Okay, for those few of you that watch me and are wondering why I've not posted in a while and now you just got a bunch of alerts, I had a suggestion over on Space Battles that my writing style took a bit of getting through. Not too much I can do apart from try to break things up a bit so there's not as many text walls. Unfortunately with this type of story information density is going to be an issue due to the butterfly occuring well before the story kicked off and there being a number of related changes.
All I can do at this point is say, if you have suggestions or corrections that's what reviews are for and while I'm not one to beg for them, I can't fix an issue you've seen if I'm not alerted to its presence. So please actually reviwe if you've feedback
Chapter 8: Haunted Grounds
"And we're back," Hikaru said after turning the stream live again. "Is everybody here? Fubuki-chan, Yuudachi-chan, Mutsuki-chan, Zephyr-chan, Zenith-san, and Crow-chan?" she asked, getting affirmatives from each of the girls. "Alright then, Crow-chan, since you're playing this one, do you want to give us a bit of background on the game?"
"Sure," Megan replied with a grin. "Realms of the Haunting, I've checked, this is a rebuild, so the AI can actually figure out doors and the graphics are a lot better, so just as a warning, expect things to get freaky and/or messy." She gave Rika an amused look as the destroyer-girl face palmed. "There's plenty of horror clichés, good versus evil and such, but considering Mr Adam Randall, the player character in the game is pretty much Joe Average, he actually is smarter than most in some areas, others… not so much.
"The long and short of why he's there though, is because a 'priest' delivered a batch of cracked and broken seals claiming that Adam's father had wanted them passed on," Megan gave her camera an amused look. "As you can probably guess, things aren't exactly what they seemed. Cue a trip to a mansion, getting locked in with a lot of doors that have glowing green sigils on them – and if that isn't a 'hey, shit's about to go down' warning sign, I don't know what is – followed by an encounter with his dead dad and a bunch of equally dead knights to get things kicked off."
"Just as an aside," her sister cut in. "While you can buy the original from GOG or Steam, the modded version isn't for sale." She paused, frowning slightly. "Though I can probably sort out an email account for the guys that did it and pass things on to them if anyone is interested, they might be interested in some new things to try," she said with a slight shrug.
Checking her system was ready to record and stream, Megan took over the stream, taking a moment to glance through the latest comments. "You'll find out in a moment, folks," she said with a grin. "Let's get into the game."
Muting the voices from the other girls, she started up the Realms of the Haunting and sat back as the intro played out. She waited as Adam Randall explained his dreams, the loss of his father – a pastor at a church, the fake priest and how he had come into possession of the seals along with being drawn to the house.
"What are those things he had in the intro, poi?" Yuudachi asked while Megan checked her settings to ensure they were right.
"The seals?" asked Megan, getting a nod from the blonde. "You know… I don't actually remember if it's explained off the top of my head. I'm fairly sure they're something to do with either this extra dimensional space called 'The Tower' or they're to keep something trapped somewhere. One of the good things is you can actually check your items and get some extra info on them, though some bits are to do with things found around the game world and not all are things you can take with you."
"Anyway," Sally cut in briefly, "Welcome to a remake/remaster of Realms of the Haunting, which was originally developed and published in most countries by Gremlin Interactive in 96/97 and the guys really upped the quality of the models and textures on the game."
"To be fair, I remember playing this when I visited you girls a while ago," Hikaru commented, "the environments were models, but a lot of the furnishings and enemies were sprites making it… 2.5D or something like that."
Megan nodded slightly as the others talked for a moment just checking her controls. "Pretty much," she said. "Though I'm glad they integrated the extras from the US only 1.2 patch. Long story short, that patch allowed WASD controls, which weren't as popular at the time as they've become since. Most games in the mid-90s were still using the cursor keys for movement."
"Honestly, I played both Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy with everything grouped on the cursor keys and it wasn't bad, but it's easier with the WASD movement in a lot of ways because you're not constantly going across the keyboard." Sally commented dryly.
Megan nodded and shifted Adam around in the game to demonstrate. "The US patch also allowed for remapping of those controls and setting the combat and puzzle difficulty, which can help or leave you confused as to how something worked." She shrugged her shoulders before bringing up the inventory screen.
