2nd day of Ransalacue, 5571A Dromdal Manor, Swan Street

Talantier, The Divided Lands

Oliver Athraite stopped mid-yawn when he saw the other two staring at him.

By his guess, it was about one bell after the start of first watch (if Talantier bells had continued after the tenth). The mage was sitting on one of the dining room chairs but his eyes had been closed. He had been concentrating on the empathic link with his familiar, the raven Fiach which he had stationed outside Dromdal Manor, with instructions to let him know if anyone approached. He wasn't sure how successful this would be; he'd only recently bonded with the bird and other than being unusually tame he wasn't sure exactly how intelligent it really was yet.

But now Saito and Qidarchios, also sitting at the table, were eyeing him curiously.


"What?" asked Oliver, just a little annoyed. "You elves never yawn?"

Saito shook his head. "Actually, no; we don't. We don't sleep in the manner way you humans do."

"I just never understood it," Dark added. "If yawning is an indication that you humans are sleepy, why do your eyes always open when you do it?"

"I have no idea," Athraite retorted, irritated even more that he had no idea how to answer that question.

The magic-user got up and once again began to pace the room.

"This is both dull and frustrating at the same time," he grumbled to his companions.

"All the doors I'd like to explore beyond are locked," the samurai replied serenely. "You did say that the spell that allows one to unlock doors is beyond your capability, correct?"

Oliver glared at Saito but did not respond, knowing the question was rhetorical.

He suddenly wished Seb was awake and with him. He wondered if Takahashi would be such a smart-ass then.

"Oliver," Dark reminded him, "we're getting paid for essentially doing nothing."

"And why would you think that I-" the arcanist began but then stopped.

The torches having been extinguished for the evening; the mage had a light cantrip going but even that dim magical illumination was enough for the two elves to see the mage's face turn red.

Oliver clenched his fists but before he could say anything, Saito spoke first.

"Sebastian said a few things about the two of you back in Three Falls."

The samurai's voice was calm but the steel in his tone told Oliver that if he dared to start something, Saito would be all too willing to finish it.

Athraite was considering it anyway; he wondered how many members of their not-so-tight-knit band Saito could really count on when a noise made him turn his head.

All three individuals looked at the closed door to the wooden elevating room.

The rumble of the device in operation was growing louder; gears clanking and chains clinking.


Qidarchios frowned. "Why would Lady Dromdal be coming down at this late hour?"

"Probably making sure we haven't nicked any of that delicious food she has stored in the pantry," Oliver said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

But the noise, having gotten louder, was now receding again.

The three regarded one another.

It was Saito Takahashi who stated what they were all thinking.


"It went past us. She's gone down to the basement."

"What should we do?" Oliver's question was directed to Dark, but it was Saito who answered.

"Nothing," the samurai stated, a hand gesture indicating that no one was to leave this room. "Nothing yet."


About one minute later, the noise of the room in operation began again, growing louder and then again receded.

The three looked at each again and then Saito Takahashi abruptly stood up.

"Wait here," he told the others and then strode over to the staircase leading to the second floor and vanished into the darkness on top.

Dark looked attentive but unconcerned.

Oliver gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and again reached out to Fiach.


Saito stood in the dark hallway just outside Lady Dromdal's room. No flicker of light was visible under the door.

The samurai hadn't wanted to try explaining to the others that he didn't want them with him up here when he spoke to the Lady of Dromdal House. While he found her personality as unpleasant as they did, she was the head of her family while her husband was away, and that legal status granted her some measure of honor in Saito's eyes.

He hoped that she would see he thought of her that way as well.

The wood elf took a deep breath and knocked loudly.

Auralana's voice responded instantly; she hadn't been asleep, Saito noted.

"Yes? What is it?"

There was no mistaking the annoyance in her tone, but Saito plunged on.

"It is Saito Takahashi, Lady Dromdal," he announced himself formally. "I apologize for disturbing you, my Lady, but we heard unusual noises and became concerned. May I come in?"

A pause and a sigh.

"Very well."


