The Arena was empty when Elane finally left the vault. Empty, save for the corpses still laying below. It was a sorry sight to behold, death with little grace, with ruins for a tomb. Stories of elven burial circled in the woman's memory. They are said to turn into trees when dying or something equally silly. But maybe that is what the older elf wanted? Elane's mind was still for a moment, reveling in the sight of death so unattainable to her. Would it do any good to offer a prayer for the slain woman? But who were her words supposed to reach? Prayers to Rhalic taught to her by her parents seemed ill-fitting. And who did she mean by the 'Moon Mother'? Amadia? Some obscure aspect of Tir-Cendelious? A stiff bow was the best Elane could muster before climbing back to the surface, without glancing back.
Sourcerer's ghetto was a lively place, as if the marasmic aura of the isle was suddenly lifted from everyone's shoulders. Vermil stood near the kitchen's north entrance, chewing something and keenly eyeing a tent made out of scraps just across him. Someone wailed inside of the structure. Elane approached the man, discreetly pointing to the concern of his attention with an untold question in her rogue acknowledged her presence with a nod and a hurried swallow.
"The woman there was sick and Lohse healed her with magic. And the Void floodgates were opened wide…"
"Voidwoken?" Elane asked, surprised. Looking around for any giveaway of a fight.
"Metaphorically," Vermil clarified. "She began kicking and screaming like a vengeful ghost, saying she wanted to die before Magisters could get to her. And she wouldn't get the fact there are no more Magisters out there to get her for an answer." He let out a frustrated sigh.
"Is she fine though?"
"She is well, as long as physical stability goes."
"As for the Magisters…" the elf recalled. "There were few patrolling the area-"
"Taken care of by Beast when we were busy ransacking the fort. Ah, and we did another search of the place. No sign of Alexandar."
"None? Maybe he is hiding…"
"Ifan searched the whole complex with nose to the ground like a dog. Not a sign of the Bishop or The Hammer.
The elf massaged her temples. "They left for the swamps? Or is there some different Magister post we do not know about?"
"We found maps, the latter seems likely. The harbor in the Fort is empty but there is another, past the marches. Beast suspects bigger Magister vessels are docked there."
"And Griff?"
"Pacified and cooperative. Bit of violence on display really goes a long way, huh?" He added with a coy smile. "Your arm is fine?"
"It…is. Fine enough," She rolled her shoulder lamely, as if the pain still lingered in her body. All an act, of course.
"Good. Good. Very good. You found yourself a nice outfit as well?"
"I, uh…it was the Arenamaster's posthumous gift, I suppose…"
"Nothing like a new dress to keep a girl's spirits up, eh?" His smile widened and that roguish glint returned to his dark eyes.
"Y-yes…" The conversation steered towards a shaky ground and the elf lost her cool.
"Now." The man laid a hand on her shoulder coercing her into going back into the kitchens."The worst part of this ordeal, figuring what we're to do next-"
Beast's party and Elane's group were already there, guarded tightly by Griff's thugs. Their leader was a part of the meeting, and now was silently sitting on his stool, his feet stomping an uneven rhythm.
"It seems everyone has finally gathered," Best commented, spotting the newcomers.
He moved to stand in the middle of the assemblage. "We'll be making the matters simple, as time's key here. We have a bit over tenday before the two moons align, and the tides are the strongest in the month. We don't have enough supplies to be thinkin' about nothin' beyond the next Magister ship that might not come, seeing the beasts that lurk in the seas. Now, to make the plan possible we need two teams, one to go out and explore the island and the other to stay here, help with the repairs and preparation. We won't force anyone to go out, but I won't hide that Elane here is the best candidate for the expedition. If ya agree, mate."
"I have no objections, if the swamps are as vicious as we heard they are, it is better for me to go…"
"You are not going alone." Fane interjected with annoyance.
Elane was about to clear her intentions, but she was not given a chance to speak.
"I'm going too. If the place's haunted you want someone with experience of quelling spirits." Vermil said.
"I imagine someone with knowledge of the wilds would be of use too," Ifan murmured from his spot, leaning against a stair handrail.
"I-I think I should stay, a healer might prove useful on site and Fane seems more than capable-"
"There is a healer here already," The Red Prince noticed, "And I've yet to see the ske-" The lizard quickly remembered who he was speaking to,"- him perform any miracles."
"I'd rather you went with us, Lohse," Vermil was quick to add.
The redhead nodded, "Okay then, chief."
"I'm also going," Sebille stated bluntly.
"I, too, have business outside the Fort's walls. I will join you until my destiny calls me somewhere else-" The posh lizard was last to come forward.
"And now I am regretting it-" the assassin murmured.
