Dogs in God's Vineyard

While Sonia watched the rear entrance and Charles checked out the floor, Margaret moved toward the other main doorway, setting herself alongside the opposite side of the door handle before she cautiously reached over to open it. The door creaked open without issue, and Margaret peered into the darkness within, her gun pointed forward. She glanced inside, squinting as her eyes tried to adjust to the pitch-black darkness of the room. When she was finally able to properly see, Margaret openly gasped.

It was at that same time that a peculiar and rather odious smell filtered into the wider area, a smell that all four of the Dogs were all too familiar with. The smell of a rotting corpse.

"Anna, come quick," she hurriedly urged.

Margaret grabbed the nearest candle available, and used it to shed light into the darkened room. Inside, three pale-faced bodies stared back at them. They were of an older man, an older woman, and a young girl barely into her teens. The man and the woman were chained to the wall, while the girl was bound to a table in the center of the room. A tray containing bloodied medical instruments laid next to her. The bodies of the man and woman bore evident signs of torture, with slits across their throats as the most obvious sign of their demise. The body of the girl, however, was cut open in a manner most foul and ghastly: her chest cavity was exposed to the world, torn open no doubt with the instruments around her.

"Jesus. That must be Melissa Watson. And the other two..." Margaret trailed off, before cautiously approaching the body of the woman. She stared carefully at her still face, noting the Watchdog tags dangling from her neck, before pulling back. "They have to be Dogs Meyer and Ford. There's no doubt about it."

Her eyes darted back over to Melissa, and despite her growing nausea, Margaret carefully chanced a look at her exposed chest. The look of utter pain and anguish on Melissa's face told a clear story. "It...looks like they cut her open while she was still alive. And...God, her heart is missing. I can see her other organs, but her heart, it's just...gone."

Anna ran without the slightest pause at Margaret's call, scowling as she quickly caught the scent of rot before anything else.

"Goddammit." She couldn't help but curse again, gripping tighter still at her revolver in a vain attempt to steady her trembling fury. "Goddammit."

Charles followed soon after, only to jerk to a halt with a muttered swear of his own. For all that he had seen of mangled corpses before, more than he could ever count, his stomach roiling as his gaze lingering on the girl's body. Bowing his head, he mumbled a prayer, difficult that it was to muster words.

Anna said nothing further for a long moment, glaring at the corpses, forcing sharp breaths in and out through gritted teeth. Eventually, she spoke up. "Leave them be. We need to keep moving. The heretics can't have gotten far. There has to be a path they took." She ordered, quickly looking further about the room, all the more furiously searching for a hint of a trail.

Anna ran without the slightest pause at Margaret's call, scowling as she quickly caught the scent of rot before anything else.

"Goddammit." She couldn't help but curse again, gripping tighter still at her revolver in a vain attempt to steady her trembling fury. "Goddammit."

Charles followed soon after, only to jerk to a halt with a muttered swear of his own. For all that he had seen of mangled corpses before, more than he could ever count, his stomach roiling as his gaze lingering on the girl's body. Bowing his head, he mumbled a prayer, difficult that it was to muster words.

Anna said nothing further for a long moment, glaring at the corpses, forcing sharp breaths in and out through gritted teeth. Eventually, she spoke up. "Leave them be. We need to keep moving. The heretics can't have gotten far. There has to be a path they took." She ordered, quickly looking further about the room, all the more furiously searching for a hint of a trail.

Margaret nodded, and she rejoined the others in searching out the basement room. It took another ten minutes of thorough and careful search: their target was so well hidden, that it almost escaped Sonia's notice. But she was the first to notice a series of odd scratch marks etched on the floor near a bookcase built into the wall. Her eyes narrowed, and she started pulling at books in a hurry: it was on her fifth try that a soft, sudden 'click' echoed through the room, and the wall partially opened as the bookcase suddenly swung out, revealing a secret tunnel carved through the hotel's foundations.

"Well, they are a cult...I suppose secret entrances and tunnels only makes sense for them," Margaret remarked.

After peering out into the darkness, and seeing no one in the immediate area, they cautiously made their way into the tunnel, Anna leading the way with a candle taken off of the table in the room. The small, paltry light was not nearly enough to illuminate the otherwise darkened tunnel, but it provided enough light to guide them forward, illuminating the path ahead through the barest margin as they traversed through the tunnel.

