Poisons and Useless Adults

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Hey, guess what we did? Yep, more spell hunting. These guys are relentless, can they even Cast all these ridiculous things they want to find? I’ll go see if I can help, not much else to do around here if they’re all busy. Study, you say? Study what? It’s nearly Fall Break.

They are all convinced the Auditorium must hold more secrets, so we head back. There’s no tub for mana this time, thank goodness! Remy’s been a bit more touchy since the last time. They all scatter about, and I hang out near the stage. Dalish says there’s something else going on around the stage, but Maribeth is too afraid of getting boo-ed to go up there. Dalish goes and finds brooms, but then Klyce and Remy find some cue cards up in the rigging.

They spend a lot of time playing with those. Apparently if you write something on one, and an actor asks for his line, it appears on his hand. But no spell appears when they do this, so it has to be something else. They go around and around for awhile. Eventually writing the line “How do we find illusory script?” The voice in the audience answers that one, though. “Not like that.” They try writing “And then he discovered the magic spell.” This one works, and they get a spell, but I can’t see it. Besides, I’m too busy trying to find the voice in the audience, so I can sit in its seat.

Then Gerhardt finds magic on the balcony rail. This leads to some rather crazy behavior. Whispering on stage does nothing, but shouting and screaming from the balcony casts the silent spell. Only, it doesn’t appear anywhere for them. Remy breaks the railing and brings part of it down to see if it silences the voice, which it does, but still no spell. Then someone looks inside the railing tube, and notices it is written on the inside. The boys with pets send them inside so they can see the writing, but only two of the guys can do that. Klyce transforms his hands into claws and cuts open the tube so everyone else can get the spell.

We all check around the building some more, and just as we’re about to leave, Dalish remembers the brooms. He and Remy have a sword fight with them, and Dalish pretends to die. He gets Feign Death floating above his head. It takes Remy a couple tries to make the death look real. Klyce isn’t a good actor. Gerhardt tells a death joke about Socrates, and he gets both spells at once! Maribeth tries it with a ray of sickness, a cup and everything. I think she deserves the spell, but the stupid magic doesn’t.

When it’s time to head to Nat’s house, the school provides carriages and we ride out with no adult supervision. We ride all day until it gets dark and the horses get tired. So, we pull off and make a small camp. Some people sleeping on the ground, and the rest of us in the carriages. We argue about setting watches, after all we’ve been through, and eventually agree on who will watch.

Partway through the night, there’s a bunch of shouting. Brigands have come to rob us! Oh goodness! It’s terrible! Klyce tries to get them to leave, because we have magic and they don’t. But they already stabbed Dalish and shot a couple of people. I toss one in the air to try to help convince them to go, but they just don’t. When they’re all down, we start hearing hoofbeats. Lots of hoofbeats, so we get the horses to run! A bunch of natives come out of the woods and start chasing us and shooting at us, but we just keep running.

Nat got poisoned by an arrow, so we just keep pushing the horses until we get to town and head up to the family estate. The servants meet us at the gate and help carry Nat inside. Nat’s parents come down, and almost spill the secret before shuffling us off to bed. We’ve told them everything, surly the’ll take care of it.

But the dreams come again. Showing me a huge lake, with hills and fields. And it’s all pulsing, beating. To the north, I feel a weak, fast heartbeat, seperate from the ground. The voice comes again. “She approaches. Burning as the sun. She approaches. Long wither is broken. Fire and destruction. Death and rebirth. World without end.” The heartbeat vanishes. I know it’s Nat when I wake with a start. Nat’s in danger!

I run down and find Nat’s room. Kendrick and Mahalla and a doctor stand over the bed. Nat is really sick and will die, they tell me. Will die unless more of the poison can be gotten. I implore, but none of them seem willing to go risk their lives for Nat. I storm out, yelling at them that we’ll go do it, just keep Nat alive. It’s the middle of the night, though, we can’t go now. I go back to bed until morning.

