Off to the side of the main workshop is a small bedroom with a rather unusual bed. The mattress is like a bag of water or oil, conforming to the shape of the sleeper. But at the moment, nobody is sleeping on it – quite the opposite! Zahnrad has heard the phrase "a demon in bed" (usually from Emmett) but he never thought it would involve actual horns and talons and flame-red fur. And he especially did not expect his partner to stop right in the middle of things and wrestle with thin air while waving a bottle around.

"Ahh, ahh!" goes Zahnrad as he flails. Perhaps he's upset that things were interrupted! Or perhaps he's just terrified of those talons and worse (though he's grateful to be behind Amelia right now. The flailing, of course, ends up causing the Kadie to tip off backwards and land on his back on the floor with a thud! "Ow… " he complains.

"Get in, get in!" Amelia growls as she thrashes around on the bed, and there's the telling sound of a cork being jammed home. "I got her!" the demonic-looking Kadie crows! "Hey, where'd you go?" she then asks, looking around for Zahn.

Zahnrad sticks his hand up from where he fell odd Amelia and the bed. "Here," he whimpers as he sits upright and gets a … well, interesting view of Amelia. He blinks a few times, then asks dumbly, "Got who?"

"The ghost!" Amy says, showing lots of teeth when she smiles. "Well… A ghost! Probably your Skeek," she amends, and reaches towards Zahn's hand with her talons.

Zahnrad gives those talons a dubious look before he actually takes the offer. "Did you have to do that in the middle, of … well … " he says a bit sheepishly. "The demon bit was, uhm, interesting!

"We can start over!" Amy says, hauling Zahn back onto the bed and hugging him. "Should I stay like this until we're done?" she asks him, with a little bit of a growl to her voice.

Zahnrad coughs … repeatedly. "I, uhm, wouldn't mind," he stammers out in between coughs. He spares a glance towards that bottle before he asks, "Will she keep if we're busy for a while?"

"She'll keep forever in there, or until the cork rots," Amy assures Zahn, before giving him a 'playful' bite on the shoulder.

"Aie! Your teeth are sharp!" Zahn blurts, more out of surprise than out of pain. As soon as he can rub his shoulder, he asks, "Your bite doesn't infect people, right? And uhm … is it different for you like … that?"

"That's silly, why… uh… " Amy says, faltering at the end. "I don't know! Let me… " She closes her eyes and concentrates, and even tries to slow down her breathing. This at least gets her hands back to normal and shrinks the horns down to just nubs, with the side effect of now leaving her tiger-striped red instead of solid red.

"Well, I guess we'll find out in a few days thanks to that bite," Zahnrad muses as he continues to rub his shoulder a bit, "But I doubt it, really, because what you are runs in your family. I don't think it's due to any bites." He grabs his own tail, brings it around, and tickles the tip of Amelia's nose.

The Kadie girl sneezes and is forced to open her eyes! "I don't feel the need to be on top now," she notes after rubbing her nose. Her eyes are still red too, and with a grin she starts bouncing up and down to make waves in the bed.

"Good," Zahnrad declares as he pounces on Amelia and nestles her around on the wavy and bouncing bed playfully. "Because I prefer being on top. You see, being on top means you get more leverage since you can hook your feet and then use your leg muscles and … " he starts explaining in that Wingnut way of his. He at least stops rather abruptly and flattens his ears sheepishly. "And uh, the view is nice too."

"It is from here too!" Amy says, and then the bed is once more put to the test. There are only a handful of times when the waves threatened to throw the Kadies off.

"Whew," Zahnrad mutters as he rolls to the side. "I feel like I can think clearer after that. Sometimes when I'm around you it's like my brain shuts off. It was worse when you were all … red," he admits. "I … think it's something about how you smell."

"Fairy moans," Amelia says after catching her breath. "That's what Isolde calls them… "

"But you don't start moaning until later," Zahnrad says as his ears splay. "I don't understand that witchy stuff."

"You aren't supposed to understand it," Amelia says, waving a now stripe-free hand in the air as she seems to be completely normal again. "It's a Mystery. Anyway… what should we do with the ghost? I mean, Isolde or Natasha could probably make it talk, but then they'd hear it all too. I think there's a way we can try ourselves, but I need to think on it some more."

"Can I see the bottle?" Zahn asks and extends his hand to Amelia. "It talked to me before, after all."

Amy half-lies across Zahn to reach the bottle, then sits up next to him with it in her hands. The glass looks cloudier than before, but otherwise there isn't really any indication of the trapped spirit.