There was in fact light within the bedroom, but it was quite faint; a candle burning on top of a writing desk situated some ten feet to Saito's left as he entered.

Lady Dromdal, wearing a long white nightgown, was seated at the desk, Sachi as always in her lap.. A cup of steaming tea sat next to some papers and a quill pen. She had evidently been writing when Saito had knocked.

Most of the room, including Lady Dromdal's bed off to the right, were in darkness, even to Takahashi's elven eyes.

The samurai gave a small bow.

"Again, many pardons," he stated officiously, then gestured to where he hoped the door to the elevating room was from Lumen's description of it. "We heard the chamber descending and then re-ascending and wondered if-"

"The behavior of your companions," Auralana snapped, "combined with some of the dreadful events at dinner has disrupted the routine of this house. Consequently, I had forgotten to feed Baron before retiring. His food is kept in the basement, so when I realized his evening meal was overdue I went down and retrieved some."

She eyed the samurai, her expression clearly indicating that she had nothing more to say.

Saito could not see Baron's cage next to Lady Dromdal's bed, but he could hear what sounded like a dog from that direction.

He bowed again, apologized once more for disturbing her and left.


"Well," Oliver considered as the three were once again sitting around the dining room table, "that sounds reasonable."

"Yes," said Saito softly, drumming his fingers on his knee, "except for the tea she was drinking."

"The tea?" Dark cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"It was steaming hot," the samurai said, "yet I saw no sign of a firepit or any other means by which it could have been heated, nor did Lumen or the thief mention any being in that room."

"So?" Oliver almost put a sneer on his face than thought better of it, Seb not being present. "She's probably got a cauldron, or something set up in the basement; it's the most logical place for one, anyway."

Saito locked eyes with the mage but after a moment the samurai uncharacteristically dropped his gaze to the floor.

"Yes," he mumbled. "That is probably the case."


Caffrine Esslos looked around the basement again and frowned.

This didn't feel right.

This room was supposed to be larger.


The teenager had paced off the room, using the copper common in her hand that had been imbued with a light orison by Bjorn Sigmundson and marked it as fifteen by twenty feet, the long axis running east-west.

But based on her calculations, the spot where the elevating room would have descended to the basement would be at least fifteen feet beyond the western wall.

Caffrine had searched and searched, and then searched again for any trace of a secret door and found none. Either her skills had deteriorated far beyond what she thought possible or something just didn't add up.

The contents of the room were unremarkable, spare sheets and cleaning supplies mostly. There were also three large sacks of aged, heavily salted meat, which she assumed constituted Baron's diet.

The light suddenly went out, plunging Caffrine into total darkness.

Damn it, the rogue cursed to herself. She'd spent more time than she thought searching for a non-existent secret door. Sigmundson had warned her the light was only good for ten minutes.

Oh, well. As it turned out, there had been nothing of interest to see anyway.

Using her hands, Caffrine made her way back to the staircase that led upwards and ascended. Upon reaching the ground floor, she closed the door behind her and made as sure as she could that Auralana would not be able to tell the lock had been picked.

The light that Bjorn had left in the dining room had also gone out so Caffrine knew even as she quietly made her way to the table and sat down in one of the chairs that the priest of Balder was still in the upstairs hallway.

She smirked to herself in the darkness. Lover Boy standing guard over his heart's desire.


A twinge of shame wormed its way into her thoughts. Bjorn had actually been one of the few members of their so-called "Light in the Darkness" that had been consistently pleasant and non-judgmental towards her. He'd said not a word of reproach when Caffrine had declared her attention to search the basement after Saito, Dark and Oliver had told the duo the events that had transpired on first watch. It was Bjorn in fact, who had offered the light orison to her.

Yet the thought of Sigmundson and Lady Ceseli Dromdal-Andronovich together still caused the teenaged half-elf to shake her head in disbelief. She was old enough to be his mother, for Olidamarra's sake! He was so handsome, too! Why would he feel the need to go-

Caffrine was suddenly grateful for the darkness.

Where did that come from, she wondered, feeling her cheek to see if she could detect a heat blush. Sure, the cleric was very good-looking, but so was Dark, and she hadn't felt anything towards him.

