Aidan
The Realms
Fifthday, 3rd week of the 7th month, Godless Age 597
Early morning
Ceallach Macht, Mistvale Highlands

Aidan crouched down and began to move slowly and carefully into the ancient city. He probed the ground carefully with every step before committing his weight to it, doing his best to avoid stepping on any loose stones or unfortunately-placed dry sticks. A part of his mind railed against the painful slowness of his progress, but the rest of him knew that undue haste would just get him killed for no benefit.

The wards actually began a distance from the outskirts of the city, and Aidan estimated that it took him at least an hour before he began to see the vague shadows of buildings rising in the mists. Curiously, while the fog near the wards was incredibly dense, it thinned somewhat as he moved towards the center of the area covered by the dome. It still provided him with plenty of concealment—he hoped—but instead of barely being able to see his own hands at the ends of his arms, he could now actually make out large shapes about three to four yards out.

The first buildings Aidan came upon were barely more than piles of rubble. Time, and perhaps violence, had ravaged them quite thoroughly. He thought for a moment about digging through the remains, but quickly discarded that thought. It would take too long, and Aidan seriously doubted he would find any valuable information in the very first ruined building he stumbled across. Instead, he crept further into the city, searching for a more intact structure to investigate.

The sun was burning directly overhead when Aidan found the first building he considered worth checking. The wall facing the street he had been following was still standing, along with parts of the roof, although the door had long since rotted away. He slowly eased his way inside. The mist was significantly lighter inside, except directly inside the door and under the holes in the roof, and Aidan could see the entire interior in fair detail. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see. There were lumps of heavily decayed and worm-eaten organic debris, little more than dirt mounds really, where once there might have been tables and chairs. He spent several minutes carefully poking through several of them but found nothing except dirt and some extremely rusted fragments of iron that were probably nails at some point in the distant past. Curiously, no bugs crawled from the debris as he searched through it.

He turned and began to make his way out, but froze when he heard a noise outside the empty doorway. Aidan held perfectly still and strained his ears until he heard it again.

shshshshthlp. shshshshthlp.

The noise slowly approached the doorway, and Aidan's heart began to pound in his chest as he moved as quickly as he dared to place his back against the wall near the door. He held a hand facing the entrance and hovered just on the edge of casting Flame Jet.

shshshshthlp. snfffffp. shshshshthlp.

The noises drew closer, and he began to hear a softer noise in between the longer, more drawn out sounds which initially drew Aidan's attention. It sounded like something dragging across the ground, interspersed with an occasional snuffle like a dog searching for a morsel of food which rolled under the couch.

shshshshthlp. snffffffffffffffp.

The sounds were coming from directly outside. Aidan's fingers tensed involuntarily, assuming the position of the first gesture in Flame Jet.

snfffffffffffp

A desiccated snout covered in dry, leafless vines poked into the building, and he could see the nostrils flare as the creature inhaled, searching for a scent. Aidan said a silent prayer to anyone who might care to listen, then pushed off the wall, swiveled to face the monster in the doorway, and cast Flame Jet as quickly as he could. He got a momentary glimpse of a large, vine-covered boar corpse bathed in the red glow of his magic gathering, and it had just enough time to squeal out its discovery before his spell completed. Flames poured from his palm, and the squeals turned to screeches of pain.

Aidan was so distracted by the surge of adrenaline in his system that he completed a full second Flame Jet cast before he realized that the first reduced the monster to a bonfire smelling of rotten bacon and patchouli. He stood there, arm outstretched towards the remains of the beast, panting heavily, mind temporarily blank. This was the first time in his life he had been the initiator of intense violence, and it felt different than the rattok and trow attacks.

After a long moment, he remembered that the Manikin squealed rather loudly just before he torched it. If anything else was nearby, there was no way they could have missed that noise. Unfortunately, the Manikin was still merrily burning in the doorway. Fortunately, there were plenty of other holes in this ruined building. As he made his way towards a pile of rubble leading up to a hole in the rear wall, Aidan checked the combat log.

Well, that confirms what we suspected about their weakness to fire. That's one light in the darkness, at least.

Making more noise than he would prefer, Aidan scrambled up the pile of debris and out the hole in the wall. He moved perpendicular to his previous path as best he could, creeping along to the next street over. Aidan didn't know whether that thing was acting alone, as part of a group, or even whether it was specifically searching for him. What he did know was that he needed to get away from there now. He moved as quickly as he dared, looking around the corner of one pile of rubble, then hurrying to crouch behind the next, changing his direction of travel multiple times so as not to leave a straight trail. After about ten minutes with no sign of pursuit or any additional monster sightings, Aidan allowed himself to relax and consider his next steps.

