They should've arrived at the next floor by now, right?
Vesryn caught himself thinking about how annoyingly narrow the stairwell was, and how tight the spiral was. Uncomfortable for someone in his amount of armor, though he was able to fit. The spin of the spiral shouldn't have been enough to make him dizzy, but he could feel it beginning to settle in. If there was just a window or something, some way he could see the outside, everything would be better, but sadly the house was not that kind.
"Ves, wait." Stel's tone was pitched low and urgent when she spoke from behind him. The sound of her footsteps halted, at which point it became clear that they were the only other footsteps within earshot. "Khari and Asala aren't... they're gone."
He turned abruptly at the sound of her voice, again subtly taking his axe in both hands and partially expecting a threat. As before, the threat wasn't one that an axe had a chance of dealing with. His mouth hung ajar momentarily, staring around the bend of the stairwell's spiral at where he expected Asala and Khari to be, but it was as Stel said: they were gone.
"There wasn't even a door this time," he said, his tone halfway to a complaint. "How could they just... damn it." He grimaced, quickly trying to think of what was best to do. Saraya was of little help at the moment, as her ability to give specific instructions was limited. She just felt about as uncomfortable as he did to be remaining where they were standing.
"I think we need to get out of this stairwell." It meant refusing to go back and look for Khari and Asala, but somehow Vesryn could guess that they would find nothing. Something in this house was working very hard to split them up. Divide and conquer was a simple enough tactic. He held out a gloved hand to her. "Probably safer if we don't let go of each other."
She hesitated for a moment, shifting to look behind her, but she must have been thinking something similar, because it didn't take her more than that moment to reach forward and take his hand. "I—all right." Her unease was not hard to detect.
"We'll find them, but not in here," he promised her, for what it was worth. There was something unnatural about the stairwell, he didn't need to be a mage to figure that out. Grasping her hand firmly so as to leave no chance of it slipping, he turned his gaze back forward and they started ahead.
The stairwell twisted on and on until he was certain they would reach the top of a tower of some sort rather than just another floor of the house. But when at last the air shifted and they stepped out onto a floor, Vesryn frowned. It was dark, and the angle was different, but... "This... this is where we just were." He said it with some degree of certainty, despite it being seemingly impossible. It was the same hall, with the same doors, the same place where they'd started up the stairs. Unless there was an exact replica hallway at the top that he hadn't been able to see when entering the house to begin with.
"But we were walking up the entire time, we..." He turned to look at the stairs, to confirm that they had in fact been going up the whole time, but when he turned his eyes to see behind Stel, all he found was a wall, smooth and covered, like the stairwell had never been there at all. He turned fully, setting down his axe and placing his hand on the flat surface, pushing against it, testing for weakness, but it was as solid as a castle battlement. He curled his hand into a fist and picked up his axe again.
"I know you didn't accidentally take us into the Fade again. So what is this place?"
Stel let out a breath; it sounded like she'd been holding it for a while. "I don't know," she admitted. "I've never heard of anything like this place before." At the mention of the Fade, though, she glanced down at her mark, as well as she could considering that the hand bearing it was wrapped around her sword still. She seemed to think better of that, though, and flipped it in her grip, sliding it home in the sheath. It did seem rather unlikely that whatever they faced here would be so kind as to allow them to confront it directly.
They lost a bit of light, but Stel focused on her mark, and the green scar brightened noticeably, letting her shift her palm out and cast its greenish pall over the hallway. "If not the stairs, then... I suppose we have to try a different door. Maybe it's a labyrinth or something. Only one way out." From the sound of it, she didn't like the guess, though whether that was because she thought it was implausible or something else was harder to say.
Her hand tightened a bit around his, and she stepped towards one of them. Strangely, it seemed to be ajar already. It almost certainly hadn't been the first time they were here. Pushing it open with the side of her fist, Stel peered in as well as she could without crossing the threshold. "It's... I can't tell for sure, but it looks like a gallery? Maybe if we can find out whose house this was..." Glancing down, she carefully put one foot over the break between hall and room as if ready to snatch it back at a moment's notice.
But it landed normally, and nothing happened when she shifted her weight forward to step the rest of the way in, so it seemed they were safe for now. The light level changed as soon as they were both inside: or rather, several lights came on at once. Magelights, blue-purple in color, flickered to life beneath what seemed to be a series of portrait frames on the walls. Stel moved them towards the first one before abruptly stopping, transfixed.
This close, he could see the first of the paintings. It wasn't so much a portrait as a scene, but it had the same sort of oil-paint style. They were looking at the back of a small child, unidentifiable save for the simple blue dress and disheveled fall of black hair. She stood in front of a half-open door, light from outside spilling onto her and casting a long shadow. Indiscernible figures were beyond the door, nothing more than vague, dark shapes, given the impression of movement away.
Vesryn frowned at it. The sudden appearance of light implied to him that whatever force was controlling the house, it wanted them to be able to see these. He wasn't sure, then, if it was better to fight it or go along with it, but if magic or demons were involved here, and he had to imagine they were, going along with them was rarely a wise idea. Still, he scrutinized the painting a moment. "I'm no art critic, but that seems a rather odd subject for a piece to hang on your wall."
"It's me." Stel shook her head. "I think. Maybe if—" She took several quick steps, soft footfalls echoing in the almost-empty gallery.
The second painting was obviously of her, captured with eerie accuracy. The only real difference between the woman in the painting and Stel as she was now were what seemed to be about half a decade and armor. In the painting, she was curled upon herself, knees clutched to her chest, looking at something that could not be seen in the frame with wide, terrified eyes. A shadow fell over her—large and humanoid in shape, but there was no clue in the painting itself as to what person had cast it.
There was no doubt that Stel herself knew, though—abstract things that had never actually been wouldn't have arrested her the way this had. She wasn't even breathing, not for several moments, and he was close enough to sense how stiff she'd become. She seemed almost to have forgotten he was present; her hand loosened around his until she wasn't actually holding onto him at all, and her eyes glazed over, unfocused.
"Hey." Vesryn squeezed her hand, quickly securing his axe across his back to free up his other hand and winding around to stand in front of Stel, blocking her view of the painting in front of her. It was obviously born of magic; no matter how many people of influence Stel knew, he couldn't believe someone that lived in the Emerald Graves would have reason to make multiple paintings depicting her. In less than flattering lights, as well. He carefully placed his other hand near where her shoulder met with her neck. "Stay with me. Talk to me, let's figure this out. It's targeting you. Has to be a demon, right? What is it making you feel?"