Zahnrad leans in. "Hello in there?" he speaks to the bottle, then taps on the glass with a claw. "Can you hear me?"

There's no response from the bottle. Amy tries shaking it a little. "Okay, it's not going to be able to talk while it's in the bottle. It probably needs a medium – like how you say it possessed Parsley. So, we can get someone to drink it, or try to work with it as a spirit," she suggests.

"Er, who in their right mind would drink it?" Zahnrad has to ask. "Well, I mean I could, maybe, but … "

"Then you'd be talking to yourself! Plus, if it's trying to lure you away, probably not a good idea to let it in your own head," Amy notes. "Now, Djivan would be good. He'll drink anything, and there's no way he could be seductive to you. Or… Oh… hmmmm."

"Well, you can overpower me, right?" Zahnrad asks, "Keep me from doing something crazy if I drank it… "

"That wouldn't give us answers, and I couldn't threaten the spirit while it was in you," Amy notes. "But I just remembered: Olivia has magic chalk that can summon Buffy. I bet she could get the ghost to talk to us."

"Or Olivia could drink it! She's weird already so a little more wouldn't be noticeable. And besides, she's a Skeek too, so they'd be compatible!" Zahn suggests with a grin.

"What if she tries to seduce you though?" Amy asks, with one eyebrow raised. "We could ask Parsley… "

"True, but then Parsley would be all over me. Oh, wait," Zahnrad muses and rubs his chin, "I guess Buffy or one of the witches is the best route." He even sulks for a second before commenting, "So much for getting to take notes on what it's like being possessed!"

"It's sticky," Amelia claims. "But yeah, best to deal with it as a spirit. It might not be able to keep possession of someone long enough to be useful anyway. How long did you talk to it last time before it was just Parsley again?"

"Several minutes at least. It wanted me to promise my head to it," Zahnrad notes as he looks back towards the hatch he had been working on opening. "So … up for exploring the passageway a bit? I want to see if it connects to anything we've seen before."

"You've got those head-light things, right?" Amy asks.

"Of course! I don't go in a hole without a light," Zahnrad claims, "Well, except if you're involved and we're … uhm anyway! Yes, I have lamps we could use."

"Okay, let's get dressed then," Amy says, rolling off of the bed so it won't rollick too much.

"But … I like you this way," Zahnrad complains as he rolls off the opposite side.

"I don't want any monsters we meet seeing me naked though," Amy points out. "It's un-witchy."

"Oh well. I'll just have to make sure you take a bath later, then," Zahnrad pouts in exaggeration. Soon enough his grin returns and he dresses, then goes about sorting out the exploring gear.

Amelia gets her clothes and weapons back in place, and sniffs at the hatch. "Still smells of sulfur and steam," she reports.

"Stinky. Yay," Zahnrad mutters as he heads over to Amelia. He actually fits the headlamp on her head first and makes sure it's lit safely before affixing his own. "I hope we don't hit any pockets of gas down there," he comments with a note of worry.

"What does that mean?" Amy asks warily. "How can gas be dangerous? I mean, aside from when Emmett has beans?"

"Oh … it can explode," Zahnrad says and waves his hand. "But I'm sure we won't have that problem."

"Explode… from the lamps?" Amy surmises.

"From any flame. From sparks too," Zahnrad adds, "But we would get advance warning. Popping sounds from minor pockets bursting. The real danger would be behind closed doors."

"I'll be on the lookout for closed doors then," Amelia says. "You should go first. I'm lighter and softer and you wouldn't mind so much if I fell on you from above."

"I wish you were in a dress. I would get a nice view… " Zahnrad teases, then musses up Amelia's hair. "And yes, you're right. I could hold your weight if you fell. I'm not as sure you could hold mine." He gives her a peck on the cheek, then starts down the hatch.

The recessed ladder holds get progressively slicker as the Kadies descend and the steam gets thicker, but Zahn's work on the perpetually wet dam has him used to slippery handholds. Amelia counts rungs out loud as they descend as well, since each is about a foot apart. "What comes after a hundred?" she whispers down to Zahn.

"One hundred and one," Zahnrad answers, "And it counts up from here. Be mindful of the footing; the rungs are getting very slick. Probably mineral condensation." He stops for a moment and scrapes a claw along a rung, then tastes it. Amelia can hear him spit a moment later. "Salt, sulfer, and limestone. Mineral deposits, yeah. Yuck," he notes.

