The moment the rain hit me, it happened.
A single bead slipped past the cowl’s edge. One drop. Cold as gravewater. It struck the fur at the base of my neck and soaked straight through like a curse.
Saving Throw vs Wet Fur Stink: d20 (4) + 3(masters cowl) = 7 → Fail
The world didn’t just tilt.
It collapsed.
The rain suddenly felt alive, every drop a needle jabbing into my skin, soaking into the fur ears beneath the armour, creeping down my spine like a thousand cold fingers digging under my ribs. Into my tail... The stink wasn’t even real yet, but the fear of it hit first, harder than any blade.
My ears snapped back flat. My tail puffed out instantly, a bristling blue banner of panic. I froze stiff beside Master, breath catching in my throat, claws flexing out through my gloves. The psychic bond sparked like a live wire, panic screaming down the thread.
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO
I could already feel the damp patch spreading beneath the armour, like a shame blooming under my skin. I imagined the smell rising, imagined the world turning on me, imagined MASTER smelling it, imagined disgust, imagined
My heart kicked violently. My breath shook.
So I did what a cornered animal does.
I attacked the first thing that moved.
A merchant trying to jog past us under his hooded cloak glanced our way. Just glanced. That was enough. My mind broke clean down the middle.
I lunged.
A snarl ripped out of my throat, sharp and manic and humiliating, claws slashing across stone as I slammed both hands into the merchant’s cloak front, sending him crashing back against a rain-soaked wall. My tail lashed with wild fury, every nerve alight with the terror of stink and the shame I’d die before admitting.
“LOOK AWAY!” I screamed in his face, voice cracking, half growl, half hysteria. “DON’T YOU DARE LOOK AT ME!”
Rain ran down my cheeks like tears I’d never allow. My claws dug into his collar. “YOU SEE NOTHING YOU HEAR NOTHING YOU SMELL NOTHING OR I CARVE OUT WHAT’S LEFT OF YOU!”
The merchant squealed, hands shaking above his head, boots slipping in the mud.
The rain thickened, drumming hard against my armour, the sound a roar in my skull. My fur underneath was wet now. Wet. WET. The shame coiled around me like a noose, and I could feel the stink beginning, that horrible sour musk that made my chest collapse inward with panic.
I snapped my head towards Master, pupils huge, breathing jagged.
I needed him. Needed him right now before the humiliation consumed me alive.
I stumbled toward him, claws still out, tail thrashing violently, voice breaking into a ragged laugh twisted with fear and fury.
“Master I am going to stink I am going to STINK I can feel it I can FEEL IT GET ME OUT OF THE RAIN GET ME OUT GET ME OUT NOW”
I clung to him, grabbing his cloak, burying my face against him to hide the shame, trembling, breath sharp, manic, teeth bared at the world like a feral thing cornered in its own skin.
Every drop of rain was a blow.
Every sound was a threat.
Every eye on me was a knife.
Only his presence kept me from tearing the whole road apart.
Then he spoke.
Master’s voice cut through the downpour like a razor across velvet, clean, cold, unbothered by my spiralling dread. “Come on, we have a job to do. And you act as if you don’t live in The Mire.”
His words drifted through the storm with that quiet weight he carried so easily, the weight of a man who’d walked down too many alleys after too many truths, a man who talked like the world was a tired witness he kept having to put back in its chair. Rain slid off his cloak like it respected him more than gravity. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t try to soothe, didn’t flinch. He just stated reality, a noir verdict delivered without ceremony. The kind that made the city listen.
For a second, everything in me trembled under that calm.
His silhouette was a still shadow in a world drowning itself. My claws twitched against the wet stone. My fur prickled under the armour, damp spreading like a bruise I couldn’t hide.
He talked like rain was an old enemy, predictable as a knife in the dark. He talked like my panic was just another body in the alley. He talked like nothing could touch us. Like The Mire was a joke we’d already killed together.
