Installment 31 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment031.png]

Al stood and held the torch out. The other end of the cellar was partially walled off, forming a separate chamber. In the dim light at the edge of his vision, he could indistinctly see some objects littering the floor. He walked closer until he could see clearly, then stopped immediately.

In the next chamber, an arcane circle was drawn on the floor in a dark reddish-brown color that suggested dried blood. The inside was marked with a pentagram, the corners of which had black partially-melted candles. Four of the candles had fleshy lumps next to them, which Al was horrified to realize were hearts.

Inside the pentagram was a human skeleton wearing a fine purple gown with gold trim, with its arms, legs, and head arranged in conjunction with the points of the pentagram.

"Do not touch any of that," Al warned the others, "and stay away from the edge of the circle. I haven't had much time to study this sort of thing, and there's no telling what horrible things might happen if we disturb any of it. Or what horrible things may have already happened, either."

The three of them leaned as close as they dared in order to see better. There appeared to be some rips in the sleeve and the gown's right side, stained with old blood. Several bones of the right hand were missing, and some of the ones that weren't missing appeared to be broken.

"I can't tell what was going on here. I can't tell if ...she?... was some sort of sacrifice to who-knows-what, or the object of whatever ritual was going on here, or just a part of the spell itself," Al observed. "Do either of you have any idea what this is?"

"Shaman stuff," came Gruntle's unexpected voice from behind Al, who reflexively spun around to find himself facing a bloody chunk of giant-rat haunch that Gruntle was holding out to him. "Shaman gets share of food if shaman wants."

Wikwocket laughed. "Hey, I ate some, it's really not that bad! Go ahead and try a piece!"

Al decided he'd get the least hassle if he accepted the dare. He drew out his knife and cut a thumbnail-sized piece of flesh from the haunch.

"Thank you, Gruntle," he said. Then, making stern, defiant eye-contact with Wikwocket, he put the bit of meat in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

He assumed not as bad as expected was the best he could hope for, and that's what he got.

"How about you, Bote?" he offered, passing the dare along.

"The giant rat is actually quite flavorful and nourishing," Bote replied, "but I only eat them if they are properly cooked. I appreciate that it has been offered, however."

The last of the rat disappeared into Gruntle's jaws with squishy bone-cracking sounds and was quickly swallowed.

"I assume you don't know anything about this, do you?" Al asked Gruntle, pointing to the magic circle.

Gruntle eyed it suspiciously.

"Got magic shaman words and a name on it."

Al was surprised. "What name?" he asked.

"Don't know who it is. Just know it's a name. Someone important."

"Like the voices from those suits of armor? You understand it but you can't read it?"

Grunt.

"Is it the name of the dead woman here? Or someone else?"

"Don't know."

"Hmmm."

Al pondered fruitlessly, and gave a resigned sigh. "I guess we're not going to figure out anything else here right now, unless maybe something's hidden."

"I do not believe there is anything else to find," Bote asserted, "Sloppy construction like this wouldn't hide anything well. I see nothing to suggest secret tunnels or stones that are any looser than any of the others."

"Do we just leave this here like it is? Maybe we should get rid of all this stuff," Wikwocket said, looking skeptically at the skeleton lying in the pentagram. "Too bad the dress is way too tall for me."

"I don't think that'd be a good idea anyway," said Al, "since I don't know enough about these things to say whether or not it's keeping something metaphysically locked up inside. If it is, breaking the circle would let it out, which would probably be very dangerous for us."

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That seemed to settle the matter. After a little more discussion, they decided to return upstairs and continue their search. Wikwocket did try to persuade them to spend a few minutes uncorking one of the barrels and filling one of their empty potion-bottles with spirits of ale from it, but Al talked her out of it.

They ascended the stairs out of the cellar and went through the kitchen, past the carelessly-discarded pile of giant-rat skin, the evidently-less-tasty organs, and a few bones that remained of Gruntle's snack. Back in the hallway, they stood once again before the double-doors. Al quietly got Gruntle to listen for any activity on the other side, and Wikwocket subjected them to her usual safety examination. Both indicated things seemed safe, so Al pushed on one of the doors. It swung open with some effort.

Inside was a large feast-hall. There was a massive dining table centered in the room, with eight large, sturdy chairs around it, a few of which were broken with their pieces scattered nearby. A few cracked plates were on the table in places that didn't particularly line up with the chairs. They were piled with bones that appeared to have been thoroughly gnawed upon by something. Moldy spots grew on the small scraps of flesh that were still on the bones. Unlit candles stood in a row down the center of the table. Al noted there were several more torch-sconces around the room, a few of which were empty and the rest containing what was left of completely burned-out ordinary torches. In the far corner of the room, stone steps ran along the walls to the upper floor of the keep.

