It was a very distinct smell; cloying at the senses and sticking where it wasn’t wanted. He had stumbled upon his fair share of corpses rotting in the sun during his years living in the woods. It was never pleasant to get a surprise whiff of something like that, but what he smelled coming through that door was worse still. The only thing he could compare it to would be like a pile of rotting corpses near a mound of dung.

  Leoric approached the hidden door and opened it further than Daegal had. It revealed a dark staircase that led downward, into the earth. Leoric winced and brought a hand up to his nose. Despite not having nearly the same level of sensitivity to smells, he could still detect what Daegal had reacted to. It was a smell he had experienced a few times in the past, and the memories were not pleasant to say the least.

  Instead of descending, he turned back and fixed Ricard with a glare. “Would you care to explain yourself, Lord Delmond?”

  The man in question, who had previously been so vocal, now remained silent with a very toxic sneer on his face. Leoric did not react to the silence with anger, and instead, began giving more definitive orders.

  “Fine. You may remain silent all you wish. We will find out for ourselves soon enough.” He pointed a finger at one of the soldiers in the room. “Gather some more of the men here but leave some to continue searching the rest of the estate.” he turned to the others next. “Watch him and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”

  With orders given, things sprang into motion as the soldiers were called to attention from around the mansion. Daegal was feeling anxious during this time. Nothing good smells that rancid, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine what they would find down there. The soldiers assembled quickly, and now was the time to descend into the dark.

  Leoric grabbed a lamp from within the house, lit it, and drew his sword before slowly descending the stairs. Daegal did not like the idea of being cramped inside that stairwell all the way down, especially when they didn’t know what they would find. In the event that something bad happened, Leoric and his soldiers would need to retreat quickly, and they wouldn’t be able to do that if he was blocking the way out. So, he waited at the top of the staircase, gazing down into the murk as several of the soldiers descended behind Leoric for support.

  Daegal’s eyes could see a bit further that Leoric’s, and the lantern light illuminated another door that was ahead of them. The group of soldiers paused at this new door and then slowly opened it. Light flooded into the stairway from this new room. There were active lanterns in there, indicating that the room was being actively used at the very least. Leoric took a quick glance around before bursting into the new space. He was closely followed by his soldiers and they all managed to clear the stairwell. A few moments passed before Leoric returned and looked up at Daegal.

  “It appears to be clear. You may descend, if you wish.”

  Daegal honestly would have preferred to not descend into that rank pit, but the part of him that demanded to know what was going on clawed at his mind, driving him forward. Holding back his revulsion, he ducked down and began the awkward descent into the depths. Half walking, half crawling, he cringed and did his best to not breath through his nose.

  When he finally reached the bottom, he emerged into a more spacious hallway that stretched several dozen meters forward. On either side of this hallway and the very end there were heavy wood doors with small metal slides at viewing height, at least for humans at any rate. Between every other door hung lanterns from the wall, softly flickering flames illuminating the room well enough to see clearly.

  The soldiers were slowly spreading out through the room, investigating the various doors. When they tried to open them, it was discovered that they were all locked, but the sliding hatches weren’t. Several of them were opened as soldiers peered inside only to be met with darkness.

  “Can’t see shit in there,” one mumbled to himself.

  Daegal looked to the door nearest to him and figured he’d see if he might succeed where the others couldn’t. Leaning down, he slid one hatch open and was met with a more potent dose of the stink that was in the air. He put one eye up to the hole, and after a moment to let his sight adjust, he let out a gasp and recoiled from the door.

  “There’s people in there!” Many of them, as he had seen. They were all laying around the cell in various states of despondency, which was saying something as they didn’t even notice him.

  “What?!” Leoric immediately moved to the nearest door to him. “Hello? Is somebody in there?”

  Daegal heard a quiet voice speak out from within. The voice was strained, sounding as if they were speaking with dust in their mouth. Whoever it was in there was male, too, by the sound of things.

  “Wha- who... who are you?”

  “I am Leoric Ashwood, a lord in service to his majesty the king and in search of the missing citizens of the kingdom. Were you one of those who were abducted?”

  “Y-Yes!” There was a brief moment of scrambling from within, before a body crashed against the door from the inside, hands sticking out of the small peak in the door with clear desperation.

  “Please, my lord, you must get me, get all of us, out of here!”

  “I intend to do just that. I only ask a moment’s patience from you while we find the key to your door.”

  “P-Please, hurry! There’s... there’s something unnatural about this place. They take people away every few days, and they never come back. The air changes when they do. I... I can’t explain it, just please, get me out!”

