Chapter 10: Pipe Room Investigation

The trio run down the halls, a few dancing motes of light illuminating the darkness around them. Every so often, Sam turns a corner and continues down the path, passing by a few civilians fleeing towards the central elevator.

The walls were vaguely alien, with inactive circuit-like lights sprawling in every direction like roots, sprawling from the way they came. Sam followed one such trail, reflecting a dim blue light in Kathryne's spell.

After a few minutes of hearing nothing more than their own breaths, a new voice pierces the darkness, accompanied by two pairs of lights.

"Hey! Over here!"

Two men hobble towards the groups, the eyes of their helmets shining with light and their bodies wearing a strange chainmail. However, one of them is leaving a trail of blood behind.

Kathryne immediately sends a mote of light forward to meet the guards, then another to illuminate the path behind them, checking for pursuers. Wolfgang passes the two men by and takes a defensive stance, swiftly drawing a large knife from her belt as the guards hobble towards Sam.

"Great fuck, Charlie!" Sam directs the more wounded to sit down. A large gash could be seen on his side, pouring out a river of blood. "What did this to you?"

"Fuckin- biters..." The man weakly exclaims, his voice muffled by his helm.

Kathryne bends down and summons another mote of light to better illuminate the wound, getting a little queasy when she sees the damage. It looked as if a single stab wound broke through his chainmail and opened up the guard's belly.

Realizing that he might not be much help, the remaining guard stands up and takes a position near Wolfgang, visibly much less wounded than his companion. "Something got Charlie good, then a swarm of shit started biting at us!"

His hands shakily check his rifle, projecting the head of a halberd through hard-light. Realizing it's empty, he pops out an expended energy cylinder before sliding a fresh one in. "Our armor kept us alive, though."

Sam takes his holy symbol into his hands and bows his head, holding it above the guard while muttering a prayer. "Guardian Seros, channel your blessing through your servant."

The symbol begins to glow with a holy light, before exploding in a circular wave of positive energy, enveloping the entire group in its effect.

Charlie's wound begins to wash away with the healing essence, stopping the flow of blood. His chest deflates with relief, moaning " Oh fuck that's so good."

"Don't say it like that." Sam huffs, using another burst of magic to close the wound completely, leaving only a gap in Charlie's armor.

Wolfgang looks at Charlie from the corner of her eyes, frowning when she sees that the wound has disappeared completely. "Damn."

"Alright, let's head back." Sam helps Charlie to his feet, handing him his rifle back.

"You go on." Wolfgang says aloud, her ears flickering as she steps towards the darkness. "I'm going to investigate. Kathryne."

"Coming!"

"Wait!" Sam calls out before the Kathryne can leave. "Are you sure? You don't even have armor on."

"Oh, thanks for reminding me." Kathryne says, reaching into her Handysack and retrieving a square scrap of ghostly leather.

The wizard draws a complex sigil on the leather, then pinches it by the sides and pulls the item apart. It explodes in ethereal energy, a layer of armor flashing over Kathryne's body before going invisible.

"There we go! Call Armor!" The wizard smiles, knocking her forearms together to reveal the armor for a split second.

"Oh." Sam pauses for a moment, before stepping forward. "Well, I'll come too. In case you find something. Charlie, Matt, go back upstairs."

"Aye aye." Charlie replies, not wanting to linger around with broken armor.

With that, the two groups head in different directions, with the trio following the trail of blood left behind.

Cautiously stalking the halls, Wolfgang's nose and ears twitch at every errant sound, alert for any threats.

Perception: 6.

While searching for threats, the slayer lets out a slow exhale, extending her senses beyond and boosting her perception. However, she doesn't detect any other presences.

In the back of Kathryne's mind, the ring whispers that the slayer used a resource.

Oh, neat! I get updates when my party members use their resources.

"Nice!" Kathryne whispers to herself.

"What?"

"You just used a ki point!"

"Yes. Shush." Wolfgang sighs. "It doesn't sound like anyone's left."

Normally, Kathryne would've been concerned over the low roll, but knowing Wolfgang's high perception skill, it was still unlikely that something escaped her notice.