Yes, she mused, technically she and Dark were related, but they were third cousins; that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in any community, human or elven.

But that was getting closer to the truth. For reasons that Caffrine never understood, or perhaps never wanted to examine, her tastes in looks ran towards the human side of her heritage.

Of course, none of it mattered an otyugh's ass anyway. Caffrine had never had a boyfriend; her life on the streets would never permit such a luxury; trying to stay alive was a full-time job.

Not (she couldn't avoid the intruding thought) that there had been any offers. While the cliché was that half-elves inherited the best features from both their parents and although Caffrine's mother and father had both been very attractive (at least, as far as her three-year-old self could remember), Caffrine herself had somehow missed the boat in that department. While her flame-red hair from her father's side was distinctive, it was also stringy and perpetually looked dirty, even when she had lived at the orphanage with its semi-regular baths.

Her face didn't feel right either, the rogue felt, moving her fingers across it. Her nose felt crooked; one eye seemed a bit more lopsided than the other…

A soft moan of misery escaped her lips.

Except, Caffrine realized a moment later, that it hadn't.

Almost at the very edge of her hearing, she heard the moan again.


Slowly, taking care to be as quiet as possible, Caffrine stood up and since her eyes were useless, let her ears be her guide.

And they guided her towards the door that led to the elevating room shaft.

Caffrine put her ear against the wooden door, listened for perhaps thirty seconds and then had to seriously restrain herself from bolting to the staircase leading up.

The main reason for her caution was for the noise (and possible injuries) she would generate knocking into furniture and walls and so forth while trying to run in the pitch blackness.

And the second was that she couldn't afford to alert Lady Auralana by screaming at the top of her lungs for Bjorn to get back down here.

And she did want him down here. Fast.


Fortunately, the cleric had been close enough to the top of the stairs that he had heard the teenager's hissed calling of his name. Seconds later, he was downstairs and bewildered, letting the half-elf pull him by the hand to the wooden shaft doors.

"Listen," she told him.

Bjorn placed his ear against the wood and listened for perhaps a minute.

He cast his last light orison and looked at Caffrine, a quizzical expression on his face.

"Is that… a person?" he asked. "I think it's a woman, but I can barely hear her, and I have no idea what she's saying."

The rogue nodded. "It is a woman; very faint. I'm guessing either an elf or a half-elf because she's speaking elven."

"What is she saying?" Bjorn asked.

Caffrine didn't immediately answer. Bjorn was about to repeat the question when he got a good look at her face, partially hidden in the shows of the nearby light.

Although it seemed like much longer, Sigmundson had only known Caffrine Esslos for about a day and a half, but in that short time she had garnered both his respect for the difficult life she had been forced to endure and his pity that the Norns, the Gatekeepers of Fate, had apparently willed it so.

But now she looked like one thing and one thing only.

A frightened child.

"Rehta," Caffrine whispered. "It means help."

She stared into his eyes.

"It means save me."

Bjorn gulped, suddenly feeling like the teenager he'd been only a couple of years ago and placed what he hoped was a calming hand on the young half-elf's shoulder, but he could see it was trembling as bad as she was.

"Wait here," he said softly. "I'm going to get the others."


The Light in the Darkness conferred.

"We need to get down there," Sebastian rumbled.

"Yes, but short of bashing these doors down, how do we do that?" inquired Dark.

Caffrine walked over to the wall next to the doors.

"Lumen," she called quietly, "could you bring your light over here?"

Illumenatta, the latest individual to have cast a light cantrip, this one on her hair clip, came over. Seeing that the half-elf was trying to peer into the slot that the lever was set into, she positioned it accordingly.

The slot was narrow; perhaps only two inches wide at most. Caffrine peered into the gap for a moment and then frowned.

"I'm going to need a better look. Can I borrow that?" she asked Lumen, indicating the hair clip and holding her hand out.

The moon elf felt this was more of a demand than a request, but the teenager did seem to know what she was doing, so she handed it over as Caffrine opened up her small packet of thieves' tools from her cloak lining and chose a tiny extendable rod.

