As the newcomers entered, the world seemed to Xander (hey, it's Xander!) to move as though in a fog, just not the same fog that had just receded... or the fog from their dreams. Our dreams... no, our dream.
Yelling, fear, weapons are drawn, a woman passes out. They are not doppelgangers. We would hear their thoughts intending to slay us. He had started to move forward to examine the doctor's limp form when the woman with the bow thinks/shouts "TATTERMAN!" The dream... the enemy... yellow mist... the man in rags.
Recognition! Fear, adrenalin. We thought we had escaped! There is no escape. Indignation. Anger. Resignation.
Miniel looks on motionless and silent, dumbfounded at the new arrivals. She'd just seen them, in the slave markets, right? What is going on here?
The incense takes a while to kick in, but soon their minds are intertwined with the new people in front of them. She sees their memories, their thoughts, and over everything, a murderous figure dressed in rags, blood spurting, bodies falling to the ground, a mysterious man calling out, "Me?".....
Miniel shakes her head to clear it. She'd never seen something like that before...or had she? She can't remember all of a sudden, her head spinning. Anyways, there's the matter at hand, the doctor and the oneirogen and...
Pushing out the newcomers' muddled minds as best she can, Miniel heads over to examine the body with the others in the group.
Desdemona, uninjured despite the unseemly spatter of blood on her face, came to with a quiet gasp. For a single second, a look of terror that transcended all thought transformed her face into a rictus, her hands raised to ward off some predatory horror. Her red-smeared dress under a baggy chain shirt looked to be sanitorium issue.
Darkness Tatterman Tatterman DARK her mind screamed - it would have been deafening, had it reached her throat. Instead, she made a choked whimper, drawing back from the figures around her - and looked at the floor.
My shadow, she thought with incongruous alarm. But her shadow was simply a shadow, nothing alarming there.
Finding her voice, she turned her grey gaze back on the armed and suspicious strangers, and those she recognized. Eyes flicking about the room, she quavered, "Gracious, I... I must have fainted. I'm sorry - are we safe here?" The hope was plaintive, and short-lived. She spotted the mist curling outside the windows and in the doorway, and shuddered.
No escape. This is the end.
There was a curious relief to her thought.
"He's coming, isn't he," she quietly asked Reine, fixing her gaze on one of the only ones she knew that had made it. She slowly rose, her lit lantern clutched in her hands. Her shadow stretched away behind her.
Breathing deep, she blinked. And turned her gaze on the strangers again. Those thoughts... those aren't mine! What have you done?!
"He's coming, isn't he," she quietly asked Reine, fixing her gaze on one of the only ones she knew that had made it. She slowly rose, her lit lantern clutched in her hands. Her shadow stretched away behind her.
Reine looked down at Desdemona, and the look of concern that had been on her face earlier was nowhere to be found.
"Could be," Reine said, quietly.
"We'll make him bleed this time," the thought was firm, angry.
Breathing deep, she blinked. And turned her gaze on the strangers again. Those thoughts... those aren't mine! What have you done?!
"Focus," Reine snapped, as if Des' growing hysteria had been verbalized. Then she blinked, looking confused, though her bow didn't waver from the doorway.
"Wait," she asked, shooting another glance at Des, "thoughts? what has who done?"
Desdemona jerked as though she'd been brought up short by a noose. She may have cowered, just a bit, from the angry-seeming woman.
"I... Do you hear that?" she asked timidly, staring around at the other people in the room. "I thought I heard..." She eyed their ready weapons, and swallowed.
Yet, what she felt was a wave of relief, stronger than the first.
It wasn't you. Not this time. Thank the gods.
Raising her hand in a warding gesture, she said, "I don't suppose we'll need introductions, with Him - It - coming. Xander is right, it's quite hopeless. Nothing we do will stop it."
Xander... The name seemed both familiar, and new. VERY new. So new, she wasn't sure it truly belonged to the half-orc it seemed to originate from. At least, he was the one who looked up when she spoke it.
Well, looked down, in her case.
The suspicion that Broom radiated quickly changed to fear at the mention of the Tatterman.
"The thing in the mist is real? We thought it was just a nightmare!"
"The hunter in the mist is real? We thought it was just a nightmare."
Broom shook a bit as the though that the thing that had killed everyone in her dream was actually here in the real world.
