Underland

In Marianne's opinion, the cities of Ariouth were all the same: old, dusty, and overflowing with wealth.

Also known as the red desert, the Domain of Ariouth was one of the most inhospitable caverns that mankind colonized over the centuries. Its high temperature, second only to the volcanoes of Sabaoth, made it difficult for vegetation to thrive; even though Marianne used magic to strengthen her body, her throat felt dry and thirsty. The landscape wasn't much better, with rocky hills and gulches bordering a vast desert of red sand. Only the undead could thrive in this hostile realm.

The Dark Lord of Ariouth, Phaleg, was the empire’s greatest summoner and wouldn't let a hostile climate get in the way of his ambitions. The summoner had called upon hordes of extraplanar servants to improve his realm, using earth elementals to dig water wells, air elementals to make the atmosphere more bearable, and used fire elementals to illuminate the layer. Hundreds of these burning creatures seethed inside magical cages attached to the cavern's ceiling.

Though poor in food and water, Ariouth was rich in metals and mineral resources. Hordes of undead workers toiled in its mines and quarry, fueling the empire's economy and Lord Phaleg's coffers. His capital city of Balamon was proof enough of his wealth. Most of the buildings were made of purple porphyry, with maze-like marble streets and obsidian walls. None of its spires and towers could rival the lair of the Dark Lord, a gargantuan statue of a faceless sphinx. Made of golden stone stronger than steel, the structure rivaled the Pleroma Institute in size and age. An ancient civilization had raised this monument long before men built a city around it, and some said that Lord Phaleg spent all his time trying to unlock its secret chambers.

But Marianne wasn't here to visit the sphinx. Her investigation had led her all the way to the local cathedral of the Light, and to an audience with its head inquisitor.

Originally, she thought she would receive answers from the Knights of the Road. This knightly order had coordinated the Verney purge, but their master Phaleg had been the former apprentice and now bitter rival of Lord Och. Few people knew what happened between them, and Marianne wasn't one of them. The last time the Dark Lords directly clashed eight decades ago, the resulting civil war nearly annihilated the empire. Even today, only the threat of external enemies like the Derro Kingdom or incursions by surface monsters kept them loosely united.

Marianne had expected that the Knights of the Road wouldn’t care about her being an envoy of Lord Och, especially since she consulted them on a case they solved many years ago.

She had been wrong.

The Knights of the Road had welcomed her with gruffness on her first day, and asked her to come back tomorrow if she wanted an audience with their commanders. She obeyed, only to be told that the people involved in the Verney case were still unavailable and that she should come back the next day. After wasting half a week, Marianne wised up and looked elsewhere for answers.

Thankfully, not all knightly orders answered to the bickering Dark Lords. The Knights of the Light were the church’s inquisitors, and as such followed the ecclesiastic hierarchy. It had taken a while, but Marianne eventually found someone involved in the Verney purge and willing to talk to her.

Priests in white garb led her through the cathedral’s majestic halls and fiery altar to a more discreet sanctuary deep in the basement, where Inquisitor Penhew awaited her. Marianne had to go through three security checkpoints before reaching her host’s office, and noticed plenty of protective and alarm wards. Though they didn’t hold a candle to the Institute’s defenses, no thief could raid these halls undetected.

Inquisitor Penhew had been transformed into an undead many years ago, and only bones remained beneath his colorful plate armor. He was signing parchments behind his desk when Marianne entered his office, a yellow glow shining from within his empty skull.

“Welcome, Lady Reynard,” the undead inquisitor said with a ghostly voice, though his jaw didn’t move. He invited her to sit on a chair before him. “Please give me a moment to finish, and I’m all yours.”

Marianne politely followed his suggestion, and took a moment to observe the trove of parchment scrolls and holy texts on the shelves. She was slightly worried by the number of candles in the room so close to the books, but priests of the Light didn’t fear the flames.

Many gruesome items decorated the room. The dry and mummified hand of a troglodyte; an eerie golden goblet shaped like a skull; a black cube covered in eldritch symbols; a broken mirror made of purple glass; an allegorical illustration of the cursed Whitemoon, the ghoulish rogue moon that obscured the sun in ancient times. The two craters on its surface seemed to gaze at Marianne like soulless eyes, making her look away.

