A Knight's Lilies

“ Abenstadt Besieged!

In a cowardly surprise attack this morning, Imperial Traxian Forces launched a fresh offensive against the Duchy of Abenstadt. Though allied troops have held the frontlines for the past few months, the ferocity of this fresh assault scattered the Free Company of Felmarch and opened a way to the ducal capital. The Imperial XV legion under general Marotinus then quickly lay siege to the city of Abenstadt, surrounding it in a blitz and cutting off all land connections in and out of the city. Allied forces are meanwhile, planning a counter offensive to cut ‘Maro’s gap.

Sources from Abenstadt report that the city is in good condition and well supplied to withstand a siege. According to a renowned merchant…”

- Arterian Affairs, Front Page, “Breaking News: Abenstadt Besieged!”

The three of them waded through putrefied rat guys with pained expressions. The cloth wrapped around their faces did little to stymie the stentch of rot and death that infested the tunnels. In a strange twist of the norm, Sophie was perhaps the one who retained her composure the most. Having travelled inside a dying spider, walking through corpse piles, and muddy Mistveil had inured her to the idea of traversing such environments. But only by a little, it was, after all, still a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

A few giant rats still leapt up at them, but it was going about what she had expected. Now that the horde like frenzy was over, the majority of the rats were far more sensitive to her aura and likely hid wherever they had originally been hiding. It meant more trouble for the group but they had all noticed something else. There was an incredibly large number of the rats.

Harlan had been the first to question it, wondering out loud about just how large the cave system really was. He told the duo that for there to have been almost a hundred if not more rats that they killed so far, including those in the onslaught, they were either connected to the Arterian sewers super colony, or had a colony of their own. But for it to just be under one manor seemed ridiculous and he feared that this area would be more extensive than expected.

Most of the rats looked emaciated, which raised another concern. If they truly were starving, they would’ve culled most of their numbers by now. But with how vicious they were, it looked more that they were on their last legs before they turned on each other, which meant they were surviving or even thriving before this. That made Sophie worry, having first hand experienced some of the rituals that the cultists conducted and the house in which this cave system was attached to, she suspected foul play.

Harlan took the lead, his armour more than enough to shrug off the rat bites. His makeshift wooden plank had now been substituted by a shield on loan from the legion, increasing his already formidable defensive prowess against their scuttling opponents. Mila took up position behind the pathfinder, her keen eyes and deft hands allowing her to spot and respond to threats, occasionally even tracking their arrival from holes in the walls or locating hidden burrows. Sophie naturally, held the rear. Despite her resilience of the awful odors and scents, she still viewed herself as the least experienced of the three when it came to matters of experience. Furthermore, it didn’t help that their job was to wipe out the rats and her aura would actively make their work more difficult. The closer the others can get before the rats panic the better.

“Here it is.” Harlan announced.

Ahead of them, what had once been a door lay shattered across the cave floor. Two sets of rat bones scattered amidst the rubble. Wait, a door? This place has to be connected. Unless… could it be a dwarven tunnel? Would fit the profile of them being under the city too.

“Opened that and the buggers scared me half to death. They looked just as surprised to see me as I did them. Got a few than ran fast enough I had time to block the entryway until the guards arrived.”

“So they all came from here?” Mila asked.

“Most likely. Or at least, I didn’t see any in the tunnels before the door got smashed.”

“Damned hells. So we have no idea what’s past this?”

“Sorry adventurer.”

“Tch. No matter, it’s why you hired the guild anyway.” Mila shifted her sword.

Harlan grunted and looked at Sophie. She just nodded, no going back now.

With arms at the ready they passed the broken doorway. Skittering and screeches could be heard deeper within the cave. So there’s more.

They rounded the corner and found themselves staring into what looked to be the beginnings of a room. There was a faint trace of furniture having once been here, a failed attempt to tile the floor, and even a dusty bookshelf, devoid of books but filled instead with strange little knick-knacks. Scattered across it all was enough rodent feces to bury a house. Kobold’s ass, I knew it! This place is connected to the sorcerer, has to be.

The ground however, was well trodden. Little blood stained feet and the occasional bit of detritus tld them everything they needed to know. They were emost certainly not alone here.

“Easy now, I hear ‘em but can’t see ‘em.” Harlan growled.

