After finding some leaves to wipe her mouth with, Larna Smith and Maria made their way to the now unprotected cabin. The door still hung ajar, and no sound came from within. Maria stepped inside first, saber in one hand, pistol in the other. Behind her, Larna Smith had her wind magic ready to unleash. There was a flickering light from within from candles and lamps, though to Maria's eyes everything was obscured by a thick, black haze. She tried to ignore the signs of dark magic, tried to see only the actual light and darkness.
Rafael and Miss Shelley were coming down from upstairs. Both seemed unharmed and unaffected by Dark Magic.
"No one upstairs," Rafael reported, "but two of them rooms showed signs of occupancy and Dark Magic, but I can't tell what kind. So they were definitely in here."
Maria scowled, but there was no reason to believe they'd left yet. "Perhaps they went down to the lake for a swim," she said sarcastically.
Rafael smiled sardonically. "Maybe," he said, playing along, "but the magic tool was definitely pointing up here."
"Then perhaps we should have it lead us at this point," Maria said. "Larna Smith, if you please?"
Larna Smith reached into her pack and pulled out the magic tool and put it on the ground. This close to its target, and having been attuned repeatedly, it apparently didn't need Maria and Miss Shelley to touch it as it pointed confidently in the direction that would supposed take them straight to Maria's mother.
Maria frowned and knelt do to see its stubby arm better. It was pointing downward at an angle. "Beneath the cabin?" Maria said.
"There's a basement," Rafael said. "A large stone basement that was for storing meat… and there's probably some kind of hidden Dark Magic lab down there, isn't there?" he sighed in exasperated realization.
"You were a child, you weren't to realize." Maria said. "We need to search for the kitchens or some kind of pantry, perhaps some kind of dumbwaiter lift."
Miss Shelley frowned and began to turn in place, one hand raised and seemingly pointing at things. Finally, she pointed confidently in a direction in the same side of the cabin as where the magic tool was pointing. "There," she said. "The kitchen and food stores would be in that direction, perhaps buried into the mountain. Any food storage basement access would be there."
Larna Smith blinked. "How do you know?"
Miss Shelley gave her a withering look. "Maid instinct. A real maid can easily intuit where all the important rooms are in any noble dwelling simply from experience."
A quick search confirmed the presence of the kitchen and pantry, as well as stairs leading down into a stone-lined basement that radiated cold. They quickly gathered lanterns and Maria quickly improvised some more fire bombs from some bottles of distilled spirits and rags from the kitchen. So equipped, they stepped down into the basement, Maria in the lead, Miss Shelley behind her holding the magic tool. The stairs went a surprisingly long way down into the ground, and the air grew noticeably cooler.
The basement was dark and apparently lined with blocks of ice, likely made from packed snow carried down from the mountain's peak, the walls insulated to hold in the cold. Meats of various kinds hung from hooks, and a huge stack of clear ice blocks stood in one corner, likely meant to be cut to chill drinks.
At the far end of the basement, a cliché hidden door into what would have been an otherwise indistinguishable length of basement wall stood open, as if someone had forgotten to close it. Their lamps made the hanging meats cast strange shadows as they made their way to the open panel, and Maria saw a rough stone passage leading downwards into the dark.
"Some kind of cave system?" Larna Smith suggested, her breath fogging slightly in the basement's chill.
"That can't be good," Rafael said. "Caves never hold anything good in stories and myths. They'd have hollows and giant bugs with acid breath and and spiders that can turn parasitize you into a puppet and worms and towers of badly constructed wooden scaffolding in them."
"We're still far above what treaty has declared as ground level," Maria said. "The King Below would not see this as trespass."
"You're worrying about talking rats now?" Larna Smith asked.
"I am a knight," Maria said. "I have to consider the consequences of my actions, especially if such actions are committed in the realm of The King Below. Sorcier has not had a war in my lifetime, and I would rather that course of events continue. Miss Shelley, would you grab some meat for a suitable offering, just in case we meet of warriors of The King Below's royal vanguard?"
Miss Shelley grabbed a nearby package labelled 'cut bacon'. Then she held it out to Larna Smith, looking pointedly at the bag she was carrying.
A pack of bacon heavier, lamps held high, the four descended into the yawning darkness. Some steps had been cut to help with their footing, but for the most part the descent was treacherous, as condensation from the cold slicked the stone, and mosses clung underfoot, ready to trip the unwary with a long, painful, possibly comical tumble.