"How do we fight it? It killed all of us before. How can it be in the real world?"
"How can we fight it? It killed all of us in the dream. How has it crossed to the waking world?"
Broom looks nervously at the strangers.
"Who is Xander?"
"Who is Xander?"
Desdemona looked at the one who spoke in surprise. Broom? Is her name really Broom?
"The Tatterman, the mists, this place... is this truly the real world? Or is it just another dream?" She looked down at her fingers, stained red, and her expression changed from surprise to concern. Unwilling to wipe them on her dress, however soiled it already was, she looked around for some more appropriate cloth, upset.
"When you're in a dream, are all things not real?"
The strange duality of Broom's queries didn't strike her until then, and she glanced between the strangers' faces, uncertain. "I thought... I apologize if I've been presumptuous. I only believed that the fellow over there was named Xander." Are my thoughts echoing, too?
"That's just what a doppleganger would say....." John mutters.
Broom's attitude changed in an instant. The fear she had been feeling moments ago almost completely disappeared and was replaced by a cheerful concern as she watched Desdamona cast about for a way to clean her hands.
"Oh! Let us help you clean up!"
"We can help cleans and order your attire"
The black liquid that was in her hand up until now disappears as Broom rummages around in her backpack while approaching the strangers, suddenly oblivious to any danger they might present.
She pulls out a worn, but remarkably clean rag and offers it with a smile.
"We can clean you off and freshen you up better than the rag if you are ok with Us using magic on you"
"We can clean the soil from you and your clothes if you consent to Us using simple magic on you"
Her honest, almost fervent desire to help clean Desdamona was plain to all through both her actions and the link through the incense.
So many voices, so many voices swirling about!
Adelar grit his teeth until they ground, bringing his bloodied holy symbol close to his lips, fingers trembling and making the chain shake.
" Lady of Valor, if ever we needed you ..."
But there was nothing. No glint of recognition, no voice from On High.
Nothing. A deafening sound that drowned out all the frayed speech that kept bombarding his mind. She wasn't answering. All that was left was three feet of steel and a strong arm, then.
Gods above, let me not die here, Adelar panicked in his own mind, Let me find absolution first. Let not my unknown sin condemn me ...
" Dream, Nightmare, it matters not," the Galtan finally growled, " We all clearly can see, hear, and feel one another, and this is enough for me right now."
It's not. It's not enough. Where is The Inheritor? Am I strong enough to survive this without Her? I'll die here. I'll die here and I don't even know where Here is ..!
" What matters is this, this Tatterman Comes, and we either fight to survive and escape this or we resign ourselves to our fates."
This must be a Nightmare. It can't be real. The Lady would not abandon me. I would not have forsaken Her. This must be a nightmare.
" And I do not Resign. I will never Resign, non."
He rapped hard on his temple, trying to force the constant speech assaulting his senses out, pummeling it out of his ear until it was gone but still it remained, lingering like a sickening rot in his mind. He couldn't stop it.
Trying to steady himself, he slid over to where the fierce, bow woman ... Reine? Reine. How did he know ...
He slid over to Reine and Miniel, giving an eye towards the other one they had helped - Desdemona, Knower of Names and Lantern Holder. With little ceremony, he tugged at some of his tunic beneath his mail shirt, a clean bit of cloth kept safe from the horrors of their flight, and sliced it off with his immaculate blade. Before he could press it into Desdemona's hands, however, another of the strangers leaped into action. She spoke of magic - they commanded magics?
While wary, there was something about the woman's cheerful disposition that didn't make Adelar stop Broom. Something ... comforting, despite the madness. In spite of the madness?
" You're a, a mage? Can you fight?" he asked of Broom.
He cast his eyes towards the group at large.
" Goes for all of you. We saw that ... that Thing kill without pausing. We need to figure a way out of this. Yes? Yes. Yes."
Laura steps back as Desdemona comes to, and then looks at John and nods, as if acknowledging their shared suspicion and recognition. "This administrator," she says, indicating the unconscious woman, "has become a focus for making dreams real, yes? Would that power end if she were to cease living?" She holds her greataxe suggestively, ready to complete the job. "We must act quickly, if the tattered man approaches."
Broom looked over at Adelar "We don't know if We are a mage. We can cast spells though, We just... remember them from other places."
