One less traveled by,

After a moment of indecision you hastily carve a mark into the wall of the path you came from and charge down the dusty path. Not only is it less worn than the other tunnels, it twists and turns at odd angles clearly not made by human hands. You wish you had the holy sword with you but you have to admit, it would be impossible to make decent speed through this place with it slung around your back or on your hip. The tightness of the space is making you mildly claustrophobic, the presence of your goddess keeping you calm even as you willfully repress the discomfort. You wish she would give you some kind of indication if you were following Janine, you seriously doubt whether her captor would be able to haul her along this tunnel and you're starting to give up hope.

Finally, when you're about to give up and turn around, you round a corner and almost tumble out of a crack into a larger room.

The room is dimly lit but it seems almost blinding compared to the darkness you'd been traversing for long minutes. It appears to be filled with... shelves? You are a ways above the ground level and you peer down into the rows of shelves. They appeared to contain all manner of things profane and blasphemous. A figure sits alone near the other end of the room, sitting in a chair contemplating a cage.

Wait... not alone.

The cage holds a creature, hidden mostly in shadow but clearly not human. Dampened slurping noises reach you in your crevice and you catch the scent of demon. What in the name of all that was holy was going on under this Abbey?

The sitting figure looks up at the sound of muffled cackling and wingbeats. You shrink back as half a dozen imps burst out of another crack in the ceiling, guffawing and cajoling with one another. They dive for the figure but instead of mobbing it they circle it at arms length, continuing to gibber and squawk.

"Quiet!"

The figure stands up and the imps scatter to a more respectable distance, their tittering subsiding but not ceasing. The voice is that of a young woman, imperious sounding but slightly spoiled. You can't make out much other than the dark robe she wears.

"Why have you disturbed me?"

Several attempt to talk at once before one out-shouts the rest, "Found girl! Intruder in pens!"

"...who?"

The imps looked at each other questioningly and one eventually speaks up, "Said name was... Jenny? Janny? January?" The others titter but the figure says nothing, seemingly shocked. The imps begin to get rowdy again when the silence lingers and she waves her arm irritatedly, sending them off tittering into the tunnels. Unfortunately, one happens to make a beeline straight for you, there was absolutely no way he wouldn't see you.

Fortunately, you'd dealt with Imps before. Your blade gleams, reflected in the imps eyes as he spies you and his mouth opens to shriek. You are faster, gutting him and ensuring that the only sound is a gargle and a faint FWOOSH as he disintegrates into flame. The figure paces back and forth, whispering to herself, clearly agitated.

"I didn't want it to happen like this... have to turn her over... can't let her be taken... betrayed me..." She eyes the creature in the cage one last time before leaving in a huff. You peer around for any hiding imps before dropping down among the shelves. You'd rather have armor but you were a whole lot more quiet without it.

Strange scrolls and artifacts line the shelves, musty tomes and... things, writhing in jars. Half of it looked fresh while the rest must have been several hundred years old. When you come to where the girl had been sitting, you get your first decent look at what was in the cage. Your divine intuition told you that it was definitely a demon... but like no demon you'd ever seen before.

It was like some unholy combination of slug, insect, and... ape? Maybe? Its posture was upright but its whole body seemed to be covered in fleshy, quivering tendrils. You'd hate to run into this thing outside the cage. It doesn't seem to take note of your presence, in fact it seems almost frozen other than the constant slurping noises emanating from its tendrilled mass.

A fusion of horrors from your world and the next.

"Nice of you to chime in." Your snark is not appreciated and you feel a harsh pang inside your head, "Sorry. I just wish I knew what was going on. Don't suppose you can tell me?" The Rose is silent once more but you can feel her reaching out, almost like she was pointing...

You walk over to a worn wooden desk, a thick book lying on its surface. Opening its pages you realize it's a diary, "Well look at this..." The writing is spidery and flowing, weirdly perfect and flowing. The language it's written in is a mystery to you but you recognize some of the glyphs as demonic, "So a demon was residing here, of all places..." you flip through page after page, "For years it looks like, maybe even hundreds of years if the state of things is any indication."

A feeling of approval from The Rose spurs you onward until suddenly the writing changes, becoming less elegant and more purposeful. Much of it is still written in demonic script but occasionally it becomes legible to you: