The adventurers took their first steps beyond the threshold and slowly began advancing through the hallway. Treading carefully they observed their surroundings, alert and holding out for assailants of any kind. Old pieces of furniture and broken crates were scattered throughout the hallway, all coated in the same layer of dust as the previous room. Every so often Dismas noticed patches on the surfaces around him where the dust had been swept off by some kind of movement. By some thing. The lobby had been long forlorn and overtaken by the ravages of time. Here though, they were no longer alone. Blade drawn he paced down the hall together with his allies.
The torch barely illuminated two paces around them, there was more than enough room to conceal someone or something from their restlessly searching eyes. The silhouette of the first door appeared on the right, exactly where the map had said it would be. There was little incentive to deviate from their path and yet the idea of whatever it was that had scraped the dust off the surrounding objects lurking in that room waiting for them to pass, upset the rogue and increased his eagerness to scan the surroundings tenfold. Eventually a seconds door came and went, then a third. It was merely a few minutes until they reached the end of the hallway and their torchlight shone brightly against the portal to that final room. It was leaned, not closed, their light was already seeping inside the room, the noise of their steps had long passed the threshold. If someone was waiting for them, they knew they were coming.
Reynauld understood that, so he handed the torch off to one of the other adventurers, he did not even look at who grabbed it. Then, motioning the team to follow him, he walked a few steps back, before charging at the door with all his might. His shocked companions watched as the armored knight burst through the brittle portal, knocking it off its hinges, before quickly rushing inside after him.
His sword raised, there he stood, taking quick strides through the room, ready to ambush whomever dared to assault him or his fellow compatriots. But nothing came of it. As the torch in the plague doctors hand began to illuminate the room in slow waves of yellow flickering light, his unblinking eyes, his tense, aggressive form found nothing at all to attack or defend himself from. He lowered the sword.
A long burnt out fireplace adorned the wide end of the room. The walls were lined with tall bookcases, reaching almost as high as the ceiling. Some were skewed, reaching crooked from the wall, one was knocked over entirely. A worn out armchair next to the hearth told stories of long evenings in peaceful study, next to the crackling embers of a homely fire. But covered in muck and grey, everything in this room, just as the rest of the castle, seemed to be years past its prime. Next to them stood a table. At first nothing about it seemed extraordinary, though as Dismas drew closer he noticed shackles and nails affixed to the its surface. Dark stains had seeped deep into the material. No meal had been eaten here in years - this was a torture device. Prompted by his disturbing discovery, he took a step back and let his gaze wander around the room one more time.
His companions discovered it at the same time as he did. In the faint flickering light of their torch, they found a symbol, smeared across the wall above the fireplace. With thick, dark streaks someone had painted a rune of unknown implication. A thick half circle with daggersharp ends, pierced towards the center by a number of spikes. He looked at his allies. Reynauld had his sword raised a little higher than just a moment ago and Junias shifty gaze dashed from one corner of the room to the next, her feet quietly shifting beneath her. The tension in the air was palpable.
Slowly the highwayman drew closer to the table. Near the top, where the unfortunate soul's head would have been, he noticed something he had missed before. Embedded into the tables surface there was a trinket of some kind. A box. Made of fine dark wood and carefully ornamented with swirls of golden gleaming metal. The doctor joined him at the table, less interested in the box and more in the contraption before her. Her eyes darted across the tables surface and the many gadgets affixed to it. Her fingers gently felt the needlepoints, the rusty fixtures. She could not wager a guess at the gadgets purpose, though it did evoke a warm nostalgic feeling within her. Then she heard it. A faint melody had begun emanating from the box in Dismas' hand. As his cloth-wrapped fingers gently turned the small crank on its side, notes of a decidedly uncanny quality flowed forth from the box, filling the room with their strange affect. She watched as the highwaymans eyes filled with a strange sense of dread at the eerie harmony.
Into the tune's weird melody seeped a quiet wailing. First, it seemed to come from the box, but as it grew louder, it began to form words. "Stop that.. music!", the lamenting cries grew louder and echoed all around the room, before turning from a moaning into a wild shouting. "STOP THAT MUSIC!" Dismas had long taken the finger of the crank, his eyes dashing all across the room looking for the source of the screaming, but was unable to make out the thing sitting atop one of the bookshelves. At least not before it lept from its perch and swept Dismas off his feet, knocking him to the ground violently. His head struck against the pavestones and before the thought of self-defense could even arise in his mind, the highwayman found himself numbed and incapacitated. Dazed, he looked up at his attacker - the thing perched atop him pinned him to the stony floor with insurmountable force. Through his hazy vision he quickly recognized the shape of a man. Donning a ragged white shirt and with eyes deep and black and crazy. A bald head, a sunken face, a leathery pale skin stretching over his bones. In panic, he shoved against the assailant, then reached for his knife, but the man simply knocked it from his hand. That abyss in his widened, gaping eyes. Dismas could not look away. Transfixed and pinned, he saw the man open his mouth for another cacophonous scream. Then, with the shrill reverberations piercing his eardrums, he watched in horror as a mass of black clouds blew forth from the mans throat, joining his horrid scream.
