Kitch and Grav Devlin's Lore

Brothers to the Grave

Kitch & Grav Devlin’s Story

Originally posted in February 2023

- Chapter I -

The sun went down long ago and most of the denizens of Tenacity quickly followed suit right behind it. Those people are smart. Our story takes us to a place where the smart only tread during the daylight, or not at all. We see two dark figures bobbing up and down with shovels next to a tree and a headstone. These gravediggers are Kitch and Grav Devlin, brothers by blood and traitors by trade. The brothers are shoulders deep in a grave plot and are hoping, against their expectation, that it doesn’t start raining.

A crow perches on the edge of a cold cobblestone marker on the edge of the graveyard’s wall. Its feet dance back and forth on the uneven textures of the stone as it peers down onto the hallowed ground. The crow bobs its head up and down searching for something in the dark.

Kitch kneels down onto the coffin after digging for far too long, tosses the broken lock aside, and peels back the decaying wood. Grav hucks his shovel up over the cart and it lands with a tink and a thud against a large stone lying in the cold moist dirt.

Grav, the younger brother, is a graverobber in his late twenties that looks like a graverobber, with a long pale thin face and an old scar over his left eyebrow from where a shovel dug into his face during a more eventful corpse excavation. He wears a black tunic made from varying qualities of leather, strapped tightly with daggers and concealing several small flasks. His gray cloak hangs from one shoulder and long oily blond hair covers his entire face when it isn't pushed back behind his ears. Grav's usual disposition is frustrated and mostly bored when he isn’t working a job. Right now he wishes he wasn’t working a job though. He wishes he was in a warm tavern trading stories with a few locals and trying to drink an entire barrel of beer.

Kitch, the quieter and more emotionally calculated, older brother is in his early thirties and wears his darker dirty blond hair short and tied back with a neat beard to match. His white face smeared with grave dirt and an oily substance leaking from parts of the ground. His back is covered with a well-worn white cloak and he wears tight black pants and tall riding boots. The clean brown leather of his shoulder straps are adorned with iron buckles that fasten small bags and tools to his chest. While Kitch is usually looking for an angle in conversations to get the upper hand, his current situation doesn’t give him much material to work with, so he just gets to the work at hand.

Kitch expels a large sigh from his chest and keeps working.

“Why do they lock these things?” Grav replies to his brother's sigh. “I mean, they’re buried under six feet of dirt and mud and roots and all sorts of ground nonsense.”

“It’s a high society tradition.” Kitch answers with a short breath.

“Where are they going to go? All it does is cause us trouble.” There is a short pause. “Wait, maybe that’s why they do it!”

There is no response from Kitch other than a smile that Grav can’t see while they stand in a dark hole in the ground. Easier to work in the dark, less attention gets drawn to dark shadowy figures shifting in graveyards at night, even if people see them from their windows.

Grav bends down and gets a better look at the corpse, “We have to start charging by the pound. These Tickets keep getting heavier and heavier. Or maybe we need to start stealing corpses from the poor district? They make them thinner over there.” 

A large bulbous man dressed in formal attire dripping with gold and jewels lays at the bottom of a rotting wooden box in the ground.

“Tell you what Grav, next time we meet with the Undertaker you can request the lightest Ticket she has. Until then, lift with your back.”

Grav meets Kitch down in the coffin. “I thought it was 'lift with your legs'?”

“Grav. Shut it and lift the damn Ticket on three! One...Two..HUURHG!”

They heave the hefty well-dressed corpse up over their knees, regrab to get a better angle, then lift the body above their heads and slide it out of the plot and onto the exposed night’s dirt. They have been working for the Undertaker for the past year now, pulling bodies out of the ground all around the city and bringing them to marked houses. The job sounds a bit odd even for them, but it pays well and the brothers honestly couldn’t care any less as long as their coin purses are full. Nowadays their purses are only full for an evening or two before they need to do another job. The nice part about Tenacity though is there's always someone getting put into the ground, which means there's always someone willing to pay to get them back out.

Grav rolls out of the grave, turns over the shoulder of the corpse, and asks his brother a question that he has asked him almost every drunken night this week, “Why don’t we go after something bigger than Ticket money?”

“Thought you already said you wanted to dig up skinnier people? Changing your mind already?” Kitch jabs.

“You know what I mean,” replies the younger brother, in a lower tone of voice. Grav notices a small pocket watch dangling from the corpse, he unhooks it from the loop in the clothing and drops it into a small bag hanging from his waist.

Kitch sighs again and avoids his brother’s eyes, “Like what? And if you say ‘The Lost Gold of the Tenacity Kings’ again I will bury you in that hole we've just dug.”

“No!” Grav answers quickly, sounding like a child being scolded for the fourth time about the same thing.

