With some careful manipulation of her invisible hand, Broom was able to pluck all the folders out of their cubbies in the pharmacy's wall and float them over to the group. Most of them were irrelevant to the situation at hand, but there were a couple of familiar names.
One file revealed that Loic Ulsohnen had frequent auditory hallucinations of his sister calling for him. His twin sister died when they were eight; Loic is now 27. His hallucinations were usually managed with tinctures.
Another file was about one of the wounded children back at the chapel- Bates Yopchick. He suffered from regular seizures, which were usually treated with medication.
Of the unfamiliar names, one stood out. Mrs. Freeling was an older woman in a wheelchair who required a delicate daily cocktail of medication to fight back the effects of age and dementia. There was a note that she seemed terrified that if she didn't receive her medication, her heart might explode- apparently a misunderstanding born of overhearing a conversation between staff. In spite of the staff trying to assure her this wasn't true, the kindly old woman was always afraid that one day her heart would literally explode if she missed her medicine.
"Well, maybe we need to convince the old ladies ghost that she's still getting her medicine."
"Does it say what she needed?"
"We can look for it and maybe look for whatever the kid with seizures needs so we can take it back to him."
"Thet's it then. Anyone here know about medicines? Maybe we can find it in that room and give her some, or something."
"Broom, can you grab the medications? We should be able to match the name with the writing on the bottles."
Xander shakes his head wearily. "Sad. Apparently, insanity persists after death." He nods to Reine's question though. "I have some knowledge. We should be able to figure something out if we can grab the medicinals."
"Is there anything in those files about and of us?" Broom asked while continuing to bring stuff over from the supply room.
Apparently the group had never been brought to this area for medication, because the files did not reference any of them. Mrs. Freeling's file had instructions for how to prepare her tincture. In a few minutes the explorers had a draught ready to give the dead woman.
As the others finished mixing, Reine squatted in front of the dead woman. The anger normally in her eyes was banked down to almost nothing, though it was clear that it hadn't been completely banished.
After some long moments of thought, Reine stood up. "I can hold her mouth open, if one of you wants to pour it in."
Xander nods to Reine. "If you would be so good, John, please hold the other end of this rope," he says tying it about his waist. Moving into position, he readies his arm to pour the concoction down the woman's throat. "Ready."
"Missus Freeling, time for your medicine," says Rostam soothingly. "this will help."
Reine waited until John and Xander were ready, then, standing slightly to one side of the wheelchair - well clear of the bloody stream - she put her hands on Mrs. Freeling's chin and forehead, tilted her head back, and pried her mouth open, as gently as she could.
John helps Xander with the rope.
To Reine, the body didn't feel any different from any other corpse. The old woman's jaw opened easily enough, and she eased her head back for Xander to pour the tincture down Mrs. Freeling's throat. Given the gross damage to her chest and therefore her esophagus, one might have expected the liquid to come dripping back out but it did not.
Maybe it was just imagination, but there was a tiny, distant sound that was almost like someone settling down to sleep after a long, hard day. The blood slowly stopped welling out of the old woman's chest and the stream gradually faded away, disappearing from the floor from right to left as it flowed into the reverse blood-fall at the end of the short hallway. In less than a minute, the blood was completely gone, even the handprints and smears where Miniel and Rostam had clawed at the walls for escape.
With the blood gone, the group had two doors to choose from.
"Fascinating!" Desdemona marveled. "I should have liked to study that bloodfall."
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"I wish people in this place would just die the boring old normal way."
"Vomiting smoke, endless streams of blood, and corpse-eaters are starting to damage my calm."
Xander can't help but smile, though it sort of looks like a grimace on his face. "Excellent! Let's see of there's anything else useful in the medicine cabinet," he says as he adds whatever else they find to what they have already. Surely some of these will come in handy. He also grabs the other patient files (if possible).
"There's not a bottle of whiskey in that cabinet, is there?" John asks Xander as he rummages about.
With the blood stream gone and the haunt put to rest, Broom begins idly examining Mrs. Freeling. "We can't fix this" she says to nobody in particular as she looks at the remains with dismay.
She looks up at Xander "Is there some place we can lay her to rest? It would be a shame to leave her here to be eaten by ghouls now that her ghost can't protect her body."
"We should at least cover her before we move on," Desdemona commented. She went to find a linen sheet to use as a shroud, her dagger held high to ward off the darkness.
