Session #4 as told by Finn

“A month to die”

Eastshore Prison, Cell 11 — The parchment crackled like dry skin in Finn’s hands. Official seal. Red wax. A little flourish at the end of his name, as if the scribe thought dying deserved a bit of calligraphy.

“Finneas Slynt, sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. Execution to be carried out on the first sun of the new month, in the public square.”

“Polite bastards,” he muttered, tossing the scroll to the floor. “They always add the full name when they mean to kill you. Like that makes it ceremonial.”

He sat back on his cot, which had three legs and the fourth replaced with a prayer book. Not his, of course. Some hopeful sod before him. The only prayers Finn muttered these days were curses muffled by sore knees. 

Rosslyn scurried along the edge of the wall and stopped, tilting her head. Finn tossed her a breadcrumb, already hard as stone.

“Got a month, Ross,” he said. “Four weeks. That’s time enough to die slow or live quick. And I don’t fancy hangin’.”

He stood, crossed the cell to the small barred window, and squinted. The prison yard below sprawled out like a wasted life—grim, cracked, and patrolled. But the outer walls? Still thick. Built for war, not for chains.

He smiled.

“There’s a difference between a man who fears his death and one who’s ready for it, Rosslyn. But I ain’t either. I’m just bored. And boredom makes for wicked plans.”

He began to pace. Step. Step. Turn.

“The kitchens are on the west side. The walls there are hollow—I heard a guard talkin’ about how the rats get in behind the flour barrels. That’s your lot, innit?”

Rosslyn twitched proudly.

“A halfling’s got one advantage, Rosslyn—we’re small. Two, if you count charm. Three, if you count the fact that no one ever looks down.”

He knelt, inspecting the floorboards beneath his cot.

“They think cells are meant to hold us in. But most of ’em don’t remember this place used to be a fortress. Fortresses have secrets. Soldiers carve escape into stone better than any thief ever could. They just called ’em ‘strategic corridors’ back then.”

He patted the floor.

“I just need to find the kitchen. Then the corridor. Then the outer wall. After that—well, I’ll improvise.”

 —  Two weeks later —

Finn wedged himself into a wall seam, dragging his shoulder bag ahead of him with the slow, patient tug of a grave robber exhuming something valuable. Dust clung to his sweat. The bricks felt tighter with every breath.

“This? This is nothing, Ross. Back then, I had poison in my blood and half a spider fang in my calf, but at least I wasn’t crawling through the arse-end of a fortress pretending to be a spider meself.”

He paused as a rusted pipe groaned overhead. Waited. Then shuffled on.

“We’d just dragged poor Jonathan back down the stairs, sticky with acid and bad decisions. Little bastard had a heart bigger than his brain. Always trying to light things up that were best left in the dark.”

Finn sucked in a breath and wriggled under a support beam, dust sifting down like memory.

Re-enterin’ that weird room again, stone cups waiting for our stones like it was some fancy dinner party—somethin’ had changed. The torchlight showed a greenish fog curlin’ in the air like a sour memory.

We all had those moonstones—needed ‘em to work the magic of the room. Me and Jonathan dropped ours in the little cups on the table straightaway, but Inez? She held hers like it was a secret she wasn’t ready to part with.

Once hers was in, though, the room lit up again and the staircase vanished into the ceiling like before. But the mist—it got thicker. My iron medallion burned hot against my chest, so I wrapped my hand in a scarf and held it away from my skin. “Yer knives heatin’ up too?” I asked the others. Sure enough, every bit of metal was cookin’. Didn’t seem friendly. I figured if the spirits down there hated iron, they’d hate a blade more than a medallion, so I swapped my medallion for the big chopper from Aalborr’s dungeon.

Old Finn snorted, wiping a cobweb off his brow as he twisted sideways, bracing one foot on an old beam, the other on a pipe slick with mildew. The wall space narrowed; he turned onto his belly.

“Funny, isn’t it, Ross? That we pay attention to the weird only when it starts biting.”

That’s when I heard it—scratching in the walls and skitterin’ under the table. My gut told me straight: Harrows. Old bogey-stories from my youth, soul-stealers and wall-walkers. Crawling back for unfinished business. Told the others, but they just looked at me like I’d farted at a funeral.

Then the rocks cracked, and hairy legs came wriggling through the wall like death wearing a toupee. Jonathan, genius that he is, lifts his moonstone to get a better look—turnin’ off the light and droppin’ the stairs again. As if pitch-black spider hell was an improvement.

I didn’t have time to scold him. I was done waiting. I made for the door—almost tripped over a loose flagstone just as a spider bigger than my bloody head popped out. I stabbed it with my torch. Lit up like a festival roast.