They heave the overweight and oblong corpse onto the tiny cart that they brought. The handcart is made of simple wood held together by shoddy, rusted iron. The poor cart creaks and nearly falls apart under the sheer weight of this dead gargantuan. Kitch takes a moment to unfold a piece of paper and confirm the identity of the man as well as read the instructions again. The paper confirms the location for the drop off and clearly indicates that the corpse shall not be altered or stolen from in any way. Kitch raises his eyebrows at the paper, puts it away, and unfolds a large piece of canvas out from a saddlebag draped over the side of the cart and lays it over the Ticket. Grav tosses the Ticket’s arm under the canvas and thinks about approaching the conversation in another way. He’s not good at doing this and wonders why his brain even attempted it. There's a chilly silence for about fifteen seconds as the two brothers finish cleaning up their evidence at the newly created crime scene. Kitch enjoys the silence of a graveyard at night because it sharpens all of his other senses. It's usually a good idea to go into jobs like this with all of your senses working at peak performance, he thinks. This silence is a rarity while working with his brother. When he’s on the job he can tell his brother to be quiet and truly has a reason to say so, every other time he simply just wants him to stop digging them both into debt with his loud mouth.

“But seriously if we just dug deeper under the tavern I bet we could find an access tunnel that--'' Kitch pierces an icy stare at his brother that stops his speech immediately. Grav’s spine tingles and shudders as he looks at the cart and absentmindedly ties something to something else.

"Scrraaaw." The silence and tension between the brothers sends a crow to fly from the top of the graveyard gate. Or the crow decided to fly away at the same time, either way the crow flies off into the darkness and leaves the brothers truly alone in the graveyard.

Grav quickly finishes the last knot on the canvas and tightens it down with a satisfying sound, securing the Ticket back into another dark enclosed space that it had grown accustomed to over the last few months.

The cemetery rests while the two living creatures take another soul from its soil. The rocks stand contented that they are too big to excavate from the cemetery dirt. The thin and patchy grass waves goodbye to them as they start to pack up and leave the hallowed grounds.

Kitch sighs.

Grav picks up his shovel, waits the appropriate amount of time to let his brother settle, and decides to just change the subject to another job. “I was going to say, what about that job that Serena was telling us about? The one about the magick book or something. The Book of Tor-vuld.”

Kitch sighs again.

“You know you’re going to pass out if you keep breathing like that.” interrupts Grav.

Kitch inhales sharp and quick, “Tervahl. You mean, ‘The Book of Tervahl’.”

Grav tossed his shovel onto the cart, “Yeah, that’s the one. Why don't we go and steal a nice light book.” Kitch takes his brother's shovel and secures it to the side of the cart where it is supposed to be.

“No.” Kitch picks up the cart alone and starts making his way out of the back of the cemetery. The cart starts squeaky as it slowly rolls under the sheer weight of the dead fat oaf. The cart hits rock after rock, making squeaks and thuds between the footsteps and quiet bickering the brothers are freely trading.

Very naively and naturally Grav asks, “How are we supposed to get enough gold to buy a tavern and open a guild if we don’t take risks to get more gold?”

“Risks are better when they are calculated, and risks with Serena are twice the risk with half the payout. Simple as that.”

“Then I think we should calculate the risks for the free gold hidden under the city held by the kings of Tenacity!” Grav blurts out a little too quickly and loudly for this time of the night.

“Unholy Mother of Merdah! Shut! Up!” yells Kitch.

Grav gets very quiet. Kitch gets very quiet. The cart stops moving and gets very quiet. The dead stay quiet.

They both look up and down the street which is somehow more still and silent than it was before. The echo of the yell bounces down alleyways and up buildings. A large gray-blue cat slowly chews a fish head next to a toppled over trash can. A lamp light gets lit from inside a building facing the graveyard. Both of the brothers look at each other and quickly have the same brain working in both of their bodies. They get off the street immediately and down into the sewers via an access tunnel door. The noise settles into the cold corners of the street and everything returns to the normal level of silence after a few moments. The cat makes his way towards the newly unearthed smells coming from the graveyard with its own treasure to bury.

- Chapter II -

The next morning the streets are bustling with vendors and merchants selling their wares trying to not look too hard at the Tenacity guards setting up a perimeter around the desecrated graveyard. The Guard are simply following procedure and going through the motions. They follow the orders given to them by the equally ambivalent lawmakers of the city. This crime scene is a bit different since the corpse that was robbed was of noble blood and that means an in-depth investigation by an Inspector must be worked in parallel. The Inspectors are not legally part of Tenacity's government; they are owned and operated outside of any government. This affords them the abilities that they are known for: kidnapping, torture, theft, and overall being menaces to anyone that they deem relevant to the crime they are investigating.

There is a single masked figure silently walking around the graveyard and reviewing the site of the robbery. Two guards are off to the side watching the masked figure make notes about the gravesite with grace and precision.

“Never liked those Inspectors, bunch of creeps if you asked me. They always move around so quickly and…creepily like. You know?” one guard mutters to the other.

“I don’t know, I think they’re kind of cute.” the second guard replies.

“... Kerwin, no.” responds the first guard.

Kerwin, a tall and heavily armored female that is currently drinking from a glass flask responds, “What? I don’t piss all over your weird things!”

“W-weird!? What're you talking about?” stammers the first guard as she adjusts her belt and turns to face the second.

“Yeah, that stuff with the woodland guy that has the foxtail. That stuff is weird Gayle. All of us know about it and we try to keep it quiet, but it's just weird.” Kerwin was nursing a rough night and a rougher morning, so her verbal filtering was turned off for the moment.

“Woah Woah Woah, that’s going too far!" Gayle exclaims a bit too loudly for Kerwin's sensitive ears. "I know about your 'weird stuff' too Kerwin and you don't see me mentioning the jesters and other masked freaks I see littered around your house at 3 in the morning. I have to walk by them just to rile you out of your morning state whenever we have a shift scheduled together!”

