Tassira tentatively shakes her head. "...no, we never saw Spike..."
The news that blood veil has reached Helvara's work doesn't surprise the young mage--but it does cause her heart to sink.
"We'll do everything we can to help, Helvara." She pulls Helvara into a deeper hug before letting go and motioning for Kayleigh to come closer.
"Can you see if you can do anything for Cassandra?"
While Tassira comforts Helvara, Regeris is all business. "Is Darien's body still here? are there any other reports of unfortunate occurrences?"
Kayleigh releases Nebbin's hand and moves over to Tassira and Helvara. When the mage requests that she help Cassandra, the cleric nods and replies, "Of course." Her eyes shift briefly to Helvara as she adds, "I'd hoped to use my last remove disease spell on Carawyn, but she's closer to home and should be easier to treat going forward. Hopefully, the spell will be better served on Cassandra...and remove the blood veil's taint from your business."
Returning to Nebbin, she suggests he help Regeris in looking at the dead man, reminding him that former employees of Eel's End might well still be shiver addicts. "Be on the lookout for anything spidery. I'll be back as soon as I'm able, but it doesn't make sense for anyone other than myself to get close to Cassandra while she's infectious."
Kayleigh asks for directions to Cassandra's room, along with the mundane herbs and remedies she might need if the spell fails and she's forced to treat the blood veil by hand. When she enters the room, she introduces herself to the other woman and tells her that she'll be trying to cast a spell to purge the blood veil from her system.
"It doesn't always work," Kayleigh warns. "And I won't be charging for the spell, either. Not in gold, anyways." Pursing her lips, the cleric makes her pitch. "In return for my efforts, I'd like you to answer a couple of possibly uncomfortable questions for me truthfully."
Not waiting for the other woman to agree to the deal, Kayleigh clutches her holy symbol, whispers a prayer to Milani, and casts remove disease on Cassandra. When she doesn't feel the spell take hold on her patient, the frustrated cleric lets out a deep sigh. "Looks like we're going to have to do this the hard way...." While she treats the symptoms of the blood veil by hand, Kayleigh asks her questions.
"Are any of the workers here still using shiver? And, if so...have they had any weird dreams featuring spiders?"
"Is Carawyn sick too? We've tried to be so careful about who we let in to the House. But Cassie does much of the cooking and shopping at market, and I fear she picked it up out in public and brought it in. Is the whole house vulnerable now?"
To Regeris she answers, "They're in opposite directions. This place is so big." She leads you back up the steps she's just come down. At the top she turns right and quietly opens the door. The room beyond has a washstand, a dresser a small table and a bed with a pathetic excuse for a patient swaddled in blankets. Cassie turns out to be a young redhead woman who's covered from head to toe in freckles and rash. She's not coughing yet, but she has a terrific fever and is definitely infected with the disease.
Her teeth chatter as she answers Kayleigh's question.
"Sure, some people use it sometimes. Darien used it. Once you start using that stuff it's hard not to keep on, that's why I've stayed away from it. Poor Darien. I can't believe he would do that."
She dabs her blood-shot eyes with the edge of her blanket and collapses back into her pillow.
"I haven't heard any dream talk, no."
---
Helvara leaves Kayleigh to her work and returns to the group downstairs.
"Ok, this way to Darien's room."
Anpugit eyes the group suspiciously as they mount the southernmost stairs. At the top you turn left and follow a winding hall past a few doors and another set of steps that go up to floor three. She stops at a particular door, but before opening it points further down the hall.
"That's the entrance to the House of Silks - the part of the building we've purposed for the business. Darien's been rooming here."
She turns a key in the lock and opens the door on a darkened, somber room. Sick yellow light spills through a thick, dirty window, casting long shadows across the walls. A figure lies on the bed under a sheet. The bedclothes are stained an ugly brown where Darien bled out in bed. On the dresser next to the head of the bed is a kitchen knife, its handle still sticky with blood.
Helvara muffles another sob and looks away when Regeris lifts the sheet to look at the victim. Even through the waxy pallor of death you can see that this was an attractive young man. He's well muscled and clean shaven, and Tassira recognizes him from previous trips to the House of Clouds. Both of his forearms, though, are gouged deep - opened from wrist to the elbow. Emi's forearms suddenly ache with memory of her own nightmare.
Kayleigh nods grimly, both when Helvara asks if Carawyn's sick and again when the madame asks if the whole house is vulnerable to the blood veil.
