Closed | I can see the lights in the distance

[kadia]

WHO: Lance, Adhemar, Detlef, Fiadh, and Kadi (aka the Order of the Schtick)
WHAT: Questing into a dark and spooooooky forest
WHEN: Middle-ish of October
WHERE: The forest
NOTES: Will update.

The trees are dark silver; the fallen leaves are nearly ankle-deep, and rustle as they walk. There are still enough leaves in the trees to block much of the sky and give the impression the stars are caught among them. The night air is chill and Kadi breathes it deeply, the way the world breathes deep of the pale light from the moon. This was the first place where she was safe. She must make it safe again.

They carry lanterns, of course, but their trail is made by the ghosts themselves. Whichever direction they come from in this dark night, that is the direction they follow. They may as well not carry the lanterns at all; the pale light of the moon bathes everything, and the spirits are unmistakable. Eventually, Kadi snuffs out her lantern so she isn't distracted going forward. She knows these woods, and very few times has resorted to carrying her own light when crossing it. Carrying it now is simply a distraction. Her part is to lead the way; Lance will guard everyone else from what is to come.

Comments

[ferruginous]

Fíadh's fingernails scrape through the dirt floor as her mind reels. She sees blood, she hears screams, she smells burning, it all comes back in a flood of-

A warm hand comes into her view, and a soft voice cocoons her in reassurance. It's just a ghost. It's not real. Her thoughts aren't real. The hand is real, the voice is real. She's here and now. A deep breath in. Out. Slowly she rises, refusing the assistance. Instead she pushes up from the ground on her own and brushes her hands on her trousers. Still, she gives Detlef a pointed look that could probably be deciphered as gratitude.

Then the bell tolls.

Quickly she spins toward the sound and furrows her brows.

"Should some of us return?"

[stableman]

Should they follow the ghosts if they want to be followed? He doesn't have a better idea, though, so he doesn't argue the decision. Instead he gives Fiadh a confused look as his hand is rejected and she glares at him for trying to help. He'd thought they'd reached at least a little bit of an understanding during her visits with Lil Gregor, but apparently not.

"I don't know that I could do more good back there, if it's something other than ghosts causing problems. I'm going onward."

[infinitewatch]

“I—“ Lance stammers, and he turns back on instinct, only to see that now approaching them is a verifiable crowd of ghosts. There are something like twenty in all, and Lance pales to see them all together, drifting forward like a silent, iridescent sea.

“They’re warning us,” he says of the bell, his voice small as he takes a step back and the spirits overtake the party. They drift through en masse, unavoidable, only as ever to proceed forward through the woods.

In the distance glows an eerie light where they’ve begun to stop. To gather.

[mysteriumtremendum]

The village will need to fend for itself.

There is no escaping the luminescent spectres drifting towards them now, and so all Adhemar can do is brace himself for the inevitable. Unsurprisingly, knowing what is to come can only do so much to offset the effects; when the cold seizes him around the heart, he goes to his knees in the dirt, and will need a moment until he’s able to force himself upright again.

Still, he sees where they’ve begun to gather ahead of them through the trees, and it’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they are waiting for an audience or gathering for an attack.

[kadia]

Kadi stops frozen, eyes scrunched shut, teeth biting her lips closed when the first one passes through her. The fear is one thing, but the cold has her shuddering immediately. Grinding her teeth, she focuses on what's ahead and marches. Another passes through her and she covers her mouth, screaming into her hand. She keeps marching. If there's one thing she learned from the commune, it was how to keep moving. She pauses to look back at Adhemar as he falls, making sure he can get to his feet without help. Then it's forward again.

They're so close. Just a few more feet and they can understand what's going on.

[ferruginous]

Considering she now knows what to expect, Fíadh should be perfectly prepared for the unavoidable collision. Except she's not. Except now she dreads the inevitable sensation even more. And when the next one passes through her it takes everything in her willpower to keep breathing, each intake of air a sharp gasp. But in seconds (Minutes? It feels like minutes) it passes and keeps going, and she's still here. I'm still here.

So she moves forward, one foot at a time, and though each jolt of cold and terror is just as jarring as the last she pushes on with the rest of them. She's going to end this and nothing will stop her.

[stableman]

There's no avoiding them, and his panic spikes upward as the ghosts keep going through him. Detlef's glad Colin isn't here, but he's not exactly glad he's here. He can't fight this. He can't do enough to make a difference without it being noticeable, and as they push in he's looking decidedly greener by the moment.

He almost wishes he'd run back to the village to 'help' them, but things are only going to get worse if they don't deal with whatever's out here, he thinks.