The two guards get into a longer discussion that turns into a bit of a spectacle adjacent to the grave robbery scene in the cemetery. There are many gestures tossed back and forth between them and they can be clearly linked to specific actions. Even the people on the other end of the graveyard that cannot hear the guards know exactly what they are discussing, and in great visual detail.

Kerwin finally throws her hands up, “Look, forget it! All I meant was that you have your stuff and I have mine," she finishes drinking the rest of the flask, "Nothing wrong with your weird wooded fantasies, and nothing wrong with my clown-based activities. I was just mentioning that I like the Inspectors, yeah they’re creepy, but in like a sexy, creepy sorta way. You know the strong silent type of guy that doesn’t have to say anything to get their point acr--” Kerwin stops mid-sentence as the Inspector is now directly behind both of the guards having this discussion. “oohp--” Kerwin chokes as she stands straighter than she ever has in her life just waiting for the Inspector to make any sort of move to end this horrifying moment.

The Inspector silently and slowly moves a copy of the gravesite report towards Kerwin's hand from behind her. Kerwin makes the smallest movement possible to grab the report as the Inspector turns away from them and glides towards the exit of the cemetery. The tension of the moment sits in the throats of Gayle and Kerwin until the Inspector is completely out of sight. Gayle eventually swallows loudly and scans the paper that Kerwin is still holding in the air where she grabbed it. She finds their assignment written on it.

‘Head to the Duned Inn to question the locals about the crime and find potential leads.’

“Unholy mother of Merdah, I can’t believe we got away with that," Kerwin says in one quick breath.

Gayle looks up from the paper at Kerwin, “We!? You were the one verbally undressing the guy.”

Kerwin adjusts her armor around her waist, starts securing the paper away, and clears her throat, “Listen, let’s just get the newbie to clean up this cemetery so we can get a jump on this lead.”

“Wait a minute,” Gayle says, flicking at the report. “There’s something written on the back of the paper.”

Kerwin takes the assignment paper with both hands and turns it over. A moment passes and Kerwin visibly blushes under her helmet.

“You dirty dog, he didn’t.” Gayle slaps Kerwin on the back of her plate mail. Kerwin smiles. “Let’s get to the Duned Inn and celebrate with a round on me you weird little circus freak."

The two guards bark some orders at a lower-level cadet and make their way out of the cemetery towards the west end of the city.

The rest of the lower-level Guard clean up the grave site and pack up their tools. Once everyone is gone, the merchants begin selling their wares a bit louder and with more enthusiasm out on the streets. There are a few moments where the entire graveyard seems to stand still. A moment of peace and reflection, then, leaves start to fall on the ground again with a satisfying rustling sound. No one asked, but this is exactly how the graveyard wants it to be.

- Chapter III -

The Duned Inn is a well-off establishment. In the sense that it's a front for thieves and cutthroats planning all sorts of devious plans; from stealing corpses to robbing small businesses. All of this is well known throughout the city, but the tavern owner pays his dues to the Guild and to the Tenacity Guards, so there isn’t any trouble from either of the local groups. The inn itself got the name because it's built under a crumbling building that resembles a massive sand dune. Although, many of the creatures that enjoy the contents between the walls of this building have never seen a sand dune. The owner stopped trying to explain where the name came from a long time ago, now when people ask he just gives them a grunt and goes into the cellar for another cask, or just simply walks away. Most of the time the inn serves as a pub for everyday Tenacity workers and drunks that used to be workers. The establishment becomes an inn when the patrons drink too much and need a place to sleep it off; no one with a sober mind would choose to sleep there.

Kitch and Grav stand against the bar ordering their fourth round of drinks, while currently working through their third round of drinks, and talking with their favorite barkeep Miranda. She’s a fine looking woman with short black hair tied back behind a dirty face. She acts more like a scoundrel than most of the scoundrel-looking patrons of the bar, but she always fills the brother’s mugs to the brim, and they love her for it. She pushes around some of the dirty water on the countertop in an attempt to clean away some of the grim. It doesn’t work and actually might have made the countertop even grimier. She carefully wipes around a full pint of beer that sits alone, being very careful not to spill any or dirty the glass anymore than it already is. The brothers see her cleaning the mug and nod in her direction and raise their glasses to it. They are trying as hard as they can to not look anyone directly in the eye though and the other patrons are returning the favor. It’s about the time of the evening that most people are just looking to punch something in the eye and the brothers, finally, know enough to not be on the receiving end of those looks and/or those punches. The air in the bar is heavy and polluted with smoke and bad language. Grav, using his peripherals, quickly looks around to gauge the authority of the room a bit more, but he's not as tactful as his brother. Grav sees a man sitting at the bar with a careworn face and the clothes of a hard worker. The man quietly drinks from his glass and everyone seems to be leaving him alone. He seems content to be where he is. Grav also notices a few gruff sailors singing and drinking loudly. He can actually hear one of them chugging his drink even with the distance of the bar between them. What Grav is happy about is that he’s not noticing any sort of legal figures, Guild or Guard. He picks up his drink and pulls a large amount of liquid into his throat, a bit splashing into his lungs as he coughs and slaps his hand down on the bar. Kitch hates how Grav drinks, not the volume or what he's like when he's drunk, just physically how he holds his drink. He loops his thumb through the mug handle, lets the mug rest against the inside of his wrist, and then drinks from the rim of the mug opposite the handle. It's infuriating to watch.