  Leoric set about trying to do just that as he set his men to scour the room and even question Ricard on the whereabouts of the key. Daegal took the opportunity to investigate the other rooms while they did that. Each time he slid open the little viewing port he was met with the sight of more people stuffed into the rooms and in various states of squalor. He noticed that a lot of them were women and children, lending more weight to the miserable scenes. Some were aware enough to take notice of him looking in at them, and they usually yelped with surprise or fear. Daegal retreated if they did that, not wanting to put them under more strain.

  Near the end of the corridor, Daegal opened another port and cringed as a more pungent smell of decay washed over him. Looking inside, he saw a sorry sight. Bodies, corpses, all strewn about the room with gaunt bodies and sunken eyes staring into nothingness. He couldn’t smell any blood, so whoever was in there succumbed to some other ailment with the likely culprits being either starvation or disease.

  How long were they in there?

  Daegal couldn’t help but feel sorry for these poor souls, trapped in the dark as their bodies slowly failed them. This was all depressing, and disappointing. Humans always found ways to make each other suffer. With a sigh he turned away from the room, but before he could take more than a single step, he heard something that gave him pause. Somebody was breathing.

  Surprised, he pressed his head up against the view port again, this time listening closely just in case he was mistaken. There was silence for a few seconds, but then he heard it again, the weak inhale of somebody on death’s door. They were alive in there, but there was no telling how long that would be the case. Daegal felt the overwhelming need to save whoever it was, to salvage something from this nightmare.

  “L-Leoric!” The captain turned to the sound of his name. “Somebody’s barely alive in here. They need help!”

  Leoric looked to the door in question as his features twisted with frustration. “They all need help, Daegal, and I can’t do anything until the key is found regardless.”

  Daegal was feeling frustration of his own now. Every subtle gasp of that person as they clung to life made him increasingly anxious. He paced in front of the door, chest tightening and tail flicking nervously behind him. Eventually he could not stand it any longer, and he had to act.

  With a low growl, he stormed up to the door once more, gripped around the viewport. Bracing his foot against the wall, his body tensed and he put everything into ripping the door off the wall. Wood groaned, then it screamed, and finally it splintered as Daegal ripped a chunk out of the door. There was now a gaping hole in the door, sharp with splintered wood, but Daegal was not done yet. He reached in again, ignoring the jagged edges of the wood as the thick hide of his palms were not threatened by such things.

  Chunk after chunk, tear after tear, he ripped the door to pieces. His demonstration of strength put many of the soldiers who were stuck in the same room as him on edge. Even Leoric looked a little offput by the display despite knowing there was no ill intent behind it. Eventually Daegal had pulled apart the door to such an extent that only the hinges, and a bit of wood that clung to them, remained.

  Daegal ducked through the door, and the scene was worse the closer he got. The practically skeletal bodies of the dead lay all around him. Some had signs of desperate attempts to escape, their knuckles and fingers bloody from scratching at the stones and doors. They were filthy, and it seemed like a bucket in the corner was the only thing they had to deal with their leavings.

  That wasn’t the main concern, though, as Daegal had to find the one who was still alive. Most of the bodies in this room were women, and he carefully stepped around them, listening closely. After a moment, he heard it again, the soft sound of a breath, and he locked on to it, following the noise to the corner of the room.

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  Once he reached the corner, he saw there was a woman laying limply with her back to the door, body curled around something. Leaning in closer, he peered over her thin form, and saw her arms wrapped around another person, a young boy, most likely her child. The lad was young, and he looked tiny in his current state. Skin hugged the bones on his body, and his gut was sunk in so far it looked like he was about to collapse in on himself. His hair, blond and filthy like the rest of him, was like a messy mop on top of his head. The only thing covering his body were a pair of pants, and they had basically been reduced to rags at this point. To an outside observer, this child might have simply appeared as another body, but there were signs of life, mostly in the struggling breathes that looked like he was using all the energy left in his body just to do it.

  Daegal was momentarily at a loss. He had never seen or dealt with a situation like this, and it almost felt wrong to remove the child from their mother’s grasp, even though she was already gone. He reassured himself by believing that she would want her son to live, so he carefully reached down and unwrapped her arms from around the boy, mumbling as he did so.

  “I’m sorry...” He desperately wished that this hadn’t happened and felt unbridled anger at those who were responsible. Reigning himself in so he could focus on the task at hand, he gently worked his hands under the skeletal body of the boy so he could lift him.

