>>6178118

Previous: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Moloch

“You tripped over a log?” Ariel asks, without even a token attempt to hide her scepticism, “Really?”

“Oh come on, you know how clumsy I can be!” Daniel replies with a cavalier grin, “Besides, it wasn’t a fair fight. It was a cowardly ambush!”

“Make up your mind, was it a log or a bush?” she presses, turning to give you a probing look, “Maybe you can give me a trustworthy answer. Was he REALLY outsmarted by a piece of lumber?”

“In his defence, it was an unusually cunning piece of lumber,” you remark, your words causing Daniel to let out a snort of laughter. Daniel Teilhard is not a man for whom deception comes easily, but here he makes an exception. Either he’s trying to put Ariel’s mind at ease, or he’s judged that looking clumsy will be slightly less embarrassing than admitting to being mauled by a feral woman. You’re just not sure which.

Ariel sighs, as if deciding that this whole conversation isn’t worth it. “I suppose you’ll be going back out there?” she says instead, giving you a guarded look, “Not you, Daniel. Obviously.”

“I was,” you confirm, “I know the route, and I know what I’m looking for. There’s nothing to worry-”

A muffled chime from the side office announces the arrival of a new telegram. Ariel quickly rises to her feet and hurries away. You throw a quick scowl across to Daniel, but Ariel returns before you can question him about the absurd lie. “I think you might need to change your plans,” Ariel warns, handing you the slip of paper, “It’s from Sakhalin.”

“I apologise for the sudden message,” Sakhalin’s telegram reads, “But I have been contacted by someone with information regarding our matter of mutual interest. They have requested a meeting at Warwick Grove, at the furthest border of the Teilhard lands. They have indicated that this a matter of some urgency, so I propose that I meet with this individual in your stead. I am closer, and will not have to travel far to meet with them. However, I can delay until your arrival if you feel it is necessary.”

“I have made discrete enquiries with an oracle, and she senses both danger and opportunity,” the note concludes, “It may be that this is the lead we have been searching for.”

The “matter of mutual interest” must be King Albrecht, of course, and his recent behaviour. Perhaps Daniel’s mention of an ambush has planted the idea in your head, however, but Sakhalin’s note leaves one idea at the front of your mind – a trap.

>I trust Sakhalin to meet this contact. My business is here, with Gratia and the forest
>The forest will have to wait once more. I’ll go with Sakhalin to meet this contact
>I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m telling Sakhalin to call it off
>Other

>>6178119
>The forest will have to wait once more. I’ll go cover Sakhalin while he is meeting this contact in case it's a trap

>>6178131
+1
Sakhalin is cool, I trust him and he began the quest for Isambard

>>6178119
>The forest will have to wait once more. I’ll go with Sakhalin to meet this contact
Black guy dies first. Every horror fan knows this. Bro's gonna need back-up from someone who is as un-black as possible: a waifish albino nobleman!

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The more you think about it, the more inescapable the possibility seems – a trap, an ambush, a murder carried out under the cover of deceit. You can practically see the path leading up to it, each step bringing Sakhalin closer and closer to a final, fatal danger. You may never truly know what it feels like to be an oracle, but just for this haunting, harrowing moment, you may be getting close.

“The forest will have to wait,” you announce, although it feels as if someone else is saying the words, “I’ll go with Sakhalin to meet this contact. If there is danger, it’s best that he doesn’t face it alone. I fear what may happen if he does.”

How far you’ve come since the start of your journey, to delay the reunion with your sister just to offer your aid to a man you scarcely know. But then, isn’t Sakhalin doing the same?

“I’ll send the message,” Ariel says softly, reading something in your face that she doesn’t put into words.

-

Plans are made, arrangements discussed, and soon you’re off towards Siegfried House. You’ll meet up with Sakhalin there, then head on to the meeting place. You act as quickly as possible, but even that seems agonisingly slow. Sakhalin is a solid, reliable sort, definitely not the kind of man to get impatient and run off ahead, but you can’t chase the thought out of your mind.