I dragged a breath through my teeth, ragged and hot, mixing with the cold stink rising under my armour. The shame bit deeper than the rain. I felt the eyes watching, imagined the stink crawling off me, imagined judgement, disgust, imagined Master turning away.
The rain continued and swallowed the street behind us as Master cut sharply left, slipping into one of the tighter arteries of the Mire. It was the kind of alleyway the city builds only by accident… a mistake in sandstone and desperation. Houses pressed together like drunks huddling for a last scrap of warmth, sandstone walls leaning inward at uneasy angles. Everything felt too close, too narrow, as if the whole district were built from held breath and bad decisions.
The buildings here were old… patched with mismatched stone, wooden beams swollen from decades of rain, roofs sagging under the weight of clay tiles and stubborn ghosts. The sandstone sweated in the stormlight, the wet surface glowing faintly gold beneath the flickering, guttering lanterns. Rain dripped from narrow eaves and choked gutters, funnelling down into the tight walkway in whining, crooked streams.
A few windows glared down at us. No curtains. No lights. Just eyes in the dark.
The kind of block where every footstep echoes too long.
The kind of place where trouble grows between the stones like mould.
The moment we stepped inside that cramped corridor, something in me seized.
The psychic bond throbbed hot, frantic, a pulse too close to pain. My claws dug into Master’s sleeve as I pressed against his side so tightly the leather armour creaked. My tail wrapped around his leg like a desperate knot, holding, binding, anchoring. I could smell the damp fur under my armour now, faint but building. A humiliation waiting to bloom.
The tight space didn’t let me think. It squeezed thoughts out of me like water from a rag.
Breath got caught in my throat. My ears flicked in every direction at once, hearing too much, hearing everything. Footsteps behind a wall. A clicking window latch. The creak of a door two buildings away. A whisper that might’ve been wind or might’ve been someone waiting to see who walked through their territory.
The sandstone pressed inward.
The air tasted stale, recycled a thousand times through these cramped lungs of a district that never breathed right.
I clung harder.
My view sharpened to a trembling point, heartbeats pounding too loud. Master’s silhouette cut through the gloom like a single strip of shadow that refused to bend. He walked with that detective’s stride, steady, certain, as if the city owed him its secrets and would pay in blood if it held them too long.
I stalked at his hip, every muscle of mine coiled, trembling, paranoid eyes darting at every doorway. SOMEONE MOVED behind a warped shutter. I HISSED before I could stop myself. A hunched figure slipped across a balcony overhead, dragging a rusted tin sheet behind them. I nearly lunged. Only Master’s steady forward momentum kept me tethered.
The sandstone walls squeezed tighter. My breath went shallow. My claws hooked into his cloak. “Master… ” I muttered through my teeth, voice brittle as cracked glass. “This place is wrong. The walls’re listening. The people’re watching. The air’s too small. I can feel it crawling under my skin.” A door creaked open twenty feet ahead. Just a crack. I FROZE.
EYES WIDE. Ears flat. Tail tightening around his thigh.
“Someone’s there,” I whispered, breath sharp, paranoid tremor running through me like electricity. “Someone’s waiting. They’re watching us. They know you’re here. They know I’m here.”
His voice slid through the cramped sandstone corridor like a match struck in a dark room, quiet and matter-of-fact, the kind of line a man says when he’s seen too much to bother flinching anymore. “I’m sure it’s just someone in their house or trying to avoid the rain. You know. Normal people stuff.”
Normal people.
The words hit me like a cold draft under the armour, slicing through the fog of fear and the stink of damp fur curling beneath my cowl. My breath snagged on the thought. Normal people… The Mire had never shown me one of those. Not in alleys like this. Not in weather like this. Not in a city built on other people’s bones and other people’s debts.
But hearing him say it, calm, unaffected, as if the world hadn’t been chewing at my nerves, did something inside me. Something grounding. Something that took the trembling paranoia in my stomach and pinned it to the floor where it could stop wriggling.
I pressed closer against his coat, leather creaking under my armour, my claws hooking into the fabric like I could siphon his calm straight into my blood. His scent carried through the tight space, steady, familiar, cutting through the sour musk blooming from my wet fur. The stink shame curled around my ribs like smoke, but his presence smothered the worst of the fire.
