They opted to go inside after all.
It wasn't, of course, that the inn looked any more secure or that Alucent's suspicions had dissolved into thin air. But the fact was, discussing this outside, in the forest, with the sweet scent still drifting through the trees, was getting them nowhere, as far as the basic question went: What was so wrong with the people inside?
"We enter," Alucent whispered. "However, we don't eat. And we don't drink. We observe, we gather information, and then we leave before whatever is causing this decides that we're next."
"And if whatever is causing this doesn't give us that choice?" Raya questioned. She hadn't removed her hand from the hilt of her Weaveblade since they'd stepped back from the window.
"Then we fight our way out."
Gryan's mechanical arm flexed, with pistons softly hissing. "But let's try the subtle approach first."
Again, they drew near the door. The warm yellow glow still streamed through the windows, beckoning them with its promise of refuge, of security, of all that weary travelers sought after a day's journey. And the sweet aroma was even more intense, almost stifling, making Alucent's eyes sting and his throat tighten.
Gryan pushed the door open.
Just as they'd expected from their glimpse through the window. Tables scattered haphazardly, chairs everywhere, and a bar along one wall with the innkeeper behind, smiling that empty smile. A fireplace, providing necessary warmth and light, with fire dancing as if hypnotic if you looked right at it. There were a dozen or so people in this crowded room, all of them in states of blissfully absent pleasure.
The farmer with the spilled ale remained in the inn, smiling still at the puddle. The woman near the fire remained staring at the flames, gazing vacantly in mindless bliss. The two men in the bar remained as they were, one still speaking, one still not listening.
Nobody looked up as they entered. Nobody even recognized their presence.
The innkeeper's smile widened slightly. "Welcome to the Gilded Sprout," he said, and again, as with that fixed facial expression, he spoke with the same blank, vacuous tone. "Please, sit. You must be tired from traveling."
They sat down at a table in the corner, the one that would give them the best vantage point in the room as well as quick egress if things didn't go their way. Alucent positioned himself with his back against the wall, a habit he'd acquired in the last few weeks. Gryan sat facing him, arranging himself so that his mechanical arm wasn't immediately apparent. Raya sat down in a position that would allow her to see the room as well as the window.
The Innkeeper approached carrying three wooden cups on a tray, steam rising from them in delicate spirals. However, the sweetness remained strong, as the liquid in the cups was the source of that aroma. He carefully placed the cups on the table, then brought dishes of roasted fowl and root vegetables that seemed edible, which was enough for Alucent to doubt their authenticity.
"Please, enjoy," the innkeeper urged. "This tea is a house specialty. Glowrose blend. Very calming after a long day's traveling."
He wandered back to the bar, his hollow grin fixed on his face, moving with the slow grace of a man who had all the time in the world and no need for haste.
Alucent's gaze fixed on the mug in front of him. What was inside was a pale, golden liquid, with tiny flowers floating on its surface. And this was where the aroma was concentrated, fragrant, and so sweet that it was cloying, something he both craved and pushed away.
He didn't touch it.
Rather, he observed others in the room. Gathering information, compiling data, searching for clues within the wrongness.
The man who'd been trying to relate a story to his companion was now audible, Alucent realized, as he'd been able to pick up voices.
"... and then we went to the... the place with the... you know, the..."
His eyes narrowed, as if puzzled, though that was instantly smoothed over, replaced once more with blank, happy ignorance. "It was nice. I remember that. It was nice."
But he didn't remember what 'it' was. He'd lost the middle of his own story, forgotten the specifics that were supposed to be seared into his brain, and been left with only the sentiment of 'nice' with none of the context that would give the sentiment any point.
The singing was coming from the woman sitting by the fire. Humming a lullaby, Alucent could recognize the tune, although he didn't know the words. But her eyes were empty, completely blank, lacking the love or sadness or the nostalgia that was supposed to be involved with singing a lullaby. She was going through the motions of humming the tune but didn't retain the memory that was associated with that. Taken away, devoured, or masked by whatever was affecting these people.