"It won't grow on us, will it?" Amy asks, counting rungs again. "I thought it was one-hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred and on like that," she admits.

"No, mineral buildup takes a long time to happen," Zahnrad explains, "Same idea is what makes stalagmites in caves. But … hmmm, it may tell us something. Contact with it tends to disrupt the depositing. So if Abner used this ladder, there should be marks where he touched it and disturbed the slow deposit formation." As for her mistake on counting, well, Zahnrad wisely doesn't comment.

"That's kind of hard to tell as we're climbing down ourselves though," Amy points out. She's almost up to 300 now, when Zahn feels things open up beneath him. The ladder becomes a normal one, suspended in the middle of a tunnel. Unlike the one leading to the workshop though, this one isn't artificial. It looks like one of the tunnels where they found Clover.

"Wow, a cave of some sort," Zahnrad comments as he pauses on the ladder to look around and get a general idea of the size of the tunnel. He also listens for any sounds other than dripping water.

It isn't too big around, but then the roof isn't so low that Kadies would need to duck. Although ducking might have helped Zahn avoid Amelia's damp tail hitting him in the face before she realizes he's stopped. "It's underground, so of course it's a cave," Amy points out.

"Zahnrad bites Amelia's tail gently, then spits it out. "No, it could be a constructed tunnel or even a lava tube. A cave is a natural formation formed through the action of water disolvi… Oh never mind, it's not important." He descends the rest of the way to the floor, then steps to the side, though ready to catch Amelia should she slip.

Amelia manages to get to the ground safely, then looks around. The walls are smoothed stone, likely the result of running water, and from the position of the ladder the tunnel runs in a vaguely northwest-southeast direction. "It's a steamy hole," Amy announces. The tunnel doesn't echo, since the walls just aren't right for it and it doesn't even really go straight for any distance.

Zahnrad goes to the walls and checks for claw gouges in them. "Any guesses where this might lead?" he asks, "You know town layout better than I do. Well, except for how it's constructed, but … er."

The walls are pretty smooth, with no obvious gouges – until Zahn looks a little lower. There might be claw gouges in the floor, filled with water.

Zahnrad crouches to verify gouges in the floor. "Trolls use this passage," Zahn tells Amelia. "Clawmarks in the floor. No idea how old."

"Well, if it keeps going like this, it should pass under the old manor site," Amy guesses, and turns towards the south. "But this way would lead towards the ruins under the Gnarly Wood, I think."

"Why would they be on the floor?" Amelia asks, bending down to shine her light on the scrapes.

"Your secret place? This might be how they came up through the ruins, then?" Zahn asks, "Which way do you want to check? Either sounds promising. The floor, well, walking! They sort of shuffle around, don't they? Or maybe someone was dragged along the floor."

"Who would drag a troll," Amy mutters, and then shudders. A deep, heart-like beat starts up, felt through the ground itself. And this is followed by a sudden breeze of hot air coming from the southeast.

Zahnrad freezes. "Uh, that's not good," the Kadie mutters. "That might mean the passage in the ruins just opened. So … that means they'll come from the northwest?"

"Or they just entered in the southeast," Amy suggests. "Should we… stay in the tunnel or go up the tube?" she asks.

Zahnrad rubs his head. "Up, I think, and shutter the lamps. We can see if anything passes beneath is. Their eyes glow, after all," the Kadie decides. "You head up first. I don't want them grabbing you and I can buy you time if things go bad."

"But I've got the weapons," Amy notes, but still goes up the ladder. "How many rungs up should we be?" she calls down.

"Enough that we won't be readily visible if they looked up. Maybe ten feet above the hole in the ceiling?" Zahnrad suggests as he follows. "And yes, you have weapons … but I feel like it's my duty to protect you anyway."

Waiting at the sixteenth rung up, Amy twists as best she can so that she can look down at Zahn, and then remembers to turn the knob on the head-lamp to close out the light. "I won't be able to see much at all," she whispers to Zahn. "Don't forget that!"

Zahnrad stops just below Amelia and then takes hold of her tail to indicate he's there. "Two tugs means start climbing slowly," he whispers, "And I won't. The rungs are all spaced equally and it's a straight line up. Just go slow and steady if I indicate to move." Using his feet to hold steady, he quickly reaches up and shutters the head-lamp.

For quite a while, the only sounds are the ominous thump-thump-thump felt through the walls and their own heartbeats and breathing – but then something can be heard moving in the tunnel below, coming towards the ladder.

