Winterhold College - Altar of Horton
Ace - Level: 9 - Total EXP: 519/90Level 7 Heismay (70/70) Mokou
Word Count: 4573 (+5)
Mokou had been strolling around the room, investigating the various oddities within. But when Heismay moved one of the tiles, Mokou was near the door in question. Thus, with her already nearby, Mokou opened up the door and checked inside to see if anything had changed.
Altar of Horton(?)
Beyond the door Mokou found a crypt in a distinctive ‘underworld’ style, with skulls -and skull iconography- all over the place. A grid of twelve stone coffins occupied the crypt’s center, while at the far end, between two reflecting pools, stood a stone altar or throne. Unfortunately, it looked like this crypt had recently been defaced. The walls and coffins of this tomb bore instances of sloppily painted graffiti, all juvenile jibes and cheeky comments. A number had already been scrubbed away, and a bucket of murky water stood next to the main altar with a mop, but there was no sign of any janitor. Instead, a single sausage rested on the altar’s cushion, just beneath the words ‘Horton was here!’.
Ace peeked through the doorway over Mokou's head, his tension at seeing another macabre looking room cut by the graffiti, at which he let out a chuckle. It didn't look like this area had another exit, but if the group was going to investigate it to find more dice options in case the ones Blazermate had seen weren't what they needed then this door was getting temporarily propped open as well lest any of the five get cut off from each other by mistake.
”I haven’t been here before. This isn’t the room with the giant dice I was mentioning. ” Blazermate said, taking a look at the new room.
”So… uh, what is even this room? Is this the bathroom or something? It has the stall writing on it and everything.””It is probably another puzzle… Of what variety I am unsure. But the janitorial equipment might be part of it.” Sectonia said, summoning an Antler to start to use the mop and bucket to clean off the graffiti so they could all see what was going on.
As the antler began to scrub the paint off the walls and fixtures of the crypt, Heismay approached the entrance from within the Postulant’s Parlor. Upon peering in, he immediately noticed the name scrawled upon the altar, which corresponded to the name on the tile he’d arranged in the Drafting Studio. “So it did work,” he murmured. As he watched, the antler clambered over the main altar to try and erase the perpetrator’s name. The moment it inadvertently set its foot on the plinth, it popped out of existence in an instant, replaced by a thick sausage of ground bug meat.
Heismay blinked. The change had been so sudden that he needed to double check to make sure he hadn’t missed something. One second the antler was there, the next it was gone. Or, perhaps, transfigured. He furrowed his furry brow. “Er…”
”Well… I guess that one was testing traps as well as cleaning… I would not get near that thing if I were you.” Sectonia said, keeping a safe distance from the altar that had transformed her Antler.
"More curses, huh?" Ace said from where he observed at the door frame.
"It's like every door we pick just spells trouble."Sectonia had never seemed to care about the fate of her summoned antlers, probably because they were made from magic and not really alive, if the Cadet had to guess. The very much living bee that had made its home on his shoulder looked slightly aghast at its fellow bug's transformation though. Ace patted it on the head and then covered the orifices that served as its ears.
"Do you wanna try sending one of the little guys over to the caskets too, Queen Sectonia? See if the whole room's out to get us?"Sectonia did just that with a wave, sending a small squad of 5 blue Antlers to investigate the caskets to see what would happen.
When an antler first clumsily brushed up against a stone coffin, a symbol lit up on its surface in ghostly green. The next moment one of its fellows happened to touch another, and for just a moment a different symbol began to glow, before both turned red and disappeared. Without much in the way of direction or smarts, the antlers continued to fumble around for a few seconds, activating one coffin after another. These glyphs, which appeared to be random assortments of dots and lines, offered no obvious meaning.
By watching, though, Heismay realized that they weren’t all unique. He saw one that appeared on two different coffins, albeit briefly, and snapped his fingers. “Wait. Recall your minions. I think I know the trick.” He couldn’t help but smile. “As dungeon puzzles go, this one is almost insultingly simple. Even easier to grasp than three men’s morris.” He snuck a glance at Blazermate and Sectonia as he said this, his tone a little snide.
”Wait… Is that just… matching the symbols? Is that all there is to this one? That’s… so simple! ” Blazermate said, noticing the same thing as Heismay.
