Not to Cause Offense Ch. 02

"Why don't you show us, then?" Grand Teller Grotz enquired. "I assume we have time."

The rest of the the hunters quickly agreed, but Lord Vareill had already made the necessary preparations and needed no prompting. As the present company stood from their seats and headed for the door, little cliques re-formed and the chit-chat in the room morphed back into roar. Terin figured he'd better finish his food and wine while he was still able, but alas, the Felinix woman had cleaned him out and was already halfway across the hall with her companion in tow. With a sigh, he checked his weapons and headed out with the rest of the party.

It seemed to Terin that they'd been descending for ages, all of them silent save for the sound of feet against stone. The main stairway was a solid five men wide and illuminated by massive sconces several feet above them along with a couple of walking torches, but it was obvious that the dark reigned supreme here. The light only extended far enough to reveal the next three or four steps, while allowing everything else to be consumed by malformed shadows and a blackness so eerily complete that it appeared almost viscous. Terin looked up as they passed by a mold-eaten tapestry and took note of the sigil upon it: a flaming sparrow hurtling towards the sky with its eyes aflame and its mouth open in an angry scream. Sparrows weren't exactly an intimidating bird, but the image was terrifying all the same.

"Where are you going all on your own?" Jira hissed from somewhere right behind him, and Terin suddenly found his entire left arm engulfed in a bear hug. "We're best friends, remember?"

"We are not!" Terin whispered, because it seemed indecent to speak any louder in such a place. "Let go!"

"You can't do this by yourself," Jira told him, refusing to be shaken off. "Everyone else here at least has a partner and you have what, now, exactly? Are you seriously going to try and hunt down this sex-zombie monster all alone?"

"What's wrong with being alone?"

"What's wrong with being...oh gods, do you even hear yourself? Lucie, are you listening to this?" The mute Jira was apparently traveling with signed something in the torchlight and she sighed indignantly. "I am not annoying him. I'm being helpful."

"You actually are annoying me. And besides that, I'm not the only one working alone."

"Of course a half-dragon can work alone," Jira scoffed. "But you're a human and therefore, you are both squishy and delicious."

"That's kind of rude."

"It's the truth! Come on, please work with Lucie and I," Jira begged, and Terin looked down to see that her eyes were now somehow twice their normal size and shimmering like two starry orbs in the firelight. "Pleeeeeeaaasssse!"

"I work alone. Sorry, no exceptions."

"Let me guess, something terrible happened and your girlfriend-not-girlfriend died and now you can't bear to put anyone else in danger ever again," Jira mocked, positioning her free arm over her face in a dramatic gesture. "It's so sad, I can hardly take it!"

Terin was honestly shocked to hear her reply to him like that and he knew he looked it, too. But finally, he regained his composure and only one thought made it past his lips: "You're an asshole."

"But I'm right on the money, aren't I?"

"Not exactly, but...close enough I suppose."

"That seems to happen a lot in our profession. Lots of monster hunting teams means there are lots of girlfriend-not-girlfriends and lots of monsters mean they tend to die."

"She wasn't my girlfriend—"

"They never are."

"—and she's probably not dead."

"Then when this is all over, we can go and save her!" Jira cried, giving him an encouraging smile. "And you'll have friends who can help you, which is the whole reason for having friends in the first place."

"It's not that I don't want to save her," Terin sighed, and the weight of that sigh actually gave Jira pause. "It's that I can't save her. No one can, not now."

There was nothing but silence for several long seconds, then Terin could feel Jira squeeze his arm more tightly and nuzzle in closer despite her previous anti-cuddle stance. He could have tried shaking her off again, but he didn't. She felt kind of nice. They changed the subject after that and kept to fun topics like "the best taverns in Ullgoare" and "your most embarrassing hunt," but Terin could tell that Jira was occasionally getting distracted. This time, it wasn't him and his "girlfriend-not-girlfriend" that had garnered her interest, though. Instead, it was Grand Teller Grotz and his channel, who had just now made their way toward the back of the party and were chit-chatting with the elves. Though she tried to be subtle about it, Jira kept stealing glances and a few times Terin caught her outright staring in a manner that seemed far too protective for his liking. Admittedly, she wouldn't be the first to consider the virtues of "saving" a channel, but it was better if that sort of idea stayed an idea. He opened his mouth to try and warn her in as subtle a manner as he could manage, and then...

