“A push away from the door, or a pull back to the hall? At least, that’s the closest thing to a definable sensation that I felt,” Prasitis acknowledges.
“I don’t like it, but I’m trying to remember if the dreams we’ve had have ever really lied to us. That is, with the one in which we all died excepted, and even that, if we hadn’t woken up in time, all together…”
The witch’s voice drops off as she loses herself in fragments of misty, citrine dreams – or nightmares, or visions.
Laura pauses at the door, and like everyone else has an instinctive flash to turn around. She shrugs, and decides there is no reason not to trust her better self, if that is where the impulse comes from. "Let's try one of the other doors," she agrees.
Remembering the hot rain they got caught in on first escaping the basement, Prasitis is dubious about the gardens that still curl with the unnatural wet fog, and suggests exploring the heart of the asylum’s ground floor.
Sagging shelves, held together by dust and an extensive system of rolling ladders, ring this library of husky, dulllooking tomes. At the room’s center broods a heavily worn table surrounded by uncomfortable chairs. A chandelier of iron vines dangles above. The scents of leather and old paper pervade the high-ceilinged space, but so does a distinct bestial musk.
On top of the book shelves, you notice three figures hiding in the shadows, and hear something akin to the sound of paper being torn and chewed on.
Aoife moves towards the noisy bookshelf and pokes one of the figures with her glowing sword.
Prasitis momentarily brightens at the sight of the next room’s interior, shadowy memories of the library of the elven embassy in Korvosa swirling vaguely upwards. The furniture was more delicate there. Comfortable. She’s sure of that much.
Her nose wrinkles briefly at the scent layered over that of the books, and her free hand twitches at her hip as she hesitates between preparing a spell or drawing a blade. She tries to pin down the creatures with her gaze, the chewing sounds more than a little disquieting.
A scornful comment escapes before she can catch it, “Philistines.”
Satomi keeps her glaive at the ready, at first due to the smell and then because of the figures.
"Anyone know what is both small and has a paper diet?"
The tiny creatures up on the top shelf cry out in surprise as they finally notice the group walk into the room, and as they turn around into the light provided by lanterns hanging on the library wall, they reveal themselves to you.
Some amalgamation of rat and human, leaning towards the rat side of the size equation, the three “ratlings”, as they are called, screech and toss a handful of books down onto the party, incurring nothing but minor scratches.
One of the three steps forward a bit, and offers a greeting in the form of a high pitched screech, and begins to talk.
”What do you want from us, long legs?”
Aoife shrugs, ”To make sure that yes aren’t about ta try and stab us in the back as soon as we move on. If yeh aren’t interested in killin’ us, that would make you a rarity here.”
Prasitis ducks under the shower of books, managing to catch one, but she’s only got the one hand free, after all. Ratlings. Charming.
Taking a discreet breath, she nods her agreement with Aoife as she starts picking up the dislodged volumes rather primly. Her magic is a bit different from wizards’, but that doesn’t mean she holds with throwing books around. “And would you please not do that?”
“But what are you looking for?” She manages to avoid adding, Apart from books to … gnaw on? or Dwarf or Acorn. The request still comes out a bit more tartly than she would like, so she hurries on, though a slight frown remains. “We’re looking into what happened here, and an older human patient who’s gone missing. You wouldn’t have seen her, would you? Perhaps we could help one another?”
"Well, preferably, we'd like to sit here and eat our books in peace." the front ratling says, puffing her chest up slightly.
"We've been walled off from our warren down below, and a lot of weird stuff has been happening up here...we want to go home...but for now, we will eat."
Prasitis can’t recall seeing anything that she would really describe as a warren in the part of the basement that she woke up in.
“That’s certainly something we could look into. Perhaps we could find a way around, or – well, there are some advantages to having long legs,” she smirks briefly, though she doesn’t relish the prospect of trying to dig through an extensive collapse. “Where is the obstruction blocking your way?”
She pauses for a bit both to wait for an answer to that, and to reach for a tactful compromise with a question she thinks she really should ask. “And what sort of weird things have you seen? If you could, maybe –” she looks rather nervously around the library “– try to save anything about the theory of magic for us, or about arcane alienation, if there's anything here about that, please, that would be lovely. It might help us sort out the strangeness that’s going on.”