"So ye stayin' in yer old squad? Fair enough." The dwarf stroked his laboriously woven beard. "How about ye, Griff. Goin' out into the wilds?"
The loutish man jerked as if burned when he finally was included in the conversation, his posture was already broken and he looked more like a beaten dog rather than an intimidating drug lord the party knew him as.
"I'll, ehem, stay behind. Someone's gotta keep the people in check. And keep an eye on the supplies-"
"Or rather make sure ye stay away from them this time…" Beast joked in a mordant manner.
Griff fell silent at this and, to everyone's pleasant surprise, seemed to have understood the implication and accepted his new role without complaining.
The chatting continued for a while, and Elane finally pinned down the nagging matter that's been bothering her ever since leaving the arena. She nudged Lohse, who was sitting nearby.
"What about the girl…and the Magister? And the Paladin…?"
"Oh, the girl is safe, we evacuated the prisoners." The redhead answered in a hushed voice. "As for the Paladin and Magister, they made it out of the fort. Said they would inform the Seekers of what happened here and told us roughly where to find their camp."
"What about the mutes in the prison…?"
"That's-"
A sudden appearance of the elven woman from Beast's party cut all talks short. What's more, two dwarves behind her hauled a Magister in tow. Crestfallen but very much alive.
"We find this one by the beach, pleading for mercy. She gives herself to us without a fight and asks for audience," the elf reported to the leader.
"Thank you, Daeyena. Bring her over here, boys!"
The woman walked up to the center of the gathering without much prodding from the dwarves.
"I saw her on the walls…" Vermil murmured to himself.
"Please…"The Magister spoke, her voice shaking. "I know what the likes of me have done to you but I am of no matter here…An inmate named Migo, is he among you?"
A murmur passed among the crowd that walked behind the magister and her escort. The Sourcerers looked at Griff expectantly. The man closed his eyes and frowned, remembering something with great difficulty.
"He was taken away…two weeks or so."
The woman gasped and fell to her knees, becoming a menace to the dwarves restraining her.
Elane moved from her spot and kneeled next to the shaken captive.
"What is your name? And who was this Migo to you?"
"C'mon, she's a Magister! Kill her and be done with it! She wouldn't be helping us if the roles were reversed!" an impatient voice demanded from the crowd. Few more cheered in the first's favor.
The shunned woman squinted, as if bracing herself for the worst.
"Come now, answer me." Elane encouraged, ignoring the shouts.
"Yarrow…And Migo was my father…"
She freed herself from the hold of the dwarves in a desperate jolt to grasp the elf by her shoulders.
"Please! When I've learnt that he was taken, I did everything in my power to have me transferred here…" desperation oozed and dripped from the woman's pleas. "I just want to see my father, then you can kill me."
"We still have not checked the prisons…" Elane noted as she looked around her companions' faces.
Some betrayed disdain, other compassion, and some remained indifferent.
"We are short on time, if you have forgotten," Red Prince began his moans of protest.
"And so we don't have the time to wander aimlessly in the swamps." Ifan noticed as he, too, approached Yarrow. "Tell me, have you been outside of the fort? Ever?"
"Y-yes. I have…I c-can show you the outposts if you help me find my father…"
Elane looked at the more unconvinced of her companions triumphantly. Yarrow just secured her own safety.
"Very well." The elf stood up. "I think we can spare an hour or two to search through the dungeons."
"Count me out," The Prince was quick to turn down the offer and walk away.
"Now, I also don't think we need a legion marching down there. The dungeons are not that vast." Vermil twirled his mustache in usual manner.
"Get up." Elane caught the Magister by her elbow and hoisted her to her feet.
"Aight, I'm going. Anyone else?" Vermil blithely looked around to see neigh nonexistent willingness to dip toes in the putrid dungeons again.
"Prepare to move out. Rest. It will take a moment." Elane ordered.
"You should be the one resting, El." Lohse pointed out.
"If I can walk then it means I am fine enough. Shall we?"
Yarrow nodded, Elane's hand on her shoulder. Neither the elf expected any foul play from the woman and neither the woman dared to test her luck any more.
They walked through the corpse-littered gateyard without hearing a peep from the Magister and entered the keep through the lower entrance, Yarrow's key letting them to do so. After a long set of stairs they ended up back in the Kniles' level of the dungeon. Mute creatures not even sidestepping from their stations.
Yarrow took a shaky breath of the heavy air.
"Have you been in here before?" Vermil asked, keeping his tone low in fear of the creatures 'activating'.
The Magister resolutely shook her head, but said nothing. The dogs kept in one of the locked chambers caught on the noise and began howling.
"Let us start from Kniles' playground, everything here seems connected to it." The elf whispered.
