A Terrifying Secret Revealed

In the kitchen, Illayana follows the tracks through the door into the scullery. She sees that the tracks lead to a set of stairs leading down, presumably to the cellar.

Thamila follows her and wrinkles her nose from the smell of damp decay from the same mold throughout the house. The smell must be worse because the room is smaller, she thinks to herself.

Ned comes in and turns around looking about the room. He steps backward onto the top step, and hideous soul-tormenting screams rise from the cellar below.

Thamila and Illayana stop dead in their tracks, their eyes wide in terror from the sound. The two women quickly back out the door into the kitchen and turn to run out the door.

Kenku puts a hand on her frightened sister's arm and makes shushing sounds to keep her from running. And Darvin grabs hold of the little halfling before she can make it to the door.

As the screams fade Darvin says, "I think we just learned the secret of the haunted house. That must have been a warning spell set by the slavers using this house. Should we descend or continue to search the house first?"

Illayana shakes a little and replies, "You may be correct, but I'm not ready to subject myself to those screams again so soon. But if we do search the rest of the house, we should be on alert for the slavers. I'm sure they heard the screams as well."

Ned adds, "It's probably best we look around some more, wouldn't want someone to sneak down those stairs behind us."

Kenku claps her hands and bounces a little, "We explore!" she trills.

They make their way out of the kitchen and back towards the entrance hall. The room to their right appears to have once been a dining room. A long broken table lies in the middle of the room and there are broken dishes and chairs scattered around.

Looking into the room to their left, they see a fireplace with two stuffed armchairs on either side of it. The chair covers have both been torn off and the stuffing pulled out.

Thamila looks at Darvin and says, "We should probably stay away from fireplaces in this house."

He rubs his hand where the spiders had bit him and readily agrees.

Back in the entry hall, the group decides to investigate the eastern wing of the house before following the tracks to the western wing.

Illayana looks through the doorway into a bare living room. Then she looks up at the ceiling and says, "It's a good thing we stayed away from the soft spots in the floor of the room above. It looks like this ceiling it's so weak one step would bring it crashing down."

"This room's ceiling is the same," Thamila calls from down the hall, "And it's empty except for a clump of tiny red mushrooms growing in a semicircle around the fireplace."

"That's not empty," Illayana says and deftly slips around the halfling to investigate. The eladrin kneels close to the mushrooms and whispers to them like she did earlier with the overgrown rosebush.

Unable to help himself, Darvin follows her in to peek about the room while the eladrin is on the floor communing with the fungi. Poking about the chimney he notices a loose stone just above the top of the fireplace. He pries it loose finding a small leather pouch stuffed inside the small cavity.

"I thought we agreed no fireplaces," Thamila calls from the doorway.

"It will be fine," Darvin replies.

But naturally, the human's prying disturbed a swarm of spiders living within the cracks and crevices of the fireplace and chimney. The arachnids come flooding out, crawling along both his and Illayan's arms and legs.

The eladrin sits up unaware of what has transpired around her and announces, "They're harmless." She then looks down and sees the spiders crawling on her.

Illayana stands up saying, "We need to get out of here." And she pushes Darvin out the door in front of her.

The eladrin druid steps through the door while whispering to the spirits of nature, turns, and rubs her hands down along the door frame. The scent of mint fills the area and the spiders skitter away, retreating from the smell.

Thamila looks at Darvin, puts her hands on her hips, and says, "What did we say about fireplaces?"

"It was worth it," he replies. The human opens the pouch, and dumps its contents into his other hand, "Look at that! Two blue quartz!"

The halfling's eyes light up when she sees the quartz. They remind her of the aquamarine crystal in her pouch given to her by her patron Neptis, the ancient water elemental who saved her life.

Darvin puts the gems back in the pouch and then into his bag. He was thankful no one objected because he could definitely use them.

Thamila and Illayana take the lead and head toward the west wing to continue searching the house. The hallway has three doors, one on either side and one at the end.

Thamila opens the door to the left and looks in the room. Inside the walls are lined with empty bookshelves with most of their shelves broken. The halfling's eyes light up when she sees an untidy heap of books on the floor. She skips over to the pile hoping to find a book of poetry.

Thamila blows the cobwebs and vermin droppings off a book named Petaled Phrases and picks it up. She is delighted to find that it is indeed a book of poetry and flips through the book before dropping it into her pack.

Darvin comes into the room after Thamila and they investigate the rest of the books together. Most of them are dull histories and collections of poems. The halfling kept getting distracted from reading every poetry book she found. Among the books they did however find three noteworthy titles.

The Magical Properties of Gemstones by the Archmage Tenser.
The Magical Properties of Herbs and Flowers by the Archmage Tenser.
The Metaphysics of Mathematics by the mage Nystul

Thamila flips through The Metaphysics of Mathematics and finds a piece of torn parchment tucked inside the front cover. The parchment contains a few handwritten, but mostly illegible words. Despite its age and dampness, she makes out the words, beyond skeletons.

"Skeletons!" Ned exclaims from right behind the halfling.

Thamila jumps a mile and squeaks before spinning around to find Ned right behind her. She didn't know how long he had been there looking over her shoulder and it was a bit unnerving.

Ned continues, "I told you we shouldn't be here."

"And I've told you, we can protect you," Darvin responds trying to hide his exasperated tone, "We're done in here. We should head across the hall and take a look around that room." Then the human heads out into the hall.

Thamila tucks the books into her pack along with another one of the nicer-looking books of poetry and quickly follows him out the door.

In the room across the hall, Darvin examines a rotted and partially broken wooden writing desk. He can tell most of the drawers were forcibly opened, then tossed and scattered across the floor. However, Darvin knew he wouldn't be thwarted by the still-locked central drawer like the previous thieves. The human pulls out some picks from his pouch, begins to fiddle with the lock, and easily pops the drawer open.

Inside he sifts through old documents and receipts for the purchases of laboratory equipment and various chemicals. Darvin feels around the back of the drawer and discovers a small hidden compartment exactly where he expected it to be. He pulls something wrapped in cloth out of the cubby hole. He carefully opens the cloth and within it are two glass vials filled with a red liquid.

These might come in handy, he says to himself and pops them into his pouch.

Back in the hall, Kenku marches up to the door at the end of the hall and grasps the knob, "Last door!" she tweets.

But before the kenku can turn the knob, a loud and malevolent voice booms, "Welcome, fools - Welcome to your deaths!" followed by booming, fiendish laughter.