Kitch glares over at his brother, “You’re an idiot.”

Grav coughs again.

Eventually, the barkeep wanders away to help another patron who evidently isn’t drunk enough and the two grave-based entrepreneurs grab their new round of drinks and pull away from the bar in the attempt to find a quieter section of the pub. The pub section they walk away from is alive with yelling and laughter and quiet brooding simultaneously. The floor is as sticky as you would imagine it being in a place that doesn't own a mop and deals in poisonous liquid that people drink for fun. There are brown and black liquids that look like sap and tar coating the wooden floorboards. In some sections, it looks like these unknown substances have joined together to form a new type of ambient creature. Kitch steps in something both slick and sticky, slips a bit and then catches himself with his other foot landing in a stickier and fresher substance. The brothers do the necessary steps in the dance that takes them through the bar and to the far wall of the Duned Inn. A small fight breaks out between some fishermen and the sailors over boat sizes and classifications of sail shaping. The brothers take this opportunity to sneak deeper into the building down a long hallway. They walk down the hallway and see that it has a few closed doors that lead into smaller rooms for discussions, or for belligerent drunks to pass out within. Some drunks didn't make it to their rooms and were simply cast down in front of the door to sleep off their night and earn their headaches.

"Got to love a place like this," Kitch says as he tries to scrap some half-sentient goop from his shoe, "you could almost set your watch by how often a fight breaks out."

"I've always preferred the dead, a lot less fighting back when you punch them." Grav leans against a doorframe to give Kitch something to steady himself on as he scrapes his boot as clean as he can. "How about in here?".

"Wai–" Grav opens the door abruptly to reveal a man tied to a chair with bloody clothes covering his face and arms. A tall man with a curved bronze dagger stands behind him but turns to look at the doorway when Grav opens it.

There is a noticeable pause between both parties.

“--t!" Kitch finishes as he reaches past his brother to close the door. "Excuse us."

The man inside, clearly not phased by the interruption, returns to his work as indicated by the muffled screaming from the unlucky man tied down. Another small pause as the two brothers turn to walk deeper into the darkened hallway. “Rule number two hundred; Don’t get involved with the Reaths,” says Kitch as he points to a red tassel hanging from the door handle. Kitch releases the door and they walk down the inn’s hallway further.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” responds Grav.

“That would be nice for a change,” Kitch says snidely.

"Huh?"

The two of them slowly creep deeper into the inn with their beers in hand. As they walk further away from the center of the building the walls seem to grow dense and echo the sounds of revelry less and less. Kitch finds a closed door missing a handle and a latch. The candle on the sconce outside the door is down to its last sputtering length of wick. Kitch waits for a moment and then knocks on the door.

Grav looks at his brother, “Do you honestly expect someone to answer?”

“Look, last time we just jumped into a room I almost had to get involved with a Reath assassin. I figured at least we could try to be polite this time.”

Kitch doesn’t hear anything coming from the other side of the door so he nudges the bottom of the door with his rough, but slightly cleaner, leather boot. The door opens and the brothers see, what appears to be, a dusty old library or study that has been either abandoned or looted many times throughout its existence. They look up and see a giant hole in the ceiling where the original library once stood. It appears that the building above the Duned Inn used to have a library in it, the majority of it now belonging to the Duned Inn owners. The light that pours in from the weak candle in the hallway can barely illuminate the first few stacks of books.

Kitch sees a small table with a few slightly broken chairs, “This will be fine.” Kitch begins to search around his belt and in his bag. “Damn, I thought I had more candles in here.”

Grav hands Kitch a fistful of half-burned-down thin candles. “Will these work?”

Kitch stares at Grav and takes the candles from his hand without looking at them. He pulls them closer to his face and notices they look very familiar with something else he was just looking at. “Where did you get these?”

“Swiped them from behind the bar when Miranda wasn’t looking.”

“Heh,” Kitch smiles as he places the candles on some dusty coasters and begins lighting them, “Honestly they should get better security in here.”

Grav is already busy flipping through a book that he found on a kicked-in desk and doesn’t notice his brother’s comment. Kitch finishes lighting the stolen candles and straightening the chairs around the table in the desolate library nook. They both sit and attempt to find an unlevel point in the floor to match the unlevel feet of the chairs they’ve chosen. They both sort of succeed in this effort and look at each other, ready to start their conversation.

"So," Grav starts, "what did we haul in from the last job?"

"The Ticket? You were there, you saw him. It was a great big fat guy that nearly broke our cart." Kitch says, attempting to stall and perhaps divert away from the issue he's about to tell his brother.

"Not the fat guy, the coin! What kind of gold did we get for that highborn grave job?" Grav yell-asks again before taking a large drink from his beer.

Kitch takes a breath, "It's not great." Grav swallows quickly and looks up from his mug. Kitch shifts his weight and nearly falls off his chair because a floorboard falls in about an inch.

"How not great is 'not great'?"

"150." Kitch breathes in and knows what’s coming.

Grav stands up quickly and knocks the chair out from under himself, the chair falls back and breaks apart in almost every way possible. It is now just a pile of sad wood without a purpose.

