No fire. No fire. This is not for you. The thought races through Prasitis’ head, and she knows it’s true, at least as far as her magic goes. That’s hardly the most alarming thing about what Veda calls out, though.
Thinking quickly, the elf witch throws her sword aside, and reaches for the staff slung over her back along with her bow – her shield would get in her way, but she can offer the weapon to Veda. She holds it up with what she hopes is an inspiring flourish, and invokes the honour of her order: “Scarlet Rose!”
Laura steps up to Prasitis and seizes the opportunity presented by her challenge to slam the gooey enemy with her fists.
Aoife is taken aback at her inability to do... anything, really, against the beast. Granted, that reaction is pretty overwhelmed by the horror of it grabbing her, "Aaaahhhh! Get i' offf!"
The beast will let go of Aoife as she scrambles out of its grasp, and lashes back out at Laura, who hurt it so. Its anger can be felt in how ferocious it attack is.
Except its anger is entirely consuming, and the mass of blood and bone that swings at her is wildly of course.
Laura winces as the blood and gore splash on her fists, and draws upon deep unconscious reserves of dislike that she has for abominations such as these. Raising her fists again, she cries out a wordless shout as she punches it right in the mouths.
Aoife grimaces as she steps away from the slime-thing, casting a spell before reengaging with the creature. Unlike normal, though, she does not channel the magic through her blade.
Veda's information is unwelcome and defies any kind of sense to Satomi, but then so does the simple existence of such a thing.
She shifts her glaive to her left hand and draws out a simple wooden club to strike the ball of gore with.
"This is not the kind of thing I have practiced for..."
The last club strike is enough to finally knock the beast down, blood and come exploding into a pile of gore on the floor of the entrance hall.
The beast has been defeated, for now. But you know you have only a few seconds before it is reformed again, from its regeneration.
At Veda's direction, Laura draws out a vial of acid from her pack and pours it over the creature's bubbling mass of goo.
Uh well done Satomi and Laura, guess we were lucky you had that...vial in your pack. A bit unusual, but maybe i should develop the habit to keep such a thing on my person as well. I realize i don't even have a torch!
Veda looks quite disturbed by the encounter. As seems her personality she quickly shakes it off though.
Good thing it's gone now. Where to next?
Prasitis is immensely relieved that Laura had a flask of something useful on hand, and as the acid works its horrific wonders on the mass it’s splashed over, the elf witch gives the stilled pile of flesh an awkward thump with her staff in fascinated disgust, in an attempt to make sure it’s actually dead.
Once reassured on that point, she stows the one weapon before retrieving her sword as well. Avoiding the trail of slime Veda warned them about, she tentatively answers the swordswoman’s question, “Checking the rest of the doors off this entryway before choosing a corridor? Nothing joined in with – with that horror, but I’d rather not learn the hard way that there are more doppelgangers or the like lurking and biding their time.”
The door opposite to the door heading to the garden does end at the rubble wall, a victim of whatever quake roughed the entire building up.
The other door provides you a relatively unique view, as asylum walls hedge in the spacious courtyard garden. Only thin breaths of sickly fog seep in from overheard, though beyond it’s just as thick as ever. Misty wisps slip between leafless trees and simple benches, giving the impression of silent beasts prowling through the garden.
And you’re opening the door to what looks like the office?
Laura catches her breath, her eyes shining with the effort. "Not sure why I have those," she says. "Good thing, though." She knew somehow that the part of her that was bonded with her, well, familiar could conjure a splash of acid, but it made her uncomfortable to feel that pool of energy within her. Perhaps that was why she had the vials, so she wouldn't have to tap into that side of her psyche.
She keeps her axe ready in her hands as she steps behind Prasitis.
Satomi takes a couple of steps back from the pile of... thing on the floor. Even after the acid is applied she continues to glance at it regularly, just in case.
She pulls a cleaning rag out and thoroughly wipes the gore off the club before tucking it away. She considers the rag for a moment and decides it's a lost cause. She drops it to remain with the dead thing.
Veda's compliment draws a head nod from gratitude from Satomi.
"You are very kind."
Gesturing at the open doors where the gore blob came in from, Satomi suggests "perhaps it's better if we close those doors?"