They stepped onto the tiles, the sfot click of their boots against the stone cutting up the pitter patter of the rats scuttling around them somewhere. A foul stench tainted the air, her nose burning at the new level of unpleasantness unmatched by even the corridor of dead rats. It smelled of the odor of rodent shit, and something else. Rot.

“Stars…” Mila coughed.

Harlan let out an undignified grunt and Sophie just clenched her jaw tighter.

Someone stepped on a shard of glass, likely from a bottle broken long ago, or a beaker lost whenever this place was abandoned. But the crack as it shattered was unmistakable. The noise as it travelled throughout this strange facility. The three paused, frozen mid motion as they waited. There was nothing but their breaths carrying in the silence.

“Well…” Mila sighed.

Then the roar of noise. An unimaginable storm of screeches and cries as hundreds of rats responded to the breaching of their sanctuary.

“Back to the doorway, quick.” Harlan called out.

The trio set up a defensive wall. Harlan’s shield in front whilst the duo would eliminate what they could.

Two dozen red eyes emerged from around a corner, the rest of the horde began gathering in front of them. Yet, unlike their more exhausted brethren, these ones appeared to be even worse off.

Their emaciated frail looking hunched bodies made them resemble more mole rats than anything else. But it was upon those same features that elicited a deep sense of wrongness. Their misaligned teeth, crooked claws, patchy fur, just felt too unnatural to look at. Almost like…

“Undead.” Mila growled, the inquisitor’s face twisting into a scornful scowl.

“No wonder there’s so many.” Harlan muttered, “Explains why they didn’t actively eat each other.”

But the ones back in the tunnel, Sophie wanted to voice her doubts, they were definitely flesh and blood. Catching a glimpse of Mila’s darkened expression however, made her hold her comment back for later.

More and more rats gathered, their erratic twitching forms slowly becoming a solid mass.

“Stay behind me.” Mila hissed.

Harlan glanced back at the girl, but Mila was already scooting past his shied. He resitsted for a brief second but stood back up, trusting the adventurer would know what they were doing.

“Together, they are dangerous. But apart, they are weak.” A pained grin appeared on the inquisitor’s face, “Close your eyes.”

“Huh?” Sophie unwittinly squeaked.

“Trust me. You’ll know.” Mila smirked a little, her face instantly grimacing as the movement exposed her nose just a little, “O’ Astralis, guide thy hand and grnat me thou fury! Beshdairite Heinaotus Helaotux.” Mila chanted.

Harlan did as he was told, for he was an experienced pathfinder. Sophie did not, for she was curious.

She nearly screamed as she staggered back and grasped for the wall as a piercingly bright light enveloped every inch of the room. Seeing stars, the light seemed to sneak through even her eyelids as she tried to turn away. The itself seared its way into her soul, her heartbeat quicked as knots tied themselves across her body. She was being restored yet melting away at the same time, like someone who got winded by a punch and left gasping for air even as pain wracked their body.

Pain for her was only that. Pain. For the undead rats, whatever Mila had done, their screeches became shrieks that made Sophie wince. They cried out in agony either from being blinded or stricken by holy light. Whatever the case, the call of death drew nearer and the creatures, if they could even be called that, felt it.

“Forward!” Mila roared.

Together, she and Harlan charged forward and began slashing, the sound of bone and flesh being slashed echoing in Sophie’s ears alongside the panicked rats crying out in agony. When her eyes were finally less bright and her head a little more focused, she finally opened them somewhat to find a sea of carnage before her.

Broken bodies and shredded rat corpses lay strew about the entry room. Some singed down to the bone with holy fire, others missing half their bodies, most just decapitated or cut into pieces after being stunned. It had been a massacare. The weak, emaciated rats died like the vermin they were.

The two ahead were busy hacking away, their weapons covered by what remained of the rats. Harlan bashed a skull in with his shield just as Mila casually swung her blade down, delivering a death blow to another. To Sophie, they looked like heroes, like Gunmar and Aurelia, beating back the forces of darkness even in a place like this.

Her hand tightened around her own blade, I won’t let them down. Fueled by a strange determination, she charged forward to join the two. Unlike Harlan, who swung both blade and shield with power and strength. Or Mila, who cut through the enemy with precision and deadly strikes. Sophie would take what Taurox taught her and put it into practice. To lean into her innate strengths.

