39. The Mad Manor

The party takes all measures to protect themselves before setting out. Over a cup of anti-possession tea, Mika persuades Rochelle to wait at the Inn while he pursues the lead at the manor, since she doesn't want to go along. As they silently speak, Ta'lok's strategical eye scrutinizes the human girl. It's just as well he's sitting this one out, too. He has questions for her.   Mirage gears up, saturating her arrows in holy water. Saeldor hefts their shield onto their back, and the group hit the road.   As soon as they're on the road proper, but before they leave the protection of town, Mika breaks marching order to walk ahead with Saeldor.   "Saw you exchanging coin with the boss earlier."   "Sure did, brother."   "All right, spill. What was the bet."   "Two bets, technically; who'd say something first and when."   "Ahuh." This is what he expected. "Out of curiosity, how'd the boss play it?"   "Mirage first, and before June."   "Huh." Mika pauses, barely suppressing a perturbed frown. "Kay."   He falls back into marching order, trying not to think too much about how the smart money was on him staying quiet.   The manor sits on a small forested hill. The fence is wrought-iron and creaks when leaned on, the yard within is overgrown, with grass and weeds creeping up the sides of the house and around the fence posts, covering what probably used to be a stone path to the front door. It's still overcast from the rain yesterday, and the wind is chilly for summer.   While the group got their gear ready that morning, Cri went ahead to scout as a mouse, so they know the rough layout, and that the rumours of strange phenomena are rooted in truth. Voices in the air, etc.   "What options do we have for getting in there, Cri?" Saeldor asks.   The gate's open, hanging on its squeaking hinges ten feet in front of them, so Cri doesn't bother to point that out, but she informs them that the front door is of normal construction, as is the exit around back. There may have been a footpath there at one point, but the entire yard and garden are now an overgrown demijungle of mold and weeds.   "Want to go around back? I hate just going in the front door., Mirage suggests.   Saeldor looks to Cri "How overgrown? Worse than the front?"   Cri surveys the knee-high grass and tangles in the front yard and nods. "Some collapsed trellises, mounds of mouldering compost... not impossible to retreat through, but," and she's looking at Mika because Cri can fly, Mirage can hover, and Saeldor's big enough that it takes some pretty serious Difficult Terrain to slow his stride, but Mika has Human Problems.   He shrugs though "I have some options - backdoor's fine by me."   Mirage suppresses a snicker, which gets a confused squint and then a scoffing eyeroll from the warlock. But he smiled, so she isn't in trouble.   "Right on," Saeldor nods. "Let's go then."   The party picks their way through the weeds, most of them following in the tramped-down trail of Saeldor's massive footprints. The backdoor is raised up by a couple of stone steps. It's a normal door, which is to say it's not pneumatically sealed, and Nimbus can move through the gaps in the doorjamb and do a quick scout.   "Awesome. Love it. Can't wait." Mirage says as she receives the telepathic scout report. "Room's empty," she translates, when the cloudform resettles over her shoulder, "It's a kitchen. And there's something... angry, about the fire in the hearth."   "There's a lit fire?" Saeldor asks, immediate.   The party glance at each other. The house is supposed to be abandoned.   "Apparently," Mirage confirms. "Exits are closed doors, so we'll have cover, but one of them also has some badfeels around it, so maybe steer clear.   Nimbus shivers, tinting grey. he started to scout there but changed his mind; it feels... bad. Empty. Cold. He compared it to vacuous space, winter's windless chill, the trepidation of a calm before storms, but none of them quite felt null enough. He's glad Mirage got the gist.   Mirage sends a little wind to soothe the elemental. "Saeldor, you picking up on anything?" she asks the paladin.   Saeldor's started frowning when Nimbus described the kitchen, and hasn't stopped.   "No undead," he says, slowly, "But the fire in the kitchen... I'm picking up something. It's not exactly infernal, but it's not not infernal, either. I'd steer clear of the hearth."   