Stel blinked several times, emerging from whatever strange torpor she'd been lulled into. And it did seem to be that—as though she'd been asleep and was only just waking, fixing bleary eyes on him for several long moments before she even looked to recognize who he was. "I..." Her brows furrowed; she seemed to struggle to speak, and failed the first few times she tried. "I'm scared. Alone; I felt alone."
Once she'd said it, she only looked even more confused. "But that's... I've never heard of a demon like this. It's... it's in our heads, Ves, or at least mine. As much as Nightmare was, if it can do... that." Her breath trembled when it left her; she shook her head almost as if clearing the last vestiges of drowsiness from herself.
"I'm scared, too," he admitted, smiling uneasily. He was relieved just to see her refocus, brought out of whatever spell the place had put her under for a second. "Gods, even Saraya's scared. But let's all be scared together. We're not alone, and we're not going to be." Quite honestly, he wanted to hug her, as he was finding the act of holding onto something right now to be especially comforting, but they needed to keep moving, not sit still and allow this place to torment them. "What do you think, keep going, or head back?" He had no desire for her to subject herself to more of whatever the house wanted her to feel. Fear, loneliness... but he was confident that as long as he was able to stay with her, she would make it through this room, and this place.
She took a moment to collect herself; it was a process he by now knew how to track. A deep breath, a self-conscious straightening of her posture, and a careful smoothing of her facial expression. The last was imperfect this time—he could still see the tension there, especially the tight discomfort settled around her eyes. "I think... we should keep going. I doubt we'll be able to get out of here or find the others by going back." It went without saying that they needed to do both of those things.
"Let's... let's go. It's probably better if I don't see many more of those, but I'm guessing the door will be on the far end." She swallowed, steeling herself, then nodded to indicate she was ready to proceed.
He nodded, taking his hand off her shoulder, though he remained attached to her by the other, their fingers laced together for security more than anything. Keeping their heads down for the most part, they walked past the remaining fires lighting up works of cruel art on the walls, not bothering to take any of them in. The door was on the far end, as Stel expected, and Vesryn pushed it open, making sure it held that way until both of them were fully on the other side. Only then did he allow it to close, and allow himself to take in where they had ended up.
It seemed to be an extension of the art gallery, but this room looked older, the stonework of a slightly different, more archaic design. In the cracks here and there was green, vines possibly from outside, but it seemed more to be growing from the walls than through them. The chamber was lit by more magefire, this time burning in braziers placed periodically throughout the central line of the room, which was an elongated rectangle with them on the far end.
The fires cast blue-green lights on life-sized statues on either side of them, creating shadows that crawled and flickered up on the walls behind them. Vesryn approached the first on his left, noticing almost immediately the stone figure's elven traits: the ears, the body structure, the armor, which was quite strikingly like his own. But the statue was not him, as the hair was quite different, closer cut and combed to one side. The face was impossible to see, as the statue was posed such that his face was hidden deliberately behind his arm, as though he didn't wish to look upon what was in front of him.
"I'm not sure I get the point of..." he trailed off, feeling something well up inside of him, at which point he gasped quite audibly, taking a step back and feeling a constricting, choking in his chest, a tightening in his throat. His eyes watered, threatening tears, the overall feeling most similar to that darkest moment in the Fade, surrounded by bodies that rose and tried to kill him and Stel. The tears would not be held back, and soon a few spilled unbidden down his face.
He blinked through them, taking a step back forward at the insistent urging in his mind. He found himself wanting, needing to see the face, but there was simply no angle at which he could stand that it was not shielded by the elf's plate-covered arm.
"Ves?" Stel was clearly alarmed by the suddenness and strength of the reaction, but she'd seen something like it once before, and it didn't take her long to put the pieces together. "It's Saraya, isn't it?" The sentence didn't quite end the right way, as though there were another question she almost asked instead or as well, but she stayed close, moving voluntarily with him when he went forward, shifting slightly sideways so as to study him instead of the statue, no doubt.
"She knows this person," he explained, his voice uncomfortably restricted. It was such a weird state to be in, experiencing feelings that were not his own. Emotional reactions at things that stirred nothing in him. "He was important somehow. What about the others?" He whirled around, taking swift steps to the room's other side, trusting Stel to keep up. On the other side was a robed figure, an elven woman judging by her figure, her face buried in her hands as though she was crying.
"This one, too. She feels... she feels their loss. She misses them." He sniffed, wiping more tears from his eyes. "I think... sometimes she almost forgets them, but seeing them like this, even without their faces, brings it rushing back. Like she lost them yesterday." Maybe she couldn't remember their faces? If all of this was constructed out of something a demon could find in their own minds... but all the faces of the dead in the Fade, she had remembered them all there. What made these different?
He turned to find the next, moving deeper into the room. The next one stopped him cold, stricken with fear for a moment. A figure of an elven mage, staff gripped tightly in both hands, fingers intensely clutching the wood, aggressively pointing the focused end down towards the ground, where Vesryn felt a foreign urge to sink. The mage hid his face in his shoulder, but somehow Vesryn could imagine him snarling. He could feel hate in the way the man stood.
Saraya didn't want to look at him, and swiftly they backed away and turned, finding themselves mere inches from the sharpened point of an arrow. A woman in lighter ancient armor held it drawn back, stone bowstring taut with tension, her face hooded and lowered to the ground. There was so little by which to tell who she was, but again Saraya knew, and this one hurt as well. "I don't know what she hopes to find," he admitted, even as she pulled him away, on to the next.
His heart nearly stopped for the next. A tall elven man, dressed in elegant robes or perhaps a noble's attire of ages past, with curly hair and a proud warrior's figure. He shielded his eyes with one hand, again giving off the impression of crying, while the other hand was outstretched towards Vesryn, as if telling him not to come any closer. He gasped in a breath. "She loved this one. Loved him very much."
Alone was what Estella had reported feeling, and Vesryn felt it now like he never had. Grief and shame and loss and endless isolation. He backed up steadily, unable to look at the curly-haired elf any longer, and fearing what the next would be, but requiring to look at it. Before he could, however, he felt a sharp puncturing pain in the back of his left leg, and he stumbled. A knife, quite real and sharp steel, had pierced his leg where the armor was weak behind the knee, inflicting rather significant damage. He cried out briefly, losing his balance from the sudden pain in his leg. His weight carried him a few steps further into the room before he collapsed to his knees.
