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year 5, quarter 3
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[attr="class","infoNotes"]Lol. Everyone is being so nice to these monster things. And Cissnei is just "Ugh. Another dead body."
[attr="class","crashLyrics"]Servants and Suspects
[attr="class","crashBody"] Cissnei groaned as the sight hit her. It was a sight of horror to see the blood and the shattered fragments strewn all over the room. What was strong enough to destroy an entire sink? She waited a moment longer, but heard no sound of movement. She turned the flashlight back on to further investigate. She tried to look for the point of origin or a trail of where the blood may lead. But, then she heard some mechanical noise in the next room over. [break][break] She backtracked down the hallway to spy inside the servant lounge. The lights seemed to be in working order here, plus the sound of a grinding gear trying to finish its task resounded through the room. Gau seemed to already be in the room trying to decide what to do with the new opening and the body itself. [break][break] Cissnei pondered what to do herself. Was it safe to keep going deeper in the building? It felt like it would bode unwell. And what would happen if someone shut the passage behind them. Would they be trapped inside? [break][break] Well, only one way to go, and for now, that was forward. She stepped up to the body and grabbed it by its clothing to haul it away. She did so with a grunt and some heavy effort. One she laid it down on the ground, she could put her arms under its armpits and dragged it across the floor. Her heels buried heavily into the carpet with each step backwards. When she was done hauling the dead weight she was panting from the effort. [break][break] Ugh. Moving dead bodies was the worst and something she wished she couldn’t admit she had experience in. She looked over it for a moment, before opening the secret passage’s door wider. She shown her flashlight inside to see what was in there. She was ready to jump out of the way in case something decided to hurdle itself at her.
[break][break] She also glanced to Gau, to see if she should expect him to push past her.
G’raha’s magic works to repair the creature’s wounds, but not its mind. It remains the same twisted, half-human beast as ever, but as its flesh knits together, its labored breaths slow. It’s unconscious, but no longer in critical condition. Maybe it can be saved when all of this is over. Maybe.
The corpse on the bookshelf moves easily under Cissnei’s expertise. It appears to have been a servant of some kind, one not overtaken by the same terrible curse as the others. The man (for it’s still a man) was unlucky enough to be trapped underground in the monsters’ paths. Deep claw marks gouge through its chest. The bookshelf is thickly stained with blood.
It opens to reveal a narrow passage veiled in darkness. This passage has been largely abandoned by time, perhaps even forgotten by the lords of this house. Cobwebs draped the ceiling in thick shrouds, sometimes blocking the way like foliage through a jungle path. The wood creaks unevenly beneath your feet as you travel through. The space echoed with the scurrying of rats and a strange, unnatural hum growing ever louder.
There’s a switch at the end of the hall. Pulling it reveals another exit previously blocked by another faux bookshelf. You emerge to a faint blue light, pulsing slowly as though through water. The air smells of something harsh and chemical. A long table bisects the room, scattered with notes, vials, strange potions, and crystal shards. Behind it, a row of desks reveals the hurried, feverish work of a woman possessed.
Behind that are the vats.
They’re made of glass, spherical and bubbling with a mysterious liquid that gives off a faint, electric glow. Inside of one, a monster matching those outside floats, lifeless. The others are larger, split into segments by panes of glass. There are sixteen individual spaces in all. Six of them are occupied.
These figures are human.
All of them are unconscious. You find a woman with long blonde hair which Cissnei and Gau can identify as Celes Chere. Next to that is a rough, violet-haired man in a tunic (Faris Scherwiz), a stern looking knight (Vossler Azelas), a rich looking man with short blonde hair (Rufus Shinra), and a girl in an orange jumpsuit with long brown hair (Princess Garnet). There is no obvious way to remove them.
Sensing danger, Gau had come to her side. His whole body tense (and vibrating slightly) with a mix of anticipation and fear, he looked up at her with utmost determination in his eyes.