Behind the seat at the head of the table was a fireplace, above which was what traditionally would have been the coat of arms associated with whoever was running the keep. The shield upon which the heraldry would be painted was blank and dull from lack of polishing. A pair of longswords were crossed behind the shield - Al noted that they appeared to be real swords rather than ornamental, though in need of polishing and sharpening.

The most striking feature of the room, though, were the portraits. To the left of the fireplace was a near-life-sized portrait of a slightly chubby young noble wearing expensive-looking clothing, posed to look towards the viewers with a haughty expression. His arm hung possessively over the shoulders of a strikingly beautiful but bored-looking young woman wearing a cloth-of-gold gown. A strip of golden metal at the bottom of the frame read: "and Baroness Julia". The engraving was offset from the center with a substantial amount of blank space before it, and some after, as though the engraver had forgotten to fill in the rest of the names.

On the right side of the fireplace, the other portrait showed an older man wearing clothing identical to the one in the left portrait - perhaps an ancestor, or a later portrait of the same man. The man scowled angrily in this one, his eyes averted. There was a golden metal strip in this frame as well, but it was smooth and blank.

Both portraits were badly ripped as if by claws.

"Whoever the nameless fellow is, the beast isn't very happy with him, is it?" observed Bote.

"Maybe it's jealous of Baroness Julia there, it looks like her part of the portrait escaped the worst of the clawing," said Al.

"Well, clearly Baroness Julia is the kidnapped beast-princess!" Wikwocket speculated cheerfully.

Al rolled his eyes. "Or the dead woman down in the cellar. She doesn't look especially beastly, does she?"

"Probably transformed by an evil wizard. They do that sort of thing. She'll be waiting for a kiss of her true love to free her from her curse and return her to her beauteous fanged and clawed self!"

"Yeah, you see, there are several problems with that idea. First, I think being long dead goes way beyond a mere curse. Second, those stories generally call for the alleged true love to be pure of heart. That means their own hearts, not the ones they've ripped out of innocent victims to use in some sort of horrible magical ritual. That doesn't seem like pure of heart behavior to me."

Wikwocket gave Al a defiant look.

"I'll bet you one gold coin that Baroness Julia is what the beast is here for."

Al returned Wikwocket's look with a defiant glare of his own. "I'll take that bet. There's no guarantee we'll be able to find out, but if we do, I'll be happy to take your gold when you turn out to be wrong."

The bet was formalized with a firm handshake.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll find out soon enough," Wikwocket said. "This place isn't all that large, and from what I saw outside there's only one more floor above this one. Unless the beast is on the roof or isn't here tonight, we'll probably run into it up there."

"Do you expect it to explain to us what's going on instead of, oh, I don't know, trying to murder us and rip out our hearts?"

"It might do both. Either way, I think it'll tell us somehow."

Al held the torch higher, and visually followed the steps in the corner of the room up to the opening in the ceiling that they led to. Then he looked across the ceiling itself, and then the floor. He took his pack off and set it on the table. He took one of the two crossbow bolts he'd tied a glass container of the ultraphlogisticated oil to and considered it thoughtfully.

"Oh, are you going to wind up your wand of fire so you can bake the beast when we find it?" Wikwocket asked excitedly.

Al gave the floor and ceiling another glance, then shook his head.

"No, I'd better not. The walls may be stone, but the floor and ceiling and furniture are all old wood and cloth. I'm afraid if I broke open the alchemical fire in here the whole place would burn down around us. I'd be tempted to do it on purpose, but then we'd have to wait around for the fire to die down and spend days digging through the wreckage trying to find the beast's remains to make sure it's gone, and if it escapes or maybe isn't even here, it may kill more innocent people before we can find it again. On top of that, this place legally belongs to whoever the monarchy has put in charge here, and we can't afford to pay to have it rebuilt. I'm not sure what our penalty is for burning down a government-owned keep but I don't want to find out by personal experience."

"Aw, where's your sense of adventure?"

"Right now, it's patiently listening to the advice of my sense of not-wanting-to-be-killed-and-eaten-or-burned. It's also telling me that if I need a hand free to use my mace for wizardry or self-defense, and I need a hand to hold this torch so I can see, I need two more hands to hold this crossbow. So, it's not really even practical for me to bring a crossbow into the situation right now."

"But what if you ended up needing a sudden fire anyway, unexpectedly? Wouldn't it be better to be prepared?"

"You just want to see a huge explosion of flame, don't you," Al accused Wikwocket.

"Well...yes. Don't you?"

"Yes, actually, but not while I'm going to be what's burning!"

"At least keep one out where you can reach it, just in case. You could always throw it or something," Wikwocket pleaded.

Al relented.

"All, right. Just one. But, I swear if I get burned to death my charred, smouldering spirit will haunt you."

"Oh, how dramatic! That one's going in the retelling, too!"