Mika is eyeing up an overgrown circle of stones in the back corner of the garden. He doesn't like the implications of a lit, angry fire, either. "If that's a well," he says, "do you think we could douse it?"   "I would say something infernal-ish could withstand some regular well-water," Mirage points out.   "True, but I figure it either works or functions as a half-decent litmus test."   "Devil bullshit, though. But screw it. I'm down to try if you all are."   Saeldor joins Mika in heading over there. It takes them a second but they locate a bucket and haul up a load of definitely-not-potable, kind of brownish water.   Saeldor tries the door and it's bolted; they step back to allow the party rogue to do her thing. She pops that sucker loose and then, with a smiling "right on, thanks" Saeldor will attempt more successfully to open the door.   It opens on, as Nimbus described, a kitchen. A pretty fair-size one, with a fire lit in the hearth, roaring like a hungry growl. It seems well-stocked, but the foodstuffs are mouldering. Brass pots, pans, and utensils are tarnished, covered in dust.   Mika will start to haul the bucket over near the hearth, but he's still a solid ten feet away from it when the flames start reaching for him, the great licks of fire sweep out like grasping claws. He jumps back, biting his tongue to suppress a shout.   "Woah, you okay brother?" Saeldor reaches out a hand instinctively but Mika shakes his head.   "I'm good, just startled. Maybe you should try, I can't throw it that far."   Saeldor nods, and Mika passes him the pail. Eyeing the distance, Mirage prepares some air magic to keep the splatter in place until it hits target. She, Mika, and Cri are standing behind Saeldor, and Cri is letting the more physical party members handle this one, but her eyes keep drifting to the pantry. Her feathers are ruffled; unnerved.   Saeldor throws.   On its own, the bucket would have tilted; it spins in the air and Mirage has to work quickly to redirect the flying drops back into place before they become too heavy for her air to move, cooling the hot air on approach so the heatwave doesn't disrupt the throw. The bucket lands in the hearth in a big splash, smothering the coals with a screaming hiss. The fuel was disproportionate to the height of the flames; the fire's only guttering now.   Simultaneously, Mirage and Mika say, “Smother it.”   Mirage spares a half-second to grin at the warlock before she yanks the oxygen out of the hearth area.   The party watches as the flames uniformly shrink and die, completely deprived of fuel. When she lets let the air back in, thin smoke begins to trail off the ashes. It's thick, black smoke, and pulls toward the centre of the hearth, resolving rapidly into a shape - a long rectangle, flat, stiff, and black as pitch. It hovers a moment before falling onto the hearth, disturbing the ashes. It's also a little shiny, an obsidian kind of gloss to it, but you can't see any light in the room it would possibly be reflecting.   “What the fuck?” Mirage gawks. “You still getting a ping off this thing?” She looks at Saeldor.   They shake their head, unnerved, eyes on the thing. "All clear. There's a fey somewhere around here though; upstairs."   “There's your chaos magic.” Mirage quips. “Anything from that closet?” She follows Cri's unsettled gaze.   Saeldor shakes their head again. "Nothing."   "We shouldn't open it." Cri says, softly.   “Okay.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “Should we be concerned that something will come out of it later? I don’t like leaving threats behind us as we move ahead.”   "I don't think there is anything in there." She looks up at Saeldor, who's watching her attentively, having learned long ago to respect Cri's intuition.   "When you reach out with your senses - all your senses - what can you find?" She's asking the paladin, who closes their eyes for a minute, focusing, communing.   After a moment they open their eyes, take a step backward. "Nothing."   Cri nods. "No air, no life, no presence, nothing. Utter nothing is all I feel beyond that door."   While they’re discussing this, Mika keeps glancing back at the shape in the hearth, intrigued. Gears turning. Mirage follows his gaze.   “Should we destroy it? Or try to?” she asks, “I’m nervous about making a shit ton of noise.”   "We're not going to look at it first?" Mika asks, looks up at the paladin, "You said it's clear right? Nothing infernal left in there?"   "I'm not sure if whatever was in there was fully infernal to start with," Saeldor points out, "but there's no presence in there that I can detect now. That doesn't mean it's safe, though."   "It looks light, could you float it up so we can look at it without touching it?" Mika suggests, looking at Mirage.   “Oh - sure? I could try. I was just going to throw something at it.” She chuckles, abashed.   A little smile for her impulse to go for the destructive route.   “Just to test it! I wasn’t gonna break it! Probably. Anyway." Mirage reaches out with her winds. The air in the hearth still has some smoke and soot in it, but otherwise feels normal. The object is light, but still heavier than she expected for how thin it is. It's stiff, unbending, and totally opaque.   She drifts it closer. It's not as big as it seemed in the hearth, maybe three-ish inches by 5-6 ish inches? She turns it over. It's only jet on one side, the other is an image. Against a black backdrop, several orange flames are painted reaching upward like clawed hands, while two slanted, furious black eyes stare out from the base of the fire.   It has a label at the bottom third, script on an image of an unfurled scroll:   "FLAMES"   Mika's eyes widen.   "If that's what I think it is," he says, with calm that everyone clocks as being too complete to not be the result of focus, "then it's safe to touch." He plucks it from the air, eyes locked on.   “What is it?”   He glances at Mirage. "Nothing dangerous - not in this state, anyway." He looks it over for a second longer before going to pocket it. "I'm not a hundred on my guess, anyway. I'd rather not answer until we can learn a little more, if that's okay."   Mirage glances at Cri and Saeldor, trying to gauge their comfort level. Saeldor's is still not fully happy with that answer, but they're also not the type to push and neither is Cri. She trusts Mika's promise to give them an answer when he's more certain of it.   They press on, but no sooner have they stepped through the other door into a long hallway than a voice echoes from no clear direction,   "IIII am the ghooooooost of Astabaaaarrrrrrrr! Leeeeave before I cuuuurse youuu"   Saeldor's eyebrows raise. They whisper "No ghost, fey."   Mika makes an "ugh" face. Cri looks amused.   Saeldor says in Sylvan, “Hey, there! Nice day out, isn’t it?”   The firbolg's expression turns surprised, as they track the fey's prence grow rapidly fainter in retreat.   "Ope. Flyby."   “Huh. Onward? Nimbus saw a parlour earlier, weird stuff there too. Oh! My bad, buddy. Two parlours. One like a sitting room and one with - ew - an insect collection."   "Which is closer?"   Nimbus indicates a near door, and the party follows him over.   Saeldor opens the door, looks around, then steps in far enough that you all can trail behind them. The walls all have wide canvases with various butterflies and moths, all pinned and labelled. The display table to the south has several jars with live specimens, one of which has a large gemstone ornamenting the bottom, along with smaller pieces to accent it, but those look like false stones - tinted glass.   Mirage squints at the stones, drawn as much by their at-a-glance value as familiarity with crystals as a spell focus. "Saeldor, anything magical?"   "Something transmutation-like on the big one, but that's it."   Cri enters behind them, smiles and wanders over to introduce her herself to the live butterflies in the gem jar.   "They'd like to be let out of the jar," she translates, after a brief conversation, "they say it's too cramped in there, but... they sound nervous."   Mika's looking at the gem more closely than you'd expect for someone who's usually not distracted by unforeseen loot. Thinking.   “Do you know what it is?” Mirage asks, as Cri crosses to a small window and starts opening it.   He shakes his head no, "I had a thought but - no, doesn't make sense. Decor? Odd use of a magic gem though. Saeldor, you can't tell what it does?"   Saeldor confirms no, they can't. Transmutation is usually to do with shape changing or material-changing, but it's a broad category.   “What was your thought?”   