All That Remains

Amicia grasps what little is left of her home

## Trophies

*I never thought I'd come back here... not so soon...*
Amicia

"**All That Remains**" is the twelfth chapter in *A Plague Tale: Innocence*. The rat horde's tactics evolve to a new level, necessitating new methods to combat it...

## Plot

### Synopsis

> Mélie came back to the castle with her brother Arthur. She brought news that Amicia's mother is alive, imprisoned by the Inquisition. Despite Amicias's determination to hide the truth from her brother, Hugo heard everything, and his condition suddenly took a drastic turn for the worse. Amicia and Lucas leave immediately for the de Rune estate, seeking a key ingredient in the life-saving elixir.
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### Summary

Night has fallen over the ruined de Rune estate and the December snow is falling. Amicia and Lucas arrive, with Amicia understandably having an emotionally difficult time having returned home. Regardless, she soldiers on to save her brother, Hugo, by hopefully finding their mother's research on the Prima Macula in his blood. The estate is in poor condition with the century-old bridge leading to the manor having collapsed. Lucas sees this as "the end of the old world".

However, despite its dilapidation, the Inquisition still has a presence in the area. Crossing the gorge using a fallen tree, the children spot a group of rats behaving oddly: instead of mindlessly wandering, this horde is traveling in a perfect, swirling circle. Amicia recalls that something had attacked the Inquisition guards in the forest, allowing her to escape with Hugo, and realizes it was the rats. Outside the main gate, the two find some Inquisition guards badly wounded by the rats, and a vengeful Amicia can choose to use them to distract the rats, simply kill them, or leave them as they are.

Opening the gate, the two children walk towards the manor, which is not only dilapidated but has been turned into a massive rat's nest with mounds of a mold-like substance stacked stories high. Up ahead, they are shocked to find the intact body of Robert de Rune, Amicia and Hugo's father, left where he had fallen after Lord Nicholas had murdered him. Suddenly, rats pour from the nest and swarm around the body, swirling themselves into a small twister which not only picks the corpse clean to the bone, but picks it up and throws it against a torch stand, extinguishing it. This gives rat swarms a way to overcome light sources, but the twisters can be destroyed by throwing Ignifer into them before they impact. Amicia is devastated, having wished to bury her father as he deserved.

Progressing further, more of the de Rune servants' corpses are found in a similar condition to Robert: untouched. Furthermore, the rats seem to be converging around Hugo's old room, which also was left entirely in its original state. Lucas cannot find any medicine left by Béatrice, Hugo and Amicia's mother, so they realize that she had an underground alchemist's lab like Laurentius did under the garden, which is the most heavily infested area with a river of rats in their way. Lighting a brazier cart, Lucas must push it while Amicia protects against the rat twisters.

Entering the ancient Roman bathhouse at the end of the gardens, Lucas notices a fresco depicting Justinian's Plague, a disaster taking place in the sixth century under the Romans when the baths were built. In the sudatorium, they find four sculptures—a toad, a swan, a serpent, and a lion, three symbols on the floor—Purification, Amalgamation, and Putrefaction—with braziers underneath them which Amicia must light. Behind the lion's head is a hidden door leading into the laboratory. They find a fresco of a baby with the blackened veins of the Prima Macula, the same curse afflicting Hugo, indicating that the curse is at least 800 years old and that this bathhouse was of great importance.

Within a box, they find a bottle containing an incomplete elixir Béatrice was making to treat Hugo. Using knowledge from the Sanguinis Itinera, which Lucas has brought with him, they hope to finish the cure. Rats arrive to slow them down, forcing Amicia to cover Lucas as he works by fetching materials, disbanding rat twisters, and moving a swiveling light beam to allow him to move. The rat swarms intensify all the while, but Lucas finally completes the elixir and the rats inexplicably fall silent and become still, as it seems the rats are linked to the elixir, and therefore to the carrier of the Macula as well. They now simply step aside for the two children and they leave the desecrated estate.

Back at the Château d'Ombrage, Arthur and Rodric are on lookout duty in a tower with the young blacksmith having fallen asleep against the young thief. Arthur spots Amicia and Lucas approaching and the two go down to meet the returning children. Rodric, pleased with Lucas' work, firmly claps the smaller boy on the back and they take the cure to Hugo. Downing the elixir, the boy asks his sister whether they will ever see their mother again but does not reveal that, in fact, he knows the truth. Tired from her mission, Amicia curls up with Hugo and falls asleep as the scene fades to black.

Navigation

* I – The de Rune Legacy
* II – The Strangers
* III – Retribution
* IV – The Apprentice
* V – The Ravens' Spoils
* VI – Damaged Goods
* VII – The Path Before Us
* VIII – Our Home
* IX – In the Shadow of Ramparts
* X – The Way of Roses
* XI – Alive
* XII – **All That Remains**
* XIII – Penance
* XIV – Blood Ties
* XV – Remembrance
* XVI – Coronation
* XVII – For Each Other