The inquisitor even had a picture of a dissected monster from the world above. The alien creature looked superficially like a worm, with three eyes on each side of its elongated skull. Powerful mandibles protruded from its mouth, the drawing revealing them as larval forms of the adult creature forming a perverse symbiosis with their parent. The dissection revealed the monster’s organs, from its elongated brain to a maze-like circulatory system.

“Our order’s words are ‘We light the way,’” the inquisitor said as he put down his pen and focused on his guest. “How can I illuminate yours, Lady Reynard? I can see questions forming in your mind.”

Indeed. Almost all the items on display were magical in nature, though their power was suppressed. Marianne sensed secret wards in the room’s walls, lessening her own power as well. “If I may ask, do these items—”

“They belonged to cults,” the undead confirmed. “It is customary for our church to destroy everything related to the Strangers when we wipe them out. Dangerous ideas kill more than swords, and knowledge of the Strangers alone is often enough to give them a foothold in our world. However, we always keep some artifacts and information behind, in case we face a similar cult in the future.”

Marianne wondered if one of these artifacts had belonged to the Verney family. “Why are you allowed to keep these artifacts?” she asked. “I thought prolonged exposure to some Stranger artifacts was dangerous.”

“As an undead, I am naturally resistant to mind magic; I am not tempted by the earthly pleasures or promises of immortality that the Strangers usually use to attract converts; and I have handlers to keep check on my sanity. Finally, our security systems will destroy this room and most of the floor if any of these items leave the room. You are actually fortunate to see this room.”

Marianne couldn’t help but blush. “Thank you for the honor.”

“It wasn’t meant to be one,” the inquisitor replied coldly. “I wanted to show you why you should execute the cultist you allowed into your Institute.”

Marianne bristled at his words. As she had worried, she hadn’t been invited to an interview out of altruism. “You are speaking of Valdemar Verney?”

“I recommended that the Knights of the Chain execute him when he was caught, but Lord Och vetoed it. Sparing him is a mistake.”

“Are you questioning the Dark Lord’s judgment, inquisitor?” Marianne regained her composure. “Valdemar Verney’s crimes were completely unrelated to the Strangers.”

“That you know of.”

“Where I come from, we do not execute people without proof,” Marianne replied defiantly. “If you have any, bring them to me.”

Penhew joined his armored fingers together. “Citizens have a wrong vision of our inquisition, Lady Reynard. Over the course of my century-long career, my order prosecuted over one hundred thousand people for cultist activities. We only ordered the execution of five thousand of these criminals. Five percent. The rest we usually let go with warnings, fines, or after a short jail time. Do you know why? Because nineteen cultists out of twenty are relatively harmless.”

Marianne couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow in skepticism.

“I said relatively,” the inquisitor clarified his words, “as most cultists don’t understand what they’re dealing with. Jaded bourgeois invoke the name of the Mother of All to spice up one of their private orgies. The young rebel against their parents by professing obedience to another deity than the Light. A local congregation is led astray by a charismatic con-man saying that the Nightwalker will lead them to a hidden paradise on the surface. Most of these people we let go with a fine, a short stay in jail, or a memory alteration spell, because they’re harmless.”

“And the one cultist out of twenty?”

“They’re the madmen and the monsters.” Penhew pointed a bony finger at the drawing of an alien monster. “A group of them assaulted one of the gates to the surface to let that thing come through. They believed that it was a messenger of the Nightwalker, and that those it devoured would be reborn as its brood. In their mind, feeding innocents to an alien beast was kindness.”

Then he glanced at the various items, explaining what each of them did. “The hand belonged to an undead troglodyte shaman-priest, whose revival ritual involved the ritual murder of five innocent men and women. The cube in the corner? It actually holds a pocket dimension full of monsters, and the last owner used it as a convenient way to dispose of business rivals. The mirror, at its full power, could enslave the mind of anyone—”

Though it was impolite, Marianne interrupted the inquisitor’s spiel. “Nobody denies the work that the Church does in keeping people safe.”

