Broom watched with irritation as everyone else except for Desdemona went into the room she had just been told not to look in. This was too much, why was she the only ones not allowed to look inside? Especially after John had explicitly said she would be interested in what was inside. Were they making fun of her?
Just as the last person was leaving the room and Xander was closing the door Broom stepped forward, held the door open and looked inside. "Look at all this stuff." she said as she pushed the door open and went inside the closet, her attention fully on the shelves of supplies rather than the corpses in the next room through the broken wall. "Is there something wrong with it?" she asked even as she started rooting through the stock and making a mental note of the supplies present.
After a few moments she was satisfied with what she had found. She noticed the broken wall and though about what it would take to fix that. The bodies beyond were in a much better state than many of the other deceased that she had witnessed up to that point, though the hoods were odd.
"We will collect this stuff and bring it back to the chapel when we return." she stated as she left the closet, still wondering why the others didn't want her to see what was inside. She closed the door behind her as Xander had wanted.
"What else did you find, Broom? and...you are...er?" he says to Laura. "Do you know what killed them?"
He tries not to look at her abdomen, and fails.
Broom holds up some clean rags, spare sheets used to cover furniture, a bucket and some packages of soap. Then leans a mop and a couple of dusters against the wall just outside the closet. She also puts some small containers of wax and polish in the bucket along with a couple of scrub brushes.
"These!" she says brightly to Rostam. "They will be very useful to help keep the chapel clean, and maybe eventually tidy up the rest of the asylum if we can make it safe again."
Reine quirked an eyebrow at Broom's "treasures," but after a moment the eyebrow fell, and the corners of her mouth moved just the slightest bit towards what might've been the ghost of a memory of what a charitable person might call a smile.
The taller woman gave Broom a nod, then returned to her scanning for threats.
"That is a worthy endeavor, Broom--although, I would like to know what happened to the rest of the world...staying inside the asylum with faulty memories and no idea of what is happening outside is an incomplete task," says Rostam.
Just for fun, he checks the corpse he uncovered, to see if the person was poisoned.
Laura is certain the armored orderly had been strangled to death. That means the beating either occurred during the strangling or after, implying some disturbing things about whoever performed the beatings.
Rostam doesn't detect any poison in the corpses.
John was checking the double doors to the southeast.
John tries the doors at the end of the hall and finds that they open easily. Inside is a strange scene. As though it had been plucked from the halls of some warm, country estate, this room is filled with inviting furnishings, a hearth ready for a fire, artwork populated by picnicking families, and a mansion-shaped cage with colorful taxidermic birds inside. Large windows might have once looked out over colorful flowerbeds, but now show only yellow mist.
A battered corpse is impaled on the antlers of a stuffed elk head hung above the hearth and another lies facedown in the middle of the thick, expensive looking carpet. Both of the corpses are wearing stained and tattered yellow robes and veils.
[larger]"NO!"[/larger]
Reine's voice snapped out like a crack of thunder as soon as she saw the room beyond John.
"Don't."Her conviction seemed to falter suddenly. "I don't... you shouldn't... I... I think I remember something... bad... in there." By the time she wound down, Reine looked both angry and embarrassed.
Desdemona, on seeing the room, had stumbled back, all but falling in her haste to get away. She nodded rapidly, agreeing with Reine's assessment.
In her distress, she had dropped her lantern, and her shadow was seeping toward the door...
Where are all the yellow robes coming from! And is that connected to the yellow mist? Xander scratches his chin. ”If there’s one thing we’ve learned here, it’s to make sure the dead are really dead.” He pulls his sword to go poke the one on the ground, and if he happens to learn how it died, that’s nice, too.
"You...remember?"
Rostam grows curious. "I recall a bird cage, some sort of singing trap. And weren't there yellow robes on some sort of ...was there a priest?"
He tries prying the impaled corpse off of the elk bust. "At least, these yellow robed people are dead. Which means, based on the uncanny and evil nature of the mist and...well, you know, that fellow we all met in our dream...whoever killed these people could be an ally."
Broom was startled by how normal and mostly clean the room looked. She was about to go in when Reine cried out and Desdemona stumbled back. Once again Broom recoiled from the doorway, confused about what was going on. She stood back and watched as Xander and Rostam entered the room she had once again been warned not to enter. "What's wrong?"
She had seen bodies butchered into a bloody mess and nobody had been concerned about her entering the room. She had been warned against entering a room with a few intact bodies and a lot of cleaning supplies, and now two people were reacting poorly to what was the most normal room they had seen yet.