"We are unlikely to be a mage. With little control over the process we recall knowledge from other minds."
There was no variation in what Broom's voices said as she related earlier events
"We have all been killed by the Tatterman already. Its how we met. We were in a dream of a strange city. Actually Cage has a picture we just found of the city! We were all in the yellow mist and the Tatterman killed all of us. You remind Us a lot of Shield. He tried to stop the Tatterman but was the first that died. Then some people tried fighting him, and they died. Someone tried to kill themselves before the Tatterman could, but he killed them too fast. We tried to run away but he caught up to us."
The fear started to creep back into her mind.
"None of us know anything about why we are here or where we came from. There were more of us when we woke up, but some of us aren't here any more. Shield's mind broke and dagger was killed by a doppleganger. Harrow, Cage, Pouch and Ourselves are the only ones that made it out of the prison. But we met Rope and Torch after that."
The fear subsides a little as she speaks about her companions
"We aren't very strong at fighting, but Rope is! Ane Torch and Cage are really good with bows. Harrow has this strange angry woman spirit inside him that does things, and Pouch is really smart and can fix people!" Broom's admiration of all her companions can be felt through the shared link, though it is strongest when she mentions Pouch.
Concern creeps back into her thoughts
"But if the Tatterman is here now, We probably won't wake up when he kills us again. Maybe We will be safe back at the chapal? It isn't too far away and if we all run fast enough maybe some of us can make it."
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Xander is momentarily fascinated with the sensation of so many voices rummaging around inside his head. I'm fairly confident there are more voices than actual people in this room.
"Allow me to clear up some of the confusion. The telepathic connection we are currently experiencing is the result of a magical incense. We were trying to see if anything was left of the administrator's consciousness. She has been taken by, possessed, by an other-worldy entity. We believe that this presence may be the source of at least some of the strange goings on."
He steps over to the fallen form of the doctor. "We are all located inside an asylum, one located in the country of Ustalav. All of us are suffering from a strange form of amnesia. The details of our lives seem to have been erased, although we still possess language, skills, and certain knowledges. The doctor here was tasked with helping us, although we are still gathering details. We seem to have been placed here as a group by a benefactor we cannot recall." He waves his hand at the incense. "A side-effect of this item seems to have been it unlocking some of our memories, although they still seem like a dream, like reading a novel written in the third person."
"And my name is Xander, dear," he says to the young sorceress, "though you may continue to call me Pouch if you wish." He seems to give off a brotherly vibe toward her in particular.
"As for the Tatterman... if he is truly present, our predicament is dire, indeed and the point of this whole discussion is moot. I am hoping it is yet a side-effect of the entity inside the doctor interacting perhaps with the incense. A door will not stop him. We might as well peek outside and see if he is still there. If not, we can, at least for the moment, write it off as a shared hallucination."
"I think my name is John...." John says non sequitur.
"I'm not sure why I have this little cage."
Desdemona relaxed a touch at Broom's sudden offer of aid, and the intended aid of that most intense man - Adelar. She accepted Broom's cloth with a grateful smile, though something about her gave the impression of... watchfulness, perhaps. Wariness - but not directed at the people in the room. "Yes, if it isn't an imposition - I would very much appreciate your magics." She shivered slightly at the thought of the red tracks on her cheeks. Whose blood had it been?
"You all have such unusual names! Please forgive my rudeness - my name is Desdemona... though perhaps you know that, due to the incense?" She looked at the smoke trailing up from where the sticks burned, and surreptitiously stepped away from it, her hand covering her mouth and nose.
Don't hurt them, she pleaded mentally... but with whom?
Her eyes fell on the one they called the doctor. "Reine and I... we've had a similar experience to your own. Our memories lost, being chased by - and killed by - that thing... though we never met this doctor. After, I mean." She glanced sidelong at Reine, who seemed on the verge of violence out of sheer rage. As though the look burned her, she looked away again quickly.
At the doctor.
The doctor whose death might save them all.
And yet... were they sure of that?
"How certain are you that mu... that killing the doctor will return us to our waking world?" Desdemona asked. She peered into the doctor's face, hand still covering her mouth in an inadequate mask.
...DO you know her? she thought, but it seemed almost a question meant for someone else.
"Surely, that monster couldn't follow us into the real, waking world," she said, but her words were too anxious to be comforting.
