The night rain fell in a dense curtain.
Rain hammered against the roof of the Song of the Wind, gathered into streams along the eaves, and splashed into the muddy alley below.
Behind the inn, a dry, abandoned well lay half-hidden amid wildly overgrown weeds and the veil of rain.
Katzke silently vaulted over the well's rim, braced his feet against the slick walls, and skillfully slid down into that sunless darkness.
The deeper he went, the heavier the dampness in the air became.
The clammy touch clung tightly to his skin, yet rather than discomforting him, it brought him a solid sense of belonging.
That stench of earth mixed with fermenting rot gradually soothed the nerves that had been wound tight all day by those meddlesome adventurers.
Feeling his way along the narrow passage at the bottom of the well, he paused when he reached a fork.
The fissure on the right sloped upward, its end connecting to the foundation beneath the inn's first-floor storeroom. There was a stone slab there that acid had slowly corroded loose; a light push from below was all it took to enter the inn.
Ordinarily, he preferred this route. It was far more concealed than climbing through the well in the back alley.
But not tonight.
What that mage had said in the hall had put everyone in the inn on edge.
If he emerged from the storeroom now, even the faintest sound could bring unnecessary trouble—especially from that ogre whose ears worked better than its brain, and that dog whose nose was more punchable than its mouth.
He did not linger, continuing down the main passage on the left toward the depths of the underground river.
The gray-white mycelium spreading across the well walls was like a mother's gentle feelers, quietly sensing