Norman spent another full day in the cell without so much as an ounce of water or a scrap of food. The guards didn’t so much as check in on him. It was clear these boxes were meant more as a way to torture someone until they died. No normal person could survive inside these boxes for longer than a day. If it wasn’t for Pedro’s kind help and the fact that the knights hadn’t taken Norman’s canteen or food, he probably would have died due to dehydration by now as well.
As he slept fitfully in one of the corners, a shadow fell across the gate to Norman’s cell. The shadow entered the cell without a sound or even so much as opening the door. It approached without making a noise and when it was finally within arm’s reach of Norman, it kicked him.
“Wah-,” Norman startled awake as something hit his foot none too gently.
He quickly located the source of the disturbance. “Grobert!”
“Shh,” The man hissed, backing toward the gate and peering out to make sure no guards were alerted to Norman’s outburst.
Norman lowered his voice to a hiss. “What are you doing here? Better yet, how are you here? I thought you were still stuck in the phylactery.”
Norman heard Grobert snort, “we’re gonna have a long talk about that later. As to why I’m here, aye was here to gather intel. Then aye heard a rumor that some human was captured. Aye thought, nah my ol ears were playing tricks on me. Aye thought it can’t be a human, those are too rare around these parts. Aye knew of only a hanful, and those should all be dead. But what if one wasn’t?” Grobert looked at Norman pointedly, making him gulp. “Aye had to make sure. And what do aye find but a young fool who somehow managed to get himself thrown in a torture cell.”
It was never a good sign to hear Grobert slip from his formal speech to what he kindly referred to as street talk. When Grobert started speaking this way, it usually meant he was too angry to properly enunciate what he was saying.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. There was no sign of you or Eugene.”
“You headed north, didn’cha? Why didn’t you ask Barthus for help?”
“… you haven’t gone north yet, have you?”
Grobert shook his head, not taking his eyes off the area outside of the cell.
Norman didn’t really want to be the bearer of bad news just yet, so he asked another question to delay that awkward conversation. “How long have you been revived?”
“A month, maybe. Saw your note and decided to come here to gather information first.”
“Wait!” Grobert turned to glare at Norman for raising his voice again.
“Sorry,” Norman spoke quietly. “I didn’t see any sign of your passage. If you saw my note, why didn’t you wait for me to return? Or let me know you were back.”
Grobert gave a quiet snort. “As if aye would be sloppy enough to leave tracks that any fool could follow. As to why I came here. You saw Ashvale, too much time had passed since we died. We needed to know what our enemy was up to. I figured you would be fine for a month or two. Guess I was wrong.”
Grobert was getting a handle on his speech and Norman breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I could have gotten myself out,” he grumbled quietly. “And you could have left something to let me know you had seen my message. I thought I was still alone, what else was I to do, sit around twiddling my thumbs? What about Eugene?”
“No sign of him. And don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. Quit dodging my earlier question.”
Norman let out a sigh. “Grothlosburg is gone. Another zone is there now.”
The man shrugged at that. Which was not at all the response Norman had expected.
“So, just follow the edge of this new zone until you reached it. What's the problem? You were bound to find where it ended up if you just kept going.”
“Yeah… that wasn’t an option,” Norman told Grobert about the dinosaurs and the magical beast he ran into.
“Well, that does change things. But that’s an issue for later, we need to leave. You should not have come down here and put yourself at risk. If you die, it's all over.”
“I know that, but I had a spare phylactery. And what do you mean we have to leave? I can’t just leave. You said it yourself. We need information.”
“Aye. And I got what we need. I’ve been here for nearly three weeks. I’ll fill you in after we get out of this town. We need to hurry before the guards come by, now put this on, and let's go!”
Norman barely caught the headwrap that Grobert tossed him. He quickly wound it about his head not wanting to earn the man’s ire yet again. “How are we getting out of here anyway… wait, how did you even get in here, to begin with?”
With a wink, Grobert vanished, appearing outside the cell. It was the first time Norman got a good look at him in the moonlight. The guy was not doing so hot. His skin was starting to peel away and his eyes were clouding over from rot. Norman wondered if the deterioration affected his eyesight at all. He pushed those thoughts for later when he wasn’t trapped in an enemy city and left for dead.
