The last few days had made Jarod paranoid, and for good reason. It seemed as though fate itself were conspiring against him to turn every bad event into something worse. First it had been a minor scuffle outside the tavern which led to his imprisonment. Then it was losing a sword over the edge of the bridge which had created the whole trifley debacle. Then it was running into those riders in the forest who had turned out to be brigands, creating the situation where they’d nearly gotten killed in the abandoned mine, and from which two of their enemies had escaped.

  That wasn’t to say that it hadn’t been a good thing he’d gotten involved. It was thanks to poking their noses where they shouldn’t be that they had been able to rescue Esther after all. But Jarod was tired of things happening to him. It was time for him to preempt the action.

  When the strange sound echoed from the nearby rooftops again, Jarod decided it was worth investigating. It could be nothing important, maybe just some weird trinket that Chathians put on their roofs, but some intuition told him that it had to be something more.

  “Where are we going?” asked Basma, being pulled along by Jarod. “Did you see something?”

  He’d seen some vague movement atop the rooftops, that was it. “Over there, by the store with all the wagons in front.” What he’d seen wasn’t enough to justify the feeling he had, but after the brigand guarding the cell had taken Esther hostage and escaped into the wild, and after the magic user down in the mines had left with such an ominous message, he didn’t want to take chances.

  They’d made it to the shop Jarod had pointed out. Up close, they could see the wagons were loaded with crates as a couple of workers lazily moved them around into hand wagons or carried the smaller ones. Without stopping, Jarod ran inside an open set of doors with Basma still in tow.

  Inside, they saw all sorts of artwork displayed, from fine art, to intricate rugs. There was a counter off the side with a startled-looking clerk behind it. Jarod ran up and started questioning him.

  “How do we get onto your roof?” he asked, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain himself.

  “I… what?” the clerk screwed up his face, trying to understand the question. “Sir, you are trying to get onto our roof?”

  “Yes, there’s someone up there that we need to get to. Which way do we go?”

  Social (authority) check (6)

  [3] + 1

  Failure

  “Sir, I can’t just let you onto our roof,” the clerk said. “Now, this is a place of business. I suggest you leave, or I’ll be forced to handle the matter less respectfully.”

  Jarod frowned. He didn’t think the clerk had it in him to do any more than call for the guards, but that was already too much of a threat for him to deal with. It was tempting to rush inside, to look for a stairwell up, heedless of what the clerk might do, but there was no guarantee he’d even find a path out.

  He took one last glance around and finally nodded in defeat. The clerk watched him as he left while a few of the other workers who had been unloading the crates gave him funny looks.

  “What was that all about?” Basma said, turning to face him directly.

  Jarod was torn between keeping a lookout for anything else he might be able to spot and giving Basma a straight answer. In the end, he settled for an explanation. “I just feel like we need to get onto the roof to keep an eye out. There’s something wrong. I keep hearing this weird sound.”

  “This is about the sound from earlier?” said Basma. She looked about ready to chide him for being so unreasonable. To Jarod’s surprise, she seemed to relent a little bit, probably because she’d been through much of the same over the last few days. “Look, if you’re really concerned about it, we should just go track down a guard. We aren’t in Cleftshire, we don’t have to do this all on our own.”

  Observation check (?)

  [5]+1

  Failure

  “What would we even say to the guards?” said Jarod. “They’re no more likely to believe us than that clerk in the store was.”

  Basma’s eyes suddenly darted off to a corner behind Jarod. He spun around to track where she was looking.

  “What was it?” Jarod asked. “Did you see something?”

  “I-I don’t know,” she said. “I think there might be someone watching us.”

  “Where? Where was it?

  “Down that side street, there.” Basma pointed down the street to a road that ran alongside one of the walls that contained the hillside and demarcated the district. “I thought I saw… I don’t know. It was like an arm, but it didn’t have a hand at the end of it.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It could have been another of the magic user’s tricks. Something like the long arms — the ifrithet — that he’d summoned down in the mines.

  “Show me,” said Jarod, nudging her in that direction.

  A flicker of something crossed Basma’s face. Doubt, but only for a moment, before she set off down the street at a half-jog. She pulled Jarod through the crowd of people, each busy with their own problems and work for the day, too busy to care much about a pair of humans intent on chasing down whoever they’d noticed.

  In less than a minute, they’d covered the distance to the edge of the district and had run down the side street that Basma pointed out. It was far narrower than the main thoroughfare that they’d been on before. There were still business and crafts shops branching off the road, but not nearly as many people out and about, particularly further down.

  The street continued straight forward, into and partially under the hill that the upper parts of the city were situated on. A 20 foot tall stone ceiling, supported by thick pillars covered half of the path, and multi-storied buildings were carved into the hillside. The underground structures were close enough to the roofs outside that a talented acrobat could jump the distance with some difficulty, or a magic user who could practically teleport could span the gap easily. This seemed as promising a lead as any they’d seen so far.

  They stopped about halfway down the street, trying to spot anything else out of the ordinary.

  Observation check (?)