Zahnrad holds the ladder tightly and slows his breathing to try and make it less audible. Then with a feeling of nervousness deep in his gut, he looks down and waits.

There isn't any light at all, until a dim red glow appears. But that's enough for Zahn's night-vision to draw on. A hulking figure shuffles past the ladder, heading northwards, with glowing red eyes and a back covered in wiry bristles. There's even a brief metallic glint from the swinging hands.

"There they are. I wonder if they think at all … and what about?" Zahnrad ponders, "And what is this ritual of marching to the beating sound. Is something calling them? Why?"

A second figure follows behind the first – but this one pauses and looks up the shaft. It raises one metal-clawed hand to feel around the inside as far as it can reach, and that's when Zahn sees that it's missing an arm.

Zahnrad's brow goes up at that. "Is that the one that Orifice caught?" he thinks, remembering that skeletal arm that was left hanging in the manacle. "How could it still be alive?"

The creature stares unblinkingly upwards for almost a minute, and then just shuffles after the first one. Nothing follows after it though, and the sounds recede into the distance, even if the thumping of the earth remains constant.

Zahnrad says softly, "Down. I want to see where they are going… " And down he goes.

"Lamp?" Amy whispers as she comes down a little slower.

"When I can't see the glow anymore, yes," Zahnrad whispers. And there he waits for just that.

The tunnel isn't straight, and eventually the glow fades around a distant curve.

Zahn opens the shutter on his lamp. "Any objections to following them?" he asks, "I think one of them is the one that killed Orifice… "

"They don't seem to move fast," Amy notes. "We could outrun them, so… I'm curious too. What makes you think one of them killed Orifice?"

"It was missing an arm. Remember the hanging arm in his dungeon?" Zahnrad notes as he now heads in the direction the trolls went. "And is the bottle doing anything… ?"

"The bottle? I left it up in the room," Amelia notes.

"Oh, good idea," Zahnrad agrees, "It might have gotten agitated or … something." He pauses to look at his hands and flexes his fingers, "I envy their metal claws. Those would be so useful!"

"Until you had an itch," Amy points out.

"That's what I have you for. They're not worse than your talons," Zahnrad points out.

The Kadie girl looks at her claws, and shrugs. "Okay, let's go," she says.

Zahnrad puffs Amelia with his tail, then heads after the trolls!

There's no need to keep the creatures in sight (or sound) since the tunnel doesn't branch at all. At least, not for several hundred yards, where it then opens into a larger cavern whose walls are full of tunnels, with a central pool of water in the center that bubbles and burps.

Zahnrad looks for steam rising from the water to judge if it's boiling or just a gas pocket. "Careful," he whispers, "large cavern… "

Coming up slowly behind Zahn, Amy looks around as much as possible without leaving the tunnel. "I count a dozen tunnels on the ground, and a few more up higher," she says. "We can get lost pretty easy if we aren't careful. Can you tell which way they went from here?"

Zahn hmms and peers about. Namely, he looks for a passage where the water is more disturbed, such as water from the path having been splashed up higher or unexpected waves in the water. Secondly, he watches for a red glow. "Mark the passage entrance we come out of with an 'X'. Your knife should be able to do it… " he whispers.

While Amy tries to carve a mark, Zahn notes that all of the water is disturbed by tiny ripples from the incessant thump-thump-thump beat. He catches a hint of red down the fourth tunnel though, just as something drops from a higher up tunnel and rolls off of his back.

Zahnrad freezes again. "Something just hit me," he whispers. Slowly he turns and looks down to see what it was.

Something looks back with big pale orbs for eyes. It's one of the smaller, non-metal-clad trolls. More of them are pouring into the cavern from various tunnels now. Lots of them.

"Uuhm," Zahnrad says worriedly as the weird little trolls start appearing. Not sure what else to do, he helps the one up that rolled off his back. "Do you understand us?" he asks it.

"They're everywhere!" Amy calls from the first tunnel. Few of the trolls pay any attention to the Kadies however, as they dive into the pool of (probably boiling) water and vanish, leaving just two behind – one next to Amelia and the one watching Zahn. They don't make any sounds as they just stare.

"Hello?" Zahnrad says to the little troll and waves his hand in front of its face.

The troll bolts upwards into a higher tunnel when Zahn waves his hand like that, but leans out to watch – and then reaches out with its own hand to the Kadie.

Zahnrad extends his hand slowly to the little troll, then holds it still so that it can touch his if it wants.

The troll seems to hesitate a moment, and then grabs Zahn's hand and yanks the Kadie up into the higher tunnel.

