Vaduk returns to the shrine, his investigation of their corner of the compound complete. For some time, the dwarf sits in silence, observing and brooding.
Something had gone wrong — much more wrong than he could remember fearing. A dark artifact? Some sort of trap? Wrack his brain though he might, he can't remember anything since a year or two after he arrived in Karcau.
But this count had something to do with it. Seems like all of them had been working together for the count. Or possibly against him — the scraps of information he had were far too unstable a foundation to build any trust on. For good or ill, though, this count was some of the reason why he's here. And Vaduk intends to get answers.
And those answers, it seems, lay deeper in this nightmarish asylum. Something had caused it to go haywire — and not long after that, whatever affliction had affected the five of them had lifted. Coincidence? Vaduk is skeptical. All of those answers may be connected.
As he ponders, he notices several of the refugees huddled around a tiny fire. Not 10 feet away is a pile of wooden pews pushed against the wall.
"Hey," the dwarf calls. "Hey, you lot."
A few look toward him — a plump woman, a twitchy man, a terrified child. The child begins to cry.
"What is it?" the woman asks. "You're scaring Brenton."
"S'ry," Vaduk grunts, half-inaudible. "There a reason your fire's so small?"
The woman glances toward the pile of furniture. "It's all the wood we've got in a fit state to burn," she replies. "No one has had time to chop up more firewood."
The dwarf sighs, and pushes himself to his feet. He grabs his looted battleaxe and strides toward the pile of furniture. With a single swing he hews a leg off one of the pews, sending it teetering. A few more chops of the weapon leave its right side as so much kindling. Vaduk gathers it and carries it over to the fire. The flames begin to greedily eat away at the fresh fuel as the dwarf lays the wood in.
"Better?" he asks. Naysa nods, so Vaduk returns to the pews and resumes his chopping.
"No loot," is Vaduk's first report from his lonely search through the bodies.
His second report takes a few more minutes of body-handling before it's voiced. "Some of these have been mauled. Anyone have any idea if this was a natural beast or... unnatural?"
As he waits for others to investigate, Vaduk rolls the most unusual corpse out into an open space on the floor, and begins to examine the body and its robe of rags more closely.
"Also, anyone recognize this flame mark?"
"Thanks," the dwarf grunts, taking the weapon. "Gavru, was it?"
He moves closer to the pile of corpses, first inspecting it from a half-dozen feet out.
"Stay close in case these things animate," he says over his shoulder.
After completing an initial inspection, if Vaduk sees nothing that would lead him to stop, he begins using the spear to roll corpses off the pile and onto the ground, where they can be seen more clearly. At this point, he avoids physical contact and keeps as much distance as he can using the longspear.
"Looks like I'm our lucky volunteer," Vaduk deadpans, looking from the group to the corpses. "Anyone got a pole or spear or anything that might make this easier?"
As the two humans talk, Vaduk kneels back down among the bags. Buried among the burlap he finds a sturdy leather backpack, its surface festooned by loops and hooks. With a smile, the dwarf sets it down and dumps the remaining sacks onto the ground, then quickly sorts them into two piles. The closer of the two piles to him contains an assortment of odds and ends: flasks, a lantern, some rope, a bedroll, a grappling hook and more.
"At least this stuff's still here," he mutters, packing most of it expertly into the backpack. The lantern he hangs from a long hook on one side, the rope he ties to the grappling hook, coils and straps to the other side. What remains he eyes with some skepticism, before grabbing a worn leather cuirass and strapping it on.
Vaduk completes his methodical work by laying out a mid-sized axe, a small hammer and a quiver of bolts, then strapping on a belt and hanging the three items from loops around it. He then hooks the crossbow onto the backpack and pulls the laden bag onto his back.
"Alright, that should suffice for now," the dwarf declares, sorting through a wallet with an array of picks, hooks and wires in it, before sliding that into a belt pouch.
Thus encumbered, he pokes his head through the door into the charnel house.
"Well, that looks... about what I expected, honestly. Pile full of corpses not exactly out of place here." The dwarf gets a little closer. "What is odd, though, is that these don't look like patients. More like... the asylum's original employees?"
The dwarf looks back at the others near the doorway.
"Think we should give the bodies a once-over before we move onward?"
Vaduk stands silently as his fellow escapees mill around him. Their conversation washes over him as only so many sounds. Crisis gone, the dwarf allows his mind to relax and finally come to grips with the broader situation.
He is in some kind of prison, hospital or asylum. Not a very pleasant one, though Vaduk had been in his share of dungeons before and "pleasant" was not a word he often associated with them.
All things considered, though, where he is was a pretty simple mystery. The bigger question is why he was here, and for that, Vaduk sees no obvious answers. He had been arrested before, of course — occupational hazard — but has no memory of being hauled off here.
