The first of the creatures to have moved is caught twice by savage attacks... Amelia and Lilly working together to push the spasmodically moving thing backwards and away from Vera. All of them hissing now, any illusion of innocence long since evaporated, the 'children' scuttle forwards on legs that are reverse jointed - jaws opening beyond what is naturally possible to reveal rows of teeth...
Swearing, Gar rushes in with his blade... stepping in with an attempt to sever the creature's head from its shoulders...
Amelia continues to sing the song, her eyes flashing red as her scythe rises and falls.
Lilly begins to scream curses at the creatures, and moves to the side to beat on the second one!
Frill moves forward and swipes at the closest monster with a sharp claw.
Attack
Damage
Vera gasps in horror as she realizes the monsters abandon their guises as children. Drawing her rapier, she tries to flank one by tumbling over the office furnishings, placing her in a good position with Amelia.
Between them, Amelia and Vera cut and hack one of the creatures as it climbs up onto a table - and rushing in, Mama slashes with small claws at it too... the creature is badly bloodied yet still fighting...
...and, at the other side of the room, neither Gar nor Lilly have any luck hitting their small assailants.
With less of the element of surprise that they had upon first revealing themselves, none of the creatures manage to bite flesh as they snap at the group...
Amelia, in a target rich environment, begins to spin and twirl her scythe as her voice rises in song, no words, just notes and tones that stir the air and the soul.
Although her bloody grin, and acrobatic moves are throwing her timing off somewhat.
She brings the flashing scythe around and down into the creature she and Vera are flanking!
Although it appears that trying to sing and threaten and attack is one too many things at the same time.
Lilly continues to curse the creature out, even as she grins at Amelia's efforts to be a bard.
She steps to the side, pinning another creature between her and her companion, and then slams at the creature twice.
Frill stands her ground and swipes twice at the closest monster (#1) with her sharp claws.
Attack
Damage
Attack
Damage
Vera pauses to study the creature's movement, then strikes.
Surrounding the dreadful creatures, Vera and Amelia strike hard... sending two of the 'children' clattering to the floor whilst Mama, taking care not to touch the dying thing, rushes forwards and claws at another... frustrated now, Gar swings wildly at his target - crashing his blade into the floorboards as it scuttles out of the way...
Hissing with fury as two of their kin fall, the 'children' continue to snap at the investigators...
Amelia, flanking with gar, attacks the one between them.
Lilly flies over and lands on the desk, flanking the last waif with Vera.
Frill continues to try and cut down the closest abomination (#1) with her sharp claws.
Attack
Damage
Attack
Damage
Amelia's rage brings the third of the 'children' crashing to the floor... whilst Lilly, moving gracefully as she floats across the room, slams into the last of them... and pushes it towards Vera.
Vera sizes up the opponent, and then, while it's distracted by Lilly, strikes when it's not expecting an attack.
Having studied the unnatural movements of the creatures from the moment that they revealed themselves for what they were, Vera makes no mistake with her final attack... anticipating its sideways dodge, she catches it fully in the throat - and, as she pushes forwards with her rapier, she ends its sorry existence.
Taking in their surroundings for a moment, the group see nothing of further interest in this room - and so, with the shouting of the raid still in full swing downstairs, Gar checks the door to the west... and finds it locked shut.
Lilly pokes her head through the wall, near the roof, to see what is behind the locked door.
Vera retrieves her lockpicks and tries to jimmy the lock on the door.
Lilly's peer through the door reveals that it opens up into a small lobby area from where another door leads to the west... and a rickety set of steps leads up into a roofspace. With no immediate threat beyond the door, the group work together to get the lock opened - Vera manages to get the tumblers moving and then, seeing that the lock is jamming, Gar introduces a heavily armoured shoulder barge...
...there is a satisfying splintering and cracking of wood as the door swings open.
Lilly does her eyes through the wall thing again, this time near floor level on the left side of the door. Then she looks up through the ceiling at the roof from a random spot to see if anything is there, so an informed decision can be made.
Amelia closes her eyes as the phantom does so, so she can describe what is what to the others.
Phasing through the door to the west, Amelia sees - through Lilly's eyes - a large room with piles upon piles of leather in various stages of tanning, from bloody and fresh to well-preserved and supple, they are piled about the room or hang from hooks set in the ceiling rafters. In amongst these piles, a figure sits in the shadows murmuring to itself as it stitches skins together...
Unnoticed, Lilly rises up through the ceiling and into a dark attic... and is instantly overwhelmed with a chorus of children's voices merged with feelings of panic, horror and pain... the waves of emotion are amplified and felt by Amelia too...
Amelia is staggered, but Lilly shrugs it off. "Great pain from above, either there are children there in pain, or the ghosts of many children. A figure stitches skins together to through the door."
The leathered skins that are hung, draped and being stitched together within the room to the west are, upon closer examination, all humanoid...
"...human skins, think we need to kill that first, then deal with attic."
At the mention of human skins, Gar grips his sword and - a little out of breath - rushes at the door. It crashes open to let loose the stench of decay mixed with the ammonia smell of tanning hides. A portly human with sagging jowls and a thick swatch of grey hair atop its head sets aside the skins it was working on and shouts at Gar, "What?!?!?! You just barge in!!! I got work I got to be doing here!!!"
Amelia, still reeling, moves into the room and brings her scythe around to threaten the creature.
Lilly moves straight toward the creature, dropping through the floor and then resurfacing on the other side of it. She solidifies as she does.
Amelia, still reeling, moves into the room and brings her scythe around to threaten the creature.
Seeing Amelia rush towards 'him', the tailor - who now that Amelia is close enough, appears to be wearing a suit made of skins - pulls a chain of jagged links from the table next to it... and swings wildly at her...