[infinitewatch]

A weak, strangled cry leaves the Captain as he’s permeated by spirits, and though he maintains his footing, he clearly goes away for a few moments, seeming to return to his senses a little later than most. He lags behind slightly as they proceed, and as they draw nearer to the glowing semicircle...

the smell hits them.

The ripeness of death, bodies thrown in a shallow pit, half-devoured by wildlife. Bodies of all sizes, few features still recognizable, a nose here, a braid there. At least twenty of them, and if anyone dares venture closer, the further down they go, the more desiccated they are.

The spirits are completely still. Waiting.

[mysteriumtremendum]

What a convivial gathering.

The vicar has performed last rites for enough people over the years to be old hat at managing the cloying stench of death, but the visceral thickness of it is enough to make even his eyes water. He presses a cloth across his mouth and nose, steadies himself, and takes those necessary steps closer to the edge of the shallow grave, to look at the bodies.

And though it is difficult to tell, given how the animals have been at them--

"Traveling clothes." His voice is thick--not from emotion, but the smell (though he's hardly going to correct someone), and then the points towards a woman's bloated, discoloured hand, at the band of paler flesh on one finger. "A missing wedding ring. And other valuables," he adds a moment later, gesturing at belts hastily slashed to aid in the removal of purses.

[ferruginous]

She knows the smell before she reaches the lip of the pit. Fíadh is no stranger to death, but that doesn't make what she's seeing any easier, and her eyes widen in devastated shock as she sucks in a quick breath. Her eyes scan all the faces she can see that still have any solid shape, searching for something familiar and hoping not to find it. But … no, none of them are the ones she knows. And surely they wouldn't let this happen. In guilty relief she forces her shock into pure rage.

Fíadh turns to the nearest ghosts. So far they've shown no indication that they understand language, but they were intelligent to lead the group here … surely they could help further for justice.


"Who did this?"

[infinitewatch]

As if on cue, the spirits all turn to stare off to the south. Who did this, indeed.

Raising his lantern, Lance takes a few steps in that direction to discover the remnants of an old fence jutting out of the fallen leaves. In the distance, he can just make out the shape of an old homestead or hunting cabin, heavily in disrepair.

"There's a house," he murmurs, then half-turns, clearly intent on going to investigate it. "Father, will you... see to them?" He nods gloomily to the bodies, so grotesquely disrespected.

[ferruginous]

Once she realizes that all the specters are staring in the same direction she immediately sets out next to Lance, drawing her sword. Her mind and heart are pounding to only one drive: retribution. Someone is going to pay for this.

A house is certainly a start. She doesn't bother turning back to the rest of the group as she continues onward.

[kadia]

Kadi covers her nose and mouth with a scarf but gags anyway. This is worse than the plague that came when she was a girl. Her eyes water, but this is a small price to pay to lend another pair of eyes to witness this. These people had voices and friends, laughs and smiles unique to them that could never be brought back. They deserve the respect of being seen and mourned.

She catches Fiadh's movements out of the corner of her eye and turns to follow her, jogging to keep up with the long-legged woman.

[mysteriumtremendum]

See to them? What is he supposed to do with a pit of reeking corpses—oh yes, he’s the priest, isn’t he. Where was that old sawbones Parykelsus when the village truly needed him; surely he would be salivating at the prospect of so many autopsies.

“Of course,” he tells Lance with appropriate solemnity, and removes a small, leather bound book of hours from its customary place on his belt. He pages through it in silence, searching for the appropriate recitation.

[infinitewatch]

Lance had hoped that someone might stay behind to help Adhemar -- there are just so many bodies-- but he can't say he doesn't appreciate the company. At least most of it.
When Kadia marches forward to join them, he pauses to shake his head. "Please," he says, "we don't know what's up there." And you have a newborn who needs you, but this remains unspoken.

[kadia]

Kadi sees him and frowns, stopping because this is sort of offensive. Maybe.

"No?" Why is he singling her out, of everyone? Because of her age? That's not something that factored into her old life. "No, we don't. And?"

[mysteriumtremendum]

Adhemar, still searching for something appropriately sombre, eavesdrops on that conversation because he is a nosy bitch.

[infinitewatch]

Lance seems bewildered by the question. Does she just... not care?
"...you've got a little one," he explains, with mild incredulity, "and I'll not take you from her."

[kadia]

So.

So it's more important for Kadi to be there for this one, very tiny person who will never remember, than for her to be there fore everyone here who will very much remember and whose lives might hang in the balance. But it's put to her this way, and she slowly realizes that, to these people, her life means less than it would to her daughter. She's not just another body here, she's her child's mother. So her footsteps freeze, and she has to think on what that means.