She did not understand why the more mundane the room was, the stronger the negative reaction became. The thing she currently found the most distressing was the lantern that was just dropped.
Broom waited outside the room to see if anything bad happened to Xander and Rostam.
Nothing happens when Xander walks in the room, nor as he crosses the floor. The room seems perfectly pleasant and inviting, save for the two corpses.
When he examines the body in the middle of the floor, the taxidermied birds in the cage in the corner start to chirp. It's a nice sound, maybe some sort of soothing magical effect to calm visitors.
John cautiously searches the room as Rostam tries to remove the elk corpse.
"Anyone know what makes a stuffed bird sing?"
"Magic, more than like," came the answer from Adelar, who stayed by the door, looking back the way they had come. With so many eyes focused on the ... oddly familiar room, the Galtan did not want them all taken from behind by some new horror.
His blade was brandished against the shadows of the fallen lantern, sparing a brief moment to look over his shoulder towards the room.
"Enemy of My Enemy is not Always My Friend," the paladin chimed in on Rostam's assessment, "... Though I suppose we could do worse, here."
The sound of the birds chirping felt ... nice, though. A warm sensation of calm, at odds with the grisly scene the room held. It was that dichotomy that gave him pause. Or was it a memory? A feeling born of recollection, or a recollection born of feeling ..?
" ... I do not think we should linger here," Adelar said cautiously, turning his attention away from the group again to guard their flank, "This feels ... Wrong, to me. Very wrong."
Laura snorts, as if to suggest that she agrees with Adelar's understatement. She looks around idly, just taking in the sights, but her body is tense and anxious under her calm facade. One hand grips her weapon tightly, the other rests on her belly in a comforting way.
"We get out now. We've done this before."
Rostam struggled to remember, but he could not. "The birds are wrong."
Rostam retreated, dragging any straggler physically from the room.
Standing and watching from the doorway, Miniel is confounded by both the room and their new companions' reactions to it.
He’s flummoxed.
Desdemona felt drawn to look into the room; she couldn't tear her eyes away.
"He fell," she whimpered, her eyes stuck on the crumpled body on the floor. "He fell!" It didn't seem likely; the ceiling was only 10' high, and the man on the ground was pulped.
The darkness in her mind whispered to her, and her eyes widened in horror.
As Rostam retreats from the room, John says: "What's wrong? Compared to the horror-show going on in the rest of this place, this is the nicest room we've seen."
"We just need to shut up those weird chirping birds and then maybe we can use this as a place to rest." he finishes as he pulls away from Rostam's grasp.
"Out," Reine said, though it wasn't a command. She knelt next to Desdemona, her bow in one hand, but no arrow knocked. "The birds... something about the birds."
Broom was starting to get frightened, not by anything in the room but because other people seemed to be on the verge of panic and she didn't understand why.
Realizing that the lamp wasn't the only thing that had fell to the floor Broom knelt down beside Desdamona along with Reine "Is she alright? What is happening? Do we need to get away from the door?"
Hearing Reine say something about the birds Broom grabbed one of the sheets used to cover furniture that she had grabbed back at the closet and cast a spell. Though it was not strong, the invisible force moved the cloth towards the bird cage, intent on covering it up.
Rostam moves to the door and out into the hallway while Broom quickly and efficiently covers the cage, but the chirping only seems to grow louder. In fact, no, it is definitely getting louder. A few chirps are now a flock of birds, the sound growing louder and louder with each passing second.
"The birds... the birds!" Desdemona cried unhelpfully, her hands over her ears - but she couldn't shut her eyes, oh, no. She stared into the room in horrified fascination.
"They fell!"
The sound of the birds grows louder and louder, the flock of birds gradually turning into a swarm, the flapping of their wings beating against the walls and thumping against the windows and their sweet chirps becoming a klaxon that blocks out any other noise.
Rostam grimaces. "Fine.. Let's kill those damned birds." For the first time, something like anger ripples across the aasimar's face.
He moves his arms, something odd rippling in the air just above (and below?) his skin. The sound of glorious trumpets fills the air, countering the birds' noises.
"What the hell is it now?" Xander says in a voice of exasperation.
John steps forward. raises his sword up high, and brings it down on the birdcage and bird.
(power attack, 2 handed_
Rostam's glorious trumpet fanfare adds to the din but is not nearly enough to block out the whirring of the birds' wings and the klaxon of the birds' call.
John smashes his sword into the birdcage's delicate wire frame, shearing through half the birds in one blow.
Desdemona, does your shadow hear? Because if not--send it in there!"
