Xander motioned the group back to the other doors. They knew there were people there. That was enough for now. Next step was to make sure there wouldn't be reinforcements from one of the other rooms.
"Ready," Milo whispers, blade drawn, as Xander tries the first door.
The door opens to reveal an almost-comfortable looking apartment. A feather bed piled high with blankets dominates the well-appointed space. Floral wallpaper has been carefully pasted over the darkness of the prison's walls, and carpets cover the floor. A dresser, mirror, desk, and armchair complete the illusion of a tidy, inviting living space on the Material Plane.
But it's not so much a "living space" anymore. Swaddled in coverlets and propped against the headboard is a body, apparently human and long since deceased, though the chill in the air has preserved the corpse well. There is no sign of violence; it looks as if he may have simply succumbed to the ever-present cold of the prison, finally fading away huddled in covers desperate for a last taste of warmth. No movement meets your eye; the room is dark and still.
Xander scanned the room with his second sight, not touching anything yet.
"If one removed a finger that bared a ring, that ring must of been something of want."
Milo shrugs. "Or the finger was just sacrificed to those things in the basement. That bloody doll is odd, though." Milo frowns. "Feels like it's watching me."
Yes, someone's creeped out by... everything here.
Beneath Xander's second sight, the house's walls, floors, ceiling, everything create a low-level glow and a faint hum. But that's to be expected in a realm shaped by the whims of a mysterious unknown sentience, and once he tunes out the background noise, no particular magic auras rise to prominence.
Kinvara examines the wound a few moments longer and decides that the injury must have been before death. It's cleanly healed instead of ragged as a fresh wound would have been; it might have even happened years before.
Milo and Tess stand back, just trying to deal with the creepiness of the scene. And after several moments, they can't shake the feeling that the man looks familiar somehow...then suddenly, it strikes Milo. The face is similar to one he saw in a portrait in the Boroi manor - a family portrait, from the look of it.
He had recognized Stepan at the time, but the two others had been strangers... Now, though, Milo's more familiar with Stepan's story. And he's certain that this man had stood in the center of the painting, head and shoulders above the brothers in line behind him for the barony.
Milo squints at the dead body for a long moment, his brows knitted together... and then he freezes.
"....isn't that Stepan?" he asks a little hoarsely. "Look at the jawline, the brow. That's-- I'd wager all the coins I have left on me. This isn't right."
Cold sweat breaks out on Milo's brow as his mind leaps to worst case scenarios: the man that had sent them through the portal might not have been Stepan at all, but something wearing his face... something who's now back in the daylight world, with a defenseless Anya.
"--it has to be an illusion," he blurts. "More of this Heart's tricks, or something--"
He strides forward, using his rapier to poke the dead body in the likely-futile hope he can try and make the corpse dissipate like smoke.
The corpse lying in the bed is all too real, and it responds not at all to Milo's prodding. But after several moments, Milo's panic begins to clear, and he realizes that, though the family resemblance is certainly uncanny, it's not Stepan who lies motionless in the bed. It's his eldest brother, once heir to the barony of Karpad - until Stepan plotted with Nicasor to get his brothers out of the way and clear his path to the title. It seems you've now discovered where they were sent to keep them out of the way.
Xander knew nothing about the Baron's family, but he was starting to put the pieces together. He closed the door so they could speak quietly with less risk of being overheard or spotted.
"Take a deep breath, Milo. We're alright. We're still on mission, nothing has gone sideways. We're alright. Talk us though your suspicions, then I'll ask her for more details." Her, being the corpse.
In contrast to Milo, Xander seemed practically at ease in this place.
Milo lets out a forceful exhale, calming somewhat as closer inspection reveals to him it is merely a strong family resemblance. "Never mind, never mind," he mutters. "It's the brother. The oldest, likely. I just-- for a moment I thought it was Stepan, that we'd been played for fools the entire time and that Nicasor himself might have sent us through."
He pinches at the bridge of his nose briefly, and rubs at his eyes to clear the pervasive gloom, though of course it doesn't actually help, as the gloom is ambient and eternal.
"I'm fine," he says, more clearly. "Anyway, I imagine this is where he sent off his siblings to. What better place to stash your inconvenient family, eh?"
He still thinks that bloody doll is creepy though. Milo grabs it and turns it face down, so the green glass eyes aren't watching him.
Silence continues to reign in the dead man's chambers, and there is no sound of movement beyond the now-closed door of the room; Milo's outburst seems to have drawn no attention so far.
"I don't think there's anything we need to ask the brother here right now. We'll come back if we think of anything."
Xander did a more thorough sweep of the room just to be sure they hadn't missed anything.
Though Xander turns over everything in Iozif's room, no more surprises emerge - as if more surprises were needed.
Moving down the hall, everyone gathers at the right-hand door. Xander listens and hears nothing; searches the door and finds no devices; tests the handle and finds it unlocked.
Opening the door, a strange sight unfolds. A well-appointed bedroom sits behind the door, carpets and richly patterned wallpaper covering the grim shadowy walls of the house. This in itself isn't so strange, as Iozif's room was decorated similarly; what's strange is the lines of loose, curly script that cover ever single available surface, from the walls and floor to the soft folds of the bedspread. And perhaps not strangest, but certainly most disturbingly, of all is the rope dangling from the ceiling, bearing a hanged body that spins almost imperceptibly in the breeze of the opened door.
Tess checks the room with a quick glace.
"I'm beginning to sense a theme..." Xander said with a sad shake of his head.
"Must be the 'Taryn' that the others spoke of," Milo says with a little grimace. "They said he'd hanged himself."
Leaving Xander to look at the script, Milo approaches the corpse warily, giving a finger-poke and then a glance to see if the suicider perished with anything of value on his body. Some instincts die hard, even on corrupted shadow planes.