  [3]+1

  Failure

  Jarod couldn’t see or hear any other signs of the trail. There were certainly still people around, but none of them looked particularly suspicious. Nobody was wearing an oversized trench coat or wielding a wand for them to chase after. They poked their heads into a few shops, but the trail seemed to have gone cold.

  “I don’t know,” said Basma. “That might be the end of it.”

  “I guess,” said Jarod, still looking around for any signs he could pick up on as he talked. He frowned. “I just feel like they’re still watching us.”

  “Maybe we should take a seat,” said Basma, indicating a bench sitting under the shade of the stone roof. “Taking a breather might help us think.”

  Jarod nodded his assent and sat down beside Basma, but he didn’t stop scanning the area, looking for any signs of their watcher. A couple times, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye, but it always seemed to be just regular folks going about their business, pulling a coin purse out of their cloak, or dumping a load of silk outside a shop.

  “Who would want to follow us?” asked Basma. “You don’t think it’s the brigand who used Esther as a hostage, do you?”

  Jarod shook his head. “I thought about it, but he seemed like he just wanted to get out of that dungeon when he escaped. I don’t think he’d harbor a grudge against us, at least not enough of one to track us all the way to Chath. I had a feeling it could be Ionda, the magic user.”

  “Maybe, but he was so scared in the dungeon. He doesn’t seem like the kind brave enough to attack us now that we’re in a city, surrounded by thousands of other people. Besides, it seemed like he mainly just wanted to look around through that mine. He wouldn’t have much of a reason to chase after us any more.”

  Jarod paled when she mentioned that. “Like the stone door that Nikolao picked up. He must be looking for it. We have to track down Nikolao and warn him.”

  Jarod and Basma stood up, doing one more cursory sweep of the area to make sure they weren’t in any immediate danger. There were so many angles they might be surprised from.

  All up and down the street, shops were set into the dirt hillside, providing ample coverage from a magic user who might want to jump them. On the other side of the street, buildings stretched up to, and sometimes beyond, the stone ceiling that was overhead. Then, if they walked another 50 feet down the side street they had entered into, there was a tunnel Jarod noticed that led down further into the hillside. That must be an entrance to the Underground District.

  Suddenly, a familiar face stepped out of that tunnel, seemingly oblivious for the moment to their presence. The armored figure of Abigail appeared around the corner. A watcher, or someone they could enlist to help? Jarod decided doubting Abigail was too much paranoia for the moment.

  “Abigail,” he shouted. “Over here.”

  Abigail glanced around and her face lit up when she saw the two of them standing by the bench. The three of them met in the middle, Abigail with a smile on her face that cocked into curiosity when she saw the serious countenances of Jarod and Basma.

  “I can tell something’s on your mind,” Abigail said.

  “You haven’t noticed anyone suspicious nearby, have you?” Jarod asked.

  “Sort of a weird question to ask before even ‘hello’, but as luck would have it, I did notice someone looking a little jumpy as I was coming out of the Underground District. A vitacean, try’na blend in with the walls a little bit.”

  Jarod looked confused. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Oh yeah, you never were much one for the city, huh?” Abigail laughed. “You’d probably think they’re a little freaky, but those vitaceans are really nothin’ to worry about. Big plant creature. Sentient green vines and all that.”

  Jarod looked even more puzzled. A sentient plant creature? That sounded just like the one he’d been rescued by during his first visit to Chath. Could that be who had been tailing them this whole time? They’d certainly been very enigmatic the first time around.

  “Can you take us to where you saw them?” Jarod asked.

  “Sure,” said Abigail. “They were just around the corner over here.”

  Abigail led them over to the entrance to the Underground District where she’d seen the vitacean. No sooner had they rounded the corner, than they heard a shout from further down the corridor and the sound of rustling leaves. An annoyed looking dwarf rounded a corner further down the tunnel, and the group ran off in that direction.

  The air got noticeably cooler as they descended into the tunnel, and a faint breeze blew cold air up and out. The tunnels here were made of magically-carved stone, smooth nearly to a polish where official signs and illicit graffiti hadn’t been carved into them. Before long, they’d caught up and Jarod saw the same kind of plant creature he remembered trying to make a hasty getaway on limbs not designed for such movement.

  “Stop!” he shouted. Much to his surprise, the creature obliged, and calmly turned to face them.

  The three of them stopped a bit away from the vitacean, wary to approach whoever had been spying on them. Jarod realized that in their mad pursuit, they had turned down another side passage, and found themselves nearly alone in the chamber, with just a couple onlookers further down.

  “Why have you been watching us?” he asked.

  “We have noticed your return,” said the vitacean. “I was sent to investigate, to see if you required more assistance after your last visit. It seems you did, though I know not yet why.”

  “What? What do you mean I need more assistance? I’ve been fine this time.”

  “Perhaps, I have not yet judged the situation myself.”

  Jarod looked at Basma and Abigail, still confused.

  “Do you mean me?” asked Basma.

  The vitacean shook its head. “No, perhaps you do not yet know. There is another one following you.”

  Without further warning, the world exploded in fire.