”And nothing happened to the Antlers that failed to match something, so… Lets start matching things Heismay!” Blazermate said, happy she could actually do a puzzle. Sectonia meanwhile just scoffed at Heismay’s sass.
With two Seekers on the job and only twelve coffins total, the trial-and-error process took less than thirty seconds total. When two matching coffins were activated in succession, they both crumbled, releasing ghostly energy that spiraled upward into the ceiling. Among the rubble Heismay could see dry, broken bones, but he paid them no mind. In short order all coffins had been matched, and the puzzle solved. A moment of silence passed after the last caskets crumbled, followed by a couple loud, metallic clangs, echoing through the foundation from somewhere within the maze. Then silence reigned once more, at least until Heismay blinked a couple times and remarked, “Well, that seems somewhat promising.”
By that time, Sectonia’s antlers had finished cleaning off the graffitti. The chaotic, misaligned magical energies emanating from the once-defaced altar settled back into their intended pattern, giving off a quiet, intentful, and somewhat malign air of necromancy that the swarm queen could keenly sense.
”Necromancy.” Sectonia said. She didn’t like that spell school for the most part as it often involved the undead. It did have a few useful spells that let you siphon life though, but she doubted that was what was in use here. Smashing her fist against a nearby wall, leaving a small crack and a painful sting in her hand.
That wasn't too surprising given the general aesthetic of the room's interior, even with the coffins being destroyed. After turning his eyes up and looking around to try and identify the source of the noises (it must have been the spell making each room random that made it too hard determine which direction it'd come from), Ace turned back to the rest of the Seekers and jerked his thumb over his shoulder back towards the room they'd come from.
"Unless you wanna mess around with that type of stuff-" which the skepticism in the hunter's voice clearly said that he did not
"-let's see if we can get a new room that's not a dead end."As it was set up now, there was no way forward for them unless they reset either the altar or the drafting studio, and one of them was a much better choice to swap out than the other. They could even try out the other options in the studio before resorting to relying on their luck this time.
Heismay was already on his way out. “That’s enough occultism for me, thanks.” With Ace right behind him, he exited the gloomy crypt and stepped back into the Postulant’s Parlor, its aloof and faded glory much preferable to the sepulcher’s accursed confined. It took minimal effort to remove the statue from the doorway and get rid of the Altar of Horton, but after that the team had a choice to make. “Should we use the blueprint to pick a room?” Heismay asked as he padded over, assuming that’d be the consensus. “And if so, what shall we pick? We could attach ourselves to the connected rooms, or explore somewhere new.” He wondered who, if anyone, from the team was responsible for so many interlinked rooms. If Sandalphon and Edward had met up, he would expect the Seekers’ resident brainiacs to make short work of this maze.
When he reached the Drafting Studio, he found even more rooms connected than before. A quick count confirmed sixteen, over a third of Winterhold’s total rooms if he had to guess. “Someone’s been busy,” he remarked idly.
“If someone has enough time to set up this kind of place, I guess it would check that they would put in as many rooms as they could” Mokou comments, floating through the air, immediately heading over to the nearest door to open it, “An…
Acquaintance of mine had a place like this, but it was less of a puzzle and more of an annoyance because there were an infinite number of rooms you could go to. Things never connected to anything other than the one room so you had to keep track of which doors you went through. Or just burn down enough of them that the host came to get you herself.”
Somehow the Ace Cadet had never considered that the college labyrinth might have a mastermind or something that was doing upkeep on the place, but it made sense now that Mokou mentioned a similar experience. The hunter blinked before saying, half-seriously,
"Huh. If this dice thing doesn't end up working, then at least we've got an idea for plan B!"Without any suggestions on what room to attach to the Postulant’s Parlor with the blueprint before the phoenix made her move, Heismay shrugged and hopped down from the chair, following Mokou as she retried the door that moments ago led to the Altar of Horton.