“Truly?” The inquisitor’s bones rattled. “If you did, Lady Reynard, you would have killed the Verney’s brood when you had the chance. When we hesitate about these things, people die.”

“All I ask for is an objective account of the Verney purge,” Marianne insisted, at her wit’s end. “I do not have the power to slay Valdemar Verney. My master alone holds that right. I shall make a report to him in due time, but for now, I am not asking for your opinion. I am asking for the truth. If you will not give it, we can end this meeting here and now.”

Her harsh tone silenced the knight. He didn’t say a word nor move a finger. Instead he looked at her with his burning eyes, as if he could peer into her soul.

When he didn’t advocate for Valdemar’s execution again, Marianne took it as a sign to go on.

"You were not my first pick as a contact," she admitted. "I looked for all the inquisitors involved in the Verney purge. Imagine my surprise when I learned a fourth of them had either committed suicide or asked for a discharge within five years of the operation.”

“Many of them asked to have their memories of the incident erased,” Inquisitor Penhew confirmed with a nod. “I can’t blame them. The reason I didn’t follow their example was that someone had to remember what the Verneys did. And what they can still do.”

Of course he hadn’t given up. “Valdemar was a child when his family was purged,” Marianne countered. “Whatever his sire and grandsire did, he took no part in it.”

The inquisitor glanced at the Whitemoon’s illustration, his gaze hollow and distant. "Lady Reynard, do you believe in evil?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you believe in evil?" he repeated, putting particular emphasis on the last word. "Not subjective evil, but true, objective evil. A malice born from the annihilation of everything good in a human being. An abyss of pure darkness so foul, that after gazing into it once, you will see it each time you close your eyes?"

Marianne considered her answer for a moment. Was that a philosophical question? Or was he leading up to something else? The Church of the Light believed that the sun would return once all living beings in Underland lived a just life free of sin. Redemption was an integral part of their credo. All souls could be purified, either in life or death.

"No, I don't," Marianne replied. Evil was but a word, and entirely subjective.

"Then be thankful for your ignorance, because that was what the Verneys were. Pure evil. Especially Baron Aleksander Verney, may his soul rot forever.” Inquisitor Penhew raised a hand to grab a scroll off from the nearest shelf, right below the golden cup Marianne had noticed earlier. “Look into his eyes, and tell me what you see.”

As it turned out, the scroll contained the official, illustrated genealogical tree of the Verney family. Though Valdemar and his mother weren’t on it, his father Isaac, his aunt Lavina, and his paternal grandfather Aleksander all received a picture. Lavina was almost a carbon copy of the portrait of Valdemar’s mother Sarah, with a leaner face and amber eyes; and though Isaac Verney was more handsome than his son and with dark hair, he shared his son’s gaze.

In truth, Valdemar looked more like his paternal grandfather Aleksander. The man must have been in his seventies when the church made the illustration, with a gaunt, wrinkled face and red-rimmed, pale grey eyes. He dressed all in red in the picture, and gazed back at Marianne with frightening intensity. The face reeked of aristocratic arrogance, but Marianne could perceive something else inside the eyes.

“A sense of purpose,” she said. This man had believed in something greater than himself, with unshakable faith.

“A dark one,” Penhew said before taking back the scroll. “I have been dead for decades, and I still shudder remembering this madman and that cursed rat familiar that always followed him... that beast’s face almost looked like that of a man, and his paws were like hands. I wish we could have finished the job back then, and extinguished the family line."

“Why didn’t you then?” Marianne asked harshly after losing patience. The idea of persecuting someone for his sire’s crime, however odious they might have been, didn’t sit well with her. “From what I gathered, you were especially thorough in stamping out the Verney family. Why didn’t you kill Valdemar yourself, instead of trying to convince others to do it?”

The inquisitor let out a cavernous sound, which she took for the undead equivalent of a sigh. “The Knight-Commander of the time explicitly forbade us from prosecuting Sarah Dumont, her father Pierre Dumont, and her son Valdemar.”

Marianne’s head perked up in interest. Pierre Dumont was Valdemar’s grandfather, and the supposed visitor from Earth. “Why is that?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time.”