“Shit, Grobert, are you ok? Here, take this.” Suddenly he was glad the guards hadn’t bothered taking anything but his head wraps from him before they tossed him in here. Norman reached into his robes and pulled out one of the healing potions he had tucked inside.
He should have thought about leaving potions in Ashvale for when Eugene and Grobert revived, how could he have been so stupid to forget?
“I’m fine. I have a potion squirreled away. I stayed like this for a reason. People shy away from the smell of rot, it allowed me to remain out of sight and undisturbed by the Brotherhood soldiers.”
“Wait, how does that work? Wouldn’t they want to get rid of anything that could spread disease?” Norman was confused by Grobert’s logic.
Instead of answering, Norman saw the locking mechanism for the door vanished. Once it was gone, Grobert pushed the door open. “I forgot you were never part of a trained military. I don’t know how it is for human armies, but I’m sure it's much the same as the gron army. Any good soldier will try to avoid work if they can. Sure some of the guards reported the smell, but not a single one ever came to investigate it before I moved to a different location. I’m sure they were afraid they would be made to clean it up if they did.” Grobert chuckled at that.
“That’s, that’s… diabolical.” Norman couldn’t help but admire Grobert’s simple yet elegant solution to remaining out of sight as an undead in a city full of zealots.
Norman watched as Grobert closed the door and restored the locking mechanism. He couldn’t even tell it had been missing, Norman was tempted to run his hand across the area to see if he could feel a difference. But Grobert pulled him away from the prison cages immediately after securing the door again.
“We ain’t got time for you to be fiddling about,” Grobert hissed as he dragged Norman through the streets.
It was clear Grobert knew his way around the town as he steered Norman down alleys and avoided patrolling guards like it was nothing. Then again it probably was. Grobert had many decades of experience avoiding law enforcement in Grothlosburg, and they had high-tech means of surveillance. Avoiding these inattentive guards was like child’s play to him.
Eventually, they came to a stop at an open canal that led into a large pipe. The large pipe ran below the streets, except it wasn’t water that was flowing through it.
Norman winced at Grobert's escape plan. “Sewers, really?”
“Sorry, princess, but we ain’t got a gilded carriage for ya, now in ya go.”
Norman reluctantly lowered himself down into the fetid water. The foul liquid came halfway up his shins and he shuddered as unidentifiable things bumped into his legs as the stream flowed past. He followed behind Grobert, trying his best to breathe through his mouth as they slunk through the sewer tunnels. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be, as long as he didn’t breathe through his nose, not that it meant he was having a fun time.
Other than the water, having to walk hunched over was the worst part of the trip and left Norman sore and annoyed. Even Grobert had to duck to fit into the short tunnels.
The pair followed one of the tunnels until it opened up and Norman could hear the sound of rushing water. They must be near the river which Apolonia or Beskara – as it used to be called – was built upon.
“Gross, they dump their sewage straight into the river? Don’t they know how bad that is?”
“Yeah, guess they don’t much care for anyone downstream,” Grobert shrugged in reply. “Hope ya can hold your breath, this next part is gonna be a bit rough for ya.”
“Let me guess, this is how you got inside the city?”
“Yup, easy peasy. Just walked along the bottom of the river with a few pockets full of rocks and bypassed their entire fortifications and all their guards. We’ll have to keep that in mind when we attack.”
Norman was not a good swimmer, or able to hold his breath for more than thirty seconds at a time. But Grobert refused to let him surface and give them away. Thankfully the man had a solution for the problem. It was not one that Norman enjoyed though. Grobert just kept teleporting fresh air into Norman's mouth. It was not a very fun experience having his mouth filled to nearly bursting every few seconds, but it did the trick.
Soon the pair were well beyond the city wall and Grobert finally pulled Norman to the river bank so he could catch his breath.
“That… was… fucking… awful.” Norman paused after each word to suck in a deep lung full of hot dry air. At least the river was warm, not that it helped with the smell.
