Eli and Victoria entered the large, two story building. The ground floor was a mess hall with rows of wooden tables and bench seats. There were no torches lit inside, and the waning sun provided little light through the windows, but neither of them had any trouble seeing in the dark.
"Still no auras," Victoria said.
Eli made his way to one of the tables, "there's still food in the bowls, I'd guess dinner by the looks of it. It's too cold to be from tonight."
Victoria shifted through the frequencies of her auravision until a trail along the floor began to glow. She crouched to inspect it and found it was dirt. Even dirt was full of life which emanated auras, but the glow was unusually bright for dirt. This soil was packed full of organisms. Looking back, she noticed the trail led out the door they had entered.
"I've got something," she said as she followed the trail.
It led around the back of the serving counter, into the alley kitchen behind it. There were utensils and pots scattered on the floor, and the trail thickened into piles of soil. At the far end of the alley kitchen was a door that had been burst through, leaving a large splintered hole big enough for a person. Beyond the splintered door was a storage closet with yet more piles of dirt and fallen debris, including a wooden shelving unit that had toppled over. She looked back over the trail of dirt, noting the lines cut through it from what she guessed to be from the heels of someone being dragged away.
"I think someone tried to hide in here, and got dragged out."
"What's with all the dirt?" Eli asked, leaning to peer over the serving counter.
"I don't know," Victoria replied.
There were clear, corked bottles of sauce on the serving counter, and Victoria looked around the kitchen until she found an empty one. She used a small spoon from the floor to scoop some of the soil into the bottle, and then corked it shut.
----------------------------------------
Titus stepped up onto the elevated platform of the lumber mill. It was a simple setup, two wooden platforms on either side of a central channel that bisected the structure. The floor of the channel had protruding wooden gears with angled hooks for teeth to pull logs along through the tall vertical sawblade near one end of the channel, which appeared to be rigged to reciprocate when the mill was in operation. Since the mill had no access to running water for a watermill, there was instead a horizontal wheel beside the mill with spokes to harness animals to turn the wheel and operate the mill. All the straps of the harness had been cut, and the only sign of the animals were deep huff prints in the soil leading off into the woods.
Titus crouched and peered into the channel, but found nothing of interest. There was a rack on one side of the platform he where assumed tools were normally stored, but it was empty besides a pair of long-handled hooks he guessed where used to position logs in the channel. He moved to the edge of the platform and looked out over the grounds.
The most obvious feature of the grounds were the wheel ruts driven into the soil by the cart now abandoned in the middle of camp. It had driven straight over the camp's fire, scattering coals across the ground in its wake. The ruts came from the east, where a wide channel of stumps cut through the woods. He looked around for footprints surrounding the mill, but couldn't discern any one set from another in the layers crisscrossing tracks.
----------------------------------------
Autumn had to push hard to open the door to the barracks, the edge of the door scraped against the frame as it came unstuck. Iris pulled a lit lantern from her bottomless bag as she and Autumn entered. After much experimentation, she had determined the flame would stay lit when placed inside the bag, and no oil would be used while it was stored in the void. The inside of the barracks looked entirely as they would expect, rows of narrow beds on either side of a long, rectangular room. Beside each bed was a small square nightstand with a drawer and a cubby space at the bottom.
"What are we looking for?" Iris asked.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"No idea," Autumn said, "the others usually just kind of look around and point out random details, maybe we do that?"
"Hmm," Iris pondered as she followed Autumn down the narrow aisle between the beds down the center of the building, "there's no boots by any of the beds?" she suggested.
"Hmm, yes," Autumn concurred, "and the beds aren't made."
"I feel like loggers probably don't make their beds," Iris said.
"Good point, I bet you're right."
Iris made her way between two of the beds and pulled open the drawer of a nightstand. Inside she found a small waterskin, a crude drawing of a man, woman and a child, and a pair of socks. She blipped a few beds down -- rapidly shifting the shadows cast around the room by her lantern -- and opened another drawer at random. This time she found a knife, multiple pairs of socks, a few coins, and another waterskin.
"There's not much here," she said.
Autumn was leaning out the side door of the barracks, which was at the back of the building beyond the rows of beds. Outside she could see a well-worn path to the outhouse, but nothing else of note. She ducked back inside and closed the door.