"Okay," she continued. "Inventory, yes we have one, this isn't just a straight FPS it's an adventure. Right now we've got basically nothing apart from the lamp and matches we grabbed and the seals we brought with us. Speaking of," she said clicking on the seals to bring them up before clicking on the 'I' on the window. "We can 'talk' about them. Have a listen."
"These fragments have some kind of occult markings… runes or something," Adam's voice said from the game. "These fragments, the seals – whatever they are, I know they're important to something… The power within them makes me feel… alive to their touch. And the dreams, they affect my dreams… intensify them. I must keep them close… keep them safe."
"Or in other words," Rika commented, "they're trouble."
Sally nodded, backing out of the inventory. "Yup, notice though, there are six seals shown and there's also supposed to be pieces missing." Moving around the room, she grabbed a set of pistol bullets and a book from another table before looking at the paintings, Adam remarking that one looked very much like Elias Camber, the priest that had visited him, holding some sort of mask.
"Okay," Robyn muttered after Megan checked the pictures at the opposite end of the room from the door that had locked behind her character. "I think if there were pictures that did that, especially ones that looked like that, I'd be leaving as fast as possible." She got nods from the Japanese girls.
"Ulp…" Yuudachi winced when Megan moved around to check another suit of armour, this one with a green miasma around it and was told there was a horrible stench. "Is that… a dead body… poi?"
Megan shrugged. "I honestly wouldn't be surprised; I mean there is quite literally a swarm of rat corpses somewhere in this place. What would one corpse in a tin really be worth comparatively?"
"Plus, you know, if nothing else said Camber was a prick, that would," Sally added.
Advancing a bit further through the game, the girls watched as a typewriter typed something up without anyone using it. Megan took the note and checked the typewriter only to be told that the ink ribbon was missing before grabbing the Colt 45 next to it and the book on the other side.
A check of the note had several of the girls shivering. "H-how did it even get typed?" Mutsuki asked.
Rika shook her head. "No clue, but once again, not an out and out scare, though the creep factor really scratches along your spine."
"Adam's got some nerves," Hikaru commented, "I'd be out that window and gone by now." As she said this, Megan worked her way around to find an open window with a headless rat under it.
Sally gave an amused snort while her sister moved Adam to one end of the corridor and lit a candle to the side of a picture showing two lit candles and an Egyptian style sarcophagus. "First puzzle of the game, folks, and a bit of a trap so watch out," she commented, watching her sister move to the side before lighting the other candle, the action causing the picture to slide up revealing a key and a hole that started glowing and spat out a pair of green blobs. A moment later they crashed into the window and detonated, blowing it open.
"That is designed to catch newbies out," Megan commented, retrieving the key. "And it can knock your health down by a third, which when you can't regenerate it, is pretty significant, particularly this early." With that, she moved to one of the doors and unlocked it. "And cut scene in a moment, plus the end of the chapter, so we'll stay quiet for a few to let you watch what happens." So saying, she moved into the room, starting the cut scene.
One cut scene later, the game set things going again in the library of the mansion, with Adam's view facing the fire between several sets of candelabras. Lighting them up, Megan looted the room of sword, shield, letters, masks and statuettes before reading the letters to the audience.
"Whelp… there's the conspiracy," Rika commented dryly, "Or at least part of it."
"Yup," Megan commented, "there's also a few other things." She indicated the sarcophagus with her cursor. "Recognise it? It's pretty similar to the picture we got the key from. It's also part of a puzzle," she pointed out, circling the snake statuette below it. "We're missing two of the snakes right now, and it's been a while so I'm not completely sure where both are. I think one's in the next area though, also," she paused, moving to flick the old gramophone on and getting the sounds of creepy, male, laughter and babies crying for a few moments before flipping it off. "That is another grate on your nerves, creepy bit and as for the last thing in here. We can also mess with the clock, not that we know what that's for right now."
