The eye on the wall continues to cry the strange ammonia substance, the tears seemingly never-ending.
”Who am I? What have I become? Please, do not gaze upon the horror I have become. No one, nothing, should lay eyes on me.”
A strange occurrence happens next, and it happens so fast you’re not entirely sure if it actually happened or not. A small snakelike tongue stretches out from inside the darkened pupil of the single eye on the wall, and its jaws snap open wide before slamming shut again, in an apparent attempt to keep you away from it, or at least make sure no one can see it.
Prasitis obligingly casts her eyes down – quite happy to avoid seeing mouths opening in monstrous eyes, and hoping the image doesn’t settle in her mind to haunt her dreams – but not so much that she’d be entirely blind-sided by another motion from the huge eye.
“We don’t mean to pry,” she says soothingly, “but we need to get past. Or is there another way? We mean to find out what happened here, and if we can help, we will.”
She looks back up, and looks only long enough for the ghosts that haunt her own gaze to hint at a grimmer tale of her own than the faint scars on her face would suggest. Mercifully, she can’t remember the details, but a creeping feeling of guilt and horror stirs in her too.
“The way behind us is barred. If there is any hope for us to undo this horror, we must get past,” she reiterates.
Aoife carefully draws her sword, "Ah know not what ye've become, but if ye'd be so kind as to let us pass, we might be able ta help."
Vedas jaw dropped when she saw the creature and she has troubles averting her eyes in a bizzare fascination and horror.
Wait, what do you mean what did you become? Have you been something else? Or someone?
Satomi lowers her eyes to look at the floor. She doesn't know what to make of the thing, or the situation. All she can put together is that 'it' used to be something else, something far more to 'it's' liking.
It seems wrong to Satomi to stare when clearly 'it' is ashamed. But averting her eyes doesn't solve the problem at hand.
"Of course. We will not look upon you. But we must pass through. How may we do so?"
”No, no, you don’t understand. I need you to look upon me. Do not look away.”
The eye continues to weep, the ammonia falling to the floor and, strangely, hissing against the floor of the asylum. The mouth coming out of the pupil flails around angrily, as if straining against a set of bonds.
”I need to look upon myself. Help me do this, and you may pass.”
Prasitis looks up again at that, and considers the riddle. It suggests an all too familiar feeling of shame. Look. No, don’t! To be seen as what one truly is, was, or wants to be, and not what one seems…
“We need a mirror,” she thinks out loud. Of sorts, at least.
Or is it a metaphor? All the while, she tries to figure out what it is that she’s looking at, exactly. A monster? The results of some sort of horrible magical accident?
"Certainly." Aoife agrees, and casts around for something reflective. She pulls out her sword and tries to rub it against her coat, seeing if it becomes reflective enough to serve as an impromptu mirror.
Laura watches the drama involving the eye creature intently. She cannot bring herself to look away. Is that what is going to happen to me? she wonders in sick fascination. She doesn't even cover her nose and mouth despite the overpowering chemical smell coming from the weeping creature's tears.
Aoife’s straight forward approach appears to get the job done, as the eye screams out once in our blood curdling terror as it sees its own reflection in the blade of the sword presented to it.
The screaming continues for a few seconds as the entire wall seems to melt away, and several of the chapel’s elders quickly turn up to watch the flesh of the wall swiftly dissolving into a pile of gore and ammonia.
Winter stares at the pile of liquid and blood and body parts for but a brief moment before pointing out towards the opening it has created.
”Good news is we can escape this corner finally. Bad news is I’m not sure we want to just yet.”
She turns to the group, her eyes lighting up expectantly. ”You proved you’re more of adventurers than we are, and care about the people here. It’s time you showed it once more, by finding us a way out of this hellhole. I will stay here and assist in the continued protection of the chapel and its survivors. Feel free to return here if need be to rest and recover.”
With that, she turns away, leaving you to your task.
White tile, spiderwebbed with cracks, lines the walls of this cathedral-like hall. A prominent, oval desk faces staunch double doors, while hard benches and portraits of somber doctors line the walls. Regal stairs ascend toward a second floor, but rubble has crushed the upper flights, blocking passage. Lofty windows, gridded by bars, reveal yellow mist seething just beyond.
This appears to be an entryway of sorts, with the double doors appearing to lead outside, and two other sets of double doors being visible from the edge of the newly created opening in the wall, where a door once stood.