Using a small piece of thread, the rogue tied the hair clip in a sideways position the end of the rod and then, with some difficulty, pushed it through the slot.

Everyone tried to peer through the slot to see what the illuminated interior looked like, but a glare from Caffrine was enough to make everyone step back. They could only wait nervously while the half-elf made her examination.

No one could hear the elven voice pleading for help anymore.

Caffrine extracted her tool, took a deep breath and looked at her companions.

"All right," she said. "Here's the story. I'm pretty sure I can get these doors open, but it's going to involve snapping a wire. I won't be able to close them again. She'll know for sure," Caffrine finished with an unnecessary nod of her head towards the ceiling.

All seven individuals all looked at each other. No one saw dissent.

"Do it," Lumen said, then looked over at Sigmundson.

"We're going to need a lookout," the bard said. "Bjorn, would you go upstairs and position yourself in the hallway? We'll need warning if either of the Dromdal women come out of their bedrooms."

Bjorn nodded but seemed embarrassed, as if he felt everyone knew as well as he the reason Lumen had picked him for this assignment.

"All right," Saito announced, stepping forward while simultaneously pulling a coiled length of hemp rope from his backpack. "Unless there's a maintenance ladder of some kind, we'll have to rappel down. The two bards go first," he said, pointing at Illumenatta and Qidarchios. "Lover Boy," here he turned to Bjorn, "if you hear Auralana getting into that elevating room again, let us know immediately! Don't bother with stealth if that's the case. Everyone else, gird for battle. Thief," he pointed at Caffrine, "get those doors open!"

Caffrine Esslos slammed her fist against the wall, causing several in the party to start.

Shaking with rage, the teenager pointed at Takahashi, but before she could get the first word out, Lumen Duskwind beat her to it.

"Saito," she said calmly, "if you call Caffrine that one more time, you're going to regret it."


Everyone's eyes were now bouncing from Lumen to Saito, who did not take kindly to the moon elf's statement.

"Samurai," he said, steel in his voice as he narrowed his eyes at his fellow elf, "do not lie." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Caffrine.

"I accept what you said earlier; that having those skills does not of itself make this one dishonorable. But I will not shy away from the truth! This child is a thief!"

"And you're an arrogant prick, but you don't hear me calling you that, do you?"

Saito's eyes went wide, and his hand flew to the handle of his katana.

"Takahashi!" Lumen refrained from shouting only with great effort. She stepped forward but held up her hands as a show of peace, which seemed to the others to be the only reason Saito did not draw his weapon.

The bard put her face to within a foot of the samurai.

"Saito," Lumen said, her voice unexpectedly soft again. "You have choices. All I'm asking is that you make them."

The two stared at each other for so long, Dark was certain Lumen's light, still attached to the hair clip on Caffrine's tiny metal rod, was about to expire.

Then Saito Takahashi stepped back, took a deep breath and removed his hand from the hilt of his katana.

"As you wish," he said gruffly and resumed prepping his coil of rope.

Lumen looked over at Caffrine, who could read her cousin's statement with her eyes.

That's as much of an apology as you're ever going to get out of him.

"Joy to the world," Caffrine mumbled. She was far from appeased, but she had to admit she was grateful for Lumen's intervention. The moon elf was in fact the last member of the Light in the Darkness she would have guessed would ever had been on her side against the samurai, so Caffrine felt she owed it to her and the others to start being mature about this. She laid out her packet of tools on the dining room table and began choosing the tools she'd need for this job.

Of course, having actually said she'd be able to open these damn doors, she knew she'd better be able to deliver, even though she wasn't one hundred percent certain she could.

Probably the only thing worse than being a thief in Saito's mind, she grimaced to herself, is being a bad one.

"You know," muttered Bjorn Sigmundson as the cleric began his ascent up the stairs, "I wouldn't mind it if everyone stopped calling me Lover Boy as well. It's not like I don't have feelings, too…"

The rest was lost to distance. Despite herself, Caffrine couldn't repress a chuckle and felt even better when she looked around and saw, just for a moment, grins on everyone else's face.


