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The town of Landrey was covered over in a fresh coat of rain. A light, misting drizzle fell down, making soft splatters of dirty water on the slightly muddy streets as it dripped off of the corners of the buildings. People crowded the streets of the market district, pushing to see what sales they could finagle out of the stall and store owners. A wagon of Halfling traders pulled their carts into the south end of town, waving joyously to the folk of the small town as they brought crops of fruit, vegetables and smoke weed from the other nearby towns. Starting to unload their haul of valuables, they busily went about to setting up their tents at the end of the market district to sell their wares. Business as usual for the townies of Landrey.

For the constable Nathaniel Alvarda, however, there were issues that needed his attention. The broad shouldered human, clad over in his blue and white cloak and chain shirt of armor beneath, ran a hand through his straight, red hair as he stood outside the door of a room in the Hobble Stone Inn. His steel blue eyes glanced down to the door knob momentarily, contemplating the idea of simply bursting in to the room. However, with a slight twist in the corner of his lip and its thick moustache, he decided against it.

Knocking a leather gloved hand against the hard wood door; he cleared his throat and spoke loudly to be heard through it. "Hallo! My name is Constable Nathaniel Alvarda. I'm looking for the man renting this room."

Nearly two weeks ago, a dark skinned man with white hair and red eyes had wandered into the town, looking lost and bedraggled. He had tiredly hauled himself into the inn and requested lodging. Though he'd only paid for a single night, each afternoon when the inn keeper came to tell him that it was time for him to go, he'd find a small pouch hanging on the door knob with coin to pay for another night and a note requesting a meal and a few flagons of mead to be sent up to the room.

Beyond that first night, no one had seen the mysterious stranger. Although, as far as anyone knew, he'd done nothing wrong, the inn keeper still thought it wise to report what he thought to be a Drow staying in one of his rooms. Since he'd not caused trouble since his arrival, the constable really thought nothing of it. Now, however, he had reason to come to the room.

"I'm not here to cause you any trouble, sir," Nathaniel shouted when he'd waited for some time with no reply to his first words. "I have come on behalf of the mayor to offer you the possibility of some work. We won't make you do it, but there's a fair bit of coin in it, if you're interested."

Inside the room, Sea'an Ahm'shigar sat on the single occupant bed atop the neatly folded blanket and sheets. Knees pulled up to his chest, his left ear twitched slightly at the constable's words, making a few strands of his white hair fall out of place. His dirty, bloody clothes lying on the floor beside the bed next to his muddy boots, he wore only a pair of simple, white under shorts that clung rather tightly to his skin.

Beside his clothes, dozens of empty bottles, formerly filled with booze, dotted the floor. The colorful array of glass containers was merely an ode to the way Sea'an had just spent the last several days; drowning himself in alcohol to try to erase the memory of the bloody slaughter at Oakhurst. It worked well enough at first. For a few hours, as the booze wore away his senses, his mind would lose focus enough to hardly remember even a few minutes prior. However, when he'd fall asleep, his dreams would be haunted by the images of burning buildings, twisted corpses and blood filled streets. Each night was only getting worse.

Reaching off of the bed to pick up his belt, Sea'an lifted his coin bag and gave it a slight shake. The lack of a jingle, but the presence of some weight told him that only a single coin remained. Sighing softly, he stood up and stepped off of the bed. Lifting his cloak from the floor at the foot of the bed, he wrapped it around his bare chest as he moved toward the door.

Sighing softly, the constable outside the door shook his head and started to turn. The moment he'd taken one step away, he heard the door start to creak open slowly. Quirking one eye brow, he'd pause and turn about to look over his shoulder. Turning full about to see the cloak wrapped Drow, he looked at him quizzically.

"What kind of work are we talking about?" Sea'an spoke quietly, lifting one hand to brush back his messy hair as he looked up to the taller human with cold, indifferent eyes.

"There you are, uh, good sir," said a slightly over weight, more than jovial shop owner as he clapped a hand against Sea'an's shoulder with a broad, toothy smile, round cheeks dimpling with the show of zeal. "I do say, leather with tempered studs surely suits you better than chain or scales, don't you agree."

Sea'an stood before a tall length of mirror, turning a moment to look over the new set of perfectly fitted leather armor, accented across its surface with steel studs to give it more strength. The studs, to Sea'an relief, were painted over with a dark pigment similar to the kind the shop owner had used on his armor. Having shiny pieces of metal on your armor would be counter intuitive to trying to use stealth after all.