Perception: d20 (15) +3 proficiency, +2 enhanced senses = 20 – Success
The world snapped into focus like a shutter clicking open. The rain’s hiss faded. The shuffle behind the shutter became just wind playing with old wood. The figure on the balcony became a sad drifter hauling metal to patch a roof. The cracked door ahead was nothing but swollen timber relaxing from the last gust of rain.
Every sound that had sharpened into a threat softened into background noise. Every imagined movement dissolved into the simple machinery of a city trying to keep itself upright.
Nothing hunted us.
Nothing watched.
Nothing waited.
It was all just me, nerves cooked by rain and embarrassment, paranoia clinging to my ribs like mildew.
I blinked slowly, breath trembling out of me, the truth settling in like smoke curling through a quiet office. “Damn…” I muttered into the dim, my voice ragged around the edges. “It’s nothing. Just shadows with too much time on their hands.”
The alley stayed the same, oppressive and close, but the teeth I’d imagined chewing at the corners were gone. Just sandstone, rain, and the stink creeping under my armour that made every instinct in me scream that the world was watching even when it wasn’t.
I pressed myself tighter against Master anyway, burying my face against the dry side of his cloak, letting the bond soothe the wild in my chest. His presence grounded everything… turned the paranoia into something manageable, something that didn’t have claws anymore.
My tail wrapped around his thigh, trembling, clinging.
“It’s just me,” I whispered in a voice too low for anyone but him and the rain to hear. “My head’s making ghosts in the cracks.”
The sandstone houses loomed overhead, close enough to touch, close enough to choke, but with Master beside me their weight felt like weather instead of threat.
Then his hand closed around my tail. SHARP. CERTAIN. NO WARNING.
The jolt went through me like a current, every nerve in my spine snapping tight at once. My breath hitched, caught between a gasp and a growl, the cramped sandstone corridor collapsing into a single point of sensation where his fingers pressed into damp fur. The wet from the rain made every stroke louder, every touch clearer, the water slicking my tail so his grip slid just a fraction before tightening again.
I stumbled a half-step closer to him, armour brushing his coat, claws flexing against the sandstone wall as my balance broke under the sudden pull. My tail had been whipping like a creature with its own heartbeat and he caught it mid lash, caught me mid panic, dragged the wild straight out of my spine with nothing but his hand.
Then he stroked.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Long passes from the base where the fur was soaked and clinging, all the way down to the tip where the hair still trembled with leftover fear. The wet sound of it followed each movement, soft and obscene in the narrow alley. My breath came out in a shiver against his shoulder.
The paranoia cracked.
It did not vanish. It never vanished. But the edges softened, dulled, bent under the weight of his touch. The sandstone houses still pressed in around us, windows like watching eyes, roofs bowing as if waiting for something to snap. But the panic that had curled sharp under my ribs now melted into something slower, heavier, a trembling exhaustion wound tight with pleasure and humiliation.
His grip on my tail held me in place better than any wall.
I pressed closer into his side, shoulder to shoulder, the leather armour clinging wetly where the rain had seeped through. The smell of my own damp fur crawled up around me, sour and sharp, but his fingers stroking through it dulled the shame, turned the stink into something survivable, something he already knew and didn’t care about.
My voice slipped out of me low and cracked, smoke curling under the words. “You pick the worst moments… Master.”
The alley swallowed the sound.
My tail twitched in his grip, a tremor that ran all the way to my throat. The world stayed narrow and close and hungry, but I was anchored. Held. Guided forward step for step by the hand wrapped around the wet length of me.
I clung to his arm, claws hooking into his sleeve, ears flat, breath shaky but steadying with each slow stroke down my tail.
We moved through the clustered sandstone houses like two silhouettes stitched together, the rain forgotten, the fear simmering but held in check, my whole body trembling under his touch as the Mire watched from its crooked windows and did not dare to reach out.