They traveled for some time: at least ten minute's worth, until they reached a central juncture through the tunnel system. Stretched out before them now where several branching paths: one to the right, one to the left, and one in the center. And, of course, there was the path behind them that led back to the hotel.

"A series of secret tunnels that stretch under the town?" Sonia murmured to herself, eyeing her surroundings warily. Every flicker of shadow had her spooked, and she couldn't help but wonder if and when someone or something would jump out at them. "They must have an extensive operation here. But, if a cult like this has been able to operate in a city like Abernathy, undetected this entire time...well, that only makes sense."

"The question is, which path do we take?" Margaret questioned. "There's no way of knowing which path leads where....I don't see any markers here. Perhaps..."

She trailed off, an idea sparking to her mind. She gestured for Anna to lower their candlelight closer to the ground, and once she did so, Margaret spotted what she was hoping to find. They were faint, but she could see a trail of footsteps leading toward the rightmost tunnel path. Unfortunately, a second set of footprints verged off toward the central tunnel as well, throwing an unfortunate wrench into her discovery.

"Not bad," Sonia complemented. "Assuming these tracks are from those bastards from earlier, then it seems we have their trail. But...hm, no way of telling which set of 'prints is most recent. Hell, for all we know, they could have split up, and gone down different paths..."

"Thank the Lord." Anna murmured ever so faintly as she hurried to Sonia when she found the passage, careful not to let the relief show, intent on given the image of the stern, confident Dog she had to be in such a moment. "Quickly, now. They can't be far ahead."

Of course, they could only move so swiftly in a dark, cramped tunnel, mindful of ambushes that they had to be, and Anna gripped her pistol tight enough to leave her hand trembling once more, furiously aching for the opportunity to use it. Charles followed at the rear, all the more tense in such cramped quarters, keeping a careful watch for any hint of movement behind them.

Anna hissed, but managed to refrain the curse, when they arrived to the passage's split. At Margerat's suggestion, she lowered the light, and let out another annoyed breath as the trail became clearer.

"Damned madness." Charles muttered from the rear, grimacing at the thought of how extensive the scheming had gone. "Should we split?"

"No, we go as one. The Lord will guide us." Anna said, not voicing the inevitability that they had surely split up. Without hesitation, she stepped to the right, and began marching down the tunnel with the light and her pistol raised and readied.

They traveled down along the rightward tunnel, a tense air following the quartet as they moved forward. Pistols drawn and eyes darting to and fro for any sign or hint of danger, the Dogs were on heightened alert as they traversed the area. It took several minutes of travel, but eventually the tunnel they had chosen opened up, revealing its end destination as they exited the end of the tunnel.

The end result was...not quite what anyone there expected.

The tunnel opened up into a vast, excavated cavern, what almost seemed to be some deep mining pit. The open cavern revealed all sorts of excavated pathways and tunnels, leading deeper into all sorts of directions as dozens of new branching paths and tunnels were revealed.

"This is..." Sona trailed off, at a loss for words as she took in the sheer scope of the area. "What is this? Did they build some sort of elaborate tunneling system all over the town?"

"Maybe..." Margaret voiced, though her tone was doubtful. "I...it almost seems more like a mine, than anything else. As if they were digging for something."

"For what?" Sonia immediately questioned with an incredulous tone. "There isn't any gold in these parts, not that I've heard. Or any other sort of precious metal or minerals. What on earth could they be digging for?"

She was silent, however, her eyes taking in the wide expanse before them. Something itched in the back of her head, as if she were forgetting something very important. Something about all of this seemed....achingly familiar to Margaret. But, why?

"He Who Walks the Desert Night..." she murmured to herself, recalling the name Father Mycroft had given for his god. That, too, seemed familiar to her.

Sonia gave her an odd look, but shook her head thereafter. She glanced over at Anna instead, and voiced a thought that almost all of them had to be thinking.

"We should turn back and check out that middle tunnel. If anyone ran down here....there's no telling where they could be now. This place is too big with too many tunnels all around: perfect to get lost in, if not ambushed in. We'd be better off coming back to this area with a militia at our side, or some sort of backup."