Session #9, as told by Finn

 The Rat’s Way Out

Finn kept to the walls, every footfall measured, every stone beneath his boots accounted for. The yard stretched wide, moonlight pooling in patches. Torches flickered along the walls where guards leaned on the parapets, bored, half-asleep. He counted torches, timed the intervals between the guards’ glances, studied the slack in the ropes on the gate. One misstep and the whole yard would wake. So far, so good — but good things never last. Then came the shout from the keep. His chest went cold. Arvin. That bastard had realized Finn was gone. Boots thundered against stone, echoing off the walls.

“Where the hell is he?!” The roar carried across the yard.

He ran the yard in his head as a practiced burglar would. He’d paced the stones during airing enough times to know every blind, every boot print, every nook and cranny that might let a halfling pass where a man could not. Guards were already coming, boots eating the cobbles, the rattle of metal like hungry teeth. He had three sensible exits in his head — the drain, the postern, the moss seam — and none of them looked clean for the moment. The dogs weren’t loose yet. Quill would call for them at any moment; the kennel boy usually panicked when hollered at, he could maybe get two extra heartbeats of time, no more. There was no hiding now. Time to spring into action.

He sprinted towards the nearest torch and ripped it from the wall.

“There!” someone shouted. A bolt pinged off the stone, close enough to kiss his ear. They meant business. So did Finn.

The granary sat outside the yard, behind the stables — prisoners weren’t allowed anywhere near the food stocks. He moved low, a shadow between barrels, sticking to the walls, hiding from sight as he worked his way to the granary. Shouts from the walls, high and sharp, called to the guards below. Finn slipped through the granary door.

Inside was silence. He was alone for now, the dust motes shifting in a single shaft of light. He worked fast. A stool upturned, a cloak snagged and tossed, a sack ripped so the wheat spilled in a nervous scatter — signs of struggle, signs of failure. He jammed a crate under the shutter so rescuers would find it barred from the inside. Theatre. Men liked a scene they could explain.

Then the fire. He threw the torch into the heap of straw by the outer wall. The first tongue of smoke curled lazy and grey, then coughed black, rising hard. Perfect. Shouts cracked sharper now:

“The storehouse! Gods, the storehouse!”

Guards thundered away like cattle driven to water. In no time everything in the granary was ablaze, an inferno. Heat came on like a wave, singeing Finn’s hair and eyebrows.

Shouts split the air. Quill barked for buckets and for a rescue. Men ran to save rations. Finn used the noise. A corner held a cellar hatch with an iron ring. He levered it, the metal complained once and yielded. A breath, then the slab lifted a fraction, heavy as sin, and he slid into the gap. Cold damp closed around him. The cellar smelled of mildew and rat droppings.

He skittered through the shadows, palm pressed against the wall until his fingers found the seam of stonework. There — a drain mouth, no bigger than a coal scuttle. Finn spat, grinned a black-toothed grin.

“Not built for you big bastards, was it?”

Cold river air slapped his face. Smoke swirled in behind him.

The drain was a coffin — a foot wide, less than a foot high. A well-fed halfling would have been hard-pressed to get through, but Finn hadn’t seen a good meal in months. He went belly-down, elbows digging in, dragging himself forward while the heat behind licked at his ankles, slimy stone brushing scalp and shoulders both. The stink of moss and rat droppings clogged his nose, and every scrape of his boots sounded like a bell in the silence.

Halfway down, the stone dipped. Water seeped in, soaking his front, and the tunnel narrowed further. He hissed, twisted, shoved one shoulder forward at a time until he thought his ribs might crack. A fat rat would’ve been wedged solid — Finn’s wiry halfling frame barely made the squeeze.

At last, the tunnel ended at a grate. He could see the flagstones of the quay beyond. Closing his eyes, reaching into a space he hadn’t visited for ages, his mind drew forth power. In his hand a purple blade simmered into existence. With a flick of his wrist, he threw the blade into a crack between the flagstones. A line of thought-power flew out with it. The moment it hid, he snapped the line taut, and when he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back on the slimy stones outside.

The tide was high; a wave slapped over his legs, soaking him through. He lay there a heartbeat, listening. No sounds of pursuit, no shouts of alarm. He rose, blackened and smelling of smoke, then slipped into the shadows, the fire behind roaring higher to cover his tracks.

He had the prison at his back and the town’s blind alleys ahead.

