Kallie nods, thinking she understood. "Okay, so we board up the door and put up a warning, hoping no one is dumb enough to pry it open? Like we just did?"
She goes to follow Cai'nan into the next rooms. "I... I'm not mad at you, you know. I hope we can still... do stuff. Later, I mean. Okay?" she whispers to him.
Cai’nan blushes and nods, but is still clearly hurt by Jaya’s chiding remarks.
Cai'nan leads the way to the final set of rooms on the first floor. The kitchen is to the north, and the family room is to the south. After some debate, the group decides to explore the northern kitchen so that their backs are secure.
The kitchen is perhaps the most... disgusting and decayed room that the group has explored thus far. The northmost walls are covered in fungus and mold. Most of the wooden furniture is severely rotted. Krodha's nostrils repeatedly flare, and the baby T-Rex makes another adorable face at the saccharinely sweet smell that hangs heavily in the air. However, shortly after Cai'nan steps inside, he is almost immediately attacked by something!
With his senses honed by several brutal months in the Expanse, the Blakros heir is able to detect the new enemy and easily dodge its surprise attack. Hidden in the wall of mold appears to be some sort of ooze. After Cai'nan points out its location, the foul creature is quickly put down by the group's collective melee might before it can act again.
After carefully searching the kitchen, you all quickly conclude that there is nothing of interest in this room.
With the kitchen cleared, there is just the family room left.
Kallie's not the first one to step into the family room, but with her height and darkvision, she's able to get a look into the room pretty easily.
Aurealia continues to sniff about, joining Kallie in her search of the family room.
Cai’nan and Krodha lead the way in, Cai’nan scanning the room and Krodha sniffing the air as well.
__________
Like the rest of Roderic's Wreck, the family room has definitely seen better days. Back in its heyday, the formerly fine furniture could have been used to stock noble estates like Verde Heights. Now? Everything from the sofa to the chairs all lays in ruin. Like the rest of the house, it is also impossible to see outside because the windows are covered in mold.
”I don’t like this...” Cai’nan says as he shifts his scimitar around in his hand. ”We should just move on...this whole place just...isn’t right!”
"I hear kids giggling. Maybe another one of those haunts?" Kallie asks. She gets ready to cast disrupt undead at the first thing that moves.
”Yeah. All the more reason to just move along...” Cai’nan adds, stepping back towards the door as his head turns side to side, clearly hearing the same thing Kallie does.
"I'm getting a secret family vibe here. That locket, the kids. We'd better head upstairs and finish the investigation."
For an instant, the room returns to its heyday. You all see a family: The Roderic family. Sir Roderic himself is sitting on the sofa, reading to his children. His wife Andella is cuddled up against her husband and performing some fine needlepoint. One of the Roderic kids, a splitting image of her mother, is sitting on her father's knee. The other two - a son who is practically a younger version of his father and a daughter who seems to take after both her parents - sit on the floor.
For an instant, you see a pleasant moment of a happier time.
Then you see the room rapidly decay into its present state. The family's flesh rots away, revealing their cracked skulls and bones. Their eyes glow a frosty blue. Sir Roderic turns his skeletal head toward the group and points a boney finger at you all. He utters two words laced with intense hatred.
Kallie and Cai'nan immediately bolt from the room. Everyone else fairs better, only being slightly rattled. Meanwhile, with Cheshire at her heels, Galatea quickly takes off after her niece.
Honey and Shiloh Kailani sit in the chairs opposite from your immediate family. A younger Galatea sulks in the corner. Shiloh decays like the others, but Honey and Galatea... do not. Instead, while your father yells at you to get out, Gali quickly flees from the room in terror as well. Meanwhile, Honey looks at you... and smiles. It's the same angelic smile you remember... and then it becomes strangely sad. The last thing you see before running is Honey fading away into golden dust...
Cai’nan goes pale as he watches the scene unfold. Part of him watches the scene with longing, another with anxiety, another with multiple levels of fear. As the scene devolves, his body is trembling with fear right up until the spirit yells it’s command, at which point Cai’nan is all too willing to abide...
Meanwhile, Krodha roars defiantly at the apparition, and moves to try and chomp at it!
The pulse of supernatural fear is too much for Kallie and she bolts. Her nimble hooves send her racing through the house and bounding outside and down the road before the fear unclenches her hearts.
When it finally does, she turns around, realizing that she's alone outside and the house looms at the end of the road. She hugs herself, shuddering. After a moment of calming her nerves, she trots back towards the house. It was just a vision. A haunt. A *freaky* vision, but just that. Back at it, then.