"If my magic can't immediately remove the disease--and that's a real possibility--I'll treat the symptoms in a traditional, mundane manner...I've gotten a lot of practice at that over the past several days and have become something of an expert at it. If I can't immediately eradicate the blood veil, I can take Cassandra to my old flat, which I've been using as a sickhouse in recent days. There I'll be able to treat and care for her and Carawyn...and anyone else who might come down with the blood veil over the next 24 hours or so. We'll return her to you once she's no longer contagious."
After thanking the young woman for being honest and forthcoming with the answers to her questions, Kayleigh warns Cassie not to take shiver and try to warn others against it as well. "There's someone...or, more likely, something...in the city preying upon users, possibly through the dreams and hallucinations the drug brings on." The cleric then tells the young woman about her sickhouse and suggests Cassie pack a few things and prepare for the walk there.
It bothers Kayleigh that she's not horrified at the condition and manner of death of poor Darien. She whispers the news that the young man was indeed a shiver user.
"I wonder what he saw in his dreams.... Maybe a swarm of spiders scuttling underneath his skin.... Maybe his arms twisting and changing into the legs of a spider...."
The cleric seems utterly convinced that the man's shiver-induced nightmares drove him to kill himself.
Nebbin looks a bit ill at the scene but looks around the room to see if there's anything else that might be of relevance. Is it possible Rolth got in here and decided Darien was close enough to them to be a victim?
Emi nods once, affirming Kayleigh's theory about Darien's death. She recounts she own experience slowly, like she's having to sort out the particulars of those memories from the jumble of all the others.
"I've had that dream. Pustules on my arms that I couldn't bear so I cut them open. They were filled with black fluid and spiders. Maybe he acted on it while dreaming, or maybe the dream didn't stop when he woke."
Nebbin's searching almost comes up empty. He goes through all of the poor man's things, looking for anything remarkable. In a last-ditch idea he gets down on the floor and looks under the low mattress. A small object underneath the bed eludes him on his first and second try, but finally he successfully hits the object with the tip of his sword and it rolls out into the open.
It's a small glass vial with a label affixed to it, The label bears a now familiar line sketch of a spider.
...Shiver. Not. Even. Once.
Tassira lets Helvara cry into her shoulder if she needs to.
"...how long ago did this happen?"
"Last night, it must have. Endeera said she was with him until very late. So sometime after she left his room. We found him this morning, when he wouldn't answer his door. Lefty picked the lock and found him like this."
Kayleigh listens quietly to the others, her mind trying to process the information gained. The presence of shiver doesn't surprise her; the presence of the same blend that Barvasi created is worrisome, however. Perhaps it's a leftover from the days before the friends brought his empire crashing down, or...maybe someone else is now producing the drug. The priestess fears there's no way of telling how fresh the dose of shiver was.
Taking Regeris aside, she whispers her concerns quietly to the inquisitor, adding, "Can you use magic to detect if Helvara, Anpujit, or anyone else here is evil? Maybe that vial of shiver was left over from before we put the King of Spiders out of business...or maybe someone else has taken over the production. I could prepare a speak with dead spell tomorrow to interrogate Darien, but that would mean one less remove disease or lesser restoration spell to deal with the blood veil...plus, I'd only get to ask a couple of questions. And I can think of three I'd like to ask: Who did you get the shiver from? When did you get it? And where did you get it?"
============
============
Regeris stares at the body dispassionately while he listens to Kayleigh whisper to him. He steps aside with her.
"Let's start with simple easy questions and see where they lead us. However I will see if there is an evil presence with us."
Regeris steps back, touching his holy symbol and requesting the Everbloom's grace to seek any evil presences within the room.
While doing so, he takes a bit to examine the body and the bed looking in specific for excessive sweat or twisted sheets, as well as checking for anything unusual with the body or signs of a potential violent attack.
As he works he looks over to Helvara as Nebbin retrieves the vial. "Do you know where he may have got this shiver?"
Nebbin waits, watches and listens, knowing there's not much he can do to help here, but ready when there is.
"The same dream during the same night. Maybe the only difference in the result is that he took shiver last night, and I didn't. Shiver never lets go."
Emi says it in an absent way, as if she's trying to work something out in her head.
The bed is a mess of semi-dried blood. When the others laid him out and covered him with the sheet they likely destroyed any forensic clues as to how Darien passed his last night. Well-placed questioning, however, serves the same purpose.
"Yes. His sheets were twisted and torn off the mattress when he was found. I pulled the bed back together before we laid him back down and covered him. I couldn't say if he sweated though. There's so much blood..."