Rousing at my usual time, I go down to meet everyone at breakfast, but most of them don’t show up. I fill Remy and Gerhardt in and we go find everyone else. It takes a lot to convince Maribeth to get out of bed, she did not fare well with our fight and flight to get here. Remy goes to pack everything we will need to travel. The rest of us talk to Mahalla about the natives in the area. They are called Cree and they are very ruthless and angry. Great… just great.

We head out, going back to our campsite and setting up watch for the night. Half-hoping that they’ll show up again, but they don’t. In the morning, Maribeth follows their tracks back into the forest, past warning signs of blood and bone, and out to a hilly plain, with a lake in the distance. I confirm this is where we are supposed to be. Maribeth knows a bit about these people, so she makes a little nature doll of the Green Witch to show our peaceful intent.

We start to head towards the village at the edge of the lake. The people come out and surround their homes, a drumbeat starts. I don’t like this, at all. Maribeth steps forward and a woman from the village matches her. Remy follows at a slight distance, and two men step out to match from the village. I step out to match their numbers, but two more step out, so I step back, and so do they. Maribeth meets the woman and they speak quietly for a bit. When she comes back, she tells us that the poison was not proper, and they are going to speak to the one who shot Nat.

We wait a long time before the woman reappears, and when she does, it is with an offer for single combat for the poison. We ask for details of what is allowed and are told anything for weapons, including magic. We have a bit of a fight over who will stand, mostly Remy fights, though no one is arguing with him. We decide on Remy and head forward. T’he’chak the wolf introduces himself and the fight begins. He’s a lot bigger and stronger than Remy, and eventually, even Remy’s magic cannot hold out. Klyce manages to shame T’he’chak into not killing Remy and we walk away.

The woman, however, stops us and takes Maribeth into the village to meet their witchwoman. When she returns, she has the poison we need, so we hurry back to Nat as fast as we can.

The Kids are Not Alright

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On the way back to the house, I ask Nat if maybe Professor Alleria can help me. I don’t do what Nat does, I can’t use divination, why did I have dreams about that horror show? Nat says she probably already knows I want to talk to her, so if she has answers, she’ll probably find me. So, when I go to her office and find a note, I’m not surprised. I am a little surprised by what it says. “Nothing I can do for you, dear.” Man, she’s just like all the rest of them. Everyone thinks I’m weird and impossible.

Where should they go looking for spells next? Nat wants to go to the catacombs, like we haven’t seen enough dead bodies lately. Remy wants to go to the Kitchens. Dead people or servires… I think I’m with Nat on this one. But no one else is, so we troop down to the Kitchens. Remy has to do some fast talking, and they want him to own them a favor. Ugh! Never! Even Remy is put off by that. Instead, he offers them Barry for a week. Barry seems not to care, and they agree. Everyone else goes in, but I stay by the door, keeping an eye out for any adults coming by.

They futz around for awhile, poking the fireplace and then a big door. Eventually, Remy comes over to me in a huff, insisting I come inside. The others have stopped responding and he needs to go into the cold room, but doesn’t trust the servires to keep the door open. Fine! I go hold the door, keeping my eyes on the creepy little chefs. They’re in there for a while, so I start sending Messages in. They’re fine, but they still don’t come out for a while. They do come out eventually, with something called False Life. Seems creepy to me.

I head back to the door, but now I watch them instead of the hallway. They peer down a trap door for a bit. I think Remy even sends his little lizard guy down. But they decide, whatever is down there, is not worth exploring, and the fireplace seems like a better idea. They whisper for a while, and when I toss in a message, they ask me to stay at the door and slam it shut once they all get out.

Remy grabs some fire out of the fireplace, like a little blob of it and takes off running. Everyone follows him. The servires start screaming immediately to put it back. Nat casts a fog cloud to blind them, and once Gerhardt gets out, I slam the door shut in the face of something I don’t Ever want to see. It sounded like a Huge Servire. Once we get outside, Remy is all smiles, writing down a new spell, but everyone else just looks tired.

My green dreams are gone that night, but the ground now has a heartbeat in my otherwise normal dreams. Why? Why? Why???