Cai’nan barely makes it out of the building and part way down the road before the supernatural terror leaves him. His own inborn fear, however, remains steadfast as he slumps down to the ground outside. The illusion over his armor has faded, and his scimitar and shield clattered to the ground beside him as he sat there on the grass, trembling and staring numbly out to sea.
Krodha comes loping out moments later, and makes his way over to Cai’nan. He nuzzles at him with his large snout, concerned for his caretaker sitting in the dirt.
As Kallie makes her way back to Roderic's Wreck, a winded Galatea eventually catches up with her.
"I'm so out of shape- Kallie! Are you okay, dear?"
Kallie pauses when she sees Cai'nan outside and staring off over the water. He must have fled with her, but she outpaced him pretty good, since it didn't look like he was waiting for her.
She slows up a bit, wondering if she should approach him. If the fear that hit him was anything like what she felt, she was sure that it would have shaken him. But being a male, he might not like the fact that it caused him to run. Certainly, she didn't like that she had fled, but it's also a pretty good instinct, considering.
Rather than do something overt, but also needing to walk around him to reach the house, she just moves near him and tucks her legs beneath her on the ground. She stares out over the water and enjoys the feeling of the wind off the sea blowing her still-damp clothes and hair dry.
"Kallie! Are you okay, dear?"
She rubs her arms against the wind and forces a smile at Gali. "Yeah, sure! Pretty crazy, right? I mean, did you see it? How they went all decayed and dead and all?"
Cai’nan heads the women moving about behind him, on a subconscious level at least. He never looks away from the horizon of the water, though, as he mumbles ”It was them. My family. My father. Brother. Sisters. You and Honey. Mom...I saw mom...and they all rotted away...rotted away and I could do nothing about it...”
Kallie snaps her head back around to Cai'nan, her eyes wide with shock. "You saw your--? No! It was Sir Roderic's family, that's all! They're already dead. It was just echoes. I think. Probably. Anyway, it wasn't your family!"
”It was to me,” Cai’nan says, and the girls can see his shoulders trembling from their position behind him, ”It was my family. His anger. Her loving eyes. And they all...they all died right in front of me...” he stammers, his voice shaky as he finishes speaking. He buries his face in his arms as the tears begin to flow.
A sudden horrific thought strikes her. Maybe the reason why Cai'nan had been so quiet about his family was that he'd suffered a tragedy like Sir Roderic had.
She reaches out her and and gently touches his shoulder, mindful of the black scales of his armor. "Cai'nan... is your family... dead?"
Cai’nan’s head shakes side to side without lifting up. His voice, muffled through his arms, barely comes though ”They...they weren’t. Mother is. Honey maybe too I guess. But now? It feels like it. I dunno. I don’t understand this stuff...”
Having not immediately understood what Kallie was telling her, Galatea listens in stunned silence to the entire exchange.
"I didn't see anything; I was looking at Cheshire when everyone sans me, Audrahni, and our animal pals just... spaced out," she admits tentatively. "Next thing I know, you two are running for your lives, and Krodha is attacking the sofa. However, that doesn't change the fact that you all clearly saw something truly horrific. My Gods..."
With Kallie and Krodha sitting on opposite sides on Cai'nan, Gali opts to take a seat behind him.
"You especially Cai'nan. I don't know what else to say besides... I'm here for you. So is Kallie. I don't think we plan on going anywhere anytime soon."
"Why do you think a secret family? Wouldn't they have been established at some less well known house? And-" The wave of fear coursed over her, but she stood fast, belatedly realizing that half the group had run off together.
"We should figure out if we can suppress this one. Clearly some of us had a more extreme reaction, and it could even be helpful towards putting Roderick to rest as well."
Cai’nan reaches an arm out to Galatea and another around Kallie as he pulls the pair close in an embrace. They can feel the man’s body trembling beneath his scale armor, and he buries his face into the crook of Kallie’s neck and shoulder.
Kallie takes her hand and strokes Cai'nan's hair as his face is pressed against her shoulder. She wonders why he saw his own family dying rather than Roderic's. She had a family, so seeing Mama Ryli or Papa Eugeni, or all her brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews back at the herd dying would have probably rattled her quite a bit. She looks at Galatea and her mouth twists. What about her? That thought causes a tightening in her stomachs.
She keeps stroking Cai'nan's hair as she frowns. She meets Gali's eyes, and she sighs. "Okay... maybe after this, we can talk," she whispers to her aunt. "I mean, I'm already going to tell the story of my ti--" She looks down at Cai'nan and checks to see if the subject of breasts has pulled him out of his funk.
”Pfhuh,” Cai’nan chortles into her shoulder as he sits up. ”Then it surely must be one hell of a story,” he adds with a weak smile. He stands and offers the women each a hand up, though he strains a bit more with Kallie and her centaur form. ”Thanks, ladies. Sorry for breaking down like that. I just...well...Gali knows I didn’t have the easiest time growing up...”
