**”In Sickness and in Wealth”**
Sure enough, Fabian’s expertise paid off. He successfully disabled a tripwire, picked several locks, and navigated the trio around a hidden pit trap. After an hour of careful advancement through the underground tunnels, they came to an abandoned warehouse in a larger chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Lorna wrung her hands with glee at the sight of it, and Fabian cracked his knuckles as he approached the large, iron door.
“What is this place?” Althea asked, giving the large building a once-over. Ignoring her question, Fabian produced his pack of thieves’ tools to once more pick the lock. But this puzzled the acolyte. Clearly the tunnel continues forward, so why was he straying off the path? Lorna peeked down the tunnel before scurrying up beside her bald friend. She brushed a scarlet dreadlock from her face. “Is there something we need in there?” Althea asked, brows knit with concern. Lorna and Fabian gave each other a smile before nodding.
“Uh, yeah, we need to check that your artifact–relic thing isn’t stashed away inside,” Fabian said, “Thieves will steal anything, you know.” He set to work picking the lock, and Lorna gave a snort before leaning against the wall. Althea nodded and smiled as well, happy to see such enthusiasm and proactive thinking on the part of such a grim mercenary. For a brief pause only the clinking of Fabian’s tools could be heard in the quiet chamber. And then they heard a cough, followed by a wet splat.
Lorna pushed off the wall, brandished her battleaxe, and peered into the dark beyond the torchlight. Stumbling out of the shadows, a man in a dirty, haggard cloak fell to his hands and knees, wheezing with each breath. “Stay away, stranger. We got no business with you,” she growled, twirling her battleaxe fiercely. The cloaked man raised his head, and Althea recognized the telltale signs of sickness.
“Wait, don’t hurt him, please! He looks very ill,” she called out before approaching the man with open arms. Althea flipped through her small prayer book, “I can help him,” she added in a calm, soothing voice. It took all her resolve to maintain an air of calm. Deep down, Althea felt a chill run up her spine. Certainly she knew the arts of medicine and many treatments for common illnesses, but she began to feel a looming sense of doubt upong closer inspection.
Althea eased the man to the tunnel floor and leaned his back against the wall. After uttering a brief prayer of protection for herself and pulling aside the man’s cloak, she was met with the putrid stench of decay. Dark, wet patches stained his tunic, all but adhering it to the soft, spongy flesh beneath. Coagulated blood, she surmised. Donning a pair of gloves and drawing her ceremonial dagger from her belt, Althea cut away the soiled shirt and gasped at what she saw. While his complexion was pale and sweaty, the skin on his chest was bone white and utterly gaunt. More disconcerting were the numerous pustules. The large, polyp-like lesions were filled with a foul, black ichor. Even more unpleasant was the shudder the man uttered when Althea accidentally popped one of the polyps. Vile, inky pus streamed down the man’s chest. Overwhelmed, Althea stumbled back and scrambled behind a corner of the storage building. She thought that vomiting would help, but the cloying, rancid stench lingered.
“You all right, lass? Not catchin’ his ill, are you?” Lorna asked. She took Fabian’s torch and approached the sick man, brandishing the small flame in front of her. The man recoiled at the flame and scrambled back a few feet. The effort elicited a rattling cough, followed by another splash of dark ichor from the man’s lips.
“Hey! You want me to open this up or not?” Fabian barked after Lorna stole his lightsource. When she ignored him, he returned to the lock in the dim light, but muttered a soft curse to himself when one of his tools snapped. He tossed it to the floor and rose to his feet. Unsheathing his longsword, he followed after Lorna.
“By the gods… Fabian, this fellow looks like shit,” Lorna said, a sober expression across her face.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Althea said softly, rejoining her companions while wiping clean the corner of her mouth. This just made Fabian scratch his head and tighten his grip on his sword.
“Look, girlie, if you can’t help him, I can,” he said, raising his weapon to demonstrate his point, “A clean death, put him out of his misery,” he concluded with a somber nod. Althea gnawed at her lip and unconsciously folded her hands over her heart.
Devotion to Helestria fills one with bliss and a love for all life, eternally seeking the light in the world. But here, in the dark beneath the earth, faced with a wicked and unnatural illness, Althea feels the onset of doubt creep into her soul. None of her training prepared for such a horrific blight. One last glance to the suffering stranger, and Althea saw only a feeble shell of a person lying limply on the tunnel floor, gasping for breath. Fear seized her heart, and so she gave her one-eyed bodyguard a nod of affirmation. Althea turned away, shutting her eyes. She could not bear to look upon the slaughter of an innocent, but he was so sick. She prayed that she made the correct choice. And then she heard a gutteral scream, but it was Fabian’s voice.