"Why are we stopping?" Jira whispered, as those up front suddenly came to a halt and with them the rest of the party. "I don't—"

"Quiet!" the man with the potions belt hissed, wheeling around to thrust his torch in her direction and glower at her. "Can't you hear that?"

Jira began to shrug apologetically, then paused. It was hard to decipher at first, but now that the entire party had gone silent, Terin could hear a long, low sort of moan hidden just beneath the crackling of the torchlight. It didn't sound human, but it didn't exactly sound inhuman, either. It existed somewhere in between, completely devoid of intelligence and yet tainted by a yearning far too similar to hope to ignore. Terin had never quite heard anything like it. It was barely audible and yet the desperation underlying each tortured syllable sunk into his core and made his stomach twist. Every so often, a louder but still dampened howl would echo off of the stone and a shudder of repulsion would ripple through the party, but no one moved.

"By all the gods," the orc growled. "What is that hellish sound?"

"It's them, isn't it?" Jira whispered. "It's those poor women..."

"Can't be," the halfling mage breathed. "It's...it's not human, is it?"

"It is," Lord Vareill answered from the front of the party, his face grim.

They stopped for only a moment before continuing their descent, though there was decidedly less talking the rest of the way down. Much to their collective horror, the moans were growing steadily louder and somehow more deranged, almost as if something had gotten itself stuck in a bear trap and had been losing more and more of its mind ever since. It was downright maddening and by the time the party reached the metal gate at the entrance to the dungeons, even the ever-stoic Lisbeth had her hands pressed over her ears. Only Grand Teller Grotz and his channel seemed unfazed by tortuous noise. The latter even looked as if it were smiling a little, though Terin couldn't be sure if the smirk was new or just an artifact of the stitches running up from its mouth. Jira seemed to have noticed it too and was now giving him a very concerned sort of half-wince, half-grimace.

"There's something wrong with that woman..." Jira whispered. "Are you sure she's okay?"

"We'll talk about it later."

"Do you see all those marks? What if she's dead later?" Jira pressed. "She looks close to it and also like she's may be going crazy."

"Quiet, please. I told you, we'll talk about it later."

Just then, the guards finally finished fiddling with the lock and the rusted metal gate slowly squealed open. Terin was relieved to have had his most recent conversation cut short, but more than that he was relieved to see that they would soon be out of the darkness. Up ahead, Lord Vareill raised both his hands into the air, flicked his wrists, and with a snap of his fingers the fire pits on either end of the cell block caught fire and the entire hall erupted with light. That's when all the moaning suddenly stopped and was immediately replaced by ear-splitting screams. The women being housed there immediately rushed the bars. Some of them actually ran into them, seemingly oblivious to any damage they might have caused themselves. Most of them were being restrained in some kind of custom locking jacket with sleeves long enough to encase their hands, but some of the more violent types were also chained to the wall by their necks or an ankle and stood at a distance struggling like mad to get closer.

Terin cursed under his breath, scrambling away as one of the women closest came hurtling toward him. The poor creature reminded him of a banshee fresh from the mud, her eyes just as red and her long, black locks just as filthy and tangled. Even her speed and her awkward, jerky movements were the same. Then his back suddenly hit another set of bars and Terin could feel a rough, warm tongue running up the side of his neck and a haunted moan wetting his ear. Still cursing, he pushed himself back into the center of the cell block where the rest of the party was now back to back and looking panicked. The elves had even drawn their bows.

"You told us they were sex-crazed!" the man with the potions belt spat. "You told us they'd gone mad with insatiable lust!"