The knife was held by a child, and elf child, so short that the strike to the back of Vesryn's legs had been done at a natural height. It was a young boy, curly headed like the man across the room from him, dressed in a little armor set to match. He hid his face like all the others, tucking it into his elbow and lashing out blindly.
And then he noticed what he'd fallen to his knees before. Not a statue, but a mosaic of some kind, the pieces of stone all varying shades of green, but seeming to depict a great emerald dragon, the one thing willing to stare down at him, if only to breathe stone fire down the painted wall at where he knelt. The eyes seemed to glow with energy, though the rest of the dragon's figure was quite stylized and unrealistic. Saraya took note of it, and felt there was no better place for her to remain at the moment, than on the ground in the path of the flames.
A soft touch at his leg, followed by the familiar warmth of a healing spell, preceded Stel's voice by a fair margin. It was far from expert, as was the case with all her magic, but it was enough that the bleeding stopped, at least. A moment later, she shuffled up to sit on her legs beside him. After a pause for hesitation, ingrained into almost everything she did as such pauses were, she lifted her hand to his back, placing it atop his armor where it protected the spot between his shoulder blades.
She leaned slightly into him, putting her cheek against his arm. It couldn't have been comfortable, with the plate there, but she didn't shift around or complain. "Let me know when you're ready to move and I'll help you stand," she said softly, then let herself fall quiet again. Something about the way she said it implied the plural 'you.'
He didn't want to stand or move. Not particularly. His armor felt ten times heavier, and somehow that wasn't so bad. He remained still for a long moment, content to just have Stel at his side. Though he felt Saraya's emotions at times as his own, he was still distinctly aware that the crushing despair, the hopelessness he felt here was not his own, but hers. And if he felt anything of his own, it was sorrow for what she had been forced to endure for so many years, every time she came close to losing her memory and forgetting leading to her just remembering again, and having the pain dredged up fresh again.
"She feels hopeless sometimes," he confided to her, quietly. "Not for us, and what we're doing, but just for herself. No matter how much we're able to do, she and I... every connection she ever had is gone. She can never have anything like what we have. Never speak to anyone. Never touch anyone. She's hardly real anymore." His eyes wandered up to the green dragon mural. He knew what it was full well. The rest of it he'd need to parse through later, if Saraya was willing to be open to him when he wanted to try.
"It can make her feel like she did when I first found her. Impossibly alone in the world. Desiring only to rejoin these people." He glanced one more time at the little boy with the knife on his right, but Saraya directed his gaze back at the dragon, more specifically the base of the mural.
"I'm sorry," she replied, releasing a slow, heavy breath. She turned her eyes up, apparently fixing them on the dragon's, though she was a little too far in his peripherals to be certain. "I wish... I wish there was something we could do." Solutions to those kinds of problems, however, weren't within even the Inquisition's power to fix—not by a long shot.
"But it can't be helping to stay here, can it? To be forced to remember like this by a demon or... whatever this is." Her concern was perhaps warranted; even apart from the possible ramifications for Saraya's mentality, there were other dangers. "It's not... it's not like with Nightmare, right? Not interfering with the connection?"
"No." He shook his head slightly. "And I know... she knows, it isn't helping. But I think some part of her feels it's deserved." As odd as that sounded, that was how he felt, or what he felt of her. That this was where she belonged. But it wasn't right, and Saraya could recognize as well as Vesryn could that remaining here would kill them both, and possibly Stel too. And that was unacceptable.
"I'm ready. Let's go." He let her help him back to his feet, his leg still mostly unsteady beneath him. But with just a bit of lean on her it wasn't unbearable, and they made their way to the nearby door at the end of the hall. He didn't bother looking back at the statues before grabbing the handle and letting the door swing open.
The hallway they entered after that was extremely mundane by comparison. Aside from the same general feeling of forlorn-ness that seemed to pervade the entire mansion, nothing seemed too distinctive. Either the entity commanding it was beginning to weaken, had decided they were poor targets, or it only controlled certain parts of the house to such a large degree.
Stel opened several doors as they traversed the hallway, but the rooms they inspected proved to have little of interest, just more of the same pristine furniture they'd seen in the foyer, styled for different rooms: an office, a child's bedroom, a lounge. Nothing stuck out as obviously important, and they were almost at the end and a staircase down when she opened the final door on their right.
When she did, it was only to bodily collide with another person. Khari staggered backwards upon impact, nearly hitting Asala behind her. “Damn—hold on." She blinked at the both of them for a moment before lunging, wrapping Stel in a hug. “Found you! Or you found us, not sure which." She let go and took half a step back. “Uh... it is really you, right? Haven't seen any illusions like actual people in here so far, but I guess it could happen."
The impact nearly sent Stel to the floor—Khari was considerably more solid than she was, and had been moving quite a bit faster. But if anything, the hug kept her upright, and it didn't take her long to regain her balance. "I don't think that's in its repertoire, no. It probably would have already done so if it could have." She sighed, but if anything, her body language was more relaxed than it had been in a while. Perhaps it was the effect of the extra company—it stood to reason that Loneliness would be less powerful in the face of camaraderie, after all.
A laugh escaped Vesryn, breathy and genuine, and he clapped Khari on the shoulder in greeting, shifting as much weight as he could onto his good leg. He imagined he probably looked something of a mess, but he was hardly ashamed of that. "It's good to see you both." He soon noticed the object that Asala carried, some kind of lens, by the looks of it magical. "What's that you've found?"
"I am unsure," Asala answered, looking at the lens in her hand. "But when I activated it, it showed us the true form of the room we were in, not the one the demon wanted us to see."
“Doesn't seem to be doing much of anything here, though." Khari glanced around, then shrugged. “Still no Zee or Cy, huh? Seems like we should keep looking."
The lens proved to be at least somewhat effective on a few of the other rooms they entered; if they looked through it, they could see what the house really looked like: decrepit, dingy, and covered in spiderwebs. After they came across a doorway with a giant cobweb stretched across it, Khari stopped trying to look through the device, leaving it to the others.
They passed downstairs, without incident this time. When they reached the landing, Khari paused, cocking her head as though she'd heard something. A moment later, the rest of them could hear it, too, shuffling footsteps, followed by a door creaking open at the end of the hall. She tensed, hand reaching back for her sword, but the figures that appeared from behind the door were familiar, and she breathed a soft sigh of relief.
“Zee, Cy! We're over here."