Fortunately, no one suffered any such tumble as they went down and the passage leveled off into a wider space. Their lamps barely gave them a sense of it, but it seemed large, and Maria didn't hear any telltale sounds of things hiding in the dark beyond their lamps.
Then the space brightened, revealing rough, natural stone walls and several darkened passageways. Miss Shelley had found a brazier with some oiled wood in it and lit it with her lamp. The greater light revealed old wooden tables, shelves that were mostly empty except for some empty bottles and other discarded tools, and a row of empty wooden cages along one wall. Little bumps of the ground were revealed to be rusting chains and manacles, and there were unlit lamps and more braziers scattered around the room.
"Yup," Rafael said quietly, even as his voice echoed slightly in the confines. "Dark Magic research lab."
Maria looked at where he was staring. There, in a relatively large and level area of the cave they found themselves in, were the faded yet familiar marks of a Dark Magic sacrifice ritual circle.
Larna knelt down to examine the marks. "This is old," she said quietly. "It's been scuffed out in a bunch of places."
"Probably dates to the last vacation Sirius had here," Rafael said, then swore. "That bitch! It was supposed to be a mother-son bonding vacation and she bought work? Even with Sirius she was a garbage mother!"
"You're a good half-brother to be insulted on your dead half-brother's behalf," Maria said distractedly as she knelt down, examining the floor herself. In the firelight, she could barely make out footprints formed from dirty feet stepping on damp stone. She looked up, following them as they led toward one of the darkened passages. She pointed. "That way."
Miss Shelley checked the magic tool she was still carrying, which was pointing vaguely in the same direction as the passage and nodding, confirming their direction
Maria led the way once more as everyone tried to walk quietly, lest they warn anyone else down here, which was at least one person. However, as they crossed the center of the cleared chamber, passing over the center of the now ruined ritual circle, a chill seemed to come over all of them, halting them in their tracks.
All around them, in random places around the room, indistinct figures in shadows of crimson and black were appearing, seemingly rising out of the floor.
"Dieke… " came the whisper in the dead, dark air. "Dieke… Dieke… Dieke…"
The figures straightened, rising tall, resolving themselves into the figures of children of many different ages clad in rags, men with the glint of scholarly madness in their eyes and knives in their hands, and figures wearing the uniforms of House Dieke servants bearing fork-like catchpoles with sharpened tines. Faces contorted in expressions of pain, madness and betrayal, they all stared at Rafael with glowing eyes that burned with hate.
"Oh, dung pies…" Rafael muttered in horrified realization.
"Dieke… Dieke… Dieke…"
Maria drew her last grenade, and flicked open the nearest lantern, sticking in the wick. The fuse began to burn. "Larna, clear us a path and run!" she cried as she faced the horde of restless dark spirits, saber in one hand, rapidly burning bomb in the other.
"Dieke… Dieke… Dieke…"
There was a sudden burst of wind that almost extinguished her bomb as Larna sent wind magic blasting towards the passage the tracks led to, pushing the dark spirits out of the way. Maria waited a beat, eyeing the fuse, then ran after them and threw the bomb behind her at the last minute. There were no cries of pain as the explosive went off, but it did seem to stun them and damage their corporeal forms as Maria placed herself at the mouth of the passage her companions had run into.
"Dieke… Dieke… Dieke…"
Instinctively, she reached for her short sword, but of course didn't find it. It was still in some ogre's guts. Not deterred, she drew her dagger, backing slowly into the passage. The dark spirits followed after her, crowding together and bumping into one another. Besides the long catchpoles, some carried knives, scalpels, clubs and lengths of chain and manacles picked up off the floor, but most were armed only with their bare hands.
"Dieke… Dieke… Dieke…"
The walls narrowed to either side of her, creating a bottleneck. Maria stopped retreating.
"Dieke… Dieke… Dieke…"
"His name…" Maria said as she prepared to stand her ground, "is Rafael WALT!"
Her sword flashed as Maria proceeded to kill that which was already dead, to make sure they stayed that way.
Huh. Was this what that rude person who had disturbed her rest had felt?
A few minutes later, she found her companions walking back towards her along the passage.
"We heard them stop screaming," Rafael explained simply as he moved to hug her, before seeming to hesitate as he realized she was still covered in ogre blood and viscera. "Are you hurt?"
"Nothing I wasn't able to heal myself," Maria said. She nodded down the passage. "Shall we continue?"
A few minutes more down the path, they found a blonde woman.
It wasn't her mother.