Broom brightened up as soon as they got to the kitchen. She waved at her friend who she had given the herbs to as she passed through.
She dutifully went up to Elbourne's room when he requested and diligently began tidying up his room while she waited for his arrival.
Reine shrugged and followed John. There was no sense in saying anything that might cause problems.
Eventually Elbourne came up to meet the group. "You're back! I assume that means you stopped the thing in the tower?"
"We stopped one of the things in the tower," Reine's voice was flat, "and a bunch of ghouls along the way to the tower." The look she gave Elbourne was't quite accusatory.
"Oh, and some old lady that tried to strangle us. She's dead, too. But there's more up there, and we're hurt. What can you do to fix us?"
She gave him a sharp look.
"And before you start thinking too deeply about it, we're not so hurt that we couldn't cut our way out of this camp. The question is whether you'd like us to keep hunting for you, or start hunting for you."
"Yeah .... the smoke spewer was tougher than we expected but we ended it." John agrees.
"The old lady ... she was cast iron."
"Aggra had very strong hands" Broom said, pointing at the black marks around her neck. "She was not nice at all, and very strange too. She sang a lullaby as she tried to strangle Us!"
"We never did get to see Zandalus though. We need a place to rest and maybe some help mending our wounds?" She looked at Elbourne hopefully.
Desdemona remained silent, but she was trying to parse whether or not the good doctor had led them into danger intentionally.
The darkness whispered paranoid fantasies in her mind, and she shook her head, completely unsure.
Elbourne held up his hands and backed away from Reine. "Gods! Of course I never meant for you to get hurt!" He shook his head. "I didn't know you'd try to storm Zandalus's chamber. Gods. I can't believe you survived the Bag Lady." He gestured at the stairs, the nickname reminding the group of the bodies hung from the walls over the camp with bags over their heads. "She's his main enforcer, a zealot who won't stand for a single word said against him."
The young doctor shook his head and looked at the group again. "Was, I should say."
"Um. Yes. I can help you with some healing. And you can stay here, of course. I can sleep in the tent while you rest." He looked at Broom and John, the most battered of the group. "Gods. Well. May I?"
The doctor's healing came in the form of some arcane phrases rather than the invocation of any deity, but in a matter of moments both Broom and John were fully healed.
Broom was very interested in whatever Elbourne was doing to heal them.
She stared at him intently as he cast his spells, trying to figure out what he was doing so that maybe she could do it herself some day.
There was something different about the way he was going about it. He didn't have anything that looked like a holy symbol, and he wasn't using a potion or other magical device to do it, but beyond that she didn't understand the significance of anything he was doing.
"If We stay here tonight, can you show Us how you fix people?"
"Listen," Reine said, softly, "if the 'Bag Lady' was that important, we should go. It won't take much of a thinker to realize that there were new folks in camp on the same day she went down. And the other guards can recognize us. They come searching through the camp while everyone is resting, and they'll have us. Or else, we'll have to cut our way through a lot of folks who might not deserve it. We should sneak out now, find a safe place to rest where we're not putting the rest of the camp at risk, and we can come back tomorrow and finish the job, maybe. We stay here, and it puts Elbourne at risk, too."
Desdemona nodded absently, having returned to staring at the shadows on the walls and floor as was her wont. "Yes, it doesn't seem safe here," she murmured. "But thank you, doctor."
"Take care of yourself doctor." John tells him.
"We're going to go hole up and get some rest in the administrator's office. It's got a strong door and some comfortable couches." he tells the man.
"You are welcome to come along with us. A healer would be useful."
To the others he asks: "Hey, what happened to the dog?"
Nipper was gnawing on a piece of jerky in Broom's pack at that very moment. He wasn't a very big little guy, but was surprisingly heavy.
The doctor nodded at the group. "That's probably a good idea. If you," Elbourne looks around to make sure no one is close enough to overhear them, "killed her, then someone's going to come asking questions." He shook his head. "I'm still amazed that happened."
In response to John's invitation, Elbourne shook his head again. "I can't. You all seem to be able to take care of yourselves. Most of these people can't. I'd even ask you to stay, but," he looks around again to make sure no one could hear him, "you've got bigger things to do."