Rostam wasn't even sure he know the name of the transfixed half-orc. Where had all these people come from?
Laura stares in horror as the birds multiply and begin a shrieking sound that grates against her ears. She shakes her head as she sees her... were they friends? Companions? She can't quite remember. But she sees John and Xander struggling against the birds and without taking the time to feel trepidation she rushes past the others and into the room. She lets her anger at the situation flow through her, and also swings at the birdcage, matching John's blows as they attack the strange swarm together.
"No - no!" Whether Desdemona was answering Rostam's question or refusing his request was unclear, and a moot point, for her shadow crawled forward across the floor despite her frantic scrambling back on her hands.
Again, the woman's shadow elongated into a serpentine, twisting thing that bore no resemblance to any rationally explained result of the wavering light. It crawled over the wall to the birdcage, moving from one of the other people's shadows to the next as though skipping across water, and like the serpent it resembled, began to feed - on the shadows that the stuffed birds cast.
"Yeah," Reine said, "that's what it was." She hadn't raised her voice, so only Broom and Desdemona were close enough to hear her.
"That," she stood up, but didn't raise her bow - there was no clear shot - she did raise her voice though, "and Watch your feet! Something made those dead people fall!"
Standing beside Des as the smaller woman started crawling backwards, Reine shrugged. "Not much we can do from out here, and it's getting crowded in there. Do you remember what happens next? I think it's the falling. Isn't it the falling?"
"Why are they smashing the cage full of stuffed birds" Broom wonders and she watches the destruction uneasily. The cacophony was making it hard to think.
Still not understanding what was going on Broom turned to Reine, the only one that seemed to have an idea about what was happening "What do you mean the falling? What can We do?" she asked.
Suddenly she remembered the magical token "Xander! If you start falling, don't forget you still have that token I asked for earlier!"
"I'm not sure," Reine answered Broom, and the look on the taller woman's face made it clear that that fact was irritating her. "I have the vaguest of memories. Something makes them fall. I think maybe that the birds have something to do with it?"
"Birds fly, people fall," said Rostam, with a look of utter, deadly seriousness that would be hilarious in any other situation.
[ooc]It does indeed.
Xander starts to move toward the cage but before he takes even a step he feels something lifting him into the air. After a moment he's at the ceiling and then suddenly he's falling toward the floor more quickly than mere falling would account for.
Xander barely has time to register the pain before he feels the unseen force starting to lift him back in the air.
Laura stares in horror as the birds multiply and begin a shrieking sound that grates against her ears. She shakes her head as she sees her... were they friends? Companions? She can't quite remember. But she sees John and Xander struggling against the birds and without taking the time to feel trepidation she rushes past the others and into the room. She lets her anger at the situation flow through her, and also swings at the birdcage, matching John's blows as they attack the strange swarm together.
The cacophony suddenly cuts off when Laura smashes her axe into the birdcage. As soon as the ear-piercing klaxon disappears, Xander feels the force let go of him and he falls to the floor again. Not too far, this time, so he doesn't get hurt any worse than he already was.
"Huh.... so much for the magic birdcage." John says.
"Hey Broom, wanna sweep this up?" John calls over his shoulder as he points his sword towards the smashed birds.
John pokes about the room.
Panting from sudden fatigue, Laura stares at the mangled object. "Did... did that do it? What was that thing?" With concern, she helps Xander back to his feet. "Are you all right?" she growls gruffly, looking him over. "Those bruises look real enough, though I do not know how you got them."
"Were the birds...telekinetic?"
Rostam pulls the deer's head and the corpse down, carefully.
"Oww. That was surprisingly painful," Xander groans as he struggles to rise, even with Laura's help. I think I hate birds now.
He stumbles over to the remains of the cage. "Quite a devious device. I wonder if that was meant to be some sort of trap"
As the birdcage is finally destroyed and the noise stopped, Miniel finally moves into the room, healing up Xander with a warm wave of divine energy and then moving on to examine the corpses. "Yellow robes...like that strange man with the ghouls. Could they be connected to that Zandalus person too?"
Desdemona had shuddered and averted her gaze as Xander was hauled into the air; her shadow, or what had been her shadow, recoiled as the shadows of the stuffed birds were annihilated along with their casters.
It swiftly shrank back through the doorway, to pool innocently around Desdemona.
When conversation suggested the threat had been dealt with, Desdemona rose shakily, dusting off her dress. "I'm terribly sorry... the birds, the sound, I couldn't... I couldn't quite remember..." she whispered.