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Finn had thought the gnomish passage might be their way out, but climbing down only brought them into a cramped, enclosed space. Rubble piled high on both sides hemmed them in, and beyond stretched a broad moat or lake, black as tar and still as glass. Overhead, the outside walls of the chamber they’d escaped from loomed down like the battlements of an ancient fortress. Jonathan said something, but his voice was drowned out by a rumbling from above. Stones groaned, and with a shudder the walls retracted, a loud metallic thump locked them out. Muffled goblin shouts echoed faintly through the walls, angry and frustrated, but for now the way was sealed. Small blessings.
Inez crouched beside a skeleton chained to the wall, her fingers tracing the moldy remnants of bones. To Finn it looked human-sized, though it was hard to tell with the scraps left. “Gotta love the decoration of this place.”, he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. He scanned the chamber. Piles of rubble rose left and right, more tumbled into the water itself. Water seeped out of that pile, maybe it blocked the mouth of a spring. He looked up uneasily at the ceiling. If the rubble had fallen from there, they might be standing under another collapse waiting to happen. 
Jonathan was a bit more adventurous; he was scrambling up a heap of stones, and was shining his light to see beyond. He claimed he could see something of a hidden wall beyond. Inez, predictably, was lost in fascination with her discovery, the dead remains of some poor sod down a haunted dungeon. Finn scowled. She was supposed to be clever, but at the worst moments she always found some relic to obsess over instead of helping them out of their mess. He was about to give her an earful when something shifted: a strand of slimy algae slithered down from the leg bone and slid across the floor toward the water.
“Huh?” was all he managed before his mind betrayed him. For an instant, clear as daylight, he saw a wheel of creamy, spicy halfling jack, his favorite cheese. His mouth watered; his stomach knotted with hunger.
The vision broke as the water exploded, a tentacle, slick and glistening, snapped upward. With surprising speed Jonathan reacted, drawing his shield and axe, portraying a warrior- priest of legend. Unfortunately, the tentacle — lacking eyes — was not impressed and coiled around Jonathan, wrenching his weapon away and lifting him into the air like a ragdoll. Finn reacted on instinct. He darted forward, blades flashing, and hacked the thing through in one fell sweep. Jonathan dropped with a wheeze, gasping on the stone. Another tendril whipped out, coiling around Inez and squeezing her ribs tight. She let out a strangled cry as it dragged her upward. She was struggling, but to no avail, her arms were tightly bound. Finn lunged again but stumbled on the severed limb at his feet. He fell into, more than charged the tentacle. Black ink sprayed across his hand as he slashed deep into its flesh. Inez and the severed limb thudded to the ground. The creature shrieked from below, and then the water swallowed it back. The fight ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Inez rubbed at the fresh bruises on her arm, frowning. The circular marks the tentacle had left behind matched the strange carvings on the skeleton’s bones. Apparently, that was what was important to her at that moment.
Finn, for his part, just wanted out. Sick of the dungeon, treasure or no treasure. But then the vision of halfling jack returned—he could smell it, taste it. His hand stretched out on its own, reaching for food that wasn’t there. He blinked, and his stomach dropped. His hand was black, covered in a stain that seemed to sink into the skin. That wasn’t right. He snapped back to the here and now. Next to him Jonathan was singing praise to the holy mother Chislev, exclaiming that he had glimpsed her great temple in the depths. Inez flicked open her spellbook, traced glowing symbols in the air, and declared there was faint magic behind the rubble, but something far stronger beneath the water. She spoke of the Omnibus, the gnomes’ legendary encyclopedia, perhaps hidden here beneath the ancient gnomish bastion.
Finn’s hand began to itch, burning faintly, as if the black ink were acid seeping through his skin. Poison, maybe. Best wash it off quickly. He crouched by the water, trying to wash it away. But the moment his hand touched the surface, tiny fish darted in, swarming his fingers. They nibbled greedily at the stain. It didn’t hurt, but he felt exposed, like bait for something bigger. He yanked his hand back and shuffled away from the bank. The ink still clung to his skin, though the fish had eaten away some of the edges. Worries for later.
Inez insisted something vast and magical lay hidden in the depths. Finn squinted again, and there it was—the cheese, a wheel so massive it could have been a moon. Jonathan’s eyes gleamed with the same fever, only he swore he saw his god’s temple.
As tempting as both visions were, none of them had any appetite to meet the beast the tentacles belonged to. They turned instead to the wall Inez had marked. She summoned her unseen servant to shift the rubble. “Why get your hands dirty when you can use magic?” she quipped. Jonathan apparently thought that was holy inspiration, because he cleared a space on the ground and began doodling. At first, he tried dragging his finger across the stone. Maybe he thought, Chislev would grant him the boon of fingerpainting. Finn smirked and tossed him a piece of chalk just to see what would happen. Jonathan drew a circle, some crude waves and symbols—child’s play, really—and then sank into prayer.
Finn waited. Nothing happened. No voices, no light, no divine wind. Just the steady drip of water and the occasional splash as the unseen servant shifted rubble into the lake. Then Jonathan’s eyes fluttered open. He announced, with great solemnity, that Chislev had promised the water path was safe.
Finn snorted. “I could get that from talking to fish,” he said.
With unseen sweat of Inez’s casting, the rubble finally gave way to a wall. Just as Jonathan had promised. Time to let Finn do his magic. He crouched to examine it, his fingers finding what eyes missed: the wall looked a regular part of the fortress structure, but he traced a hidden seam along the corner and bottom of the wall. The stones lacked mortar in those areas. Nothing on the right side. He called Jonathan over, and the two halflings shoved with all their might. The wall shifted a fraction and clicked loudly. Both of them stumbled back, sweat on their brows, unsure what they’d just unleashed. The bricks came at them, forcing the halflings back, and a door swung open. Finn stepped forward with a flourish, bowing low and sweeping his hand as if ushering a noblewoman into her carriage. “My lady,” he said. Inez smiled, clearly pleased.
