The smell.

By the goddess’s grace, this smell!

The foulness in the air had taste. It even had texture. She could chew on it if she had a mind to, and a stomach made of weapons’ steel.

“Yer telling me a rookie did this? With a straight face?”

Barlo wore, like her, one of the new Enginarium hazard masks and his voice came muffled through the protecting layers. Even though they did nothing against the smell, these were supposed to protect against other airborne filth. Quistis needed more convincing.

By the light of a sprite the cave looked like something scrapped off the bottom of a nightmare. The rot had set in and whatever was left of the ratmen that hadn’t been originally incinerated or reduced to splattered gore was now decomposing into puddles of fluids speckled with bits of fur and armour.

It reeked. The damned smell overwhelmed her concentration. The way the mask chaffed didn’t help either.

“Are ye sure we’re in the right place?”

Quistis checked the annotated map again and retraced for the third time their path coming in.

“Right place, Barlo. Shut it and just find the stinking corpse. I want us out of here as soon as Rumi and Vial get back.”

“That side tunnel ain’t on yer map, is all I’m saying,” the large vanadal warrior commented as he turned half of a ratman over with the sheath of his sword. Rotten meat slid off festering bone with a wet thud.

He thumbed toward a passage marked by a man-shaped hole in the rock. Someone had smashed through to open some secret way. It wasn’t noted on the map.

“What channelling bursts someone from within?” he asked, making a face at another corpse that seemed to have been quartered.

“A Vitalis mage’s,” Quistis replied. “But this wasn’t a Vitalis mage in here. One wouldn’t leave so much blood go to waste.”

“Rare buggers. Never met one of them. Do we have any?”

“Couple. In Aztroa. Breed’s dying out, if we’re lucky.”

Quistis tried not to take in every detail of the scene, but it was tremendously hard as she picked her way carefully among the refuse. She was glad for the thick-soled boots she wore.

Barlo griped but he was more accustomed to this sort of scenery. He kept turning bodies over, making a trench through the gore in his search.

“If Lucian bought that rookie story, then he needs to retire. Poor hummie’s gone soft in the stone.” He tapped his thick temple as he stepped over the remains of a tall ratman. That one had been cleaved in two at the waist. Its entrails had dissolved into stringy ribbons of congealed matter that spread away like garlands on a dress. “If I’m any expert I’d reckon there was an entire cadre in here. A lone ash eater doesn’t kill like this.”

Quistis knew that Academy-trained channellers had to show at least a modicum of decency in their work. What she was seeing in the cave spoke of unhinged use of deadly force and very little discrimination.

But they were there more than eight days after the fact. At least eight days, by her expertise. Ratmen lived in abject filth as a rule, so the estimation was likely on the generous side.

“Well, we’re in the right place,” Barlo called from somewhere further ahead, out of her sprite light. “I found the aelir’rei. She ain’t a pretty sight.” He beckoned her forward with the torch.

Quistis made her way toward the paladin’s voice, trying not to slip in the mess. Her light sprite showed the remains of an aelir, judging by whatever was left of her. The rot hadn’t eaten her face yet, but the rest was just a bloated, leaking mess that made a good effort at turning her stomach. She sighed and turned away.

“They could have buried her.”

“Hard to bury someone in solid rock, Quis. Let’s see if we find that damn shaman’s corpse.”

“I’m going to bite Lucian’s face off when we get back. I don’t know if I’ll flog him before or after I spit him out.”

Barlo chuckled as he overturned more bodies. Human remains. Old. Before the killing. Gnawed bones scattered by the violence.

“Lucian couldn’t have known someone would stumble across our operation. Be happy he remembered yer interest in these critters.”

The maps had shown many entryways that the Guard had never even suspected. Whoever had drawn them had spent considerable time down there and been frightfully meticulous. There were even exits leading to villages, some of which were barely more than a name on a territorial map.

Quistis fought down the bile rising in the back of her throat. She felt her knuckles turn white on her staff and forced herself to calm. Anger at their own failure in managing this sordid affair wouldn’t fix the blunder and it would definitely not get them closer to uncovering the flesh sellers that had been plaguing Valen’s countryside.

Little wonder they couldn’t find any sign of the bastards for so long or even gotten news of their comings and goings since those first reports of missing people. There were tens of places to slip in and out of the tunnels, dozens of routes, even more that were still secret.

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“Complete failure,” she mused, the words bitter as she wandered away from Barlo’s track. “Rats wiped out. Nothing to follow up on. We had one lead and we mismanaged it.”

Quistis was busy enough being miserable that she didn’t notice the burnt skeleton until she tripped over it and went down with a brief cry and a splash.

“I see ye found’im.”

Barlo was trying not to laugh.

“Not a word, Barlo.” She picked herself up from the muck and tried to shake it off her clothes. The stink would be with her for days. “It’s a burnt-out skeleton. How do you know it’s a shaman?”

“Larger shoulders than the rest of the rats in here. See? And there’s a half burned wooden staff over there.”

He raised his torch to the wall. The light shone on the burnt, greasy outline of a ratman caught in an explosion. Fire had blackened the rest of the wall. He whistled.