After a few moments of silence, the three finally arrive at the origin of the blood trail: a labyrinthian room with a low patchy ceiling, filled with intertwining pipes and blue tubes. In the center of a room was an open platform, complete with a few damaged displays and a pool blood splashed onto the floor.

Kathryne grimaces upon seeing the amount of life essence spilled onto the floor. "That's... a lot."

"Yeah." Sam groans. "Good thing I got to him."

"Hm." Wolfgang steps into the room, pulling out a small journal and looking around, beginning to sketch a rough layout of the scene. "Try not to step in anything."

Kathryne nods, stepping close to Wolfgang. She's had some investigative practice from years of playing escape rooms alone and roleplaying detective characters in Wrathfinder campaigns. "Analysis."

"What?"

"Huh? Oh," Kathryne holds up her finger to her eye. "I'm using a divination ability. It makes my Perception skill scale off of Intelligence, and it gives me an eidetic memory while I have it active!"

Wolfgang lowers her journal for a moment, intrigued. "Really? How long can you keep it active?"

"For as long as I remain focused and mindful." Kathryne explains. Keeping it active for a long time is easier said than done, though. "Here, I think I can share it."

Tapping her ring, Kathryne makes both hers and Wolfgang's rings glow a blue hue, before the Analysis display appears in the slayer's vision. Surprised, Wolfgang looks down at her own hands, then to the room around them. "If it helps..."

Sam stays near the entrance, looking around the room. "I don't think I'll be much help here, so I'm going to see if I can't turn the lights back on. The generator room should be somewhere around here."

"Yell if you need help!" Kathryne smiles, before bringing a mote of light to the pool of blood in the center of the room.

Inspecting the puddle closer, Kathryne and Wolfgang discover a strange pattern at the edges.

"Rat prints?" Kathryne tilts her head, figuring that it must've been the 'swarm' that one of the guards mentioned. "They're pretty big, though. Especially that one!"

Among the swarm of large rat prints was a pair that were nearly as big as her own feet. "They must have been huge!"

"And bipedal." Wolfgang grunts, pointing to the lower quantity of front paws. "From the looks of it, the guard was stabbed. Probably by the biggest one."

"Like, with weapon?" Kathryne asks. "Wouldn't a rat rather use its teeth?"

"Maybe if it was a normal rat. Did you get a good look at the guard's wound before it was healed?"

"I did. It was just one big stab wound. I didn't see any teeth marks, but there was a lot of blood so I can't say for sure."

"Hm." Wolfgang nods, writing in her journal. "Looks like after the guard was stabbed, all the other creatures started swarming them. The guards fled once they could, but the creatures didn't pursue." She says, motioning to the trail of boots heading out of the room alone.

Kathryne looks around, spotting a few dents and scuff marks against the metal pipes, as if bullets were fired wildly and bounced off the tubes. "I guess he fired at the swarm. Maybe it scared the creatures away."

"Or they had another reason to not pursue."

The wizard points at the dents, counting 6 from where she can stand.

Suddenly, Sam's voice echoes from a nearby room, yelping and falling to the ground.

"Sam?! Are you okay?" Kathryne calls out.

"Yeah!" Sam's voice echoes from another room. "Fuckin... found a bathroom! Floor's all wet!"

"Oh. Ew." Kathryne shudders, before calling out again while Wolfgang inspects the damaged displays. "How many bullets can a guard's rifle hold?!"

"Depends on the energy cylinder, but the ones we carry can fire 8!"

"Maybe he hit some of them, then." Kathryne mutters, standing on the tips of her toes and noting the trajectories. "Thank you, Sam!"

The slayer waits for the two to stop shouting at each other before pointing out one of the displays near her. "This says some of the hatches near here were opened. One is in that direction."

Wolfgang points to a trail of rat-like footprints crawling underneath the pipe. The biggest of the group was among them, but its as if they had shrunken in order to crawl underneath. Accompanying the trail was a long smear of blood, as if they had been dragging a pair of small bodies with them.

"Can you squeeze down there?" Wolfgang asks.

"Ehm..." Kathryne looks at the narrow gap Perhaps if she was in her old body, she couldn't wriggled underneath. "Maybe if I used the Grease spell..."