  Touching the young boy’s body added an extra layer to the visceral situation. He could feel the ribs against his palms, yet at the same time it felt like he was holding a feather with how light this child was. The boy nearly fit completely inside of both his hands while curled up, and despite being moved, he did not open his eyes, apparently too weak to even do that much. Daegal felt like he was holding something that was impossibly fragile, and he instinctually pulled the child to his chest, cradling him to make sure that there was no chance he would fall.

  When he emerged from the room, he was greeted by the surprised stares of several soldiers and Leoric.

  “God have mercy,” Leoric said in a quiet voice as he looked at the state the child was in.

  “Leoric, h-help him. What do we need to do to help him?”

  The captain looked between Daegal and the child in his arms, various pained emotions flashing across him face as he did so. The state of the child was dire, and Leoric could not lie, either to himself, or Daegal.

  “Daegal, I don’t know if that child is going to make it. He may be too weak to survive at this point.”

  Those words were like little needles in Daegal’s heart as he looked down at the fragile life in his arms. The thought of giving up and letting the boy die made him feel nearly ill as his jaw locked. It was then that he noticed that the boy’s hand was griping his little finger. It was such a weak grip that he hadn’t noticed it until he saw the little fingers that barely were able to wrap around his. Despite the weakness, Daegal could see that the boy was holding on as tightly as he could. That decided it for Daegal as he looked back at Leoric with a firm gaze.

  “No. He’s still fighting, still clinging to life. I’m not going to give up on him when he wants to live.”

  “Daegal, you-”

  “No!” he raised his voice and gave a particularly venomous glare at Leoric.

  Leoric met Daegal’s stare for a few strained moments. Eventually a weary sigh escaped the man. “Very well, Daegal. We will do whatever we can for the boy, but please, don’t get your hopes up too high.”

  Daegal relaxed and gave an appreciative nod. “Thank you, Leoric.”

  With a deep breath, Leoric set about facilitating the child’s potential salvation, starting with pointing out two soldiers. “You two, you will take the child to the castle and present him to the royal apothecary for treatment. Make sure he knows that this is a request by a royal guest and to do everything in his power to save the boy’s life.” He turned to Daegal next. “Daegal, please hand over the boy to them.”

  Relinquishing the boy into the care of the soldiers was a difficult prospect for Daegal as it meant he would not be there to ensure everything went well. With some reluctance, he gingerly transferred the little one to the soldiers who did at least hold the boy securely. The two of them left to fulfill the order, climbing up the stairs at a steady pace, recognizing the fragility of what they held. Daegal was anxious seeing them leave, and he wished to finish clearing this dank cellar so he might catch up with them.

  They were forced into a waiting pattern for several minutes. No keys had shown up in all this time, and some of the men started talking about having Daegal rip apart the other doors as well. Just as the idea was starting to gain more traction, a soldier came down the stairwell and held up a keyring that clattered with a whole collection.

  “We managed to get it out of him, sir.” Whether by force or some other coercion the man did not say, but that hardly mattered as they could now free these people.

  One by one, the doors were unlocked, but not before Leoric gave a warning to all those who were inside about Daegal. He made it perfectly clear that there was a being unlike any they had ever seen before, and while he appeared scary, he was not a danger to them. Leoric also swore them to secrecy until such a time as Daegal’s existence became public knowledge. Despite these warning, many did still react with open fear upon seeing Daegal, and it was only those who were weakened to the point of needing assistance just walk that didn’t seem to care who their saviors were, just so long as they were able to escape this small pit of hell they were thrown into.

  The last door to be opened was the one at the end of the room. Leoric turned the key in the socket, and with a soft click, opened the door. The moment this door opened, Daegal felt a chill crawl up his spine. Something deep in him recognized the sensation, and warnings flared up from an instinctual level. Lunging forward, he grabbed Leoric by the shoulder before the captain could enter that room.

  His actions cause the soldiers to jump with alarm, some of their hands gripping their weapons threatening. Even Leoric wasn’t immune from the surprise, but he managed to restrain himself from taking a threatening action.

  “Daegal? What is the matter?”

  “There’s... something wrong with that room. I can’t name what it is, but it’s just... wrong.”

  Leoric considered for a moment and decided to trust Daegal’s feeling, taking a step back from the door and eyeing it warily.

  “What do you propose we do, then? We must still clear the room to make sure nothing is left unknown.”

  Daegal knew that, and while he didn’t like the feeling of that room, he couldn’t in good conscience let anyone else walk through that door first. He sighed as he decided to take the initiative.

