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"Dibs on the sack! Farrukh, you want the lunch, since you found it? Doesn't look much worse than your usual rations."
"Should I leave the dog cloak on?" Astraden asks the party.
"Sure, why not, in case the cellar's off limit as well." Eben says, using his hind leg to scratch an ear.
Carina the Pomeranian yawns. "We've got time. Let's go, eh?"
The group exits the ruined church at last, making its way to the southeast. The map marks a squat, ramshackle building close to a copse of withered, leafless oaks. It seems early in Harvester for them to be losing their leaves. Then again, autumn seems to come earlier every year.
The three-eyed urchin is still dogging the group's heels.
Alessia Viera, for her part, always believed that lavender flowers smelled like death.
Pomeranian Carina coughs and sneezes when the minty reek hits her nose. "Eugh... I thought I had enough of this sort of smell back at Diamond Lake."
"See, when working with the sick and dying, inevitably you'll need something to block the odour of death. Wearing a mask packed with mint or lavender will ruin one of them for ya for life, but they're otherwise necessary to keep your lunch down..." She wrinkles her nose. "...evidently, that's why Mom never liked lavender much."
She glances over at the three-eyed urchin, and her curiosity finally gets the better of her. She meanders over to her and waves hello. "Hello, little one. May I ask why you're following us around?"
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"What are you talking about? It all smells like 'house' to me..." says Eben, recasting all the spells that more or less went to waste on one crazy ghoul.
"Although given the choice, I'd go with lavender too. It's kind of a gross smelling flower or herb or whatever anyway, so having it ruined for all time isn't that big a deal. At least not compared to mint. I can't imagine a life without juleps or mojitos."
"I agree. Lavender makes me gag. I'd rather have jasmine or sandalwood any day." Cuetzpalli wrinkles his nose.
"There's a powerful odor of sickness and mint around the house, Eben. Perhaps your olfactory sense was compromised by something you tried at the Deluxury?"
Zalamandra smiles at Shrieking Sammi. "You want to be our herald, don't you? We're about to enter a dangerous basement, so it's best that you stay back here."
"Lavender makes me sneeze. Nose is twitching just thinking about it."
"Makes it really hard to sneak around if you give off a strong scent anyway, so I'm not missing much."
Farrukh waves at everyone to follow him, realizes he's invisible again, and then just whispers "Follow me." as he walks up toward the house.
"You're going to meeda Prince!" Sammi says to the pomeranian, grinning widely. She has a thick and unusual accent—vaguely reminiscent of the dialects of the street gangs in the Free City, but with its own Alhaster spin. Her third eye seems to twitch about as she speaks, as if she's isolated all her excitement into it to avoid screaming in Carina's face. "I heard from da men adda'Luxury aboudit! But you casn't meet 'im widdouda prip an' prommer herald, know! Just casn't!" She jabs herself in the chest, assuming a straight, dignified posture. "Dat's why you got me hereda help you out! I know alla workin's an' jerkin's. An' I always wasnteda meeda Prince!"
She reluctantly backs away at Zalamandra's suggestion.
"Farrukh, check the windows while we knock," Astraden says. She knocks on the door.
To Sammi:
"How are you supposed to be our herald if you don't even speak Common?"
------------------------
To Astraden:
"That was the plan, yeah."
Carina shoots a quick glare at Farrukh. "Hey now, she does."
Just a very unrefined form of it.
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Sammi cocks her head, frowning. "Whaddat? I speak Common just fine! I just doesn't talk weirdas you all! 'Sides, diction's easyda fake, right?"
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"Knock? Do you think anyone actually lives here?" Eben shrugs and trots on up to the door regardless.
"Doesn't hurt to check first. Could be someone living here who has no idea what their basement used to be." Astraden knocks scratches at the door.
Astraden scratches at the door. A moment later, an old woman opens it. She has pale, blotchy skin, and her eyes are slightly unfocused as she looks down at the dogs. Her attire is very plain and ratty, and she smells strongly of mint. In contrast to her garb and surroundings, she wears a glittering silver charm around her neck.
Further inside, the group can see that countless bunches of herbs hang from the ceiling, and frightening masks of all sorts adorn the walls. Roughly a dozen people lie on the floor, each on a simple mat. They look very ill.
The old woman scowls at the party. "Shoo, dogs! Shoo!"
"Bark! Woof!" Astraden makes as if to run away, then turns and tries to dart past the old woman's legs. She pants and scratches at the bed of one of the sick people, then licks the elbow of that person.
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"Uh, woof." Farrukh says, convincingly.
He rears up on hi "back paws" and puts his "feet" on her shoulders. He makes a show of sniffing all around her, but particularly tries to get a whiff of that stuff she's holding and get a sense of what exactly is in it.
The woman cries out in alarm as Astraden rushes inside, and nearly falls to the ground as Farrukh jumps up on her. "Help!' she cries. "Rabid dogs! They're attacking my patients!"
The sleeping woman Astraden approaches stirs as Astraden's illusory dogsona licks her. Her eyes open, and they seem clear. She reaches out, stunned, and reaches forward to scratch Astraden's scruff. "I...what's going on?"
The charm itself resembles a simple silver disc, though on looking closer, it looks sort of like a coiled serpent or worm.
Astraden drops something at the feet of another patient, focuses for a moment, and then noses that patient's foot. When nothing seems to happen, she repeats the motion, growling in frustration.
She looks back outside for Carina, speaking in Elven. "A little help?"
