Next Morning & Beyond

You wake up early and refreshed, Neira still resting on your chest, an arm draped over you. You try your best to manuver yourself around to get out of bed without waking the Sunrider. After an extremely long time inching around the bed.

"Success..." you mumble to yourself as you're standing up, looking down at Neira, smiling at her still sleeping body.

You quickly dress your armor back up, making sure you are prepared for the day ahead of you. There isn't a whole lot you really need to do, just keep resting and relaxing. The army itself is going to try to leave in another thirty six hours or so, which means tomorrow once the sun begins to set. This will allow you to travel over night for another twelve hours or so and thus will be at Rathkin's doorstep at the brink of dawn in exactly two days from right now.

You forgot how peaceful it really was when you stepped outside. As it was still early in the morning, most people were not awake yet, just a handful which you saw sitting around or just moving through out the city. You could see green bushy trees towering over some of the walls, birds chirping and singing in the distance. This place is so alive and beautiful compared to the Syndicate where everything is basically dust and bones. It brought back good memories of your old days as a farmer.

Another few minutes, the Tavern is in your sites and low and behold, you actually see nobody in front of the Tavern except two Sunrider's sitting in chairs next to the front gates, on watch. "All good...nice." you rub the side of your head, happy that everything is going well. You greet the two Sunrider's guarding the Tavern who report all is well and the civilians have been behaving. They already know they will be on duty for another couple of hours until two different Sunrider's decide to take their places instead.

With the morning sun rising and the cool brisk air, you just continue your walk, around the Tavern, making your way down a few back alley's of Murnic, just to explore the town and see if there was any trouble. As you walk behind the Tavern, minding your own business, something about being back here sparks a certain conversation you had with a Murnic civilian. You didn't think much of it until in the corner of your eyes you notice something that is just a little bit out of place. Something so tiny, that nobody would probably even look at it. Everything behind the Tavern is tied down with rope and has a type of blanket thrown over top of it. Obviously chairs, boxes and crates which possibly hold food and drink are sitting back here in storage. Yet, next to all the neatly stacked barrels and boxes, you see another blanket, clear of dust and dirt, the corner of it slightly scrunched up and no ropes at all over top of it.

As you think back towards your time in Rathkin, when you would fight in the slums. There was always so many hidden compartments all around certain buildings. You recall the last night you had with Claire, being down in the slums, just having escaped the castle's dungeon and venturing into the slums to one of those same places.

You lift the blanket up and it reveals a wooden slab with a handle on it. Clearly somebody doesn't want people to notice this is here. But you can't just leave it at that so without any trouble you pull up on the handle and look down into the hole. Stone stairs descend into the ground, you can see light at the bottom. "Huh...goes under the Tavern?" you think aloud to yourself.

It's at that point you hear what you know is wood on wood hitting against each other, the sound softly echoing up the now opened cellar doors. You reach up and scratch your chin, wondering if you should get another warrior or Sunrider to follow you in, just in case but quickly push that thought off. "No one can kill me." you say over confidently to yourself. With a hand on the grip of your short sword, ready to defend yourself as needed, you take a step down into the cellar below, making your way into the dimly lite, dust filled room below the Tavern.