He immediately regretted inhaling deeply as the stench of rotting sewage and human waste hit him. He also realized he was covered in a layer of unidentifiable slime from the river. He retched a few times but managed not to puke.
“Ugh, I need a bath or maybe just a new body at this point. I’m not sure this smell will ever come out.”
“Well, you’ll have to suffer in silence for now, we ain’t done yet. We need to be well clear of the city to avoid the roaming patrols.”
Norman groaned but otherwise remained silent as he jogged after the man as Grobert led them perpendicular to the river.
Grobert kept up a grueling pace for over an hour before he finally came to a stop. “Alright, here should be good enough to rest for a bit.”
Norman collapsed on the still-warm ground and let out a pained grunt. The hot dry air had long ago sucked all the moisture out of his clothing. Unfortunately, that left a coating of dried slime behind that made Norman itch like crazy. Now that he wasn’t focused on putting one foot in front of the other and not tripping, he couldn’t stand the itching anymore. He ripped the clothing from his body and tossed it on the ground. Then he began to scratch himself fiercely to try and alleviate the uncomfortable sensation.
“Looks like you may have caught something from the river,” Grobert spoke nonchalantly.
“Ya think!”
Norman grabbed handfuls of dust from the ground and scrubbed off as much of the gunk, that had dried to his skin, as he could. After an hour of vigorous scrubbing, Norman’s skin felt raw and sensitive but he wasn’t itching anymore. He reached into his discarded clothes and retrieved one of his hidden healing potions. Norman rubbed the bottle in the sand to clean it off before tipping the contents into his mouth, making sure the bottle never touched his lips. Then he discarded the bottle and sighed in relief as the healing effects kicked in.
“Are you done flailing about like a drunk in a one-armed bar fight?”
“Fuck you. I would like to see you deal with that any better than me. God damn undead immunities,” Norman sighed.
Grobert just waited silently while Norman vented, one eyebrow raised.
“…I’m done. Now can you explain to me what’s going on?”
“About time. You want the long story or the short one?”
Norman gestured to the emptiness around them. “I think we got time for the long version.”
“Alright, but let's walk and talk, we have a long trip ahead of us.”
Norman spent another full day in the cell without so much as an ounce of water or a scrap of food. The guards didn’t so much as check in on him. It was clear these boxes were meant more as a way to torture someone until they died. No normal person could survive inside these boxes for longer than a day. If it wasn’t for Pedro’s kind help and the fact that the knights hadn’t taken Norman’s canteen or food, he probably would have died due to dehydration by now as well.
As he slept fitfully in one of the corners, a shadow fell across the gate to Norman’s cell. The shadow entered the cell without a sound or even so much as opening the door. It approached without making a noise and when it was finally within arm’s reach of Norman, it kicked him.
“Wah-,” Norman startled awake as something hit his foot none too gently.
He quickly located the source of the disturbance. “Grobert!”
“Shh,” The man hissed, backing toward the gate and peering out to make sure no guards were alerted to Norman’s outburst.
Norman lowered his voice to a hiss. “What are you doing here? Better yet, how are you here? I thought you were still stuck in the phylactery.”
Norman heard Grobert snort, “we’re gonna have a long talk about that later. As to why I’m here, aye was here to gather intel. Then aye heard a rumor that some human was captured. Aye thought, nah my ol ears were playing tricks on me. Aye thought it can’t be a human, those are too rare around these parts. Aye knew of only a hanful, and those should all be dead. But what if one wasn’t?” Grobert looked at Norman pointedly, making him gulp. “Aye had to make sure. And what do aye find but a young fool who somehow managed to get himself thrown in a torture cell.”
It was never a good sign to hear Grobert slip from his formal speech to what he kindly referred to as street talk. When Grobert started speaking this way, it usually meant he was too angry to properly enunciate what he was saying.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. There was no sign of you or Eugene.”
“You headed north, didn’cha? Why didn’t you ask Barthus for help?”
“… you haven’t gone north yet, have you?”
Grobert shook his head, not taking his eyes off the area outside of the cell.
Norman didn’t really want to be the bearer of bad news just yet, so he asked another question to delay that awkward conversation. “How long have you been revived?”
“A month, maybe. Saw your note and decided to come here to gather information first.”