"And this..." Lord Vareill explained, gesturing around the cell block. "...is what that looks like."

The party just stared for a while, scanning the cells and trying to comprehend the situation. As Lord Vareill had promised, the women all seemed to have lost their decency, but the manner in which their symptoms manifested themselves varied from individual to individual. It was easy to get distracted by the women still trying to rip their jackets off and grab at the hunters, but some of them didn't even acknowledge the party's presence. A few were hiding out in the corners of their cells, playing with themselves as best as they could or else rubbing themselves against the furniture. Still others were fully content to play with one another. With dead, unseeing eyes, they licked at each others' faces until they'd been rubbed raw, bit at each others' lips until they bled, and gnawed at the cloth between each others' legs until it had started to tear. In the cell nearest them, a blue-haired vision with dark circles under her eyes leaned up against one of the bars of her cell and started performing fellatio on it, all while groaning and moaning in ecstasy.

"Disgusting," Grand Teller Grotz growled, then he turned to Lord Vareill. "Is there nothing you can do? You can't get those chains off of them and keep them separated, at least?"

"If we don't keep them restrained to at least some extent, they only end up hurting themselves and each other," Lord Vareill replied. "And yet, if we don't allow them any physical touch, their mental state deteriorates even further."

"This is insane..." the Draconian woman groaned, seemingly awestruck by what she was seeing. "Does nothing relieve their symptoms?"

"We sent in a concubine once," Lord Vareill told her. "To see if it would help calm them, even for a few hours. He almost didn't make it out alive."

Though he was still listening, Terin decided to break away from the rest of the group and do a little investigating on his own. As he toured the cells, he made sure to take note of each and every woman he passed by—the way they looked, and sounded, and acted. But he was primarily looking for signs of magic, either active spells or residuals indicative of once active spellcasting. It seemed unlikely anything other than magic could be responsible for the horrifying display before him and yet, Terin found nothing aside from the traps and protective spells clearly cast upon the dungeons by Lord Vareill. Still, it was the women's eyes that bothered him the most. Every set of eyes trapped behind the bars of a cage was crazed, bulging, bloodshot and they didn't seem to blink. He watched one of the women for well over a minute and she didn't once blink. But the women did look around an awful lot. In fact, they couldn't seem to stop surveying the exact same places over and over again, as if they all possessed an identical nervous tick.

"Do they never sleep?" Terin asked. "Do they never grow tired of it all?"

"We think they sleep. But we can't be sure. Sometimes, they stop moving around and their breathing grows shallow, but they don't ever close their eyes."

"And where are the rest of them?" Terin pressed, but Lord Vareill only looked at him with a confused expression. "You said there were thirty-two victims, but I only count twenty-eight."

"Oh! Well, three of them are royals and, of course, are being attended to accordingly. As I'm sure you understand, they are completely off-limits. If you need to poke and prod, you may do so down here, but only down here, am I clear?"

"Sure," Terin agreed, though Jira's fur looked a bit ruffled. "That still leaves one unaccounted for, however."

"Did you not examine the last cell? Down there, on your left?"

Admittedly, Terin hadn't looked there, though only because there didn't seem to be any reason to do so. There was no noise coming from that cell and no apparent movement, but now he stepped up to the bars and looked inside. Sitting dead center was a woman with long red hair pulled back in a braid, wearing one of those locking jackets and chained by a collar around her neck to the back wall. It was impossible to get a better look at her, given that she had her torso bent forwards and her face was buried in her knees. There she merely rocked back and forth against the ground, either sobbing or moaning or possibly both.

"Hello there," Terin cooed, crouching down so that he was eye-level with her. "Come on, look up at me."

The woman did so, and Terin could instantly feel himself grow sick. A pair of unblinking, emerald green eyes was staring up into his and she had a golden septum ring with a little red ruby that was unmistakable. It had been years, but Terin still recognized Ashe. She was a monster hunter from the Southern Falls who had once joined up with him and his team to kill a flesh-eating giant, back in the days when he'd still had a team. Ashe had always been so excitable and full of life, but now there was absolutely nothing behind her eyes. All of the things that had made her, well, her had faded into the background and only pain remained.