Twisting at his waist, kneeling down and quickly standing back up, Sea'an was pleased to the lack of noise the armor made when moving quickly. The fact that the new leathers fit like a glove was just a bonus on top of its effectiveness. Turning toward the round little man that had made the armor for him, Sea'an regarded him briefly before starting to step away from the mirror. "This will do perfectly."

Sea'an was appreciative to Constable Alvarda for paying him half his fee in advance, even if he hadn't showed it. It had been quite some time since Sea'an had any coin in his pocket to buy things for himself. Even while living in Oakhurst, most of the money he did manage to finagle from the townsfolk by selling off the crops he grew only went towards new farming equipment or materials to help maintain his house.

Several minutes later, Sea'an was slipping a dagger into each of his newly stitched boots. Additionally, the new cloak he'd bought carried several loops of leather sheathing for carrying differently sized objects. Perfect places to hide more daggers and the tools of his more familiar trade.

Even with the new armor, the daggers and a fresh sharpening for his own short sword, Sea'an was still left with quite a bit of weight in his purse. Smiling inwardly, he walked out of the shop with a straight back to meet with the guard that had been waiting for him there. As the two of them started walking, the thin, greasy haired guard cleared his throat briefly. "Uh, well... As the good constable already explained to you, ah," he started.

"I know," Sea'an cut him off sharply, red eyes shooting the guard a glance. "The recent rains have opened up a sink hole near the road at the south edge of town. Townsfolk have reported hearing strange noise from it and y'all want someone to investigate," he said, slowly closing his eyes as he pulled the grey-black cloak he'd just bought around himself more tightly. "However, with the presence of some out of towners, you figured it'd be easier to just pay some people who are, more or less, expendable to go check it out rather than risk your own kith and kin."

"Well, I, uh..." the guard stammered lightly, his face growing slightly flushed. Sea'an smirked at that. It wasn't something he could blame them for really. Closing his eyes a moment, the guard recomposed himself and sighed loudly. "You won't be going alone. There's another... a man who says he's on some kind of pilgrimage has agreed to help us as well and he'll be going in with you."

Not saying anything back to the guard, Sea'an simply thought to himself that he'd prefer to do this alone. But if that's what the town's guard was going to do, he was hardly in a position to deny the help.

Shortly, they came upon the southern gate of the small town of Landrey. Up ahead, a contingent of guards surrounded a large, gaping, muddy hole in the ground just a dozen or so paces from the roughly paved, cobblestone road. Near the circle of guards that nervously watched the hole, nearly thirty feet wide at its broadest girth, was a man in a heavy robe just a few inches taller than Sea'an, speaking with Constable Alvarda.

The ruddy hood of his cloak was pulled up over his head so that Sea'an couldn't see any of the man's features. However, he could tell that he was broad of shoulder and his arms seemed to make the arms of the cloak stretch a bit. Definitely hiding a fair bit of muscle beneath his cloak. Besides seeming keen on hiding his appearance, two things stood out about the cloaked man speaking with the guard captain. The first was the pendant hanging down about his chest; a brilliantly polished rabbit's paw seemingly made of steel. The second was the rather large hammer strapped across his back. The long shaft of the hammer was nearly as thick as Sea'an's wrist and made of solid oak, inlaid with intricate patterns of swirls and weaving, accented near the middle, top and bottom with laced, leather grips. The head of it was all of black, cold iron looking slightly rough, but still rounded out on the edges.

"Ah, Mister Ahm'shigar," Constable Alvarda said, lifting a hand to wave toward the drow. "Come here, come here." Taking a step back as Sea'an approached; the man gave a slight flourish of his hand toward the cloaked man. "This is Lucian Bross. He'll be accompanying you into the tunnel."

"A pleasure," the man in the cloak whispered, lifting a hand gloved in rough cloth, a flash of green reflecting off of hidden eyes beneath the hood.

Taking a glance down at the hand briefly, Sea'an ignored it and moved toward the sink hole, still slick and muddy on its edges. "Are we ready to get this over with?" he grumbled lightly, looking into the dark passage.

Dropping down about six feet or so, the tunnel softened into a slope almost immediately, descending slowly at an angle in a south easterly direction. Sea'an tried to focus deeper into the tunnel, but the shining sun light outside was making his eyes hurt a bit and made it difficult to peer into the darker shadows inside.

"Yes, yes. Both of you know why you're here," the constable said, folding his arms over his chest. "All we need you to do is take a look down into the tunnel and see if there's anything dangerous inside. We don't expect you to put yourself in any kind of danger if you do find anything down there. All you have to do is come back and tell us what you've found."