When Regeris asks about the source of the shiver, Helvara again has a ready answer.
"I stay as far away from that drug and that market as I possibly can. In the early days at Eel's End I even tried to talk Devargo out of producing the stuff, but he would hear nothing of it. After that, the best I could do was try to talk my people out of using it. But they're free, of course. Darien came to us with a problem and never shook it for very long."
"This maker's mark was one that Devargo used, but I think you can still buy it at the Night Market, among other places. I don't think Devargo was the only one who produced it. He wasn't starting that gang war alone you know, he would be sure to lose against House Arkona if he did. He had friends... you killed some of them when you took him down, but he had others. Friends I couldn't persuade him to quit."
Regeris detects no lie in Helvara. She seems genuinely distraught at the man's death, moreso even than the night you took Devargo down.
"Do you think someone could have done this to him? I've hired as many guards as I can afford, and Anpugit has more of his own. No one raised an alarm of any kind. The only way into the house other than the doors downstairs, which we lock, would be up on the third floor. Most of the space up there is still unoccupied and some of the windows are busted out. But the door was still locked from the inside this morning..."
"He probably did it himself," Nebbin says after some thought, "but maybe we should go upstairs and look?"
He thinks some more.
"I mean, someone could have gone in, then come out and used tools to lock the door again, right?"
"It doesn't hurt to be thorough," Kayleigh chimes in at Nebbin's suggestion to search the upstairs area. "I'll go with you if you'd like to check it out now," she tells the big warrior. "You can search with your eyes--and a bit of Milani's guidance--and I'll scan the place with detect magic...just in case another invisible imp is up to mischief in this place as well."
Nebbin nods and moves in front of Kayleigh in case anyone else is up there.
Loathe to share information, but recognizing they need to invest in allies, Regeris just speaks the truth.
"There are... signs that there may be a malevolent presence haunting the dreams of people in this city. Those who use, or may have ever used shiver could be vulnerable. This is our first guess. A good thief or someone with decent magical ability could get in and out of the room leaving the door locked. We'll continue to look through the building for more information and question everyone. However - if our theory on shiver is correct it is important that any of its users who work with or for you be found and spoken to. Can you please gather anyone who was a habitual user back when Devargo was in business? Anyone who would have connections either. And Anpugit, he seems informed and may know something."
Emi is fairly certain Darien killed himself, whether aware or what he was doing or not. She doesn't say so directly thoughm Instead she references something they've already seen.
"A person suffering from these dreams doesn't always suffer them in their mind only. Remember Carawyn walked about, entered other rooms, and acted like a person awake, but she wasn't. It may have been the same with Darien."
Thinking along those lines causes something else to occur to Emi.
"Has anyone else noticed that the most severe dreams happen to many people all at once? It doesn't seem to be one person one night, and another the next, or a couple of nights later. They're clustered together, maybe not exactly shared, although Darien's and mine seem to have been similar. It's more like we all slip into another world, one where these dreams take place. Might there be something about the timing? Why one night instead of another?"
Although she doesn't believe anyone snuck in to murder Darian, Emi ultimately goes along to check things out simply to have something productive to do. She goes to check entrances and other possible ways in or out, while Kayleigh and Nebbin check Darien's room.
"With Darien gone, I think Berind is the only employee I have left with a taste for the stuff, and he's been clean for weeks as far as I know. I'll ask the question and gather him at minimum for you to question downstairs."
Helvara leads the party out of the room and back around the corner to the steps. As the group advances up the dark staircase the old boards under their feet creak ominously. At the top of the flight they emerge into a hall that's well lit by the broken, unshuttered widows along the outer wall. Outside those windows the second floor roof extends out another twenty feet or so, making it very feasible for someone traveling along the shingles to infiltrate the house.
Padding around the third floor you find that this section covers more than half of the building's floorplan, encompassing six deserted rooms filled with broken furniture and dilapidated bedding. Based on the floorplan downstairs and the many rooms on this and the second floor, this building must have been an inn a very long time ago. The layer of dust over everything is thick and essentially undisturbed. So while it's technically feasible that someone used the shingles to enter here, you can't find any evidence that it actually occurred.
Coming back down two flights of stairs to the tavern, Helvara motions for you to follow back up the northern stairs where you first met Cassie. But rather than turning right into her room she leads you left, up another flight and into a parlor room on another part of the third floor that's not connected to the chambers you just examined.
The parlor is half living space and half bedroom. Seated in a chair in the corner is a nervous young man who Helvara introduces as Berind.
