Upon seeing its reflection, the eye widens for a few seconds before quietly withering away to reveal a door.
"I didn't get to touch it..." Mya mutters slightly disappointed.
She walks to the door and attempts to open it.
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.
Mya looks through one of the windows "This is the same mist from our dreams, isn't it?" she looks closer and her focus adjusts, catching a glimpse of her reflection. She already knew what happened to her, but seeing it first hand, again, shocked her despite how emotionally stunted she felt right now.
She takes a few moments to regain her composure. "This looks like an entrance hall, so the desk would be facing..." she turns her head towards the double doors "The entrance."
Mya moves closer to the doors leading outside and examines them visually, Do they seem locked? "I think that if our dream was somehow real, the gray rags monster might be waiting for us outside."
When Arberie's trick works, Tassa gives her an appraising glance. "Nice work. I...don't think I'da thought of that."
Tassa's been feeling an increasing hunger since she woke this morning. At Mya's mention that the tormenter from their dreams could be behind the door, she decides that perhaps it's time to give in to it.
Glancing behind her shoulder to see if there's anyone from the encampment who has followed them. Then she says, "Alright, well then let me get ready to show him that we won't be easy pickings."
Tassa lets the thing inside her come forward. Her arms and legs mostly dissolve into a blubbery mass of glistening black tentacles, mixed in with way too many mouths and eyes.
Baldrek heads for the double doors. "Juste lete me know when you rready."
The entry doors are swollen in their frame, making opening them extremely difficult . After several attempts, though, you're able to force them open. As soon as you do, a bilious yellow fog spills into the room, vaporous tendrils clinging to the chamber's fringes. Outside, you can barely glimpse vague, bulbous masses moving deeper in the mist and hear what sounds like the faint churning of a distant but gigantic stomach.
Mya closes her mouth and holds her breath. She attempts to step back from the fog, trying to use her hands to signal the group to close the doors.
Thoughts race in her head How does this building look from outside? Can anyone from outside see this? Are people attempting to reach us? Has a city or the entirety of Golarion gone to the Hells?
Arberie isn't so sure the mist isn't poisonous. But, it's the sounds coming from out in it that really disturb her.
"I think we should stay inside."
Tassa wills the monstrosity back inside herself again, and sighs.
"I mean, going out there looks awful...but is it more awful than staying in this asylum? If we don't go outside, what's the plan? Do we think that we'll find a place in the asylum where we'd like to live out the rest of our days? Or another way out that doesn't go into that sickly fog?"
Mya steps back until she feels safe from the fog.
"I assumed, considering our shared dream, that the fog would be tormenting... us specifically? It seems unlikely this yellow mist has taken over Golarion."
She sighs.
"But I guess it wouldn't hurt to see what is outside?"
Arberie feels she should stress the part that really matters.
"The fog isn't the main problem here. Do you not hear that? That is not a small creature sound. There is something out there, and not just one. We can pretty much see them to know that."
"If you must test the situation be my guest. I'm not going out there with you. I know all I need to already and the answer is yes, it IS more awful out there than it is in here. Maybe those things will move on and things will change tomorrow or the next day, but right now it's not even a contest."
Baldrek closes the door again. "No matterr how much I wante to gete out, findinge anozerr bath is better. If we cannot..." He shruggs, pointing back to the door. "We trry ourr lucke."
With that, Baldrek moves to the next door.
Baldrek quickly discovers that the door is barricaded from the inside. It can likely be broken down, but it'll take some effort.
Reluctantly, Tassa accedes to her companions' logic.
"Ok then, shall we see if there's anything more useful behind this barricade?"
Shrugging her shoulders, Mya walks to the northernmost double door.
"We can see about breaking doors down when all options are exhausted."
She attempts to open them.
Sagging shelves, held together by dust and an extensive system of rolling ladders, ring this library of husky, dull-looking 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.
A library. Not very useful right now. The dust and the smells of leather and old paper all belong to the place, but the bestial musk was strange. "Animals in herre? Be carrefule."
Arberie peeks in to take a look around the room.
"More doors on the far wall" she remarks. But, she isn't yet convinced to go that way.
"I suppose we can open everything we can for a look and then decide."
Mya looks around the library and feels strangely at home.
"This is nice. We might look through the books, maybe there are documents with info on where we are?"
She turns to Arberie "I agree." Mya steps back from the library's door and moves behind Baldrek, ready for him to open the door.
As you look in, you notice that several of the lower shelves have had their contents scattered across the floor. Some of them appear to have been gnawed through. The perpetrators quickly become apparent: three ratlings lurking atop the bookshelves. Noticing you, they shriek in a bizarre-sounding language . Their meaning becomes clear when they start throwing balled-up papers in your direction.
Mya resists the impulse to cover her own hears because of the unbearable shrieking and asks to her nearby companions "Does anyone understand what they are saying?"
In case the hostilities escalate, Mya preemptively reaches to the source of her magic and, as if the night allowed her to remember how to do, she instinctively reaches deeper.
Her body glows with a muted light and the sound of clockwork emanates from her as she manages to tug at two different strings of time, belonging to Arberie and Baldrek.
Tassa shakes her head No.
What she does understand is the hunger growing in her belly. Like unclenching a fist, she allows her arms and legs to get lost in a blubbery mass of glistening black tentacles, mixed in with way too many mouths and eyes.
Throwing wads of paper is a bit hostile, but it's not dangerous of course. The mostly rat and a little human creatures are a creepier than not, but maybe they're not so bad.
With this evaluation guiding her, Arberie decides to try placating them along with some apologetic friendliness. Putting on a smile while her head retreats down between her slumped shoulders, she raises her hands, palms outward to mime her embarrassed sorriness to them.