Personally, she thinks madness and horror would be better words, but she’s trying to keep things lighter while she can.
Laura frowns at the creatures, following Prasitis's lead by giving them plenty of space so as not to spook them.
Satomi would rather not spend time in the company of the little ratlings.
We should keep going. We have things to do, and they will not be any help."
"Oh, don't worry about us..." the ratling that stepped forward says. "We have created a new nest next door for now, and our pack is working on finding our way back down now."
"Books are one of our greatest treats, it is a great ask for us to stop eating them. But perhaps we could be talked into doing so, if you promise to bring us back something worth eating!"
The ratling's comment and request are intriguing enough to keep Satomi from wanting to move right on to other things, at least for a moment.
"Hm, if books are your favorite thing to consume, does that mean it would be books you want us to find for you, or are there other delicious things besides them?"
And the part that most interests Satomi. "What makes a book more or less delicious?"
Prasitis has her own ideas, but decides to keep her own counsel about the floral delicacies of Elven poetry, though she is curious about what the ratlings will have to say.
“I’m not sure we can promise that, exactly, but if we find something you like, we’ll do our best to bring it back. Otherwise – carry on, I suppose.”
She’s quite proud of the sang-froid she manages to put behind the statement, even if it means a certain amount of books are bound to fall prey to the ratlings’ hunger.
"The older, the better. And of course, any magical paper is the most delicious."
With that, the ratlings disappear through one of the many holes they have tunneled out through the wall above the bookcases.
And you are alone in the library once more.
With a slight glance over the texts here, you can learn that the library itself contains a wide variety of different topics, mainly focused on mental health aspects as well as common medical practices and other matters of regional record.
Several books of import seem to have been copied from other sources, and you even notice a handful of works that have directly been stolen from Rozenport's Sincomakti School of Sciences, and bear the stamp of said school.
Would you like to take some time to research some here? Or carry on into the asylum? The research would most likely take several hours.
Prasitis breathes more easily as the ratlings scurry away, glad things didn’t come to a brawl in the library. That said, she can’t say she’s pleased at the thought that they particularly like eating magical texts. So does her familiar, of course, but the knowledge isn’t lost that way. Perhaps we’ll be able to find some outdated medical texts in storage somewhere that we could offer instead?
The witch-knight’s eyes quickly skim the shelves in curiosity. She’s not surprised to find most of the volumes are of most interest to alienists, but she recognizes the seal stamped on a spine here or there, and those have clearly gone wandering.
Pointing them out, she says, “Those belong to the Sincomakti School. I wonder what they’re doing here? Even if they were on loan, I doubt they would just be mixed in with the others.”
Laura regards the library flatly, but shrugs and does her best to make the best of it. Perhaps there are some books about the sort of creatures like... what did Prasitis call it? My familiar? With this goal in mind, she begins to scan the titles and from there proceeds to explore the room more thoroughly.
Aoife pages through any books that look particularly interesting, but otherwise lets the library be.
“Let’s move on,” Prasitis suggests, after she collects the books that belong to Sincomakti and stacks them neatly on a table in preparation for delivering them to the safety of the chapel. Perhaps we can arrange for a messenger to return them once all … this has settled down somewhat.
Laura nods to Prasitis, almost like a salute, and indicates she is ready to follow where the elven woman leads. That is strange, she thinks to herself, when did I accept Prasitis as my leader? It's like she reminds me of someone else... She shakes her head, reluctant to expend energy on trying to remember something she knows she can't recall.
While looking around in the library for books on the subject of herbal medicines appeals to Satomi, the present probably isn't the right time.
"Where next?"
With a last glance at the books she's picked out for later - she wonders if there's a particular theme that would emerge - Prasitis gives the double doors at the other end of the library a try, wondering what else this dreadful place is hiding. At least the ratlings are just being a bit annoying rather than absolutely hostile, at the moment.
This L-shaped hall runs from a collapsed space in the west to a small waiting area outside the asylum administrator’s office.
Opening the room that looks like a boardroom...
A once-handsome wood conference table now sits marred by the partially toppled southwest walls. Between heaps of collapsed stone, a closet door still stands. There appears to be a closet door ajar in the northwest corner of the room.