“Pyro work, sure as Winter’s cold. Mean one, too.”

Quistis wasn’t listening. She had found the shaman’s resting nook. Some of it had survived destruction.

“Pry this open for me, please,” she said and showed a battered old metal chest. “Would it be too much to hope that the rat would’ve kept some records?”

“They’re not often literate. But we can hope.”

Barlo unclasped his spiked mace from its hip harness and brought it down two handed on the chest’s lid. He bashed it again, and again, until the lid bent out at the corners, enough for him to slip his fingers between. He ripped it off without even straining.

“All for you, my lady.” He presented the mangled trunk for inspection with an over-dramatic flourish.

It was filled with papers and coins. Quistis dug through the contents, her sprite hovering near her.

“No names, but there are orders here. And dates. This one either was literate or held on to someone else’s accounts. We’re taking this with us back to the Fortress.”

Finally, something to brighten up the trip. Maybe—

“Quistis! Barlo! Come help.”

The call had come from the side tunnel. Both Storm Guards rushed over. Quistis slipped through the hole while Barlo lagged to smash open an entryway more appropriate for his size.

One man in full armour had been propped against a wall, panting and bleeding. His helmet was off, and he was deathly pale. His armour looked to be the only thing keeping him in one piece.

A slim woman leaned against the wall, chest heaving with the effort of having carried him. Her short, white hair was damp with sweat.

Quistis went to work on the warrior. “What happened?” she asked, hands busy inspecting him.

Barlo trotted over and took up position as a guard, mace in hand, facing the opposite end of the tunnel.

“It’s bad down there, Captain Quistis,” the woman said. “Throne, it smells worse down there than here.”

“Report.”

After downing a healing potion and receiving magical mending, the warrior could stand, albeit dizzily. For the moment, at least, he was out of immediate harm’s way. Quistis mixed him a tonic from the flasks in her satchel.

“There’s nothing sane down there. I can tell you that much.” The woman leaned forward, hands on knees, and dry heaved. “We barely made it out. I think it used to be a Sanctum, but it’s dying out. We need to call in a Vitalis to take charge of it. It’s full of chimeras, and they’re all crazed,” the white-haired scout explained.

“Are you hurt?” Quistis noted her state.

“No. Just bloody tired, Captain. Vial’s bloody heavy to carry.”

“What kind of chimeras are we talking?” Quistis knew the creature by theory, but she also knew that a Vitalis could breed any kind of these monstrosities.

“Human, for the most part. I think this is where the missing people ended up. We didn’t get far through.” Her breathing steadied and she pulled herself up. She ran a nervous hand through her hair. “It’s huge, Captain. Whoever it belonged to has been active for a long time here. There are a lot of bodies down there.”

“Thanks, Cap. And I owe you one, Rumi,” Vial said as he drank the concoction Quistis had offered him. Colour returned to his cheek and a shine to his eyes.

“Don’t mention it. Don’t need it again, please,” Rumi replied with a shaking grin.

“How in the Bloody Throne did ye get taken down, lad?” Barlo asked over his shoulder, grinning. “I saw ye fight daemons. These can’t be worse.”

“You fight them,” Vial grumbled. “If you cut a daemon’s head off, it bloody dies. These things keep coming. Had to hack them to bits and even then, they still kept trying to bite my ankles off. My sword broke and we got swarmed.”

“You can stand down, Barlo,” Rumi said. “There’s an elevating platform. We got it moving and we came back up on it. I didn’t hear it go back down.”

She sighed and turned to Quistis.

“We need to go back. I caught a whiff of something down there, but I can’t be sure without going in deeper. It could be a big problem on our hands.”

If Rumi said it was important then Quistis needed no other explanation. They had learned all they would in that stinking place. The only way to go, it seemed, was down.

“Barlo, hand Vial your spare sword. We’re going back.”

The vanadal drew his broad-bladed weapon and handed it over without a word. Vial needed a two-handed grip for the weight. He tested the edge with a gloved finger and whistled.

“It’s tight down there, Barlo. You won’t have room to swing that mace.”

Barlo raised his chin, the vanadal version of a grin.

“I’ll manage,” he said.

Nonetheless, he uncrossed his lower arms and rested hands on the pommels of his daggers.

“I’ll take point. Make sure ye don’t give the Captain more work, eh?”

Rumi kicked him in the back of the knee and scowled up at him. He only chuckled, unperturbed.

“Just jostling ye, speck. Don’t take jesting so hard.”

Quistis stepped between the two warriors and pressed her hands to their chests.

“I require a Blessing of Cassandra,” she chanted in prayer to the Goddess. Her palms flared up with blue lights and left behind an imprint of her fingers on their armour.

“Are you fit to fight, Vial?” she asked as she rotated some of her flasks inside the pouch at her hip.

“Fit and eager to get payback, Cap,” Vial confirmed. He had his helmet back on. Deep gashes scored the metal, which told Quistis all she needed to know of the creatures waiting.

“Whistle when you need barriers. Rumi, you’re the eyes on the back of my head. We do everything smart and neat,” she barked her orders at them. The entire unit confirmed.