"We already cleared the lower level, so no use going back there…"
The trio looked as disheartened as one could possibly get to take but one step into the complex. Elane kept a firm grip on her sword when she finally decided to venture onto the stairway and down a familiar path. The same stench greeted the noble's sensitive nose, maybe tad more bloody than earlier, considering the floor littered with additional cadavers.
Yarrow stepped forward to peek over Kniles' lacerated remains, then spat at them.
"We haven't been up there yet." Vermil pointed at the stairs connecting this level with the upper one. Torches still illuminated the cloistered chamber suggesting that it was actively used.
Climbing the staircase revealed a room as spartan and the guresume workshop beneath. The wailing of hounds that came right from the other side of the wall became unbearable. Vermil got to rummaging through sparse belongings of the butcher, stored in a singular chest. Yarrow looked with an unreadable expression at the painting of Bishop Alexandar, hanging just above a simple wooden desk. Stone pedestal in the corner hoisted another of those Magister wands. This one was as inert as Orivand's, Elane judged, touching the object. With the collar off, it was definitely easier to sense the odd energy coming from the artifact.
"Anything?" The elf asked the rest.
"No, and the only door leading from this place seems to go to the dog kennel."
Their Magister companion was absorbed in some lecture, snatched from Kniles' desk.
"Something interesting there?" Vermil peeked to see the cover. It read 'A History of Forbidden Objects'.
"I can't understand a word of it but this page was marked…" The woman handed the book over to the black-haired rogue.
Scanning over the page the man whistled. "Seems our dear deceased was interested in immortality. That's heresy in Order's eyes…"
Elane jerked as if burned, and trotted to look over the human's shoulder.
"Idols of Rebirth…?" She murmured to herself.
"You want to take the book? Fane might find this interesting," Vermil closed the lecture and handed it to the elf, without even waiting for her answer.
She nodded apologetically and slipped it into her bag.
"Any idea what's next? We'll kill the dogs?" Vermil eyed the caracasses below.
"I'd…rather not," Elane admitted grimly.
"They won't attack me on sight, maybe I could let them out…" Yarrow thought aloud.
"And have them run rampant? What if one escapes? There are children in the ghetto."
"You are right." The two-hander slid easily from its sheath on the elf's back, even if she felt repulsed by the idea. "We cannot let them leave, and we cannot leave them to starve here."
"Leave it to me, will you? Have a slow walk to the other entrance. I'll let you in."
"What are you-"
A nagging hand on her shoulder stopped the Magister mid-sentence while the other slipped the sword back to its harness.
"Come, let us leave the dirty work to him."
They slowly marched to the appointed spot but Elane recognised the echoing incantation, the wet smack of twisted flesh that followed them into the corridor.
"Did you know about Kniles' experiments?" The elf asked, to drown out the unsettling sounds.
"No," the woman breathed.
They passed right next to a torch mounted on the dungeon's wall, Yarrow's skin was the hue of bone.
"But I heard stories…There were always rumors about The Hammer. What she was doing with the prisoners she hauled off to her fortress... why they never joined the rank-and-file thereafter…"
The woman's lips twisted and trembled, she was fighting back tears.
"Hey," Elane stopped and awkwardly leaned to look the much shorter Yarrow in the eyes. " If we find your father and make it out of the island alive, escape with us. You will not remain loyal to the Order after seeing this, correct?"
A deep breath of putrid air brought the human no comfort. "Correct. I will help you to the best of my ability-"
The door at the end of the hallway opened, Vermil looked more ashen than ever.
"Come, quick," there was no hint of the playfulness that usually rang in the undertone of his voice.
The kennel…well, one could guess what had escalated here, seeing the animals mangled and impaled on bone shrapnels. Resurrective necromancy was something Elane could never stomach, even if she saw the benefit of employing it here. Cruel efficiency.
They made it through the hay-covered cobblestone floor into an adjacent torture chamber. Tools of pain and suffering laid scattered around the square room. Table displaying them still bearing the smears of blood. On a chair placed right in the middle sat a man, clad in Magister armor. His head has been cleanly shaved and branded with a sigil of an opened hand. Sign of the Magisters.
Yarrow let out a choking sob and clung to the hunched man's knees. He seemed barely conscious, pale as a corpse with an absent, clouded gaze. The corners of his lips bore signs of a dried, black puss and when the woman approached him, he coughed some more, staining the red hood of his daughter as well as his own chin.
"Vermil, what…?" Elane breathed, so terrified by the man's state, it stole the voice from her throat.
The man just shook his head, unable to answer.
"Pop…! What have they done to you…?!" Yarrow wailed, kneeling by her galvanized father. Her hand fell onto the chair's armrest and, to her horror, she realized they were spiked.