The inquisitor put the scroll back in its place before focusing on his guest. “Where do we start then?”

“How about the Knights of the Road?” Maybe he would give her the answers she couldn’t get from them. “From what I understood, they coordinated the purge.”

“Yes and no,” the inquisitor replied. “A purge was far from everyone’s mind at first. At first, the Knights of the Road were simply investigating the disappearance of a young woman. I think her name was Mona, or something. Pretty standard procedure for them.”

Each knightly order had a specific focus. The Knights of the Road specialized in finding people. Kidnapped individuals, escaped convicts, enemies of the state on the run, bounties, the victims of disappearances... all of these targets fell under the order's purview. They were by far the best investigators in the realm, and usually mobilized when local militias faced trouble far over their head.

“The local authorities couldn’t find her?” Marianne asked.

“No. There were no clues, no motive for the kidnapping. She was some no-name apprentice nurse in Saklas. In fact, I’m sure the Knights of the Road only paid attention because they had been investigating the asylum where she worked for another reason entirely. They used magic to follow a trail to the village of Vernburg, in the Domain of Horaios.”

“Vernburg was the Verney’s seat of power,” Marianne remembered. “Their castle oversaw it.”

“It still does. The ruins we left at least. The village was never resettled after we torched it.”

Marianne did her best not to show her unease. The flat, bureaucratic tone he used made her wonder if the papers he had been signing were execution orders.

“In any case,” the undead continued his tale, “The Knights’ lead went cold, so they went to us… and as it turned out, someone had already reported something similar to the local clergyman. This person claimed to be part of a cult called the Followers of the Grail run by Aleksander Verney, and that they were the masterminds behind hundreds of disappearances over the last century.”

A shiver went down Marianne's spine. "Hundreds?"

"That we know of. The cult mostly targeted young women, especially freshly flowered maidens.” The glow inside Penhew’s skull seemed to falter into nothingness for a moment, like light swallowed by darkness. “The clergy had dismissed the informant’s claims at first, but when the latest victim’s description eerily matched that of Mona…”

“Why dismiss it?” Marianne asked, horrified. “A man comes to you reporting hundreds of disappearances, and you did nothing?”

“Haven’t you heard a word of what I said?” The light in the inquisitor’s eyes burned brighter than before. Her remark had struck a nerve. “We get hundreds of such reports, and usually they don’t amount to much. Aleksander Verney appeared to be the image of respectability. We thought he was just being slandered, and since the Verney controlled the local militia in their territory, the cult mostly stuck to it and buried any investigation. We had nothing but one questionable witness.”

Or more likely, the inquisitors were eager to investigate common people, but not Oldblood families. The privilege of birth excused many things, to Marianne’s disgust. “How was this Mona any different?” she asked. “Why pay attention to her rather than all the others?”

“She was an anomaly,” the inquisitor admitted, “taken because she had been touched by otherworldly forces or some other bullshit. From what I understood, what happened to her was the last straw for our informant and he spilled everything."

Marianne hesitated to continue asking questions, as she could tell that she would find the answers disgusting. But she had a job to do, and Lord Och wouldn’t take her squeamishness for an excuse. "Why did the cult kidnap young women? To sacrifice them?"

“I shouldn’t even tell you. We were asked to burn all the cult’s texts and prevent knowledge of their beliefs from spreading, in case it would inspire other madmen.”

“So far, these people only inspire revulsion.”

Her answer seemed to have satisfied Penhew, for he gave the gory details. “The Verney worshipped a Stranger who tasked them with the creation of a powerful artifact called the Red Grail. The cup would grant immortality to anyone who drank from it, and became the cult’s symbol."

The undead inquisitor's glowing eyes glanced at the golden, ghoulish cup on his shelf. “Only death can pay for life.”

It didn’t take long for Marianne to put the two and two together.

"It's gilded bones.” The noblewoman put a hand on her mouth, horrified. She had seen bone weapons and items before, but the implications… if the cult had kidnapped hundreds of people over the years…

The inquisitor nodded slowly. "A beast slumbers in every human being, Lady Reynard, and some are very much in tune with their animal side. Our laws are harsh, and our punishments often appear unfair… but they protect us.”

