"I guess we're following that blood trail," Ahto replies. "Probably a trap, but we don't have a lot of options if we're going to find out what's going on."
"Even if it is a trap, it's all we have right now unless we plan to go spelunking again. So I suppose I'll lead the way, unless someone else is better at following tracks."
Varrren nods at the tiefling newcomer and replies to Pyrrha, "That is why I dragged it up here. It was, perhaps, a clue."
Varrren shrugs at Mephiston, "I will follow your lead."
The blood droplets continue down a back alley, until they come to an end next to an old manhole. The lip is smeared in bloody fingerprints, just as recent as the blood splatter you saw on the way here. It's hard to tell, but the fingerprints are scattered and smeared, as if whoever did it was in a hurry. The blood trail seems especially thick just outside the manhole, then thins out rapidly as they head back toward Grozz's dumping ground.
Running on adrenaline, this one. Wont be a body far from here unless there is healing nearby. Substantial magic or alchemy for his sake. Pyrrha says leering down at the manhole entrance.
"Back into the depths it seems. Joy of joys." The Thrune Agent's tone makes it clear that it's anything but. He reaches down and pries the cover open and peers down into the passage beneath it.
Mephiston peers back down into the passage, which as they suspected leads back into the Siphons. At the bottom of the passage they spot more blood, and following it farther down the hallway reveals larger pools and smears of blood, including boot prints. Pyrrha is right—whoever was losing this much blood almost definitely was only still moving because of adrenaline. The passage comes to the fork where one path veers to the south, while the other appears to be less a path and more the remains of a collapsed sewer tunnel still partially full of water.
"Good insight Pyrrha. It looks like we're going to be lucky to find whoever is missing an arm. Well, find them still alive at least. This looks a bit like a fight. Let's try to follow the trail back and see where it leads."
"Well, there's no sigh of which path to take inherently. Let's just pick a path and hope we get lucky." Mephiston heads into the broken tunnel. It seems more likely that the blood was covered by water than whoever was injured suddenly started bleeding here.
Mephiston heads down into the collapsed tunnel, the water coming up near his knees. Not much farther down, he spies another hallway that must have intersected with this one. One side of the tunnel has collapsed, but the other runs northward; he has to haul himself up to look, but Mephiston does spot some specks of blood running down the hall, although they look a fair bit older than the ones they've been following. Farther up, the tunnel dips back down, probably due to another collapsed passageway. The end of hishallway runs up against a grate, which Mephiston can tell is from a room he discovered earlier. The grate seems loose, like a good shove could dislodge it, but it's still in place for the moment.
Ahto follows Mephiston, keeping enough distance to not be in his way, but close enough to come to his aid if someone or something attacks.
"I think this passage leads back to an area we've explored before. Shall we see if it leads us to our prize, or try something else?"
"If it's Grozz, he's most likely trying to crawl back into his spider hole. Hopefully, we can catch him and get some information from him before he bleeds out."
Mephiston and Ahto give the grate a shove, and the weakened stone around it crumbles and collapses, and the two of them stumble into a pool of stagnant water. Crawling up onto the raised platform, the two of them plainly notice something new; bloody handprints are pressed into the stone where they climbed up, and a trail of blood and dripping water leads down toward a once collapsed pathway. Now though, the passage seems to have been cleared—perhaps more easily than you might have expected—and the wet, bloody trail heads south along that corridor.
Pyrrha eyes the trail south down the corridor. The fact that this one hasn't bled out already has me wanting to heed caution over a speedy pursuit. He doesn't appear to be wandering without purpose, and his stamina has kept him moving faster than even a hardy soldier. Be careful. Pyrhha cautions as she draws her weapon as she continues to bring up the flank of the bloody path.
"I find myself agreeing with you. I'll keep my eyes open." Mephiston takes the lead again, moving forward cautiously.
The path continues southward, before splitting off in two directions. Mephiston notices that the blood trail continues down to the east, but to the west he sees what looks like some crudely dug catacombs. They're dug out of the wall with rubble lying in the center of the room, likely carved out of the walls with something like a pickax. Without venturing much further, he can see several withered legs jutting out over the edge of the catacomb. At the end of the hall—from the other entrance to the room—he spots what he's fairly certain is a pressure plate. However, he doesn't spot any trap in the room.
Varrren looks into the room to the west, a thought nagging the back of his mind. For a moment he just looks before recollection clicks into place. Once it does he turns back to the others and speaks softly, "Didn't we hear a rumor that Grozz has ghouls to guard his lair?"
"I vaguely remember something along those lines. That would explain a few things, and also raise several more questions. The trail continues in a different direction, so we don't necessarily need to deal with this, but I suppose we do have the option to do so."
"Yeah, I remember hearing something like that, too. Maybe we're not chasing a wounded Grozz, but one of his pets that fished a meal outta that dump site. That would at least explain why our elusive mark is moving so fast."