It’s only when you see Sakhalin waiting for you at the gates of Siegfried House that you finally allow yourself to let out a little sigh of relief. He stands as tall and stiff as a mountain, while servants and soldiers scurry around him like ocean waves. Slowly, like rocks grinding together, he raises one hand in a solemn salute.

“Master Pale,” he greets you, gesturing towards his waiting carriage. It’s a discrete model, stripped of any ornamentation or insignia, but the door has a weighty heft to it – enough to stop a bullet, you suspect. It seems that you’re not the only one with misgivings about this whole affair.

“Sakhalin. I’m glad you waited,” you tell him as you settle in. It might be discrete and protective, but the carriage isn’t especially comfortable to sit in. “What else can you tell me?” you continue, talking to distract yourself from the growing pain in your spine, “Do we know who this contact is?”

“We do not,” the dark-skinned man answers, pausing a moment before continuing, “I am aware that this could be a trap, Master Pale. I have been careful and cautious with my enquiries, but there is no such thing as perfect secrecy. Even with my position at the King’s side, I am still just a humble servant – there would be little outcry if I was killed under uncertain circumstances.”

“Well then, that’s why I’m here,” you assure him, forcing a crooked smirk, “If someone as important as me gets slain, it’ll definitely stir up trouble.”

“A joke, Master Pale,” Sakhalin says in his mournful voice, “Very good.”

[1]

>>6178140

Warwick Grove, you learn, is one of the many, many hunting outposts scattered throughout the Teilhard lands. This one has been defunct for a very long time, abandoned and left to rot once the game grew thin and the noblemen moved to more abundant lands. As far as Sakhalin can tell you, the place should be completely abandoned by now. A good place for a discrete meeting, you suppose, but you’re starting to get paranoid about these remote, isolated places.

The sun is fading from the sky when you arrive, the deteriorating state of the narrow road forcing you to leave the carriage a short distance from the outpost itself. Slowly, methodically, Sakhalin takes a wooden case out from beneath his seat and opens it to reveal an especially large revolver. There’s something deeply unsettling about seeing him load a half-dozen of the fat bullets into his gun, like waking up one morning to find a gentle, delicate oracle sharpening a hunting knife.

Still, you’ll be glad to have the extra gun at your side if things go wrong.

“This way, I believe,” he says mildly, lighting a gas lantern and stepping out of the carriage. You follow, dust and dried leaves kicking up under your boots as you march. Though the back of his head reveals nothing, you spot a pensive expression on Sakhalin’s face whenever he glances back. “Master Pale,” he adds, strangely hesitant, “If anything should happen, I would ask that you take care of our contact, and yourself. You should not put yourself in danger for my sake. I am-”

“We both know that that’s not going to happen,” you interrupt gently, shaking your head.

Sakhalin doesn’t raise the subject again.

-

Fortunately for you, a search of Warwick Grove doesn’t leave you with much to cover. Only a single wooden cabin remains standing, all the other buildings having either collapsed into disrepair or burned to the ground at some point in their sad history. Trading a glance with Sakhalin, you cautiously approach the cabin. With the lantern flame lighting your approach like a firefly’s glow, there’s no chance of approaching undetected. You can only hope that this “contact” isn’t an assassin waiting to shoot you down.

The heavy door is unlocked, swinging open with a slow creak as you push against it. Sakhalin holds the lantern high, but the soft light reveals nothing of note – some old furniture, but no sign of your waiting contact.

“Were we too late?” you murmur. Sakhalin shakes his head, touching a finger to his lips. You creep into the cabin, wincing to yourself every time a floorboard creaks underfoot. It’s only when you’re walking over a mouldering rug that the creak sounds different – louder, hollower. Stepping back, you draw back the rug to reveal a trapdoor set into the dusty boards.

[2/3]

>>6178142

Another creak rings out as you lift the trapdoor, this time from the rusting hinges. For a moment you almost expect to see the pristine white stone of the Demesne behind the trapdoor, as if fate had conspired to drag you down into that uncanny realm. Then the moment passes, and you see the stones for what they really are – simple grey stone, roughly hewn and overgrown with moss.