Mika's hand strays near his pocket. "Dousing flames makes sense. But what's the opposite of a gemstone? It could be a trap of some kind, or it could be part of whatever hex is on this place, which we did come here to resolve..." he frowns, thinking, then looks back up. "I got nothing."   “Air?” Mirage looks curious. “Gas is the opposite of a solid - is that how that works? Should I blast it apart?” Her hands crackle.   Mika looks unsure. "Sounds loud - and whatever it does, we don't know what triggers it."   “True. Always the logical one.”   A twitch of a half-smile. "I try."   When Cri opened the window, the butterflies she's chatting with got excited. Oddly, one of them asked the other if they thought the window was big enough.   Cri cocks her head, switching back to beast-speech.   “Big enough for what?”   "Shh!"   "You shh!"   "Nothing!"   “Oh! Can you change your shape too? I enjoy taking lots of different forms from time to time.”   "We can get BIG!" excited, gleeful   "Real big!"   "But there's no room in here!"   “If I take you outside and let you go, will you hurt us or anyone else?”   "Not on purpose!"   “Can you tell us your real forms?”   "These are them!"   “So you always look like this, just bigger?”   "Yes!"   Cri beams. “Amazing! Saeldor, is there a problem if we let them go?"   "If they're being held here, we should release them," Mirage agrees.   I think Mika's wandering the perimeter, looking closely at the pinned up boards, but not seeming to find anything that reduces the thinking-hard furrows in his brow. As Saeldor looks at him to get his vote on the butterflies, he starts to say something, stops, then says to Marwa, "Can you... would you be able to keep the bugs in the jar if we opened it up?"   “Maybe? But why would we do that?”   "I want to see what happens if the gem's removed."   “Oh. Sure. I can try to keep them in a little air pocket.”   Saeldor's gonna re-close the window for the moment, just in case. The experiment takes only a moment. With the gem extracted to the tabletop, Mika looks disappointed.   "huh. Kay."   “Do you know what this stone is for?” Cri asks the butterflies.   "Makes us BIG!"   As they say this, everybody gets the feeling like there's a movement in their peripheral vision. As they look around, they see all the butterflies on the pin boards growing moving their wings, sending the pins harmlessly to the ground, and they hear hysterical giggles echo bounding around the room, bouncing from wall to wall.   “Destroy the stone!” Marwa shouts, already sending.   "Blast it!" Saeldor agrees, doubting their wooden club will damage it. Marwa's hands are already crackling. She sends a bolt of electricity into the gem that breaks it in two!   Mika's going to make a hurried inquiry about presences, re: the hysterical laughter but Saeldor shakes their head in the negative. Mika's head is on a swivel trying to track the voice as the giggles fade.   Lowering her hand, Mirage looks at him and says, “Don’t worry, they’ll show their face when they’re done being a coward. Or they get bored.” She steps over, gives his hand a subtle squeeze   Squeeze back, kind of sheepish lil smile. He wasn't sure if anyone else heard it.   There's a faint smell of ozone as the pieces settle. The butterflies shrink back down to normal size. Cri can report that the butterflies are unhappy about the gem's destruction. They enjoyed being big, but she agrees it was probably for the best that they remain their usual size.   "Can we let them go now?" Mirage asks.   Cri smiles, "I don't see any harm."   The butterflies are still petulant at the loss of the BIG, but will concede that there's more space and flowers outside than in here. Cri and Mirage reopen the window and remove their lid, and they they flutter on out.   "So this room was what, then, a trap?" Mika is looking at the broken gem. "Still magical?"   Saeldor squints at it "Not sure; its hard to read in here."   "Can you dispel it, if it is?" they ask Mika, who shakes his head no.   Mika shakes his head "Dispel is weave shit. Cri?"   "I can try."   Cri walks over to the broken pieces and stands with her hands over them, shuts her eyes, starts singing softly in her own language. As the party watches, the gem loses its cut edges, takes on a shape probably closer to that it came from the earth in.   Mirage gives Cri a high five. Cri smiles so much it makes her eyes squint.   “Next parlor?”   "Right on. This is the sitting room, right?"   "Yeah. Suit of armour sitting at a table, but otherwise normal looking."   "This-a-way, right Nimbus?" and with the cloudscout as a guide, the group steps back into the corridor.   "Ope, incoming." Softly, from the paladin   As the party pauses before the second parlour door, the same warbling voice sounds all around them.   "One of you is going to die if you open that door, you know."   “Immediately, or of natural causes sometime in the future?” Mirage asks in immediate response.   "There's one way to find out, but you'll be happier not knowing", an echoing, malevolent giggle, then Saeldor shakes their head, the fey's dipped again.   Mirage sighs   "So it's definitely just trying to get in our heads, right?" Mika asks.   “This whole place seems designed to do that. Feels like we’re the bugs under the microscope at the moment.”   Saeldor frowns, stroking his beard in thought. "It set out a condition: If this, then that."   Mika looks annoyed. "Fuck. Is opening the door going to be a tacit agreement then? Or is the damn pondscum-spawn just trying to scare us off?"   “You think the suit of armor would open the door for us if we asked it to?” Mirage interjects. “I’m making a lot of assumptions here. All of which could be wrong. But it said if YOU open the door - so what if someone ELSE opens it, you know? Just a thought.”   Mika nods, a grin growing as she explains. "This, this right here?" he says, excited, "This is why you don't get to call yourself dumb. That's fucking Brilliant. You're brilliant. Hey!" rapping on the door "You in the armour; give us a hand with the door?"   A solemn voice, baritone, comes from within.   "I take orders from none but my master. Or mistress."   “Who is your current master or mistress?” Mirage asks.   There's a brief pause while the party waits.   "This is yet to be determined. I shall serve the one who proves worthy."   “What must one do to be considered worthy? And who does the determining?” Mirage smiles, finding her loophole.   "I shall serve the one who can defeat me without laying hand nor spell nor armament against me."   Mirage looks at the others. “Should somebody try?”   Saeldor considers this, and then smiles. "So any of us could be worthy, then."   “Yes.”   "How do you know your master or mistress isn't standing out here waiting to be let in?" Saeldor   A moment later, the handle turns. A suit of resplendent armour; functional, polished steel, stands with immaculate posture just inside. Having opened the door, they turn, walk across the room to where they were sitting, and take up their seat again.   Mika's still smiling at Mirage sidelong as they enter because gods how is it fair that she gets to be this smart and that fun and gorgeous and kind and ugh. Smitten.   She gives him a warm smile - like she sees him looking and is letting her response show on her face. The smart guy saying shes smart is sweet.   This lavish parlour contains comfortable armchairs and other beautiful furnishings. Against the far wall is a matching pair of wooden chairs and a solid block table. The armoured person is seated in one chair. The table's marble surface is marked in black and white squares, and chess pieces are arranged across the top in an unfinished game. A scrap of paper beside the board notes the turn count.   When Mirage finishes making moon eyes at Mika, she looks at the chessboard. Seems like Mika's thing, but it takes him a second to clock it through Mirage's distraction. When he does, he wanders over to take a closer look. The party trails behind, as there's not much else of note here.   The knight has White's side of the board. Mika glances at the turn count, studies the board, and a cheeky lil smile grows on his face. "A defeat that doesn't touch you with hand or weapon, huh?"   He looks sideways at Mirage as she comes to a stop beside him, watching her as she frowns at the board.   "Black's turn. By the way," he murmurs, before falling into careful quiet, letting her think.   "I think..." Mirage starts, eyes darting from piece to piece, "we move the black knight? Hop over the king and go forward toward the white side one?   "Then the king can’t move towards us, because pawns. Can’t move back, because rook. Is that enough? Could he get out some other way?”   