Miniel says her usual prayers for the poor woman, ioun torch still dutifully bobbing along above her head despite all the trouble they'd had, then rejoins the others. "Let's just hope that she doesn't go back to gushing imaginary blood tomorrow. I wouldn't want to take her outside into the mist, given...what happened to...you know." She helps take care of the body, then heads off to her original pre-blood-drenching destination of the double doors on the far side of the room, listening for any signs of movement beyond them.
Des went to retrieve bed linens to wrap Mrs. Freeling in while Miniel approached the double doors on the other side of the day room. It looked like there used to be a heavy lock on the door but the doors had been broken- from the inside.
Miniel pulled the broken doors open and found nothing but darkness. In spite of her sharp elven sight and the yellow light spilling in the tall windows, the room on the other side was dark as a tomb.
Someone inside was sobbing and crying for help. "The lantern went out! Please, Brenton, I can't see! I can't see!" It sounded like a young boy.
Xander agrees with to Desdemona's suggestion to cover the body. "We could probably take her back to the morgue," he suggests to Broom. Internally, he would prefer to incinerate the corpse to make sure she's truly gone, but he doesn't think that would be a helpful suggestion at the moment.
Once the body is covered, he follows Miniel to the double doors. The darkness seems a curiosity here.
"A darkness spell most likely. A strong one. Even my eyes can't penetrate." He pulls out a small crystal and holds it to his eye (using detect magic).
Broom didn't know anything about magic. She took out a torch and lit it before carefully poking it into the darkness taking care not to put her own arm into the inky blackness.
"If you can see the torch, come towards the light" she called out.
John listens to the voice and tries to discern if it's a trick to lure victims into the darkness.
The light from Broom's torch was immediately snuffed when she put it into the unnatural region of darkness. The voice didn't seem to hear her. "Please, it's so dark! Help me, Brenton! The lantern went out!"
The little boy's voice seems perfectly sincere to John.
Xander sighs as he listens to the voice. "Given what we've seen and experienced, and the darkness spell, we should expect this is another trap or haunt. And one that's particularly difficult to deal with given the spell."
"It sounds like a little boy. Maybe it's one of the children who were patients here." John says earnestly.
Broom frowns and hands the torch to Xander. She then takes the lantern (conveniently at the top of the pack just like everything she ever wants from it. This pack was amazing!} and lights it. Hanging it from the end of her broom she plunges it into the darkness.
"Can you see this lantern?" she calls out. Perhaps it was they type of light source that was important as the child had been talking about a lamp and they had just found one stuck in time.
"Seems like magical darkness - and one that neither ordinary nor normal magical light can penetrate. As to the voice, I agree with Xander. I would guess that this is another haunt, given that it hasn't responded to us at all and it's just saying the same thing over and over. Be careful." She doesn't stop Broom from poking her lantern in, but gets ready to intervene should anything bad happen.
Broom found that the darkness was too much for lanterns or even magical dancing lights. It swallowed up everything, letting no light in or out of the room.
The boy inside just kept crying piteously. "Please! Please, Brenton. Help me!"
"Didn't we meet a Brenton?" Reine was clearly having another of those moments where she wasn't quite sure which set of memories were "real."
"I thought..." She turned to Desdemona, "didn't we make some kind of deal with a kid named Brenton?"
Though she had not made the connection a moment ago, ideas suddenly flooded her mind "Wait, didn't Brenton have a special lantern of some kind? Maybe that is what we need! Or maybe Brenton himself can talk this person out of the darkness." She gasps as her eyes go wide for a moment before she whispers "You don't think that is his brother trapped in there, do you?"
Now that she was thinking back another thought struck her "Hey, Xander, wasn't there another child that was suffering seizures because he didn't have his medicine? We know you helped him but maybe now we can get the proper stuff he needs."
"Ah - yes. That would make sense, Broom. Though...is it a good idea to bring him here? He might rush straight into the darkness, and we don't know what's in there. But I can't think of anything else to try..."
Desdemona had draped the old woman's body with a sheet, pausing to wonder if she should say some words over her... but the terrified cry of the child snapped her attention to the door.
He was afraid of the dark.
She felt that viscerally.