"Are you kidding me!? That pays for our drinks tonight and TO-NIGHT ON-LY," Grav enunciates, "and that's IT! If we're going to keep stealing these rich corpses from rich graveyards then we need to start getting paid for it like rich people who rob graves!" Grav is now making more noise than their neighbor who is currently being tortured to death.

"You're right," Kitch states very clearly and calmly.

Grav is unsure about how to handle this new situation of his brother agreeing with him during a tantrum. He assumes it is a trap and proceeds carefully. He takes a few seconds to calm down and settle himself. Grav makes his way back over to the table where Kitch is still sitting calmly. He broke his only chair, so he just leans casually against the unlevel table instead.

Kitch's hand swings down into one of his bags and takes out a small pen and paper. "You are quite correct. What was the last haul that we brought in?" he asks his, now calmer, brother.

"I don't remember, I think it was the high-born smithy lady."

"That's right, and the job before that?" Kitch begins writing quickly.

"The little goblin merchant I think." Grav answers and then smiles, "I liked that Ticket because it didn't hurt my back to carry him. Plus he was dressed all nicely so he didn’t stink as much."

"Exactly. Are you seeing a pattern here at all?" Kitch asks somewhat rhetorically as he writes faster.

Grav doesn't answer because he's swallowing the rest of his beer.

Kitch continues, "Every Ticket we've gotten has been highborn, rich beyond anything we could imagine, or they are a part of the Trilu--". Kitch cuts off his speech since he doesn't hear anything. There is a distinct lack of commotion down the hallway leading to the main tavern. Kitch goes to the doorway and leans his back up against the door frame. He slides a finger between the door and the frame to peek out and tries to see down the hallway.

"Snuff those candles out and don't make a sound." he whisper-yells to Grav half-sitting on the table now holding his brother's beer. He slides the door open just wide enough to fit his head and peers down the hallway. There are two Tenacity guards pushing patrons of the Duned Inn up against a wall of the tavern. One of the guards is drinking a beer and pointing to certain patrons and making rude gestures with her fingers.

Kitch pulls the door closed, as best he can with the hole in the door where the handle should be. He walks back to his brother, "What's the date today Grav?"

"No idea, I could barely tell you what time of day it is right now."

Kitch glares at his brother slightly, "I'm taking a guess here, but it might be the end of the month for the Tenacity guards. Which is bad, really bad timing for us."

Another blank stare from Grav as he finishes Kitch's drink.

"This means that the dirty guards of Tenacity are looking to make up for their ever-lacking quotas, and they always start in the taverns." Kitch explains quickly and quietly to his slowly inebriated brother, "We need to get out of here now. Our wanted posters are still up everywhere from that last stunt you pulled outside of the alchemy shop."

Grav drunkenly smiles into his brother’s beer mug and looks down like a dog that was just yelled at for jumping on the table and eating your sandwich.

Kitch continues, "Start looking for an exit or a secret passage or something. This place reeks of 'secret library passageway'".

The two thieves start searching and tossing the poor old dusty library for anything that might help them escape this room and the entirety of the Duned Inn. Grav wades into piles of books stacked on the ground knocking them over, while Kitch starts pulling on sconces and some of the books that are still on shelves and bookcases. A few moments pass as the brothers make a mess of an already messy room. Grav starts getting anxious and makes his way over to the door to see what his brother was talking about.

Kitch sees his brother walking towards the door, "What are you doing?".

"I'm just going to look and see how bad it is," Grav responds, sounding a lot calmer than he truly is.

"Fine, but make it quick. I think I found something in the floor over here."

Grav pushes his finger between the door and the frame like he saw his brother do. The door starts twisting in its hinges and pushes slightly open. Grav gasps and pulls back into the room.

Kitch slides his fingers into a small wooden hatch in the ground and feels an odd electrical coolness wash over his hands, "What the hells was that Grav?"

Grav starts mouthing words and making movements with his hands in the dimly lit room.

Kitch squints, "I can't see what you're doing." Kitch starts walking over to the door. Grav slaps his hand away and whispers, "A guard is coming down the hall."

"Okay, okay, alright. The hatch. Go uncover the rest of the hatch in the floor. It might lead to a basement or a hidden cask storage room or something."

As Grav starts making his way over to where his brother was clearing the floor he hears a sound like a skeleton clearing its throat from beneath the floorboards. He stops dead in his tracks and looks back to his brother to see if he heard the noise as well, "Did you just he--" the same noise returns louder, this time the two of them do not doubt what they both just heard.

The hatch suddenly begins to creak under the sounds of distant wailings from under the floor. The brothers simply stare in horror at the small hatch in the floor as they are unable to move or think straight. Between the noises coming from the floorboards and the impending doom of the guards about to open the door, the two of them can only become spectators to the events that are unfolding. The noise slowly fades from below the floorboards and the room becomes silent and cold again. The hatch begins to open very slowly on its own until it is entirely flipped over and completely open, exposing a small passageway in the floor.

The chill hits both of them as they take a deep inhale of the cold, musty air now emanating from the hidden hole in the floor.

“O-o-o-O-Okay!,” stammers Grav, “ Rule forty thousand and thirty-eight or whatever! We don’t go into scary ghost holes that open on their own!”

The brothers hear their neighbor’s door open and yelling begin.

