Somber reflections of the deeds we had done often painted the days ahead. Some victories were more clear cut, but often the difference between a win or a loss was just a handful of breaths being taken. How many souls remained untarnished, including our own. It was easy to take the wrong end of the stick and beat yourself raw asking what could have been different. The truth was it didn’t matter. You fought, and you fought until something greater overcame you.

We received a brief drizzle from above before we walked outside the grasp of the village surroundings, and as the farmland rescinded to give way to the wilderness, a tense weight settled back into us. I was also tired of walking.

“Shouldn’t be much longer.” Jakob tilted his head at the map as we continued along the dirt road. “We’ll need to take a right turn after the next hill.”

It was hardly a forest, but sparse groupings of trees sat amongst the long grass and hardy bushes. A surprising lack of wild flowers, which I thought slightly suspicious - but then again, my knowledge of such things was murky and spotty. To think Woodsworth would be there at my estate amongst all my knowledgeable tomes…

The hope was that we could amount enough power before he found out about our survival. Then we could think about catching him off guard, or pressure him into making a mistake where we could take him away from all the stolen power. It seemed like quite a distance away - and whether that would make it sweeter didn’t seem to matter when part of me was so desperate to take that bite. Poor choice of phrasing, perhaps.

“About here,” the Ranger eventually pointed. A small valley, muddied by the brief ran and occasional footfall led away from the main road and through the barely thinner vegetation.

We nodded and followed along, our clothing immediately dampened as the tall grass shed their held droplets of rainfall.

“It’ll be about a mile now.” He folded the map and put it away. “We’ll know it once we know it.”

“Big hole in the ground?” Florence asked, her face drab and tired.

“Same as fuckin’ always,” Angelos grinned at us both, before stumbling across an errant root.

I grinned in return but had nothing more to add. Evil liked to hide away, so naturally we would spend time in the depths or trying to shine a light on the hidden shadows. The Alchemist had a house, and if the Mage had her current power, she would have been able to set it fully ablaze before the man could step out of the door.

Tired and cold. Too cold for what was mostly a mild day. Something lingered, and I wasn’t sure if it was just the end stages of the poison. Occasionally, the wound itched, but plied me with no further malady. What lay in the back of my mind and tortured me so was part of the nightmares from the previous night, and part vibrations of a troubled future. Not that destiny intended on tipping me off to something untoward happening - but it felt inevitable.

Even struggling through the thick grasses and tangling weeds here was slightly more taxing that it needed to be. As if nature was holding me back from something. An event that needed avoiding. I could not stop now. Would not stop.

“You okay, Victor?” Florence came up beside me, half her robes now a darker shade of orange from the collected downpour. “You look like you got the unpleasant taste of something in your mouth.”

“Just looking forward to a proper rest once we are back in Fogvale. Warmth. Hot food. No walking.” I shrugged and gave her a smile.

“I think we’ve earned some of that, for certain.” She nodded toward me, then turned to the Guardian. “Mind if we spruce the house up a bit? Make it more comfortable?”

He worked his jaw for a moment before relenting. “If you wish, lass. I suppose this is turning into a longer venture than I had anticipated.”

"Not planning on chasing some greater good or fouler evil any time soon, then?” I grinned at him, but paused to catch my breath for a second.

He shrugged and looked off into the distance. “Nothing that my God has asked me to do. Now, let’s just hurry up and get this over with. I may not be as old as this giant arsehole, but I also tire of long treks.”

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Jakob looked like he wanted to interject with something, but thought better of it. I imagined it would have been something about the trek not being so long or arduous, thus far. While originally I had thought we could have used the wagon at least part of the way, seeing how open the landscape was now, it wouldn’t have been a good idea. While the forest allowed cover from the canopy and hidden away clearings, Petal and our belongings would have been a sitting duck out amongst the tall grass.

We continued to trudge through the dense greenery, and I was briefly surprised at how much more tiring it made the process. The valley opened up onto a flatter field, smaller hills dotting around the horizon. The grass paled in waves as the breeze rolled through. I could see no beauty in it, however. It was drab and tiring. How unlike me to be in such a sour mood - either the poison had worn away at my stoic stubbornness, or I really wasn’t looking forward to the smell of wet fur and rat droppings.