Cyrus's eyes found them first; his posture eased considerably when they did. “Excellent. Wasn't sure where this one would go." He said it like he had expectations for the doors in general, which was admittedly a bit of an improvement over the rest of them.
"Cy," Stel breathed, tone laden with relief. "Zee. It's... really good to see you." Pursing her lips, she made eye contact with her brother. "Any idea what we're dealing with? We must have done something right, if we all wound up in the same place again."
“Loneliness demon." Cyrus's answer was immediate, certain. “I believe it has possessed the house as a whole. Getting out of here will likely require finding the locus of its control and forcing it to manifest, so that we can slay it." He shifted his grip slightly on what seemed to be a book he was carrying under his arm, then eyed the lens in Asala's hand keenly. “May I?" He held a hand out towards her, clearly requesting that she hand over the object.
Once she had, he studied it for a moment, blinking in something like surprise when he peered through it. “Interesting..." Tilting his head, he opened the book with one hand, arm braced against the spine, flipping a few pages with the other until he reached what appeared to be a specific one. It was hard to see the illustration well, but it didn't matter after a moment anyway—the writing on the pages shifted. For several long moments, Cyrus scanned new words, brow furrowed, and then he closed the book with a snap.
“Is there a child's room around here somewhere?"
Admittedly Vesryn had not been paying all that much attention to their surroundings after leaving the room with the elven statues behind. All the house had done up to that point was target either him or Stel in a very personal way. But one of the rooms they had passed on their way here did indeed stand out in his mind, as soon as Cyrus mentioned it.
"There is, actually. We passed it not long before we came here, it isn't far." He limped a step away, beckoning. "Come on, it's just this way."
Cyrus nodded. “I think we'll find what we want there."
Khari followed willingly enough, but her skepticism emerged in her tone if nowhere else. “Which is... what, exactly? And how do you even know?"
“I'm not sure exactly what. Hopefully being able to see the room as it is will provide some hint. As for how..." Cyrus tapped the cover of the book. “This fell off a bookshelf in the library. I suspected it might be important, and it was. The journal belongs to a child. A little girl. She describes being spoken to in her dreams by a friend. It stands to reason that she's the conduit the creature used to enter this plane."
Khari frowned. “Makes sense... but why would it drop the answers into your hands like that? The lens was kind of an easy find too, actually."
Cyrus lifted his shoulders, though his expression did not match the lightness of the gesture. “There's a reason such demons are rare. Their existence is unstable. They feed off of loneliness, but that is an emotion that seeks its own end in a way that Pride or Envy or even Despair don't. Loneliness is a craving for company." He paused, then continued. “Perhaps it wants to be seen."
They arrived in front of the door, then, and Khari opened it back up. Initially, it just looked as it had the first time Vesryn and Estella passed it. But then the lens in Cyrus's hand glimmered, and their surroundings changed, illusion shimmering away like a mirage in the desert.
What it left behind was a rather grim picture. The smell hit them all first, old rot, flesh and wood alike. The source was clearly the desiccated corpse laid out on the bed, a small body that could not have been more than four feet and a few inches tall. Khari sucked a breath in through her teeth, and immediately seemed to regret it, lifting her hand to her face and fitting it over her nose and mouth. “Shit."
Cyrus's expression was grim, but unsurprised. “Her thoughts and feelings would have guided the demon into the world. It's likely to be trapped in a sentimental object. If you were a lonely little girl, where would you put something like that?" He seemed to be asking the room as a whole.
The query provoked an obvious reaction in Stel, who swallowed thickly and stepped past her brother and Khari into the room. "I'd keep it with me," she said, without hesitation. She lingered a moment more, steeling herself for the implications of that statement, and then crossed the room to the bed, old floorboards creaking underneath her. Though the body was half-rotted away, she was careful with it, shifting the little girl's clothes around gently and pursing her lips when she found a pocket.
When she drew her hand away, there was a small object in it. Opening her fingers, Stel uncovered a wooden figurine, carved in the shape of a large dog. "What... what should we do with it?"
A quaking tremor beneath their feet answered first, as if the whole house shuddered at once. Cyrus braced himself on the doorframe; Khari nearly fell backwards into Zee before regaining her balance. “I don't think it liked that."
“Destroy it. That will force the demon to appear."
Estella didn't look especially happy to be doing it, but she nodded, returning her eyes to the figure. She exhaled; flame bloomed at her fingertips and licked up the wood, blackening it and then burning it away entirely. She was left with only ashes in her hand, but for a moment, nothing happened.
Then the house shuddered again, and the ashes gusted away from Stel's hand. Where they fell to the floor, a glowing circle appeared, and from it there appeared what could only have been the demon. In sharp contrast to its more impressive kin, this one was rather small and pitiful, almost like a heavily-deformed child, lumpy grey flesh tufted unevenly with white hair. It hunched, enough that its knuckles dragged the ground, and peered up at them with doleful, watery pale eyes.
Vesryn wondered how many people had ever laid eyes on such a demon before. He stepped forward, his intention clearly communicated by the way he hefted his axe. He had to strongly remind himself that this was not, in fact, a child, that the real child's body was in the bed across the room, and this thing was responsible for the child's death. Not entirely, of course, if he was understanding what had happened here, but all the same, it had to die.
He'd forced himself to strike down things he had no wish to attack before, and as before, he allowed Saraya to do what he was unsure of, and guide his axe back, steadying his weight beneath him, steeling his heart. With one swift, surehanded motion he brought the weapon down, allowing his eyes to close as it found its mark, and letting the sound and the feel confirm that the demon was dead.
Withdrawing the weapon once it was done, he took only a step back towards the others before the house gave another great groan around them, this one much more consistent and urgent. The dying moans of a structure only kept up by this creature's hidden and immense power. He sought his friends' eyes. "We need to move."
And move they did.
It was initially difficult to get their bearings in the house, given that the decaying edifice bore almost no resemblance to the building they'd entered. But fortunately the complete lack of direction they'd all had to deal with when they were getting turned around constantly was no longer present, and they eventually came upon the first hallway they'd entered.
Khari crashed through the door into the foyer, and that was indeed where it spit them out. The front door took more work, locked as it still seemed to be from the outside, but between Asala's magic and Vesryn's axe, they got through with time to spare. The manor collapsed slowly behind them, until it was only a still pile of ruins.
Khari heaved a sigh, bracing her hands on her knees for several breaths. Straightening, she glanced back at the house with a deep frown. “Let's... not ever do that again."
