The wall makes a deep slurping sound as it sucks the blood from Alexander’s hand. His face tries to hide the agony he is withstanding, but they can all tell he suffers. With his eyes pinched and his teeth clamped, his skin turns pale. After a good five seconds, the vacuum fades and he falls on his back.
“Are you alright?” Lyssa stands over him. His eyes are wide open, his irises shifting rapidly between blue and grey, as he gasps for air.
“I’m well enough”, he coughs and rolls onto his side to get up again.
“Well, whatever you did, Alexander, it worked. Look.” A deep red colour, darker than blood, smooths out the cavity of the ominous rune. The priest’s blood hardens rapidly. The clotted blood starts to crack and with every crack a muffled noise of scraping stones echoes from inside the church.
Right in front of their very eyes the rune begins to grow in size, pushing away the bricks surrounding it. A doorway is created, framed by bloodied stone, revealing the inside of the cursed sanctuary.
“Shall we?”, Oslando whispers, both weapons drawn and ready to strike down any foe coming for them.
He steps through the opening. Bruq follows him closely and so does the small Merodius Darvantigo. Dargothoth, still disguised, joins them after Lyssa helps him stand up.
“Thanks”, he says while grinding his teeth, as if politeness physically hurts him.
“It’s okay. Just don’t do to us what you did to our guide.” Her face shows a string of different emotions, but he mainly recognizes kindness and sadness.
“I will try to contain myself”, he sadistically jokes while grinding his teeth. “We’ll all be fine.”
(Perception 11)
They enter some kind of storage room, mostly filled with barrels, some whole, some broken, and a lot of functionless items. There’s a door to their left, luckily without another blood rune, and it forms the only exit from the macabre scene on their right.
A dead acolyte lies in the corner in front of four big paintings. His eyes are heavily covered by an excessive amount of dried blood. His mouth is subject to the same condition and, right were the heart of this human would be, a black and red crystalline object is stabbed.
“I guess this one isn’t a cultist”, Bruq states.
(Arcana 16)
“Don’t touch the dagger. It’s blood magic as well. It will kill you.” It’s strange to hear grim news in the friendly and slightly high pitched voice of the innocent sorcerer.
“Thanks for the heads up, Mero”, the half-elf says, taking a step back from the corpse.
“Alexander, do you know what religious order he belonged to?”
(Religion 21)
“He is just wearing plain brown robes, nothing to deduce from this”, he tells them, causing Bruq to sigh. “The paintings, however”, Alexander says in a louder voice, “give it away. They portray four different gods. Corellon Larethian is on the left, the god of that created the elves. The radiating man on the next painting is the god of sun and light, Pelor. Beside that is Sehanine Moonbow, the elven goddess of the moon. The one on the far right is the Raven Queen, self-proclaimed goddess of death.”
They look at the different symbols and deities illustrated on the canvas, most details hidden beneath layers of dust.
“They are, in the order of which they are standing, the gods of the spring, summer, autumn and winter. If I’m correct, this church is dedicated to the gods of the seasons.”
Oslando nods his head slowly. “Well, thank you for sharing”, he says without making his distrust audible.
(Investigation 18)
As they try to come up with a plan for when they run into the cultists, Lyssa kneels down near the cold corpse, noticing that his state of decay doesn’t match his body temperature.
“What do we have here?’, she whispers to herself with a joyful melody and removes the necklace of the acolyte.
“Lyssa, what are you doing?” Mero observes how the siren captain is dangling a thin string with a brass key hanging from it in front of her.
“He had this around his neck”, she says. She sounds absent. When she scratches some dried up blood away, it reveals a message to her: “to use when in need”.
(Wisdom 6)
She is startled and lets out a short but loud scream of panic.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” The satyr’s grip around the glaive tightens, ready to slay an invisible enemy threatening his companion.
“The key is singing to me”, she stammers during her hyperventilation. “It’s singing the same rhyme over and over again. It’s screaming! Make it stop!”
Bruq helps her release her grip on the metal. She calms down and holds it by the cord again.
“It stopped”, she sighs in relief.
(Arcana 12)
“It’s magical, alright”, Merodius says, although the information he provides seems to be unnecessary. “What did it say?”
She stares into nothingness as she recites the rhyme.
“Three chests hiding in front of my eyes,
but only from one you may claim your prize.
Unlock one to fulfill your desires and greed.
Word of advice: only to use when in need.”
And as she speaks these words, three wooden chests materialize out of thin air.
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