Kitch pulls the broken door to the room fully closed, grabs his brother’s arm, and pushes him towards the open hatch, stopping at the mouth of the hatch, “We do now.”

- Chapter IV -

The clearly haunted hole in the floor beckons with an air of bittersweet freedom. The only two living creatures in the room have been staring at the floor for exactly six seconds, their brains darting back and forth between being imprisoned in the Tenacity jails and wondering if what is down there is worse than jail. The hatch lies on its back leaving the opening to reveal the top of a black iron spiral staircase that leads down below the Duned Inn. Grav thinks for a moment and imagines the descent into the crypt of the city where the rats gather and discuss their next feed and jobs. Kitch isn't thinking for once in his life, snaps out of it, and starts pushing his brother into the hole as fast and as quietly as he can. Kitch descends the first few stairs and closes the hatch behind him on his way down. The shouting from the next room over stops and he can hear footsteps in the hallway.

Grav's boots hit the putrid liquid that runs through the small tunnel first. Once all four boots land on the soggy ground, the brothers take a breath into their lungs and immediately regret it. The sewer itself smells worse than any graveyard they've ever been in, or under. It's not just the human waste and bodies, although they do smell terrible, the walls and pipes are leaking something that smells cold and devoid of life, and somewhat reminds Kitch of what he stepped in earlier. The smell has now settled inside their noses and their bones shiver between their muscles. The tunnel itself is wide enough for the two of them to walk through side-by-side, but they both need to duck in order to avoid the hanging roots and moss tickling their heads. Pieces of iron or thick metal poke out from the walls and ceiling. The ground seems to be cobblestone and brick covered in dirt, slime, and decaying waste.

"ooOHAAgh-" Grav gasps as he both dry heaves and inhales at the same time.

Kitch pulls a bit of cloth from his pouch and wraps it around his face. He hands some to his brother, but Grav is already doing the same with his own piece of cloth.

“I sincerely doubt this thin piece of cloth will do much against whatever is down here, but I’m not going to risk it,” Kitch whispers to Grav.

In a normal speaking volume, Grav replies, “I think we are well past whispering at this point.” Wiping the spit from his mouth he tightens the cloth mask down around the back of his head. Once he completes the task, Grav reaches into his pack and pulls out two more candles.

“Okay, how many of those did you actually take?”

“Do you want one or not,” replies Grav. Kitch takes one from his brother and lights it from a smoldering sconce that is hanging on one of the tunnel walls.

“Come to think of it, why are there sconces down here at all? And why are they still smoldering?” Kitch asks his brother as he turns around.

“-BRAAWHGGLLL!” Grav replies with a short vomit into the center of the tunnel where a thin channel of liquid is running. He makes an effort to dab his mouth with the remaining bit of cloth that isn’t covered in his own vomit. It doesn’t work.

Kitch looks at his brother with both sympathy and irritation, “Alright, let’s just keep moving. This tunnel has to lead somewhere. Someone has clearly been here recently, these sconces don’t take much time to burn down to their coals.”

His brother answers with a delayed, “-buh.”

The tunnel seems hand dug since the width and height of it keeps changing every hundred feet or so. The brothers are able to easily walk through it with their heads ducked, but more and more things keep seeming out of place. A small lantern with a flickering flame half submerged in the channel, a large rock that seems to be cut ornately, and a woman’s beautiful yellow dress garnished with pearls and rubies seemingly hung from one of the pieces of iron protruding from the walls of the tunnel. Grav eyes the loot, but Kitch pulls him away shaking his head.

“Two questions. One, are we hallucinating? Two, are we going to die down here?” asks Grav.

Kitch hesitates and then runs his hand over the dress and lets it play around his fingers as he walks by. After a few more paces deeper into the tunnel, Kitch holds up his candle to illuminate the rest of the tunnel and answers him, “Maybe.”

Both men walk a couple dozen more paces in verbal silence. Trying to mostly step on the cobblestones and bricks. The only noises are their boots sloshing in and out of the muck covering the stones and a faint trickling of vile liquid from the walls.

“You only answered my first question.”

“No, I answered both.”

The brothers find an opening at the end of the tunnel with large flat stones and long pieces of wood holding up the sides, creating an entranceway. As they get closer they realize the stones are grave markers and headstones. The brothers pass by them without a second glance, they only have one way to go at this point and stopping isn’t getting them out of this disgusting place any quicker. The two of them stumble into an antechamber with large ornate pillars framing either side of a large wooden door wrapped in iron bands. The door and pillars must be at least 40-feet tall. The pillars depict well-dressed gargoyles pulling humanoid creatures up from the bottom of the pillars to the top. The wooden door is stained dark, old, and worn, but doesn’t look like a regular human could even move it let alone open it.

The brothers adjust their clothing for a moment before mentally preparing to tackle this immovable door problem. The two of them simultaneously feel like a skeleton’s hand tickles their bones from their lower spine up to the base of their skulls. The two intuitively turn around quickly to view down the long tunnel they have been trudging through to hear the same noise that alerted them to this dark cavern in the first place. Only, this time, much louder, and much closer. Kitch draws his daggers as Grav throws down his mask and heaves himself at the large iron door.