...whilst, following closely behind Amelia, Gar crashes past a pile of leathers and swings at the dreadful figure.
Vera moves in, grimacing at the stench. She then tries to bury her rapier into the thing.
Amelia swings her scythe around a the creature!
Lilly slams into it from behind with both fists!
Frill bares her claws and double moves into the room, ready to provide flanking help next round.
Several times, the investigators attack... their blows rending tears and rips into the suit of skin worn by the creature. Flapping around comically, the suit falls from the tailor revealing sinewy muscles and spurs of exposed bone...
Spinning around as she tears her wounds into it, the creature clatters its savage weapon into Lilly...
Protective of his charges, Gar rises his sword high... crashing it down upon the creature.
Lilly screams in anger and pain, and slams her fists into the creature again!
Amelia, seeing that Lilly is too angry to attack properly, waves a hand and Lilly fades into smoke, and Amelia breaths deeply to suck the ghost back into her.
Frill takes a 5' step to the left and flanks with Vera. She swings twice.
Flanking Attack
Damage
Flanking Attack
Damage
Vera pauses to watch the creature's moves, then strikes when she correctly anticipates one.
With a final blow, Vera's rapier pierces through the 'tailor' and sends it crashing to the floor...
Frill takes a quick rest, sitting on the floor. "Mama's getting pretty tired, dearies. I don't know how much longer I can be effective," she whispers as she gets her strength back.
Gar apologises to Mama Frill, "Lilly seemed to think there was kids in trouble up there or something... ain't the time to be resting... not yet anyways".
Leading the group up the stairs... the attic is dark and quiet. It is quite hot and stuffy from all the body heat rising from the work floor below and being captured beneath the gable of the building’s roof. Piles of finished textiles, forgotten in the back corners of the manufactory, are stacked along the walls waiting for sales or deliveries that will likely never happen. These huge mounds of clothing muffle all sound, and everything lies beneath a fine layer of textile down given off by the constant cutting and working of fabrics in the workshop below.
The sensation first felt by Lilly, and still unsettling Amelia, doesn't seem to have any impact upon Gar, Vera or Mama Frill... but for the pair who lived through Bloody Jack's predations upon Amelia's orphanage, the feeling of horror is all too real...
Vera draws her sword and steps into the room, looking around.
In one of the back corners, amidst a drift of textile down, is a small figure. It resembles an amalgamation of thin children’s bones, infants’ bed clothes, and bits of dust and fuzz, all with the hand-painted head of a dolly atop it. Shrinking backwards from the group, the figure seems more scared of the group than they may be of it... although as Amelia comes into the attic it stops its retreat into the fabric...
What the...?
"Silently the shades of evening"
"Gather round my lowly door;"
"Silently they bring before me"
"Faces I shall see no more."
"O the lost, the unforgotten,"
"Though the world be oft forgot!"
"O the shrouded and the lonely,"
"In our hearts they perish not!"
"Living in the silent hours,"
"Where our spirits only blend,"
"They, unlinked with earthly trouble,"
"We, still hoping for its end."
"How such holy memories cluster,"
"Like the stars when storms are past,"
"Pointing up to that fair heaven,"
"We may hope to gain at last."
Despite the pain the room contains, Amelia's voice again rises in harmony, trying to quiet the pain. Lilly collapses into a small girl again, tears streaming on her face.
The raw pain pouring from the darkness of the attic seems to quieten at Amelia's singing...
Moving out of the darkest corners of the attic, the small thing - identified as an Attic Whisperer by Vera... but more pertinently identified by Amelia and Lilly as the amalgam of the essences of the many innocent children murdered over the years by Bloody Jack - reaches into it ragged 'clothing'. Beckoning Amelia and Lilly over, it produces a piece of charcoal and starts to write on the floor with a child-like scrawl;
Bloody Jack Carver
Decided, “No farther,
The blood was enough for now.”
He gave up the knife,
And the inspector his wife,
So another could take the blood vow.
Having written this previously unknown verse of the Bloody Jack rhyme, the whisperer 'looks' at the investigators with its doll's eyes...
Setting the charcoal down, it retrieves a ragged and bloodied piece of parchment and hands it to Amelia. It is immediately recognisable as the fortune written by Madam Larua for William Hughe all those years ago - presumably recovered from the wreckage of the fortune-tellers stall, it is mostly intact;
'You will soon lay down the knife as your time is done. Another is to come who will return to the scene of the crime and take up the bloody business again'.
...and finally, a small skeletal hand offers up a pair of blood-stained tinker's pliers - from a set remarkably similar to those on the various work benches back at that first crime scene.
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Vera reads the fortune over Amelia's shoulder. She reads the verse written by the attic whisperer, then ponders the case...
According to the redacted records, Muncy said a creature had taken the form of his daughter and attacked his wife, and they killed each other... a spite-waif... the mirror-portals to the Between... dopplegangers... spite-waifs taking the form of children... Bloody Jack was killing children... The bones of his victims—some were human, some were not...
She then kneels warily before the attic whisperer.
"So... the dopplegangers are replacing the children of Castorhage with those spite-waifs from Between? A workhouse like this one would be a perfect place to do that. But they're also coming through the mirrors! One of them replaced Inspector Muncy's child all those years ago, and that's what killed the Inspector's wife! And Old Bill... Bloody Jack... He was killing both spite-waifs and innocent children alike! Perhaps he was after the spite-waifs but couldn't tell the difference! And maybe just did not care...?"
"But who is this other to come? The Inspector is dead..." She looks at Amelia. "Or, is he...?"