Broom was disappointed that she wasn't going to have the opportunity to learn how Elbourne healed people, but she didn't object to the plan.
"Thank you for your help, we will be back tomorrow to talk with Zandalus" She collected her things and gathered up Nipper, ready to head back to the chapel.
"Her heart gave out," Reine said with a shrug. "She did have a small stab wound, but other than that, I don't believe there's a mark on her." She gave Elbourne a shrug.
"Should we wait until nightfall, or go now?"
"We're going to leave now." John tells the doctor.
"Keep yourself safe and take care of as many people as you can."
"If the gods are with us, then we'll be done with this soon."
John motions for the others to go.
As they leave the doctor's tent, he looks around to see if anyone is watching them.
Reine had her doubts about whose side the gods might be on, but she kept them to herself. Instead, she simply nodded and took up the rear as the group headed out. She, too, kept alert for unfriendly eyes as they headed out.
It didn't look like anyone was keeping any particular watch on them, even as they approached the door to Debis's former haunt. The crowd that had gathered when they first came through had dispersed and there were few people willing to set up their tents by the haunted room.
"Everybody....just walk casual." John says under his breath.
The goal is to get out of the yard and back into the south part of the asylum, then find a place where we can watch for anyone who trails after us.
Desdemona drifted after the others, hands and teeth clenched as she thought of going into the dark outside the room, but unwilling to take out her glowing dagger and attract attention. As they got closer to the door, her eyes grew more desperate, but she soldiered on.
The dark holds no secrets, her nemesis whispered in her mind. And it was true - she could see clearly. But that wasn't the point. How could she trust that what the shadows revealed to her was real?
Absorbed with her thoughts, she had no fear left over for the cultists, and slipped out of the room with the others.
Broom smiled and walked casually with the rest of the group as per John's request.
Once we're through the doors into the room where we dispelled the magical darkness, John speaks to the others.
"I think we should retrace our steps through the hall to the east that will lead to the administrator's office."
"We can pass through there and wait in the hall just south of it."
"I'd bet that someone will lean on the doctor to learn about us and he'll tell them what I said about sleeping in there."
"We can give it an hour or two and see if anyone shows up. Then head back to the chapel for rest."
Reine frowned - a thinking frown, rather than one of anger or disagreement.
"There are two sets of double doors here," she said, then pointed to the chairs and furniture in the room they'd found the old lady with the bleeding heart.
"We could pile things up to block both sets of doors, which might discourage following all together. Then again, it might convince them that we're hiding something worth having. If we wait in the administrator's office, is there a path someone could take to get past us while we're waiting?"
"There's two paths that lead back to the chapel."
"One leads pretty directly through the administrator's office. That's why I left the clue with the doctor."
"It should direct anyone following into a place we can intercept them."
"Right," Reine said. Then she raised her voice a bit. "So we'll sleep in the administrator's office tonight. Good thing we hid that food there."
No one's head popped up when Reine mentioned stashing food somewhere, so maybe no one had heard her. The quartet slipped back through the doors to Debis's room, now thankfully un-haunted and only as poorly lit as the rest of the asylum instead of supernaturally dark.
As they closed the double door behind them, though, everyone saw a woman walking around the nearest tent notice them entering the formerly haunted room. She didn't do anything immediately, but the look on her face was very surprised.
"Just leave the doors." John says as Reine hesitates.
"If Zandulus sends people after us and we have to fight them, it gives us a chance to reduce his guards piecemeal."
Broom listened to Reine and John's plotting. "We have all sorts of sheet that could be used to tie the doors shut if the handles are still strong enough.
We could also ask Genny TwoTails if she would keep an eye out for anyone as well."
She thought for a few more moments "If anyone can magically make darkness, we can leave that here so nobody knows the darkness is gone."
John turns and points a finger at Broom
"Stop talking to rats....."
Reine shok her head. "John's right," she said, "about the doors. I'm not sure about the rats. Let's go."
Desdemona had no additional ideas as to how to avoid the cultists following them, but she nearly choked when Broom suggested creating more darkness - on purpose! She made a soft, strangled sound in the back of her throat, and turned pleading eyes on Broom - but she followed the others.
John leads the other back to the administrator's office.
He watches out for ghouls, crazy people, and talking rats.
