another. Neither direction reveals anything that would indicate a brothel or something similar.
“Do you think that guy lied to us?” asks Shorty.
“Brother Willim seemed pretty confident that he hadn’t,” Jiron says. Then to Reilin he nods over to several young men hanging out on the corner. “Go over there and see if they can tell us where it is.”
Reilin nods then moves over and begins talking with the men. At one point Reilin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a couple coins and hands them over. After that the men are much more talkative and helpful.
The others wait and soon see him turn around and make his way back to join them. “It’s down this way,” he says as he points to the section of the street heading off to their left.
“Is it a brothel then?” asks Jiron. Moving out, the others follow right behind him.
“Not exactly,” explains Reilin. “It’s more a tavern than a brothel. When I asked them about it, they said there are a few girls that work there, but mostly it’s a tavern.”
“Great!” exclaims Potbelly.
“Don’t be getting any ideas,” Jiron says with a quick glance back. “We are not getting drunk tonight.”
“Aw, come on,” Scar says. “A couple ales won’t hurt anything.”
“I’ll skin any one of you who gets drunk,” he says. Then he comes to a stop and turns back toward them. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Absolutely,” affirms Shorty.
Turning back to continue down the street, he glances at the buildings lining the sides and asks Reilin, “Which one is it?”
“They said to look for a doorway with two dark lanterns hanging next to it,” he replies.
Moving down the darkened street, they leave the light coming from the hanging lantern on the street corner behind. Jiron searches the fronts of the buildings he passes for any sign of two lanterns, dark or otherwise.
“Be a good place for a murder,” comments Scar. They are beginning to feel on edge.
Then, “There it is,” Jiron announces. A rather dilapidated looking, double story structure standing on their right has a doorway flanked by two unlit lanterns. No light can be seen coming from any of the building’s windows and the area is quiet as a tomb.
“That can’t be the place,” Stig says. “It looks deserted.”
“Could be intentional,” Shorty suggests.
“We’ll find out,” Jiron says as he moves toward the door. Pausing at the foot of the three steps leading up to the door, he glances back and says, “Stay alert.” Indicating for Reilin to accompany him, he turns back and takes the steps up to the door where he knocks three times. When nothing happens he knocks again, this time louder.
The sound of a floorboard creaking comes through the door. “Someone’s in there,” whispers Reilin.
Jiron nods. He places his ear against the door just as the sound of the deadbolt being pulled back comes through to them. Then, the door opens a crack and a voice from the dark within asks, “Yes?”
Reilin looks at Jiron who nods toward the crack and mouths ‘Go ahead’. “We were told this is The Split Navel,” he says.
The voice from within the darkness remains silent for a moment then says, “I think you have the wrong place.”
As the door begins to shut, Reilin exclaims, “Gryll sent us!”
The door pauses and the darkness remains quiet. “Gryll you say?” the voice asks after a moment.
“That’s right,” affirms Reilin. “He said this was a good place to go for women.”
“How do you know Gryll?” the voice asks.
Reilin glances over to Jiron who’s beginning to look impatient. Returning his attention back to the voice he says, “We helped him with a job up north.”
“Indeed,” the voice says. “One minute.” Then the door closes.
“What did he say?” Jiron asks.
Reilin relates in a quiet whisper what they said to one another. By the time he’s done, steps can be heard coming from within moving toward the door. This time when the door opens, a small amount of light escapes.
“Welcome gentlemen,” a man no more than three feet tall says as the door opens all the way. A hallway leads twenty feet into the building where it ends at another door that’s closed. The light is coming from a candle sitting in a wall recess midway down on the left. There are no doors other than the ones at either end of the hallway.
“So this is The Split Navel?” asks Reilin.
“Yes,” replies the short man. Once all the others have entered, the short man again closes the door and throws the bolt. Turning, the man begins walking toward the other door.
“Creepy,” whispers Shorty.
Scar gives him a nod in reply.
As they move down the hallway, they begin to hear the sound of voices coming from behind the other door. A bark of laughter followed by several curses being shouted in anger does nothing to put them at ease. Just before they reach the door a man cries out in pain.
Smoke billows out from beyond the door as the short man opens it, acrid smoke that smells quite foul. As the door opens completely, they see a fair sized room with many tables spaced about the room. Two men are dragging the body of a man from the table closest to the door toward a door on the far side of the room. A telltale red streak left by the man being dragged reveals that he must have been the one who cried out.
Jiron follows the short man into the room and is led over to a table near the middle. The eyes of many of the other patrons follow them as they cross over to it and take their seats. Without a word, the short man turns and moves toward the door through which they entered.
A lone serving woman makes her way through the tables, and places two tankards of ale before two men at a table against the wall. Easily in her forties or above, she has the look of one whose life has been anything but easy. A massive woman, her unkempt brown hair streaked with gray is tied back in a ponytail. Her face may have been comely at one time, but now it shows rigid lines and seems to be set in a permanent grimace.
She casts her eyes toward Jiron and the others, takes notice that they are there, then without a hint of acknowledgment, returns to the bar. Four more tankards are waiting for her. Picking them up, she makes her way through the middle of the room, past their table without a word and sets them before a small group of men two tables away.
“Lousy service,” comments Stig.
On her way back to the bar, Scar waves her down and with a smile asks, “How about some ale?”
She stops in her tracks and locks eyes with him. After a moment of meeting her steely gaze, his smile gradually disappears. “You all want ale?” she asks in a voice more a man’s than a woman’s.
“Uh…” he says, “yeah, that would be great.” With a barely perceptible nod, she returns to the bar.
“I’ve been in some dives before, but this place has to rank among the worst,” comments Potbelly quietly.
“This place is a Den of Hollow Eyes,” remarks Jiron. “Did you smell the smoke when we entered?” When the others nod he adds, “They’re doing biloci.” Biloci is a weed and a highly addictive narcotic. The user smokes it and is visited by hallucinations while they’re under the direct influence of the drug. Once the drug begins to wear off, it leaves them with a feeling of euphoria which can last for hours. The downside is that when the euphoria wears off, the user tends to spiral into deep depression lasting days.
Dens of Hollow Eyes are illegal in most places and the Empire being no exception. Some places tend to go lenient on those caught within one, but the Empire has a more stringent approach. Death.
Glancing around, they can see many of the men sitting at the tables are not entirely there. Their vacant eyes stare at imagined visions the drug induces. Every once in awhile, one would grunt, burst out with noise, or exhibit some other indication of the drug’s influence.
At the bar, the woman is loading a tray with six mugs. Picking it up, she sloshes some of their contents onto the tray as she turns and heads toward Jiron and the others. As she makes her way through the tables, one man in the throes of biloci touches her posterior as she passes. Without hesitation, she takes her left hand and strikes him across the face with a blow hard enough to send him to the floor. Men at other tables pause in their conversations and glance at the man on the floor for a second, then the talking resumes when nothing further looks to be happening.