Despite the leafless trees and the eddying fog, Prasitis finds the garden somewhat more attractive than the claustrophobic and definitely infested ruined interior. She wonders if in happier times there would have been any roses…
The back of the garden fades into the fog, though, and that means deeper into the heart of the complex than is entirely comfortable with the dangerous weather and without doors and other defensible points, as Satomi’s words remind her.
“You’re right, of course,” she says, and starts closing doors before heading to what looks like an office off the entrance hall. She slams the doors on the way shut with perhaps a bit more vigour than is strictly necessary, as if taking comfort in the sound of solidity.
As though it had been plucked from the halls of some warm country estate, this room is filled with inviting furnishings, a hearth ready for a fire, artwork populated by picknicking families, and a mansion-shaped cage with colorful taxidermic birds inside. Large windows might have once looked out over colorful flowrbeds, but now show only the haunting yellow mists outside.
A battered corpse is impaled on the antlers of a stuffed elk head above the hearth, and another one is sprawled across the floor on top of what appears to be a stereotypical fur rug of some large beast.
Laura narrows her eyes in suspicion, and looks backward wondering if they can just close the door and leave the room alone.
Prasitis decides she certainly doesn’t approve of the room’s décor. The happy families certainly don’t square with her recent experience of the asylum, at least, and the birdcage … is beyond weird.
A mansion. Are we the birds, then, in this larger cage? And if those are stuffed… She’s very glad that she directed Argyria to wait in the chapel until called for. Her familiar certainly doesn’t need to see this.
And that’s before considering the corpses in the room. The witch cautiously enters, trying to make sense of the space and what happened here.
Satomi also enters the room, cautiously with her glaive held blade slightly forward and at the ready. She looks around carefully.
They are barely out of the chapel and she has already seen two things she could not have imagined were possible, so she is ready to find the worse things she can imagine, or wouldn't yet think to imagine.
In reference to the bodies she comments "it seems as if every room, no matter what it is for, must be despoiled in some way. Nothing can remain unruined."
Laura follows the others inside, examining the furnishings and the walls to try and figure out how the corpse got impaled on the wall.
Aoife follows up the back, making sure that no creatures sneak up and surprise them.
Pras and Laura both see the path out to the East, that seems to somehow cut through the yellow mist before curving to the north.
However, as soon as you approach too close to the bird cage, the clearly dead and obviously stuffed birds begin to...chirp? Their mouths move in a horrible cacophony of noise, filling the room and your ears with horrible noise as the sounds increase in volume slowly.
“There’s a path through the mist,” Prasitis says, pointing through the window, and trying to keep her voice level over the sound of the dead birds. “But I think we might rather want to come back later!”
Given what just came through the doors a few minutes ago. She waits for the others. Her honour demands it, after all: she can hardly let them suffer the risks of whatever’s happening.
Who would animate a flock of stuffed birds? Why? Some sort of bizarre trap?
"It would take something of great strength to throw people around so high like that. The birds could be an alarm to alert it to come!"
Satomi quickly moves over to the bird cage and brings her glaive down on it in a chop.
Laura smoothly smashes her greataxe inside the birdcage at almost the same moment, growling under her breath.
Aoife raises her sword and backs against the wall slowly, preparing to defend herself.
The damage Laura causes to the cage and birds is more than enough to smash through it and then, their taxidermied (lifeless?) bodies fall to the floor.
The only things of interest left are the two dead bodies laying on the floor. What’s next?
Laura uncomprehendingly looks over the corpses, briefly mollified by the fact that they have stopped screaming. She shrugs and prepares to proceed down the path through the yellow mist.
Whether it’s the diplomat’s daughter in her or the witch, Prasitis watches aghast as Satomi and Laura deal with whatever it was with chopping steel. Then again, since it seems to have worked, it seems preferable to just letting the dead birds do their almost certainly unpleasant work.
With a nod, she falls in behind Laura on the way to the east wing.
Unbidden, something about the room reminds Laura of a memory from before, about ghosts and spirits that linger long after the body has departed. It occurs to her to stop and look over the corpses to see if they hold any clues about why they were here.
Satomi waits a couple of minutes, remaining alert and on guard in case they were too late in stopping the alarm. During that time she occasionally glances at the two bodies.