Typical, sarcasm was wasted on these two. As she walked over, Jonathan stopped them short and said: “Wait. I might have something that might help us enter safely.” Pressing a hand to their shoulders and mumbling a prayer. A warmth spread through Finn’s body, deep and steady, like a hearth fire on a cold night, like a belly full after a long fast.  A “Thank you.” escaped his mouth before he could stop it.
“You two, please wait until I tell you to follow me into the room.” Finn stepped into the room. No click. He waited, until he was sure nothing would happen. He stood in a space with a set of stairs leading up. He sneaked up and peered into the next room staying low. The room beyond was rectangular, with narrow walkways around the edges and a central pit three feet down where water flowed fast. Finn listened carefully—only the sound of running water. No traps sprung when he stepped forward. Safe enough, for now; he called the others over. The pull of the lake gnawed at him. The cheese was still there, calling. Jonathan’s eyes burned with zeal, his need to reach Chislev’s temple nearly feverish. Only Inez seemed immune. She pressed a hand on their chests and said they’d need to continue. This pacified Finn’s desire to go back, but Jonathan brushed her off and said he needed to enter the holy temple.
“We need to go back and feed the owlbear cubs. They’ll die without us.”, Inez pleaded. That cooled Jonathan’s fire — he turned around and had that puppy look back in his eye. “One moment.” He dashed back, to return hauling a severed tentacle with him as food for the beasts.
They carried on in their usual line: Finn at the front, Inez behind, Jonathan bringing up the rear. The walkway led to a corner at the end of the room. Sneaking a peak around the corner; another door barred their path, oak bound in iron. A quick inspection showed this to be the same type of lock as earlier; a specific long other side tingle mechanism. Finn’s tools made quick work of it. The door opened normally. No traps, no magic. He tested it, threw in a pebble for good measure. Then stepped through, Inez and Jonathan followed on his heels — Click.
The mechanism woke. Light seared their eyes. Stone ground and thundered. And suddenly, impossibly, they were standing beneath the black obelisk, the cool dawn air brushing their faces. The sun was just crawling over the horizon. The owlbear cubs came bounding, muzzles wet with whatever kill they’d found in their absence, still playful as ever. Tussling with both Inez and Jonathan, who seemed ecstatic to see the juvenile killing machines. Jonathan tossed them the tentacle, and they tore it apart in delight.
Their tents were nowhere in sight. Finn blinked in confusion. They were back at the monolith near the moonstone fields, not their camp. The moonstones they had lobbed at the golem to save their lives could still be seen at the foot of the monolith.  “How?” was the only thought that formed in his head. Jonathan was rolling in the grass with a cub, giggling like a child, blissfully unaware. Inez did seem to take in her surroundings while a cub was licking her face.
Since they’d left this place, it hadn’t rained. The remains of the giant elk were still there, the dirt reddish brown with dried blood, bones white, meat rotting, crawling with flies.
“They’re not here for us!” Finn said, pointing. “They’re here for whatever killed the elk.” Inez and Jonathan looked at him as if he’d gone daft. Jonathan insisted the cubs had tracked them. Inez’s mouth hardened.
“Don’t start about leaving these cuties behind, Finn Slynt. It’s not happening.” Jonathan frowned. The idea hadn’t even crossed his mind, but now that it had, he was firmly against it. Finn knew when a battle was lost, he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Let’s get back to camp. It’s a long walk, and the day’s not getting any younger.”
By late afternoon they had reached the hamlet, both halfling’s stomachs growled loudly to announce their arrival. The old mayor, Meyon Hiir, was still perched on his porch. He squinted at them, muttering about their return from the wrong direction and their strange changes. A remark on Inez’s state of dress, elicited a shade of crimson on her cheeks that Finn hadn’t seen on any living creature. Then his eyes caught Finn’s blackened hand, turning him into a drunken oracle of prophecy: “Light of moon will wash away the night.”
Finn asked for food, but Meyon ignored him. The old man demanded if they’d were convinced his tales of giants and soldiers were true. They should continue on, but his rambling questions triggered a tale from Jonathan, of Chislev and their underground adventure. Going on and on, Jonathan’s explanations soon lulled the man to sleep where he sat. Finally.
But a sleeping man on a porch meant opportunity — Finn quickly peeked inside the cottage for anything edible, only to be confronted by Meyon’s other-half. Wielding her broom like a halberd, she demanded: “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
“Your husband fell asleep and I…”, Finn stammered.
“And that makes it alright for you to walk right in?” she barked.
The fierce woman reminded Finn of Auntie Greer, the respected and feared leader of the Slynt clan — whose stare could fix an ogre where he stood. Her word enough to make enemies and undesirables disappear. Finn’s heart sank into his boots, the old woman was not done giving him an ear full. “Get out of my house! Get out!”, and she started to call for villagers to come to her aid. They slipped away before trouble grew teeth, cubs trotting at their heels.
Back at camp following an hour of brisk walking. Inez traded her goblin princess dress for crisp office wear — not the most practical for the road but standing taller with her dignity restored. Which in this case meant she left the men to the cooking while she bent over a goblin book, pen scratching. Back to the role of servants for her highness. Finn didn’t really mind; he knew his part in this. Besides there was food coming, life was good.
Finn stirred the pot with his stained hand, wondering if it would ever come clean. But still not as bad as his lilac hand. He could now do things, no halfling should be able to. Distracted, divvying up the stew — he served Inez a royal portion, Jonathan a hearty bowl, leaving himself only half a bowl of dregs. That night he went to bed hungry — dreams were bad.
Life on the road was tough.