Sally nodded while Megan moved her character around the desk, checking the draws before moving to the bookshelves opposite the creepy gramophone. "And here's the point where probably several people, who don't always pay attention to things get stuck. We've explored everywhere we know we can get to at this point, so where would we go from here?"
Megan nodded as well, moving the cursor to show the dot changing in it. "Hidden door in the bookcase is one of the older tropes for mystery type stories, but it works." Switching to the sword, she opened the bookcase and went inside.
"And three, two, one…" Rika counted down while Megan moved forwards.
The screech of the first enemy appearing made both Yuudachi and Mutsuki yelp and jump into one another's arms, ending with them both on the floor, much to Rika's amusement. "Not funny, poi!" Yuudachi glared at her roommate.
"Yes it is," Rika replied, smirking at the pair before turning back to the screen as Megan sliced the enemy apart. "Oh wow, looks like they took some hints from one of the Silent Hill games… Homecoming I think," she commented, the monster screaming once more before keeling over and fizzing out.
Chuckling, Megan continued down through the cave, cutting down another two enemies that tried to jump her when she reached the bottom, which was brilliantly lit compared to everywhere else they had seen so far. After a moment, she turned around and frowned. "Huh… that normally collapses once we're out of the passage way, I wonder…" trailing off, she moved towards the path they had come down only for the screen to shake and rumble, tossing down rubble along with what looked like a few piles of bones. "Ah, they changed it to happen as you try to escape. Guess we're staying down here for a bit."
"Word of advice," Sally commented as Megan turned around to head through the open exit to the platform. "The reason things are pretty bright in this room and in some others is due to lava, or magma since it's underground, you don't want to try going for a swim in it in game, it'll kill you in seconds."
Megan nodded, making her way through the corridor and cutting down three more of the demons in yellow trousers, which made Yuudachi and Mutsuki jump when they appeared.
"Right, now things start getting serious," Megan commented, reaching a room with a door and two paths out besides the one she had entered by. The room had a white summoning circle of some kind on the floor along with a couple of wooden crates.
Moving around to the crates, she looked down and grabbed a box of shotgun shells from one, which caused another roar from one of the fodder demons.
"Looks like we've got company," commented Adam's voice.
"Not for long," observed Hikaru as Megan cut the demon down with the sword before grabbing the rest of the ammunition in the crates along with the one magazine under a shelf in the opposite corner by one of the paths out.
"Metallic orb, feels… alive," Adam commented before Megan had him pick up the orb from the shelf.
"Probably not something you'd really want to be messing with honestly," Megan commented dryly. "Anyway, that's this room clear, and if you didn't notice, there is a shotgun in this game, we just found a couple of boxes of shells for it in the crates." Moving over to the door, she placed the orb in it and moved inside, killing another demon as it jumped at her.
"Right, let's see…" moving to the table in front of what looked like a couch or stuffed chair, she grabbed the scroll from the table. "One map for this area," she commented before grabbing a green potion from a side cabinet along with another document. "The potion is a health refill, low level one though, and the last is…" she went into her inventory and checked the parchment. "A lot of notes and a sketch of a door, plus an object, one we're going to get very familiar with before long."
While Megan switched to checking the map, Sally frowned slightly. "Something for everyone to note while my sister is mucking around," she said. "The maps in the game all come on parchment scrolls like the one on screen, and unless they added the feature to the game for the mod, there is no auto-map. You have to figure out where you are on a map by comparing it to your surroundings. For instance, if Crow pulls the map back a bit to show the top," she suggested, waiting while her sister did that.
"See the tunnel there? Crow came down that to the cave, which is where the magma lake is then down the tunnel to the room with the pool symbol before this one. Off to the east is that passage over a bridge and south leads further into things, down to the area with the big doors and such." As Sally spoke, Megan scrolled the map to show what she was talking about.
"First thing's first," Megan said, exiting the inventory and moving to the door. "Shotgun," she said, taking the orb back and putting it back in to get through the door before retrieving it again.
A few moments later she had headed down the path over the magma and tripped an ambush by the demons, one she quickly broke by killing the one that had appeared behind her. Unfortunately the other three followed her, resulting in a fighting retreat until all three were dead, a chilling, half-metallic screech sounding every time the sword sliced the demons' flesh.
