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It's an ordinary, quiet night. The . . . patrons, or whatever they are, of the lab equipment shop downstairs, took off about forty-five minutes ago.
There's silence, mostly. You can only be out at night in Sothis if you have business. But there's some business. Every so often a party passes under Katie's window. Their conversation is mostly what Katie has become accustomed to thinking of as "focused", though occasionally some is just downright tense or revelrous.
Wind. Distant insects. Dogs.
Something shuffles downstairs.
And continues to shuffle.
"Are we good?" The voice is insistent, alto, and right underneath Katie. And it's female.
"Yes, fine". Higher. If Katie knows what female halflings sound like, it sounds like that.
The shuffling moves deeper into the shop. A glass clinks. Laughter starts, whispering at first, then merely hushed.
"Oh my god." A third voice.
"All this stuff is fake, you know. This and this and this used to be one bespoke fixture."
"Fuck."
Whoever it is is going through the merchandise.
Expensive, heavily regulated merchandise. Katie's parent have only been in Ulunat for two weeks, but she's picked up that the proprietors of this place have gone to a moderate effort to secure it against thieves.
God damnit, she's trying to sleep. Can't these morons be quieter about their robbery? Wait, shit, fuck. This is Osirion. She's not totally sure how the law works here but she knows they're crazy strict about it. Could she get in trouble for not doing something about it? She remembers hearing a story once about an adventuring party who got in a situation like that, she doesn't remember where exactly it took place, could it have been here? And she does have Sleep, though that might not work if they have high-circle casters. But then, even if they do, dying to stop a robbery might get her ruled Good, which means a cushy afterlife instead of having to put up with a husband and pregnancy and kids and all that. Though it might also get her ruled Lawful and Heaven sounds a lot later than Nirvana or Elysium. Can you go to Heaven against your will? She hopes not. Fuck it, she's not gonna get another chance at this, better seize the moment. She grabs her component pouch and creeps down the stairs as stealthily as she can manage.
If Katie can see in the dark, she'll see people moving around in the Employees Only restricted merchandise room, the heavy door thrown open. [ Apparently these people can all see just fine in the dark; they haven't lit any lamps or cast any light spells. ]
There's a steady rustling noise; if Katie can see, she'll see that the display soybean plant is growing at a visible rate, across the floor, bigger than soybean plants should.
She'll need slightly less perception to hear and see the person inspecting the shelves behind the counter, inches away from moving their head and getting a clear view of her.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. She tosses off a Sleep spell in their general direction, hoping to hit their co-conspirators as well and also she might get ruled Evil if she kills when she could incapacitate and also she would feel kinda gross about it.
A thud as whoever it is falls over.
Sounds of confusion in the merchandise room and the meeting rooms behind it.
"What the--"
"RAN!"
People rush out.
A light flares up.
Someone is kneeling to wake the fallen halfling, there's a bulky cloaked blonde with a sword charging Katie, a horned figure, somebody else.
Oh shit. Here it comes. This is gonna be painful. Briefly, she hopes. She throws off her one remaining spell, Summon Monster 1, and bolts in the other direction, hoping there are some city watch or Abadar clerics or hellknights or whoever the hell enforces the law in this godsforsaken shithole nearby.
A voice of cold command tells the summoned creature to still.
"Just grab her!"
As she passes the soybean plant it lurches up and wraps around her. At the same time, the double-edged sword pierces the side of her thick shirt, missing her body.
Several people are closing in behind her.
Well, this is it. Not much she can do now. "Oh gods please just make it quick!" She really hopes they aren't Zon-Kuthon cultists. Shit, are those even illegal here? He is Lawful.
A whoosh, the creature's screech, a clattering of glass, another screech, and a curse behind her. The monster is still giving them some trouble. But they're hitting it.
In part with expensive fucking concoctions, it sounds like.
The blonde leaves the sword in her left hand and grabs Katie's right shoulder with her right. It's a strong grip.
"Is she safe? Do I need to spare her?"
"Now, come on, guys."
It's the voice that issued the command to the monster, which they're still fighting with vials.
"She deserves a chance to prove she's another gift from Urgathoa."
"Her spirit, like."
"Fine."
She can almost certainly take care of the little shit, but they don't know that.
When this all goes to Heaven it'll serve them as a lesson in prejudice.
If it ends up doing them in, well, she can't take care of them forever. And she doesn't have other worthy successors.
She throws an ordinary metal knife into the beast, which looks pretty hobbled by now.
She does as ordered and scans her captors. Holy shit the tiefling and the blonde are both hot. Is it common for underground evil cultists to be that big? She's never seen any in person before. Also it's just now striking her how weird it is for all these people to be women. Has she died and gone to one of the Good afterlives already? She thinks that would be more overt and also she would have to go through the Boneyard first. Wait, the hot one said Urgathoa. That's the undead one right, not the torture one or the slavery one? Why would they have use for living captives? Wait, shit, she's also the disease one. Are they gonna use her as a test subject for bioweapons? Oh gods, she should've gone down fighting, she's so stupid. "Please, have mercy, my family is wealthy, they can pay a ransom, also do you really wanna mar a pretty girl's face with plague buboes, surely you can find some ugly old guy to experiment on, right?" She has that plea cached in case of a situation like this and is realizing she wasn't really supposed to use it on women, but female evil cultists are probably more likely to be lesbians anyway. Which, y'know, would be nice. Gods damnit, don't kid yourself Katie, it wouldn't be nice, they're gonna replace your spine with a giant parasitic worm from the Abyss, not fuck you.
"Cease your attempts to bargain with fleas. We are not fleas. You will either be remade in our image or you will not leave here."
Huh, well at the very least their image doesn't look obviously gross. "Are you guys, like, vampires? That's the only kind of undead that can pass for living, right? Er, I guess ghouls could maybe pass for living to some really dumb peasant who had never seen an elf before and thought they were all blue and fanged, but you, uh, don't seem skinny enough to be ghouls. Er, no offense, I mean, just that you're not horrifically emaciated and all, which I'm told ghouls are. And also, like, you have hair, I think they don't have that either." She's so going to get tortured.
"Teg is a vampire." She gestures at the blonde woman holding Katie. "The rest of us are a kind of undead you won't find in textbooks."