Quirking a brow briefly, Sea'an started toward the hole, jumping down the edge and giving a dissatisfied grunt as his boots sank into the soft mud below. "Yeah, all right... I-... We'll be back shortly."

Hopping down behind him, Lucian grunted lightly before lifting a hand with his head low to wave toward the guards. "Not to worry, Constable Alvarda. Xan will guide us true, I'm certain."

Slowly, the two of them descended out of the sunlit entrance, down into the shadowy depths of the tunnel. Sea'an had no trouble seeing ahead, his eyes softening to the shadows until he could clearly see the tunnel ahead of himself. The man behind him, however, had no such advantage and, before Sea'an could tell him to hang back while he scouted ahead, the cloaked figure clasped the icon round his neck and speaking some word of divine language. With a flickering dimness, the steel rabbit paw started to glow, casting out a sphere of light around the cloaked man.

Giving a slight grimace, Sea'an grunted under his breath and paused momentarily. "Hang back a bit," he spoke quietly. "I can see in the dark just fine, so I'll stay ahead of your light to see if there's anything dangerous out there. It'll likely see your light long before you can see it, so you'll probably want me out of the sight of whatever might be there."

"Sounds fine by me," Lucian murmured quietly, softly tugging his feet along through the mud, plugging along slowly due to the soft ground.

Sea'an's soft foot steps kept him, for the most part, from sinking into the mud and he quickly paced on ahead, ducking down as he saw the tunnel bend around a corner and open into a true cavern. Stopping at the tunnel's end, he saw the muddy canal dropped down a few feet onto a stone floor that angled down a slope, open rather far. A few paces off the left side of the tunnel, the stone floor dropped out quickly into a deep chasm. The mud from the sink hole had covered over quite a bit of the ground here and some ways ahead of where the tunnel ended, it had bunched up into a huge pile, apparently having piled over some object there.

Eyeing the pile of mud curiously, Sea'an quietly stepped down from the tunnel mouth and started to creep around toward the side of the mud pile. Looking over his shoulder toward his companion briefly, he took a few steps back to get just inside the field of dim light around the edges. Lifting a hand in a stopping signal toward the cleric, he edged around the side of the mud pile.

There, his suspicions of a structure were confirmed. The mud had piled up over a squat building carved of stone. The carving was crudely done, though sturdy enough to be used. Overall, the whole structure couldn't have been more than five and a half feet tall; just a few inches taller than Sea'an himself. A few feet down, he could see a jagged door way cut into the side of the building with a ragged curtain hanging over it.

Slowly, Sea'an edged closer to the doorway. Peering down the hill of the stone slope he was on, he could just barely make out the silhouettes of similar buildings further down the grade. Pulling up one of his daggers, he pushed aside the gauzy curtain and peered inside. From the look of it, the small building appeared to be some sort of storage shed. There were mud-clay vases lining one wall and several small, hatch-lidded metal boxes along another. The floor was such a mess, however, that it would be bothersome to try to get into any of the containers quietly or to try to find anything in the mess on the floor.

Hardly seems like this is dangerous, Sea'an thought to himself, letting the curtain fall back into place as he slowly crept back around the building toward his companion. Maybe dwarves live down here or something?

As he rounded the corner of the mud pile, he would see Lucian kneeling down on the cave floor, running a gloved hand across some of the mud there. Taking a brief glance up, he stood up and lowered his head, keeping his face obscured with his hood. "Ah, did you find anything, Sea'an?"

Giving a light shrug, Sea'an sheathed the dagger he'd pull out back onto his belt. "Didn't see anything alive, but this mud is piled onto a small building. No sign of the occupants..."

With a quick nod, Lucian turned back toward the tunnel and slowly started toward it. "Shall I go fetch the guard captain then, since we've found no danger?"

Following him as far as the cave mouth, though he stayed outside the bubble of light and spoke in hushed tones, the Drow nodded lightly. "Yeah... I'll hang back and see if anything else comes by while you're away. Just hurry up... I don't want to stay in this dank hole all day."

With a soft chuckle as he started away, Lucian gave a little shrug of his shoulders. "And here I thought Drow were supposed to feel at home in caves and such."

Shooting him a glare, Sea'an folded his arms over his chest, but kept silent. He wanted to tell him off about what was and wasn't his business, but decided it best to just leave it alone. Really he just wanted to get the job over with.

After Lucian was gone, Sea'an settled himself down into the nook of the stone beside the tunnel, huddling his knees up to his chest under his cloak. Taking a glance over the side of the nearby cliff, he figured it must've been quite a drop. Even with his dark vision, he couldn't see to the bottom. However, he could hear the sound of running, bubbling water down below.