Not that anyone would.

Jakob stopped and put his hand over his eyes to gaze around our surroundings, before turning to the left by some degree, and he set off once again. We followed, with no need to question. By now, we were all miserable and tense, so the quicker we got to the point of danger, the better.

Past small groups of trees and small mounds of earth, we then slid down a short embankment - Angelos swearing constantly under his breath as he got closer to tumbling head over heels. The next field past the hill behind was less green. As if evil itself sucked the life from the surroundings, the vegetation was sparser and brown mud covered the majority of the area.

Florence lit a small ball of flame in her hand to warm up, shuddering as her wet clothing chilled her in the waning sunlight. It would be typical for us to come down with some flu just after defeating the next in a long line of horrors, our downtime extended and miserable, recovering with illness instead of enjoying life.

Of course, perhaps I had just doomed us with fate - and soon enough we’d be nursing the pained results of our eagerness to achieve.

“Over there,” Jakob pointed slightly to our right.

A few hundred feet away, almost camouflaged against the rest of the mire of the muddied field, were a handful of holes. However, their size was anything but fist sized. Even from this distance, a dozen feet wide or more for the bigger recess.

“Underground,” Florence noted. Not really a whine or complaint, just a cold statement of the inevitable.

“How deep do you think it goes?” The Guardian looked deflated as his hand idly tapped at his spellbook. “We’re going to need to start bringing shovels with us.”

“As far down as evil deems to lurk," I grinned at their scowls. A little melodrama never hurt in such situations. While I had said a decent line or two in my time, I was both too tired and too on edge to spout words of heroic encouragements. Things were about to be wretched, and I wouldn’t fill their heads with lies.

With little else to busy ourselves with, we began approaching what we believed to be the Warrens. Within two hundred feet, we drew our weapons. Within one hundred feet, the tension was almost palpable. Then we were there.

The primary hole was indeed a good fourteen feet wide. The others were several feet, with some variation - but none that were large enough for us to fit through. I stood up to the maw of the den, a foul stench rising up into my nostrils already. “I grow tired of evil smelling so bad.”

Silence and darkness led downwards into the ground.

Florence lit a flame in her hand, illuminating several feet with amber light. Claw marks could be seen rent into the mud - I wouldn’t need the Ranger to explain what or who had caused them. The deeper grooves were almost a fist in width apart - quite a large foot, if my reckoning was correct.

Jakob held out a torch which the Mage lit, and her flame went out. The surrounding sky almost seemed to become more overcast - dimming as we intended to seek demise in the bowls of the wilderness. Perhaps there was just more rain coming.

“Well,” the Guardian shuffled his feet and started walking off to the side, “you get grandpa inside then, Uncle Angelos needs to go take a piss.”

Florence rolled her eyes and nudged me into leading ahead.

I did so with a sigh. Less because of the Guardian's frank demeanor, but because I could already smell rat dropping and wet fur and we hadn’t even taken two steps inside. Normally when your expectations were met, you’d hope it wasn’t for something so cliche and nauseating.

The light of the torch led us through a descending tunnel of mud carved by many claws. Across the damp floor, puddles of rat urine sat languishing to burn at our nostrils. I avoided them the best I could - quietly pointing them out to the other two. I did not like having wet feet, and that was doubly so for being soaked in-

Movement behind as Angelos crept to catch up.

“Took your time,” Jakob muttered.

“Well, when you get to my age, lad-“

My glare silenced the pair. I had my doubts that we could sneak up on the monster in its own lair, but it would be helpful if we didn’t alert it sooner than necessary by talking about the Guardian's bathroom habits.

Eventually, the tunnel led to a carved out chamber. Piles of detritus and filth cluttered up each corner, and multiple tunnels ran out from every wall. The large one ran straight ahead, but the rest were the smaller ones - a network of tunnels either used when the rodent was smaller, or…

I stopped, halfway across the room toward the large exit. My head slowly turned to the side, at the sound of slight noise, and the rest of the Party tensed up.

With a rasping shriek, a rat the size of a medium dog called out from one of the holes up the wall.

Immediately, as if lying in wait, dozens of pairs of sinister yellow eyes lit up in the multitude of tunnels around us.