Alucent realized they were witnessing repetitive behaviors. Basic functions, the mechanical process of being human, but none of the associated memories. Watching puppets moving through their predetermined cycles of activity, going through the motions, not comprehending the purpose behind their own endeavors.
Across the table, Gryan reached for his mug. Alucent was about to call him off, but Gryan merely brought the mug close to his face, taking a breath of the steam rising off the liquid. Then he sipped, barely dampening his lips. He set the mug down again.
"Mild sedative," he whispered, his voice tuned so that only their table could hear. "Not strong. Just enough to make you feel relaxed and ease your defenses. But that's not what's affecting these people." His gesture swept the room, the empty tables. "This is something else."
He turned toward the innkeeper, raising his voice to a conversational level. "Now, that's a nice steam oven you have installed there. See that copper thing with the pipes in the wall over there?" He gestured toward the brass-and-copper steam oven built into the wall, alongside the fireplace. "What kind of pressure ratings will that thing take, if you don't mind me asking? It looks like a Runepeaks model, but I'm not sure of the maker's mark."
"It keeps us warm. That is enough."
The innkeeper's frozen smile didn't change.
Gryan's face hardened. You see, for someone from Iron Vale, especially a mechanic, an engineer, or someone who'd spent years working with steam-tech and understanding the precise specifications of every component—having a man not know the basic specs of his own equipment was profoundly wrong. It wasn't just ignorance. It was the absence of something fundamental, like asking someone their own name and getting a blank stare.
Raya had not touched her cup. She was cupping her hand over the top of the mug, palm down, fingers splayed. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling with slow, controlled breaths. She was feeling something, accessing her Thread 2 skills to discern the metaphysical properties of whatever was in that tea.
"The Runeforce in this room," she whispered finally, her eyes still closed. "It's wrong. Too smooth, too clean. Like a tapestry with all the dark threads pulled out." She opened her eyes and looked at them both. "You see, there's no grief. There is no fear, anger, or anxiety. There is nothing negative. And that's not right. Emotions don't operate that way. You can't pick and choose, erase the negative ones without affecting the rest."
Alucent was still cataloging the room, his analytical mind racing with the information, trying to reconcile all of the pieces. The tea reduced defenses but did not account for the absence. Memories that were full of passion but were no more, only the motions remaining. The innkeeper was unsure of the most basic elements of his own equipment. And the omnipresent scent, which clouded minds unless one actively resisted it.
There was something else going on here. Something they weren't noticing yet.
Movement caught his eye. Near the fireplace, hovering in the air above the woman who was staring blissfully into the flames, a distortion. Like heat haze on a summer road, that shimmering quality where the air itself seemed to bend and warp. But it was too cold for heat haze, and the distortion had a shape to it. Not random wavering but something almost deliberate, almost alive.
Alucent concentrated on it, trying to pick out its form from the poor lighting and the wisps of smoke rising from the fire. But the distortion began to move, drifting towards the woman's head. And then, as if it realized Alucent was focusing on it, it shot away. Quickly. Impossibly quickly. It phased through a solid plank of wood, disappearing into the wall.
"Did you see that?" Alucent spoke quietly, with great urgency.
"See what?" Gryan was looking in the direction Alucent was looking, but he didn't appear to see whatever it was.
"There was something in the vicinity of the fire. A difference in the air. It vanished into the wall."
Raya's hand had gone to her Weaveblade hilt. "We need to leave. Now."
"We first need a room, then," Alucent declared, already laying out the plans as he spoke. "Because if something is here, something that is causing this, then we must see it clearly. Understand what we're dealing with. And we can't do that with a dozen witnesses in the common room."
"Evening travelers. Would you care to remain for the evening?" The innkeeper approached once more, that calm smile plastered on his face. "We do have some rooms. Very nice. Very peaceful.
"Yes," Alucent said before either Gryan or Raya could object. "One room. Upstairs if possible."
"Of course." The innkeeper produced a brass key from someplace behind the bar. "Second floor, end of the hall. Sleep well."