"Oh! Very sorry to disturb you! We're just having a look around. We'll leave you to your... paper eating! Nice to meet you though!"
Maybe they won't understand her words, but it can't hurt to try. She slowly backs up away from the dorrway.
The creatures were creepy little bastards for sure, so Baldrek gets his trident and net readies just in case.
After a few tense seconds, it becomes evident that the ratlings don't wish to fight. They've likely claimed the library as their own, so as long as you stay out, they'll (hopefully) leave you alone.
Mya stops concentrating, dispelling her effects on time. Never a waste to not provoke a fight.
"So, next rooms, then?" she walks toward the nearest door.
Arberie shrugs at Mya's probably rhetorical question.
"I guess so, surely we'll find one of them that works out for us."
The door is unlocked and leads to a small storage room. A portion of the western wall has collapsed, giving access into the adjourning room. That room is a somber conference room. A long desk, several chairs, a sideboard, and numerous once-stately landscape paintings form a barricade against the western door that you checked earlier. Unfortunately, this makeshift defense doesn't seem to have been effective - as evidenced by the six corpses in the room. All have been battered by a variety of blunt instruments and have had their faces wrapped in sheets, shirts, or grain bags and cinched tight around the neck. A few of the bodies wear white clothes like the corpses you saw downstairs, others wear ragged mundane clothing, and one is clad in heavy padded clothing.
Potential Loot
Padded Armor x1
Sap x1
thunderstone x2
Gold Ring
"So zis bunch locked zemselves herre." Baldrek says, pointing to the barricade. "Zen ze wall brroke and someone orr somesing got zem." It wasn't the greatest mystery after all.
"Beaten ande strrangled." He proclaims as he loots the bodies. They would not need their stuff. He ignores the armor and the sap. "Two thunderrstones ande golde rringe."
"Movinge on."
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 picnicking families, and a mansion-shaped cage with colorful taxidermic birds inside. Large windows might have once looked out over colorful flowerbeds, but now show only yellow mist. A battered corpse is impaled on the antlers of a stuffed elk head hung above the hearth. Another lies dead on the ground. Both are wearing stained yellow robes like the insane man you rescued from the ghoul.
Mya looks upon the awful scene "This is horrible. What did this to them?"
She enters the room, wary of the taxidermic creatures and away from the stuffed elk head, trying to get closer to the body to gather whatever information she can from it.
Arberie grabs the sap and tucks it away on herself, because you never know.
Arberie casn only guess in generalities.
"Must have been something quite big and strong I'd say... Unless it flies. But even then, still fairly big and strong."
She looks about for other entrances to the room, hiding places, things that aren't moving now but might start, or holes in the ceiling, windows, or walls large enough for something to come in and out of the room.
As Arberie picks up the sap, you begin to hear a faint chirping. It sounds quite pleasant.
The pleasant chirping rapidly increases in volume until the sound has transformed into a shrill, mechanical-sounding klaxon.
Mya looks around, searching from the source of the problem. Coincidence or not, it started after Arberie dove deeper in the room, so Mya immediately tugs at her time strand.
Tassa tries helps Arberie look for anything interesting or useful, but is distracted by her growing hunger.
If Arberie doesn't find anything in this room, Tassa will go back North, to listen at the NE and NW doors (though most of what she hears seems to be a growl coming from within her).
Frowning when the pleasant chirping turns to the klaxon, Baldrek looks around and sees the cage with the birds inside. "Hum... ah, f#*#e it!"
Arberie is quite confused about the sudden noise. She's seen nothing. She takes a defensive stance and looks around again.
You ready yourselves as Baldrek destroys the cage. A moment later, ghostly copies of the birds inside swarm toward Arberie, attempting to carry her away.
Ghost birds are not even on the long list of bad things Arberie can imagine might be around. She's so surprised by being mobbed she does little more than wiggle a little as she's lifted.
"WHOA!"
Mya steps back, the birds evoking some sort of uneasiness. She immediately lets go of her chokehold on Arberie's time strand, not much use when she's being dragged away, and tries to find one for the birds, if there even is one, to slow them to not carry her companion.
Tassa moves opposite of Baldrek, hoping to use him to keep their strange new foe off balance. As she does, glistening black tentacles lash out for the bird-things.
Tassa's tentacles demolish the avian carcasses in the wreckage of the gilded cage, causing the ghostly birds to abruptly vanish ... and Arberie to drop back to the floor.
Potential Loot
Each of the two bodies has the following on his person:
MW Silver Dagger c1
Potion - cure light wounds x2
When she drops, Arberie is able to manage a decent landing rather than dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes. She is confused though.
"What was all that about?"
Mya shrugs her shoulders and moves close to Arberie to help her stand up.
"I think all our discussions about leaving or not are moot, there is no place that is safe."
Mya collects the potions and the dagger, putting them on the bag they found previously. She goes to the other door, the one that does not lead outside and gets ready to open it, looking back for the team's approval so nobody is got by surprise.
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.
"Oooh f&^k I wish it wasn't so gods-forsaken creepy out there. Not that it's much worse in here. Still, I think Arberie persuaded me: in choosing between several s#!tty options, I'm inclined to see if we can learn more in here before going out into...whatever that is."
"If you arre goinge to starrte sinking like zat, you betterr go back to ze chabele ande wait with zose lambs." He says to Mya. "Make yourr hearrt of stone ande live. Give ube ande die."
Agreeing with the others, Baldrek closes the door and turns back to check other doors.
Arberie rolls her eyes at Baldrek's... whatever he's trying to get across with his supercilious little speech, and goes along to another door with the rest.
High asylum walls hedge in this 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. At the northeastern corner of the courtyard, a sturdy wooden shed leans against the wall.