she had been digging around, too, because I guess I’m not the only one in the family with…unusual traits. According to my Aunt, if you go back a couple of generations on my mom’s side, you find that my great-great grandmother was pregnant with her oldest daughter before she met her husband. Based on hints found in some old diaries, Aunt Esma believes the father was a dragon in human form.

Think about that for a minute: somewhere in my family history, there is a real dragon. A dragon that, given how long they live, may still be around. As soon as that thought settled in, I kind of grew obsessed with the idea of tracking them down. It’s not entirely crazy. I mean, sure, there is the possibility that they don’t want to be found, and they are a dragon. But I feel like I need to try, and I have a where and a when, and I even have the name they were using, so I have a starting point.

“It’s common knowledge,” I continued, “that all the old cairns around here have long since been looted and emptied, but there’s one that’s about a half day from town that we’re pretty sure has never been explored. Because almost no one knows it’s there.

“Sera and I were part of a group of kids that used to go inside this cairn from time to time. She and I even spent the night in it once. We called it The Whispering Cairn because of the sounds it makes when the wind blows, and for a while we spread stories among the other kids in town that it was haunted so we could more or less keep them away and have it to ourselves.

“The few people that do know about it don’t go there anymore. About five or six years ago, a friend of ours tried to spend the night inside, and she never came back out. We’re pretty sure she died in there. And then a couple of years after that, another kid tried to do the same, and they go hurt, bad. That was the last time I knew of anyone going there.”

I paused to take a deep breath. Talking about what happened to Masildi is never easy. It doesn’t help that she and I parted on such a bad note. I could make all sorts of excuses for why things ended they way they did, but they are all just variations on blaming the victim, and that wouldn’t be right. So I just swallowed my guilt and pushed on.

“Even though we’ve been inside it, none of us went in very far. Just down the entry hall to a junction with alcoves on either side. That is less than a hundred feet in. But the cairn goes back a lot farther than that, and we don’t know what’s there.

“What we’re proposing is that we band together, and explore The Whispering Cairn. I won’t deny that it’s potentially dangerous. Sometimes there are animals living in there, and it’s possible we’d need to deal with that. But we are a group of seven, and we aren’t kids anymore. We’re also armed, and not without some skill.”

“Is it actually haunted?” Snagsby asked.

“I don’t know. It might be? But we never saw anything that suggested it was. The most dangerous things we came across were animals and other people.”

There was some discussion after that, and to my surprise and relief, no one got up and walked out. So that was a start.

“There’s more. If we want to do this, there’s an abandoned mine office near the cairn that we could maybe use for a place to stay. It wasn’t in great shape when we found it several years ago, but if it’s still standing we could maybe fix it up a bit so it could keep us dry, and give us a place to work out of that is away from prying eyes.”

This was another Night Walkers discovery and we used it as our private hideaway for a couple of years. I described the small structure which resembled a farm house, complete with kitchen, bedrooms, cellar, and a well out back. When we found it, the roof was leaking and we patched it with a sort of homemade tarp—we were teenagers, remember—but I doubt that had survived the last seven years. We’d be lucky if the roof hadn’t collapsed. But the idea had a lot of appeal. Even in severe disrepair, it would be better than sleeping outdoors. As long as it didn’t come crashing down on us.

Snagsby asked, “How much do you think we might get out of this? I need to know if I should quit my job.”

And that was the rub. I didn’t know. Abadar wouldn’t allow me to mislead them, either, even if I wanted to. “There’s no guarantee. This isn’t like a secured investment. The cairns around here that have been looted have held phenomenal treasures, but that doesn’t mean this one will, too. And though we are reasonably confident it hasn’t been explored yet, it’s still possible that someone else has already cleaned it out. I wouldn’t quit your job until after it’s paid out.” Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, and so on.

“Great! I’m quitting my job then,” Snagsby replied. And, I might add, completely ignoring my advice.

After that, everyone else threw in, too. We were officially signing up to be squatters and grave robbers.