"If anything happen, Gau protect. Okay?"
Slowly, so as not to lose her, he began stalking through the dark passage that had opened before him. Even with his lightest steps, the floorboards still creaked...
There were rats in the walls. He hungered. But now was not the time for rats. Now was the time for questions... questions that had to be answered.
Something was humming. Breathing, perhaps. Dreaming. As he progressed, the humming grew louder... maybe that was where his answer lay. On high alert as always, he searched for a source of the noise... and found another switch. With only a moment's hesitation he approached it cautiously... and pulled it. Another passage opened up, hitting him in the face with a blast of bitter, chemical-scented air.
The light... it wasn't natural. It was all too... sterile.
Oh, Gau didn't like this place. Not one bit.
Swallowing hard, he turned back to Cissnei and nodded before entering the new passage. With each step, his despair grew more and more prevalent. There was clutter, yes, but not that cozy nest-building kind of clutter. The kind where something had attacked the place, ravaged it, maybe out of fear...
It was then that he noticed the unconscious bodies in their pods. Men and women, floating half-dead in wombs of glass... among them, a familiar face, pale and serene, framed by her long golden hair...
"Celes!" His eyes sparkling with happy tears, his arms outstretched as if to hug her, Gau ran over to greet his friend. But she didn't move. All he could do was tap on the glass and wait for her to awaken.
"Celes? Celes...?”Tap tap tap.“Wake up... wake up!”Taptaptaptaptap.“Celes... sniffle… wake up...”
Try as he might, she wouldn’t wake up. Not with all the tapping and coaxing he could possibly do…
Promise Me You'll Take me on your next Adventure. A Journey. Together. That's all I ask.
G'raha sighed as the beast's wounds began to dissipate. Sleep. Well at least that's what G'raha hoped that was what the creature was doing watching it's chest start to slowly rise and fall as it nodded off. He wanted to examine it further, perhaps compare it to the scraps of the books that had become like confetti, but as he approached to do so Gau scampered from the room and down the hallway. "Gau!" G'raha exhaled reaching out a hand in unheeded protest as the small one rounded the door.
Much and more was happening in the moment, but he did not give chase at once. "Let's make sure that I can come back for you, my friend." G'raha noted beginning to exam the room for any secret exits or doors the creature might be able to escape from should it awaken. As he searched the room, he came across suits of armor with different emblems embeded in each. He hmmed softly to himself as he examined them. They looked oddly like the lion one in his bag. He had thought to take them all til one that bore an eagle came in sight. Hadn't Cissnei mentioned that she needed an eagle's crest? Quietly he stole it away in his bag with lion's crest. If no one had taken the griffon's crest, then he knew the course he needed to plot after taking care to make sure Gau and Cissnei were both fine. If genetic experiments were merely hidden be secret flips and bookcases, he could not imagine what horrors might be unleashed in a more complex situation. One he would not sunject them to.
G'raha wrestled with a suit of armor pulling it out into the hallway and propping it again the door. He doubted it would be enough to stop the creature if it were still in a rage, but perhaps docilely it might be okay in it's temporary confinement. G'raha quickly paced the hallway as he heard Gau comfort Cissnei rounding into the room. "I've temporarily contained the unfortunate creature in the room," he began rounding the door staying in the door frame. He thought for just a moment of telling of his discovery of the emblem but thought better of it. "However, I fear that if unattended it might fly into another rage, I shall stand watch over it and hopefully calm it once more or if worst should come to worst..." he let the sentence trail as he looked down not wanting to say the words in front of the child. "Pray, keep watch over Gau for the time being?" He asked more as a statement then a question as he nodded towards the other red head before retreating back into the hallway.