Returning to the room, she grabbed the shotgun, shells and a few extra healing potions.
Making her way back and through the unexplored corridor, Megan travelled along another winding path before the sounds of clunking, hissing steam pistons and rattling bone made her pause. Preparing her shotgun, she rounded the corner and yelped in surprise as she almost ran into a skeletal creature in steam armour. The throaty roar of the shotgun firing four times covered the sound of screams from Yuudachi and Mutsuki as they ended up on the floor again, Rika and Robyn joining them with yelps of their own.
"Fuck…" Sally breathed, barely audible over another series of shotgun blasts directed at another of the steampunk skeletons that was clanking towards its friend. "Bit closer encounter than I would have liked, especially at that res… damn…"
Hikaru nodded vigorously. "Dess, definitely, dess," she affirmed. "At least it didn't have time to attack before Megan killed it, but that was a bit closer look at the steam-marine than I wanted desu."
"What the poi is that thing?" Yuudachi asked, managing to regain her feet from the tangle with Mutsuki.
"A corpse in steampunk power armour," Rika replied before letting out a shaky breath. "Kami, Crow-chan… I know your friends upgraded things a bit, but did they have to make the enemies look that nasty? I think I saw some skin on that thing's skull." She shuddered, retaking her seat.
Megan sent Rika an arch look. "I didn't tell them how to upgrade things, Fubuki," she commented, moving Adam down the stairs and taking out another steam-marine as she entered a larger room. "Okay, pretty sure this would add a lot of value to the house, presuming there weren't things trying to rip your face off while you were touring," she commented dryly, drawing a snort of amusement from Sally.
"Pretty sure Kikoskia had about the same comment, though he 'played' it," Sally commented. "Dang big place though, no way in hell that it wouldn't be known about by Camber."
"Yup," Megan nodded, frowning slightly. "Now, where am I going…?" she trailed off as she brought up the map of the area from her inventory and scanned it. "Right, I need to go through the door on the left first." She paused for a moment. "There's something we need to do in this area," She paused for a moment. "There's something we need to do off in this area," she motioned with her cursor at a room on the map near a set of squiggly lines. "Why anyone would do said thing willingly I don't know, but we need to. They probably should have had a few things in to force a different cut scene until you had found and read something, but this was the nineties so programming wasn't as advanced in some areas."
Making her way through the halls in the game, and killing a couple more enemies, Megan made her way to what looked like a chapel mausoleum with a dozen or so sarcophagi, odd green lighting and a throne with what appeared to be a giant rib cage behind it. "Right folks, this is what I was talking about," she said, indicating the throne with her cursor. "Would anyone willingly sit on that chair without knowing what it's about? I sure as hell wouldn't."
"Bone backed chair in the middle of a dungeon, with skulls for hand rests, in what looks like a tomb given the sarcophagi at the other end of the room, beyond a shimmering field of gods know what…" Rika trailed off and snorted expressively. "Really fucking inviting and a really good plan to use the thing," she drawled, "not."
"Yeah, they should have it that if you stumble on this, Adam should flat out refuse to sit there," Sally commented. "That said I'm not sure if there's anything in game that tells you why you need to sit on it short of getting yourself dead through misadventure." Hearing a quiet 'poi' from Rika's end, she nodded. "Yeah, there's actually an area that kills you if you don't use the chair, though I don't remember if there is anything that explains why unless it's some sort of voice clip from entering the area in question."
Hikaru nodded, frowning. "There's a door that Crow hasn't been to yet, which is actually locked at this point, where you get two cut scenes if you don't get branded. One I think plays either way next to the entrance where you find a handless skeleton, the other only shows if you don't sit on the chair." She cocked her head for a moment. "The others mentioned Kikoskia and I think he's got a few 'extras' videos for his replay of the game. One is that event. If you ignore both 'warning' cut scenes, you die."
Megan nodded before clicking on the chair to initiate the cut scene. A few moments of watching Adam get comfortable before his hands were scorched with a set of brands later she regained control. "So I think that should only be possible after the warning or finding something to say 'hey, you need to use this chair, otherwise bad things happen'."