When she's satisfied it's safe she relaxes but asks the others for some help.
"We shouldn't leave the bodies like this. We should lay them out on a table or the floor, where they will have some dignity. Can we move them before leaving?"
Prasitis eyes the fallen birds uneasily, but acquiesces readily, setting her shield aside for the moment. Arranging the body on the ground already should be easier, but the one stuck over the mounted elk’s head…
“On three?” she asks. The more she has to think about how the body got up there as she considers the difficulty of getting it back down at all gracefully, the less she likes it. With a bit of help, though, it's managed a bit more solemnly than flopping the thing over one side after being pried from the antlers.
The body on the floor appears to have been beat to death, and the one on the antlers was apparently killed by said antlers.
Outside, on the path through the mist, rustic flagstones create a path through a bed of wilted flowers and shrubs, the foliage shriveled as if drowned by the surrounding sea of dense yellow fog. Though the unnatural mist muffles every motion, a sound like the flapping of giant wings splits through the fog bank, causing it to swirl as if seeking escape.
The sounds of wings, however, seems far far above you, and doesn't seem like an immediate threat.
Each of the two bodies seems to be outfitted better than most of the corpses you've seen up until now, as they both carry a fine silver dagger, two potions, and identical necklaces.
Satomi removes the items fro the bodies.
"This is unusual, each with the three same items, and in each case both items are the same. Our need is considerable, and silver weapons may prove to be useful. My own is already silvered, but maybe a couple of you could use them?"
She puts the amulets aside for a moment and studies the potions. After a few seconds she adds the to the amulets and speaks the word for an orisin. Satomi spends the next couple of minutes looking for magical auras coming from the items.
"Unfortunately I can't say what the potions do."
Strapping her shield back on, Prasitis looks back from the door to the garden path. "I've not prepared the right cantrip to investigate at the moment, I'm afraid, though I could tomorrow. I wouldn't refuse another dagger, if there's one to spare. I've one in cold iron already, but..."
Her voice fades away as she briefly loses herself in vague memories of where she got it. It was a gift, and she thinks she feels fond about it for it, but the details are lost to the oblivion that shrouds most of her recent past. "Regardless."
Aoife gestures for some of the items to be handed to her, "Heh. Handy." her eyes glow with a muttered incantation as she analyzes their findings.
The four potions are cure light, and the daggers are just masterwork silver daggers.
The necklaces, however, are amulets of natural armor +1.
"Very nice." Aoife notes as she studies the findings, "Tha amulets should serve as a minor ward against blows." she explains, slipping one on and tossing the other to Okita, "Seems too useful ta leave laying here."
Tucking one of the silver daggers into her belt, Prasitis now fairly bristles with weaponry. She'll have to consider how to best sort it later for easy access. She encourages the others to take up the amulets, since she's got her shield to go with her armour.
Picking the former up again, she sets off the path to breach the door to the east wing.
The curving path ends in a door, with the asylum walls to the left, and the endless banks of yellow mists to the right.
Unfortunately, the door appears to be locked.
“Is anyone … equipped to deal in skullduggery?” Prasitis asks, trying to find a relatively polite way of asking if any of the others have burglarious skills.
“I could try to force the door, but I’m not the strongest.”
Now that she mentions it, another flash of memory: surrounded by her sisters-in-arms, faceless helms nodding in response to clipped signals, a portable ram brought forward. But she herself among those waiting to respond after it had been applied.
"Not that ah recall, but there's a lot ah don't remember." Aoife says with a shrug, "But ah do think...." she walks up to the door and places her hand against it, "Let's see..."
You mean if someone can get the door open? Let me try, that seems familiar.
Veda instinctively reaches to her hair and pulls some hairpins out, trying to unlock the door with them.
As soon as both Veda and Aoife touch the door separately, the entire group gets a strange combination of a dream and a vision that you shouldn't quite go through this door just yet. Something is pulling you towards the inner part of the entrance hall you just left, but you're unsure what the feeling is or where it's coming from.
Aoife shakes her head to clear it, ”Och. Bloody visions. Everyone else get the’?” she rubs her temple, ”Figures. Nothin’ can be normal, can it?”