Oedon Chapel
It was a tall, dark, dingy gothic cathedral, clad in hanging gossamer sheets and dusty cobwebs. Dozens and dozens of urns fill much of the space, their lit candles filling the space with the pungent yet comforting aroma of incense, thick enough to make one's eyes water and head swim. For Heismay, though, the odor was repellent, and he balked from the smell before following Mokou through the door. On the floor of the upper area lay a gaunt,
hunchbacked figure in a hooded red cloak, with long arms, spindly fingers, and only a few teeth. From somewhere in the area though, perhaps a side room, came the irregular but very disquieting sound of squishing meat and cracking bone.
Mokou sniffs the air as she sets down upon her feet, hands firmly kept in her pockets, “Hm. Quite a heavy dose of incense. Ritual of some kind…” she notes, walking through the center of the room and glancing at the gaunt figure nearby, speaking to him without breaking her stride “Hey. Just passing on through.”
The chapel dweller waved, then replied in a somewhat tremulous, high voice. “O-oh, hello! Alive and well, are ya? This here's a safe place. Stay as long as you like. And if you find any sane survivors, tell'em to seek shelter here at Oedon Chapel. 'Cause there's nothing to fear here... Ha hah ha!"
If only it was that easy for people to get here after hearing about it, Ace thought. Although sadly the group had run into hardly anyone that wasn't hostile, and the faceless man seemed pretty safe in the drafting room already.
"Thanks," he told the host. The hunter had stepped in after securing the door to take a look around with everyone else, recognizing that the bit of skepticism he felt at the stranger's reassurance that this was a safe room was likely due solely to how it looked. And maybe the strange noises. Before he did any sort of investigating the Cadet asked the hooded person,
"Any chance you've seen some dice around here?" The creepy dweller looked genuinely apologetic. “Oh no, er, sorry. I don’t get out much. People mostly drop by when they’re sick and ailing, see, and leave once they’re feelin’ better.”
"It's Ya-cool, no worries," Ace replied. The chances of finding what they needed to escape in the who knew how many rooms there were in the maze were already pretty slim, so it was neither a surprise or a disappointment that the dice probably weren't in this particular area.
It only then occurred to the hunter that if people were coming to this room to recover and then heading back out, that the inhabitants of the labyrinth might be travelers that had gotten sucked into it and were now just as stuck as the Seekers were. The rooms themselves implied that people lived in the college, but the woman he and Heismay had encountered early on that had mutated, the artist whose face was stolen, even this person with the clouded eyes might not be consensual inhabitants.
"We're actually on our way out of here - like out of the whole place. Once we get our route connected we could probably take anyone that wants to leave too with us," he said, gesturing to the party at large and glancing at the others to check if there were any that disagreed with his suggestions, though he'd already made it.
"After we look around we can head back to the room we came and go from there."Although it ended up looking a little grotesque, the wizened fellow attempted a smile. “Ah, that’s…very nice of you, yes. I’d like to leave, but there’s always folks here who need help, hm? A-and I can’t walk, exactly, so someone would need to carry me, hee hee…”
”You say you are a cursebreaker of sorts? It seems I have gained something like that in my journeys through this place. Remove it from me.” Sectonia said, not really happy about needing someone like this to ‘cure’ her, but if this is the guy who removed these sorts of things she didn’t have much of a choice.
”My Antlers can assist your exit if you so desire…” she continued, trying to be polite. While she could keep a stoic face, those that had been with her know she was finding this almost painful to ask for.
“Oh, of course!” Carefully, the chapel dweller withdrew a white linen cloth from beneath his cloak. With a shaking, infirm grip he turned it over in his gnarled hands, then gestured at the ground in front of him. “P-please, lay yourself down, with your head in reach. And I-I’ll tend you, best I’m able.”
Sectonia wasn’t happy about any of this. And now he wanted her to lay down? Well, a curse break would probably need something like this… Still she wasn’t the trusting sort and summoned a golden antler to watch over the whole thing. But she wasn’t going to let him know that.
”Very well… That will be your ride out of here assuming things go well…” Sectonia said, wiping down a spot to ‘lay down’, although spending some time recleaning the area after she smashed the ground and injured her hand due to her curse. Now that she was aware of this thanks to Ace, she was really annoyed with it. She could never have proper nails again if she kept breaking them with random punches.
With a spot clear and her strongest Antler on standby, Sectonia finally laid down hands clasped over her chest. She really wasn’t having a great time with this but it would be better than her constantly damaging her nails, hands, and it seems allies.
