Kishan moves through the door with her sword drawn.
"Drachman, left, I'll take right; Jackson, keep us covered. Julian, stay close. John, can you sense anything about this part of the NeverNever?"
Once in her defensive position, Kishan casts her gaze about, looking for threats, as well as any of the odd mystical phenomenon that tend to occur naturally in the NeverNever.
Kishan steps onto the stone balcony that encircles the top level of the tower, her coat blowing back in the stiff, cold wind. The place smells of bird nests and mold, all carried away on the breeze. There is no indication of life here, not even birds on the wind. Other than the standard uneasiness that mortals might feel in the NeverNever, you have no sense of danger.
Aaron can hear the soft rumble of massive ice chunks scraping together below, an almost subsonic frequency.
This place seems to be abandoned.
John sniffs the air and brushes his fingers over the stone railing.
"This stone is old, formed in fire then frozen in anger."
"Stay alert. Is everyone going to be warm enough? I have an emergency blanket and some sleeping bags in my pocket, but no winter coats. My jacket will protect me, but if anyone wants one of the others, let me know."
"This place looks empty, but I doubt that door was there for nothing. This place has significance, and I believe the arsenal was their to protect it; either to keep people out, or to keep something in. In either case, whatever is here is dangerous; either because it is too dangerous to be allowed into the wrong hands, or because it is too dangerous to be allowed into our world."
"I'm not sure I want to be here any longer than we need to be. This has all the hallmarks of a Winter Fae's temper tantrum, and a big one. I like my limbs warm and mobile."
"Let's get moving, I can hear the ice shifting below."
Aaron draws Gram and moves in, eyes open to wide to every spectrum.
Aaron moves around the balcony, discovering a barred window of human proportions. Peering in, he sees an icy floor covered with rushes and knotted with large clots of bird droppings. Nothing jumps out to eat him, but he does notice many crows nesting in the rafters. They stare back at him with eyes glinting and beaks silent.
"Where are we?" Julian asks to no one in particular. "I've been living above this place all my life and I didn't even know it?" He takes in the view. "It's beautiful, but something about it... I just don't like it."
Turning around to check the locations of her companions, Kishan shows a look of shock on her face when she sees Julian's form. Her lips move as she reads the script on his forehead. She is a scholar, as knows Latin fluently, in addition to a few other languages. Not that she would need it to recognize that script. Malleus Mallificarum. The infamous Witches Hammer.
"Julian! What...?"
In the NeverNever, John takes on a harder, sharper look. His eyes sink into his skull, becoming darker and beady. His nose is slightly longer and sharper, his teeth become more predatory, and his red hat becomes damp with blood.
The door opens onto a balcony. The air snaps cold and crisp, blowing against the flames of the house. The stone balcony wraps around a room atop a tower, something like Rapunzel's tower in Tangled, but impossibly high. Far below, maybe a mile below, the tower climbs out of a frozen sea. Flash frozen. Waves are frozen into the ice, as though Summer had instantly become Winter. The ocean stretches to the horizon in each direction, though in one direction their is an ancient sailing vessel, something like a massive Viking dragonboat, stuck in the frozen sea. There is a window cut into the wall at the top of the tower, leading into some sort of room within, shrouded in an unnatural darkness.
Look at the right drawing in this image.
So it is like the spire on the right, except at the bottom of the widest part of the tower there is a stone balcony with a stone railing that wraps all the way around. There is only one room atop the spire, not two like in the other drawings. There are three barred windows evenly spaced around the walls, all leading into the same room.
The whole spire sits on or grows out of a frozen sea below. Far off, you can see the dragonboat caught in the ice.
Aaron whistles.
"That explains so much. Maybe a weird question for you Julian, but do you have any memories of your childhood?"
Julian looks equally bewildered. "...What? What are you talking about?" He looks down at his hands and loses his grip on his shotgun. "What's wrong with my ha--" he lifts up his shirt to look at his stomach and sees aged marble"-- What's going on?! Why is this happening?" The boy rubs at his face, pulls at his arms, runs his hands against his hair, no longer feeling the familiar fleshiness or individual strands of hair but smooth sculpted stone.