With finesse and grit, she pummeled her way into the rat horde. Her blade, though naught but a simple iron sword issued to adventurers, still acted as an extension of herself. She danced through the crowd and effortlessly cut them down. She could feel it returning, a fragment of herself from earlier times. Her soul stilled, and with each swing of the blade, a callous indifference to the slaughter returned as she turned her mind to the idea that this quest was just as her old work had been, a ‘job’.

“Watch your eyes! Beshdairite Heinaotus Helaotux.” Mila chanted again when she saw some rats recovering.

Like that, the slaughter was complete. With Harlan tanking any hits coming their way, Mila blinding their foes whenever they got orgainized, and Sophie becoming a dispensary of death. They began the methodical eradication of the cave lab.

Room by room, they passed by strange contraptions and artifacts littering the place. Through it all, they slashed and cut down any and all resistance they found, wiping out the rodent menace through sheer force alone. It was during this extermination that Sophie noticed Mila frown, which in turn evoked a frown from herself as well once she noticed what the Inquisitor was focused on.

By all metrics they were doing well. The extermination was progressing and only one or two rooms remained to be cleared. But the more they pushed, the more the horde seemed to realize that they would not survive, rats scattering here and there in a futile attempt to avoid their fates. On the surface, this meant nothing much beyond primal fear. However, given that Mila had identified them as part undead variants, it meant that their instinctive behaviour was odd. That they weren’t as fully undead as one might expect. They are hybrids, which means someone tampered with them. I bet it’s the mage.

“Saint damned hells, this smell.” Harlan groaned as they approached the last two rooms.

Mila hacked out a cough and tried to tie the cloth tighter around her nose to no avail.

Sophie’s eyes watered from the aggressively irritating smell of rot. This was different, more foul. She pressed her back against the wall, ready to breach into one of the rooms. With a brief glance at the others, she saw Harlan flick her a nod of acknowledgement. Mila just tapped her shoulder.

Taking a deep breath only to immediately gag, she clenched her mouth shut and threw open the door. Harlan charged in with his shield at the ready, the squealching noise of a rat trodden underneath his advance was followed by a quick gurgle as Mila joined the attack. As the two charged in, Sophie heard the footsteps come to an abrupt stop, a silence against the few rats that were now shrieking at them.

Worried, Sophie dashed in and immediately was hit by the stench. Her heart sank as her stomach churned and she understood why they froze. Within this room was a giant pit. Even without peering over the edge, one could see mostly humanoid bones with a few nearly fully chewed corpses still having bits of rotted flesh attached. Sophie dreaded to know how many bodies there were for the scent to be so overwhelming. But as for how the rats survived inside this ostensibly locked off lab, she suspected that the bones weren’t all just bones before. Certainly explains why the rats were hungry for flesh. At least, I don’t think that we’d be the first targets for a meal even with giant rats in the wild.

“Let’s clean this place up.” Mila growled. The other two offered no resistance and joined her on the warpath.

With ruthless efficiency, they blinded the next room and cleared it out. They sweeped the complex one more time and only now did she gradually get a better sense of the whole place. It was a lab, that much was certain. Most of the other rooms looked to be for testing spaces, their single bed and plethora of random haphazardly collapsed shelves brought up a sense of unease. Combined with the unfinished main room, it was clear this place was abandoned in a hurry.

She guessed that it was when she had encountered the strange soldiers and the direktor in the Myndiri ruins. Only having somewhat thwarted their plans of a bizarre ritual sacrifice by pure chance. To her, the situation was a little too similar.

Steeling her nerves, she approached the body pit. Shallow divots on the side of the stone work likely allowed the rats access to the people, but was steep enough that escape was nigh impossible. Stellesia watch over me. She shuddered at the thought. At least three dozen likely died in the pit. She could only hope that they perished normally instead of through starvation, or worse. Her eyes watered as she tried to endure the fetid corpse pile, catching sight of some decayed rats mingled amongst the bones.

Her attention eventually landed on a figure that shook her to the core. Beastfolk were common in Cyndralia, so their appearance likely wouldn’t elicit shock except for the most rural of peoples. Ratfolk were rumored to exist in the far fringes but no one she knew had ever actually seen one. The figure she saw was very much a rat-person, and very much unlike a beastfolk. For they had the torso of a humanoid, but the head and lower body of a rat. It was a horrific amalgamation that struck her as unnatural, that there was no way something could look like this. Unless they were created to be like this.