The sandstone narrowed to a throat of stone and rain, and then the world opened into the gatehouse. The first thing I felt was the weight. Not of the armour. Not of the swords.
Of AUTHORITY.
PRETEND AUTHORITY
The kind that settles over a place like dust on old furniture, the kind that doesn’t need to shout because the gallows and the laws and the history already did the shouting long before we were born.
House Serrean’s mark was everywhere.
The sandstone around the gate was cut cleaner than the Mire’s cramped housing blocks, each brick fitted with the precision of wealth and oversight. Rain slid down the walls in thin, silver lines, tracing the grooves of centuries. The structure felt ancient and indifferent, like it had seen a thousand people pass through and forgotten every one of them.
The Blue Guard stood beneath that weight like statues that had decided to walk. The one nearest us, armour polished to a cold sheen, looked like the man carved in every propaganda mural from here to the capital. His plate was a deep, almost royal blue, trimmed in steel that caught the rain like shards of lightning. The crest on his shield was the House Serrean forked sigil, sharp and proud, painted in a duller grey that spoke of military tradition rather than vanity.
He didn’t move as we approached.
None of them did. Four soldiers in total, spaced deliberately: two at the flanks, two at the actual gatehouse entrance. Their helmets were expressionless things, slits of darkness where eyes should’ve been, and their posture had that rigid, inevitable feel that told me every muscle had been trained to obey long before they ever learned to think.
My tail curled reflexively around Master’s thigh, tighter than before, the wet fur clinging to his trousers. The stroke he’d been giving it still echoed through my nerves, softening the panic but sharpening my awareness. These people weren’t shadows or ghosts or tricks of the rain. They were solid. Real. Dangerous in a clean, orderly way that always made my fur crawl worse than any street thug.
This kind of danger didn’t shout or swagger.
It stood still and waited for your first mistake.
The bridge behind the gatehouse stretched out into the night, black and slick with rainfall, a long spine of stone arching toward the southern outskirts. Lanterns glowed in small recessed alcoves, their light pooling like candle flame trapped in the ribs of some enormous beast.
Master walked like he belonged there.
I walked like a shadow glued to his hip.
The nearest soldier’s head tilted just slightly as we approached, a minimal movement, barely a gesture, but in this world that was the same as drawing a line across the ground and daring us to cross it.
The rain hissed off his armour. The shield angled forward. The sword’s point hung with idle promise toward the cobblestones. My claws flexed hard inside my gloves. The air tasted of discipline and old blood and the kind of justice men in power force down everyone else’s throat because they’ve forgotten any other flavour exists.
We stepped closer, Master calm as ever, the rain sliding off him like he was carved of darker stone than these walls. And me? I pressed myself to him harder, breath shaking as the tight space behind us opened into the wide.
I hated it.
The walls knew my fear and drank it, The soldiers didn’t move. The bridge waited. Yet I followed Master forward into the lion’s jaws, tail held tight in his grasp, breath shallow, paranoia humming through my bones like a low, broken song.
The moment we stepped beneath the gatehouse arch, the wind shifted. It carried me with it, carried the damp, sour bloom rising from my armour, carried the miserable truth of wet catgirl fur, straight into the faces of House Serrean’s finest. And they weren’t ready. Not even a little.
Saving Throws vs Odour:
Soldier 1: d20 (3) + 1 = 4 → Fail
Soldier 2: d20 (5) + 1 = 6 → Fail
Soldier 3: d20 (2) + 1 = 3 → Fail
Soldier 4: d20 (8) + 1 = 9 → Fail
The stink hit them like a back alley punch. The first soldier stiffened, armour rattling like someone kicked a tin cabinet. His helmet dipped forward and he staggered half a step out of formation, gauntlets flying up to brace the sides of his visor. His breath came sharp, ragged, fogging the slits.
The second made a sound I’d only ever heard from dying animals and traumatised drunks. A wet choke. The kind that says the soul’s giving up before the stomach does. He turned sharply to the wall, shoulders heaving, helmet clanging as he slammed one palm against the stone to steady himself.