"How certain are you that this isn't the real, waking world," Reine asked. It could have been a cruel question, but if so, her heart clearly wasn't in it. She shook her head, and gave a sigh of frustration.
"Xander there is right about the door. One of us might as well look. I'll do it."
With that, Reine stepped to the door and took a cautious look into the next room.
Broom began happily casting a simple spell and started meticulously cleaning Desdemona first and then her clothing next.
As she did so, the fear of what was going on faded once again into the background of her thoughts.
"Oh, We believe this is the real world. We think that what Torch meant was that the Doctor is what was making our dream come true in the real world. We don't think killing her will change anything though. Cage knocked her out and the smoke stopped coming out of her mouth, but nothing else seems to have changed."
"We believe this is the real world. We think that what Laura was suggesting was that the Doctor was making our dreams bleed into reality. We don't think killing her will change anything though. John knocked her out and although the vapourous energy stopped coming out of her mouth, nothing else seems to have changed"
After Desdemona was clean, Broom changed her spell and started fussing over her clothing, mending any little scuffs or tears that she found while Reine went to look out the door.
Reine looks out the door and scans the walls and the floor, mismatched eyes wary as she readies herself for the monster's rush. But she sees nothing. No Tatterman, no unnatural monsters, no yellow mist, nothing. The hallway is quiet and empty. Nothing to worry about.
Broom's ministrations brought such a sense of relief to Desdemona that it brought tears to her eyes. "Thank you! I feel that I haven't been clean in ages. I truly am grateful!" Her words were slightly muffled by her vain attempt to stop breathing the incense. Those listening to her thoughts might have been surprised at how rigidly she controlled them now, had they known her well.
As it was, she only seemed curious of the strangers, and apprehensive of their imminent doom.
Blinking the tears away surreptitiously, she looked toward the door and Reine, wary. "I... honestly, I wasn't expecting us to survive for this long. Is there any point in running, Reine?" She didn't address the idea that this was the waking world.
That thought was too terrible for words.
"The rat-people never warned us about this. Honestly, if I had the power to transform or grow smaller, I might join them in their tiny warren. They seem to have been spared most of the horrors we've seen." She glanced at John. "That... that isn't a birdcage, is it?" The idea brought back a memory of angry little spirits and dead cultists.
"I don't think it's what you would use for a bird. I think it's for angrier animals with teeth and claws." John answers Desdmona
"I don't see anything." Reine said to the others.
Doesn't mean it's not there, The thought went through her mind - and the minds of anyone else in the room who was listening to thoughts. Still...
"Nothing looks like it did when we ran in here. No Tatterman, no ugly things, the door isn't smashed up. I don't..."
I don't know what to make of this, and I'm getting tired of being pushed around like a piece in someone else's game!
"I don't think we have to run any more. Not now. But we probably shouldn't stay here."
Laura takes care to breathe, keeping herself calm. Her heart had been racing for most of the time since the others had entered the room, and she had been fighting that feeling that another part of her was stirred up and frightened, an amplified sense of danger. "Hush, hush..." she tells herself, placing her hand on her stomach. "It will be all right."
"That's odd, if there is nothing strange outside, then where did all this blood come from?"
"That's odd, if whatever chased you was truly a figment, then where did all this blood come from?"
"If we are going to leave, let Us get Our stuff"
"If we are going to leave, let Us get Our stuff"
Broom went back to the pot where the incense had been burning. To her surprise, not very much of it had yet been consumed. She careful tapped out the coal and wrapped the remainder in a piece of parchment from the desk.
"Maybe We can link the minds of everyone back at the chapel!"
"Maybe We can link the minds of everyone back at the chapel"
She carefully put the rest of the incense in her pack and proceeded to clean out the iron pot, dumping the ashes into a small trash bin beside the desk.
Content with the task completed, she went back to the door. As the lingering vapours began to fade, her final thoughts through the link was
"Do either of you want to be cleaned as well?"
"Do either of you want to be cleaned as well?"
The final emotion was one of really wanting to be allowed to clean up her new companions.
"I think I just knocked the doctor out. Do any of you know if that weird stuff will start again when she wakes up?" John asks the others.
Laura looks meaningfully at the unconscious body of the administrator, and then at the blade of her greataxe. "Think we have learned, all there is to learn," she murmurs. "Yes?"