Most of it was still present, indicating a recent death, however one might quantify that. She did notice that it was almost wholly intact, almost as if the rats had kept it so. A small chill went down her spine. Her eyes had only just reached in between the legs. This… the main breeder. Stars above. So many rats…

She signalled to the other two and together, they took in the sight in detail before finally retreating from the stench. With the lab mostly cleared, they began the journey back out, the disgusting little exploration having finally come to an end. Sophie shot Mila a pleading glance, the girl reciprocating with a frown and a half scowl before nodding.

Backing out of the cave, the trio breathed a sigh of relief. Their relaxed demeanour contrasting with the tense legionnaires and pathfinders waiting by the entrance. One particular legionaire wore armour of dark blue and black, different from all the others here. It would seem that Captain Ferrick had come to take charge of the situation now that the expedition returned.

But before any of them could act, Mila removed the cloth around her nose and pulled out a small church sigil. In that instant, Sophie saw the life flicker back in the girl’s eyes, the small smirk of pride when she held the sigil within her hand.

“I know this is an inopportune time but I must ask for your cooperation. Within this tunnel is a facility that I suspect might be connected to…” She paused, her eyes darting to Sophie for a moment, searching for something, “...a potential heretic that the Astralian church is after. It is thus with all due respect that I ask for your help to ask the cathedral and inform them that Inquisitor Lyudmila is reporting a potential heretical site and require both templars and the presence of another Inquisitor at once.” Mila declared.

Everyone looked at her, unsure, hesitant, and a little confused. It was the legionary captain who was the first to react. He drew closer, squinting at her sigil before rubbing his hand on her chin. As the two locked eyes, Sophie saw that Mila looked almost like a completely different person from the one she had been travelling with. The captain quietly gave her a nod of acknowledgement.

“Dawes, grab Petyr and inform the cardinal there that we need the Argent Curia and the Inquisition here.” Captain Ferrick ordered, “Rest of you, assume high security protocol. No one in and out besides the pathfinder.” He barely even glanced at Sophie, “And the adventurers.”

A legionary, presumably a man called Dawes, saluted and sprinted back out. The rest of the soldiers did as they were told with military precision. The dozen odd legionaries spread out immediately to cover any choke points within the manor.

“If there’s anything else, you know where to find me.” He dipped his head towards Mila before turning to the pathfinder, “Harlan. I know your boys want to explore the tunnels too, but for now hold here until further orders. As for your adventurers… sort it out.” Ferrick dispassionately stated and turned on his heel to leave.

That left the duo with the contingent of pathfinders still here. Most of them wore expressions of confusion at the sudden turn of events, though Harlan was the most bewildered one out of them all.

“You? An inquisitor?” He whistled.

“Yes. But I am technically on break. As such I joined my…” Mila paused, scowling at Sophie.

Sophie wilted a little but offered her a soft smile regardless. Mila responded with what she could only hope was a smiling scowl.

“... My friend here as an adventuring party.” She finished.

This sparked a bevy of whispering amongst the pathfinders, even the two legionaries on guard at the tunnel entrance. Most of them were amazed or amused, some doubtful, and some even outright disdainful, though never louder than a whisper. They all, however, looked to Harlan for a response.

“So all this… our suspicions about the direktor…” Harlan muttered.

“Were likely correct. Though this was a coincidence, I assure you.” Mila answered. She then sighed and met Sophie’s gaze. But this time, instead of determination or a stalwart look that intimidated her, Sophie saw a sorrowful, almost kindly look in the Inquisitor’s eyes.

“Mila?” She asked.

“We’ll have to stay here until I can update the next Inquisitor.” Mila explained and turned back to the pathfinder, “As for the direktor. I hope she doesn’t mind explaining a bit about him?”

Sophie stiffened up. She had grown more comfortable talking to people and speaking in public. She didn’t mind it as much. But for Mila to so suddenly call upon her felt awkward at the best of times, much less as they were still covered in putrid rat guts.

“Umm… “

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.” Mila seemed to realize her mistake.

Sophie shook her head and faintly smiled, “Was just surprised is all.”

Seeing that Sophie was speaking, Harlan motioned for her attention and took his chance, “You knew the direktor? Err, well, former direktor?” He hastily corrected.

Sophie’s smile darkened, “Unfortunately. Yes.”