“No! No! No! No!” Grav screams as he starts pushing with all of his strength against the heavy door. His feet start slipping on the grime-covered stone until his foot hits a solid cobblestone. This gives him the resistance he needs to put his shoulder into his push. As Grav starts pushing against the heavy metal and wood door, his brother notices that a massive gust of powerful air explodes from behind the door and starts rumbling the antechamber. Kitch sees the door opening inwardly towards his brother, he grabs him by the back of his tunic and pulls him out of harm's way from the door before it swings wildly open and hits the wall of the antechamber next to them. The shock of the impact rattles the iron in the door and shakes the bricks in the walls of the room. Kitch and Grav rush into the newly opened room and hide on either side of the doorway. As they clear the way of the door and peek down the tunnel, they hear the horrific sound bouncing down the tunnel after them louder and louder. Kitch turns his head and hides it behind the door. Grav squints hard and can finally see the thing that is making the noise. A light blue skull the dimensions of a full-sized goblin is careening down the tunnel shrouding everything behind it with a green mist. Grav ultimately pulls away from the door as a blast of air screams past them and into the new room they broke into. At this moment the brothers finally turn to see the cavern on the other side of the opened doors.

The graverobbers are standing at the top of a very large, long stairway looking out over three large alleys the width of city streets. The lanes themselves are lined on either side with large tightly-packed plots of gravestones and mausoleums. The necropoles unfold far into the distance and get enveloped by the darkness of the cavern the farther out the brothers look. The stairs they stand on are covered in cobblestones and bricks, the same materials line the pathways between the plots further below and seem to be much cleaner than the ones the brothers familiarized themselves with while getting here. The cavern itself stretches hundreds of feet upwards until it is met with toothy and sharp stalactites covering the entire surface. The edges of the cavern are dripping with dark stony teeth that almost touch the floor of the cave. Nearly every part of this cave is illuminated with green and blue flames that hover around broken lanterns, the corners of mausoleums, the streets, and high up around the ceiling of this cave. The skull that shot past them is swirling up over the undead city as it arcs back down to land on a platform covered with enormous glass jars and clay containers off in the distance.

Kitch finally pulls off his cloth mask and tosses it to the floor, “I think we might have bigger problems than germs at this point…”

Both Kitch and Grav share a silent moment before the walls of the cavern seem to reverberate with the booming and guttural sound of screams. The wailing ceases and the brothers catch the movement of something on the platform where the floating murder-skull landed. Before they can shift their eyes to see anything better, a voice calls out.

“Welcome…”

The voice booms as it echoes around the room and into the eardrums of the brothers. They see arcane runes appear around their feet as they struggle to comprehend what is happening to their minds. They feel a wave of energy wash over them, heat, cold, heat, a flash of light, darkness, fuzzy images, and then their bodies heave onto a smooth stone ground. In an instant, the brothers are now on their hands and knees within the center of the platform they saw in the necropoles. Both brothers feel their skin crawling as the teleportation circle fades from under them.

"Welcome to the Tenacity Undercity, my decrepit seeking freelancers."

Kitch looks up first, while holding his chest and gasping for air, he sees a tall figure draped in a long gray robe that has accents of black, gold, and purple running throughout the fabric. His hands are covered in bejeweled rings that shimmer from both reflected light and the imbued magickal effects cast upon them. There is a large tome floating a few inches above one of his hands, the pages turn rhythmically. Kitch finally makes his way up to the face of this creature to see that he looks like an older distinguished man in his mid to late 60s, but there is something very haunting about his demeanor. The skin appears to be pulled back across his face and pinned there under a wig. There are thin metal accessories seemingly attached to his head, all of them having odd symbols and decorations hanging from them.

Grav tries to speak and mimic the creature, “ooo- waaakklome…”

“Stand.” The tall figure orders the trespassers.

Both Grav and Kitch stand up in an instant with a crackling energy coursing through their muscles and bones, snapping them to attention. They feel as though their bodies are being controlled by an outer-worldly force. Kitch tries to move his hand and can barely wiggle his finger, but he feels as though trying to move any more than that would upset their new host and cause something awful to happen to his mind or his spirit, and Kitch likes both of those things the way they are. Grav simply uses all of his newfound energy to not pass out or vomit. He succeeds in not doing either.

They both stay very still.

The older figure speaks again, “Hmm, not a lot of you come wandering down here anymore. Not since the last, what did you call it?" He turns a few rings around on his fingers. "Ah yes, a festival I believe they called it.”

Kitch attempts to start speaking and his throat makes a sound that he isn't familiar with. He closes his mouth and clears his throat. The figure in front of Kitch shows his annoyance by flicking through a few pages in his tome.

Kitch looks at Grav to gauge the level of involvement he can rely on getting from his brother at this time. Grav has one eye open and it isn’t even looking at the creature towering over them that’s taking control of their bodies. Kitch is on his own for these negotiations.

Kitch attempts to speak again, "Sir. We are humbled by your presence and w-".

The figure raises his slightly decaying hand, his rings clink together between the long fingers, and Kitch feels his mouth go numb. "Let's skip to the more interesting part of the conversation, shall we?"

Kitch nods as his lips drool slightly and the liquid lands on his boot.

The tall gray figure continues, "I know who you are. In fact, Kitch, I know you so well because I'm the one who has been hiring you for the little expeditions into the world above."