The third tried to keep professional posture, to his credit. He lasted two seconds. Maybe three. Then his sword clattered against his shield as both hands shot up inside the helmet, muffling the terrible, wet retching echoing inside the metal bowl strapped to his head. The smell of bile mixed with the stink of my fur like a war crime.
The fourth simply stepped backward. Twice. Then again. A retreat in slow motion, as if hoping no one would notice.
The scent didn’t let them breathe. Not justice. Not honour. Not steel. Just me. Just my humiliation turned weapon. And it tore through their discipline like a knife through old parchment. Yet none of them raised a shield. None of them spoke. None dared make trouble.
They parted for us like the sea parting for a vengeful god, helmets angled away, some shaking, some braced against walls, all trying to keep the contents of their stomachs somewhere south of the visor.
Master walked through the carnage with the same calm he’d wear stepping through cigarette smoke in some rain drowned alleyway. He didn’t break stride. Didn’t look left or right. Didn’t need to. This was beneath him. And they knew it.
I stayed glued to his side, tail still wrapped tight around his thigh, cheeks burning hot beneath the cowl. My claws dug lightly into his arm for balance as I passed between the soldiers, every one of them recoiling like I was a plague in boots.
Maybe I was.
The stink clung to me like a sin I couldn’t wash off.
The shame crawled under my skin like worms.
But the way those armoured giants crumbled before us… the way the gatehouse emptied around our steps… the way even House Serrean’s DOGS couldn’t stomach me…
Some dark, crooked part of me purred.
Even soaked. Even humiliated. Even trembling with that horrible damp musk… I still emptied a room better than any blade.
The soldiers didn’t speak as we passed. They couldn’t. I heard one gagging in his helmet behind us, the metal echoing like he was drowning inside a bucket.
The sandstone gate loomed overhead. The bridge stretched forward into the dark. The world stank of fear, rain, and me.
And yet Master just walked.
So I followed, clinging to him like the alley hadn’t finished with me, knowing nothing in this city, guards, stink, or storm. could stop him. Or pry me from his side.
The bridge swallowed us whole.
Long. Narrow. Built from the same pale sandstone as the gatehouse, but older, worn down by the weight of a thousand storms and a thousand regrets. Rain pattered against it like fingers drumming on an old crime scene file, each drop tapping out a rhythm only the Mire could understand. Our boots slapped wet stone, water running in thin rivulets over the edges into the marsh inlet below.
And the marsh… gods. It stretched out beneath us like a dying animal. Dark water pooled in pits and trenches carved by years of neglect. Reeds shivered under the rain, tall and brittle, bending like thin silhouettes that had forgotten how to stand straight. Tangled brambles strangled half submerged roots. The mud churned itself into a swampy grave, deep enough to swallow legs, deep enough to drag down a careless traveller until nothing but bubbles marked the spot.
The smell rose up in a thick, sour breath, peat, rot, stagnant water, and the ghost of something ancient that drowned here long before Redstone ever stood. The sort of smell that reminds you the earth digests things slower than men but with far fewer regrets.
The road beyond the bridge wasn’t a road at all. Just a worn ribbon of compacted earth. Footprints flattened into puddles. Boot trails weaving through muck. The ghosts of wagon tracks long since swallowed. No proper paving. No stone. Just years of trudged movement forcing a path through land that didn’t want one.
I clung to Master harder as the air thickened with bog stench and marsh breath, my tail wrapped tight around his thigh like the bridge might collapse and I’d drag him down into the mud with me before letting the water swallow either of us.
My mind flickered with paranoia and rain haze. Every ripple in the marsh water looked like a creature testing the surface. Every shifting shadow felt like something waiting to drag someone screaming beneath the reeds. The hollow wind threading through the tall grasses moaned like the marsh kept the dead close.
And above all this… House Serrean. Their vassaldom HQ perched in Redstone Hold like a misplaced crown. Like someone dropped a noble house on a swamp by accident and pretended it was intentional.
