"Alright I got your rats. Coming up!"
Tie the sack'o'rats to the bottom of the chain. Then climb out outta the hole. Then pull the chain up after.
The chain, unfortunately, is still about as high up as you recall. This all but excludes the immediate possibility of you attaching anything to it - well, not in any reliable sense, anyway. You could try to pull off something ridiculous and try a mid-air connection, but this seems a bit too unlikely to even properly consider.
However, you are pleased to note that now that you're endowed with some proper desperation, you can reach the chain just fine if you use the bag of rats as a jumping-off point. The rats don't seem pleased about you trying this, but you don't exactly hold their opinion in high esteem.
"Thanks," I whisper, and leave the room.
It seems like there's something bigger than kidnapping going on here - I should probably figure out what the queen was talking about. I search the castle for anything pertaining to stoats or minders.
You head out of the hallway and over to the foyer, supposing that rooting through the other rooms in there is probably not worth the effort. As you wander down the steps, you find yourself looking up. The ceiling is painted, and quite unusually so at that. Organic curves and grooves arranged into the shape of grayish sulci and gyri, split in half longitudinally - a map of the surface of the cerebral cortex, and a rather elaborate one at that.
You slow your descent to examine it in a little more detail, and notice something stranger still - the shape of it isn't rendered in mere paint, but rather in differing densities of miniscule writing in a script that seems unfamiliar at first glance. It is only as you stop halfway down the stairs in distraction that it starts to become legible... vaguely. The letters are tiny enough, the words unfamiliar enough to complicate the task, presenting an overall impression of linguistic pointillism. Masterfully done, to be sure. The mere examination of it makes your eyes tingle ever so slightly.
"Yeah... sure... Maybe tomorrow when they finally see fit to release me." Leif says with mild disgust creeping onto his face.
Don't go any closer to the guy, rather wait him coming closer. If he does and keeps offering the stone, then pick it very carefully (to minimize contact with stomach acid) and wipe it clean on the skirt. Give it a cursory examination and put it in some wedge of the skirt where the coin is. Then shake the door and yell for guards.
You choose not to snatch up the gemstone immediately - the crazy guy unsteadily keeps offering it to you. "Take it," he says, and begins to rise from his position. "I need you to take this, take this away - I need to be free for the next part," he says, starting to approach. Unsure of what he's talking about, you humor him and delicately take the stone in two fingers, wiping it on your skirt. You'd rather not get any digestive fluids on your fingers - that's how you catch weird diseases, you know.
The gemstone is red and asymmetrically oval, about the size of your fingertip, with a small black core from which many almost invisible filaments seem to erupt, a small and seemingly almost organic structure frozen in precious stone. It draws the eye rather well, you find, and once you look up, you see that the crazy guy appears to have fully recovered from his vomiting, and now appears to be pacing back and forth.
You decide to put the gem away for now, hiding it in a fold of your skirt, and move on with your current plan, which is to make a lot of noise and yell for some guards to approach. Banging on the door with all of your might, you almost manage to drown out your own voice. Almost.
Moments afterward, the figure of what you assume to be the turnkey appears, a ragged, heavily scarred man who happens to be slightly larger than you. On his forehead you see a dagger-made rendering of a third eye. His actual eyes just about keep up with it in the ability to unblinkingly stare at you. He says nothing, probably expecting some complaint or another from you.
Right. Go to the chapel and see if they have a spare robe or something lying around. Maybe an actual bag with which to hold my riches.
You head down to the courtyard and step into the chapel. You find it surprisingly ostentatious, yet very much empty - the inside is perfectly polished stone of gentle beige only broken up by small sections where the wall has been partially stolen, letting in air and light alike. There are but two pews, one with its back missing, arranged irregularly right by the very entrance, and the rest appears to be taken up by a conspicuously bare chamber. Where there once seemed to be side chambers, there are now only empty doorframes that appear to lead directly outside.
The chamber itself does look like the altar area of a church sans the actual altar - it has a semicircular shape, with tall windows of stained glass in the back that nobody appears to have harmed yet despite the generally looted-looking state of the rest of the place. They let in quite a lot of sunshine, filling the center with intermingling color generated by their filtered light. You'd almost say it looks brighter in here than it does outside.
In the middle of it stands a very unkempt priest, facing away from you with his arms wide open, humming meditatively. His robe is covered in shimmering gold sequins that upon closer examination appear to be gold coins polished to complete smoothness. You step progressively closer, but the priest pays you no immediate mind. You politely beg his pardon and ask if he's got a spare robe.
The priest lowers his arms and goes silent. He is not a small man by any means, and the heavy robe makes him look even larger. "Hm?" he intones as he turns around, and you repeat yourself. "A spare robe?" he repeats. "I did, once. Why do you ask, child?"
You look down at yourself. He looks at your sack-tunic. A few moments pass as he attempts to make sense of it.
"Well," he says eventually. "I do begin to see."
Scratching his great expanse of beard, he furrows his brow. "I may be able to help. Though... I must admit I do not recognize you at all. Have you... been in the chapel before?"
Eric Codeburn, COMPUTISTICS SPECIALIST
- Wounds: 1
- 6514 gp (non-sequential)
- Gold-Backed Burlap Torso Garment
- Inscribed Brick ('Water')
- Anglefork Castle: Demon Prince
Benny Calverly, Barber
- Naked
- Finely Crafted Knotted Sack-Club
- Rat Pantheon: Enemy of the Gestalt
- Sack of Enraged Rats (and 214 gp)
Leif Erikson, Miner
- Traces of Gore: Bits On One's Bits
- Reappropriated Skirt
- 1 gp
- License to Bathe
- Anglefork Castle: Lunatic
- The Prison Stone
- Elongated Affairs: A Noble Task
- Elongated Affairs: The Numbers of the Stoat
- Wounds: 1
Robert Johnson, MLG
- Naked
- A Word: WATER
- Traces of Mischief: Blackened Fingers
- Traces of Mischief: A Choking Odor
- Heavily Improvised Sack-Flail (110 gp)
- The Mind, It Goes A-Wandering: 4
Eileen Minett, Vinyl Collector
- Queenly Garments: the Humble Dress
- Sticks: 0.95 (total)
- Rat Pantheon: Disliked
- Traces of Mischief: Mouthful of Blackness
- Anglefork Castle: the New Queen's Confidant
Author
Topic: Our Salvation: It Is Written (Read 263767 times)