He paused again, feeling the faint vibrations of guard boots overhead. Six steps. Two guards. Regular pattern. Good.

He shifted his weight, squeezing into a vertical shaft once used to pass messages between tower levels. Another breath. Another prayer. Another inch.

“You know what the difference is between a fortress and a prison?” he whispered. “A fortress keeps the world out. A prison keeps it in. But no one ever built one for someone who was both.”

There was a thud behind me, but I didn’t pay it any attention. There were more legs. More fangs. I fought ‘em off as best I could, torch in hand, dancin’ like a fool. Yanked the door handle—it moved like a lever and spun the whole room like some cursed carnival ride. When the spin stopped, two more spiders pounced. One bit my hand—vision blurred like I’d had too much of that plum wine Inez kept in her pack. I stabbed again—burned the spider and myself. Pain woke me up good.

Missed the next one, so I did the only thing I could: jumped up and crushed the bastard under my shins. Splattered my trousers in spider guts. Felt like a win. Painful. But a win.

I turned and there they were—Jonathan and Inez, both down. One of the spiders was crawling on Inez, and I didn’t think—I just ran and whacked it with the torch. The last one ran off when it saw its pals crisped and crushed.

I tried to wake them. Nothing. Spider poison’s a nasty thing. Jonathan, the healer, always the one needin’ healin’. Typical.

Old Finn paused, panting, his ribs scraping stone. From somewhere above, a guard’s boot clicked faintly. He didn’t move. Waited. Whispered low.

I tried the ol’ smuggler’s wedge trick—pinchin’ under the nose like we did back in Aalborr’s caves. Didn’t help. Though Jonathan twitched a little. So I cleaned his wounds with what was left of my water—he needed it anyway like you wouldn’t believe.

Inez though… still cold. Her leg was swelling, stocking clinging like death’s own bandage.

Had to peel it off—delicate work, I tell ya. Found two little spider teeth buried in her skin. Yanked ’em out with a prayer to whoever listens to bastards like me. Still no response.

So I did what any good halfling does—I improvised.

I looked through her pack—by all the gods, she was travelin’ in style. Wine, pickled quail eggs, soft cheeses. No medicine though.

I asked myself: What would Jonathan do? If he weren’t droolin’ on the flagstones, he’d probably whip up a potion. I had wine, salt, and an idea. Old Marda Slynt used to train the roosters for the Slynt’s Cockfight betting scam. One of the premier matchups was fightin’ poisonous giant centipedes. She’d mix a bit of centipede venom in with the bird’s feed to help ‘em with buildin’ resistance to venom.

I squeezed a bit of goo—might’ve been poison, might’ve been brains—from a dead spider and stirred it into the wine with my hot knife. Poured a bit into Inez’ mouth. Then Jonathan’s. Risky? Aye. But they didn’t die right away, which I took as a good sign.

Inez coughed like she’d swallowed fire. Crawled to a wall and looked at me like I’d betrayed her personally. Jonathan stirred too—sluggish, but alive. I gave him cheese and goat jerky. That did the trick.

Torch was dyin’, so I borrowed one from Inez’s pack. The green fog had thinned by then. But the room still stank of webs and fear.

“I’d like to leave this place now,” I said. And no one argued.

We collected our stones. I led the way up, Inez held the light, Jonathan stumbled along at the rear. The hatch wouldn’t budge for me—poisoned hands, I figured. Inez muttered a spell and it blew open like a bad secret. Wind whistled in and Jonathan started askin’ questions no one wanted to answer.

But above us? Our camp, just as we’d left it. Even the owlbear chicks were still there—bless their murderous little faces. Me, I was just glad it meant breakfast was sorted.

Crawled into my tent. Closed my eyes. Next thing I knew, it was tomorrow.

He winked at Rosslyn, who twitched her whiskers from a nearby pipe. And that, Rosslyn, is how a halfling survives a nest of magic spiders with nothin’ but a torch, some wine, and a dangerous idea. Now hush—we’re comin’ up on the kitchen vents, and if I don’t squeeze just right, we’ll both be spider food.”

He reached the junction where the corridor should open into the outer barracks wall—a door hidden behind a false panel in the supply room. He scraped away the chalky buildup, heart racing, and braced himself to pry it open.

But behind the stone… nothing. Not a hollow. Not air. Just more wall.

“Blocked,” Finn breathed.

He pressed his head to the wall. From the other side, faint echoing boots. Patrols. Guards.

He slumped, back against the stone.

“Well, Ross, that’s it then. Either I go out in front of a crowd, swingin’ in my best shirt, or I crawl back and wait for plan bloody B.”

Rosslyn squeaked and curled around his hand.

He closed his eyes.

“Back to the cell it is. But not to stay.”