Sighing quietly as he waited, Sea'an's eyes fixed on the building briefly as he thought he noticed some movement. Tensing up a bit, he pulled his cloak about himself and huddled close to the lip of the tunnel mouth, eyeing the building cautiously.

Just as he seemed about to relax again, his eyes confirmed the movement. Doddering up from around the corner was a pair of stout, rag-clothed humanoids. Both had beady, wide set eyes; long, pointed noses; and large, almost flopping ears. Goblins. They'd pushed a broad, wedge shaped wheel barrow, made all of metal and stone around the corner of the building.

The two of them seemed to squabble briefly in their odd, nasally language before the two grabbed up shovels. Moving shoddily, though rather quickly, the two busily hefted shovel after shovel of loose, damp mud onto the barrow, both exchanging words, of which Sea'an could make neither heads nor tails.

Goblins, eh? Sea'an thought to himself as he watched the two doing their work. Suppose that accounts for the crude stonework on that shack.

"You're certain you saw no living creatures?" came the sound of Constable Alvarda's voice seeming to echo briefly down the tunnel with the sound of noisy footfalls in the soft, squishy mud.

An affirming ‘hmm' came from the tunnel as well, soon explained by Lucian's words. "Neither Sea'an, nor myself saw any creatures down here, though a stout building seems to have been buried in the mud slide."

In a bit of panic at the lack of stealth from him companions, Sea'an quickly turned his attention back to the goblins. When he looked in their direction, however, they were gone, along with their shovels and barrow.

As Lucian and the constable came to the mouth of the tunnel, Sea'an came out of hiding, illuminated still by Lucian's glowing charm. Behind them stood a contingent of about half a dozen guards from the town. Eyes narrowing on the constable, Sea'an spoke quietly, "I don't think there's any danger in collapsing the tunnel and just forgetting about this whole mess, Mister Alvarda."

"Oh?" the constable said, hands folded behind his back. "Your companion tells me you've found a building and I'd like to inspect it to see what might be found inside. Perhaps the town could use whatever's inside."

"Nothing of value," Sea'an spoke again, "I've already assessed that. There doesn't seem to be any kind of dangerous monsters here that will come up again if you close the tunnel. So, you may as well just close it up and leave it at that."

"If it's all the same to you, Mister Ahm'shigar," the Human captain said with a bit of a sneer, the red moustache on his lip curling up slightly at the corner of his mouth, "I'd still like to check things out for myself before we make that decision."

"But, I-..." Sea'an started to speak, but could find no more words to say without simply telling him about the goblins. If I tell them though, he paused in thought, eyeing the constable and guards as they went around the corner of the shack, They'll likely just want to exterminate them all.

The Drow felt a hand on his shoulder, bringing him to look behind himself, where Lucian stood, hooded head low as he whispered to him. "You're not telling them something," the cleric stated simply.

Shooting a glare at the hand on his shoulder, Sea'an spun round to face the cleric and jerked his shoulder back to remove the hand from it. "I saw goblins coming over to clear out the mud while you were gone," he hissed out quietly, "And poking around in what could well be a goblin village hardly seems like a good idea for these people."

"What?" Lucian nearly shouted, taken aback as he looked to where the guards had gone around the corner. "Why didn't you just tell them that?"

"If I had, I think a man such as the constable would think it a good idea to invade the area, supposedly with the idea that he's just defending his town."

Lucian's head lowered a bit, somehow seeming to deepen the shadow that hid his face. "Nnn... Yeah, most likely. Hu-... People can be that way when they think they're in the right." Starting to step toward the corner, he moved past Sea'an. "Perhaps I can convince them to-..."

Lucian's words were cut short and interrupted as several loud cracks and the sound of shattering clay sounded through the cave, punctuated with the panicked screams of the guardsmen that had accompanied Constable Alvarda. Sea'an and Lucian both froze as they looked to the corner, not sure what to do. A moment later, Constable Alvarda came limping around the corner, panting heavily with blood dripping from a laceration on his forehead and metal spike rammed through his left leg, just below the top of his boot.

With rage in his eyes, he held his long sword in hand and stumbled toward Sea'an and Lucian. "Y-you! Damned dark elf," he snapped, "You trapped that hovel, didn't you?"

"W-what?!" Sea'an snapped back, red eyes glaring at the guard captain as he leaned against the wall of the shack and stumbled on. "Why would I do that?"