He's smiling. "Try it."   “You're the chess guy, you don’t want to play?”   "Humour me."   “Sure.”   She moves the black knight to C3, says "check"   The knight straightens his posture. Mika grins.   "Marwa, that's not check. It's checkmate"   “Oh shit.” She says, flabbergasted.   Mika is looking at her like he *really* wishes there weren't three other people present, but his eyes are pulled away by the knight getting to their feet.   Everyone tenses, but only for a moment, as the knight drops to a knee before Mirage. But as they go to remove their helm in respect, they blur, dissolving swiftly into smoke which condenses toward a single point in a phenomenon familiar from the kitchen hearth. A flat rectangle, shiny and black. Stiff but not heavy.   Mirage floats it up again, turning it over in the air. The other side of it has an image in the same style as the other one, of a person in full plate armour, holding a sword before them, point-downward, as if swearing a vow. The label reads KNIGHT.   “Does this confirm your theory from the kitchen?” Mirage asks, looking at Mika.   He nods, and reaches out to pick it out of the air. She can see his pulse jumping in his neck.   "I think there's more of these," he says, turning it over, "Between eleven and twenty more."   “Are they…cards? What are they?”   Saeldor’s eyes widen briefly, then they look serious. Mika doesn’t clock this, he's pretty severely distracted, he's taken the previous card out of his pocket and is holding the two together, either unwilling or unable to fight the smile that's spreading across his face.   "You ever heard of the Deck of Many Things?"   “Oh!" It sounds familiar "that deck has a Wish card, right?”   "So they say." Mika's smile has become an ear-to-ear grin.   Saeldor's face is grim. "That's not all they say."   "True." He fans the cards to regard the "Flames" one you found in the kitchen. "I never heard of the Deck taking other shapes, but if someone has another explanation - actually if you do, don't tell me." He laughs.   “So wait, someone already drew these cards?" Marwa asks, "Or…I’m confused.”   Mika looks at Saeldor. "Dormant, right?"   Saeldor nods, slow. Mika keeps talking, fast.   "It's not called the "Cards of many things,'" he reminds, "I don't think they work until they're assembled into a deck. Shuffled, maybe. But I don't think picking up a card off the ground counts as 'drawing'.”   "Mika." Saeldor interrupts, "I know this is exciting for you, brother, but maybe we need to think about this. If the shenanigans here are because of a Deck, we don't know what's in it. We don't know if a wish-granting card is real, or if it is, if it's even here. And even if it was..." he pauses, brief, tense, searching for what Ta'lok would say here, a way to appeal to Mika's logic, his pragmatism. "...your odds are no better of drawing that than drawing something that kills you on the spot, or rewrites your personality, or- or a thousand other things!"   “We should be careful.” Cri says softly into the silence that follows.   Mika looks between them, and I think they can all recognize a stubborn set in his face as he realizes his elation is going unshared. He looks frustrated, and a little annoyed. He pockets the cards.   "I never said we shouldn't," he says, pocketing the cards and straightening his back, "We came here to dispel this shit anyway, right? If that happens to end up assembling a Deck..." he shrugs.   “Hey isn’t that my knight in shining armour?”   Mika startles, looks at Mirage, who's standing with her hand out, trying to read if this is a lighthearted comment to lighten the mood, or if she's trying to make sure he doesn't have a fully assembled deck on his person.   “What? I won it fair and square. I’m sure you can figure out a way to get me to hand it over later.” She grins.   Mika holds her gaze a second longer, then huffs a laugh through his nose, drops the eye contact, and hands her the KNIGHT card, "As if anything in a pocket is safe from you, anyway."   “You know it.”   "If you two are done flirting....?" Saeldor speaks from the doorway.   "Never," quips Mika, who still feels like gravity's been reduced every time he's forced to concede this is real.   “We just got started, but I get that we have other priorities.” Mirage says, giving Mika a conspiratorial smirk as she follows him toward the exit.