Aoife nudges the closet door further open with the tip of her sword to peer inside.
The witch keeps an eye out as the group proceeds. Seeing all the rubble is enough to make her think it was a mercy that they were locked in the basement when whatever hit the place did. She doesn’t want to think about what or who might be buried under all that stone. Then again, with the fog clouding her memories, there’s no guarantee that other horrors might not lie in wait within her own mind.
Satomi has little idea of the layout of the place since she's seen so little of it. She's content with whatever the others choose, following along.
Pras notices an unusual mucus-like trail running along the floor in the hallway, connecting three of the doors in its disgusting, but faint. color of green.
Once you go inside the office and open the door, however, a much more gruesome sight presents itself. A collection of floating, aberrant brains, spinal columns, and dissections has been started inside the closet of this room.
And to make matters worse, the remains of a human lie on the floor, as some sort of thing has formed what looks like a nest out of the remains.
As you open the door, the two things inside the nest notice, and pop up out of the nest. They look like small moving fetuses, with tiny beady eyes and extremely sharp claws.
“Did anyone else see this?” Prasitis asks, pointing out the faint trail of mucosa. “Whatever it is seems to have been moving around, so we should be careful. ‘And slimy things did crawl…’”
Disgust roughens her voice even as she scornfully recites a snippet of verse that abruptly breaks off once the contents of the next room are revealed. She almost misses the inhabitants as the bizarre anatomical horror traps her sickened attention. Say what you will about the old queen and all her pride and jealousy, Prasitis catches another flash of memory and grim humour, she had much better taste than this.
“Watch out!” she warns, matching actions to words as she fixes the nearer of the nesting monsters with an icy glare.
Laura's eyes widen and she stares at the creature. She nods absently to Prastitis and draws her axe, moving protectively in front of the elven woman and swinging at the second monster (assuming that Prasitis is taking care of the first with her glare).
Aoife, blade at the ready, still balks at the graphic sight before recovering and thrusting with her blade at the... things.
The two monsters leap out of their unsettling nest...thing, and crawl into the nearest persons space in an attempt to bite them.
It still cackles out in anger as it feels the magic work on it, but it did save from the full effect.
Satomi moves around to the side and strikes at one of the things.
Laura growls under her breath. "Does anyone know what these creatures are?" she asks.
Prasitis cocks her head to one side appraisingly even as she lunges at the nearest of the little creatures with a twist of her fingers and a hurriedly hissed spell.
She shakes her head. "I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like them before."
Aoife brings her sword back up in retaliation, trying to hit anything but failing. She steps back slightly to try and get a bit of space.
The two attacks, one from Laura and one from Okita are just barely enough to damage the two small creatures through their glass cases, and they screech loudly in pain before crawling forward and attacking the two that hurt them, Laura and Okita.
Since the little monsters seem unfazed by her magic, Prasitis does her best to circle around and support the others’ attacks, drawing her own sword with a slashing flourish.
Laura grips the shaft of her axe and concentrates as she swings it at the enemy. She also steps around the creatures to flank with Prasitis.
Satomi steps away from the thing coming after her. She chooses a direction that will force it to start moving away from the other one if it wants to pursue her. When she has her distance again, Satomi attacks.
And with Laura's brutal axe, combined with the rest of the damage from the party, she finishes off the two small creatures inside the glass jar, reducing them to a grotesque red paste on the floor.
That leaves the room to be explored, the horrific sight inside the closet notwithstanding, the rest of the room appears to be a doctor's office. There is the mutated corpse in the closet to search, as it does look like it was wearing one of the multiple doctor's coats that are hanging from the walls in the closet.
Gingerly, Prasitis tries to figure out what happened here, trying not to let the scene get to her as she examines the corpse-nest and the gruesome collection of the cabinet of anatomical curiosities.
She's distracted by a brief flash of childhood nightmares that crosses her tattered memory: urban legends of disappearances and bizarre experiments below the streets of Korvosa – some of which, at least, her own scars have since been able to regrettably confirm – and half-awed, ghoulish cautionary tales about monsters in the night that twist and warp the flesh of their victims.
Aoife cautiously makes her way through the room, sword-tip at the ready and prepared to stab anything that surprises her.