The two Sourcerers watched with cold, silent hatred.
"Little…Yarrow girl…Grown up, flower-headed girl.." This man, Migo, articulated slowly and with great difficulty.
"We're going to get you out, pops. We are…"
"Yarrow girl, I'm sorry…I'm..sorry…" Witch each word the tortured's voice cleared, he even raised a hand to caress his daughter's cheek.
"Please…could you give us a while? He must gather his bearings." This plea was addressed at Vermil and Elane, who obliged, and left, shutting the door to give them some privacy.
"Torturing innocent fathers, purging people of Source, sewing flesh together into 'toys'. Is nothing below the Order? " the rogue hissed through his teeth, leaning against the metal entrance to the cell.
"The next Magister I see is going to suffer," the elf stated coldly.
"Think that Migo fellow is going to reco-"
The iron muffled sounds well enough, but not to fool Elane's keen senses.
She jumped the doorknob in a split second, Vermil jerking away as if the surface he was leaning on turned to lava.
Nothing could have prepared them for the sight of a father, hunched over his own daughter who was sprawled on the floor, looking at the two Sourcerers with teary eyes, hands reaching to a crushed throat with her aorta ripped open. Migo's bloodied mouth was enough of an explanation.
"For the love of the Void…!" The rogue hollered, clenching his fists. He hadn't gotten around to replacing his weapons before coming here.
Elane tugged her sword free dazed with disbelief, as if she was stuck in some kind of a never-ending nightmare.
Migo let out a growl, more animalistic than human and lunged forward.
The elf's blade came to meet the impending mass of flesh and aimed straight for the head. Steel met skull in a nausing crack. The blow would have been enough to kill a man, but Migo still moved. He let an monstrous, inhuman shriek, cradling his cracked head. Flooring the writhing mass of flesh with a foot to the chest, Elane jabbed her sword into the exposed neck, stifling the shriek into a wet gurgle. Despite all that damage, a hand clad in iron managed to coil itself around the elf's leg and clench, forcing a yelp of pain from her.
Vermil rushed to Yarrow's side as the two struggled hand's length away. It was too late, she died with a pained disbelief etched onto her face.
The sound of metal scraping against the floor followed by a wet crack told the man the father was no more as well. Elane heaved, and turned to the woman's corpse with a limp. The tip of her sword dropped heavily to the ground, taking in the cruel reality.
"Why?" That was the only world she could force out of her stifled throat.
"Mind control? Brainwashing?" The man looked around methodically, searching for what his eyes could discern, glyphs, chalk, drop of ritual ink…A jar of maggots?
The round container rested atop the table, its contents squirming and writhing, forcing translucent, ringed flesh against the unyielding glass just to get to the Sourcerers on the other side.
Elane gasped at the sight, taking a few wobbly steps toward the exit when the man pointed at the finding.
"What is this? For the love of…ugh!"
Elane's voice faltered in disgust seeing the man pick up the object, and study it intently. Scholarly consternation turned to raw terror when he realised what he was looking at.
"... Mind maggots. Annelids of demonic origin. Ugh, awfully rare to boot."
"They are…putting demons into people's brains?" The elf gulped, feeling the stress-induced nausea setting down in her stomach.
"Maybe purging people isn't enough," the scholar from Arx sighed, carefully stashing the jar into his own bag.
"You…want to take this with you...? Elane twitched with disgust.
"What, want me to leave it here in the open for gods know who to find?" He jabbed.
"No…no, of course not."
He joined her by the entrance and they both looked down onto the bloody mess, distraught and frustrated.
"We can't bring them up to give them a proper burial, we don't have the time… Or a guarantee that someone won't go about defiling the bodies."
Elane shot him a piercing look, eyebrows frowned. "You want to leave them like this? Here?" Her free hand motioned down.
"I'm no gravedigger, and this is as good crypt as any."
The woman was forced to relent, feeling even more terrible because of it.
"Come, let's at least lay them down together."
The two Sourcerers moved the bodies closer together, lacing their hands on their chest. The rogue closed Yarrow's eyes and pressed them with two spare coins while the elf positioned Migo's severed head back in its place. This was all they could reasonably do for them but Elane hated it, and could only hope her parents weren't watching her from within the Hall of Echoes.
They left the dungeons bloodied and beaten, this time only psychically. Their only solace and boon of this trip- a hound they found locked in a cage that haven't yet succumbed to the Magisterial brainwashing. Their companions waiting for them were furious and disappointed upon hearing the news, as they have lost the only guide that could make their expedition easier, and to something so monstrous and predictable too. But they had to set out regardless.
Into the Hollow Marches.