"What... What am I?! What's happened to me! M-my childhood?! I don't know! I remember my Mom, my Dad...my bar mitzvah... Starting school... But that doesn't make me some... Holy shi-- I'm a monster?"
"I don't know exactly what is going on, but it appears the magic of this part of the NeverNever is affecting you somehow. I don't know why nothing like this happened the first time you were here, when John shifted you into the NeverNever in order to take your place. Regardless, even if it turns out you are something other than natural born human, that does not make you a monster. It is your actions that tell who you are, not your appearance, and not what material you're made of."
Aaron waves his sword at the crows.
Shoo!"
Julian stifles any sort of emotion. At this point, he's burned himself out. He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried as much as he had today. He couldn't remember a time that he cried at all. He avoids looking at Kishan. Maybe she's right? Maybe it's the weird place changing him. Deep down, he knew.
"So what are we doing here?"
"I believe I recognize that ship down there; the one frozen in the ice. There is a known way point there. We can either use it to get back to the real world at a known location, or to get our barrings and find the way point that corresponds to Boston."
She takes another sidelong look at Julian. "However, I don't think we should be in a hurry to leave. If we'd just wanted away from the police, I could have veiled us back at the house. Whatever is going on with Julian and his family, this place is connected to them somehow. The answers to that mystery are here, and I suggest we not throw away that opportunity." She looks around the group before finishing, "Keep on guard though; I still think that this place is likely to be dangerous. I believe we should commence with a search, level by level, and see what is here. If there are answers, I would like to find them. Remember, we are in the realm of faerie, and probably the Realm of Winter as well. Do not eat any food found here, and don't believe anything that seems to good to be true. If you meet any faeries, don't make any promises, do not accept any gifts, and under no circumstances agree to any bargains."
"When you are ready, I suggest we proceed."
Julian tightens his grip on the shotgun and makes for the tower entrance. "I guess there's no point in stalling," his voice cracks.
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Hefting his shotgun into a ready position, he nodded at the others and started moving around the tower, looking for a good entrance into the room. "Knew I should have kept my copy of the Brothers Grimm stories," he said aloud to nobody in particular. The moment he found a door or unbarred window, he moved half-way inside and swept his gun from side to side, covering as much of the room as he could.
Moving around the balcony, Jarrod comes to a window with bars bent out. He slithers halfway through, seeing Aaron at a window on the opposite side, shooing ravens.
Looking about the dimly illuminated room, Jarrod sees the faint outline of a trap door, hidden underneath rushes strewn underneath a table on the wall near Jarrod's window.
A massive raven, nearly two feet in length, flaps down from the rafters and alights on the table. The bird eyes Jarrod, as if daring him to say, "Nevermore." He seems nonplussed by the man's weapon, or even by the presence of the others.
The bird bites at the edges of the table for a few moments, as if to say, "See how vicious I can be. Watch me bite this table."
Finally the creature turns one eye to Jarrod, who has the strangest sense of his mother calling through the house, "You close that door, Jarrod Liam Jackson. In or out, make a decision."
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"'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor, I muttered, tapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more,'" Jarrod quoted, almost feeling compelled to speak those words. Stepping fully into the room, shotgun in a casual rest but ready for action at a moment's notice, Jarrod gave a short bow and said, "Pardon for the intrusion, fair creature, but my companions and I are seeking passage through your domain."
The birds overhead cock their heads to the side, taking in the Detective's entrance.
The bird on the table pecks hard on the rough wood, "Kraa, kraa."
Jarrod has visions of the birds swarming down on him, Hitchcock style, but a quick shake of his head clears his vision.
Several birds, six or seven, no, definitely six, come down from the rafters to the floor pecking at the wood floor beneath the rushes.
"Maybe that means they won't bother us?" Aaron says, and tries his luck at taking the stairs down.
Aaron pries up the door in the floor. What little heat there is in the room seems to flow down into the hole below, betraying the laws of thermodynamics.