"Hi. Helvara said you wanted to ask me some questions? This isn't about Darien, is it?"
Ever polite, Kayleigh introduces herself to Berind and apologizes for her appearance, trying to assure the young man that she's getting over a bout with blood veil, not currently in its grip and contagious.
"Yes--it is about Darien, but it also concerns you." She asks Nebbin to produce the shiver bottle he found under the dead man's bed. "Your concerned boss tells us you've been known to occasionally indulge in shiver," the priestess continues, trying not to sound too preachy. "Well, you might want to stop...or at least not use this brand." Pointing out the spider logo on the bottle she adds, "We think there's some ingredient in this blend that allows someone or something to enter or control your dreams and hallucinations while you're under its effect. We believe Darien was driven to inflict his fatal wounds upon himself."
"And if you know anything about this brand," Nebbin adds, "maybe you could tell us? Like where it came from? Or if you ever had any weird dreams?"
Berind's face drains of blood when he hears the questions and the guesses around Darien's death.
"Oh Gods! I... I'm clean. I've been clean for weeks," he replies.
"But I did have a dream just last night. A horrible one! I dreamed that I... I went downstairs in the middle of the night... and that I took a knife from the kitchen... and that I went out in the street and killed an old man who was sleeping in the alley! The dream was so bad that I woke up sweating and shaking. I had to convince myself it hadn't really happened."
"The dream was so bad that I almost fell off just last night! If I'd have had a dose of shiver on me... well, I honestly might have taken it. I really wanted one - for the first time since I quit I just really felt the need. To help me sleep again."
He casts a guilty glance at Helvara who stands in the corner, slender arms crossed under her breasts.
"Tell them where you got the drug, Berind. There's something very bad going on here and you need to help them get to the bottom of it."
He looks back to your group, shame and dread written across his face.
"The last time I used, that was the stuff," he says, pointing at the vial in Kayleigh's hand. "It was cheap. A friend of mine got the doses and we took it together. I don't know where she scored it."
Nebbin has to hold himself to stop from rushing out to the alley to see if there's a man there. He's afraid Helvara's friend might be a murderer ... though maybe it's not really his fault?
Antsy, he waits for someone to ask about the friend, too eager to get outside to think about doing it himself.
Kayleigh believes Berind...for the most part. Still, there are some things about his testimony that warrant further questioning and investigation. Before proceeding, she asks for Milani's guidance in finding the truth.
"Going back to your dream, Berind…," the cleric asks slowly, "...what reason did you have for killing the old man in the alley? And how did you convince yourself that the events in your dream didn't actually happen? Did you go to the alley? Can you show us the alley where you thought you killed the man?"
Trying to be surreptitious about it, Kayleigh checks to see if there's any blood on Berind's hands or clothes.
Regeris listens as Kayleigh and Nebbin question the man. He looks grim. "Devargo's supply. No lead there. Naturally he had the city flooded with the stuff. Maybe check out the alley, although I hope that what happened with Darien was an extreme case and not... typical."
He walks over to Helvara. "Darien's probable suicide and the blood veil appear to be problems of Korvosa, rather than this building. We're still looking for information but has there been any other unfortunate or strange occurrences?"
He also glances to Tassira. "We may want to check on your mother."
At Regeris's final words, Kayleigh, too, glances at the mage and gives a quick but firm nod.
Once she's a distance from Berind, Kayleigh approaches Helvara. In a hushed whisper, she asks, "How much did you move Darien after you found him, and was the knife always on the nightstand?"
A distracted Tassira has very little to add.
...is Mother okay? I want to know, but also I’m afraid to know...
"No, the knife was gripped in Darien's hand. One of the boys, Spike or Lefty pried it out of his frozen fingers and put it on the nightstand. We only moved him a little bit so we could pull the sheet up over his head."
Berind looks from face to face nervously as Helvara explains how Darien was found. There's something more, but he's plainly having a hard time getting it out. When he speaks, his voice is little more than a whisper.
"In my dream, I wanted to kill. I was thirsty... so thirsty. I went out into the street looking for something to quench my horrible thirst."
"When I found him lying there sleeping he looked so... full. Like he would burst at the seems with life. And all I could think to do was to cut him. To bleed him, and to... consume him. Like a vampire or something." He shudders at reliving his dreaming thoughts.
"I must be crazy! It's crazy to dream that, right? I woke up in my bed, feeling like the drug would quench my thirst. But I didn't have any, and I didn't take any. I didn't leave my room. I swear I had nothing to do with Darien's death. It was a dream."