Carefully, the ghoulish caretaker lifted the cloth to Sectonia’s head. It was so thin that it let light through like paper, but when it fell against her it felt beautifully soft. With utmost gentle slowness, the caretaker drew it along the patient’s brow. It was a shockingly soothing, relaxing sensation: Sectonia had no idea just how bad she really felt until this very moment, yet the next all her discomfort seemed to drain away. A few minutes later the dweller finally removed the cloth, half-soaked with a yellowish fluid, though to Sectonia it seemed like mere seconds. The malady afflicting her was gone.
She wasn’t entirely sure what to think after… That strange cleaning. Relieved sure, but… hm… She had to think about what just happened a bit. She wasn’t totally unaware of a cursebreaker probably being deformed to break said curses, but being ugly itself was a curse as well. Well… she got up, rolled her now relaxed shoulders, and thanked the strange man trying to figure out ‘how could she make someone who was ugly but useful, not ugly?’
“Feeling better Sectonia? If the curse has actually been cleared, I’ve got my own to get rid of” Mokou commented, floating over to the Chapel Dweller and planting the sword she had acquired from the cursed armory into the ground nearby, “Cursed item, gave me a certain psychological taste for the dead. While I
could just learn to live with it…” Mokou trailed off, giving a dismissive wave of her hand, “Well, better to get rid of it if I have the chance. I’m sure you can agree.” Once she laid herself down, the caretaker obliged, gently sponging away her affliction. That left his cloth soaked, and unable to absorb any more disorder until it could be wrung out.
While Sectonia got her healing after taking over the conversation, as a queen does of course, the Cadet had gone to check out the rest of this space. If there were other people in here that had come for rest and recovery, he could let them know about the planned escape too while looking for anything else interesting. There may not be the set of die that Sandalphon needed, but maybe other useful items were lying around in here. The first spot to check would be wherever those dubious noises were coming from. If there was anyone else in the room it would be there. Following them to their source would hopefully not bring the hunter to any more macabre scenes.
He really ought to know better by now, though. In a side room of the chapel Ace discovered an elevator shaft leading upward into the darkness, and upon the lift itself -presumably keeping the pressure plate clamped down- he saw one of the worst things he’d ever seen. It was a horrific,
nightmarish tower of body parts, of arms and legs, tongues and tentacles, misplaced teeth and weeping eyes. Its form shifted constantly, leading to the nauseating noises the hunter had been hearing, and the continuous changes had to hurt terribly. A trickle of tortured gasps and groans issued from the pillar of suffering, only intensifying as Ace came into view and a handful of the eyes swiveled his way.
He recoiled at the sight of it, halfway to backing entirely out of the side room. After a tense and distressing moment where neither Ace nor the horrific amalgamation did anything besides stare, the former let out one shaky breath. It didn't leap to attack him, but on second thought it didn't take an expert of anatomy to realize that it probably couldn't. He imagined it would be difficult for it to move at all as legs and other limbs grew, shifted, and then morphed. Out of all the things those noises could have been, a creature constantly folding in and expanding upon itself was not something Ace would have ever guessed. And the worst part was, this thing did not appear to be immune to its own body contorting, if the sheen of tears in its multiple eyes and the labored breathing was any indication.
Was this not a monster, but a person? The victim of one of this place's horrible curses?
His face going a little green, Ace turned his head away with a grimace. His first instinct was to ask if this former person was alright, but obviously they weren't. If they were like this then the healer in the next room hadn't been able to help them? What was he supposed to do, then? Just leave them to their suffering?
Tumor Fred did not show any other reaction to Ace’s arrival or behavior. It just stood there, changing, twisting, gurgling, whimpering, unable to control itself, the one poor soul that the Chapel Dweller’s Shroud of Dreamt Sins could not save.
Eventually the hunter steeled himself and turned back towards the mutant. Unlike the other Fred he thought this one was able to see and hear, but with several mouths stuffed with its own body parts he wasn't sure about them being able to speak. If they also couldn't mime out their words it would be hard to communicate, but Ace felt it would be very cruel to write them off and not to at least try.