Vesryn caught himself thinking about how annoyingly narrow the stairwell was, and how tight the spiral was. Uncomfortable for someone in his amount of armor, though he was able to fit. The spin of the spiral shouldn't have been enough to make him dizzy, but he could feel it beginning to settle in. If there was just a window or something, some way he could see the outside, everything would be better, but sadly the house was not that kind.
"Ves, wait." Stel's tone was pitched low and urgent when she spoke from behind him. The sound of her footsteps halted, at which point it became clear that they were the only other footsteps within earshot. "Khari and Asala aren't... they're gone."
He turned abruptly at the sound of her voice, again subtly taking his axe in both hands and partially expecting a threat. As before, the threat wasn't one that an axe had a chance of dealing with. His mouth hung ajar momentarily, staring around the bend of the stairwell's spiral at where he expected Asala and Khari to be, but it was as Stel said: they were gone.
"There wasn't even a door this time," he said, his tone halfway to a complaint. "How could they just... damn it." He grimaced, quickly trying to think of what was best to do. Saraya was of little help at the moment, as her ability to give specific instructions was limited. She just felt about as uncomfortable as he did to be remaining where they were standing.
"I think we need to get out of this stairwell." It meant refusing to go back and look for Khari and Asala, but somehow Vesryn could guess that they would find nothing. Something in this house was working very hard to split them up. Divide and conquer was a simple enough tactic. He held out a gloved hand to her. "Probably safer if we don't let go of each other."
She hesitated for a moment, shifting to look behind her, but she must have been thinking something similar, because it didn't take her more than that moment to reach forward and take his hand. "I—all right." Her unease was not hard to detect.
"We'll find them, but not in here," he promised her, for what it was worth. There was something unnatural about the stairwell, he didn't need to be a mage to figure that out. Grasping her hand firmly so as to leave no chance of it slipping, he turned his gaze back forward and they started ahead.
The stairwell twisted on and on until he was certain they would reach the top of a tower of some sort rather than just another floor of the house. But when at last the air shifted and they stepped out onto a floor, Vesryn frowned. It was dark, and the angle was different, but... "This... this is where we just were." He said it with some degree of certainty, despite it being seemingly impossible. It was the same hall, with the same doors, the same place where they'd started up the stairs. Unless there was an exact replica hallway at the top that he hadn't been able to see when entering the house to begin with.
"But we were walking up the entire time, we..." He turned to look at the stairs, to confirm that they had in fact been going up the whole time, but when he turned his eyes to see behind Stel, all he found was a wall, smooth and covered, like the stairwell had never been there at all. He turned fully, setting down his axe and placing his hand on the flat surface, pushing against it, testing for weakness, but it was as solid as a castle battlement. He curled his hand into a fist and picked up his axe again.
"I know you didn't accidentally take us into the Fade again. So what is this place?"
Stel let out a breath; it sounded like she'd been holding it for a while. "I don't know," she admitted. "I've never heard of anything like this place before." At the mention of the Fade, though, she glanced down at her mark, as well as she could considering that the hand bearing it was wrapped around her sword still. She seemed to think better of that, though, and flipped it in her grip, sliding it home in the sheath. It did seem rather unlikely that whatever they faced here would be so kind as to allow them to confront it directly.
They lost a bit of light, but Stel focused on her mark, and the green scar brightened noticeably, letting her shift her palm out and cast its greenish pall over the hallway. "If not the stairs, then... I suppose we have to try a different door. Maybe it's a labyrinth or something. Only one way out." From the sound of it, she didn't like the guess, though whether that was because she thought it was implausible or something else was harder to say.
Her hand tightened a bit around his, and she stepped towards one of them. Strangely, it seemed to be ajar already. It almost certainly hadn't been the first time they were here. Pushing it open with the side of her fist, Stel peered in as well as she could without crossing the threshold. "It's... I can't tell for sure, but it looks like a gallery? Maybe if we can find out whose house this was..." Glancing down, she carefully put one foot over the break between hall and room as if ready to snatch it back at a moment's notice.
But it landed normally, and nothing happened when she shifted her weight forward to step the rest of the way in, so it seemed they were safe for now. The light level changed as soon as they were both inside: or rather, several lights came on at once. Magelights, blue-purple in color, flickered to life beneath what seemed to be a series of portrait frames on the walls. Stel moved them towards the first one before abruptly stopping, transfixed.
This close, he could see the first of the paintings. It wasn't so much a portrait as a scene, but it had the same sort of oil-paint style. They were looking at the back of a small child, unidentifiable save for the simple blue dress and disheveled fall of black hair. She stood in front of a half-open door, light from outside spilling onto her and casting a long shadow. Indiscernible figures were beyond the door, nothing more than vague, dark shapes, given the impression of movement away.
Vesryn frowned at it. The sudden appearance of light implied to him that whatever force was controlling the house, it wanted them to be able to see these. He wasn't sure, then, if it was better to fight it or go along with it, but if magic or demons were involved here, and he had to imagine they were, going along with them was rarely a wise idea. Still, he scrutinized the painting a moment. "I'm no art critic, but that seems a rather odd subject for a piece to hang on your wall."
"It's me." Stel shook her head. "I think. Maybe if—" She took several quick steps, soft footfalls echoing in the almost-empty gallery.
The second painting was obviously of her, captured with eerie accuracy. The only real difference between the woman in the painting and Stel as she was now were what seemed to be about half a decade and armor. In the painting, she was curled upon herself, knees clutched to her chest, looking at something that could not be seen in the frame with wide, terrified eyes. A shadow fell over her—large and humanoid in shape, but there was no clue in the painting itself as to what person had cast it.
There was no doubt that Stel herself knew, though—abstract things that had never actually been wouldn't have arrested her the way this had. She wasn't even breathing, not for several moments, and he was close enough to sense how stiff she'd become. She seemed almost to have forgotten he was present; her hand loosened around his until she wasn't actually holding onto him at all, and her eyes glazed over, unfocused.
"Hey." Vesryn squeezed her hand, quickly securing his axe across his back to free up his other hand and winding around to stand in front of Stel, blocking her view of the painting in front of her. It was obviously born of magic; no matter how many people of influence Stel knew, he couldn't believe someone that lived in the Emerald Graves would have reason to make multiple paintings depicting her. In less than flattering lights, as well. He carefully placed his other hand near where her shoulder met with her neck. "Stay with me. Talk to me, let's figure this out. It's targeting you. Has to be a demon, right? What is it making you feel?"
