This wasn’t going to be subtle.

Watchmen marched down a tunnel, the sound of dozens of boots on stonework cacophonous to the point I’d covered my still-enhanced ears. They’d broken out armor for this, breastplates shining as they trod through the narrow tunnels, barely able to fit two across. Rifles had been traded for pistols and swords for the close-quarters the tunnels would force on them.

It made for a cramped passage and a worse racket as they walked. I’d have gone in more subtly, but I wasn’t in charge here.

I kept back, mostly an observer for this one. My position in the formal hierarchy in the Watch could best be described as a ‘tolerated person we are no longer allowed to touch’. I was here at Malstein’s invitation, and I was only too aware of how much the Watch Captain tolerated my presence as a means to an end.

I took some petty pleasure in the fact he’d seemed happier to have me alone than one of the others with us. Tagashin, in full Voltar disguised, was singing a merry discordant song whose tune she had to be mangling on purpose. She increased the volume every time Doctor Dawes winced next to her, and he seemed to be on the verge of asking me for something to cover his ears.

I had some, and it would be sufficient payment for having asked him to be between Tagashin and me. That was a punishment without any real crime causing it.

“Are we close?” Doctor Dawes asked Malstein ahead of us, voice raised to try and drown out Tagashin’s singing.

“Close,” Malstein yelled back, having wisely stuck us, more specifically Tagashin, a good thirty feet behind the main body of Watch. “We should be in a position to take the second entrance as well by now, and they should have no route to escape from.”

Should was the operative word, hoping that the occupants were still alive. Depended on how long the Changer had decided they needed them alive.

I eyed the ceiling, where crafted stone occasionally dripped water onto the floor below. Dwarf work was very fine, but there were still cracks and places for leaks to occur. And that was probably from the cistern, which from what I’d read was a miracle of dwarven engineering. Like all feats of dwarven engineering were, impossibilities for everyone else up until recently when the explosion of steam and arcane mechanics had begun to match them.

Since the dwarves left, how long since these tunnels had been maintained properly? We hadn’t had time before coming down here.

It hadn’t been as simple as heading straight into the underground of course. There’d been talks with the Delver’s Guild, about the locations of monster types that produced Sulfuric Acid naturally. They’d given us six back, and four were patrolled far too regularly by Delvers for the gang to be in that area.

That left two, both of which had their own reasons for being good spots. The one we were checking first was deep underground, nestled underneath an old dwarven cistern repurposed for use by the city. There was only one place large enough to host a large group down here, which was better than the potentially dozens of places in the abandoned dwarven town of Kreshern we’d head to next. It had been a long trek, nearly four hours underground through winding tunnels, halting to deal with the occasional creature roaming about.

Most knew to stay away from groups this large, and a volley of pistol fire had sufficed to drive off the rest. More warnings to our enemies. Did Malstein have some trick?

Ah, he was talking to one of the mages he’d brought along. I hadn’t talked to either, although overheard conversation had indicated one was a hydrologist. Smart move given the cistern. Then what was the other-?

An ear-splitting shriek suddenly echoed across the tunnels. My hands immediately clamped over the clothes covering my ears.

Sound mage. Well, that was one method of suppressing an enemy you would never catch off-guard.

Several Watch rushed in, barking orders to drop weapons and surrender. Those stopped almost immediately, no other sounds following till three members of the Watch rushed back out and proceeded to empty their stomachs on the tunnel floor.

It didn’t take long for the smell to travel the tunnel’s length to us. The stench of death made my stomach churn a little but I forced it calm. Damnations.

Malstein moved forward, muttering angrily to himself. Probably reaching the same conclusion I had. We’d been too late in getting here.

More Watch funneled out, one moving to Malstein while using a hand on the wall to steady themselves.

“It’s a fucking mess in there, sir,” he whispered to Malstein, not low enough for me to miss even with the sounds of boot on stone as the remaining Watch moved to help their comrades. “If someone’s alive, they’re not going to be much longer.”

I limped past, the pain in my leg a constant dull as I moved past the milling Watch. Malstein was ordering them forward but said nothing to me as I reached the door.

This had started out as a storage room, barrels of water and dwarven spirits found when Her Majesty decided that she wanted the underground. Those had all been removed, and you could see the beds, tables, even an arcane stove and other amenities that had been added when the Pure Bloods made it a base.

Now it was an abattoir that put my devouring of the cows to shame.

It was hard to tell when one body began and another ended, not just because so many littered the ground but because they’d been so thoroughly torn apart. Scattered limbs, heads, and corpse parts even smaller were spread across the floor, a small pool of blood an inch deep spanning the entire room. A hundred feet by a hundred, and still it was impossible to find a spot where there wasn’t a piece of someone on the floor.

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I put a handkerchief to my nose to block the smell as I stepped inside, carefully keeping my hooves away from the body parts. Experience had taught me that getting a bone or chunk of flesh wedged in there could take hours to get pried out.

“Probably more than one attacked,” I said, raising my voice so the handkerchief wouldn’t muffle it too badly. “Otherwise I imagine some would have made it past the door.”

That or the changer had cleaned up afterward, but there would be no purpose to that.

“Poor bastards didn’t have a chance,” Malstein noted, while Dawes turned his attention clinically to a severed arm close by the door. “Hard to tell from how many strewn about the pieces are but they look like they were standing in clusters, except for the groups in the middle. Changers probably started at the doors and worked their way inwards.”

“Radius and Ulna bones have been severed cleanly,” Dawes noted as he examined the severed arm. “Flesh has been sheared through as well. I’ll need more time to examine it, but that’s a very fine blade moving with a lot of force to cut like that. Not at all as I’d expect from those bone weapons Changers have formed in the past.”