Just in case there was any suspicion, G'raha did trot back to the room leaning against the door to listen for any rumbling but heard naught. He doubled back retracing their descent into an ascent back up to the main floor, through the study of shredded paper of the waiting room with another small pang to his heart, and back into the main hall. It seemed that he was in the clear as peered into the hall before booking it to the the griffon's statue. He was much glad to see no one else had removed the third emblem, and he made haste applying the eagle and the lion emblem accordingly. He took a step back as the three sank into their spots, and he held his breath as he thought he heard a mechanism begin to whir or clink.
[attr="class","crashBody"] She turned to G’raha. She was quite displeased he only ‘contained’ the beast. It was more of a mercy, and safer for everyone, to put it out of its damned misery. A difference between her with an inky soul and someone with a more pure one. Something didn’t feel right in her words, but she couldn’t guess what. He didn’t report what they found in the room other than the monster, which was still a nuisance. One she may have to deal with coming back from the abyss of a corridor. [break][break] Well, whatever he was up to...she would simply have to find out later. It would do better to split up and cover more ground anyway. [break][break] Cissnei closed the eyes of the dead servant. The widened frightful look in the corpses’ blank eyes should be laid to rest. Hopefully, solving the mystery could lay the spirit to rest. Her flashlight shone through the darkness, catching the flecks of dust and web in the air with the glimmer of light. It bounced off the narrow walls with an endless darkness. Each creak made the tension in her rise. If she had hoped to tip toe using stealth, it was all but lost in this echoing space. The sound of rats made her even more paranoid that something untoward lurked just beyond. [break][break] She hesitated flipping the switch. All her senses were screaming the reminder of Shinra manor. The moment was needed to steel herself. [break][break] Gau spoke. He would protect her. Her expression softened slightly as she looked to him. “I’m supposed to protect you. So, be careful.” And G’raha would owe her every gil. She charged by the hour. Then, it seemed Gau would flip the switch without warning. He looked to her for permission and she simply inclined her head in response. [break][break] The second faux bookshelf cracked on its hinges. The smell of chemicals worsened. Her back teeth ground, fighting against the screams of her memories... [break][break] Only someone with conviction and some madness could go this far. She closed her eyes. [break][break] Elfe. Vincent. Zack. Sephiroth. Angeal. Genesis. [break][break] How many nameless others were felled to such madness? [break][break] She remembered the white coats coming to her orphanage home. The disappearance of children. Cracking the door to see… [break][break] She gasped and realized she was trembling. [break][break] She wasn’t ready. [break][break] She took a step forward anyway. [break][break] She walked around the table for now to observe the vats. And she wasn’t surprised at what she found. It was expected. But, these ones. [break][break] Another breath. A mental shift. She was a Turk first now. Celes. She knew her. A little awkward, but still trying to find a normal life. It was easy to read her. The man in the tunic looked like someone she’d find in a Turk watering-hole in the shady parts of town. The knight looked like a hard ass, Cissnei would bump shoulders with. A young lady who seemed too soft for the journey. And… [break][break] “Mr. President…” She breathed and instantly felt overwhelmed by mixed feelings. Eyes shook back and forth as she tried to process it. “How ironic.” The president himself caught in something so similar to the darkness that Shinra tried to hide. She tried not to laugh from the madness of it. Immediately, she looked on the vats to see if there was a release button, a control panel, perhaps even wiring that would lead to such things… [break][break] Gau’s panicked sobs made Cissnei turn her attention to him. She looked up at the vat he was tapping. Celes’s. “They aren’t dead.” She said gently. To be honest, it was hard to be sure. They could simply be preserved. Rufus simply couldn’t be dead. She had seen him escape death plenty of times, like a cat with nine lives. And she simply had quite a lot to say to him, whether he wanted to hear it or not. [break][break] “For now, we must find a way to open it.” Then, as if to try to help Gau take his mind off the worst, “How do you know Celes? Is she your friend?” A silly question. By his reaction, of course she was. [break][break] Cissnei turned to the desk. It must be in the notes.
