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

[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.]