“Get off of him, you mad fucker!” Lorna bellowed. Althea snapped open her eyes and turned around to see the sick man sinking his teeth into Fabian’s arm. A wild, frenzied look filled the stranger’s cloudy eyes. In that moment, Lorna brought her axe about in a single arc, cleaving clean through the man’s leg. Dark, thick blood sprayed across her boots. Yet he remained latched onto Fabian’s arm, and the sudden shift helped to topple the bald mercenary to the ground. A muffled, throaty howl erupted from the stranger’s black, ichor-stained maw, still fastened to Fabian’s forearm. The man’s pale hands clawed at Fabian’s dark leather armor, but proved more of a nuisance than a threat.
“Get him off me, damn it! He’s almost down to the bone!” Fabian slammed his arm against the floor, and with an audible crack the nameless biter’s skull crumpled against the floor, finally shaking him loose. Groaning out of pain and frustration, Fabian held his injured arm to his chest and reached out toward the dwarf with the other. Thanks to her voluptuous center of gravity, Lorna easily pulled her ally to his feet. He cursed and flexed the fingers near his breastplate. “What in the Nine Hells was *that* about? He was one foot in the grave one moment, then thrashin’ like a wild dog the next,” Fabian grumbled and looked to Althea. “You couldn’t help that poor sod, but maybe you could patch me up, little lady?” he wiggled the arm against his chest for emphasis, but then immediately winced with regret.
“Ah! Of course I will,” she said and produced a small, golden handbell attached to a braid of white silk ribbons, one of several holy symbols of Helestria. “Warmth of hearth, light of dawn, by Helestria’s grace may this pain be gone,” Althea recited with eyes shut and one hand on Fabian’s arm. The crease on his forehead subsided as a warm glow enveloped the acolyte’s hand.
After a moment, the light faded and Althea stepped away, head bowed in silent gratitude toward her goddess. The bald mercenary flexed his arm once before Lorna landed a punch directly on the previous injury. He nodded his thanks before gesturing his dwarven companion and the torch back to the storage shed. Perhaps Althea even improved the mercenary’s arm beyond the norm, for he picked the lock in almost no time flat. With a heave, they opened the rusty, creaky vault door. What they found inside was unexpected by all.
“By Helestria’s light!” Althea gasped. Illuminated by the orange torchlight lay a sprawl of long-dead corpses, each showing advanced stages of decay. Strangely, they all bore lumps beneath their clothing, and they all had several dark, fleshy, foot-long stalks sprouting from their backs. Some kind of fuzzy mold had grown out of their eyes and covered the upper halves of their faces. Well, what was left of their faces. By Althea’s assessment, these poor souls likely met their demise quite some time ago. The mold and stalks presented another new anomaly for the healer. Overall, a dank and musty stench filled the air pouring out of the building. Clearly this place had been sealed off for some time.
“What do you think happened, Fabian?” Lorna murmured, nudging one of the corpses with the head of her axe. “Look like Razortusk’s men by their armor,” the dwarf added. “Hard to say with the poor state they’re in,” she sighed. Her keen, dwarven eyes pierced the dim light of the building before settling on something in the corner. “Over there!” she pointed and gingerly stepped over the carpet of corpses toward the other side of the modest warehouse.
Althea whispered more prayers. Already she had seen so much death, and it was only her first day out in the world. Just what exactly was happening in this village? Did they know about this place? And where did that sick man come from? Question after question poured into her mind… until she tripped over one of the dead bodies.
“Try to stay on your feet, little lady,” Fabian shook his head with a sigh of his own as he followed after his axe-wielding partner, “What’d you find?”
“Spices, dyes, silks, you name it! They’ve got at least two wagonloads of the rare stuff!” Lorna laughed like a giddy child.
Althea tried to stand, but the clumsy acolyte found that her foot was caught on something. Perhaps one of the dead’s bag or maybe a cloak? That’s when the body stirred and slowly turned its mouldering gaze toward her, baring a lipless sneer. A familiar, throaty howl croaked from the corpse’s lips, and Althea screamed in terror.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/kbwpgs/lair_of_the_cryptmother_ch_2_dark_fantasybody