"Wait!" Sebastian called out just as Caffrine had made the signal she was about to clip the wire and open the sliding doors. Everyone made hushing gestures at the barbarian, who ignored them and looked at the others scornfully.

"My woice is not problem," Sebastian informed them while pointing at the doors. "Problem is noise these doors will make when Caffrine opens them. We heard it from here; if Lady Dromdal is still awake, she will hear it, too."

The others looked at each other. The barbarian seemed proud that he had been the only one to have thought of this beforehand, even if he had no idea how to fix it.

Oliver Athraite put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Good thinking Seb, but I think I've got this."

"You can cast a silence spell?" Lumen asked, her voice incredulous.

"Not yet," the wizard replied, a little defensively, "but I think I can muffle the sound enough. A little prestidigitation should do the trick."

He incanted, then nodded at Caffrine. "Do us proud, girl."

The rogue nodded and looked back inside the slot. She had positioned the gears to the position she thought (or guessed) they should be, and her wire clippers were in as good a position as she could manage, given the circumstances.

She took a deep breath and pulled down on the clipper handles as hard as she could. The tiny but sharp blades came together, cutting into but through the wire. It took a few seconds of wrangling and twisting, but eventually she made the final cut.

The wooden doors slid apart, making a noise louder than they would have preferred but substantially quieter than it would have been otherwise.

Oliver and Sebastian positioned themselves at the bottom of the staircase.

No warning sound came from above.

Dark used a cantrip to create another light and placed it on Lumen's quiver.

His cousin and fellow bard tied the rope off to one of the metal railings in the shaft (used presumably to guide the wooden chamber up and down) and finished securing the rope around her waist.

The moon elf looked up and down. Twenty feet above, the bottom of the elevating room filled the shaft. Twenty feet below lay the bottom of the shaft. She could see another set of closed doors.

"We're going to need Caffrine again, you know," she told Dark.

"I knew that," the teenaged rogue said smugly, having just appeared beside them and tossing the hair clip without warning to an annoyed-looking Saito, who caught it nonetheless without comment. The samurai then heard Dark humming something and looking over at the high elf, was alarmed to see him pointing at the samurai and incanting.

On instinct, Takahashi's hand flew to his sword hilt again, but Qidarchios raised a halting hand.

"A message spell," he explained. "For the next ten minutes or so, I can whisper a message and as long as I'm within a hundred feet or so of you, you'll be able to hear it and send me a short reply."

"A sound idea," Saito replied, ignoring the pun as he gritted his teeth, "but let me know before you start throwing spells at me."

"He can be a bit sensitive," Caffrine nodded sagely at her cousin. "Try a little tenderness."


As a rule, elves were proficient in climbing and Illumenatta Duskwind was no exception. The moon elf was at the bottom of the shaft within seconds, untying the rope and gesturing for Caffrine to follow.

As she watched the end of the rope being hauled up, she bent down and peered underneath the doors.

Her own light made it impossible to be sure, but she thought she could detect a very faint reddish glow.


Caffrine was already working on the doors as Dark arrived and untied the rope around his waist, signaling for Saito to haul it up.

Fortunately, while there was no lever set into the wall by these bottom doors, Caffrine had surmised correctly that there would be an actual lock upon them, as Lady Dromdal had operated them with her keychain when she had entered the wooden elevating chamber.

"I'll have them open in a few seconds," she said quietly as she worked.

Dark flicked his fingers at the door, knowing the prestidigitation cantrip lasted an hour and looked over.

Lumen, longsword already in hand, looked back at him and gave a short nod.

Qidarchios did not carry a sword, only a dagger. He considered drawing an arrow, but the cramped confines of a basement would make that a poor choice if it came to battle, he reasoned. Trying to control his trembling, he drew the dagger and nodded back. He was sure his attempt at a reassuring smile came out more as a grimace.

"Here we go," he whispered to himself, Lumen, Caffrine and, he hoped, Saito.

The doors slid open.


The scent of wet dog, waste and spiced herbs hit their nostrils at once.