Stel blinked several times, emerging from whatever strange torpor she'd been lulled into. And it did seem to be that—as though she'd been asleep and was only just waking, fixing bleary eyes on him for several long moments before she even looked to recognize who he was. "I..." Her brows furrowed; she seemed to struggle to speak, and failed the first few times she tried. "I'm scared. Alone; I felt alone."
Once she'd said it, she only looked even more confused. "But that's... I've never heard of a demon like this. It's... it's in our heads, Ves, or at least mine. As much as Nightmare was, if it can do... that." Her breath trembled when it left her; she shook her head almost as if clearing the last vestiges of drowsiness from herself.
"I'm scared, too," he admitted, smiling uneasily. He was relieved just to see her refocus, brought out of whatever spell the place had put her under for a second. "Gods, even Saraya's scared. But let's all be scared together. We're not alone, and we're not going to be." Quite honestly, he wanted to hug her, as he was finding the act of holding onto something right now to be especially comforting, but they needed to keep moving, not sit still and allow this place to torment them. "What do you think, keep going, or head back?" He had no desire for her to subject herself to more of whatever the house wanted her to feel. Fear, loneliness... but he was confident that as long as he was able to stay with her, she would make it through this room, and this place.
She took a moment to collect herself; it was a process he by now knew how to track. A deep breath, a self-conscious straightening of her posture, and a careful smoothing of her facial expression. The last was imperfect this time—he could still see the tension there, especially the tight discomfort settled around her eyes. "I think... we should keep going. I doubt we'll be able to get out of here or find the others by going back." It went without saying that they needed to do both of those things.
"Let's... let's go. It's probably better if I don't see many more of those, but I'm guessing the door will be on the far end." She swallowed, steeling herself, then nodded to indicate she was ready to proceed.
He nodded, taking his hand off her shoulder, though he remained attached to her by the other, their fingers laced together for security more than anything. Keeping their heads down for the most part, they walked past the remaining fires lighting up works of cruel art on the walls, not bothering to take any of them in. The door was on the far end, as Stel expected, and Vesryn pushed it open, making sure it held that way until both of them were fully on the other side. Only then did he allow it to close, and allow himself to take in where they had ended up.
It seemed to be an extension of the art gallery, but this room looked older, the stonework of a slightly different, more archaic design. In the cracks here and there was green, vines possibly from outside, but it seemed more to be growing from the walls than through them. The chamber was lit by more magefire, this time burning in braziers placed periodically throughout the central line of the room, which was an elongated rectangle with them on the far end.
The fires cast blue-green lights on life-sized statues on either side of them, creating shadows that crawled and flickered up on the walls behind them. Vesryn approached the first on his left, noticing almost immediately the stone figure's elven traits: the ears, the body structure, the armor, which was quite strikingly like his own. But the statue was not him, as the hair was quite different, closer cut and combed to one side. The face was impossible to see, as the statue was posed such that his face was hidden deliberately behind his arm, as though he didn't wish to look upon what was in front of him.
"I'm not sure I get the point of..." he trailed off, feeling something well up inside of him, at which point he gasped quite audibly, taking a step back and feeling a constricting, choking in his chest, a tightening in his throat. His eyes watered, threatening tears, the overall feeling most similar to that darkest moment in the Fade, surrounded by bodies that rose and tried to kill him and Stel. The tears would not be held back, and soon a few spilled unbidden down his face.
He blinked through them, taking a step back forward at the insistent urging in his mind. He found himself wanting, needing to see the face, but there was simply no angle at which he could stand that it was not shielded by the elf's plate-covered arm.
"Ves?" Stel was clearly alarmed by the suddenness and strength of the reaction, but she'd seen something like it once before, and it didn't take her long to put the pieces together. "It's Saraya, isn't it?" The sentence didn't quite end the right way, as though there were another question she almost asked instead or as well, but she stayed close, moving voluntarily with him when he went forward, shifting slightly sideways so as to study him instead of the statue, no doubt.
"She knows this person," he explained, his voice uncomfortably restricted. It was such a weird state to be in, experiencing feelings that were not his own. Emotional reactions at things that stirred nothing in him. "He was important somehow. What about the others?" He whirled around, taking swift steps to the room's other side, trusting Stel to keep up. On the other side was a robed figure, an elven woman judging by her figure, her face buried in her hands as though she was crying.
"This one, too. She feels... she feels their loss. She misses them." He sniffed, wiping more tears from his eyes. "I think... sometimes she almost forgets them, but seeing them like this, even without their faces, brings it rushing back. Like she lost them yesterday." Maybe she couldn't remember their faces? If all of this was constructed out of something a demon could find in their own minds... but all the faces of the dead in the Fade, she had remembered them all there. What made these different?
He turned to find the next, moving deeper into the room. The next one stopped him cold, stricken with fear for a moment. A figure of an elven mage, staff gripped tightly in both hands, fingers intensely clutching the wood, aggressively pointing the focused end down towards the ground, where Vesryn felt a foreign urge to sink. The mage hid his face in his shoulder, but somehow Vesryn could imagine him snarling. He could feel hate in the way the man stood.
Saraya didn't want to look at him, and swiftly they backed away and turned, finding themselves mere inches from the sharpened point of an arrow. A woman in lighter ancient armor held it drawn back, stone bowstring taut with tension, her face hooded and lowered to the ground. There was so little by which to tell who she was, but again Saraya knew, and this one hurt as well. "I don't know what she hopes to find," he admitted, even as she pulled him away, on to the next.
His heart nearly stopped for the next. A tall elven man, dressed in elegant robes or perhaps a noble's attire of ages past, with curly hair and a proud warrior's figure. He shielded his eyes with one hand, again giving off the impression of crying, while the other hand was outstretched towards Vesryn, as if telling him not to come any closer. He gasped in a breath. "She loved this one. Loved him very much."
Alone was what Estella had reported feeling, and Vesryn felt it now like he never had. Grief and shame and loss and endless isolation. He backed up steadily, unable to look at the curly-haired elf any longer, and fearing what the next would be, but requiring to look at it. Before he could, however, he felt a sharp puncturing pain in the back of his left leg, and he stumbled. A knife, quite real and sharp steel, had pierced his leg where the armor was weak behind the knee, inflicting rather significant damage. He cried out briefly, losing his balance from the sudden pain in his leg. His weight carried him a few steps further into the room before he collapsed to his knees.