Pomeranian Carina's ears perk up and she trots inside.
She looks over the patient before digging through her backpack for her medical supplies and tending to her--to the untrained observer, it looks like the Pomeranian is chasing her own tail before licking the patient's foot.
Evidently, this sort of thing is second nature to her. "...did you expect we'd be doing stuff like this while pretending to be dogs? Because, to be honest, I didn't." She replies in equally fluent Elven.
"I am both surprised and glad to say this situation has surpassed my imagination."
"I've heard of some healers bringing animals along to treat their patients. They help a great deal with relieving emotional trauma." Carina expounds while she works in a flash, applying a poultice to the sleepy woman's skin and gently washing it with a damp cloth. "Mom never had any such pets--I was hoping to convince her to get a dog while we were in Diamond Lake."
"Of course, there's the issue of them getting fur everywhere on your medical supplies..." She continues in this vein as the woman's skin clears and her breathing gets easier. It doesn't look like Carina realizes how effective her treatment is yet.
Zalamandra concentrates, trying to read the old healer lady's mind.
She then turns to Eben, Cuetzpalli, and Tanith, casting a spell that lets her whispered words be easily heard in their ears. "We should try to sneak downstairs while Farrukh's got her distracted."
The old woman shoves her invisible assailant away and runs, screaming absolute bloody murder.
The two cured patients stare uncomprehending at Carina. "Th-that's Elven," the first one whispers. She keeps scratching Astraden's neck. She's a young woman wearing dark green rags. Her hair is long and ratty.
"Who are you?" asks the other, a middle-aged hobgoblin woman. "What are you?"
"Because," the hobgoblin adds, staring at Carina skeptically, "dogs don't usually carry quite so many poultices."
"What are you talking about?" the younger woman hisses.
They look around, confused, as the invisible partymembers enter the building and proceed to where Farrukh, earlier, noticed a well-concealed latch in the wall. Pulling it causes the floor to slide out in the corner. Previously-unseen tiles shift and click into place, sounding almost like massive dominoes as they settle rapidly into the shape of a spiral staircase. It's a remarkable feat of engineering.
The chamber itself is empty, save for several rotting prayer mats strewn about. Each of these mats bears a simple black triangle. A five-foot-wide hallway leads east, and a large heap of tangled rope lies in its entrance.
The old woman runs around the block and out of sight. The two cures patients sit up.
"I feel completely fine," the hobgoblin says to herself. "I feel like you two don't really understand the point of Sinner's Sanctum. Patients don't come here to get better—we come here to die." She's not angry or upset. She just seems bemused.
She moves to another patient, focusing her magic and casting another powerful healing spell. "We'll definitely have to get a new cover after this," she tells Carina in Elven. In Common, she replies to the hobgoblin. "My name is Mudpaw, and this is Fury. We're well aware of the situation here. Would you mind letting us work a little more? Perhaps you could track down your caretaker and calm her?"
"Now, please hold still, and I'll fix you right up." She moves to another patient with poultices and cloth.
The third and fourth patients are a pair of old men, both evidently vagrants. Neither of them awaken, but their ugly sores start to dry up and recede as Carina applies her expert medical knowledge and Astraden applies her magic. In a day or so, they'll be gone completely.
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Eben trots along with the rest of the pack to the cellar while the healing-inclined ladies do their thing on the upper level.
"Hey, these stairs are different from the upstairs. I think they were added after the hut was built."
He stops and stares at the eastern hallway. Or, more specifically, what's in it. "Oh, it's an innocuous pile of rope that's sitting in a doorway, that we'd have to step over to pass. So, clearly, it's a monster. Farrukh, Tanith, one of you want to go kill it?"
Not entirely convinced of the danger, Tanith walks over and gives the pile of ropes a poke.
"And when we come back, you can just leave the rest to me."
Farrukh lets go of the doctor woman and gives her a very light shove for authenticity. He then heads down into the cellar with Eben and Tanith.
"I mean, the rope is PROBABLY fine... Farrukh says. But he gives it the side eye anyway as he descends, though he only stops if he notices something.
Astraden and Carina both hear a strange sound as they head toward the trapdoor. It sounds like a mix between a crackling fireplace and grinding metal. They hear the sound once, then three more times. It sounds like it's coming from around the street corner, in the same direction the old woman ran.
The old woman has stopped screaming.
The creature makes a low creaking sound as its eyes light up with white fire. It is an oddly artistic creation, considering it's probably about to try to kill the group.
"It's almost a shame to destroy it." Farrukh says, and goes at it with all he's got.
Farrukh's blades screech and scrape as they hack through the surprisingly springy and durable rope creature. At first, he seems to have laid four nasty hits, but the rope only bends and warps, reknitting rapidly. In the end, only two slices have had any real effect.
As Astraden and Carina ready to run, they both hear voices from down the street and around the block.
"...was just some dogs, that's all," says the distant voice of the middle-aged hobgoblin.
"We understand that this is your version of the story—and we are loathe to inconvenience a law-abiding citizen of Alhaster—but we do feel the need to remind you, as a courtesy, of the terms and conditions of citizenry, and the consequences of misleading an officer of the law." This female voice is harsh and somehow grating, and carries easily to the pair of healers.
"Either you are lying, or she is," says a second voice, almost identical to the first.
"You understand the complications this suggests," says a third. "Perhaps the ideal solution would be to bring both of you back to the Aerie?"
The hobgoblin sounds nervous now. "That won't be necessary."