---
The room was exactly what you'd expect from a roadside inn. Small, spartan, clean, but old. A single bed with worn linens, a small table with a washbasin, and a window overlooking the back of the building. The whole space smelled of wood polish and dust and that underlying sweet scent that seemed to permeate every surface.
Gryan locked the door as soon as they were in, his mechanical arm moving to check the window. Ensuring they had ways out and that nothing was getting in that they didn't know about.
"Okay," Raya said quietly. "You're going to explain why we're being kept in this building with all these people whose feelings have been consumed?"
"Because we must know what is doing the feeding," Alucent stated. He stepped towards the window, peering into the forest that lay behind their inn. Nothing but trees was all that was evident in the darkness, colored a cyan-purple hue by the light of the Turquoise Moon. "The tea isn't the cause; you admitted that much. It merely opens their minds and renders them suggestible. But what, then, is the cause of this, and what feeds on them?"
"And you expect whatever it is to just appear and introduce itself to us?" Gryan was testing the door hinges, checking that they were sound and that the lock would really hold if someone attempted to break in.
"I think if we're potential prey, yes. It'll come investigate."
They didn't have to wait long.
The distortion materialized, perhaps ten minutes after they'd locked the door. It phased through the wooden wall as if the material wasn't there, shimmering into visibility slowly, cautiously, like it was testing whether this room was safe to enter.
Finally, it fully materialized, causing Alucent's stomach to sink.
It was a worm. Or something worm-like, at least. A semi-transparent body, a meter long, segmented, moving in a way that wasn't exactly physical. Like it was swimming through air, through reality, through currents they couldn't see.
But the most terrible thing, the thing that caused Alucent's analytical brain to stutter. Was the head.
Six eyes. Human eyes. Not worm eyes or insect eyes. Human eyes, with irises and pupils, with all the tiny details that had made them so familiar. They were arrayed around what was the 'head' of the creature, blinking slowly, independent of one another. Brown, blue, and green. Like the thing had harvested them from different individuals.
The worm-like creature—because that was clearly what this was, some sort of parasite that Sir Vorn's briefing would surely have mentioned, but Alucent's memory was still reeling, drifted through the room. Its six eyes rested on different objects, scanning, evaluating.
After that, it concentrated on Gryan.
All six eyes turned on him as one. Gryan was still examining the lock on the window, his back half turned, oblivious. The worm-like creature began to move closer, its body oscillating with the rhythm of its 'swimming' motion.
A proboscis protruded from somewhere near its mouth—a thin, needle-like one, shining faintly in the moonlight coming through the window. It reached for Gryan's head.
Gryan froze. He didn't jerk backward and didn't resist. Just ceased moving. His face went slack, his eyes glazing over as if a switch had been flipped, shutting off everything that was Gryan.
Alucent scrambled back.
Thinking of what to do, but he wouldn't be able to use the Reed-Pattern Caster, as the noise would surely wake the entire inn, bringing the innkeeper, as well as whoever was helping him, running. But he had his Runequill in hand, the amber ink swirling with purpose.
He etched quickly, frantically, a Thread 2 glyph of sound drawn directly on the air. There was no copper filament, no preparation, only raw writing that formed a transient design. The glyph pulsed cyan as it activated: a sharp, high-pitched screech that filled the room as if with a physical presence.
The worm-like creature reacted violently. Its body convulsed, its proboscis retracted, and its six eyes blinked in rapid, uncoordinated bursts. It phased through the wall the way that it had come, disappearing as quickly as it had materialized.
The sound glyph began to degrade after a few seconds, the sequence faltering for lack of proper root. Silence resumed, broken only by the ringing in Alucent's ears.
Gryan stepped backward, holding his head with both organic and mechanical hands. His face was ashen, with shallow, rapid breaths.