The knife was held by a child, and elf child, so short that the strike to the back of Vesryn's legs had been done at a natural height. It was a young boy, curly headed like the man across the room from him, dressed in a little armor set to match. He hid his face like all the others, tucking it into his elbow and lashing out blindly.
And then he noticed what he'd fallen to his knees before. Not a statue, but a mosaic of some kind, the pieces of stone all varying shades of green, but seeming to depict a great emerald dragon, the one thing willing to stare down at him, if only to breathe stone fire down the painted wall at where he knelt. The eyes seemed to glow with energy, though the rest of the dragon's figure was quite stylized and unrealistic. Saraya took note of it, and felt there was no better place for her to remain at the moment, than on the ground in the path of the flames.
A soft touch at his leg, followed by the familiar warmth of a healing spell, preceded Stel's voice by a fair margin. It was far from expert, as was the case with all her magic, but it was enough that the bleeding stopped, at least. A moment later, she shuffled up to sit on her legs beside him. After a pause for hesitation, ingrained into almost everything she did as such pauses were, she lifted her hand to his back, placing it atop his armor where it protected the spot between his shoulder blades.
She leaned slightly into him, putting her cheek against his arm. It couldn't have been comfortable, with the plate there, but she didn't shift around or complain. "Let me know when you're ready to move and I'll help you stand," she said softly, then let herself fall quiet again. Something about the way she said it implied the plural 'you.'
He didn't want to stand or move. Not particularly. His armor felt ten times heavier, and somehow that wasn't so bad. He remained still for a long moment, content to just have Stel at his side. Though he felt Saraya's emotions at times as his own, he was still distinctly aware that the crushing despair, the hopelessness he felt here was not his own, but hers. And if he felt anything of his own, it was sorrow for what she had been forced to endure for so many years, every time she came close to losing her memory and forgetting leading to her just remembering again, and having the pain dredged up fresh again.
"She feels hopeless sometimes," he confided to her, quietly. "Not for us, and what we're doing, but just for herself. No matter how much we're able to do, she and I... every connection she ever had is gone. She can never have anything like what we have. Never speak to anyone. Never touch anyone. She's hardly real anymore." His eyes wandered up to the green dragon mural. He knew what it was full well. The rest of it he'd need to parse through later, if Saraya was willing to be open to him when he wanted to try.
"It can make her feel like she did when I first found her. Impossibly alone in the world. Desiring only to rejoin these people." He glanced one more time at the little boy with the knife on his right, but Saraya directed his gaze back at the dragon, more specifically the base of the mural.
"I'm sorry," she replied, releasing a slow, heavy breath. She turned her eyes up, apparently fixing them on the dragon's, though she was a little too far in his peripherals to be certain. "I wish... I wish there was something we could do." Solutions to those kinds of problems, however, weren't within even the Inquisition's power to fix—not by a long shot.
"But it can't be helping to stay here, can it? To be forced to remember like this by a demon or... whatever this is." Her concern was perhaps warranted; even apart from the possible ramifications for Saraya's mentality, there were other dangers. "It's not... it's not like with Nightmare, right? Not interfering with the connection?"
"No." He shook his head slightly. "And I know... she knows, it isn't helping. But I think some part of her feels it's deserved." As odd as that sounded, that was how he felt, or what he felt of her. That this was where she belonged. But it wasn't right, and Saraya could recognize as well as Vesryn could that remaining here would kill them both, and possibly Stel too. And that was unacceptable.
"I'm ready. Let's go." He let her help him back to his feet, his leg still mostly unsteady beneath him. But with just a bit of lean on her it wasn't unbearable, and they made their way to the nearby door at the end of the hall. He didn't bother looking back at the statues before grabbing the handle and letting the door swing open.
The hallway they entered after that was extremely mundane by comparison. Aside from the same general feeling of forlorn-ness that seemed to pervade the entire mansion, nothing seemed too distinctive. Either the entity commanding it was beginning to weaken, had decided they were poor targets, or it only controlled certain parts of the house to such a large degree.
Stel opened several doors as they traversed the hallway, but the rooms they inspected proved to have little of interest, just more of the same pristine furniture they'd seen in the foyer, styled for different rooms: an office, a child's bedroom, a lounge. Nothing stuck out as obviously important, and they were almost at the end and a staircase down when she opened the final door on their right.
When she did, it was only to bodily collide with another person. Khari staggered backwards upon impact, nearly hitting Asala behind her. “Damn—hold on." She blinked at the both of them for a moment before lunging, wrapping Stel in a hug. “Found you! Or you found us, not sure which." She let go and took half a step back. “Uh... it is really you, right? Haven't seen any illusions like actual people in here so far, but I guess it could happen."
The impact nearly sent Stel to the floor—Khari was considerably more solid than she was, and had been moving quite a bit faster. But if anything, the hug kept her upright, and it didn't take her long to regain her balance. "I don't think that's in its repertoire, no. It probably would have already done so if it could have." She sighed, but if anything, her body language was more relaxed than it had been in a while. Perhaps it was the effect of the extra company—it stood to reason that Loneliness would be less powerful in the face of camaraderie, after all.
A laugh escaped Vesryn, breathy and genuine, and he clapped Khari on the shoulder in greeting, shifting as much weight as he could onto his good leg. He imagined he probably looked something of a mess, but he was hardly ashamed of that. "It's good to see you both." He soon noticed the object that Asala carried, some kind of lens, by the looks of it magical. "What's that you've found?"
"I am unsure," Asala answered, looking at the lens in her hand. "But when I activated it, it showed us the true form of the room we were in, not the one the demon wanted us to see."
“Doesn't seem to be doing much of anything here, though." Khari glanced around, then shrugged. “Still no Zee or Cy, huh? Seems like we should keep looking."
The lens proved to be at least somewhat effective on a few of the other rooms they entered; if they looked through it, they could see what the house really looked like: decrepit, dingy, and covered in spiderwebs. After they came across a doorway with a giant cobweb stretched across it, Khari stopped trying to look through the device, leaving it to the others.
They passed downstairs, without incident this time. When they reached the landing, Khari paused, cocking her head as though she'd heard something. A moment later, the rest of them could hear it, too, shuffling footsteps, followed by a door creaking open at the end of the hall. She tensed, hand reaching back for her sword, but the figures that appeared from behind the door were familiar, and she breathed a soft sigh of relief.
“Zee, Cy! We're over here."
