may 27th, night

[unabatedly]

Something's going on here by the lake.

[An understatement, to be certain, considering the events that transpired at the seance.]

I can't get close enough to get a clear idea but... It was just like in that room, with the spirit and the board. Something isn't right. I'm trying to get close enough to the moors to see what's out here.

[The King in Yellow. Prepare your allegiance. It could very well be connected to the play and she doesn't doubt it. But Ambrose had mentioned the lake. She has to know.]

It smells out here just like the other night. Minerals... Sulfur? [She sighs.] There has to be something here. I just can't see it.

[But then her voice quickly goes silent for several moments, as if she's stopped broadcasting entirely. But then, there's a quiet thought: Someone's here. Over there. And whoever is there, whatever is there, is enough to apparently stop her from thinking or broadcasting, much less concentrating on what might be going on.]

Oh, Maker. What is--

[And that thought is interrupted by a single, almost deafening, shout from Neria, one of utter panic and terror, and then there is truly silence and nothing else.



... At least, there is for a moment. then, abruptly, all-too-loudly in the Investigators' ears, there's the blare of a trumpet - a sound echoes only moments later by an audible clarion-call over the moors. A rustling, gurgling sound follows rapidly, cloth and friction and running water... and then silence again. In that silence, the sensory feed from the telepathic network comes on, and for a moment it is still and black.



Then it is not.

And then, in a sulfurous burst of fire that the Investigators can feel on their skin and a noise like the clanging of gates and chains, the familiar presence of the network is gone from their minds altogether.]

Comments

[willyousee]

Neria!

[It's suddenly like shouting into a deadened room - the absence of psychic presence was something he thought he'd be grateful for, but this is the exact opposite of soothing. Immediately heading for the lake at a run, not even bringing a candle with him, Alcuin puts his mind to work trying to push past the panic and find a way to make a connection with her.]

[There is something cutting him off - a slick, shifting barrier unlike any shield he's ever felt. It feels smothering, almost liquid to his mental fingers, and memories of the phantom sensation of drowning at the seance make him recoil. But Neria was panicked, and it's a long way to the lake. Honing his thoughts to a slim edge, like he would to find the seams in a Traveler's shields, he searches for a thin point and pushes--]

[powersthatbe]

[Neria is not on the other side. Instead, his mind is immediately in the midst of a thousand searching filaments of consciousness, each one seeming to inhale and exhale thought, a thousand eyes in the darkness, a caustic mist, a fluttering column of bats. Drowning in a color. He finds himself immediately in poessession of words and languages he has never heard before, but they come at the cost of many of his own thoughts, his own words. Reaching for a familiar concept, he will find instead a thought on the slow torsion necessary to sculpt living ribs into decorative shapes. He is being watched. Learned. Digested. ]

[willyousee]

[ He immediately recoils, trying to throw up his own protections, but it's harder to grasp now. Fleeting shimmers of shields coalesce and then flicker out again, blocking a few things but not everything despite his efforts. The way back is shut, slurping closed like mud over his head. There is no sense of where he is, what he might be doing, what he's seeing... nothing. Everything is here. Everything is now. Everything is bizarre landscapes of shapes that are difficult to comprehend. Neria is still out there somewhere. So instead of retreating, he stands his ground and hopes that he's still moving in the outside world. ]

Where is Neria? [ It's hard to shape the words properly, but words are his forte. It will take more than a brush ] Please, what is it that you want?

[powersthatbe]

[There are flashes. A dark room, a steel table, a sudden bright light flaring. A bubbling mire. A blare of trumpets and a hammering force driving him to his knees. The feeling of sharp teeth scraping across his scalp. It is not a brush or a comb.]

[willyousee]

[Ducking instinctively, he covers his head, fighting back the rising fear and finding a core of anger beneath it. Still, he tries to keep his voice steady and calm, though he's never been as good at that in psychic space as he has been in the real world. The trumpet is familiar, the notes burned into his memory at the seance. Raising his face to stare into the center of the mindscape, he opens his hands to plead and cries strongly:]

Forgive me, your Majesty, if the King in Yellow you are. You sent your herald to speak through us and we are trying to understand. Please, my lord, release her. Speak plainly that I might carry your message and others may understand, but please, let her go!

[powersthatbe]

[Another flash comes, of terrifying masks that smile in hideous contortions of what might be considered a friendly manner. An idea, like a spike, is embedded with it. Masked figures are to be honored. A knife flashes in the dark, a sense of threat, rising, tightening within his throat. An image of Neria, shrouded in white, something about the shape of her unmistakably wrong. A sense of confusion, and approval. Inhuman shapes are to be honored. A vast block of sandstone, crumbling rapidly. In the desert is danger. In fire, danger. Shun the hot places. Drown the heat. ]

[willyousee]

[A gasp of shock catches in his throat and becomes a scream as thought after thought sink into his mind, splitting fissures through it as they find homes, heedless of the wreckage they might cause. He can't pull away, paralyzed by pain, fear, and rising awe, but as soon as the last thought is in place he wrenches free. Scrambling away, he somehow manages to gain his feet and collect enough of his mind to recall how he got in. Names of gods he can hardly remember fall from his lips in a broken litany as he molds his shattered mind into the thin blade to cut through the membrane of this place and try to escape back to the other world. ]

[He must take the message. Must bear the news. The King is come. Douse the heat, revere the perfected. The King is come.]