Zahnrad yikes! as he finds himself going upward! "I didn't expect this!" he calls back to Amelia.

There's no reply from Amelia. And once Zahn is pulled into the upper tunnel, the troll lets go and retreats a ways further.

Zahnrad sits down on the floor and looks at the little troll. "Why did you do that?" he asks it. The Kadie then can't help but look back into the cavern for Amelia.

The cavern is empty, with no sign of Amelia or the other troll. There are sounds now though; claws scraping on stone, coming from the tunnel below.

Zahnrad goes quiet. The best he can figure was they pulled them out of harms way. So he shutters his lamp and just watches out of the upper cave for what is coming.

Eventually, the red glow returns as the two big trolls come out of the lower tunnel, dragging a smaller troll behind him. It's that troll's claws which scrape against the ground, although there isn't any way to tell if the creature is conscious or not, since it doesn't seem to be resisting in any way other than trying to be an anchor.

"What is going on?" Zahnrad wonders as we watches the smaller troll being dragged along. "Where are they taking it and why?"

The kidnappers and their prey vanish into the original tunnel again, and the cavern is still once more. The bubbling of the water and the thumping earth-beat are the only sounds, until the beating abruptly stops and the water vomits up a horde of damp trolls.

Amelia's lamp appears on the far side of the chamber as well, lighting things up.

Zahnrad blinks a few times. "Weird," he mutters as he watches the pile of wet trolls for any sign of movement. "That reminds me of the night all the otters got drunk more than usual and had to be fished out of the waterwheels… "

The trolls get up, shake themselves off (and with their loose skin, that is quite a sight) and then calmly disperse back into the tunnels. Even Zahn's troll scuttles off down the tunnel they're in.

"Won't one of you explain what is going on?" Zahn complains and waves his hands in frustration. Still, he can't allow himself to be frustrated too long; he's worried about Amelia. So … out of the tunnel he goes, back into the main cavern.

The other light bobs about, as Amelia climbs down from her own tunnel and brushes herself off with her hands. "That… was awkward," she reports.

"The troll didn't feel you up, did it?" Zahnrad says, sounding suddenly possessive.

"It hugged me," Amy notes, and searches for her mark. It probably helps that she dropped her knife next to the tunnel as well. "That was very very weird."

"Mine didn't," Zahnrad says, sounding disappointed. "But I guess we now know the little ones are allies. So what are the big ones?"

"Allies?" Amy says. "Remember the ones with Clover? Half of them were not our allies. We can't assume anything. They could have hidden us because they didn't want the big ones hanging around chasing us."

"You're not very trusting," Zahnrad notes, "So, should we follow the larger trolls? Or do you want to get out of here?"

"I want to have some wine," Amelia says. "And a bath. And petting, and dinner."

Zahnrad … pouts. "Maybe we'll learn more from the bottle anyway," he rationalizes. "And I'll only go if you agree that I get to bathe you… "

The poofed out girl says, "You'd better bathe me! It's more calming that way. We can look down the other tunnel later, when I don't feel so frayed."

"That explains the red striping on your face," Zahnrad comments as he reaches over to trace down said marks.

Amy eeps at that. "They came back? I didn't feel anything! It must be the magic down here making it act up beyond my control," she frets.

"If it makes you feel any better, it kinda looks good on you," Zahnrad offers and even leans into kiss her cheek. She, of course, hears in her head, "Dagh right it does! The boy knows what is hot."

"Let's get out of here before I start getting funny ideas," Amy says, smiling a bit from the kiss. "I really don't like that the hatch was left open behind us… "

"You know he would make a cute pet… " comes a 'funny' thought that Amelia was probably worried about. She doesn't have long to dwell on it, though, as Zahnrad is already heading back the way they came. "Worried something will be up there waiting for us?"

"Just worried it'll be noticed without us blocking the shaft, I guess," Amy says, lashing her tail.

"Mm, he has a nice butt," comments Amelia's inner monologue. "Want me to climb up first, or you first?" Zahn asks.

Amy shakes her head to clear it, and then says, "I'd better go up first, just in case!" She then dashes down the tunnel towards the ladder. "Go back to sleep, you!" she thinks to her inner demon.

"What? You don't think his butt is cute?" the demon retorts. Still, it does seem to quiet down after that. Zahnrad is quickly following her. "I'll try to wedge the hatch shut once we get up there. Then it's back home, I guess! And hm, I need to think of a way to get Olivia to drink that spirit… "