In his efforts to evade pursuit, he had moved laterally through Ceallach Macht, not really getting any closer to his goal, the center. While a city wasn't a traditional dungeon and didn't have an end, Aidan guessed that the boss of this place would be close to the middle of the city. He had very little hope of actually defeating the boss if he found it, but any information on it should prove helpful to the Starchasers. With that in mind, Aidan did his best to orient himself back towards where he thought the center of the dome was and resumed his slow, hopefully-stealthy progress.

As he navigated the rubble-strewn alleys and foggy streets of Ceallach Macht, doubts began to creep their way into Aidan's thoughts. I should never have come here. I sent a warning to the Starchasers; once Brighid left, I was under no moral obligation to them. I would have failed the quest, and maybe they would have sent someone after me, but surely they wouldn't chase me once I left their territory? It's not like I have any chance in here, despite the Council's promises. They told me to my face that it was a task I could accomplish, and clearly it isn't. I have no business here. It was only luck—or Luck—that let me take out that Manikin so easily, and that there was only one. If there had been two, I'd be dead already. And moving around is the surest way to attract attention; I should find somewhere to hole up in.

Before he knew it, Aidan was standing in front of a hole in the wall of another partially-intact building. He felt enervated, lost, and alone. He began to squeeze into the building, seeking somewhere dark and small where he could curl up and vanish from the world. Once he managed to work his way inside, the building really was perfect. It was dark and gloomy, with only the diffuse light from the hole he just came in from to light up the interior. There was very little space, as the entire front half of the building collapsed inwards towards the back.

Aidan swept some dirt and dust out of the way with a corner of his tunic. He wedged himself in with his back to the corner, hunched over, thighs against his chest and chin resting on his knees. He was famished and started to reach for one of the centaur trail rations, but then decided, No. If I’m going to die in some miserable misbegotten place, I want some real food in my belly when I go.

Aidan retrieved his box of holding, then reached inside and summoned a burger into his hand. It is still steaming hot, like it was just out of the frying pan, and for a brief moment, he brightened a bit. Then he popped the shamburger into his mouth and begin to chew. Greasy, savory, balanced with the salty-sharp flavor of good cheddar cheese. Delicious. He swallowed and closed his eyes, basking in the temporary bliss.

Then Aidan's eyes snapped open. What the fuck was I thinking?! He recognized the signs of depression, but there was no trigger for it. He had been fine, frazzled, but fine, one minute, then suddenly dark thoughts had assailed him from all the shadowy recesses of his mind. He remembered the nightmares he and Brighid both had the previous night, and realization dawned. In essence, he was just attacked again, this time mentally and emotionally instead of physically. With that realization came another: whatever it was, it wanted him to stop moving and go to ground. It was searching for him, and if he was stationary, it would eventually find him. I have to get moving, now!

Hurriedly, Aidan stuffed the chest back into his backpack and pushed his way back through the hole in the wall. He looked around quickly once and saw two dark shapes moving slowly towards him down the alley. Not that way, then! He backtracked a little, then moved onto the broad avenue the alley emptied out onto. The Boar Manikin seemed to operate primarily by scent rather than sight, and the two shapes he saw didn’t seem to react to his movement. Being on the open street might actually give him an advantage by letting him spot enemies before they sniffed him out. He could just barely hear the rasping sounds of dried vines against uneven cobblestones echoing through the fog, but he didn't see any manikins, so he just kept moving.

Aidan spent at least two hours playing cat and mouse with the manikins hunting him. More than once, a prompt opened in his mind, but he mentally shoved them to the side without looking at them; his focus was entirely on staying alive and moving closer to the city's center. He made steady progress down the avenue and towards his goal until eventually, he came to a giant archway leading into a tunnel under the hill Ceallach Macht was built around. And, unfortunately, it was very much guarded.

Aidan was still too far away to make out the exact details, but there was an enormous shape hunched at each side of the archway. Where the Boar Manikin had been about the size of a really fat pony, and the other shapes he had been dodging through the fog were within that same general size range, these things were at least as tall as Fionn, and he wasn't entirely sure that they were standing at full height. Aidan edged closer and closer, trying to get a solid look at one of them through the mist. He gave it up as too risky before he could tell anything more than that they were roughly humanoid in shape, with broad shoulders and long arms but comparatively short legs. They smelled absolutely foul—he could smell them from at least ten yards away—but not rotten; they might be living creatures.

Clearly, this tunnel led to something important if it had dedicated, potentially living—and able to think on their own—guards. Aidan desperately wanted to get past them. The only question was how to manage it?

As he began to formulate his plan, he quickly checked over the prompts he had been ignoring.

Zurai

Special thanks to Cenomy for their exceptional support on Patreon!