Luckily, a low hum surges through the walls, and the lights turn on, bathing the room in a calm, blue light and revealing a path around the crawlspace.

Going around the pipes, the two follow the bloody trail towards a metallic hatch, then towards a hole in the ceiling.

Approaching the hatch, even Kathryne could detect the scent of strong rot and disease, like a corpse left to decompose. A few flies hover around the latch, searching for its source.

Wolfgang furrows her brow, opening the hatch to peer inside. "I'm getting a good idea of what did this." Reaching in, the slayer retrieves something that was caught on a barb.

"Eww!" Kathryne gasps as she steps back, watching Wolfgang hold the bottom half of a disemboweled rat-like creature.

Even the slayer frowns in disgust, gently placing the body on the floor nearby. "There's something else caught in the pipes. Can you use your magic to get it?"

Kathryne grimaces at the suggestion, sighing as she steps forward. Wolfgang kneels down to provide the wizard a place to step so that she might see inside. Spawning a small ball of light so that she might see better, the half-gnome spots a bag drenched in dried blood stuck on a ring of spikes, with what looks like tiny sausages waving around in the current.

"Oh god..." She mutters as she telekinetically pulls on the bag, gently pulling it out of the pipe and near the carcass.

"Yeah. Gross." Wolfgang says, amused at Kathryne's reaction as she opens the bag, revealing a stew of rotting intestines and diseases. "This isn't usually the part that gets told in stories."

"Blech." The wizard stands back a few feet, keeping her Analysis active for Wolfgang's benefit. "That can't have been good for the water."

"Might've been the point." Wolfgang motions to the carcass. "This one was taken apart by the guard's bullets. Top half must've gotten past the filter. But whatever's in the bag has been dead for a while. 

Wolfgang lifts up her nose, sniffing the air again. "I'm not detecting a trail for the bag, though. Like it just... appeared."

"... Maybe the creature was hiding it in a Handysack?" Kathryne asks. "Smells don't go past the borders of an extradimensional space."

"It's possible. Handysacks are popular with merchants and adventurers, but it's not unheard of to find a few in the ruins of undercities like this." Wolfgang says, before scratching her neck. "Erm..."

"Something wrong?"

"No... Thanks, by the way.. It's nice to not just talk to myself."

"Oh!" The wizard smiles. "Sure! I'll be your rubber ducky."

"... What are you talking about?" 

The sound of boots tapping against the hard floor enters the room. "Slayer? Kathryne?"

"We're over here!"

Sam peeks his head around the corner. "So how's your investigation coming-... Eugh."

"You." Wolfgang looks up to the cleric, returning to her 'business' face. "Did you find anything?"

"Kind of. The generator was manually turned off. Not the usual 'hit it a couple of times' kind of off. And someone made a mess in the toilets."

The cleric pokes the bottom half of the carcass with the tip of his rifle. "Don't tell me that rats did all this..."

"Not just any rats." Wolfgang growls, before picking up the body and showing to the other two. "Ratlings. See how the legs are deformed? And the hair loss?"

Sam recoils in disgust. "Okay, I believe you! You don't have to show me its dangly bits."

"Actually, its dangly bits might've fallen off."

Kathryne avoids looking at the carcass. "What are ratlings?"

"They're monsters, similar to gremlins. Instead of dark magics infecting a tree stump, it infects a rat." Wolfgang explains. "They're not that dangerous by themselves, but there's evidence that this group was led by a wererat."

"What?" Sam says, shocked. "What makes you say that?"

Wolfgang points to the size shifting rat prints. "Lycanthropes can shift forms at will. That, and ratlings aren't smart enough to come up with a plan like this."

"Shit... Are Charlie and Matt infected? How does lycanthropy work?"

Wolfgang shrugs. "Maybe. Lycanthropy is usually spread through bites, but I can't inspect their wounds anymore, so we'll just have to ask."

Sam frowns, but Wolfgang puts a hand on his shoulder. "I don't blame you. He might've died otherwise."

"Can't we look at their clothes?" Kathryne asks. "I mean, healing doesn't really repair clothing damage."