“Why Serrean set up their vassaldom HQ here is beyond me.”
Then the realisation hit me, sliding into place like a puzzle piece carved from bone and common sense. Warriors. I felt the thought flare across the bond, sharp and inevitable.
“They did it because Serrean's a warrior culture,” I muttered, voice low, tail twitching against his leg. “Serrean doesn’t put their base in soft places. They plant it where the fists already know how to swing. Where the bloodline sharpens the steel.”
My claws flexed in his sleeve. “Strength makes good leash material.” The marsh wind hissed under the bridge. The reeds rustled like gossipers spreading old fears. The rest of Redstone Hold loomed.
We stepped off the bridge and into the thinning rain, boots sinking slightly into the sponge of soaked ground. The trodden path ahead slithered through the marsh like a spine of worn stone, leading toward the southern outskirts where the abandoned fort waited in the dark.
The world felt wide and wild again. Drowning in rain. Breathing marsh rot. Watching us. But Master walked forward. Which meant I followed, tail tight, ears flat, paranoia humming through my bones like a tuned wire, ready to snap or sing at the slightest touch.
The rain slackened just enough for the world to take a breath.
That was when she stepped out of the reeds. A tall silhouette at first. Long pale cloak.Green leather bracers. Bow slung across her back in that stiff, pride-ridden way elves always wore their weapons, like the damn thing was part of their skeleton.
My tail pricked like a wire pulled taut.
She moved with that eerie stillness only elves ever had, the kind that made you think they floated instead of walked, like the ground wasn’t worthy to dirty their boots. Her ears poked through her hood, long and pointed, twitching with every shift in the wind.
And then she flashed it. The badge. An Oakwood Vanguard crest. A Grey Hollow insignia. And a laminated warrant card for the Oak Trade Road Protectors.
I stared at the card, drenched in rain. Mud at our feet. Marsh rotting around us. And we weren’t even remotely near the damn Oak Road.
My mind snarled with that vicious, alcohol-sharp contempt that bubbled up whenever some outsider strutted around showing off rules that didn’t apply. Like flashing a lighthouse map in the desert. My lip curled, tail whipping once behind me.
Her scent carried discipline, steel, the cold bite of strict upbringing. A stronghold elf. They were always carved from the same mould. Hard eyes. Hard posture. Hard life. They grew warriors like other places grew weeds. Seeing one outside a stronghold was like spotting a wolf in a butcher’s shop aisle. Out of place. Wrong. Uncomfortably rare.
She stopped a few feet away, boots sinking slightly into the bog road. Her eyes skimmed Master first. Always him first.
THEY ALWAYS LOOKED
At least she didn't touch. Then she looked at me. My ears flattened. She tensed. Her hand halfway drifted to her belt knife before she forced it back down.
“Lord Protector of Bogclutch… and the cat...” she announced, voice clipped, militant, trained speech. “I am Tamsin Marshbite, Hunter of Tir Saril, presently seconded to Oakwood Vanguard.” She held out the badges again, as if repeating the crime made it legal. “I am assigned to assist your unit on the scouting of the southern fort. I will act as forward tracker.”
Her chin lifted with that typical elf superiority, even as the rain plastered her hair to her skull. I stepped closer to Master, tail coiling around his leg like a serpent wrapping its chosen prey. My claws dug lightly into his thigh through the leather, marking territory with quiet, lethal intention. The stink rolling off my soaked fur made her flinch ever so slightly. Good.
Her perfect elf nose wrinkled. She tried to hide it. Failed. My voice slid out low, syrupy, and dark. “I didn’t ask for a babysitter.” Her jaw tightened. “I wasn’t asking permission.”
Her accent had that clipped, militaristic edge, every word carrying the weight of a thousand drilled hours and the pride of a people who never bent unless something stronger forced them to. A stronghold hunter. Raised behind stone, taught to kill anything that crossed the boundary.
My paranoia crawled like fire ants down my spine. TOO TIGHT here. The marsh CLOSING IN. The elf too close. Master in the open. Her eyes on him. My fingers twitched. Tail thrashed once, spraying a fan of rainwater. She reached for her bow instinctively.
