Installment 30 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment030.png]

Al's torchlight revealed the room to have once been for bathing. A tub sat in the middle of the room, its bottom covered with a dark, foul-smelling, gelatinous congealed film. There was also a full-height mirror, which the trail of stains brought them to before continuing to the tub. Dried, flaking blood made streaks of smeared handprints on the mirror. Like the footprints they were following, the handprints looked almost human.

"These aren't the same as the prints we saw in the village, right?" Al asked. "The ones there looked more like some sort of wolf or bear, didn't they?"

"They did," confirmed Bote. "Perhaps what we see here is not related to the beast we are hunting?"

"Or maybe the beast has grown and changed over time?" Al speculated.

"Or maybe the beast we're after is a descendant of a long line of beasts, degraded and malformed from generations of inbreeding, like royalty!" suggested Wikwocket. "I mean, not Casusian royalty, you know, but other places," she dutifully corrected herself with only a little sarcasm.

"So, whatever killed the servant came in here and tried to wash the blood off in the bath?" Al looked as closely into the bathtub as he could without gagging. "Not much left now, but how is there any moisture left in there after the amount of time it took for the remains to be completely skeletonized?"

"I think I see some lighter spots heading away from the bath back towards the door," Wikwocket said, kneeling to look closely at the floor.

"Can you follow it back out? Because I'd like to leave and close the door again as soon as possible," Al urged. The smell was becoming intolerable. Bote had already retreated back to the hallway, and even Gruntle seemed to be trying not to breathe deeply. Wikwocket seemed to agree with the sentiment, leading them back out into the hallway and around the corner in the direction they hadn't explored yet. Al closed the bathroom door behind them, then hurried to get away from the stench. He caught up to the others as they paused in front of a set of double-doors halfway down the hall. Like the front doors of the keep, they were iron-bound oak. These had a pattern of small holes in them, outlining a shape as if something decorative had once been nailed to the doors. The shape resembled the outline they'd seen on banners by the entrance.

Before Al could suggest carefully pushing one of the doors to see if they could get a look inside, Gruntle turned to look further down the hall, where there was a smaller door at the end in the opposite wall. His ears twitched, and he sniffed the air.

"What is it?" Al asked, quietly.

"Food!" Gruntle almost whispered, stalking quietly down the hall. Wikwocket gave Al a shrug, and followed Gruntle just as quietly.

"I suppose if they hear something, we wouldn't want to leave it behind us anyway," Bote said softly. "At least they're both trying not to make a lot of noise this time."

"I guess so. Wikwocket's small and light, so it's perfectly reasonable that she should be able to move quietly. I'm still not used to seeing that from something as large as a gnoll, though. I guess it's best to let the sneaky ones take a covert look before we stomp our own noisy way over there."

Gruntle and Wikwocket seemed to share a short, nonverbal discussion over who should push the door open, which Wikwocket seemed to win. Crouched with her eyes at the crack to see through, she slowly opened it. Then, her face expressed mild disappointment and annoyance, while Gruntle grinned and suddenly shoved through into the room.

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"Just big rats," Wikwocket griped. From inside the room there was some unexpectedly deep chittering and squeaking of alarm, along with the sound of a single impact of a heavy object against flesh and bone. Al and Bote jogged up to look at what was going on.

The room appeared to be a kitchen. Cabinets around the room were all wide open and largely empty. Shards of pottery were scattered on the floor. A few scraps of dried meat were on the ground, one piece gripped in the teeth of what would have seemed an ordinary rat if it weren't the size of a dog. Its skull was messily crushed against the floor.

A few other giant rats were fleeing down an open trapdoor in the floor, through which some wooden stairs downwards could be seen. In the wall was a long-cold hearth with a small pile of dusty wood stacked next to it.

Gruntle hung the flail back on his belt.

"Cook it?" he asked, pointing to the broken-headed rat-creature.

Al suppressed an expression of disgust. "No time for that." he answered. He regretted it immediately as Gruntle picked the creature up from the floor, its head oozing, and bit into the foreleg.

Bote looked away and made his way across the kitchen to the stairs. "It's not as if it was a person," they muttered quietly to Al, "This is simply the way of nature. Gruesome, messy nature."

Al moved to follow Bote, though for the first few steps he couldn't help staring in morbid fascination as Gruntle gnawed the foreleg loose and began noisily eating it, bones and all. Al turned away when Gruntle held the rest of the rat out, offering it to Wikwocket who seemed only slightly less horrified than Al was.

"Please don't eat the whole thing, we don't have time for snacking. We're just going to go on ahead and look downstairs. I'd appreciate it if you were both there to back us up if there's something horrible down there."

Trying to ignore the sound of bone-cracking and chewing behind him, Al knelt down and held the torch out down the stairs. They were steep, and went down about ten feet. The cellar walls and floor were rough stone. Al could see some barrels on their side along the wall to the distance that his torchlight reached. It sounded as though something was squeezing past the gaps between the barrels, and Al hoped the huge rats had some sort of burrow behind them that they were retreating to.

"If you would prefer, I will go down first. This isn't much different from home for me, aside from the sloppy masonry-work here," Bote offered.

"Yes, I'll be right behind you though."

Bote descended, with Al immediately behind. The cellar was mostly empty, aside from the barrels stacked along the wall on the cold stone floor. Al's sinuses burned from oak-scented alcoholic fumes hanging in the stale cellar air.

"Well, we know where to come if we get thirsty, at least," Bote commented.

"Or if we wanted to burn the whole place down. Spirits of ale get very flammable once they're distilled far enough. Judging by the smell in here everything in those barrels has probably been distilled several times, so it'd probably catch fire easily if we poured any out."

Wikwocket came down the stairs. Al turned to look and saw her chewing thoughtfully with a look of mild distaste on her face. She saw him looking at her in disbelief.

"I had to at least try a little piece. It's actually not as bad as I thought it would be. It might actually be pretty good if you cook it and season it properly. Whoa, smells like a party in here! Is that the good stuff?"

"Depends who made it."

Al leaned closer to examine the barrels. They were entirely devoid of any maker's mark. He walked down the row of barrels until halfway down, he found a sheet of parchment nailed to the top of one. It bore the seal of the royal Casusian treasury and certified that the taxes for the contents of these barrels had been paid by... someone. The space where the name should have been was completely blank.

The date on the certificate was just over a year ago.

"This is very strange. Take a look at this," Al said.

"No," Bote replied, staring intently further into the cellar, "I think you should look at this first."