“Sorry about that…” Toog sighed and downed the fourth shot in a row. “I think it reminded me a little too much about the gnomes, you know?”

“Well, we all have more than enough horror to lug around at the moment," Arne said. "I guess you just saved us the trouble of having to–“

“No. No, hold up. What is it with you and those frog-sucking gnomes?” Dia demanded.

“They swarmed me while I was working. And not for the first time either! I was totally innocent and suddenly they were just everywhere, and I didn’t know what to do and then they started threatening me and when they left, I panicked and killed all my rats.”

Arne nodded slowly. “Ehm, I’ll go get you some more alcohol, shall I?” When he came back from the bar to the private back room he had paid a few extra coins for, grateful for early morning drinkers in Arabesk keeping seedy bars like this one going, he heard parts of a conversation that ended in Toog stating, “Maybe you’ve just been lucky and not ever been swarmed by vicious gnomes.”

“They are people, like child-sized people, they do not swarm!” Dia said with emphasis.

“So, we got a lot of good and bad things done tonight,” Arne stated and sat down, handing Toog a large mug of strong beer.

“I nap for a few seconds and you two make contact with otherworldly beings. Typical. You could have woken me up, you know!”

“I was working!” Toog said, brow furrowed.

“Next time you sleep while an otherworldly thing makes contact with us, we will prioritise waking you. Promise,” Arne stated. “So, we–“

“It was a shit show!” Toog said, suddenly very sober and matter-of-factly. “The tentacles know who we are. Actually, by not being in on it, it might not have seen you, Dia. Though it probably did back in the bathhouse garden.”

Arne nodded. “Yes. If it was being truthful, then we are potentially pretty fucked.”

“But?” Dia asked.

“I have a feeling it wasn’t being completely truthful about everything. I mean, we have to protect ourselves and react to it like its threat is very real, but… it was bragging. People who are secure in their power don’t do that.”

“How do you know that analysis works with tentacle monsters?” Toog asked.

“I don’t. But we also don’t know that whatever it was that …inhabited? that inhabited the priestess was actually a tentacle monster. We do know a lot of other things, though. Tentatively. It did answer everything on the list.”

“Ech, the list.” Dia rolled her eyes.

“The list which it was lucky we had. It told us that the Family is an energy source. That the orgies were a means for them to join with people, which I assume is what happens when the participants are taken up to the altar? When the cactus berry vanished the other day, maybe it was because that was the point when she was taken over? It said it walked among us in any form it chose.”

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“Yeah, and that it would bring its bigger siblings here. That was its purpose, right?” Toog looked around and then took a long swig of beer.

“It said ‘we’. That ‘we are all watching you through the flesh’,” Arne replied.

“It could be full of shit,” Dia said.

Arne nodded. “Well…” He took a drink, gathering his thoughts. “It does seem that they are one, or at least somehow sharing information. This thing we spoke with was clearly not an enormous tentacle thing sitting in the ceiling, but it still knew exactly what the giant one told us… that it was old when we were young, blah, blah. Even if we entertain the notion that it is indeed the same creature that fought us in the Family’s house and drove us off and then somehow changed itself to be inside one of the priests, then isn’t it just a little too implausible that we happened to pick the right one out of four officiants that didn’t know they were going to come under attack?”

“Tentacles…” Toog muttered.

“So, are you being Arne about it and making a list, or do you expect a reply?” Dia asked.

“Mostly Arne,” Arne said tiredly, “but do feel free to respond if you have something you want to share.”

“Alright, so what do we do now?”

“We do what people have always done when they attract heat. Go under ground,” Arne said.

“Why?” Dia demanded. “They’re threatening us, why don’t we kill them instead?”

“Because while the priests are easy enough to handle, the giant tentacle monster is impervious to our damage, remember? You hit it straight in the …whatever part that was and it didn’t flinch,” Arne said. "Burning potted plants were flying." Dia looked like she was about to give a sharp reply but then stopped herself.

“I couldn’t sense it. When I reached out, I felt the priests. I didn’t feel that thing,” Dia said, unusually worried.

“I’m alright with keeping a low profile, but how do we shake them if they can change shape?” Toog asked. “I vote we go elsewhere.”

“Let me just interject,” Arne said tiredly, “that we have to be able to justify it to our employer if we leave.”

“Sure,” Dia waved a hand dismissively. “We’re just enacting plan cat mask. And since they know that they are missing one here, it makes sense we go to… Crackerville and try it there.”

“Cracker…” Arne began hesitantly, deeply puzzled.

Dia waved her hand again. “You know, one of the other towns that had these lunatics in them. I go there in a mask and infiltrate them as a priestess and learn about them from inside.” She shrugged.

Arne stared blankly ahead of him, giving himself a few moments to enjoy a sweet little fantasy where they found a way to kill an old, old vampire instead. Then he focused on the situation, weighing for and against. On the one hand, getting away was smart, on the other, sending Dia in to do the talking was devastatingly stupid, on the other other hand, gaining knowledge from inside the Family's inner circle would perhaps be simpler in a smaller town where the Family would have fewer resources to throw at them even if they got discovered.

“That might work, we still have the cat mask, so we just have to get you into a robe with some purple embroidery on, and that shouldn’t be too difficult. We could make our way up to Rasheed north of here. You said there was a temple there, right?” he asked Toog, who nodded and shrugged simultaneously.

“Excellent! When do we leave?” Dia asked.

“I need to let my people know I will be gone for a little while and make sure everything is in order, this is absolute havoc for my business,” Arne stated. “You two will have to procure a robe for Dia the Family priestess. We should meet tomorrow at noon just beyond the northern market by Lichgate, at the tavern just to the right before you exit. It has a symbol of a river bird on the door. Many traders leave from that gate, and we can either get mounts or follow one of the caravans.”

Toog looked thoughtfully from Arne to Dia and back again. “Dia is right, you are bossy.”

“And that’s a privilege I earned from being the group messenger to our absolutely terrifying employer. And I use the term employer in the lightest possible sense.”

“I did think you accepted that task a little too easily, with too little pay…” Toog grinned.

Arne got to his feet. “I don’t think either of us should go to our normal haunts, to be honest. Just in case they know more about us than we hope. See you tomorrow. Don’t get killed. That would be really annoying for me.” With this, he left.

Just as he closed the door to the private room, he heard Dia say, “I’m right about the paladin stick up his ass, right?”