I frowned. “They did have a cache that included weapons in the warehouse. Could be they decided to use some of those.”

“Or perhaps someone else was responsible for this massacre,” Tagashin said in a faux-dramatic tone I was picking up on as her default for Voltar now that her glamour had worn off. “Perhaps the Black Flame?”

And now every eye in the room was focused on me. Oh joys

“Doubtful,” I answered. “Unless he’s upgraded the quality of his muscle, or figured out how to hide the signs of diabolism, no one Versalicci knows could have done this.”

Summoned devils could have maybe done this, but there was no smell of sulfur or taint on the astral. A glance there showed crossing patterns of blood formed into giant webs. This place would have to be purged before some greater spirits of violence started forming out of the massacre, but no signs of diabolism. I limped over to the wall, beginning to tap along the sides as I walked the perimeter.

“Noticed something?” Malstein said as I cleared a wall, turning to start the second.

“Some things you always pick up if you live long enough in the gangs,” I said, tapping gently on the wall. “One of them is you’re ever given something, always make sure it’s not a trap. If that thing is a location, the first thing you do is make it yours.”

“It’s solid brick,” Malstein noted.

“So you get creative,” I said. “Never trust a location till you’ve made it yours. You can never tell when it’s just a trap meant to be sprung later.”

Doctor Dawes cleared his throat. “I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything to your room.”

“I’ve done plenty there,” I muttered as I felt some more of the wall, testing each brick. “I’m hardly going to say what any of it was.”

In truth, there were three different mixtures just waiting in my lab, seemingly in-progress potions that if I was ever in a pinch, I could tip over or smash to unleash one of three plagues on Voltar and Dawes’ property. Fire, poison, and bees. Perhaps the insect-attracting pheromones weren’t the best idea but I was still working on something that could carry diabolic rot in it.

Malstein was right, these walls were quite solid brickwork, but when you could not go to the sides, go up or down. And up was several thousand gallons of water threatening to pour through with the slightest mistake. That left down.

“If it’s not in here, they might have made a secure little cubby off in the tunnels,” I mused as I eyed the stonework. Best not to do the same trick I’d done in the warehouse, I doubted the assorted Watch would appreciate me spreading diabolism around.

I looked at the blood-covered floor, looking for where the blood flowed. Watch members were setting about the grisly work of collecting the shredded and torn-apart corpses, most of them seeming on the verge of being violently ill. Quite a few weren’t even stepping inside.

Eventually, I found a spot where the blood was draining, and feeling with my finger I felt a gap that the blood was pouring through.

“I have something, but the blood has to be filling it up,” I said. “Can we get this cleaned out of here?”

It took longer than I’d liked, and the hydrologist seemed quite unhappy about the amount of human ichor that had spilled on her in the process, but it exposed the floor below. Including a quarter-inch thick line separating two of the bricks.

“Here,” I said. “Can someone get me a hook? A knife? Something to pry this out?”

Within a minute I had a dozen tools, only two of which actually helped in prying up the brick. It came out easily enough, but this wasn’t an escape route. They must not had had time to make one. No, this was a hiding spot.

I pried out more bricks and some of the Watch helped as the hole widened, exposing the next layer. Underneath was wood, and underneath that was the sound of panicked breathing coming up from down below.

“There’s someone down here,” I said. “Probably not a Pure Blood if they were going to be sealed in there.”

“Definitely not,” Malstein said, gesturing to a Watch member with a hammer. “Whoever is down there, this is the City Watch! Please stand still, and call out if any blows against the wood above might hurt you?”

There was no reply, but the breathing slowed a little.

“She’s calming down a bit,” I said. “You need a hand?”

“It’s only wood,” Malstein said and raised the hammer.

“Stop!”

Faux-Voltar’s voice rang out. Malstein barely stopped in time, the interruption slowing but not stopping the swing of the hammer. It fell from his grip, and I reached out, grabbing it by the head.

“Ghrrk!” The damned thing was heavy. Malstein managed to snatch the end of the handle, pulling it back just before the hammerhead drove my hand into the wood planks.

“Detective?” he asked Tagashin while I winced and examined my hand. Nothing had broken, thankfully.

“The third board from the top,” Tagashin said. “It bends slightly in the middle, almost as if there’s more weight on it than the others.”

Looking at it, it did, a tiny, almost imperceptible bend. I had no idea how the Kitsune had spotted that, or if she’d detected it some other way and sized on the board’s bend to preserve her disguise.

“Might not be a trap,” Malstein noted, eyeing the board. “Probably best not to risk it. Explosive of some kind?”

“Probably,” I answered, rubbing my hand with the other as I moved back from the hole. “We could tunnel around it. Did anyone bother to bring a pick?”

***

Someone had bothered to bring a pick, several in fact, and they were traded frequently as breastplates were taken off and people traded shifts on the mining. Apparently, when the Watch wore breastplates they wore uniforms that were much thinner and more form-fitting, which I wouldn’t complain about in the slightest.

My broken leg meant I couldn’t help, so instead I stood by the hole they’d dug watching, bemoaning the fact I was not helping. Definitely that and nothing else.

“You may want to close your mouth some,” Tagashin whispered to me.

It was one panicked attempt to shut my mouth later that I realized it was already shut and glared at the kitsune. They were almost through down there, and I moved over to the wooden boards as they broke through.

“There’s an Infernal in here!” one of them yelled. “Chests, papers, some blood that's fallen through. Nothing got damaged. Can you speak?”

A barking cough was the answer, and then a raspy voice asking for water. My ears perked up. Raspy thought it was, I recognized it immediately.

So, this is where Kalasyp has ended up. It would be interesting to hear exactly how.