"Terin?" Ashe choked, and she fell forward onto her cloth-encased elbows so as to scoot as close to him as the chain holding her would allow. "Please...please...please..."

"You know this woman?" Grand Teller Grotz asked, but Lisbeth answered before anyone else could.

"That's Ashe Leighnore of the Calcodie."

"Interesting," Grotz mused, looking thoughtful. "Are there still Calcodie roaming about?"

"Never mind that," Terin snapped, and he turned his now burning eyes toward Lord Vareill. "My lord, you need to explain this to me."

"Ashe was the eighth monster hunter I hired. She lasted almost two weeks."

"And the rest of them?" Lisbeth pressed.

"No one else has come back. We don't even have bodies."

Turning back toward Ashe, Terin seated himself firmly on the floor and watched her closely. It's not like they'd ever been particularly close, but she'd always had a habit of making friends with unnatural ease and she never forgot a friend once she'd welcomed one into her ranks. After the flesh-eating giant fiasco, Ashe had always been eager to trade stories with Terin and his crew whenever they'd crossed paths and was always more than willing to help out in a bind. She was a kind and compassionate soul trapped in a world where in-fighting and competition among the big game hunters was much more common than camaraderie. Now Ashe needed his help and Terin knew he couldn't leave her like this, rotting away in a cell begging him for relief. Meanwhile, the rest of the company had gathered around them and were eagerly watching.

"How is it that she can speak to him or even recognize him?" Grotz asked, looking perplexed. "None of the others seem capable of such clarity, even if their memories are somewhat intact."

"Please, I don't mean to be rude, but I need absolute quiet," Terin pleaded, and thankfully, everyone went silent. "Now then, Ashe—do you remember me? Can you tell me what happened to you?"

"Terin, please..." Ashe groaned. "I need you to...need you to...you to..."

Unlike the other women who seemed incapable of lucid thought, Ashe was at least trying to break through the fog of lust and communicate with them. Terin could see deep-seated concentration in her eyes and occasional flickers of intelligence, though they only lasted a millisecond or two before fading away. There was no mistaking it: Ashe was still in there somewhere, but much like a drowning man unable to overcome his animal panic, she was struggling to overcome the more corporeal animal instincts that had likewise consumed her. Words would form on her lips, but then Terin would watch as they became lost to her almost instantly after the fact.

"Come on, Ashe," Terin begged. "Give us a clue, even just a word or two. Please."

"Terin...help me..."

"Why is she in her own cell?" Jira asked, her voice little more than a horrified whisper. "I though they needed some minimal amount of contact to stay sane."

"As part of her contract, Ashe requested she be fully restrained and isolated in her own cell in the event of an accident," Lord Vareill explained. "I'm actually surprised she's doing so well."

"I said I needed quiet," Terin demanded, before turning back towards Ashe. "Come on, tell me what did this to you."

"Everything hurts," Ashe moaned, and they could see her start to rub herself against the stone floor. "Please..."

"This is embarrassing," Lisbeth sighed, turning away. "We should just wait for the rotary."

"Like hell I'll let you use a rotary on her! You have no right to—"

"Out of all the women here, Ashe is the only one with the training to properly articulate what happened to her," Lisbeth interrupted. "The rest can only give us vague, imprecise descriptions and uneducated explanations for their condition, but with a little push in the right direction, she can give us concrete information."

"At what cost?"

"Look at her!" Lisbeth hissed. "You think she wants to be this forever? You think she wants to have lost herself for nothing?"

"What happened, Ashe?" Terin repeated, now ignoring Lisbeth and desperately trying to get through to Ashe. "I need to know, please."

"It's...it's so red..." Ashe whispered. "It's so red and the ground is so sharp, but you remember, don't you? You remember the red and the sharp?"