With that done, she retraced her steps out of the chapel, through the main room, making sure to point out the locked door there and back to the room with the first sarcophagus in it. Heading through the door opposite to the one she came in through, she followed the path around to another area, killing several of the yellow trouser wearing demons around it.
"Okay, now that party is over, next bit," Megan commented, moving around to the 'caged' side of the middle room to find a lever. The door that opened led to another room with another demon and several crates and an increasingly loud heartbeat. Killing the demon, she quickly looted the place before grabbing the key. "Considering we've only seen one locked door in this place that can use a key, you can probably guess where this goes, however we have to get there first."
Going back to the door to the room, she opened it to reveal a pair of steam-marines outside, one straight ahead, and the other to her right. "Your presence violates the pact, as it is written, as it was, so it shall be, for all eternity," a robotic voice growled.
Rolling her eyes while Mutsuki and Yuudachi whimpered, Megan switched to the shotgun and opened up on one of the marines. "Stuff your pact where the sun doesn't shine, wanker," she responded, killing the other marine as well. A quick trip around the corridor got her into the middle room for another few magazines for the pistol.
"Hey, Crow, since you're there, you might as well hop by the infinite enemy room on the way back," Rika commented.
Megan nodded, "True," she said. "Though I'd actually be interested in where all those enemies came from." Making her way back to the first sarcophagus room again, she turned left and opened the other lever door. "Alright, a couple of things here, first up, as mentioned, this area has unlimited enemies, at least as long as you don't do anything. There is a trick to stopping them. There's also this," she indicated the symbols on the walls. "Which, I believe are a mob blocker," she continued as she went past them and down to the room.
Moving quickly, and ignoring the enemies that spawned, she hit two hand-shaped buttons on the opposite wall from the entrance to the room before turning, evading a couple of steam marines and hitting a third button, which caused something to start grinding as it moved. Another quick evasion let her slip past the marines again and around into a new area where a fourth button sat. Pressing that resulted in the marines collapsing in a clangour of metal. "Wow, that was louder than I remember," Megan commented.
Sally nodded, watching her sister clean up the three corpses with her sword. "Yup, though it makes a bit of sense that there would be noise from them collapsing," she commented. "Anyway, as mentioned, if you're not quick off the mark you can eventually be forced out of the room by those enemies because they'll keep spawning. I don't think there's many areas with infinite potential spawns, but this is one of them and they're protecting something on the back wall."
"Chullum ashidar in derias," Adam read off when Megan clicked on the glowing script.
"What he said," Hikaru commented, "though something to note, it's a bit of an obvious hint but look above the words. Remember that big statue in the main room? It looks pretty similar, right?"
Turning Adam around, Megan nodded before walking onto the plate in the floor causing a short clip of something similar to the wormhole travel in Stargate before the main catacombs room appeared. Moving up to the statue, she activated it, quickly killing the two demons that tried jumping out of the ground at her. "I believe that proved the point," she commented dryly, getting an amused snort from Hikaru.
Smirking, she opened her inventory, she took out the second key they had gotten and opened the door with a pile of bones next to it. "Alright, time to go through this mess," she commented. A moment later she blinked at the sound of bone cracking underfoot. "That's new…" she commented before a cut scene triggered, showing Adam finding a skeleton in a jacket, without hands.
"Okay, at this point, if I hadn't booked it before, I'd be gone, no ifs, buts or maybes, just naff this noise, I'm outta here," Hikaru said.
Rika nodded, swallowing as Megan crunched down the corridor. "Yeah, corridor filled with corpses that have been there long enough to decompose? Not somewhere I'd want to be, and I've been in battle."
Robyn chuckled as Megan left the bone filled corridor. "I dunno, kinda reminds me of some of the bone walls in the Paris catacombs," she commented, getting blinks from the others.
"You've been down there?" Sally asked.
Robyn nodded. "On a school trip," she clarified. "The place must have taken centuries to dig out that much, at least if it was dug out rather than eroded." She shrugged, watching Megan scout around the new area. "There's probably more corpses down there than in the cemeteries in Paris, even got walls built of long bones with skulls at different heights, which must have taken hundreds if not thousands of bodies to do given there's what, one skull and twelve long bones in the human body?"