With Gau’s tapping, the fluid inside the vat bubbles and shifts. It has a kind of energy to it, almost magical, that glows faintly in the darkness. This liquid is then siphoned into tubes splitting off from the vats in a great tangle of glass and Sonoran plastic. It leads away from the main room into the circular antechamber beneath the ballroom where a great mass of whirring machines run in a constant, staticky hum. There are vials here and droppers and all manner of chemicals. Along the back of the room is a row of what appear to be modified computers, also Sonoran in make.
There are a few more vats here. One is broken, the sticky liquid splattering the floor like aquamarine blood. Another contains the lifeless body of Emet-Selch.
The notes on the desks are cryptic, full of scientific jargon and references to past research with no given context. The notes all refer to a certain Project Moonwhisper to take place on this very night. The thesis hypothesizes something about off-world subjects carrying their own traces of residual extra-dimensional power. If this power could be collected, refined, and then allocated to other subjects…
The rest is a mix of jargon and illegible shorthand.
G’raha’s journey back to the entrance hall is a silent, oppressive affair. The path is no less dark or dreadful than before, and without the company, it feels almost as though the darkness could close in on him. Is he being watched? The house, it seems, is itself a predator, waiting for its chance.
The entrance hall is exactly as G’raha left it. No one else has taken an interest in the Griffon since the trio left for the east wing. There are voices down the hall towards the ballroom and the sounds of a scuffle. There’s a peculiar smell in the air. Smoke? Something creaks upstairs and crashes with the sound of splintered wood.
The night has become no less eventful since the death of de Lune.
As G’raha sets the emblems into place, a mechanism behind the plates grinds into motion. The statue clanks with the sound of hidden cogs moving together like an old clockwork tower. After a moment, the statue shudders then slowly sinks into the floor like an elevator. It lowers until shuddering to a stop in the basement, revealing the hidden room beneath the entrance hall. There is a ladder along one side of the drop. It’s easily scalable.
There are books here. Hundreds of books, maybe thousands, in this secret library beneath the manor. Bookshelves line every wall from top to bottom, heavy with the weight of old pages. The tomes are strange and arcane. Some appear centuries old. Some are in strange or lost languages. There are titles on the occult, on the gods, and on theories of dimensional travel beyond the stars. There is an entire wall dedicated to theories on the de Lune family crystal.
Notes scattered across one of the three desks show equations and algorithms all written in the same neat, looping script as the manor invitations. Though they are difficult to decipher at first glance, it appears to be a way to harness the time altering magic of the crystal to create a kind of a separately controlled pocket dimension confined within the manor’s grounds.
When the spell is ended, time resets to the time of casting with all elements inside the pocket dimension keeping its new state. All of this is complicated and obscure, but to a scholarly man such as G’raha, the general concept, at least, is clear.
Post by Emet-Selch on May 19, 2021 10:00:23 GMT -6
all our splendour
BATHED BLACK IN SILENCE, OUR SURRENDER A SOMBRE REVERIE
Really, it should have been expected that, at this moment, this most crucial moment, that Hades would reveal himself. Appearing quietly behind G'raha, he simply raised his revolver to the Exarch's back before... "Pow." His voice came out softly instead, as the gun was lowered and put away. His lips curled into a slight, amused smirk. "One would think you would learn after the first time, Exarch." One of these days the man was going to get himself killed because he got too engrossed in the moment, he was sure of it. Either that or find some idiotic cause to sacrifice himself for. The Ascian sauntered on over to the side, leaning his back against the old tomes stacked neatly in the shelf. "Here you are. Severed from the Crystal Tower. Isolated from everyone else. In a place none but you even know about. With everything I'm looking for."