"I..." There's a long, long pause as the others march ahead of her. After they've gone on a way, she turns back to help the priest. She can no longer count her own life the same as she did before she was a mother, she realizes. Instead of protesting, she quietly aids the man she can safely aid, far from those taking the true risk. That's her place now, for the sake of her child.

[infinitewatch]

Secretly rejoicing at how easy that was, Lance gives her a respectful nod and turns away again to catch up to the other two. He wasn't prepared to have to argue over why a young parent shouldn't go racing off into danger, but then, he'd be a massive hypocrite for doing so anyway.
She... doesn't need to know that.

He jogs up to Fiadh and Detlef, shining his light toward the shack. There's no motion in it yet, that any of them can see, but there is a strange, human-sized shape out in front of it.

[stableman]

"Hello?" he calls. The person has to see them, with the light and everything, but they're not moving. At all. Somehow that's creepier than if it had been coming at them.

"You know, we could leave. The whole village. We could take all of our houses and gear and just go. The ghosts can have the woods and this house, everyone lives on happily." Despite his words, he's edging closer to the structure and figure. A few moments later he's close enough to see that it used to be a person, but now it's another corpse, wrapped tightly in vines and roots. Great. They're probably about to be up against someone who kills with the Vice, and Shepherds will return in time to find them all dead.

"Good. This is exactly how I was hoping my day would go," he says, stepping back to be close to Lance and Fiadh. How they're supposed to do anything against someone who can use trees he doesn't know, but he's got to try. His cats are back in that village as well as people he cares a lot about.

[infinitewatch]

When Detlef speaks the second time, the person encased in roots starts whimpering feebly.

[ferruginous]

Fíadh keeps step right behind Detlef as he inches closer, white-knuckled grip secured on her sword. Normally she would scowl at his glib remarks but somehow that all fades away to background noise as her eyes remain fixed to the shadowed figure. But she widens her eyes as the realization of what she’s seeing comes into focus, right at the same time she hears the thing whimper. A very human whimper. Instantly Fíadh moves into action, cutting away at the tangles and trying her hardest to keep from nicking the already-suffering person inside.

“Captain, Detlef, help me!”

As wretched as it is a niggling doubt keeps root in her brain; maybe this person is the killer? But she’ll never know if they’re too dead to answer questions.

[infinitewatch]

Lance is close behind them, and hurries forward when Fiadh calls to him.

"Saints alive," he hisses, beginning to saw at the branches with his belt knife in time with the blacksmith, the lantern lighting from below what the moon above cannot.
The more progress they make, the clearer it is that this man is beyond saving: he's not only entangled by the roots, but impaled, his mouth forced open by a stalk that erupts out the side of his neck, the contents of his bowels held in place by the growth that stabs through them. His limbs are bent at unspeakable angles, his eyes rolling and bearing consciousness only to the extent that he is still alive.
Gods only know how long he's been here like this.

The jostling alone has been too much for him, and his cries grow weaker until he lies still, expiring before their eyes. Lance tremulously reaches to close his eyelids, looking to the other two in silent horror.

Anyone casting their eyes about might see a sack lying nearby, or notice the glint below the corpse in the roots where coins have fallen.

[stableman]

He rushes forward, trying to help, but when the man dies Detlef is turning to the side to throw up violently in the nearby bushes. While death isn't new to a vet, this is gruesome and extreme. No one should die like that.

[ferruginous]

Even Fíadh blanches at the state of the poor man and it's obvious that there's no saving him. She lowers her sword in defeat and averts her eyes to the ground, no longer able to look at the gruesome sight. It's down there she sees the glitter of something hidden in the roots along with a sack. She furrows her brows and sheathes her sword before crouching down to inspect it.

She pulls at the roots and dusts off some of the coins, turning them in her hand for a second before grabbing the bag nearby. Inspecting its contents sends a new wave of anger through her: it's full of valuables. Jewelry and money, she thinks she even sees a gem. Shooting her glare back to the dead figure she stands up and turns to her companions, wordlessly handing the bag to Lance.

[infinitewatch]

Lance absently reaches out to place a steadying hand on Detlef's back, his own eyes still glued on the sight before him. He's interrupted only by Fiadh offering out the bag, which he takes and inspects, only to draw the same conclusion. He looks up at her, then to the little house.

Upon entering, a similar sight greets them: roots have come through the window and the floorboards to claim a second body, this one silent and immobile from what they can see. The cabin contains an assortment of weapons: blades mostly, little ones for cutting purses and bigger ones for killing, and the floor is littered with pieces of straps, buckles, bags taken and sorted through.

Highwaymen. Well. Ex-highwaymen.

After taking in this grim spectacle, Lance simply glances to Fiadh and backs out of the cabin again. "We should go," he decides.

Whatever happened here is not for them to understand.