Marianne lowered her hand and gathered her breath. "How could… how could they even reach such a sick conclusion?"

"Through trial and error,” he replied, still looking at the ghastly cup. “We found early versions of these grails made from troglodyte, Dokkar, and even dragon bones. This particular cup was crafted more than eighty years ago from a human male. After decades of experiments, the cult eventually identified that human maidens were the best material for their Red Grail."

“Why would anyone do that?” Marianne sneered in disgust. “For immortality? Couldn’t the Verneys already afford it?”

"The Verneys committed these atrocities for the same reason so many good people worship the Light," the undead inquisitor said with a hint of bitterness. "They believed that their vile god would reward their faith by granting them entrance to some promised land full of sunlight. Gaining immortality from the grail was only meant to be the first step to access their deity’s paradise."

The empire’s laws were harsh, but never cruel. Criminals were put to work in life and death, but citizens had rights and were entitled to imperial protection. Even the people who became the Earthmouths were willing martyrs. Nobody forced them to undergo the transformation.

Could desperation truly justify this cult’s atrocities? No. It had just been madness, and pointless cruelty. The Verneys had murdered so many innocents for a pipe dream.

The inquisitor observed Marianne closely, waiting for her to recover her composure. “Now, you understand why so many of my colleagues chose to die or forget, Lady Reynard. It’s one thing to hear it… and another to be there, finding the bones, seeing the horrors these madmen kept in their castle’s basement, witnessing the worst humanity has to offer. We are trained for it, and we even have oneiromancers to help us deal with our fears. But sometimes, even all of these measures aren't enough. The Verney purge was the breaking point for many knights.”

She could almost taste the sorrow in his voice. “It was one for you as well,” Marianne guessed.

“I asked to be transformed into a skeletal knight after it,” Penhew confirmed. “My kind of undead is… less susceptible to emotions, and we do not dream. We do not suffer from nightmares.”

“I’m sorry for you.” This experience had clearly been the most harrowing of his existence. “And sorrier for the victims.”

“I wished we could have saved them, but we were too late,” the inquisitor replied. "We coordinated with the Knights of the Road to raid Aleksander’s castle and run an inquisition in Vernburg. Almost everyone in that cursed town was in on it, Milady. If they weren't part of the cult, they supported its activities. So we torched the whole place, castle included, to make sure nobody was left to pick up where the Verney had left off.”

“Except Valdemar,” Marianne said. “Why did your commander decide to spare him and his mother’s side of the family? Was it related to the informant?”

"Probably, but I cannot confirm it. Our Knight-Commander took the secret with him to the grave.” Penhew waited a moment, briefly hesitating to tell her something. “But between us, I have a theory. Only a theory… if you are interested in my opinion after all.”

Marianne encouraged him to speak up with a nod. “You told me the truth. I guess I can listen to your advice.”

“Good,” he said, before confessing. “Mona's kidnapping was incredibly brazen, and I took it as a sign that the cult was getting desperate. Maybe their god had run out of patience with their failures, and the Verney only had a limited time to finish their artifact. I think that they were considering… extreme measures."

Marianne caught on. "You think that they considered sacrificing Sarah Dumont, even though she wasn't a maiden."

"She was almost part of the family, but not quite either. Anyone can kill an outsider, but your own daughter-in-law? I think Baron Aleksander decided to sacrifice her as a show of faith to his god, and Isaac turned informant to save her. It would explain why we were asked to let her, her infant son, and her aging father go, even though they had to at least be aware of the cult’s activities. I can’t confirm it, since I was never privy to our informant’s identity, but I trust my instinct."

That... that would neatly explain everything. Only a high-member of the cult could have provided such detailed information about the disappearances. Isaac Verney made perfect sense as the informant.

And yet… Marianne felt something didn’t add up with that story. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but her intuition told her that the inquisitor had overlooked something important.

"How did Aleksander Verney perish?" she asked.

“We burnt him at the stake,” Penhew answered with relish.

“And his son Isaac?”