"Hm. Let's check to see if we missed anything first, then we can get the guard's side of the story."

*****

"We were just doing our rounds."

The trio had met up with the injured guards, now resting in a break room and making sure that the victims didn't have any lasting injuries.

One of the two guards, Matt, looks down at the floor as he recalls his experiences, while Joseph Argoyle listens from the doorway. His armor and gambeson were placed nearby, with no signs of damage on his tunic. "We were making sure the bridges were shut and preparing for the slayer to arrive."

Kathryne writes down Matt's statement in Wolfgang's journal while the slayer tries to pry Charlie's armor off. While the guard was pale from blood loss, the wound on the side of his torso was completely gone.

"Help! She's trying to eat me!"

Matt gives a concerned look to Sam, who simply shrugs. "Ignore them. What happened next?" The cleric asks, motioning for Matt to continue telling his story.

"Right. That's when the lights went out. We were on the way to give the generator a few kicks when we started hearing noises in the big pipe room. Charlie started talking on the radio, then I saw a hard-light blade turn on and stab him in the side!" Matt exclaims. "I tried to help, but then a bunch of little things started swarming us and biting at our armor. I shot at everything until I was empty, then we got out and called for backup."

A hard-light blade? Kathryne thinks, emphasizing the note in the journal.

"A little bit after that, we saw each other." Matt continues.

"I see. Anything happen between running out and meeting with us?"

"I don't know. I started praying pretty hard, so I couldn't hear much else. After Charlie got healed, we met with Joseph, and now we're here."

After a while, Wolfgang finally pulls off Charlie's chainmail, taking his gambeson and tunic with it. She checks for damage on the inside, saying "The blade is the only thing that came through. But you two should still be tested in a few days, just to be safe."

"Tested for what?" Argoyle asks from the doorway. "Do you know what attacked them?"

"Yes. A tribe of ratlings, led by a wererat."

"Wererats?"

Matt looks to Charlie, concerned as he starts to curl his fingers as if they were claws. "Oh shit! It's happening!"

"No it's not."

"It'll be any minute now!"

"The curse takes a few days to set in."

"... Not even a little?"

"No. We're not even sure if the wererat actually bit you."

"Aw." Charlie's shoulders dropped, leaving everyone mildly baffled.

"What can be done? To make sure?" Joseph asks.

"I could administer a test in a few days, when the curse sets in, but by then you'd need a miracle and a powerful cleric to get rid of it. You're in luck, though..." Wolfgang says, turning to Joseph. "You can also kill the lycanthrope before the curse activates. Does the trick with the most common strains.

"Which means the price for killing this thing will be high. 150 gold pieces for the head of the lycanthrope, plus another 15 for the ratling tribe."

"150?!" Joseph cries out in surprise.

"That's if you want it done as soon as possible. Make sure that your guards don't turn into more monsters."

"I can hire my own mercenaries to deal with them for that amount. There's a few that arrived from the recent caravan."

"They're adventurers, not mercenaries. Amateurs at best, and they're just as likely to rob you than help you."

Argoyle frowns, thinking as he takes the slayers words into consideration.

Diplomacy (Haggling): 9.

Kathryne quietly groans as she hears Wolfgang roll rather low, already seeing Joseph starting to think of a counter offer.

To be fair, 150 gold is a lot. My Identification services cost around 50 gold, and that's already considered a hefty chunk of change.

"I don't have that much gold on me, but I can offer you something else." Joseph says. "50 gold pieces, and one of our portable plant cultivators. They're expensive, and you can save on your ingredients with that."

Wolfgang's ears flicker at the offer, letting the silence sit for an uncomfortable moment. "... Fine. Give me a few hours to prepare."

"Of course." Joseph sighs in relief, stepping out of the way.

Wolfgang motions for Kathryne to follow, who gives a quick bow to the guards, especially Charlie. "I hope you feel better soon!"

Matt gives a wave as she leaves, leaning towards Sam once the two were out of earshot. "Is that her? The one you were talking about?"

Sam sighs, quietly grabbing his rifle and tossing Charlie's tunic towards him. "Let's grab lunch."