Immediately, the wall of sickening smoke crashed against Dismas' horrified expression, he felt the whirling clouds rush and push against his skin and finally begin to seep through it. The feeling of powerlessness was unspeakable, not possible to put into words. The final layer of protection from the outer affects, the thing separating that which is you from that which is not, broken. Rendered ineffective against the wails of this horrendous half-human creature. In an utter gut-stirring panic Dismas violently struggled against the madman's grip, but was powerless against the demonic strength in his bones. As he was once again ruthlessly pushed against the stone floor, he felt the mans unspoken wails flush through his head. The particles of his delirium flooded into his skull into his mind and for a brief moment, Dismas could understand him. Suddenly, he could understand the rapturous, voiceless language the man was speaking, the seemingly random wails and shouts and outbursts of rage. He saw what he was seeing. The words and images of horror, loss and wordless cruelty. Stories of worlds annihilated in the blink of an eye, lives extinguished - washed away by a tide of unstoppable, supreme and inconceivable motion. Listless motion, untouched by and ignorant of the primal fear and destruction they wreak upon those in their wake. Washing away those before and those within with no effort or intent. As the images became more and more manifest, each muscle in his body contorted into a state of unsustainable tension. Is that what the man in the white shirt was feeling at every moment? Eyes widened in shock, this swirl of blackness felt like an eternity. As if the torrenting forces he now found himself within had taken him in and would never let him go.
With an ugly, shattering crack, the monstrous charade ended. Struck by a heavy gauntlet, the maniac was flung off of his victims body, landing on the floor next to him. Blood came spurting and pouring from the laceration at the side of his head. A boot kick kept him down and evoked from the man a squeal quite pitiful. Before he could stabilize himself once more, a bullet pierced clean through his forehead. With an ear-piercing crackle, bits and pieces of the man's head splattered on the wall behind him and his body fell to the floor lifelessly. Dismas, still shaking, holstered his gun with jittery, unsteady fingers. "Foul beast", the crusader screamed. The vestal rushed to his side. With a look of quiet worry she beheld the highwayman. "Are you alright?". Dismas gave no response. Still facing his attackers corpse, his gaze wandered into an endless distance.
"What in the lights name was that?" Reynauld murmured through clenched teeth. The vestal could hear the hatred dripping from his words. He stood over the mans corpse, prodding it with his sword, "what manner of satanic corruption does this to a man?". For a moment too long the crusaders eyes locked with the lifeless black gaze on the mans face and a shuddering sensation hushed through his body. Quickly, he turned away. Dismas arose from the floor and leaned up against the table. Reynauld looked at the rogue and even through the tiny slits within the crusaders helmet, Dismas could sense a brooding fear. "What was that smoke?" he finally asked. Dismas did not know how to respond. "I don't know" he returned, his voice flat and devoid of affect. "Do you need medical attention?" the vestal kindly repeated her earlier query. She was met with an expression of confusion. Offense almost. "I am quite alright."
Paracelsus watched the interaction from where she stood, at a small distance from her allies, and found herself quite affected. That monster's victim could have been her. And the way it had reduced the loudmouthed Dismas into this vacant-looking shell in just a moment shook her more than she was willing to accept. Reflexively she turned around, checked for something behind her, but there was nothing there.
As his companions slowly recovered from the shock of the situation, Dismas picked up the strange music box from where he had dropped it. "This is the thing," he spoke, strength slowly returning into his speech, "this is what broke that man." The others looked at him and immediately Reynauld came towards him for an inspection. "He descended on me when I began playing," the rogue continued, "it must have been the source of his torment." "Cursed thing" Reynauld spoke under his breath as he bowed down, examining it. In no time, Paracelsus had appeared beside them, just as keen to inspect the box as the knight was. Carefully, she took it from the highwayman's hands and began turning it over in hers. Dismas watched as her fingers slid over the boxes surface, feeling its shape and topology. The woman was looking for something, though what it was he was not able to say.