Remy tells us he overheard Malden and Garian arguing over dangerous experiments and something called Project Ambrosia. Malden threatens to kill him if things don’t stop happening. When Malden left, Garian called him foolish and said he had infinity in front of him!

Maribeth tells us of terrible dreams she’s still having of her grandfather. He says war is coming. She says the fire talks to her too, of Blood. He says her friends will leave her and she will know the time has come.

We all get a fieldtrip right before Fall Break. Professor Lerin takes us out to the Petals to show us all the work being done to build fully magically automated buildings. It’s beautiful and amazing! There’s a new Sanctum Pitch that can hold fifty thousand people! He says we can come out to a game once it’s finished. The professional league will play here, and our whole team can come watch.

Then it happens again. There’s a flash of blue on a screaming woman ahead of us. I try to push her up into the air, away from all the people, but I’m too slow, and everything explodes! Lerin saved us, he saved us all. He saved our whole class, but not himself. Gerhardt tried to save him, too, but it was too late. That explosion was just too much.

They escort us back to school. We relate the story to the professors who meet us at the gate. Lerin’s funeral is very small, but we all go. To remember him.

The headlines are terrible. War and Terrorism.

Nat tells us that his family has invited us all to Spring Break at their house. It’ll be nice to get away for a while. But Nat says it’s not normal, says something must be wrong. Well, nothing is right anymore. How bad could it be? What if they’re just being nice? We’re all going to go with Nat, even if we have to tell Klyce’s mother about the invitation to get him to go.

NoNoNoNoNo!

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The police separate everyone back into lounges, adults in one and kids in the other. Apparently, they don’t suspect us kids, because as they interview the adults they let them then join us. I’m not staring at Oliver talking to all the cool kids, I’m not! Hey, where’s Klyce?

When he shows up, Klyce drags us all out of the lounge to go searching for clues. Why are we Doing this? The Police are here… But we go look at the bedrooms upstairs. We find a spot of blood, a knife, and some bloody clothes in Philomena’s dad’s closet. That was easy… a bit too easy… You don’t kill someone and then leave the evidence in your hamper. You just don’t.

We head to the next room, which is full of police. Dalish starts to spill, and Klyce cuts him off, backing us all out of the room. Over in Philomena’s mom’s room, we find an old desk, that Maribeth breaks into. She reads a bunch of letters from several different men, but then puts them back, insisting they aren’t relevant to bloody murder. Love seems a fair motivation to me…

Next we go down the back stairs and hear the police talking to the kitchen staff. They don’t seem to know much, but are lamenting Karl’s death. Klyce asks them forcefully about a basement and they insist that only the Butler has the key. The butler, Ulysses, is very polite, and Klyce is actually nice to him. He takes us downstairs, and watches us, getting nervouse when we get near expensive wines. Nat uses a wand to discover a secret door in the back of the cellar, but Ulysses is Not going to let us go down without the family’s permission.

Klyce heads upstairs to get that permission and returns a few minutes later with Philomena in a huff. I can only imagine the horrible things he said to her. She tells Ulysses to open it, however, so we are allowed in. Remy immediately begins detecting really strange magic, and as we walk down the catacomb path, the door slams shut behind us.

I do not like this, I do not like this at all! Ulysses doesn’t like it either, and as we continue on, he begins coughing horribly. There seems to be an increase in mana in the air down here. Suddenly, there is whispering in the air.

“More Meat!”

NoNoNoNoNO! I tell the others what the strange whispers said as tiny creatures begin to attack us all. Klyce tosses Ulysses into a Rope Trick and I Levitate up to the ceiling, curling up into a little ball. Maribeth falls, and I go down and drag her up into the Rope Trick, pulling the rope up behind us while the rest fight off the little monsters.

Klyce comes up after the fight is all done, and Alters Ulysses so he can breathe, but he’s still unconscious. We leave him in the Rope Trick, with the rope pulled up and we keep going. Nowhere to go but through. The Mana gets thicker and thicker as we travel, and even Klyce starts having trouble breathing with how thick it is. I use Gust to keep it out of my face, but it barely helps.

