Session Thirteen, Part One: A Turn for the Worse...
Sensations
Darkness.
A low creaking sound, the complaints of wood.
A dull, throbbing ache, and motion twisting the stomach.
The scent of unwashed bodies, of feces and urine.
Bile.
Items of Unusual Note (Glunnyn Mernig)
- Parchment note, charred, unreadable. Found under table.
- Tankards, pewter, fourteen. Found scattered around the room. Two containing ale remnants, found near parchment note above.
- Dagger, steel, one. Finely made and balanced for throwing. Found in Body #7, probable cause of death.
- Belt remnant, leather, one, badly charred. Found next to Body #8 (probable cause of death: severe burns to head, shoulders, and arm).
"Lords of Justice," Katya breathed as she looked over the scorched room. The stench of charred flesh and stale blood swept over her as the air stirred, and she fought back an impulse to gag. "What
happened here?"
Beside her, and somewhat below, Glunnyn Mernig held a piece of cloth over his sensitive nose. A pair of goggles were in place over his eyes, making them seem owl-wide and distorted as he looked up at her. "That," he replied, "is what we are here to find out."
"Glunnyn." It was Jemis. "I think I found something, but it's pretty fragile. Looks like a letter or something, but it's mostly burned. I thought maybe, you know, you could fix it with your magic."
Mernig nodded, and let himself be led over to the scraps - lying beside an overturned table, it looked as if a stray ember had set it smouldering. Now only the edges were left - the rest a blackened mess.
Sliding another piece of parchment under it, to catch the pieces, Glunnyn gingerly opened it. Only the salutation was visible: Watch-Lieutenants Dru and Di'Fier.
1. Parchment note, charred, unreadable. Found under table.
There had been a message...
That was why they had gone, and without backup besides. The Docks had been their beat for years, and they knew they could handle the worst the district could throw at them.
Besides, if the author of the note was telling the truth, they didn't have backup they could trust.
The place was a cellar alehouse called Piggott's - an unpleasant name for an unpleasant establishment. There was no sign, just a set of stairs leading down, the acrid stench of urine emanating from the bottom.
"Smells worse than Krom's Throat," said Di'Fier, staring down into the dimly lit dark.
Dru's face wrinkled in a distaste that was the mirror of her partner's. "I don't like it either, but if we've really got a mole on the team..."
Di'Fier nodded, and headed down.
Ashrem flipped one of the tankards up into the air, catching it easily. "There's more than a dozen of these around," he said, performing a quick mental count. "And...six bodies. Either all of this lot were two-fisted drinkers, or half the people that were here have vanished. Not that that's a surprise, in Freeport."
"What were they drinking?" asked Glunnyn, from under the table.
"What?"
"In the tankards. What was in them? Can you tell? The type of drink chosen might help identify witnesses. Or suspects."
Ashrem looked dubiously into the tankard, twisting it this way and that, turning it upside down. "I can't tell, it's empty."
"Nonsense," the gnome scoffed. "There should be remnants, like in this one." He picked up an overturned mug that lay under the table, and trotted over to Ashrem to display the contents. "You see?"
Ashrem rotated the tankard so that Glunnyn could see into it, and the gnome frowned. "Are you sure you didn't find that in the wash? It looks about as clean as you'd get in a place like this."
The elf shook his head, and looked behind the bar. "The clean ones are all back here. Oh, and two more bodies."
Glunnyn frowned at the tankard he held - it had clearly been filled, drained, and not yet cleaned. Raising the cloth that covered his nose, he took a deep whiff. "Ale," he reported. "Although...there's something else..."
2. Tankards, pewter, fourteen. Found scattered around the room. Two contain ale remnants, found near parchment note above.
"I hate Freeport taverns," Dru complained. "Especially when you're late getting there. All the good seats are taken."
Indeed, the shadowy fringes of the small room seemed to be taken up by what were no doubt the "regulars" - nameless dockside ne'er-do-wells of a sort familiar to the pair through long experience. Di'Fier scanned the faces, wondering if they'd put any of them away, perhaps only for an hour or two, but after a while they all started to blend together. He raised a hand and waved the bartender over, signalling for a pair of drinks.
"
And I dont trust that note," his partner added. "You don't really think anybody on our team is working for the Claw, do you? Who would it be? Glunnyn? He wouldn't recognize a bribe if it bit him. Katya, Miss Law and Order?"
Di'Fier shook his head as the ale was set before him, fingering the message that had brought him. "I don't believe it either, but we've got to check it out, just in case." He raised the mug and took a deep swig - it was awful, of course, but he managed a sickly smile at the bartender, who was watching him intently for his reaction.
Probably brews his own beer, Di'Fier thought,
and I don't want to get thrown out for offending him, not before we meet this informant.
"Quooral wouldn't take a bribe, he's almost as dense as Glunnyn. Jemis? Jemis is a
reformed criminal, he's probably straighter than Katya now. And Ashrem..." she hesitated. "Di'Fier, you don't suppose it's Ashrem, do you? Di'Fier? Di'Fier?"