Approaching, she cautiously said, "Yes, I remember Brenton. I took the toy for him. If his brother is in there..." She shivered. Despite her sympathy for the boy's terror, both her own fear and her knowledge of the haunts and undead they had encountered stayed her from entering. "Does anyone have rope? Else I've brought some linens we could tie into one... We could throw them into the room and lasso the boy. If he's really there."
Raising her voice, she called, "Don't worry! We're here to get you out of the darkness!"
For all her words, she didn't get within ten feet of the room... but her shadow was slowly, almost imperceptibly, stretching toward it.
In spite of the multiple people calling to him through the open door, Debis didn't seem to hear. The boy just kept crying, calling for his brother, and yelling about how the lantern had gone out and he couldn't see.
Xander does hope that with these meds he can help the child with seizures. In the meantime, "Without actually going back for the lantern, one of us could try to physically contact Debis. But I am not convinced of the safety of such an action. Still I'll be happy to hold a rope for you." Inwardly, he doubts that this child is even still alive. If it isn't another shapechanger, it most likely is a spirit. Still, some of us might feel bad to simply leave him there without checking.
He whispers to Desdemona, "Can your 'friend' reach the child? And would there be negative consequences were the child still alive?" He hopes he hasn't offended her, but it's obvious to him that her shadow is more than normal. He wonders if she's capable of actually controlling it, however.
Desdemona froze, a panicked look rocketing across her face. Then it was gone, and she smiled at Xander, saying, "I don't kn-"
That was as far as she got before her shadow, which had been slowly growing away, abruptly flooded toward the room.
Desdemona made a strangled noise and planted her feet, determined not to be dragged into the dark. But this time, her shadow simply slid away vanishing in the inky void.
"I don't know," Desdemona finished breathlessly, not meeting anyone's eyes. "I... I can't control it."
But does it control me?
"It's no friend of mine," she whispered.
The shadow has a 50% miss protection in full darkness. It's immune to death effects, disease, and poison, and has evasion. It can fly in the dark (60' perfect), so it will.
Broom looked at Desdemona with concern and cast her cantrip again, surrounding Des with four little magical lights that shone on her from all sides so there was no shadow to be cast "Are you its prisoner or warden? Do you want us to try and make sure it doesn't come back?" she whispered while glancing at the rest of the group for support.
Lit in colors, Desdemona stared at Broom, completely confounded by the idea she had presented. Was she supposed to be the warden of the shadow, of the darkness itself, rather than its prisoner?
Great job, the dark giggled in her mind.
Ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, Des nodded at Broom. *I have to try.* She glanced at her feet, where the shadows had been, if not eradicated, then dismissed to a great degree... and for the first time, her shoulders relaxed a touch.
*Can I ever be free? Or am I trapped, just like Debis?*
The thoughts slithered in her mind, and she reflexively thought of a blank mist... but the darkness could not be tamed.
Trapped, or free? Trapped, or free? Trapped, or free?
Xander nodded to Desdemona's trepidation. "We all have our demons to deal with. Some are more physical than others." He looks around to the others. "So, a rope then? Is that the strategy?"
"I can go into the room."
Rostam paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath as if looking inward, and then his entire body appeared to ripple with some sort of heat, or invisible cilia that moved the air around him. He opened his eyes again.
"I will have a better chance of lassoing him than anyone."
Rostam took the offered rope.
"Hold on to one end and pull me out if necessary," he said. He looped a few lengths around his waist, leaving enough to lasso the boy.
He stared at Desdemona. "Your shadow has not let us down. Not even once. That's better than can be said for the ghouls, the doppelgangers, even people back at camp."
Then he turned into the darkness, walking slowly, his halo soon eaten up by the utter blackness.
Broom was dismayed by the responses. They had no idea how one would go about getting rid of a shadow and had hoped one of the others might have an idea. Instead, not only did nobody offer up a solution, but the shadow that was tormenting Desdemona was actually praised.
So, Broom did what they always did when confronted with something they didn't know, they stared off into the distance as she cast their mind out into the void, looking for answers in other memories.
Just like every other time they tried this while in the asylum, their thoughts quickly pursued leads down into dark minds with little to offer except madness. Although they were certain that they had done this before, they were beginning to doubt whether there was ever any point in making these attempts.
As they pulled themself back into focus, Broom looked at Des with determination. She whispered again so that the shadow that had entered the dark room wouldn't hear "We don't know how to get rid of a shadow, but We will keep looking."
John will help hold the rope as Rostam enters the dark.