"I will keep this for studies", Paracelsus announced after a moment and began stuffing it into her satchel. "Out of the question!" bellowed the crusader immediately. An armored hand violently snatched the box out of the doctor's defiant hands, "this is the beast's work. It must be cleansed." "Give it back", Paracelsus screamed immediately. Her arms reached for the box, but the crusader firmly kept it out of reach as he stepped away. "Out of the question." he solemnly repeated himself as he slid the thing into his own pack. "You sniveling worm!", came a bitter response from behind the plague mask. "The scientific implications of this find are far beyond your horizon, swordman! You would not understand their imports if your servants spelt them out to you!"
Reynauld did not react, nor did he turn around. "Our mission is to extinguish evil and it is what we will do. We push ahead." The hulking metal figure disappeared through the doorframe and, reluctantly, the remaining soldiers followed. Only Dismas lingered for a moment. Looking after the troop, he felt as if the torchlight had become ever so slightly dimmer. As if the color had washed out of its striking orange blaze by just the tiniest amount. The others had not taken notice, but he had. Or was he imagining things? With a slight shake in his steps, he followed after his allies. Within that small conflict just prior the others seemed to have already forgotten what horrid thing had just happened to him. But he had not. And spitefully he began reevaluating his role on this trip.
As they entered the hallway, the four soldiers were each on the lookout for the giant creature they had spotted earlier, but it was nowhere to be seen. Unsure whether to view that as a good or a foul omen, they pushed towards the empty stone frame leading into the cellar. Instantly a cold and humid breeze hit them from below. The mossy cobblestones were slippery underneath their feet on their descent deeper into the ruins. What would await them here, in the heart of this cursed old castle? Given the rough and lacking information they had been supplied with and given the things she had already had to see and feel, Junia found it difficult to find certainty in anything. Clutching the mace in her right and the rosary in her left, she sent out a swift and silent prayer to whatever deities might yet watch over her. Again unable to stop herself from feeling as a mere liar to herself, she defiantly pushed through the words until the prayer was complete. There was no one watching over her. Her guilt and shame had made her entirely undeserving of their divine love and she knew it well. Trying her hardest to choke back welling tears of familiar desperation, she repeated her own mantra to herself. She could try, only try, to make it right. Earn back the squandered trust and love she had lost. Distracted by her thoughts, she almost slipped off a wet cobblestone and had to catch herself on the crumbling railing.
In the encroaching darkness at the bottom of the stair, Paracelsus lit another torch. The adventurers shuffled through the arched frame and made themselves familiar with the surroundings. To the right there was the expected big pile of rubble. No one, neither soldier nor adventurer, was making their way through this blockade any time soon. So they headed left, returning to their previous path, though a few meters below the earth this time. There were an astounding number of wine barrels and bottles, stacked up in the corridor, some broken, some intact - red stains all over the floor. The old crusader's hearty grin was concealed underneath his helmet as he viewed the spoils. "A warrior's feast", he thought, "Well deserved after we finish this quest."
The next room, the cellar version of the large fireplace study they had just passed through upstairs, was basked in complete and utter darkness. Even the torch seemed to merely prod at the veil of black, powerless to lift or pierce it. Carefully the soldiers advanced inside, Paracelsus with the torch in her hand, half a pace behind the crusader at the front. Careful gazes to all sides, pumping blood and tense muscles. The silence was untrustworthy. Paracelsus' leather shoe knocked against something on the floor. The company halted briefly and as she descended the torch to gain a better look, a terrifying scenery became visible to all of them. At her feet there lay bones, human remains, and looking around more carefully, they now saw them in other places of the vault too. Hunched over and sat against walls, sprawled over the cold stones. Skulls and spines and other skeletal remains of whatever unfortunate souls had found their demise here. Making sure none of her allies took notice, the plague doctor swiftly reached for one of them. She beheld the curves and cracks of the skull, the detailed and wondrously unique anatomy of this dead person's head with keen, fiery interest.
The scenery reinforced the troupe's suspicions of further lurking threats. The crusader brought his sword closer to his body as he looked around, the vestal raised her mace and slowly they advanced. Without warning or noise, something came flying out of the darkness and hit Paracelsus in the left arm. With a loud wail of agony she stumbled backwards and both the skull and the torch fell from her hand.
Darkness. Dismas recognized the feeling. The consuming blackness around him did not allow him to see his foes, but they were there. And they knew where he was. A situation he had navigated, escaped and survived more times than he could ever count, but this time he had companions who were not familiar with the night. And this time, he was scared. His racing heart, pumping the blood through his veins, reminded him what terrible creatures may yet lurk in this fallen fortress, he could feel a quickly building panic rush through his body. Silently and quickly he retreated until he felt the wall against his back and drew his blade. He could hear them approaching.
Their steps, rattling and wild, did not sound human.
