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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 3912974" data-attributes="member: 11760">Chapter 7 The Shadows of Kem HouseIt is the 5th day of Rain, in the 721st year of the Imperial Age.Heath Leach watches the adventurers' prayer circle and chuckles. As the group disperses and makes their way toward Maidensbridge Abbey, his smile fades."Good luck, kids," he says. Closing the window of his shop, he finishes mixing the smelly compound before him and scrapes the paste into a clay pot before putting a thin, greasy paper over the opening and sealing the pot with a hiss. That took care of Olaf Carter's annual post-winter cold.The list before him was of fungicides for the orchard, but instead Heath looks out toward the closed window again. After a moment, he walks over to a cupboard and opens the bottom drawer with an angry squeak. He takes out one item, then thinking for a moment, takes two, before stuffing them into his belt and arranging his apron to cover them."Good morning, Giselle," Heath nods at the woman walking past him, who smiles in return. They talk about daily pleasantries, with the subject inevitably traveling toward the mission at the abbey. Giselle Trinder's focus was the shameful behavior of the Sawyer lass, which Heath chided her for, citing his own youthful indiscretions. Heath had three more conversations like that on his way, not hurrying.His destination is a house that most of the town gave as wide a berth to as possible. If anyone admitted its existence, it was only be to spit on the ground or scowl at it as they passed by. Heath does none of these things. He simply stares at the door for a long time. It has been almost 15 years since he walked across its threshold.Heath reaches under his apron, confirmed the sharpness of his axes, and walks into Kem House.The heavy oak door opens easily. With both Kem sons dead or incarcerated and Rogren confined to a sickbed, there was no one to bar the door behind the creature once it left on its fool's errand. Heath shuts the door quietly behind him.The foyer is as he remembered it: open and expansive, yet sunless and uninviting, even in the day. Something about the dark wood paneling seemed askew, enough to make him mildly dizzy. He had given up on determining the exact cause of the feeling during his first visits, but in the interim he'd forgotten about it. To his left is a sitting room, seemingly untouched for many years, the antique furniture within caked with dust. Straight ahead lay the main hall, which Heath knew led to the family library, a study, and the kitchen beyond.He steels himself and makes for the immediate right, toward a wide staircase, which is much the worse for wear. The fine wine-colored rug that once covered the steps is in faded tatters and the finely carved, lion-themed balustrade in serious disrepair. Heath decides stealth is his best option and creeps gently up the first two wider steps. He avoids the railing for fear it might crumble, keeping careful watch on his own bloody footfalls.Blood?He spins to face the front door again and lets his eyes adjust to the low light. A fresh trail led from the entryway and down the hall. The immense, gilded mirror now rests on the tabletop that it normally hung above. The glass is shattered, large fragments sitting in a pool of blood on the floor. Heath follows the spoor with his eyes, surprised to see it arc all the way into the study.And then, from the same direction, comes a strange wet thudding sound.Heath stands, listening to the noise echo, then pushes back his apron and takes out both of the small axes. He rotates one shoulder and grimaced at the familiar painful grinding of old bones and the chips of the barbed Reaver arrowhead embedded underneath. He suddenly remembers he hasn't used these axes since the last kobold attack 10 years ago.The blood is a smear, as though something small had been dragged. Heath continues on quietly toward the study, ready to provide medical assistance if necessary, but keeping his axes ready, and is careful to avoid broken glass when passing the shattered mirror. His fractured reflection watches Heath creep past.The thick, wet sounds settle into a rhythm. Holding his breath, Heath rounds the corner.Morning sun fills the smallish study from the entry opposite Heath. A child no older than 10 kneels in the middle of the room over a dissected pig, face and arms painted with complex patterns of blood. His hands are fists, pounding the dead animal's insides one after the other, even though the boy is clearly exhausted. Tears pour from his eyes, mixing with the hog's blood on his face and smearing the triangular markings on his cheeks, but no sounds escape his open mouth.The boy notices Heath and seems to snap out of his trance. Shocked, he immediately leaps to his feet and edges his way closer to an open trap door in the floor. Two broken timbers lay beside a bunched-up rug. Rogren's desk is shoved into a corner, exposing the black mouth of the trap door.The boy's eyes widen when he spots Heath's axes. So much like the other Kems."It's you!" he shouts, terrified, gaze now darting back and forth between Heath and the hog. "Just the way it was!""Wait," Heath says, panicked, flipping the axes downward in his open palms to show he'd means no harm. "It's OK. Whatever you think ..."The boy vanishes through the trap door."I don't want to be a Kem!" he shouts as he fell from view.Heath leans an arm against the doorjamb and exhales, feeling at a loss. He had just decided to follow when he hears two female voices emanating up from the hatch."Hello?" a woman asks. "Is somebody up there?""Quiet!" the other voice, an older woman, bellows, "None of our concern!"The women bicker with one another unintelligibly for a short moment as Heath makes his way closer to the trap door, stepping around the fetid hog and the broken timbers. The next thing the pharmacist hears is a blood-curdling scream from the younger woman."HELP!"</blockquote>

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