Master didn’t even break stride. He just looked at her. And the world seemed to shut up for a moment, like it was waiting to see if she’d keep breathing. He had that detective stillness about him again. The kind of quiet that peeled lies off people like rotten wallpaper. I felt it through the bond too. Cold. Precise. Effortless.
He didn’t have to say a word yet. His presence said everything. Tamsin swallowed, a tiny movement but one my enhanced senses caught perfectly.
She adjusted her tone. “Look… Serrean wants the fort cleared. The Marauder didn’t trust anyone else with it. You two have a reputation. I’m not here to interfere. I’m here to ensure the job gets done.” Her eyes flicked from his sword to my claws. Then to the marsh. Then back to Master. "I can track. I can scout. I won’t slow you down.”
The rain drummed on the reeds like impatient fingers. The marsh bubbled. My paranoia hissed along the back of my skull. Her presence was wrong. Her reasons were thin.
Her timing filthily convenient.
But Master stood beside me, cold and quiet and calculating. Which meant I stayed beside him, claws twitching, tail locked around his leg, ready to carve the rain itself if she stepped too close. In the bog’s half light, with the fort waiting somewhere ahead like a wound in the earth, Tamsin straightened her back and waited for judgement, mud splattering her boots, her perfect elven pride fighting not to sink. A hunter offering herself to wolves. Or walking willingly into their den.
Mud sucked at our boots. The marsh breathed rot. And the elf stood there, all posture and pride, waiting to be measured like a knife on a pawnshop counter.
Master didn’t give her drama. He didn’t give her suspicion. He didn’t give her fear. He gave her nothing. Just that dead calm of his, that cold neutrality that stripped every word down to its bones before he spoke it. “That’s fine,” he said, voice flat as wet gravel. “We’ll need a scout anyway, considering the cat’s current scent. If we want this job over with, we take the help. Otherwise we wait it out and let her dry.”
His tone didn’t shift. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t soften. No pity. No humour. Just a simple, pragmatic verdict. And gods, it sliced.
The elf blinked, thrown off by how little he cared about the rain, the mud, the marsh hate breathing around us. She stood straight, military spine stiff even as wet hair clung to her jaw. But she heard it. That quiet dismissal of everything except the job. That was Master. He treated danger like weather. Inconvenient, but expected.
The three of us walked in silence, the kind that settles over a scene before the punchline turns bloody. Rain softened to a whisper, a thin veil clinging to armour and fur, turning the marsh road into a grey, shifting ribbon that curled ahead of us like it was trying to slither out of its own skin.
Tamsin kept her distance, boots ghosting over the mud with that floaty elven discipline.
Master walked like the rain barely existed, hands in pockets, gaze forward, trench coat mind in full swing.
I stayed glued to his side, tail coiled tight, the stink of wet fur rising like a curse I couldn’t shake. Minutes stretched, the world collapsing into the rhythm of footsteps, breath, the soft click of Master’s crossbow bolts knocking together somewhere under his cloak.
Then the shape of the fort crawled out of the darkness.
My ears pricked sharply.
Perception Check:
d20 (18) + 0 WIS + 3 Proficiency + 2 Enhanced Senses = 23
A black smear at first. A broken tooth rising from the bog. Then detail sharpened with every step. Except it wasn’t abandoned. Touchlights flickered along the outer wall, flames swaying like nervous hearts in the moonlight.
But the place itself was a corpse pretending to breathe. Sandstone cracked open in long, crooked wounds. Battlements sagged like tired shoulders. Half the towers were missing their tops, one eaten away entirely, another leaning like it had grown bored of standing straight. Gaps spiderwebbed across the curtain wall, some large enough for a grown man to crawl through.
Rot, neglect, the slow grind of rain and time.
Light where there shouldn’t be light. Silence where voices should have been.
A fort that looked alive only from a distance, and only if you squinted hard enough to lie to yourself.