"The Conclave," he gulped, anguish evident in every note. True emotion that he rarely showed, Alucent had never seen such raw emotion from him. Certainly not this intensely. "The cries from down in the low forges. Then the accident. I'd forgotten. I'd totally forgotten how much pain I was in. How afraid I was. Of the others screaming, of them, of me crying out, of me being helpless, as I was crying out right along with them—"
He cut off, his jaw clenching as he gripped the edge of the table with his mechanical arm, causing the wood to creak.
Alucent and Raya looked at him. And then at each other.
The awful truth weighed them down like a physical burden.
But the sweet tea did not bring peace. It did not ease the anxiety, the fear, or the pain. It simply left them exposed. It was the dinner bell for the parasites that fed on their pain, that feasted on their negative experiences, their negative memories, until there was nothing more than empty contentment because there was nothing left inside worth being felt.
"How many are there?" Raya's voice was barely a whisper. "In this building. How many of those things?"
Alucent stepped towards the window, peering into the blackness that was behind the inn. Built partially around this huge tree, its trunk a good three meters wide, with its limbs arched overhead as if providing a natural canopy.
He'd believed that was merely a design feature. Capitalizing on the existing tree as a starting point, incorporating its structure as a resource saver.
He'd been wrong.
This moonlight: cyan, purple, utterly unnatural, lit up the tree's bark. And this, adhering to the bark, hidden in the shade, pulsating with this rhythm of synchronized breathing, was a multitude of the worm-like creatures. Dozens. Possibly hundreds. These semi-transparent bodies formed a sort of pulsing, parasitic carpet, their joint respiration being responsible for that sweet, floral aroma that saturated everything.
The Inn wasn't built around the tree by accident. It was as if it was built for the tree. To form a feeding ground for the nest.
"Oh, by the turning gears," Gryan whispered, moving to stand alongside Alucent by the window. Raya joined them, her face impassive, but her knuckles were white on the hilt of her Weaveblade.
They watched in silence. Taking in the magnitude of the situation they'd stepped into.
Then, the back door of the inn swung open.
But then the innkeeper appeared, walking with that same calm reverence. He was balancing a huge wooden bucket filled with something, steam rising from it, in both hands. He went over to a trough fixed at the roots of the tree, a feeding trough, Alucent realized with a grimly terrible certitude, and began pouring its contents.
The drugged tea, Glowrose. An offering, every night, for the patrons that lived here, so that they might hydrate before the parasites came, feeding off whatever pain, fear, or sadness remained with the clientele.
But if the innkeeper is a victim and these worm-like creatures feed on memories, how is he able to retain his and feed them? Do these things behave in another manner? How can I figure this out without being a victim? Or wait, is the innkeeper one of them? No, this doesn't make any sense.
Alucent was confused internally, analyzing what he couldn't comprehend.
The innkeeper wasn't a victim. He was a shepherd. A participating volunteer, maybe even a believer. A person who had opted for this, who upheld this system. A cultist of blissful ignorance.
He emptied the bucket and placed it down. And then stood there, still, with absolutely perfect immobility in the cyan-purple moonlight.
And then, slowly, so slowly that it seemed purposeful, calculated, he turned his head. His eyes rose, tracking upwards, finding their window in the night.
His empty, calm smile fixed directly on them.
He saw them. He knew they were watching. Had probably known since the moment they'd entered, since the moment Alucent had hesitated at the door.
He knew they'd discovered the truth.
The innkeeper's smile widened slightly. Then he turned and walked back inside, disappearing into the warm yellow light of his slaughterhouse.
Alucent stepped back from the window, his mind racing through scenarios and options and the very limited range of choices they had.
"We need to leave," Raya said. "Right now. Out the window if we have to."
"He knows we know," Gryan said. His voice had steadied, the shock of recovered memory settling into cold pragmatism. "He'll be waiting. Him and whoever else is involved in maintaining this place."
"Then we fight our way out." Raya's Weaveblade was already partially drawn, its edge glowing faintly with inscribed runes.
Alucent looked at the door. At the window. At the mass of the Worm-like creatures clinging to the tree outside.
They'd walked into a cage. And the keeper was fully aware that his new sheep had discovered exactly what kind of slaughterhouse they were in.