What does he remember? Anything that feels recent is hazy — hard to piece together.
Vaduk lowers himself down a rope into a dry well, something far below gleaming in the light of his lantern.
Shouts and barks echo behind him and he sprints down a wooded path.
He quietly rummages through a bookshelf, a fire crackling beside him on a stone hearth, and the storm outside almost but not quite drowning out the noise of copulation in the next room.
A smug man in a red waistcoat offers a too-small bag of gold. Vaduk snatches a small black chest back to his body as he stares the fool down.
Any job can go wrong. Vaduk knows it. But which one went wrong to end up here? And how could any bungled heist leave his mind so jumbled? Unless...
His mind shoves a forming thought aside of its own volition as he returns his awareness to the room.
"None of you know anything about how you got here either," he says flatly, only a hint of question in his voice.
Vaduk doesn't stand around waiting for responses, but turns to the sacks near where the doctor-creature fled. It's only a moment's rummaging before he pulls out an oversized crossbow, plain but well-cared-for.
"That's better," he murmurs, then turns to face the others. "Someone said something about getting out of here?"
The dwarf snatches the keys from the doctor during her few seconds of inactivity, clutching them close as she launches herself forward toward her brave but hapless victim.
Seeing the torturer intent on exacting her bloody rage, Vaduk picks a likely key from the ring and inserts it in the lock, trying other keys until he finds one that works.
As the surprisingly complex mechanism clicks open, the dwarf shoulders it open and races across the short hall to to unlock the opposite cell.
"Arm yourselves!" he hisses, standing back from the opening door.
Vaduk had been examining the lock when the "doctor" turned her back, and so was inches away from the woman when she flew against the bars from her victim's kick.
The dwarf didn't hesitate, crouching down and reaching for the ring of keys around the doctor's belt, working or wresting them free. Picking this lock could take him all day, but a key? Just a second.
Across the hall, Vaduk lay on the belly for a moment after waking up, trying to calm his mind and think. A dream, that's all. And about all he knew. What else? Face pressed into the grimy stone, the dwarf listened. Movement, steel through the air, a scream. Murmurs from around him.
He sat up and looked around more fully, matching sights to sounds. The gnome and elf in his cell, the two humans across the way. The figures from his dream. That seemed odd, but then nothing seemed normal here. He idly felt his back as he registered some sort of surgery or torture across the hall.
"Can one of you two pick a lock?" the gnome asked.
Vaduk didn't respond for a moment, but pushed himself to his feet and examined the lock on the cell. It seemed crude on the outside, but it took just a moment peering at the tumblers to disabuse Vaduk of his illusions.
"Tricky even with good picks," he murmured back, voice surprising him with its raspiness. "Without? Very hard. Maybe impossible. Hard to say."
The dwarf stalked up to the door of the inn, then paused. He examined the battered wooden door. By ingrained instinct, he looked for oddities. Something wrong.
A moment was all it took to see that there was no danger. First thing. But then he let his eyes wander more broadly. The door — not a door. Decoration. Didn't work. The older man was right behind him. Waiting for him to go in. The dwarf shook his head.
"Won't work," he grunted. "Fake door."
His ragged shoes clomped loudly on a cobblestone, the noise cutting through his stupor like an axe. A second ago, he was — he didn't know. But now, noise. From him. The eerie fog swirled. The back of shirt was missing. Unnatural footsteps came toward him. Danger all around him, and yet it was the noise of his shoes on the pavement that shoved its way to the front of his mind and refused to be ignored.
He — who was he? He crouched briefly, trying to take his bearings. Fog. Figure. Fear. All outside his control. But he could control his own feet.
He moved forward across the street. Feet nearly silent now. How he couldn't say. But this he could do. A few steps helped. More. With every silent stride, the world cleared. He was still lost. Figure and fog. Fog and figure. But ahead: light. A candle? A sign.
Time later to think. He had to focus. The sign — an inn? Ruined, but someone there. An enemy? He felt not, but couldn't say why. Shelter, then. Shelter first.
Below the sign, another figure. Big. Much taller than him. But not tall like the figure. Normal-tall. Normal proportions. Human? The word penetrated his mind as he approached. With it came other words: elf, halfling, dwarf. The latter resonated and he knew that was what he was, knew so firmly it seemed strange he could ever have forgotten.
The human bellowed into the darkness, and the dwarf cringed instinctively. He hesitated, taking stock. In the moment another human emerged from the fog, and spoke sense.
Hesitation passed, he swept silently out of the fog, a still-young dwarf of stout body and long brown beard, currently sprawling unkempt down his chest.
"Shh!" he hissed. He paused, trying to form words. "Get inside."
As the dwarf moved toward the door, another word formed in his mind. He spoke again, not bothering to turn back to the human.
"Idiot."
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