Due to their shared low-light vision, all three members of the Light in the Darkness were able to see further than human eyes could, and to them the light's radius was just enough to dimly show them the far wall of the basement, forty feet distant.

"This isn't the room I was in," muttered Caffrine as she drew her dagger and joined the others in stepping into the chamber.

The walls were stone, but both the low ceiling and the floor beneath them were made of packed earth.

Dried fruits and herbs hung from the ceiling, indicating this room was used as a root cellar.

About twenty feet directly in front of them, a tripod with a small hanging cauldron had been set up above a firepit filled with glowing coals; the source of the reddish glow.

A chair and a small table were beside it. On the table sat a teapot and what looked like a short stone dowel of some kind.

These details were registered and discarded in an instant.

There was something wrong about the far stone wall.

It didn't look quite… flat.


The shaft had opened in the northeast corner of the room, facing south. The east wall extended forward next to them, but a glance to the right as they cautiously advanced showed only darkness; apparently the western wall was more than forty feet away.

Three sets of lungs drew sharp intakes of breath as they came up to the south wall.

Starting next to the east wall and extending westward were a line of stone faces.

They seemed like death masks; stone images of sorrow and despair that might have been carved into the worked stone itself.

Men and women. Human and elf.

But at the very end of the line, the last two of the thirteen faces were not stone.

The man and the woman before them seemed to have been somehow entombed in the very rock; only their faces from chin to forehead still showing.

The male face, a human, had its eyes closed and did not respond to the newcomers but the female half-elf did, her gaunt face and sunken green eyes eliciting a shiver of terror through Lumen as he and Dark crowded around her.

"Help me," she croaked in elven, her voice so hoarse that even standing next to her, they could barely hear her. Dark wondered how she had had the strength to call out louder before, then realized that this poor woman was in the last throes of dehydration and starvation and probably wouldn't last much longer.

"We'll get you out of here," he replied in Common, while wracking his brain to think of a way to do just that that wouldn't involve a hammer and pick making so much noise that no cantrip could ever mask the sound.

"Have something to drink," Lumen said, as her own shaking hands found her waterskin and held it to the woman's mouth. She wasn't sure how much made it down the poor half-elf's throat as opposed to dribbling down her chin, but she swallowed and nodded weakly in appreciation.

"How long have you been down here?" asked Qidarchios.

The woman's eyes showed her torment. "I don't know," she whispered. "A long time."

"What's your name?" asked Lumen.

"Vivi," came the weak reply. "Vivi Knot."


Lumen and Dark glanced at each other, and each could read in their cousin's face the dawn of understanding.

But that was a matter that would have to wait.

"Caffrine," Lumen said as she was rummaging through her backpack to find a piece of hardtack she could feed to Vivi. "Do you have any ideas how we can free her? "

There was no response.

"Caffrine?" the bard said, turning around.

Her blood froze. The rogue was standing about five feet behind them, looking not at them or the imprisoned Knot, but westwards.

And she was slowly backing away, a look of naked terror on her young face.

Lumen cursed herself now for concentrating all her attention on the stone faces as they had followed them westward along the south wall.

The far wall was now dimly visible at the edge of their light's radius.

Two green eyes there were staring back at them.


As the odor of wet fur and something unidentified but far more horrible swept over them, Illumenatta and Qidarchios began to back away as well.

"Lumen," Caffrine said in a voice that was as cracked from fear as Vivi's was from thirst, "I think you were right. I think this is a Three Dog Night after all."

Another pair of green eyes opened, right next to the first pair.

"Anyone want to try for four?" Dark said, said, trying to raise his companions spirits with the feeble jest but failing utterly.

And then, as what they were looking at began to walk into the brighter light, Dark saw he had been wrong.

There weren't four dogs in Dromdal House after all.

But he dearly wished there had been.

Growling with a sound that seemed to make the very stone vibrate around them, an enormous two-headed hound slowly moved forward. The top of its back came within a foot of the eight-fall tall ceiling.

The creature that Dark now recognized from Darren's description as a death dog let out two deafening howls and leapt forward to the attack.