"Something along those lines," Hikaru agreed. "Still… walking over unburied corpses… brrr…" She shivered, rubbing her upper arms. "How many people died in this place?" She didn't get an answer to the question because at that point Megan managed to trip another ambush by the demons only to turn around to find a green wearing, horned demon almost right in her face. Hikaru wasn't the only one to shriek at the sight, or the only one to end up kicking back from her computer only to end up on the floor.
Most of the yells were covered by the roar of the shotgun as Megan unloaded a full box of rounds into the new demon, swearing as she backed up away from the other two demons before it fell. "Son of a bitch…" she muttered, switching to the sword to kill the remaining pair. "I'd forgotten about him." Letting out a breath, she shook her head, giving the others a moment to recover themselves and their seats.
"Right, that bastard you just saw is the second level version of the fodder we've been running into thus far," Sally explained. "They're smarter, faster, hit harder and are tougher, as you saw. Their corpses also don't vanish like their lesser brethren and they're only the third enemy type we've run into, there are more that are worse."
Shaking her head, Megan went into the room the demons were guarding to retrieve a pair of health potions. "You know, I don't think two potions, even decent ones, are worth the box or more of shotgun shells to deal with ugly."
"At least we're close to a weapon that will make ammo mean less," Sally commented.
Megan nodded, taking a breath and letting it out through her nose before having Adam turn around and return to the crossroad of tunnels. A trip down the opposite tunnel to the one they had just been in didn't turn up anything apart from another sarcophagus, but the one opposite the bone floored corridor led to a pool, which Megan avoided. "Word of advice, don't go swimming, it kills you pretty quick," she commented.
Heading up the stairs she entered a room with a tall marble altar and huge winged statues. "Okay, here we go," she muttered, moving next to the altar to trip the cut scene. Once it hit the point she had an option, she gave the camera a look. "And here we finally find out a bit more about why we need the brands. Notice the altar, and the smaller of the objects on it both have the same markings? Well, they're linked in with what mister voice-out-of-thin-air was talking about. Of course that means we're likely not going to get anywhere useful if we don't take the things on offer," she continued, clicking the link to do just that.
Almost immediately after the cut scene finished, something in the game screamed at her.
Spinning around, Megan had Adam use the staff they had recently gotten to blast one of the two green-winged gargoyles as it attempted to stalk her.
The second, she evaded for a couple of minutes, allowing the staff to recharge three skulls before blasting it into dust as well.
"And enemy number four, the gargoyle, not particularly threatening given the staff, but annoying when they flock," Sally commented dryly.
Megan shrugged, stretching a bit before opening the inventory for her character. "Okay, so you probably noticed two things were picked up by Adam, one is obviously the staff; the other was a palm-sized metal circle with the same design as the brands and something to connect to it. There is a reason for that which will show up later, but for now…" she trailed off, letting Adam talk about both the 'Shrive' and the staff before returning to the main room. "One path left to explore, which was hidden behind the statue. Let's see what there is."
"Might want to prep the shotty, Crow," Sally commented. "If I remember right, there's a cut scene then a mob to deal with."
Switching weapons, Megan nodded. "Let's get this done," she said before moving past the doorway that had been hidden by the statue, up some stairs and into a mural covered room. Two steps in, a cut scene triggered, showing a dark haired man with a moustache and beard very much in the style of several villains like Cardinal Richelieu from the Three Musketeers. "Camber," Megan growled.
The cut scene provided little information apart from the fact Camber was a card carrying ass, villain and wanted the Shrive.
In his wake, he left a trio of nasty looking, bestial skeletons to attack Adam, one of which was immediately obliterated by a pair of shotgun blasts before it could get close.
The other two followed shortly thereafter, Megan muttering about Camber's likely family tree and what he could do with it under her breath as she evaded both skeletons.