Cyrus's eyes found them first; his posture eased considerably when they did. “Excellent. Wasn't sure where this one would go." He said it like he had expectations for the doors in general, which was admittedly a bit of an improvement over the rest of them.
"Cy," Stel breathed, tone laden with relief. "Zee. It's... really good to see you." Pursing her lips, she made eye contact with her brother. "Any idea what we're dealing with? We must have done something right, if we all wound up in the same place again."
“Loneliness demon." Cyrus's answer was immediate, certain. “I believe it has possessed the house as a whole. Getting out of here will likely require finding the locus of its control and forcing it to manifest, so that we can slay it." He shifted his grip slightly on what seemed to be a book he was carrying under his arm, then eyed the lens in Asala's hand keenly. “May I?" He held a hand out towards her, clearly requesting that she hand over the object.
Once she had, he studied it for a moment, blinking in something like surprise when he peered through it. “Interesting..." Tilting his head, he opened the book with one hand, arm braced against the spine, flipping a few pages with the other until he reached what appeared to be a specific one. It was hard to see the illustration well, but it didn't matter after a moment anyway—the writing on the pages shifted. For several long moments, Cyrus scanned new words, brow furrowed, and then he closed the book with a snap.
“Is there a child's room around here somewhere?"
Admittedly Vesryn had not been paying all that much attention to their surroundings after leaving the room with the elven statues behind. All the house had done up to that point was target either him or Stel in a very personal way. But one of the rooms they had passed on their way here did indeed stand out in his mind, as soon as Cyrus mentioned it.
"There is, actually. We passed it not long before we came here, it isn't far." He limped a step away, beckoning. "Come on, it's just this way."
Cyrus nodded. “I think we'll find what we want there."
Khari followed willingly enough, but her skepticism emerged in her tone if nowhere else. “Which is... what, exactly? And how do you even know?"
“I'm not sure exactly what. Hopefully being able to see the room as it is will provide some hint. As for how..." Cyrus tapped the cover of the book. “This fell off a bookshelf in the library. I suspected it might be important, and it was. The journal belongs to a child. A little girl. She describes being spoken to in her dreams by a friend. It stands to reason that she's the conduit the creature used to enter this plane."
Khari frowned. “Makes sense... but why would it drop the answers into your hands like that? The lens was kind of an easy find too, actually."
Cyrus lifted his shoulders, though his expression did not match the lightness of the gesture. “There's a reason such demons are rare. Their existence is unstable. They feed off of loneliness, but that is an emotion that seeks its own end in a way that Pride or Envy or even Despair don't. Loneliness is a craving for company." He paused, then continued. “Perhaps it wants to be seen."
They arrived in front of the door, then, and Khari opened it back up. Initially, it just looked as it had the first time Vesryn and Estella passed it. But then the lens in Cyrus's hand glimmered, and their surroundings changed, illusion shimmering away like a mirage in the desert.
What it left behind was a rather grim picture. The smell hit them all first, old rot, flesh and wood alike. The source was clearly the desiccated corpse laid out on the bed, a small body that could not have been more than four feet and a few inches tall. Khari sucked a breath in through her teeth, and immediately seemed to regret it, lifting her hand to her face and fitting it over her nose and mouth. “Shit."
Cyrus's expression was grim, but unsurprised. “Her thoughts and feelings would have guided the demon into the world. It's likely to be trapped in a sentimental object. If you were a lonely little girl, where would you put something like that?" He seemed to be asking the room as a whole.
The query provoked an obvious reaction in Stel, who swallowed thickly and stepped past her brother and Khari into the room. "I'd keep it with me," she said, without hesitation. She lingered a moment more, steeling herself for the implications of that statement, and then crossed the room to the bed, old floorboards creaking underneath her. Though the body was half-rotted away, she was careful with it, shifting the little girl's clothes around gently and pursing her lips when she found a pocket.
When she drew her hand away, there was a small object in it. Opening her fingers, Stel uncovered a wooden figurine, carved in the shape of a large dog. "What... what should we do with it?"
A quaking tremor beneath their feet answered first, as if the whole house shuddered at once. Cyrus braced himself on the doorframe; Khari nearly fell backwards into Zee before regaining her balance. “I don't think it liked that."
“Destroy it. That will force the demon to appear."
Estella didn't look especially happy to be doing it, but she nodded, returning her eyes to the figure. She exhaled; flame bloomed at her fingertips and licked up the wood, blackening it and then burning it away entirely. She was left with only ashes in her hand, but for a moment, nothing happened.
Then the house shuddered again, and the ashes gusted away from Stel's hand. Where they fell to the floor, a glowing circle appeared, and from it there appeared what could only have been the demon. In sharp contrast to its more impressive kin, this one was rather small and pitiful, almost like a heavily-deformed child, lumpy grey flesh tufted unevenly with white hair. It hunched, enough that its knuckles dragged the ground, and peered up at them with doleful, watery pale eyes.
Vesryn wondered how many people had ever laid eyes on such a demon before. He stepped forward, his intention clearly communicated by the way he hefted his axe. He had to strongly remind himself that this was not, in fact, a child, that the real child's body was in the bed across the room, and this thing was responsible for the child's death. Not entirely, of course, if he was understanding what had happened here, but all the same, it had to die.
He'd forced himself to strike down things he had no wish to attack before, and as before, he allowed Saraya to do what he was unsure of, and guide his axe back, steadying his weight beneath him, steeling his heart. With one swift, surehanded motion he brought the weapon down, allowing his eyes to close as it found its mark, and letting the sound and the feel confirm that the demon was dead.
Withdrawing the weapon once it was done, he took only a step back towards the others before the house gave another great groan around them, this one much more consistent and urgent. The dying moans of a structure only kept up by this creature's hidden and immense power. He sought his friends' eyes. "We need to move."
And move they did.
It was initially difficult to get their bearings in the house, given that the decaying edifice bore almost no resemblance to the building they'd entered. But fortunately the complete lack of direction they'd all had to deal with when they were getting turned around constantly was no longer present, and they eventually came upon the first hallway they'd entered.
Khari crashed through the door into the foyer, and that was indeed where it spit them out. The front door took more work, locked as it still seemed to be from the outside, but between Asala's magic and Vesryn's axe, they got through with time to spare. The manor collapsed slowly behind them, until it was only a still pile of ruins.
Khari heaved a sigh, bracing her hands on her knees for several breaths. Straightening, she glanced back at the house with a deep frown. “Let's... not ever do that again."