"That would make a lot of sense," the spy agrees. "And it would explain the amount of blood."
Pyrrha settles into her fighting stance, ready to respond to anything that stumbles by when she adds, Doesn't sound like anyone wants to disagree. So what now? Turn back and go poking around where we found the money and the letter, or push down one of these paths?
"The blood trail is either a clue or bait," Ahto replies. "If we keep going, we either find out what it leads to, or we'll spring the trap waiting for us. Everything else seems to be a dead-end." He shrugs, then gives Pyrrha a playful poke in the ribs. "Worst case scenario, something tries to kill us. That's about the run-of-the-millstone for us as of late, isn't it?" He finishes by giving her a wink and a crooked smile.
Ahto and Mephiston continue forward again, walking past another pair of stagnant pools. Mephiston notices what looks like a passage through the grate to his right, but it distracts him just long enough that his first hint of the trap is hearing the light click as both he and Ahto sink their foot into another pressure plate. The whole group hears the wall behind them grind open as worn down mechanisms part some of the old rock, and a huge gout of flame bursts out from the now-exposed nozzle jutting out from the new opening.
Ahto catches sight of the gout of flame just a moment too late to get completely clear off it, but he manages to duck and avoid the brunt of the blast.
"Ow! Sonofab$#$!!" he growls as smoke rises from the singed fringes of his shirtsleeves.
Mephiston hears the sound and instinctively throws himself forward, rolling along the ground and entirely out of the range of the flames. He feels the heat lick at his back for just a split second, but it unscorched. "Well, we're certainly back in Groz's territory." He grumbles a little and steps back to disassemble the trap. "That will teach me for getting careless."
Ahto decides to put another pace's distance between Mephiston and himself - still close enough to close in case of a fight, but (hopefully) not close enough to get caught in another unspotted trap.
He redoubles his focus on watching for trouble.
Mephiston disables the device with a few quick motions, removing the internal trigger near the nozzle to keep it from spitting flame. Ahto creeps forward and looks around, and just before he steps on it he notices yet another trap; a pressure plate hidden in the floor, not unlike the ones they'd just stepped on. Looking to the left, he spots an odd seam in the wall that likely sports another trap. However, past the pressure plate he also spots a few droplets of blood scattered on the ground just around the bend. It seems they're headed in the right direction.
Ahto follows Mephiston’s lead to pass the pressure plate, then looks to the rest of the group. ”We’re staying on the trail, right?”
"I don't see any reason not to." Mephiston takes the scouting position again, trying to be more careful this time.
Mephiston heads down the passageway as the group cautiously steps over the previously noticed pressure plate, and continues down the corridor. As they round the bend, they cross into another room and notice another set of bloody spatters on the floor, although most of them appear to be much older. The now russet-colored cobblestones on the floor almost hide the smaller pools of blood from your current quarry, and those themselves almost hide what is distinctly a footprint; it looks mostly human, but it almost looks like there are chunks of flesh missing from the outline. Around the room, Mephiston spies some bear traps strewn around the floor with loose rubble and gravel scattered around. It seems likely that at one point these traps were meant to be covered, but whoever traveled through here must have revealed the traps by accident in their haste.
As Mephiston starts to head down the only available path, his eye catches what looks like another hidden panel in the wall. Approaching carefully out of fear of a trap, the Chelaxian runs his hand along the grooves until he feels a catch, and the wall slides open to reveal a hidden passageway. It breaks off in two directions, one heading to the south while the other heads east.
"A lot of traps ahead, and a secret passage too. Well, isn't this turning into a fun little adventure." The Chelish man grumbles a little bit as he looks down the newly revealed passage. He moves ahead just a little bit and checks the passage heading east.
"Your idea of fun has come into question Mephiston," Pyrrha mutters as she brings up the rear.
”At this point, being ambushed would be a relief. I’m tired of being led through this grist mill,” Ahto adds, keeping a pace or two behind Mephiston.
Varrren chuckles from the rear of the group, "But we are having an underground adventure, Pyrrha. It is most intriguing."
Mephiston takes a look up and around the bend in the hall, coming to what appears to be another secret store room. Barrels of what he believes is likely ale along with bags of sand—probably to stem any leaky walls in Grozz's domain—sit alongside the shallow pools so common down in the Siphons. It doesn't make much sense to have a secret door just to head here, and Mephiston's intuition tells him there's likely another secret entrance or exit to this room, but he can't seem to find it. However, as he heads back to tell the group, he hears quite a bit of muffled noise headed from the other passageway, what sounds like several shuffling footsteps and... laughing?
Mephisto clicks his tongue and falls back to the rest of the group. "There's something ahead. I think there's another passage, but it's concealed and there's other movement up ahead. We might have finally found part of Grozz's territory. I suggest we be ready for resistance as we search ahead."