“Wait!” Grobert turned to glare at Norman for raising his voice again.
“Sorry,” Norman spoke quietly. “I didn’t see any sign of your passage. If you saw my note, why didn’t you wait for me to return? Or let me know you were back.”
Grobert gave a quiet snort. “As if aye would be sloppy enough to leave tracks that any fool could follow. As to why I came here. You saw Ashvale, too much time had passed since we died. We needed to know what our enemy was up to. I figured you would be fine for a month or two. Guess I was wrong.”
Grobert was getting a handle on his speech and Norman breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I could have gotten myself out,” he grumbled quietly. “And you could have left something to let me know you had seen my message. I thought I was still alone, what else was I to do, sit around twiddling my thumbs? What about Eugene?”
“No sign of him. And don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. Quit dodging my earlier question.”
Norman let out a sigh. “Grothlosburg is gone. Another zone is there now.”
The man shrugged at that. Which was not at all the response Norman had expected.
“So, just follow the edge of this new zone until you reached it. What's the problem? You were bound to find where it ended up if you just kept going.”
“Yeah… that wasn’t an option,” Norman told Grobert about the dinosaurs and the magical beast he ran into.
“Well, that does change things. But that’s an issue for later, we need to leave. You should not have come down here and put yourself at risk. If you die, it's all over.”
“I know that, but I had a spare phylactery. And what do you mean we have to leave? I can’t just leave. You said it yourself. We need information.”
“Aye. And I got what we need. I’ve been here for nearly three weeks. I’ll fill you in after we get out of this town. We need to hurry before the guards come by, now put this on, and let's go!”
Norman barely caught the headwrap that Grobert tossed him. He quickly wound it about his head not wanting to earn the man’s ire yet again. “How are we getting out of here anyway… wait, how did you even get in here, to begin with?”
With a wink, Grobert vanished, appearing outside the cell. It was the first time Norman got a good look at him in the moonlight. The guy was not doing so hot. His skin was starting to peel away and his eyes were clouding over from rot. Norman wondered if the deterioration affected his eyesight at all. He pushed those thoughts for later when he wasn’t trapped in an enemy city and left for dead.
“Shit, Grobert, are you ok? Here, take this.” Suddenly he was glad the guards hadn’t bothered taking anything but his head wraps from him before they tossed him in here. Norman reached into his robes and pulled out one of the healing potions he had tucked inside.
He should have thought about leaving potions in Ashvale for when Eugene and Grobert revived, how could he have been so stupid to forget?
“I’m fine. I have a potion squirreled away. I stayed like this for a reason. People shy away from the smell of rot, it allowed me to remain out of sight and undisturbed by the Brotherhood soldiers.”
“Wait, how does that work? Wouldn’t they want to get rid of anything that could spread disease?” Norman was confused by Grobert’s logic.
Instead of answering, Norman saw the locking mechanism for the door vanished. Once it was gone, Grobert pushed the door open. “I forgot you were never part of a trained military. I don’t know how it is for human armies, but I’m sure it's much the same as the gron army. Any good soldier will try to avoid work if they can. Sure some of the guards reported the smell, but not a single one ever came to investigate it before I moved to a different location. I’m sure they were afraid they would be made to clean it up if they did.” Grobert chuckled at that.
“That’s, that’s… diabolical.” Norman couldn’t help but admire Grobert’s simple yet elegant solution to remaining out of sight as an undead in a city full of zealots.
Norman watched as Grobert closed the door and restored the locking mechanism. He couldn’t even tell it had been missing, Norman was tempted to run his hand across the area to see if he could feel a difference. But Grobert pulled him away from the prison cages immediately after securing the door again.
“We ain’t got time for you to be fiddling about,” Grobert hissed as he dragged Norman through the streets.
It was clear Grobert knew his way around the town as he steered Norman down alleys and avoided patrolling guards like it was nothing. Then again it probably was. Grobert had many decades of experience avoiding law enforcement in Grothlosburg, and they had high-tech means of surveillance. Avoiding these inattentive guards was like child’s play to him.