"Nope," she agreed.
Iris blipped behind her and held up the lantern, "there's a note."
"What?" she asked, turning back to the door. She looked up and saw a small note nailed to the door, she hadn't noticed it because it was placed at eye-level for most people, which was well above her head.
"It says 'don't go alone,' what do you think that's about?" Iris asked.
"I guess they need help holding it, I don't know," Autumn shrugged.
They startled as the front door to the barracks cracked open, but were relieved to see it was Eli, Victoria and Titus entering the barracks.
"Find anything?" Eli asked.
"There's no boots," Iris explained, "the beds aren't made but we're pretty sure that's normal for loggers, and there's this weird note on the back door to the outhouse."
Eli made his way to the back door and inspected the note, "this door probably gets used a lot and the paper's not worn, it must have been put up recently."
"See?" Autumn looked at Iris, "who notices stuff like that?"
Iris shrugged.
"It's getting pretty dark out there," Eli announced, turning to face the room, "we'll stay in here tonight. You can look around for clues but we're uninvited guests, don't disrespect anyone's belongings."
Autumn dropped her pack and plopped onto the bed furthest back in the barracks and opposite the backdoor, "Titus, you take that one," pointing to the bed across from her beside the door.
"Why?" He asked, clearly annoyed at the command.
"Biggest guy between me and the nearest door," Autumn said, placing her hands behind her head and wiggling a comfortable crevice into the straw mattress.
"Why don't you just sleep further from the door?" He asked.
"Second closest bed to the outhouse," she answered simply with her eyes closed.
After everyone chose a bed and stowed their packs, Iris pulled a series of sandwiches from her bottomless bag. Each one was wrapped in a clean tan cloth with a name written on a small paper tag secured with string. Autumn had prepared them in the tavern's kitchen the night before they left the city, each one made to the specifications of a different party member.
"Titus," Iris said, reading a name on one of the sandwiches before looking up and blipping it across the room.
Titus was sitting on his bed beside the back door and removing some of his extraneous armor pieces when he glanced up at his name. Before he registered what was happening, the sandwich bounced off his chest plate. He gasped, dropping the metal bracer in his hands to clatter onto the floor as he lunged forward to catch the sandwich with a scrambling grasp. He grabbed the sandwich with one hand, then quickly grabbed it with the other to hold it secure, finally sighing in relief when he was sure the sandwich was safe. The look he gave Iris was seething.
"Sorry," she gave a wincing smile.
Autumn still lay in her bed, and held an arm straight up into the air, "hit me," she said, then squineted open an eye as she quickly added an afterthought, "not literally."
Iris looked through the sandwiches until she found Autumn's, then blipped it across the room and straight into Autumn's waiting hand. After passing out the rest of the sandwiches, she sat on the bed and happily unwrapped her own. Her stomach rumbled and her mouth watered at the sight, a fish salad sandwich with a thick layer of greens and glimpses at juicy bright red slices of fruit just beneath the top bun. Just she as she was preparing to take the first bite, she remembered Littletooth, and groaned.
She looked over at her bottomless bag where it rested at the foot of her bed, and had an idea, "hey Abby, can you feed Littletooth for me?"
The bag said nothing at first, then loosened its drawstring and slipped open to release a harmony of deep, otherworldly tones that Iris interpreted as acquiescence. A moment later, a curled tentacle raised up out of the bag, uncurling to lift Littletooth's bowl out of the void and place it on the bed.
"Wait," Iris said, "not on the bed."
The bag released discordant, annoyed tones, and then dropped the bowl back into the void. The tentacle then wrapped around the corner post at the foot of the bed and pulled the bag over the edge to drop onto the ground. Abby pulled the bowl out again, placed it on the floor, and was soon depositing leftover rabbit chunks into it. The tentacle retreated, and the bag released two back-to-back, high pitch harmonies that sounded almost like a whistle. A second later, Littletooth came tumbling out of the bag and rushed towards the bowl. Iris looked up and noticed everyone else looking at her strangely, mouths agape with sandwiches still in hand.
"When the fuck did you get a tentacle monster?" Autumn asked.