If the walk is uneventful, he will light a candle in the administrator's office to make a little light.
Then usher the others into the room to the south to wait, leaving both doors into the office cracked.
"If someone follows us. The light will draw them in. Hopefully we will hear them and take them by surprise."
As Broom waited with everyone she pulled everything out of her pack and began to neatly clean and fold all of it. She was amazed at how much stuff fit inside.
After going through the contents of the pack she played with Nipper for a bit before starting to wander around the office. She idly poked about in the books and ledgers that had contained nothing of interest to anyone when they first found the room.
Even casting about looking for other thoughts on the subject matter she was unable to understand anything in the articles. Growing tired of that she began to clean up the room, sweeping the rug, polishing the desk, organizing the books and stacking any bits of rubble in a neat pile in the corner.
"Hssst....Broom" John calls softly to Broom.
"Stay out here in the hallway." John says, gesturing for her to join him in the corridor to the south of the office.
"I don't want any of the crazies to sneak up on you if you're straightening up in the office."
Desdemona had heard Broom muttering to herself as she worked, and something she said caught the less organized woman's attention.
"Wait, everyone. Broom had an idea," she said softly. Picking up a piece of paper and a pen from the inkwell in the office, she carefully penned a note, and held it up for them to see. "Misinformation."
The note read, 'Zandalus forbids the faithful to go beyond this point.' It had the squiggly sigil of his followers inked below it.
"We can still wait... but this idea might save us from a fight," she said with a smile at Broom.
At John's insistence Broom moved out into the hallway. There she had even more to take care of as there was that strange slime trail that had been tracked across the floors that needed to be cleaned up. Unfortunately, she didn't have any water that would have made cleaning the mess easier so instead she resorted to the slow and methodical method using her little cleaning cantrip.
When some of her random ponderings were suddenly taken seriously, she offered to help "We think We can make the ink turn yellow with our cantrip. That might help lend some more authority to the note." she offered.
"A wonderful idea! May I see how you do it?" Desdemona asked, giving the sheet to Broom. She watched curiously as Broom worked her magic, the gestures seeming... somehow familiar to Desdemona, though she couldn't remember the context.
She experimented with the same gestures Broom made, but nothing happened. Perhaps she needed to jog her memory a bit more to achieve a similar skill.
Or perhaps only the darkness granted her powers, and didn't care about ink. She didn't like that thought one bit.
Broom was at a bit of a loss about Desdemona's request. How did she do it? She never really thought about it before, when she wanted something to happen the words and gestures just came to her.
"We don't really know how We cast spells. We just want something and then sometimes We get a feeling or impression and then the words and movement just happen. Each spell has its own feeling."
Broom smiled and her gaze wandered about the room as if she was trying to physically see what she was thinking. "Our shocking spell gives us thoughts and feelings of being in deep, cold places. There are things there that use electricity to shock thing. Then there is there is the new spell where it feels like We are dreaming but still awake, an airy place that is always changing and then suddenly We have a helper. But We do like this little spell the most. It makes us feel like..." she trailed off for a moment as she searched for the words, her wandering gaze suddenly fixed on Desdemona "Like We are home. Cozy and happy."
With that Broom casts prestidigitation.
Reine watched Des and Broom out of the corner of her eye, keeping most of her attention directed towards the direction they expected the erstwhile apostles to be coming from. Still,
"If you can make two or three of those, that might be handy," she whispered to the two smaller women.
Desdemona couldn't help but smile at Broom's description, though it was a bit wistful.
When she had finished casting, and Desdemona had finished attempting to replicate her success, Des shook her head in frustration. "I don't think I... maybe it's the knowledge of these other people whose minds you visit, that you're borrowing? Their memories, their skills..."
She started when Reine spoke, and gave her a quick nod. "Yes, of course." She got busy making more documents, and giving them to Broom to complete.
Broom helped change the ink colour to yellow using her cantrip. She also thought about what else might help make the signs more believable. Perhaps some eldritch symbols? She took a couple of moments to cast her mind about looking for random things that might look good.
There were plenty of strange sigils and symbols to choose from as she sifted through all the thoughts and memories. She had little idea what the vast majority of them meant, but she made suggestions anyway to try and improve the look of the signs.