"I think I just knocked the doctor out. Do any of you know if that weird stuff will start again when she wakes up?" John asks the others.
"It will. The only way to stop it is to end her...it."
Content with the task completed, she went back to the door. As the lingering vapours began to fade, her final thoughts through the link was
"Do either of you want to be cleaned as well?"
"Do either of you want to be cleaned as well?"The final emotion was one of really wanting to be allowed to clean up her new companions.
Reine looked down at herself - possibly for the first time. Her nose wrinkled.
"I could stand to be a bit less sticky," she said, seemingly to the room at large.
"The blood is real," she said, "the first time, there was a lot of blood, but we all woke up dry. This time..." She trailed off, with a quick glance at Desdemona.
"It's different, this time."
"We should assume that the doctor's awakening would restart the phenomenon. However, if we take her back to the chapel, perhaps the priestess can care for her?" He shakes his head. Winter will most likely need to keep her unconscious. "I don't believe there is any cure, nor do I believe there's anything left but a shell. But, this truly is uncharted territory. If we are going back to the chapel, let's do that soon. We can rest up a bit there before continuing. Besides, it will take me a while to look through these materials. Perhaps we will discover something useful among the doctor's books." It's possible he's just excited to have a chance to sit and read for a while.
A red-skinned, black horned tiefling, dying, crawling on the floor, scratching as it pulls itself along with its fingertips, gurgling with blood pouring from a neck wound.
Everyone sees the image quite clearly in their heads. It is a powerful, almost commanding thought, more of a directive than an observation.
A moment- not even a heartbeat- later, over by the door, both Reine and Broom hear the noise in their ears. A long, labored scratch as something pulls itself along the floor and then stops as it comes to the end of its stamina. Gurgling, choking, and gasping. A red-skinned, black horned tiefling, dying, is laboriously dragging himself across the floor out of the library.
Reine recognizes him immediately- Bisartis, who had made a stand at the library's far end to hold off the Tatterman and give her, Desdemona, and Adelar a chance to get away. He is clearly dying but not giving up as he tries to get back to his fellow survivors for help.
"Black shadows of hades!!!" John exclaims.
"Who is that and where did it come from?"
Broom happily starts cleaning Reine with her spell. A few moments later, she stops suddenly as the vision enters her mind. A moment after that, she stares at the wounded teifling who had been just a strange thought a second ago.
"Bisartis!" Reine blurts the word - though it is unclear whether she's answering John's question or simply calling out to her wounded ally.
"Who here can heal?"
Still, Reien is Reine, and her bow comes up as she looks for the enemy that must be following the injured.
"Get to him, I will cover!"
Seeing as how the new people seem to know him, Xander feels it would only be polite to keep him from dying. He rushes to the tiefling's side and allows a mote of healing energy to flow into him.
He also tries to determine the nature of the man's wounds.
"Well, at least he won't bleed to death."
" Easy, Xander, easy, it could be a trap!" Adelar called, laying a hand on him to try and stop him, but even the Galtan rushed out to assist the Half-Orc, blade in hand to guard him from anything that might come out of the shadows and nightmares.
The brief touch seemed to impart ... something to Pouch. Adelar had a sudden flash of insight, a ... a warning. An Omen? Something dark and terrible that ... that could be avoided?
Was this The Inheritor? Did she speak to him again?
It was the faintest, briefest sensation, and Adelar could not focus on it to figure it out - not when people needed his protection.
Xander kneels next to Bisartis, reaches down to check the tiefling's vital signs, and his hand passes right through the dying man's body. He can see and hear the tiefling, as real as anything he's ever seen, but there's no substance to him. Adelar sees this, too, and while he can't reconcile Xander's hand passing through Bisartis's body, he's sure the dying tiefling is as real as the wall next to him.
Everyone still in the room gets a sudden surge of pleasure, hunger, and anticipation from somewhere outside themselves. It feels like the joy a wolf must feel while leaping at a deer.
While Adelar and Xander are distracted by this strange spectacle, Reine sees something out of a nightmare. From the corner on her left, a soft, squishy looking thing with too many arms and a big, bulbous head flows across the ceiling as easily as if it were the floor, rushing to get in place above the two men at the end of the hall.
"Larger beasts," Desdemona echoed John briefly, her face troubled, but then Bisartis came scraping in the door - and something was hunting him.