Tess glances around the room warily, while Xander moves to examine the script. The words, oddly enough, are not carved or painted with any sort of substance - they seem to simply be manifesting somehow, just appearing. The looping script is difficult to decipher for a moment, but it is clearly in the Common tongue, poetic rants on blood, family, betrayal, and justice.
But as you begin to feel yourself slipping into a strange, hypnotic reverie, you manage to pull yourself away. There are mysteries to solve here, after all.
Milo moves to examine the body. But it's doubtful that this is the kayal the others had spoken of - this man is human, wearing finely tailored clothes and two ornately engraved rings. And the crest on one of those rings, a heavy signet ring, looks familiar. There was another brother who had preceded Stepan for his title...
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Tess spots something - a mass of shadows seething in the corner, and a skeletal maw and fierce claws forming from them. There! she shouts.
"Oh Sh**."
"Oh Sh**."
Xander threw up a ward against undead, encompassing himself and all his allies.
"-or not," Milo sighs as he registers this is no humble kayal. "I'm oh-for-two. No, this looks like the other brother, probably-- I guess hanging is just a popular way to go, here--"
Further words get cut off by the appearance of the freakish horror. "Ahh!!"
The mass of seething shadows suddenly stops, and the skeletal face begins to twitch back and forth unnervingly, eyeless sockets scanning the room. The group holds their collective breath as it turns to where they stand - and then lets out a collective sigh as the gaze wanders past them. Xander's ward seems to have worked.
"Can we just edge out of the room and shut the door?" Milo asks in a hoarse whisper, knowing nothing about the hideous shadow creature.
"Yes, we could." Xander said in a normal voice, watching the creature carefully still. "I worry that if we do not destroy it, that when we destroy the Heart and send all the denizens of this place back to Karpad, we will bring it with us."
"Now that would be very bad if it got out of here, I don't want to think of the trouble it could cause."
"Exactly. We have a great opportunity for an ambush here. Everyone arm up with something that can hurt it. Lets see if we can take it out in one shot."
"....alright, alright," Milo groans, looking less than enthused. "At least I've got an enchanted blade, now... You say this thing can reach through armor?"
Oblivious to the living waiting with bated breath in his chambers, the tortured spirit of Henric Boroi simply floats, occasionally muttering words of nonsense that flash across the walls with a pale blue glow.
Xander drew his spiked aspergillum which was treated with ghost salt and loaded with holy water. He gripped it in both hands and slowly moved into position.
The companions make their preparations, encircling the allip as best they can and readying for a strike.
Milo takes a breath and hopes this isn't the last thing he or any of his friends get to do...
using luck
Together as one, the companions' attacks fly. The weapons slice through the mass of shadow, and Kinvara's burst of positive energy suffuses the creature with painful light, but the creature remains standing...floating...doing whatever it's doing. The spirit lets out a tortured scream, muttering incoherently, and lunges for Milo, its shadowy mass coalescing into a spectral claw.
But Milo's luck holds out, and the claw darts past him as he ducks out of the way.
Milo's teeth flash white in a reckless grin as the swipe misses him. Again, he tries to drive his enchanted blade home.
Alas, the swing is not as precise...
Xander lashes out with his own fistfull of positive energy.
Henric 15/30
The companions lash out at Henric's spirit again, Milo with blade and Kinvara and Xander with hands bathed in light. The shadow creature nearly dodges out of the way of Kinvara's touch, but the Lady of Graves guides her hand in bringing the wayward spirit to Her judgement, and the dhampir's touch makes contact at the final moment.
Before Tess even has a chance to swing, the allip is overcome, and the shadowy mass bursts into a thousand fine wisps that dissipate into the air on a nonexistent breeze, the writing on the walls fading into blankness. The room's only other inhabitant is Henric Boroi's body, still dangling lifelessly from its noose in the room's center. A bed sits against one wall, a desk and an ornate darkwood wardrobe against the other.
Milo sags with relief. "That could have been worse," he says, and automatically starts to try and wipe his blade only to realize there's no actual.... blood on it. He squints at it for any ectoplasm, or whatever, then shrugs.
"Well.... be at peace, you creepy corpse," he mutters to the hanging body. If someone else wants to cut him down, fine, but Milo doesn't want to touch it again. "Maybe we should check the wardrobe, might be something in there?"
Xander was a priest of Pharasma. He cut down the body, checked it over and removed the noose, then laid it to rest with a few short words.
The Shadow Realm was cut off from Golarion, but it was not cut off from the Boneyard. Maybe now the spirit of Henric could rest easier and be sent to whatever terrible reward awaited Kuthonites.
As Xander cuts Henric's body down, he notices the man is extremely well-dressed, as befitting someone of his station. He wears two rings, one on each hand; one bears the Boroi family crest, while the other displays a picture of a cornucopia inlaid in opal. When Xander examines it with his second sight, it glows faintly.
Milo's hunch is rewarded when he looks in the wardrobe and finds Henric's other prized possessions squirreled away - an intricately filligreed longsword, two small vials filled with a gold-flecked liquid, and a belt of linked gold rings. Xander's second sight causes the sword and the vials to reveal their magical auras; the belt, though well made, has no such aura.
Xander handed the Boroi crest ring to Milo. "When we get out of here, the family might want that back. Not sure Stephan deserves it, but the rest of his family hadn't done anything wrong."
The two Protection potions he handed to Milo and Tess. "Should help keep you safe from dark-hearted creatures while you're in the thick of it."
"This other ring will sustain someone without food or drink, and will reduce the amount of sleep someone needs. For those who need to replenish magical reserves, it's very valuable." he handed it to Kin. "Best for a healer."
"I never was very good at using real swords. Milo? Tess? Either of you want it?"
"A sword would make a good back up should I get disarmed..."