"Are you... still in there?" he settled on asking after taking more than a few long moments to sort his thoughts.
The first thing he heard was a
chck-chck-chck-chck sound of one of the monster’s arms splitting in half to become two molar-filled jaws, but a moment later, a groan escaped Tumor Fred that was too deliberate to be coincidental. “Yyyyy…yyyyyyyyy…”
That simple noise dashed any lingering doubt that the miserably deformed thing was, in fact, a person. Ace didn't know if that should be good news or bad.
"Okay... okay. You're hurting, right? Do you think you can be moved? We can try and find you some help," Ace said, with brief pauses during to let the Fred reply as best he could. It answered laboriously: yes, no, and no.
Not being able to move meant that if they were to find help for the poor guy, they'd have to bring that help here, but... a 'no' to being helped?
"What do you...?" Ace started, trailing off quickly as he knew anything more complex than the vague affirmative and negative sounds would be too hard for the Fred.
"You don't want help?"There was not even a moment's hesitation before Tumor Fred forced the same sound from one of its throats. "...nNNnrht...."
Ace felt his stomach drop. He wasn't that naive that he couldn't figure out what the writing lump of body parts meant when he implied he was hurting but didn't want help, at least not in the traditional sense that the hunter was offering. Anyone could see that this unfortunate Fred was suffering and unable to do a thing about it, and if it had been like that for a long time then what it was asking wasn't unthinkable. Even so, Ace was confirming it himself before he even knew it.
"Are you sure? You- You don't really want someone to just... put you out of...?""..Yyeth.s.. . .."
Ace swallowed hard.
"Come on..."He glanced back at the doorway to the main room, though it didn't seem like he was lucky enough that another Seeker would find the two of them and make this awful choice for him. He really, really didn't want to be the person in this position, but then again he also wouldn't have wished it on any of his friends either.
Looking back at Tumor Fred, Ace bit the inside of his cheek and forced his gaze to sharpen, looking for any signs of a vital spot. Its insides probably shifted just as much as its outsides did, which was a horrible thought. His job description in the Old World technically included the duties of carrying out capital punishment, but he'd been fortunate enough to never have even been given the opportunity to do it. He had put suffering monsters and animals down before, but this was a person - somewhere in all of that. The only humanoids the Cadet had fought in this world had been hellbent on killing him or another Seeker, which was a totally different situation than this. Even though this Fred was a total stranger, he didn't feel like he could do
this kind of mercy killing... but it wasn't really about him. And if he was going to do it anyway, he was going to do it was quick and painless as possible.
He'd only realized that he'd held his breath at some point during gathering his thoughts when he released it all at once, not completely resigned to this course of action yet.
"...really sure?" he asked, voice quiet.
Tumor Fred shifted just slightly, a twitch of its upper section as though attempting to nod before it just cried out pitifully. "hhh.. . .Yyyth...."
Eventually Ace nodded too, silent. Internally he was grasping for some kind of wordplay that might cheer the guy up in his final moments, but the longer he thought on it without finding any the more his resolve started to falter. So instead he fumbled with his weaponry, quickly settling on the heavy bowgun. It was more impersonal than a melee weapon, but a shot would be faster and it was better to use something he was completely familiar with to reduce the chance that he messed this up.
"Ready? It... it'll be quick.""...tyeh..."
The monster hunter took aim, focusing down and past the bowgun's front sight until he could see a faint pulsing under the Fred's flesh. That had to be his heart -or
a heart- moved up. For Tumor Fred's sake Ace prayed that destroying one was all it would take.
The whole encounter from start to finish had only been a few minutes, but when Ace rejoined the other Seekers in the chapel's main room he was paler than he had been last they'd seen him. Perhaps they'd heard the gunshot and the silence devoid of the crunching and squelching sounds that followed it. The Cadet himself only said,
"I'm ready to get out of this place as soon as possible."Ace would hear no arguments from Blazermate or Sectonia, both having their own reservations about the place. But it seems they at least have another person to bring with them, being held by the golden Antler Sectonia summoned. Looking almost comically small in the large bug’s hands. Once everyone stepped out of Oedon Chapel, Heismay allowed the door to shut behind them, bidding farewell to the foul-smelling and ill-omened place for good.
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