Having felt Desdemona's deep-seated, bone-gnawing anxiety through the link the incense had manifested for them, the party could be forgiven for thinking she would scream, or flee, or both.
Instead, she rushed to reach for the tiefling as well, not having realized the trouble the others were having with the same. "Get him inside!" she gasped, only pausing in confusion when her hand, too, passed through the apparition.
Suddenly, Desdemona froze... and slowly, slowly, looked up.
"Above us," she warned the others in a dry squeak.
Her shadow, strangely enough, had fallen across the bleeding tiefling rather than stretch back from the light in her hand.
"I didn't think this could get any weirder....." John says, hefting his longsword and moving over to the door.
"Where do these unnatural things come from?"
"What fresh hell is this?" Reine curses softy, raising her bow. She lets fly her wicked-looking arrow at the thing on the ceiling, and only then calls a warning to the others.
"Look out above! On the ceiling!"
Laura freezes, her eyes following Desdemona's fearful look upward.
Broom gets a look that is equal measures of horrified and fascinated. She urgently points to the repulsive creature but says nothiong.
"What fresh hell is this?" Reine curses softy, raising her bow. She lets fly her wicked-looking arrow at the thing on the ceiling, and only then calls a warning to the others.
Reine's arrow slices into the creature's side but doesn't seem to do much damage.
Adelar kept trying to figure it out - how Bisartis's flesh just ... moved for Pouch. Surely a, a wound. Magical interference. Some demonic curse, yes, that was it. He had seen similar at the ... At the Worldwound?
Had...
Had he been to the Worldwound?
Then the calls from the others came. Above? Above?? There was a man dying on the grou-!
His head tilted up until he saw the monster, the predator that had so easily baited the two men into its net. Even though he had warned Xander of the possible snare, he had fallen victim to it just the same.
" Get behind me, get behind me!" he cried, brandishing his longsword with precision and finesse as he prepared to protect the others and cut down the creature with divine fury. More than just his sword arm, though, there was a ... a flare within Adelar. A power surging forth.
Without understanding how, or why, the Galtan knew he could assail the creature's very willpower. A lingering gift from The Inheritor? It must have been so! A righteousness so strong that it could knock others off balance, yes! Gripping his holy symbol, Adelar gave a quiet utterance to The Lady and forced his resolve into the very thoughts and utterances of the maddening creature, probing and eroding its own grasp on reality and emotion.
If it could play tricks, then so would he.
Swift Action: using Hypnotic Stare on the monster - target suffers -2 to Will Saves so long as it does not go further than 30' from Adelar.
Is the creature within melee range? How tall are the ceilings? If Adelar can melee attack, use the following. If not, he is holding until the target gets in range and then will use the same attack against it.
Try as he might, he can't seem to lay a hand on the tiefling. Is he insubstantial? A ghost, perhaps? And then his attention is drawn to the ceiling. Ahh, lovely, a decapus. We can't rely on our senses.
Reine had allowed herself to feel - for only a fleeting moment - a spark of hope at seeing Bisartis. Then, as had happened every. single. time. in this infernal place, that hope was snatched away.
Even though she'd fired her arrow at the thing on the ceiling, she'd felt herself lost in a haze as that hope had been shattered.
Then Adelar had shouted, and done... something, and Reine was brought back to whatever version of reality this was. Her shattered hope once again coalesced into anger. With a threat in sight, and a probable source of her latest hurt, that anger became a cold, focused blade, and Reine's will flowed through it.
She stepped into plain view in the doorway, and it was as if, for a moment, time stopped. To everyone who could see or hear her, Reine suddenly seemed like the most important being ever known. There was an urge - nay, a commandment - to listen to her. That what she was about to say, or do, would hold some vitally important, but hidden meaning...
"You chose the wrong bait," her voice was cold, her words clear, precise, directed at the thing on the ceiling, and carried the weight of doom. "now you've come to collect a goblin for dinner, only to find an ogre waiting for you."
From nowhere, a harrow card was now in Reine's hand. She flicked it contemptuously to the floor where the creature could see it - the face of death stared up at her prey.
Terrified that Pouch was in immediate danger from the thing, Broom silently ran forward. As she did, a viscous black liquid smelling faintly of vinegar filled the palm of her hand. Once she was close enough, she flung the acidic glob as the strange creature.