Consciousness came back to Harley the way bad news does, gradually, then all at once.
Water was dripping somewhere to the left, then the smell hit him like a rock. It smelled of…rot. Then the feeling of stone against his back, the hardness sinking into his flesh after he had veen on it for too long. A painful discomfort.
Then his wrists, which were tied.
He eventually opened his eyes to see where he was.
Cave ceiling, torchlit at the far end, stone formations overhead that caught the light and held it in small amber pools. Everything about the cave felt modified. Wooden supports at the walls. A rough-hewn corridor to the right. The sounds of movement somewhere further in… footsteps, a voice, the clatter of something being dragged across stone.
Harley pulled up his UI before anything else because the UI was the one thing in this situation he trusted to tell him the truth.
STATUS
HP: 51/100
MP: 40/40
[Crimson Mist — Unconscious] ← EXPIRED
New Status: [Restrained — Movement Penalty: Severe]
Location: Unknown Interior — Ahmadanam Region
Active Quest: The Terror of Ahmadanam
Current Objective: ???
The question marks were doing a lot of heavy lifting there. He appreciated the honesty even while resenting the implication.
Namir was to his left; sitting against the same wall, wrists bound in front of him with cord that looked identical to what was on Harley's own wrists. His eyes were already open. He had been awake longer, long enough to have assessed the room, catalogued the exits, and arrived at whatever conclusion his expression was currently communicating, which was less than calm but significantly more than panic. Somewhere in the productive middle.
"Good morning," Harley whispered, to lighten the tension.
Namir gave him the most judgemental look to have ever judged, "It's not morning."
"It's a figure of speech."
"Your HP is at fifty-one."
"I'm aware, thank you."
"The salve is still in your pack." Namir glanced toward the corner where both their packs sat, it was not far, maybe eight feet, propped against the wall with the casual confidence of items that had been put there by people who did not expect their owners to be mobile enough to reach them. "They didn't take the equipment. They just took us."
Harley processed this, "Why would they take us and not the equipment?" to be honest, it was kinda dumb to put their gear so close to them, but maybe it was game advantage?
"Same reason they would take villagers and not their livestock." his partner's voice stayed low, even, "We're worth more moving than we are as parts."
The word 'parts' landed with more weight than Harley was prepared for at this hour, whatever hour it was.
"Bandits," he words flowed through his effortlessly, "The mist is theirs, or at least the collapse is. the original game had them using it as a harvesting method. The forest generates the mist naturally in the deep regions but someone figured out how to concentrate it near the entry paths. You walk in, you go down, you wake up somewhere less convenient than where you started." He paused, "The beast the village described isn't a creature it seems."
Harley stared at the cave ceiling and felt the particular exhaustion of being surprised by something he should have seen coming, "The bandits ARE the beast."
"The bandits are the beast," Namir confirmed, "This is floor one. The lore almost never gives you the truth up front."
"A clue would have been nice."
"The lore notification said but not all is as it seems."
Harley thought back to the floating text in the forest, 'but not all is as it seems', he had read it, but he didnt think it would be this crazy, "I thought that was flavour text."
Namir's silence did the talking, he was not impressed.
"Okay," it was getting uncomfortable even more, "We need to get out of these."
The cord was hemp; rough-woven, the kind that tightened under tension but had room in it when you relaxed your wrists completely. Whoever had tied them knew what they were doing but had been working efficiently rather than thoroughly, there was give. Not much but enough. Harley had spent two years in a factory working with equipment that required precise manual dexterity under time pressure, this was something he could do.
The trick with hemp cord is patience and the selective application of stillness; pull tight in one direction, ease off, find the fraction of slack that opens up in the geometry of the knot, work that fraction. It took longer than he would have liked however. It took shorter than he feared. The cord came loose with a soft sound that he immediately stifled by pressing his hands flat to his thighs.
Nobody came after the sound.
He moved to Namir, who had been working at his own from the other direction, between the two of them the second knot took half the time. Namir stood in the same motion as the cord dropping, Harley just behind him. The salve went into his pack. The sword went to his hip. The relief of having it back was disproportionate to its actual combat rating.
[Restrained] — EXPIRED
Movement penalty: Removed
The corridor went two directions. Left was where the torchlight came from, brighter, the sounds of activity; right was darker, quieter, Namir pointed right, Harley didn't argue. They moved along the wall, steps careful, using the stone to muffle their footfalls.
The cave system opened as they went, Wooden structures had been built against the rock walls; storage, from the look of it. Crates, barrels, stacked cloth bundles. A workbench along one wall with tools Harley recognized from contexts he didn't enjoy thinking about; restraints, chains, the administrative equipment of people who moved other people against their will and needed to be organized about it.
He stopped at the doorway to the next chamber.
The room beyond was large; larger than the storage corridor, the ceiling higher here where the cave's natural formation had left more vertical space. Torches on iron brackets at intervals. And people. Not bandits, these were people sitting or lying on the cave floor, bound at the wrists, some with their backs against the wall, some curled on their sides. A rough count put the number at fifteen, maybe eighteen. Men, women, one who looked no older than fourteen and was sitting with their knees pulled to their chest and their eyes focused on the middle distance.
Harley recognized two of them from Crestmere. The woman who had been carrying a water jug when they were marched through the village. The older man who had needed his fence reinforced. They were here. They had been here. Which meant the bandits had been taking people from the village for however long the mist had been operational, and Cain's count of 'people who entered the forest and didn't return' was proving true.
His hand tightened on his sword hilt.
Namir put a hand briefly on his arm, not to stop him but to redirect. He pointed back the way they'd come, then forward, then made a splitting gesture with two fingers. His eyes were asking a question and giving the answer simultaneously.
Harley read it well, "I'll take the prisoners. You scout further. Find if there are more."
Namir nodded once. Pointed at himself, pointed deeper. Then pointed at Harley and at the room full of captives with an expression that communicated both 'I trust you with this' and 'please do not make noise.'
They split.
The prisoners were quiet when Harley slipped into the room, a few heads turned at his entry. The woman with the water jug saw him and her eyes went wide; he pressed a finger to his mouth before she could make a sound, and to her immense credit, she held it.
He started at the edges. The knots here were the same type as his own, whoever the bandits had on tying duty was consistent if nothing else. He worked fast, whispering as he went, a few words at a time, enough to establish that he was helping, that they needed to stay quiet, that the exit was behind him and to the right. Some of them could barely stand. He helped them up when they needed it and got out of the way when they could manage.
Twelve people freed. He was working on the thirteenth when the door at the far end of the chamber opened.
The bandit was large; not dramatically large but the size of a person who has been doing physical work every day for ten years and whose body has adjusted its expectations accordingly. He took one look at the room, at Harley, at the unfastened cords on the floor, and moved for the nearest alarm; a hanging piece of metal against the wall, the kind that exists to make noise.
Harley moved first.
⚔ COMBAT INITIATED
Harley Watson vs. Bandit Guard — HP: 85