The faint stench of rotting vegetables still hangs over the cellar as you descend, the lantern’s light revealing a cringing figure huddles beneath a thin blanket. They tremble as you approach, hiding their face as if afraid of the light. Sakhalin dims the flame somewhat, and the figure slowly pulls back their blanket. When you see his face, you can’t help but let out a gasp of surprise.

-

The last time you saw Armin Leigh, the former Tomoe agent was in Master Teilhard’s care – or custody, perhaps – with the vague promise of a new, legitimate job ahead. You left him to it, then promptly forgot about him. For all you’d know, Master Teilhard might have shot him in the head as soon as you were out of earshot. Now he’s here, hiding in the storage cellar of a derelict hunting cabin.

It’s a small world. Small, and very strange.

“You?” he rasps, “Oh I get it. I’m hallucinating. Right, right…”

“No, sir,” Sakhalin answers gently, reaching down and pulling Leigh upright, “This is no vision or hallucination. You contacted us, I believe? You had something to tell us?”

“Yes! Um, yes. But I was starting to think nobody was coming,” he whines, yelping with pain as he tries to climb the stairs. Sakhalin carries on regardless, practically dragging Leigh back up to the surface. There, he unceremoniously dumps Leigh down into a chair and steps back to check through the smeared, dirty windows. You search your coat pockets and find some trail biscuits wrapped in wax paper, tossing them over to Leigh before joining Sakhalin.

“I am… concerned,” the tall man admits in a low whisper, “He does not seem reliable.”

“He’s probably been hiding in that cellar for… well, I don’t know exactly how long, but I don’t think he had anything to eat or drink,” you reply, glancing back as Leigh devours the snack, “He’s hurt his leg too, goodness knows how. He’s not going to be quick on his feet.”

Sakhalin lets out a low grunt, going back to checking the windows.

>You need to get Leigh out of here, as soon as possible. Everything else can wait
>Try and get some information out of Leigh. If he doesn’t make it out, at least you’ll have your answers
>Take a moment to try and put Leigh’s mind at ease. He’s not going to be much help in this state
>Other

>>6178147
>Try and get some information out of Leigh. If he doesn’t make it out, at least you’ll have your answers

>>6178147
>Try and get some information out of Leigh. If he doesn’t make it out, at least you’ll have your answers
How and why has he escaped Teilhard custody?

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“Keep watch,” you murmur to Sakhalin, your words answered with a tiny nod. Leaving him to gaze out into the darkening ruins and the trees beyond, you return to Leigh. Brushing dust off a spare chair, you drag it across and sit opposite him. For a moment, you just study the dishevelled young man. His skin is streaked with dirt and grime, wild tufts of hair sticking up in all directions. The biscuits are long gone, but he keeps glancing about as if there might be more. Unfortunately for him, there aren’t.

“Leigh,” you begin, your voice causing him to flinch, “What did you want to talk with us about, Leigh?”

It takes him a moment. “The King, wasn’t it?” he offers.

“I think it was the King, yes. Very good, Leigh,” you reply, fighting down an urge to shake the young man by the shoulders, “What about the King, though?”

Leigh’s brows dip into a deep frown of thought. The question seems too much for him now, so you change track with a suppressed sigh. “The last time we saw each other, you were with the Teilhard family, weren’t you?” you press, hoping to stir his memory, “Can you tell me what happened after that? You must’ve left Siegfried House at some point, and gone… where exactly?”

“Master Teilhard sent me to one of his, um, friends. A business friend, not a… you know, a friend friend. He said it was for work, so I could do something good with my life. But I didn’t stay there long, he sent me on again. To… um… Petrichor,” Leigh’s mouth twitches into an unsteady smile, “I was working there for a while.”

Petrichor, you recall, is the main city at the heart of Silvera territory. Which could possibly mean…

“Were you working for Choirmaster Moreau, by chance?” you ask, the name causing Leigh to shudder – so badly that you can only take it as a confirmation. “So, you were sent to work for Choirmaster Moreau,” you continue, “Is that right?”

