The Truth - Part 6

Dark and depressing.

If Olivia had to use two words to describe this place, it would be using those two.

When they had first arrived in this manor, aside from the dining room, they hadn't been in one part of it long enough to truly see what it looked like. But now that they had free roam around the place, albeit having to sneak around to do so, those words truly described the place.

Granted, it being the middle of the night didn't help, but even with the few light sources around and the moonlight peering through the murky glass, some parts of it looked like an abandoned home you would see in a horror movie.

Cobwebs adorned a good number of corners as they looked from the numerous rooms attached to the dingy hallway they were in. Cracks and damage, likely from rainwater making its way through the building, were abundant when you were paying close attention. It would seem that even with the few remaining people under his employ, it was not enough to keep the place in tip-top condition. Only the route from the entrance to the dining hall, and then to the rooms had been cleaned and kept pristine. Entertaining guests was quite the chore in and of itself it would seem.

How someone could live in this place when it was this bad, Olivia did not know. Was it a case of out of sight out of mind? Or did the chief truly not know the extent of the problem? Perhaps, the only rooms he used were the only ones that were well-kept, meaning he had never seen any of the others. Hard to believe that was the case, but Olivia had heard stranger things before.

Their group continued to move around the manor, but so far they had come up empty. The multitude of rooms ended up being a disappointment, finding some to be long abandoned, some as storage for food and drink, and others as additional bedrooms, namely servants quarters, but again lacking in what you would expect to find there. Servants.

Now, Olivia was not completely stupid. You would have to truly be a fool to not realise there was something strange going on here. While there is the whole, lacking citizens in the village issue, it was still rather odd to not find the chief's guards around. Sure, they could have headed somewhere else, lest the chief end up scoring for the night and being forced to listen to it, but for them to not even be in the manor at all, was odd.

Finding the servant's quarters empty as well was just the icing on the cake. Something strange was afoot, and all of them could tell that whatever it was, did not bode well for them.

The issue was, however, that they couldn't just leave. There were still places to search, and they needed to find information about the new chief or at least his connection to this village and the previous chief who ran things here. So far it was a bust, but as they thought about it, given what the new chief was doing, what was the likelihood that anything incriminating or the like about him would just be out in the open?

So, that meant they needed to be smarter when searching. Or, as it would turn out, luckier.

*Creak*

Which is what ended up happening as Olivia stepped onto a very creaky section of the floor, which just so happened to have a rug on top of it.

Television and films she had seen instantly popped into her head, and she knew what it was. Sure it could have just been a random creaky floorboard. But given that the only place that had creaked before was the stairs, which is rather common for them, nowhere else in the house had creaked. Not even in the damaged rooms, which just showed that even with all its problems, it was still rather well made.

Finding this creaky section was a glaring oddity, whereupon pulling back the rug, shined a light on the cause.

A trap door.

"There has to be something down there", Olivia declared.

The others all agreed, a couple of which did so through the exhaustion and tiredness on their faces. They all hoped that they had found the light at the end of the tunnel, and more or less all of the rooms in this place had been checked. The only place that remained was the chief's bedroom, and none of them wanted to deal with that one. So, reaching down, Olivia pulled the trap door open, revealing a dark passage and a ladder.

Lyrika grabbed one of the lamps from the wall nearby that had been left on in the house. It wasn't so odd for this to be the case, as guards would need some light to see if someone was breaking in. There was also the case that some servants would be active at night, to get things ready for the morning, or maybe even head to one of the rooms for some evening dalliance that was hidden from the rest.

No matter the reason, this meant there were several light sources for them to use, and with the one in Lyrika's hand, she shone the light for Olivia to head down, clearly able to see the ladder now.

Before long, Olivia and Lyrika were both down. Philly and Ameril stayed topside to keep an eye on things while keeping themselves hidden given the strange situation they found themselves in. It would be terrible if they all headed down and got trapped in this basement.

The flickering light of the lantern, barely illuminated their surroundings, giving off an ominous glow to the stone and wooden walls that gave shape to narrow passage. Dirt, cobwebs and other mysterious patches along the walls showed that this place did not receive the care and attention of the servants in this house, but the floor had plenty of footprints, meaning it was well used despite this.