In short, it was a bad spot. At least until Hades gave a shrug and chuckled. "Something tells me you have a tendency to give our mutual friend quite the fright." He wondered how Alexander or Cassandra dealt with it. Perhaps they had come to expect it? Or did it still seize their heart for that briefest of beats? "Fortunately for you, I'm not here for anything like that. Lahabrea would have happily jumped on this opportunity, but I am not so violent." He looked at the area around them, the writings on the table, before perking a brow. "Well, what do we have here." He remarked. So the Exarch had found it before him after all. A pity, that. Still, he could work with it. He'd not have it said that he didn't make any attempt at collaboration or cooperation. At least he didn't shoot the guy.
Oh, right, that left one other, minor issue. "Oh, the manor is on fire, by the by, courtesy of a garish man in red, red, and more red. It would make for an awfully convenient way to cover one's guilt, would it not? You may wish to go resolve that before everything and potentially everyone is lost." And all this burns down. Wouldn't that be a waste if no one got the prize? He looked at the notes and the thousand thousand books surrounding the two of them. "Well, go on, then. Go save the day, I shall be here when you return." He'd just keep himself busy in the meantime, as she gave G'raha a slight smirk. He had an idea of what to expect.
[attr="class","infoNotes"]Techno wizard time. The skill no one knows Cissnei has.
[attr="class","crashLyrics"]Servans and Suspects
[attr="class","crashBody"]
Cissnei studied the vats and tubes. The design of these vats reminded her greatly of Shinra and its reactors...and some of the science departments' incubators for their projects. Her first reaction is to find something heavy and break the vats in good old Turk smashing fashion. But, a little voice in the back of her mind made her hesitate.
[break][break] If she did so, would she jeopardize their lives? Would the force and glass injure them? Would the sudden loss in pressure cause health issues? Would there be some kind of hibernation sickness?
[break][break] If she could, it might be better to ease them out of their slumber and find a way for the machine to do its shut down process. She moved to the row of computers in the back. She thought Sonoran technology didn’t function outside of, well, Sonora. But it seemed this person was able to figure it out. She would need to study how it networked later. For now, she would see if there were…
[break][break] Solus?
[break][break] Her brow creased as she looked into the vat near the computers. Her boots crunching the glass and she maintained steady footing to not slip. Unlike the others whose air bubbled when they breathed, Solus didn’t seem to have any indication of vitals upon inspection. A soft frown touched her lips. She only briefly met him, but she thought him too clever for this.
[break][break] She touched the glass lightly, her expression softened. “Sometimes one cannot merely be an observer.” A soft murmur touched her lips. Perhaps once this incident was cleaned up, she could move his body to a more appropriate setting. “I found what I sought. I will try to do as you ask and hope he is better than when I last saw him…” She knew for a fact Rufus would be a different man than what she last saw. It made her nervous. "I will do my best to get you out."
[break][break] She turned back to the series of computers. Well, it seemed they were all duped to be some form of science project for this Project Moonwhisper. Well, she certainly didn’t sign a consent form for this. The best thing to do was to try hacking.
[break][break] She checked to see if they were left on a login screen. If so, she would pull a thumb drive out of her blazer and plug it into the back of one. She restarted the computer and hoped it would boot to her thumb drive so she could run under the operating system using DOS command line to get the information she sought: information on the subjects in the containers and how to power down the machine. And if neither work, she would attack the network that supported it with a DDOS attack, in hopes to overload the system. If it could not continue to process its typical commands, it should be responsive to something as simple as that...
Promise Me You'll Take me on your next Adventure. A Journey. Together. That's all I ask.
G'raha watched as the very conspicuous opening appeared where the statue had been. Quickly he made his way down the ladder hoping not to have been seen, descending into the dark for a moment before coming into a well lit library. Far more books than he could possibly read in a night, in a lifetime, perhaps if he was still one with the Crystal Tower, he may have stood a chance at it. For a moment he took a moment to think back to his study in the tower, before focusing on skimming the titles.