“Sweeping the floors, emptying the bins, that sort of thing. But I kept my head down and I listened. I looked at things I wasn’t supposed to look at,” a secretive smile, wicked and triumphant, flickers across Leigh’s face, “She keeps files, you know. Files on everyone, even the King. I think she’s been-”

The sharp crack of a rifle cuts Leigh’s sentence short, causing the young man to fling himself to the ground with a desperate little wail of fear. Another shot rings out a second later, this one causing glass to explode from a shattered window. Dropping low and drawing your revolver, you scuttle over to the broken window and peer out as best as you can.

“I believe we have company, Master Pale,” Sakhalin says, with no more panic than a waiter announcing that dinner is served, “Master Leigh, were you followed?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” he wails, “Maybe!”

“I believe he was followed,” Sakhalin decides, brushing some shards of broken glass off one shoulder.

[1]

>>6178165

More rifle shots ring out, silencing any further attempts at conversation. Judging by the number of shots, you can easily guess that you’re outnumbered – there might be eight, perhaps as many as ten armed men descending upon you. Risking a glimpse out, you can see faint flickers of movement as they dart between cover and hide behind stout trees. They wear black, just like the men who attacked you at Professor Silvera’s dig site.

One of the men is slower to get into cover than the rest, allowing you a brief moment to fire back. Your shot drops him, although you can’t tell if he’s dead or merely wounded. Two of his companions start to drag the fallen man into cover, only to drop him as Sakhalin coldly shoots one of them down. The rest of the unseen solders fire back, forcing you back into cover. Even as the gunshots ring out, and Leigh screams, you hear something else – a metallic rattle as one of the soldiers throws a metal cannister towards you, shortly followed by a sinister hiss as white smoke belches up from where it fell.

Almost immediately, an acrid smell hits you like a slap in the face and brings tears to your eyes. A second more, and twin daggers of burning pain stab at your eyes. Every moment seems to bring fresh torment, with the gas creeping into your lungs with every shuddering breath you take and burning you from the inside out. Leigh writhes on the ground, coughing and spluttering, while even Sakhalin struggles to keep his composure. Through a veil of tears, you can dimly make out the soldiers converging upon the outpost.

“The back window, Master Pale!” Sakhalin hisses, pointing to the rear of the cabin, “Take Master Leigh and go. I can stay, to hold these men for as long as possible!”

“Damn you, Sakhalin, I’m not-” you hesitate, “If we’re going, we ALL go!”

“And they will catch us, because we march at the speed of our slowest,” he rasps, “Do not put yourself in danger for my sake. Take Master Leigh, and leave!”

“You heard him!” Leigh pleads between retches, “We need to leave!”

>You’re not leaving. You’ll hold this cabin, whatever it takes
>Sakhalin’s right. If he holds the soldiers off, you have a chance to escape
>You’ve got enough information. Leigh is just dead weight now – leave him behind
>You’ve still got the cellar. Perhaps you could take shelter there
>Other

>>6178169
>Leave the cabin, circle back and hit them from behind
Static defense against tear gas is doomed, but I don't want to leave our homie behind

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“Wait, just let me think for a moment,” you hiss, turning to shoot Leigh a dark glare, “Shut up, will you?”

Leigh is so startled that he actually does fall silent, save for his ragged breathing. You’ve still got the constant rattle of gunfire to distract you, but at least you don’t need to listen to his whining. Sakhalin frowns, leaning around the edge of the window and firing off a single, precise shot. Out in the dark, someone wails and dies.

“Next chance we get, we make a break for it,” you suggest, nodding to the back window, “I know, I know. We can’t outrun them. But if they start to follow us, we circle around and hit them hard. Draw them in, then cut them down.”

Sakhalin considers this for a moment, heedless of the bullets whistling and cracking all around him. Then he nods, the gesture curt and clipped.

-

Sakhalin drags Leigh upright and crosses over to the window, smashing the glass with the butt of his revolver before pushing Leigh through the opening. The young man grunts with pain as he lands, crawling a few paces away as Sakhalin follows him through the window. You cast a fleeting glance backwards, seeing movement in the trees, then hurry after Sakhalin.