Dimly, Di'Fier knew he was expected to respond, but he just couldn't seem to collect his thoughts enough to do it. There was something else he had to tell her, he knew. Something important. Something about the ale, or was it about the way everybody was watching them? Or maybe it was how the scars on her wrists had opened up again...maybe she'd be able to figure it out. "Ale," he croaked.
Katya turned over one of the bodies behind the bar. "This one's the barkeep, if I'm not mistaken. There's a lot of blood." The fat man's head lolled back as she pulled on his shoulder, revealing a deadly length of steel buried to the hilt in his throat. "Knife to the throat," she reported, glancing over to where Glunnyn squatted, inspecting the other body.
Turning back to the corpse, she bent to study the dagger more closely, and bit her lower lip. "It's Dru's," she said. "I remember her picking it up. She kept complaining about losing daggers, or giving them away, or something like that."
3. Dagger, steel, one. Finely made and balanced for throwing. Found in Body #7, probable cause of death.
Dru was on her feet in an instant, as Di'Fier slumped to the table. Almost unconsciously, her arm spun a dagger through the air to bury itself in the barkeep's throat, sending him stumbling back into the shelves of liquor, clutching weakly at the blade. She offered a silent thanks to the Jade Serpent for its protection, and then the rest of them were upon her.
Clubs, coshes, blackjacks - they were armed for capture, not killing...and fortunately for her, she didn't have the same restrictions. Her blade whispered into her hand, and she began to show them just why the criminals of the city were so scared of her. Behind her, Di'Fier lurched to his feet, his arm swinging outward, blade appearing from nowhere just in time to gut one of the thugs. He staggered back to back with Dru, fighting a losing battle with the drug.
By the time three were down and bleeding, the rest had backed away to a safer distance, out of blade's reach. They shifted like a circle of wild creatures kept at bay by fire, knowing it would die down eventually. One of them, blood running down his arm, reached behind and took up one of the bar stools.
The rest of them took that as some sort of signal, and they came at the duo, howling.
The last corpse - behind the bar as well - was by far the worst. Its head was a misshapen, charred mass of cinders, pieces of ash peeling away to reveal the bone beneath. Much of the rest of the body was burned as well, burned and studded with shards of broken glass - probably from the shattered bottles it had been thrown against.
Yes, Glunnyn thought,
the bottles had broken, spilling hard liquor on the man...but what set him on fire in the first place?
Next to the man, on the stone floor of the bar, there lay a piece of leather belt - the buckle end.
Now that's a strange thing to find, he thought, lifting it up. Most of the belt was gone, burned away in whatever conflagration had consumed the man's head. A quick glance at the corpse revealed that its own belt was still present.
A very strange thing indeed...
With a grimace, he lifted the nose-cover again, placing his face close to the body, and sniffed. Fighting back the waves of nausea, he stepped back. There was a scent he knew very well, underlying the burned flesh...alchemist's fire.
4. Belt remnant, leather, one, badly charred. Found next to Body #8 (probable cause of death: severe burns to head, shoulders, and arm).
Di'Fier's vision blurred, and the attackers doubled and redoubled and then undoubled, moving all in perfect unison. He took a step forward and the room tilted like a ship in a sudden gale, sending him to one knee, then the other. He couldn't see anything to his side - he could barely see in front of him. His sword was heavy, too heavy to lift.
With a mumbled command, he made it vanish again, started to push himself up - they were coming at him again. Holding his hands out, he called the it forth from the glove once more, letting the thug's momentum drive the sword deep into his own belly. The falling corpse wrenched the blade from his hand, as everything went black.
Dru spitted one, slashed another across the face, twisting and rolling to keep out of their way. Somewhere behind her, she could hear Di'Fier hit the floor, and she knew it was just her now. Blows rained down on her, too many to parry, battering away at her as she moved, thrust, cut. The b-st-rd with the chair came in - no way she could ignore that. She ducked, but it wasn't her the thug was aiming at - it was her blade.
Hand numb, she watched the rapier skid across the floor.
Rapier gone, threw the dagger...not much left... She dodged another blow of the stool as she yanked her buckle open. The belt slithered into her hands, the heavy pouch at the end turning it into a makeshift flail. It would have to do.
She swung at stool boy, who threw up an arm to reflexively block. The long belt wrapped around his head, bringing the pouch around into his face with a satisfying crunch - and the sound of breaking glass. An instant later, the pouch was enveloped in flames.
The thug dropped the stool and fell back, clawing at the burning leather with muffled shrieks of pain. Dru shoved him, hard, sending him catapulting over the bar and smashing into the bottles of liquor, their blue flame joining the unnatural red of the alchemist's fire she'd had in her pouch.
He was still screaming when the remaining thugs closed on Dru for the last time.
There was a scraping sound of stone on stone, and everybody looked toward the source. Quooral stood by a section of wall, swung aside to reveal a low doorway. "Smuggler's passage," he rumbled. "You can smell the harbor."
Sensations II
Shapes moving in place, but huddled each to itself like a scared, lonely child.
The sound of metal moving on metal.
Heavy weight, cold around the wrists.
Salt sea air.
Blood.