This time, the undead inquisitor avoided her gaze. "The rats, Milady. The rats ate him."

The rats? “What… what do you mean?”

"They…” The undead’s armored fingers shook, and the light within his eye sockets dimmed. “No, I... I'm sorry, Lady Reynard, but no, I..."

He was there when it happened, Marianne thought. He saw it, and it still terrifies him decades later.

“I have already told you everything that matters.” The inquisitor seemed to regain his composure, but went into a rant right afterward. “I did it so that you may understand who you are dealing with. I knew this Valdemar was up to no good the moment I heard of what he was trying to achieve. Reaching that other world full of sunlight… he took the words right out of his family’s book! The same madness possesses him!”

Marianne winced. The similarities were… worrying indeed.

“If you let him live, he will repeat his family’s crimes all over again, and they will be all on your conscience,” the inquisitor said harshly. “Lady Reynard, I beg of you. Return to Paraplex, hang that blackblooded bastard, and let the dead rest. For their sake, and yours."

Marianne left the cathedral with just as many questions as answers.

When she reunited with Bertrand, her retainer was busy preparing their carriage for the return trip. The giant beetle pulling it enjoyed a tasty meal made of dung and other substances Marianne couldn’t identify, its antennae rising up in happiness.

At least one of us is happy here, Marianne mused, as she petted the beast’s back. Even Bertrand looked dismayed with the results of his own investigation.

"I couldn't find any birth certificate for Pierre Dumont,” her vampire retainer admitted with a dejected look. Bertrand prided himself in his thoroughness. “As far as the empire is concerned, he appeared out of nowhere."

This was highly unusual. The imperial bureaucracy was slow, but extensive and efficient. Few things completely evaded its gaze, and never without the intervention of the Dark Lords or powerful figures.

"So he did come from another world," Marianne said.

"Or from a distant, lawless corner of the empire, Milady." Bertrand clearly didn't believe in Valdemar's story. "In any case, the first time Pierre Dumont appeared on any document was for the birth of his daughter, Sarah. Her mother was listed as a certain Alayne Marne, a very common name. Too common, I would say—”

A promised land where the sun still shines, Marianne thought while listening to her retainer’s report. Pierre Dumont died pretending that he came from another world full of light… What are the odds that his daughter would frequent a cult looking for one such paradise?

Marianne didn’t believe in coincidences. She didn’t think Valdemar was a cultist, but Penhew might have been partly correct in seeing a connection between his beliefs and his family’s cult.

“—yet I couldn't find any marriage document involving Pierre Dumont,” Bertrand continued. “At first, I thought it likely that Sarah Dumont had been born out of wedlock, but considering that marriages are overseen by the Church of the Light, I am tempted to consider another possibility."

Marianne quickly guessed the implications. "You suspect her birth certificate was forged."

"It is not unlikely. The Verney family ruled their territory with an iron fist and had a relatively free reign in nominating local bureaucrats. But priests of the Light are chosen by the Church.” Which was why the cult informant went to them. If Inquisitor Penhew had been truthful, then the Verneys had subverted everyone else in their lands. “Hence, while the cult could hide the girl's true parentage, a false marriage document would have been quickly identified."

"But what would be the point of such deception?"

"I do not know," Bertrand admitted. “Milady asked me to consider all possibilities, and so I am.”

Marianne reviewed the elements of her case, and immediately identified the problem. “Valdemar’s genealogical tree is full of suspicious holes,” she stated out loud, trying to put her thoughts into words. “Aleksander Verney, a vicious cult leader, made him a secret heir. And yet he, his mother, and grandfather were spared from the purge.”

Did the Verney believe Pierre Dumont's tale of coming from another world, and did their best to keep it a secret? Did they believe his grandson was important to their cult’s goal?

"The more I learn about these people, the fishier this all smells," Marianne said. And the more she felt that the Knights had overlooked something critically important during the Verney purge.

“What do we do then, Milady?” Bertrand asked. “Do we return to Pleroma?”

“No.” The report to Lord Och would wait until Marianne had found something tangible. "We will look for more clues at the source.”

It was time to visit the lost Verney lands.