Once outside, you drop low and flatten yourself against the cabin’s outer wall. For those first few moments, you don’t dare move a muscle. The rifle fire continues for a second or two, then falls silent. Though your ears are ringing, you think you can dimly make out the faint whisper of footsteps. Glancing aside to Sakhalin, you gesture for him to move. You’ll take one side, he’ll take the other.

Thumbing a few extra bullets into your revolver, you creep around the outermost edge of the cabin, stopping every few steps to listen for any suggestion that your plan is ruined. When you get to the corner, you take one last moment to wipe tears from your eyes before swinging around. The soldiers are halfway through climbing into the cabin when you round the corner, caught completely off-guard by the first bullets that rip into them. You fire from one side, and Sakhalin fires from the other, cutting down the soldiers in immediate view. The survivors scramble to regain their composure, one leaping through the window almost directly in front of you.

You have just enough time to see his eyes growing wide beneath the glass lenses of his mask before you plunge your dagger into his side, hot blood spilling out over your hand as you pull the blade sideways. He dies with a gurgle, slumping down as you rip the dagger free. With no time to reload your revolver, you snatch up the fallen man’s rifle and search out for a new target – but, at first, you don’t see any.

Then you hear the soft rustle of fallen leaves, spinning around to see one of the wounded men limping away into the forest.

[1]

>>6178195

“Stay here with Leigh!” you shout to Sakhalin, taking off after the wounded man without waiting for an answer. You don’t think about what you’ll do once you catch up with him, you haven’t thought that far ahead yet, but you run after him regardless. Like a hunting hound chasing a promising scent, all you need to do is pursue the man.

An iron vice of pain clamps down around your temples as you run, the smell of blood causing your head to spin. Even as you move further away from the cabin, the smell seems to get stronger and stronger rather than weaker. The scent of blood has always roused strange feelings in you, strange and terrible feelings, and this is no different. Your instincts, operating on a level below rational thought, all cry out a single message – something bad is about to happen.

But even as these thoughts race through your head, you keep running. Even when you hear the wounded man scream, a scream unlike any you’ve heard ripped from a human throat before, you keep running.

You keep running until you arrive at the base of a great tree, looking up at the spreading branches in horror. The soldier, the bloodied strip of quivering meat that was once the soldier, is draped across the branches, speared in place by countless sharp points. Other branches are bent under the weight of the night owls perched upon them – ragged, cadaverous things with sharp beaks and piercing eyes, their feathers flecked with gore. The birds gaze down upon you with inhuman intelligence, even as the clouds above part to reveal a burning red eclipse in place of the moon you know so well.

And then it’s gone, all of it. The eclipse, the night owls, all of it, gone in the blink of an eye.

All of it, save for the soldier’s viciously mutilated remains impaled upon the tree’s branches.

>I’m going to take a pause here for today, but I’ll be carrying on tomorrow at the same approximate starting time
>Thank you to everyone who stopped by, I’ve been eager to get back into writing for a while but I just haven’t been able to make the time until now

>>6178198
Thanks for running!

These guys were well equipped but pretty poorly trained. I think whatever organization they belong to hasn't been deploying them for long

>>6178203
>whatever organization they belong to
It's probably the Church or one of their benefactors. But as to exactly why they are running interference like this we just don't know yet. Maybe one of them has yet to die of their wounds and can answer some questions

Hopefully we can get the body down without leaving, and take it back to the cabin. So we have proof of our claims

>>6178228
I would rather not come any closer to the mystical man-flaying tree

>>6178229
The tree's probably fine. It's the owls you gotta watch out for.

>>6178198
Thanks for running! It's a busy weekend for me, but I'll vote if I get the chance. Welcome back, QM! Been missing this quest.

>>6178228
>>6178229
Fairly certain that guy just got Strixed. And i'm fairly certain that the Oracles are compromised and infiltrated by Strix, which was the cause of that hysteria before quest started.