Nathaniel Alvarda stumbled past Sea'an and Lucian, moving along slowly and then turning toward them with his blade hardly held up in one hand to keep the two of them back. With a bit of a chuckle, he backed toward the tunnel. "There must be something of value down here for you to have wanted us to stay out so badly AND set those traps," he almost grinned, but found himself lacking strength to keep it up. "Best run while you can, Drow, I won't let the death of those guards go unavenged!"

Before Sea'an or Lucian could say another word, the constable turned on his unwounded heel and hopped up onto the tunnel lip. Running as fast as his wounded leg would allow, he soon disappeared into the darkened corridor. Sea'an turned to Sea'an, about to speak for a moment, when both of them were alerted to the sound of running foot steps coming up the stone hill beyond the shack and the sound of shouting, warbling voices.

With a quick look around, Sea'an ran toward the pile of mud at the back of the house as Lucian followed after him and allowed the light on his necklace to flicker out. "What are y-..?" Lucian started only to be cut off quickly as Sea'an started to claw mounds of mud from the pile and snapped at him in a hushed growl, "Start digging! There's no other place to hide!"

Stumbling back a bit, surprised by the Drow's sudden forcefulness after having seemed quiet for so long, the cleric swung the hammer up off of his back and swiftly joined in helping Sea'an to dig the mud away. Working quickly, tossing the mud into a heaping pile just above where they dug, and covering themselves in filth, they managed to dig out a small alcove in the mud, which Sea'an quickly clambered into. Crawling in and crouching in front of Sea'an, Lucian pulled his cloak up around the two of them and moved both of his hands to push at the bottom of the pile of muck they'd made above the hole. Grunting heavily, he ducked his head inside his cloak as the force of his blow collapsed the mud they'd piled up down over the entrance of the hole. Arching his back, the mud piled down on top of him, his cloak keeping it from falling into the hole.

Now, with Sea'an curled up underneath Lucian and the cleric having pulled his head inside his cloak, the Drow saw his face for the first time. His eyes were a bit larger and more almond shaped than a human's, mostly dark, though Sea'an couldn't determine the color in the darkness. His face was covered over in a thin layer of fur and a thick pair of incisors jutted down from his upper lip. Long, narrow, floppy ears hung down from the top of his head, lying beside straight, short cut hair the appeared black in the colorless vision through which Sea'an saw.

A Therian? Sea'an blinked; looking up at the lapine faced cleric crouched over him. Err... Can't remember what the rabbit looking ones are called, he thought to himself, searching for the word. Of course, there were so many breeds of Therians, beast folk, and Sea'an had never really encountered one, so it was only natural that he couldn't remember what they were called.

Outside, through the mud, the two of them could just barely hear the sound of bodies being dragged across the stone. The sound of metal occasionally clanging across the stone punctuated the occasional angry shouts of what they could only guess must have been the goblins. For a good long while, the sounds kept up, the silence between the two of them finally breaking when Lucian muttered quietly, "I guess they must be moving the guards' bodies."

Staring up at rabbit-man's face still, Sea'an shook his head a moment, trying to clear his thoughts. "Uh, yeah, I suppose so," he murmured to himself, pushing aside the question of why Lucian was hiding his face for now. "Do you hear them still?"

Pausing for a moment, Lucian shook slightly as he drew in a deep breath. "Nngh... No. A-and... Is it, ah, is it getting harder to breathe?" he spoke, his voice quavering slightly.

"What?" Sea'an questioned earnestly, not feeling even slightly uncomfortable with his breathing. "No. It's just your imagination."

Gasping out once more, Lucian started to pant heavily. "N-no, it's not... Th-the air's getting th-thin..." he started to panic, eyes going wide and starting to push his back up against the mud behind him. "I-I have to get out! I c-can't breathe!"

Eyes widening in return, Sea'an started up at the lapine cleric and shook his head. "No, Lucian! Calm down! If we go out now we might-..."

Lucian suddenly stood full up, breaking off the cover of mud over his back and gasping out sharply. Losing his footing, he fell backwards, tumbling down the hill of slick mud and falling on to his rear at the base of the mud pile.

Shit! Sea'an swore at himself, swiftly grabbing a pair of daggers from the inside of his cloak and jumping up to his feet. Giving a soft grunt as he slid down the hill, stumbling a little before hitting the stone beside Lucian, he stared ahead, feeling just as surprised as a group of about ten goblins looked.

Looking about at the group of goblins, Sea'an chewed on his lower lip while Lucian groaned painfully, slowly starting to roll over.

Well this is just great, Sea'an thought as he eyed the goblins cautiously. What now?