Heading down the narrow passage, each of them had their weapons to hand, not wanting to be defenceless in case someone or even something was lurking around down here. Ready to fight, they continued along the passage, wondering where it may lead.

…

It wasn't long before they came across an intersection. On the left was a door, and to the right the passage continued. So, after a quick nod of the head, they headed to the door, weapons in hand.

The door was solid wood, albeit rotting and showing signs of woodworm giving a good idea of its age. But even like this, it could still stand firm against an attack. An attack that thankfully Olivia did not have to participate in since the doorknob opened easily.

With the basement being secret and all, it would probably be overkill to then lock up all the rooms down here as well, so it made sense.

As slow as a sloth, Olivia pushed the door open, holding her knife aloft. Lyrika stood a little bit back, but kept her eyes on the widening slit of the door, putting her night vision to good use. If she spotted anything, then Olivia would be the first to know, and the first to lunge if it happened to be someone on the attack.

But, neither ended up in such a state. Olivia pushed the door open fully, and Lyrika found no one inside.

Light streamed into the room, and they almost caught a bout of déjà vu, finding the room to look exactly like the office they had entered before. The only salient difference was the layer of dust caking all the surfaces and the numerous bugs that fled from the brightness of the lantern they held.

Both of them shivered as they saw them flee into the cracks around the room.

"Let's hope this office offers more than the other one."

So, without further adieu, they got to work searching through the room looking for anything that might help them.

Lo and behold, after only a short amount of time searching, they found what they were looking for.

…

There was a lot of rubbish in the room, so it took some time before they found anything useful. It also didn't help that the scurrying of something in the corner of their eyes didn't really expedite the search either. But, eventually, they came across several documents that gave some good insight into what the new chief was doing.

"Hey, Lyrika, take a look at this."

A couple of steps and Lyrika was by Olivia's side, peering down at a large, unrolled piece of parchment. Upon it was a rather simple map, as far as Olivia could tell. Granted it looked nothing like the maps she would see when using her phone, but with the symbols of huts, trees and the meandering blue lines that were surely rivers, it couldn't be anything else.

"That's… I think that's a map of all the beast-kin villages in the area." Lyrika quickly brought it up, surprised at seeing it. "I didn't know one existed."

"Wait, what."

"Well, I didn't know anyone had bothered to map out where all the villages are. As you can see there are quite a lot of them. Some villages have maps showing just the surrounding villages, or you just know where they are by word of mouth when trading."

"Someone put in a lot of effort to create this then. But why leave it behind?" Olivia asked.

"Maybe it's wrong. Incomplete maybe. I mean it looks like whoever made it did scribble a red line over it, so they probably made a mistake with it and made a new one."

Looking closer, Olivia could see what Lyrika was referring to. It did, as you can imagine, look like someone had just drawn a line over the page, curving back on itself, almost as if to cross out the large piece of parchment. But Olivia could see that was not the case.

It is possible there still was an issue with the map, which is why it was just left behind, she had just found it on the floor, but the red line to her looked like someone marking a path.

The line started at a village right at the top left, and ran across to the right, hitting another village, before curving around, and going back across passing by a few others. This had to be the route that the new chief was taking in his 'recruitment drive'.

"That might be right." Lyrika replied after Olivia brought it up, "The line starts here" she said pointing at the top left, "so that must be this village."

It made sense. Everything all seemed to point to this village being the starting point for the new chief's journey. From there the line passed by Teagan', Yoban's and eventually Lyrika's village, continuing onto several more that she did not know much about. But the order of villages fitted with what Lyrika had learnt from meeting the new chief, as well as from the odd talk with Teagan and Yoban.

But it was at this point that Olivia had to wonder. If that was the case, and the new chief came to this village and recruited the previous chief, why is the 'incomplete' map of his route in this place? Surely the new chief had to have made the map and route before ending up here, so the ruined one would have been wherever he started. He could have brought it here, but why? It didn't make sense.

The only conclusion she could come up with was that there was something wrong with what they had learnt. With this place being the beginning of the new chief's journey, maybe it wasn't a case of him turning up here and appealing to the previous chief.

Maybe, he was the previous chief.