  “I’ll go in first. If something is wrong in there, I have a better chance of surviving it.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You don’t have to, because I’m doing it anyway.”

  Leoric looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end his shoulders slumped with resignation. “Very well, but please, be cautious. Not only would I have to answer to my king if anything were to happen to you, but I would also have to answer to Lady Fiora. Quite honestly, I don’t rightly know which I fear more.”

  The bit of humor did a lot to ease the tension of the situation, but it returned when Daegal approached the door. A feeling tugged at his mind, familiar, and it was reinforced by a smell that was different from the general stench of rot and filth that permeated the air down here. His earliest memories resurfaced, the day he crawled out of the earth, and he recognized the smell of this room. It was the nearly the same as it was in that cave.

  For that reason alone, he needed to see it, to know what was causing it. With a gentle push on the door, past collided with present. This room was different than the rest, bigger, circular, with large drapes that hung from floor to ceiling. A table and chairs were pushed up against one wall, and the room was illuminated primarily through the use of a plethora of candles. What captured the most attention, however, was the center of the room.

  There were drawings on the floor, seemingly made with blood among various other substances. A large ring of vital fluid was spread out across most of the room, its form augmented with strange symbols and shapes that crisscrossed over one another to create an almost hypnotic pattern. It was strange and sent a shiver up Daegal’s spine just looking at it.

  Leoric and the rest of the soldiers slowly filed into the room after him, and Leoric cringed and covered his nose.

  “Ugh, it stinks in here. Is that sulfur?” Leoric had not encountered the substance that often, but it was such a unique scent that he couldn’t fail to recognize it. “And what in God’s name is all this?” he said as he saw the floor.

  Daegal did not recognize the name of said substance, but the smell he would never forget. Something was itching at the back of his mind, like a dream that he was only just starting to remember. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to consider it for long, because he heard the scraping of something on the ground from the wall.

  He was only able to turn in time to see something burst out from behind one of the drapes and charge right at him. Daegal barely had time to turn before it collided with enough force to bring even him down to the ground. Whatever it was, it unleashed an unearthly shriek as it attacked. As he landed on his back, he finally got to see it clearly, but it didn’t make much sense to him.

  It looked human, but at the same time, wasn’t. Its face was the general shape of a human but distorted. Bones were stretching out the skin where they shouldn’t, teeth sharpened to points, and eyes like black marbles. The skin was pale, blood vessels visible beneath the surface, and the body gaunt with skin pulled tight against muscle and bone. Not a shred of hair was on its body, making it seem even more bizarre than it was.

  The thing shrieked as it clawed and scratched at his scales ineffectively. Daegal tried to grab at it, but it was slippery and flailed around erratically as it attacked. Eventually it seemed to realize that clawing wasn’t doing much, so it balled up its fist and brought down a hammer blow onto Daegal’s head.

  It hurt. It actually hurt. Daegal had never been hit barehanded with enough force that it caused real pain before. Whatever this thing was, it was significantly stronger than an average human. There was no permanent damage, but the repeated blows were starting to build. Daegal’s shock was starting to wear out, and now coupled with the pain, his body was falling into fighting instinct. His vision narrowed as his focus intensified on this unknown attacker. With a growl rumbling in his throat, he managed to get a foot underneath the torso of the creature, and he kicked out as hard as he could.

  The thing was launched off him, flying a short distance through the air before colliding with the wall and falling to its hands and knees. It staggered back to its feet as Daegal jumped to his. It let loose another shriek, and Daegal answered with a roar that pierced the air. He was ready to fight now, but another surprise came.

  It cowered from him. Where he expected another feral assault, the thing huddled in on itself, almost bowing to him. Daegal was confused, but Leoric did not hesitate to take the opening. Dashing forward, the man raised his sword and brought it down quickly upon the creature. His aim was true, and the sword sliced through the neck of this pale imitation of a human, cleanly severing the head. The rest of the body went limp as the head rolled across the ground before settling in place.

  Daegal was breathing heavily, still trying to process everything with his mind swimming in adrenaline. Leoric took charge from that point.

  “Do not drop your guard! There could be more of these things. Search the room!” The men under his command cautiously did as they were told, checking every inch of the room as they tore down the drapes to ensure none were hiding behind them.

  Leoric stepped up beside Daegal, looking down at the severed head and into the soulless black eyes. He poised a question then, one that seemed almost rhetorical in nature.

  “What the hell is this thing?”

  Daegal’s body purged enough of the adrenaline to start thinking clearly again, but even so, it did not help him in this moment.

  “I... I don’t know.”