Aoife carefully pokes her way forward, peeking outside first to see if it's safe before working her way right, opening each door in turn to see what's on the other side.
Maybe this is a dream after all. Or a nightmare, Prasitis thinks, trying not to dwell on what she’s just seen melt away to allow further access to what she doesn’t want to believe has been her home for some unspecified period of time.
“What do you think?” she asks, not least to distract herself, peering in either direction down the hall, “Straight through to the heart, or circle around the outer passages first, if we can?”
First, though, she joins Aoife in checking the doors, especially to what must be a room opposite the grand staircase that once led to a second floor.
The large set of double doors to the outside world need a bit of a pull to truly open. as they seem to be somewhat stuck in their frame. But with a swift tug, Aoife opens the front doors to reveal a large wall of dense yellow fog.
A quick glance out into the fog reveals many vague bulbous shapes, all obviously not humanoid wandering around inside the clouds. Within seconds of the door being opened, Aoife reports hearing a sound that she can only describe as the distant churning of a large stomach.
Aoife swiftly shuts the outer doors, "Nope. Na going out there" she says, then moves to the others.
Laura does her best to keep up with the others, and growls with dismay at what she sees outside. She looks to Prasitis and shrugs, as if to say it does not concern her from which direction they approach the dangers. She cracks her knuckles and stretches her wrists and neck.
At the vague sight of the things in the fog, Prasitis is glad to agree with Aoife. She wonders if the things have been out there since the boiling rain the day before, but in any case the idea of trying to fight in fog so thick is appalling.
“Let’s try to make sure there are no surprises in the wings before being funneled through the main corridors,” she suggests, and moves to start checking the smaller doors that open onto the entrance hall.
Aoife and Pras try to open the door next to the inner double doors, and find it somewhat barricaded from the other side. After a few moments of work and some pushing and shoving, they finally manage to force the door down, providing access to the room.
A long desk, several chairs, a sideboard, and numerous once-stately landscape paintings barricade the door of this somber conference room. A toppled wall opposite the barrier undermines the room's defenses, a point driven home gruesomely by the masked bodies littering the ground.
A total of six bodies lay in this room, the apparent cause of death being battered with a variety of blunt instruments. Every single one of the corpses has had their head covered in sheets, shirts, or grain bags and tied shut.
One of the bodies appears to be a former orderly, as it is wearing a suit of padded armor and carrying a sap. Beside her outstretched hand is a sack containing two thunderstones and her finger holds an expensive golden ring with an inscription addressed to a loved one.
Laura dispassionately loots the bodies, which seems like a familiar activity for her. She wonders idly as she does so if the other bodies are patients like them. Instinctively looking to Prasitis for direction, she indicates the head covering and motions a question of whether they should remove them to look at their faces.
Prasitis nods in answer to Laura’s unspoken question. She’s not sure what that would reveal, but she murmurs her macabre speculations aloud, “It looks like they were bludgeoned to death, but why the bags? To stifle them first, or just … sadism?”
She tries not to think too much about lurching around, blindly trying to fend off blows from all sides while trying to breathe through sacking. She keeps her free hand halfway up as she looks around the room, as if unconsciously warding off the lingering menace of whatever killed these people. But if it came through the wall behind… For the sake of everyone’s morale, she keeps that part quiet.
Laura hefts the bodies up and removes the bags so they can get a good look at the corpses' faces.
The bodies appear to be a mixture of patients and staff alike, and there isn't anything that seems to be out of order besides the fact that they were beaten to death.
Luckily for them, and your consciences, a handful of them have weapons in hand and the group appears to have died fighting and had the bags put on afterwards, rather than being beat to death while blind.
Neither is a fortunate way to die, but at least it wasn't any worse. Something you can say a lot recently.
The elf witch frowns as the group works out more about how the wretched victims died, at least. “Thank the goddesses for small mercies, but still, the coverings? Remorse too late? Squeamishness? But then one might think throwing something over the whole body would be simpler.”
She’s not sure where the cool pragmatism comes from, but eventually she shrugs, and picks her way through the fallen wall to check the next of the smaller doors opening from the entrance hall.
To this point Satomi had followed the others quietly, regarding herself as somewhere between an interloper and a junior partner vis-a-vis the group. But she understands something about the scene that might be significant so she speaks up.