—————————

The granary door belched black smoke, heat pressing out in waves. Quill shoved the first man forward.

“Move! Buckets, now! Tear it down if you must!”

Two guards rammed shoulders into the door until the bar splintered. Smoke clawed at their throats as they stumbled inside. The air shimmered orange, straw and spilled grain spitting flame like oil.

“There!” one shouted, pointing.

Through the choking haze they saw the signs: a toppled stool, a cloak half-burned in the fire’s edge, a trail of grain scattered like breadcrumbs across the floor. By the far wall, sacks had slumped open, and in the midst of them, a heap of fabric catching flame.

“Gods…” another muttered, pressing a cloth to his mouth. “That’s him. Must’ve panicked. Trapped himself.”

Quill shoved past, squinting through the heat. The shape on the floor writhed in the flames, fabric twisting, curling into nothing. The stink of scorched cloth and hair filled the room. He coughed hard, eyes watering.

“Idiot,” he spat, though his voice cracked with smoke. “He locked himself in, like a rat in its own trap. Thought he could run from me?”

A beam above cracked and spat sparks. Men dragged him back, yelling about the roof. Buckets sloshed, but the fire had already eaten too deep. The grain hissed and popped, bursting into sparks like fat on a griddle. Quill stood in the yard again, face red, eyes streaming, watching the roof sag. Guards muttered behind him — about waste, about punishment, about what the Warden would say. But Quill only stared at the smoke curling into the night. He clenched his jaw so hard it hurt.

“Burned himself,” he said at last, more to convince himself than anyone else. “That’s the end of Slynt.”

The men nodded. None of them noticed the iron ring in the corner of the cellar hatch, nor the faint breath of cool river air that had swept the smoke aside for just a heartbeat before the fire took hold.