Eventually, they came to a stop at an open canal that led into a large pipe. The large pipe ran below the streets, except it wasn’t water that was flowing through it.
Norman winced at Grobert's escape plan. “Sewers, really?”
“Sorry, princess, but we ain’t got a gilded carriage for ya, now in ya go.”
Norman reluctantly lowered himself down into the fetid water. The foul liquid came halfway up his shins and he shuddered as unidentifiable things bumped into his legs as the stream flowed past. He followed behind Grobert, trying his best to breathe through his mouth as they slunk through the sewer tunnels. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be, as long as he didn’t breathe through his nose, not that it meant he was having a fun time.
Other than the water, having to walk hunched over was the worst part of the trip and left Norman sore and annoyed. Even Grobert had to duck to fit into the short tunnels.
The pair followed one of the tunnels until it opened up and Norman could hear the sound of rushing water. They must be near the river which Apolonia or Beskara – as it used to be called – was built upon.
“Gross, they dump their sewage straight into the river? Don’t they know how bad that is?”
“Yeah, guess they don’t much care for anyone downstream,” Grobert shrugged in reply. “Hope ya can hold your breath, this next part is gonna be a bit rough for ya.”
“Let me guess, this is how you got inside the city?”
“Yup, easy peasy. Just walked along the bottom of the river with a few pockets full of rocks and bypassed their entire fortifications and all their guards. We’ll have to keep that in mind when we attack.”
Norman was not a good swimmer, or able to hold his breath for more than thirty seconds at a time. But Grobert refused to let him surface and give them away. Thankfully the man had a solution for the problem. It was not one that Norman enjoyed though. Grobert just kept teleporting fresh air into Norman's mouth. It was not a very fun experience having his mouth filled to nearly bursting every few seconds, but it did the trick.
Soon the pair were well beyond the city wall and Grobert finally pulled Norman to the river bank so he could catch his breath.
“That… was… fucking… awful.” Norman paused after each word to suck in a deep lung full of hot dry air. At least the river was warm, not that it helped with the smell.
He immediately regretted inhaling deeply as the stench of rotting sewage and human waste hit him. He also realized he was covered in a layer of unidentifiable slime from the river. He retched a few times but managed not to puke.
“Ugh, I need a bath or maybe just a new body at this point. I’m not sure this smell will ever come out.”
“Well, you’ll have to suffer in silence for now, we ain’t done yet. We need to be well clear of the city to avoid the roaming patrols.”
Norman groaned but otherwise remained silent as he jogged after the man as Grobert led them perpendicular to the river.
Grobert kept up a grueling pace for over an hour before he finally came to a stop. “Alright, here should be good enough to rest for a bit.”
Norman collapsed on the still-warm ground and let out a pained grunt. The hot dry air had long ago sucked all the moisture out of his clothing. Unfortunately, that left a coating of dried slime behind that made Norman itch like crazy. Now that he wasn’t focused on putting one foot in front of the other and not tripping, he couldn’t stand the itching anymore. He ripped the clothing from his body and tossed it on the ground. Then he began to scratch himself fiercely to try and alleviate the uncomfortable sensation.
“Looks like you may have caught something from the river,” Grobert spoke nonchalantly.
“Ya think!”
Norman grabbed handfuls of dust from the ground and scrubbed off as much of the gunk, that had dried to his skin, as he could. After an hour of vigorous scrubbing, Norman’s skin felt raw and sensitive but he wasn’t itching anymore. He reached into his discarded clothes and retrieved one of his hidden healing potions. Norman rubbed the bottle in the sand to clean it off before tipping the contents into his mouth, making sure the bottle never touched his lips. Then he discarded the bottle and sighed in relief as the healing effects kicked in.
“Are you done flailing about like a drunk in a one-armed bar fight?”
“Fuck you. I would like to see you deal with that any better than me. God damn undead immunities,” Norman sighed.
Grobert just waited silently while Norman vented, one eyebrow raised.
“…I’m done. Now can you explain to me what’s going on?”
“About time. You want the long story or the short one?”
Norman gestured to the emptiness around them. “I think we got time for the long version.”
“Alright, but let's walk and talk, we have a long trip ahead of us.”
