Beneath Shadows and Insects

The walk back to Broadhurst ends with Abbott Loric running out to hug Violet and grab Alecs by the arm, just to be sure the famous Violet's Savior is real. Alecs tells a dramatic tale about teamwork, mentions his name several times, and corrects nothing. Hank explains that the goblins were bleeding Violet to open the sealed stairs under the tomb, and that what they really wanted was an abbot. The abbot is indignant: they know where he lives.

The party takes its first real respite. Ashley starts on the faux-sense lenses with Trian helping, Hank and Mia research the tomb in the abbot's library, Alecs commissions twenty signed headshots of himself, and Khanarch fishes like a bear, standing at the water with his mouth open until a salmon jumps in.

Breakfast goes sideways when Targon, leader of the Gilded Hand, finds them eating standing up in the inn's hallway. Hank calls his company the Broken Hand. Trian asks, very politely, whether Targon is a mason, a day laborer or a chef, and sends dry toast to his table. Targon warns them not to test him.

The barmaid says the tavern's meat orders keep coming up short, and Brune the butcher says meat shrinks when you cook it. Reeve Rosamund, over a glass of milk, adds the rest: thefts from the granary and smokehouse, a stonemason feuding with the Gilded Hand, a woodcutter who won't go into the Silver Wood, a carpenter who came back sick and is hiding, a furrier whose traps keep breaking, and a charcoal burner named Orson who wants to see the heroes.

Orson admits, quietly, that a giant bug scared him so badly he fled and lost his brass amulet, and please don't tell Ellery. Ellery, next door, is burning what is left of her prize pig. The trail leads into a maze of acid-wet tunnels, the party's first montage, and on the second try every hero earns a Victory.

At the end of the tunnels is an arixx, a horse-sized mantis in a lair of bones. It burrows, erupts under Khanarch and drags him underground. The floor is full of pits and the party falls into nearly all of them. Hank keeps it marked, Mia jumps into a hole to heal Khanarch, and Trian keeps singing everyone back onto their feet.

Then the arixx takes its turn, and Trian Redleaf, the troubadour who kept everyone alive for three sessions, is dead. Mia shoves the huge body across the floor. Hank lands the killing blow. The treasure in the bones will have to wait.