When Kayleigh suggests leading the party to the scene of the dream killing, Berind reluctantly agrees. He leads the group down the steps and out doors opposite from where you entered the tavern.
You find yourself in a narrow alleyway. The eaves of the buildings to either side overlap creating deep shadows even in the bright of day. He walks you around a corner and stops next to a pile of refuse.
"The old man slept here. This is where I killed him."
Looking around you find no signs of a murder here. There's no corpse and no bloodstains. Berind looks relieved.
Tassira starts sweeping the area with detect magic, her eyes glowing a familiar arcane blue.
Nebbin lets out a long sigh, pleased that there's no dead old man here. He's not sure what more they can do here, though. They've warned the brothel and maybe further connected the shiver with the bad dreams (and the bad dreams with the killings), but he's at a loss still at how to stop it all.
Kayleigh offers Berind an apologetic smile. "Sorry to put you on the spot like that, but we're all out of our element in this situation and investigation. It looks like Darien may have had an extreme dream--as opposed to merely creepy--because he actually used shiver last night. And I think Emi made a great observation earlier--about why these dreams seem common on only certain nights. Perhaps it has something to do with phases of the moon; I believe some of the previous dreams had a gigantic spider hanging in the sky where the moon should have been."
Knowing the folly of investigating a well-traveled alleyway, Regeris does a search anyways.
Neither Tassira's orison nor Regeris's search turn up anything remarkable in the alley.
It's late morning. The plagued and murder-filled city is your oyster.
Tassira sighs. "...dammit. No magic traces here."
"Well, while we're here... I understand you have a haunted basement you'd like us to take a look at?"
Emi shrugs at Helvara in support of Tassira's suggestion.
"Yeah, while we're here..."
Regeris nods as the rest o the group return to speak with Helvara. "We came here about the basement in the first place. Hopefully it's something we can cleanly resolve."
Nebbin agrees with the others. Maybe they can at least deal with one thing here, since so much else seems to be beyond him them.
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Helvara leads you back through the front office and down the steps into the basement. There are crates and barrels piled up against the door. With a little help from Nebbin the way is soon cleared. Bending down to the lock, Regeris finds that the magic of the lock has reasserted itself.
As Regeris works on the lock Helvara turns back to the rest of you. "So what kind of trick do you have to deal with the wasps?"
Kayleigh sighs at Helvara's question. "Personally, I've got nothing," the cleric confesses. Turning to Regeris and Tassira, however, she asks, "Can either of you cast a protection from evil spell? Since the wasps seem to be summoned, they shouldn't be able to harm someone under the spell's protection. I'm thinking that maybe one of us, under that spell's protection, might be able to enter the crypt and try to communicate with the haunt to find a way to remove it."
Tassira fishes her spellbook out of her backpack and starts looking through it. "I should have that sort of protective spell..."
"...yep!" She taps the page she opened the book to. She's grinning.
"Finally, something I can help with."
"I can try to talk to it," Nebbin offers. "That way, if it stings me, it won't hurt anyone else. You can all tell me what to say."
Kayleigh purses her lips and tries to think. "Well, if we want to put the haunt to rest, we need to right whatever wrong is keeping the spirit here, at this site. I can think of three possible culprits. Dradjit the Godslayer, whose mark we've found twice in this place; the dead elf's lover who betrayed her; or possibly whomever broke into the tomb and maybe stole something from her sarcophagus."
Turning to Helvara, the cleric concludes with, "And it might be a good thing to promise that we'll rebuild the broken wall and reseal the tomb once we've put the haunt to rest. Promising that might make the haunt more cooperative...if it's intelligent to begin with."
Regeris frowns. "Brute force may be able to suppress it temporarily but you're right, we need to determine the source fo the ill and set that to right. Removing the desecration and rebuilding the shrine is the best way to go about it. Some alchemist's fires or similar weaponry may help for those of us who don't have Tassira's magic."
After some fidgeting Regeris defeats the lock a second time and opens the door. The room beyond is dark, dusty and filled with pieces of worn out and broken furniture. On the wall opposite is an arched door frame that leads into a natural cavern. Steps cut into the floor lead down into darkness. You know from your last trip that the way down to Camina's Grotto is single-file.
As the party moves, Tassira casts a light spell and switches out her colour spray spell for protection from evil, using a few gestures, arcane syllables and a little bit of magic.
"I think there's less trash down here," Nebbin notes. "Maybe someone or something else has been down here?"