Beneath, a narrow set of stone steps spirals down. Unexpectedly, the steps are neither carved nor laid, but supported by chains.
.
The stairwell is bitterly cold, tiny ice crystals forming in Aaron's breath. Imperceptible to most, there is a faint smell of saltwater, and old fish. Ammonia.
The stairwell extends for hundreds of feet, with a small copper door, about 3 feet tall, roughly where ground level should be. The stairs continue beyond, and from there you can hear the gurgle of water, the shudder of shifting ice.
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"I really don't like the looks of this," Jarrod said as his eyes looked down the strange stairs. Carefully placing his foot on the first stair, he slowly applied weight until he knew that it would support him. "Let's go down one at a time, I don't trust that these chains would support all of us at the same time. I'll go down first, then when I'm a ways down, Julian, you follow me down." With that said, he started making his way down the stairs, his shotgun ready to blast the first hostile he came across.
Aaron provides a different plan, raising his hand.
"Why don't I go down first? I have enhanced senses, and should the stairs collapse under me I can probably survive the fall. If not react in time to simply leap back to the top."
"Of course if you WANT to go first...?" the dragon man asks, raising an eyebrow.
"That's 'O Mighty Smaug' to you." he says with a grin, then descends.
Alright, 'Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities,' after you. Kishan quirks a smile, "Finally a reference I can get behind!"
She reaches out with her senses, looking for threats or enchantments.
Aaron also keeps a lookout on the descent, all sense straining.
The group descends into the tower, stairs swaying gently with their passage.
Aaron's nose fills with the smell of ammonia. Viewing the massive rubbery wall in broad spectrums reveals flickering psychedelic patterns, an ultraviolet light show that feels like communication, but in a language that even his draconic gifts cannot interpret.
Kishan is equally fascinated by the mystic nature of the tower and of its strange tentacular wall. The tower throbs with power, draining heat into a bottomless well, freezing both the ice and whatever is trapped within.
Below the room with the tentacle, the stairs become more solid, carved from stone. The walls, too, change, becoming gradually larger blocks and then eventually carved from solid rock. At this point, you are well below the surface of the water. You can feel the pressure increasing as you descend.
Being ever one to tempt fate, Aaron pokes the tentacle.
Unsure of what he's looking at, Julian raises his shotgun and steadies it on the tentacles. "What the h--are you sure you should be doing that?"
Gram slides easily through any sort of protection around the wall of tentacle. The ancient sword sinks into the arm as though through air, drawing a fountain of blue-black blood. It may be that the tentacle shudders, or it may be that what shudders is reality itself. Something almost tangible washes over John and Julian, briefly making them seem normal, then foul beyond belief, then they return to their typical Fae appearance.
Jarrod carefully studies the door, and realizes that it is strange indeed. As he carefully studies it, he notices a fine tracery of lines, like something from the Moria door. By the time he follows the lines from left to right around the door and looks back, the door has changed, covered in intricately interlaced gears and cogs, like a complex clock. Watching further, wheel appears like something from a U-boat.
Through it all, a single handle remains, shaped like a tree bent in the wind.
Seeing no obvious danger, Jarrod grabs the handle. It feels warm in his hand, but not unpleasant. With a tug, the door swings in. A small snow drift fills the bottom half of the door. Wind whips in, chapping lips.
Beyond is a small snowy pebbled beach. After about 20 feet the beach descends into ice.
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"I don't know which is more weird, the dimensional door leading us to this world, or this steampunk-styled door," Jarrod said before stepping outside. "And I am really glad I started wearing this duster. Seriously, is this part of the Never Never modeled after Antarctica? I really don't want to have to pass through the Mountains of Madness."
"Um, ya. And Mr. Drachman; speaking of ancient abominations, keep in mind that the door that brought us here was right next to a military grade arsenal, quite possibly intended to be used should something terrible try to access the door, from one side or the other. With that it mind, would you mind not stabbing the Eldrich Horror that might be the very reason that arsenal was placed there? The last thing we need is to piss off the Watcher in the Water, let alone Cthulhu's ugly stepchild."