Ghosts of Gauntcliff Chapter Four

[ewancummins]

Benn looks back and forth between the moth and the blue dome. He reaches for something nearby, a pebble or something similar, and drops it down into the blue glass.

The pebble rolls on the curved surface of the smooth glass, coming to rest against the stone wall of the pit.

[Adam]

"Not exactly what I expected," he mutters as he looks back towards the moth doubtfully. "You want me to go down there?"

[ewancummins]

"Not exactly what I expected," he mutters as he looks back towards the moth doubtfully. "You want me to go down there?"

The luminous moth gives no answer, save to fly in slow circles over the pit.

[Adam]

Benn walks around the pit as well, trying to go the same speed as the moth and looking for anything else he may have missed.

[ewancummins]

The Side Parlor

Someone knocks at the hall door.

Denys looks over, ''Yes?"

A muffled voice speaks from the other side of the door.

"Master Sancerre, the lady, Elliana, is asking for you."


Denys sighs, and turns back to the others.

"I had better go see what she wants. If I keep that woman waiting too long, she'll start to ask all sorts of questions we don't need anyone asking just now. Dorgio, you can get directions to Maggie's grave by asking Melmoth. You other men, good luck to you on your patrol. Everline-- may Ezra watch over your soul, girl."

Sancerre leaves the room in a hurry.

[Adam]

"Well, there's nothing for it then," Benn says, before dropping down into the pit.

[steveflam]

The Chief turns to the third monster, a scrawny beast in a robe of ratskins.
"Smezel, uh....Open the door. We go see Fat One now."

"Thank you, Chief. Uh, Chief, can you get your friends to find Jonas and bring him? And I have an idea, but I want to talk to Benn about it first. You are afraid of Dodd's and I guess Dodd's are bad people."

[Ail]

"Everline barely survived an encounter with this creature in her dream, just how long do think a small child will be able to survive in the flesh?" Thom says to Eustace. "That there is enough justification to open the door."

"Just because one's body reaches physical maturity, doesn't mean one's mind reaches maturity at the same time. No offense Everline." He says, offering her a smile. "Think about Eustace, out of all the servants it chose a 12 year old girl to attack and kill. After that it disappeared, why? I can only wager to guess that there were no other children here at the time, I am correct Denys." He says looking to Denys but continues on. "Than we show up and on very first night the creature reached an attacked Everline, the third youngest person on this entire island and Everline wasn't even at the Abby. Than this very afternoon Jonas was taken, the youngest of every one on the island." Thom says as stating the obvious.

"The information is there, all you have to do is look. Trust me Eustace, my deduction skills are uncanny. Need I remind you of the time how figured out a vital piece of information at the delapore estate from nothing more than a lock of hair, the beginning of a letter and a drawing?"

Your deduction may be fine, Thomas, but your logic is atrocious. What I'm arguing against is that there is no visible link yet between that door in the abbey and access to where Jonas is. Now, if you don't give me clearer motives that just your own presumption, I'm afraid I can't let that door open unless I'm perfectly sure those writings are not warning are not warning us against doing that.

I admit the thing attacks children, that seems to fit what we know of it. I also believe there are ways into the dream world where these things apparently move. But I'm not yet sure that door leads anywher, and opening it without knowing what is behind might be folly of the gravest kind.

Dorgio, do you recall what the inscriptions said?

[Brock Marsh Runoff]

SIDE PARLOR

Dorgio presses his fingers to his temples as he tries to remember the inscription...

"All hail
The unconquered son of the sun
Prince of the dawn
Brilliant youth
World-Breaker
the Ever-Spring
Blazing Charioteer
We give thee worship
Make new our hearts
Burn away the mists
As you must rise
Towards the noon-tide queen
So the Dusk-Lord must flee
Into night"

He furrows his brow, remembering the scroll he and Eustace had been pouring over before the attack. "So the Dusklord, not a corruption of The Morninglord, but the enemy, yes? And the scroll we found, it was a priestly ritual, a kind of necromancy dedicated toward the Dusklord. But whether it was meant to keep him in or bring him forth, I am not knowing."

Dorgio stops and lights another cigarillo, a sign of his nerves at work. "Perhaps there is something worse than a spectre locked away in that abbey. No darker road than that."

[Rock of the Fraternity]

"Necromancy, you say," Everline says, her voice becoming a bit more prim and scholarly; she even steeples her fingers. "Necromancy is all about moving the energies of life, death and undeath around. It is not usually about unbinding or summoning. It could be about nurturing this Dusklord, perhaps, which might give it the strength it needs to escape its prison. But then again, it may not. It could be used to weaken or even defeat the creatures of night.

I wish I could see the scroll for myself, or even some of Benn's notes on the thing."

(OOC: She's ignoring the question about her age on purpose, folks; I haven't missed your posts! )

[Brock Marsh Runoff]

"The scroll, it's still in Eustace's room, correct? We should be looking again, the solution may be simpler than we first thought. If it is a spell, then maybe we've had trouble understanding it because it was written in the language of sorcerery. If so, there are prayers, spells, certain things we can invoke to perhaps divine its purpose."

[Ail]

"Yes, you're right, Dorgio. I have such an orison prepared! And yes, I agree with you regarding the dusklord. He must be the enemy, surely, and whatever is locked behind that door is at his service."

Eustace bolts away to his room, to retrieve the scroll.

[ewancummins]

BENN, BEYOND THE WALLS OF SLEEP

"Well, there's nothing for it then," Benn says, before dropping down into the pit.

Benn plummets through the glassy barrier and drops through empty space chased by a million shards of glass as fine as windblown dust. He lands with a gentle bump in a grassy sunlit meadow ringed by green woods. Looking all about, he cannot see the black vault, the pit, or the glass lens through which he crashed.


If the glowing moth remains with him, he can't see it in the warm daylight.

[ewancummins]

JUERGIN-

The Chief turns to the third monster, a scrawny beast in a robe of ratskins.
"Smezel, uh....Open the door. We go see Fat One now."

"Thank you, Chief. Uh, Chief, can you get your friends to find Jonas and bring him? And I have an idea, but I want to talk to Benn about it first. You are afraid of Dodd's and I guess Dodd's are bad people."

The Chief wanders off to look for the other monsters.

Smezel takes out a crude iron knife from his robe of rat hide.
He stares at the blade.
"Errr...ummm...gotta 'member words...''

Gruz pokes him.
"You dumb."
The two monsters nearly get into a brawl, but stop at a sharp look from Juergin.

Smezel belches, scratches his round belly, and says at last-
''Okay."
He scrapes the iron knife against the stones of the floor. He whispers in a sing-song voice,
''Iron calt, iron bricht, mak' the portal thro' the nicht.''

The floor beneath Jeurgin, Smezel and Gruz ripples like a pool of black water, and then all three of them fall through it!


They land on a cobbled street, flanked by tall crooked houses of whorled limestone and twisted black timbers. The roofs of the houses tilt over the narrow lane, nearly touching, with only a sliver of purple night sky showing through the gap.
Gruz says,
“We home.”



Juergin feels Dark One slide across his back, and hears the shadow's voice in his ear, ''What is this place, Juergin?"

[steveflam]

Juergin asks Grus and Smezel "Where are we? Are we close to the fat one?"