"The bags are a gesture. They are meant to communicate identity, like a signature. They were added to the dead afterward, so they are not a practical artifact of the killings. Each is the same, regardless of who or what the person it was placed on was. They do not reference the dead. They reference the killer or killers."
"The bags are a symbol, a statement, indicating who the killer or killers are. Or, in whose name the killings were carried out. It could be a religious act."
Laura frowns. Religious cults in Ustalav... now why did that make her skin crawl?
No cult Laura knows about has the bag over the head methodology. Perhaps a unique cult to the asylum?
As you are pondering the exact meanings of the bags, a boisterous clanging sound comes from the entryway, followed by several thumps as it sounds like the doors hitting the walls as they are shoved or pushed open.
What follows, as you scramble to understand what's happening, is a series of squishes and pops, as if something was rolling across the floor in the entrance room.
Care to investigate?
Laura lets go of the body she is holding and draws her axe, stepping quickly over to the door and peering into the entrance hall.
The way Prasitis draws up short at Satomi’s explanation makes it obvious how unsettling she finds it, but also plausible. Before she can say anything in acknowledgement, though, the ringing and slightly squashy sound that intervenes closes the elf’s mouth for her again, at least for a moment.
“Is anyone there?” she calls out cautiously, even as she thinks that it definitely wasn’t the sort of sound she’d expect Winter to make, and who else have they met that would be so adventurous?
Taking that extra moment gives her time to choose her weapons more intentionally, and this time when she draws, it’s her elven blade in hand. She moves to take up position beside Laura, ready to assist.
What Laura sees around the corner is precisely the sort of monster she's most likely accustomed to.
A large pile of bloody gore and intestines has smashed through the two front doors, leaving them ajar, and is currently rolling towards the door she's looking out of. Several different spines and a multitude of various teeth sprout from the beast, and the horrendous sound from earlier echoes out of its multitude of mouths. A trail of fresh blood is smeared behind it, as the entire thing seems to be oozing blood out onto the floor.
Satomi cries out "what is it?" But she doesn't wait for an answer. With a bright flash she hefts her glaive up. There is a second flash of light reflected off the bright blade as she brings it down.
The horrific beast cries out in pain as it is struck for the first time, and it churns and rolls across the floor as it moves closer to the group, enough to slam into Okita, the first available being for it to attack.
Veda takes out her bow and fires at the thing from a distance as well.
[b]What is it? Seems like a nightmare, some magical experiment gone wrong or something! Makes me want to puke![/dice]
Laura steps forward beside Satomi, and draws upon her knowledge of street fighting tactics to give herself a burst of strength. She then throws herself and her axe against the mess of gore, attempting to drive it back from its prey.
Laura manages to find purchase somewhere in the rolling ball of gore that sits beside you, and she pushes it five feet away from you, giving you some space.
As Laura pushes the monstrous thing back, Prasitis steps up and levels a vicious slash at it, before bringing her shield up to bear snd bracing grimly against counterattack.
"Unnatural, but not extraplanar!" the witch calls out her snap assessment. "I can't place it!"
"What in the hells?" Aoife exclaims, "Kill it with fire!"
She draws her blade, the freshly-polished steel gleaming first in the low light and then with its own inner light as it strikes out at the monstrosity.
Aoife’s blade strikes the beast cleanly, and a horrendous cacophony of sound emits from the pile of gore as it screams in pain.
Lashing out once more with a handful of bones and unnatural appendages, it chooses to make Aoife the target of its rage.
This horrendous pile of a beast is what is known as a hungry flesh. Come to life from originally from some dark corner of an alchemist’s lab, this specific one seems to be...different. The body is a slight yellow color, and it seems particularly hungry, as if it hasn’t fed for days. Or more.
I think this abomination is called a hungry flesh...i know it from somewhere. Please don't ask me why, because i have no valid answer to why i would know such a thing.
Veda doesn't look too pleased with her own knowledge.
Suddenly Veda seems to realize something else and becomes very, very pale.
Stop it! Stop attacking it! Hurting it with anything that slashes or pierces it will only make it grow...somehow. It regenerates itself and grows when it gets hurt the wrong way! We need to bludgeon it and best kill it with fire or acid! Do we have something of that? Oh hell my weapons are useless!
Waving her arms around she's screaming loudly.
And don't step into the slime trail!