Taking a breath and blowing it out, Megan sighed. "Okay, now that he's dealt with for a bit, I don't think there's much left of the chapter, so we might as well get it done before taking a break then Naka can take on her challenge," she said.
Making her way out of the room, she went down a twisted set of stairs to another – elaborately carved – door, this one having an indentation in it for something. "Now this looks familiar," she commented, opening her inventory and pulling up one of the parchments. "Yup, rather interesting sketch here of the door, which suggests that it's been here a while, likely as long as the Shrive, though who put it here and why is up for debate."
"Probably not Camber," Rika commented. "I doubt he'd put a door in his house that needs a key he had to have someone else fetch." She frowned slightly. "Although… he's obviously had the place above a while since we saw his picture up in the entry hall, and he can obviously get down here easily enough, so why are the traps and enemies still active?"
Yuudachi cocked her head slightly at her friend. "Are they still active, poi? I mean poi, what if this Camber person started them after leaving, poi, and Adam is the first one in a while or he set them up for Adam," she suggested.
"Still wouldn't explain the chair, that voice and needing to get the Shrive, which is a key to this door, after one that is password protected, with the Shrive itself in a locked area that you need to be branded to access," Robyn pointed out. "I don't think he controls the whole house, some bits seem… protected from him, unless he just doesn't need keys for some reason."
"Doesn't explain why half of upstairs is barred by some sort of glowing sigil either," Hikaru added.
Megan nodded, closing the image and equipping the Shrive and shotgun. "True enough, but then there's obviously more to both Camber and the house than meets the eye," she said as she opened the door in front of her. "Speaking of, let's get this area picked clean. I think there's one of the snakes in here somewhere and I'd rather not try to find it whilst under assault by boneheads."
Making her way through the area, she checked four small chambers with a sarcophagus in each of them, coming away with three boxes of shells before reaching the main room of the area, a large, open room with several side corridors and a shallow pool of water in the middle.
"Okay… that room is making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end," Rika said. "It absolutely screams 'ambush' or 'boss arena'. Hell, with the ammo you're finding, I'm almost expecting an alien task force to drop by for tea," she continued, watching Megan search the side areas of the room and gather another few boxes of shells and several magazines along with the snake statuette. She didn't see her roommates share a confused look behind her.
Hikaru nodded vigorously. "Dess, very much dess," she agreed. "I think anyone that knows Serious Sam, in any incarnation, or probably several other games like Metroid, would be wondering when the ambush is going to come in, especially with that refill on ammo."
"Oh there is one," Megan responded, double checking she had everything before positioning Adam in line with the altar, "Just not quite as soon as some might think." Moving him forwards, she triggered the cut scene.
Several of the girls scowled at the ghostly Falshire knight – who looked a bit more ghostly in this incarnation – when he explained how Adam was touched by destiny and how he had people coming after him to try to both humiliate and kill him among other things along with telling Adam to find the Tower and his lost equipment.
As soon as the cut scene finished, Megan turned around and booked out of the room, which was starting to spawn more of the skeletons to attack her. Reaching the doors, she closed them behind her before making her way back to the room they had encountered Camber, which was occupied by another – thankfully – single skeleton.
Two roars sounded as the shotgun obliterated the enemy. "Okay… there was the expected ambush. You can go back there, if say you've forgotten or not seen the statuette, but it's a pig to fight the however many skeletons in there right now and gods know if that's one of the infinite spawn rooms or not," Sally said, sighing.
"Yup," Megan agreed. Sighing, she checked her inventory and saved. "Okay, I think there's one more cut scene we need to see then this chapter is done and I'm gonna call it once we've seen that. Of course we need to get back to the mansion first, which is going to be 'fun'."
Heading back to the main room of the catacombs, Megan had Adam go around through the crypts to the side opposite the bone corridor and up to where the entry to the upper area of the main room lay before running into problems in the shape of a pair of horned demons. One got a staff blast to the face followed by several rounds from the shotgun and keeled over, the other ended up eating a full box of shotgun shells before it died.
Sighing, Megan headed back to the entry room to the catacombs, using the Shrive on an interesting bit of wall, which revealed another tunnel and headed back to the study for the last cut scene of the chapter.