"Uhhbubuh." Replies Kitch and Grav simultaneously. Grav, who is finally becoming more aware of the impending danger they are in, has also woken up enough to be part of the conversation.

"I will admit though, having you stumble into my undead city is a bit of a coincidence that I'm not even entirely comfortable with. But with both of you in the profession of robbing graves, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised."

Kitch starts thinking that this creature really likes the sound of its own voice. He starts looking for ways that he might be able to get him and his brother out of this situation. He scans the platform they are standing on but doesn’t see a way down from where they are, other than the teleportation that got them there in the first place. Kitch notices a lull in the talking and then quickly meets the gaze of his captor again.

“I feel as though I haven’t made my position in this arrangement clear enough. Let me ease everyone’s minds.” The figure waves his hand and Grav falls to the ground in a lifeless heap. Kitch attempts to lunge for him and suddenly his limbs snap back into standing attention. "Now now le–" the figure is cut short by Kitch's scream.

"NO! GRAV!” Kitch stares back into the eyes of the creature, “PLEASE!" Kitch forces his eyes down, stares at his dead brother, and tightens his hands until the bones show their color through his skin. His mouth continues to move, uttering the same words without saying them. His lungs seem dry and empty as his mind screams around inside his head. His hand actually moves a few inches from where it is being held in place by the creature's abilities. The creature makes an intrigued 'hmm' noise as it notices this. Kitch allows some air into his lungs to be immediately spent again, "NO!" He then releases the pressure from his hands and lets out a whimper, "...please."

The figure floats over to Kitch and looks into his wet eyes. Kitch is not paying any attention to the creature as his brother lies unmoving on the platform's surface. "Interesting response for someone in your position. I figured you'd be accustomed to the dead at this point in your career." The large gray figure says with an odd charismatic tone to his voice.

Kitch ricochets his eyes to stare directly at the figure that is now hovering a few inches from him. His brain enters a tactical negotiation mode. "What do you want? I'm clearly still alive so you want something, and if that's the case then you already know what I want." A sharp breath is drawn into Kitch's chest to refill his exhausted lungs. "Give me back my brother."

"I told you I wanted to get to the interesting part of the conversation. And we've arrived!" The tall figure speaks sarcastically, cracks his knuckles, and moves a few rings around on gangly fingers. "I figured you'd be happy to have more of the cut if there were less of you, but as usual, the living are always more complicated than anticipated. I can revive your brother." Kitch perks up slightly. Partly because of the realization that his brother is actually dead in front of him, but also because it can be undone by this undead monster. "And I will.”

The figure catches a small blue flame wisp floating by and crushes it into its bony palm, presses its fingers together, and releases a small ball of yellow energy, “Like this.”

The energy hovers over to the side of Grav's head and nestles into the skin with a shocking jolt. Grav's body lurches a few inches off from the ground, he gasps, grabs his chest, and looks like he just ran a hundred miles in thirty seconds. "Merdah! Mother of all unholy darkness an-", Grav squeaks out of his mouth before needing to breathe in again and hold his chest.

The gray figure releases its hands in an oddly welcoming gesture and continues speaking as if he just deadheaded a flower from a pesky plant that he's not even sure he wants to keep, "I have enjoyed pulling the strings of fate with you so far Kitch, but I have much more work to do and I'd like to simply get back to it."

"Grav! Are you okay!? Answer me!" Kitch howls at his brother who is still writhing on the ground.

Grav replies shortly, "oooh..." he starts catching up to his breath, "...yeah. Better than good."

The tall gray figure turns Kitch's head with a psychic grasp, "As I was saying, work to be done. On both our ends. So let’s skip to the end." It smiles with a sharp and toothy grin, "I have another job for you and I believe we just handled the upfront payment with your brother's life being restored."

"I was dead!?" Grav finally speaks at a normal volume again. Neither the creature nor Kitch look back at Grav who has made it to his knees at this point.

"I have the bodies I need from your previous jobs with me, but I require some materials that would be rather annoying for me to gather on my own. Plus a little extra coin never hurt any plan." The gray figure hovers slightly away from the brothers. "There is a wizard's stronghold, not more than a few day's travel from the city. I need you to break in and find me a small–”. He pauses for a second thinking of the word, “Odd box. And then return it to me. Here. While you’re there, loot as much as you can as well."

The brothers are both a bit shocked. Kitch for thinking that the job would have been a lot harder considering this creature's power, and Grav for coming back to life after dying.

"I'm not a complete monster, and I understand the basic need of incentives for these types of deals. Otherwise, these things get more convoluted and vexing. So, I will also offer you both a share of the looted profits. Twenty-five percent seems more than fair."

Kitch feels the weight of his own body come back to him as he is seemingly freed from the creature's hold. He stumbles slightly and then quickly kneels next to his brother to offer physical and emotional support where needed. Grav seems to be doing better and better with each passing moment, and this gives Kitch time to consider and judge the entire situation they have gotten themselves into.

A long pause happens as the gray figure’s boredom starts to manifest itself physically. Kitch's brain enters another state of negotiation.

“Alright, we accept. But–” A shorter pause as the brothers exchange glances with each other, Kitch worries slightly more, and then they both stare back at the undead creature that has been menacing them for the past ten minutes. “Twenty-six percent.” The figure smiles, showing its rotting teeth again.

“It’s easier to split that way.”

– The End –