He looks over at Krodha, who is crouched down and wiggling his hips as he stares at the tiger playfully. Cai’nan whistles at the dinosaur, whose focus is snapped and he instead lumbers over to Cai’nan and nuzzles his snout up under his arm. ”So...” he begins as he looks nervously back to the house, ”back inside?”
Kallie rises to her hooves in a smooth motion that doesn't require near as much effort as Cai'nan expected. "It's totally fine. At least you got to grow up." she finishes under her breath.
"Sure. Those ghosts aren't going to haunt themselves, right?" She smiles brightly.
"I don't think Sir Roderic had a secret family, Aurealia," says Audrahni. "I've spoken to some of the elves who've been here since the Cove's founding, and they all knew Andella and the Roderic children."
Under the watchful eyes of Jaya and the Andosana sisters, Audrahni and Biscuit carefully explore the room.
"I don't think there's anything here," the gravedigger finally concludes.
"You have nothing to apologize for, Cai'nan," reassures Kallie's aunt. Galatea readily returns Cai'nan's hug. She also appears to be very happy by what Kallie whispers to her.
The trio and their animal companions quickly rejoin the main group.
"I-Is everyone ready to go upstairs? I think we've cleared out this first floor," says Audrahni. "W-We can take either staircase; according to my research, they end up in the same hall."
Cai’nan nervously enters the building once more. As he turns the corner to rejoin the group, he looks vastly different than he had before. He is now wearing full plate armor covered in thick, broad, black dragon scales that match the appearance of his shield, as opposed to the common clothes of his earlier appearance. He looks at everyone with a confused expression at the strange looks he is getting, before looking down at himself and his jaw falling slack. ”Oh! S%$!!” he says closes his eyes and thinks a moment, and the armor shimmers and changes in appearance back to the common travelers clothes he had been in prior...
Jaya looks up over her smoked spectacles as Cai'nan curses, pointedly not giving him, Kallie, or Galatea any sort of hard time for their temporary flight. "Oh, you didn't mean to show the scary armor?" Traveling together for weeks meant that she and Kallie had helped him in and out of it, so the glamer wasn't news to her. Personally, I think the 'I am a threat'-cat was out of the bag when he brought a T. Rex on a leash, but I suppose armor is slightly easier to pilfer... I'm sure he's thought this through more than I.
She turns aside to scribble a quick note on the door the family room. "Cherished Family Memories - Dangerous - Do Not Open"
"That should be enough for now I suppose. Let's see what's on the next floor up."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. But it would have been so much more dramatic if they were secret."
"Plenty of drama going on here as it is..."
Kallie giggles at Jaya's sign. She checks around for anything she might have dropped as she fled, and then starts inspecting the stairs for rotted boards.
Both sets of the stairs appear to be safe. Kallie's inspection of the first set reveals no danger. As for the second set in the back, when escaping the torrent of water, Biscuit was able to climb them without issue, and she isn't a small dog.
"If both stairs go up to the same hallway, why don't we go up in two groups rather than one long line?" Kallie suggests.
"That's a good idea," Aurealia replies. "'Elle and I can take one of the staircases."
Before heading upstairs, Galatea realizes what Jaya is doing and makes sure that the door to the family room is firmly closed. The locals of Roderic's Cove then go up one set of stairs, while the visitors take the other. As Audrahni said, you all end up in the same main upper hall. It would seem that there are doors in every direction but directly north...
Not seeing anything important to distinguish them from one another, Jaya picks the closest one to her, casts a quick divination to check for any magical traps, and gestures for Cai'nan to try the latch.
Cai'nan nods and opens the door...
More nervous than she wants to admit--despite not bolting earlier--Croquelle plays a quiet drumroll as Cai'nan approaches the door, hoping to lighten the mood a bit.
Aurealia stands behind Croquelle, ready to bite anything that might pop out at them.
The room closest to Jaya is the one to the northeast. Cai'nan opens the door without any trouble. Inside he finds the remains of what seems to be the youngest Roderic child's room. Of note, between the two outside windows, he sees a ruined wicker cradle nested against the wall.
...And hiding behind the cradle is a pair of pink bunny ears.
Aurealia approaches within thirty feet of the cradle an her nostrils flare as she sniffs to see if there is a creature hiding beneath the ears.
"Nothing living in here, but be careful anyway..." Aurealia warns.
”Uhmmm, I’m not seeing much to go on here...let’s keep moving...” Cai’nan says as he moves on to the next room cautiously.
Aurealia goes to look at the bunny ears and whatever might be under them.
Kallie twists her mouth. "Pink bunny ears, huh? Think they'll look good on me?"