Every book seemed to be a new and vivid subject, he would have loved to pour into, but the miqo'te knew when it was research time and when it was reading for pleasure. The only book he plucked from the shelf was one that mentioned inter-star travel, his eyes growing wide as he skimmed the table of contents quickly stuffing it into his bag for more thorough research. The morbid thought of the count no longer needing it flashed through his mind, and he chastised himself for such a horrid idea. Still, if it were for the greater good to know this, then such transgressions could be justified
Of particular interest as he rounded to go to look at the next set of shelves where three long desks with parchment spread cross them. Something seemed oddly familiar from the script, and G'raha dug into his bag to lay his invitation against the font lay before him. Just what had the count been up to? In earnest he began to read the thesis scrawled across the top and his mouth thinned into a grimace. Pocket dimension? How was that even-
Graha's ear perked as he felt the poke in his back, and they stayed that way even as Emet-Selch lowered his weapon and moved to his side. He kept the sigh of relief from exhaling as to not betray the momentary fear instead turning to the ascian and crossing his arms. "And one would think you would have learned a new trick." His tail flicked in agitation as he turned to look back down on the configurations he had been piecing together. "Should you be the one to thank for the little ghost show earlier?" He remarked his eyes tracing the equations and theories on the page. "And what exactly is it that you seek? If you've as much as interacted with this manor, you'd know more than one mystery lies before us."
He side glanced over at Emet as he explained the manor was on fire. So, that was what the smell of smoke had been. "I think our friend is more than capable of taking care of himself, wherever he may be. I'd say nay that he worries to much about my safety, for he is even more slippery an enigma than one could think coming and going as he pleases as is wont for the Keepers of the Moon. One night we might spend hours together talking into the night, the next he's gone for weeks on some quest he deigns not to tell of." G'raha bit his tongue. Talking about the Warrior of Light always seemed to loosen his tongue more freely than need be. He paused lowering his head to better decipher a bit of convoluted jargon.
"Aside, you said so yourself," G'raha commented coming up with a plan that he hoped would work or at least bemuse the Ascian long enough for him to finish reading as his eyes darted back and forth across the pages. "I'm no longer connected to the Tower in as meaningful way as I was on the First," he had to concede this weakness if he were to press the point, "then pray what abilities do you think I should employ to stop the fire? As a student of Baldesion, I was only ever armed with my mind and a bit of skill with a bow. Unless you plan to absorb all of this material into the rift and leave us all to perish, I'd suggest playing parley with another of your ghostly apparitions to have another stop the fire." A pocket dimension? He frowned both trying to put the pieces of the complex spell and theory together as well as see if Emet took his bait.
[attr="class","wensday"] "Yes. Celes is friend." Cissnei's words seemed to soothe Gau. "Very strong. Wan' be like her someday..."
Could Celes hear him? Just to make sure, he tapped the glass once again. The liquid inside bubbled and fizzed, hypnotizing him... but this was no time for looking at bubbles.
This place... so inorganic, so cold and hard and broken...
There were probably clues around here somewhere. Probably in the paper. But the papers were full of big and confusing words... important, maybe, but big and confusing. All he could do was ask Cissnei to read them for him.
"Cissnei, what those science words mean? Must be important..."
He kept one ear open as he continued to investigate. A little sniff here, a bit of digging here... okay. Let's see. There was a semi-dried puddle of what he assumed was blood. Upon touching it, he discovered it felt like blood. But it probably wasn't blood. Not for putting in mouth. He moved on, still half-listening, and hoping he didn't accidentally awaken that strange man in the vat.
He did not trust that man. He didn't like that man's pale, waxy skin and shadow-ringed eyes... like a ghost. An evil ghost. A ghost that would end up killing him. A low growl arose in the back of Gau's throat before he thought it better to just look away. Just look away and look back at Cissnei...
Moonwhisper... the only word he recognized. The name of the manor. Could it be that the manor itself was part of the experiment? And what would become of everyone in it? Had they all been tricked into being part of someone's twisted little scheme? Would they all end up like Celes, suspended in mysterious glowing liquid?