Towards the end, we find all the recent graves have been messily robbed. What is Going On down here? Are they eating the corpses? Are there skeletons walking around? We start hearing moaning. Nat says to hit undead things with sticks or spells. Gerhardt casts Grease on the ground in front of us, and we prepare to burn them down.

The Grease works, they all scramble and fall and get lit on fire. I control the fire a bit, to keep them burning, these horrible moaning undead things. The others finish them off. This is the worst place we’ve been, yet. Soon we start seeing liquid pools of mana on the ground, it seems to be seeping through the ground. The tunnel ends then, no more graves have been dug.

Nat thinks we’re under the stables or servant quarters, so we head back, to get above ground. The Rope Trick and Ulysses are gone! We make it back to the door without getting attacked again, at least, and Nat finds the way out. The police are still there, with different servants. Don’t worry, they tell us, the father has been arrested, it’s all over.

We head out to the servant’s quarters at a run. We find a door to a basement and head down. GREEN! No!NO!NO!NO!No! I stare, unmoving, while everyone else spreads out. They find dead bodies everywhere, in a variety of states of decay. The whispers start again. Nonononono… Nat asks me about my dream. I was just running, and they were whispering. Just running.

I step forward, trying to hear better. Just whispers.

“Where are you? I can’t hear you.”

“She approaches. Shining as the Sun.”

I keep walking through the green. The others are talking, but I have to find the whispers. I keep walking. The Green slopes down. Maribeth and Klyce slip and slide past me. Featherfall. Dalish runs after them. I keep walking. Nat slides past, but Nat has Featherfall. The tunnel stops and there’s a huge chamber of Green. I can hear chanting now, but I still can’t make it out. Another tunnel, and I keep walking.

There’s a smaller chamber here, more finished with an alter. Ulysses is on the alter. There’s a corpse floating above him, with vines all through it. Eugenia, Philomena’s mother, is there, too, with a jagged dagger poised over Ulysses. There’s an archway beyond them.

“Sacrifice the mean. Open the door.”

“Stop Them!” I shout at everyone before running forward to tackle Eugenia.

She gets away and stabs Ulysses, but he’s not dead, yet. Maribeth puts her to sleep before she can kill him, and I find keys in her pocket to let Ulysses free. The others fight the plant corpse until it collapses and the gateway closes. It’s finally quiet again, as I Levitate Ulysses, and carry him away from the alter.

The plants are withering away, as we head back to the previous chamber. Klyce says someone will have to take the fall for this. There is no evidence that will convince the courts a person wasn’t at fault. They wake Eugenia up, but she doesn’t remember a thing. Ulysses wakes after some healing, and we tell him everything. We drag them both back up to the servants’ quarters, where all the plants are gone, and only massacred bodies remain.

Klyce goes to fetch the Inspector and we tell him the whole story. As we finish, and discuss what will happen next, Ulysses steps forward and confesses to all the crimes. He has served his family long and well, and he will not see this take them down. The Inspector grudgingly agrees. This is awful! Magic is real! Why can’t that be the answer!? That’s just the way “justice” works, Klyce informs us. We all take our leave and head back to school.

Swimming, Books, and a Party

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The investigators question us, but things come round to normal. Families are safe and school is about learning again. Everyone is sure that the Lake holds important spells for them, and thus begins our next adventure.

Some of the boys haven’t really learned to swim before, so Maribeth tries to teach them in the shallows while Klyce heads out to the middle, I sit on the Dock, and Remy stays clear of the water. After Nat lowering me down from that window so softly, I’ve been working on ways to lift people up with the air, too, so I keep an eye on the new swimmers, in case they need pulled out. Remy notice something magical triggering when Dalish goes under and starts flailing, but a desire to live keeps him from investigating too thoroughly.

Watching the center of the lake for Klyce after he says he’s going to do a Rope Trick below the waves is a little nerve-wracking, but he eventually comes to the surface and says he found something. Unsure what it is, he invites everyone out to take a look. Maribeth goes out to the center to keep an eye on them, but doesn’t dive down. Remy and I stay dockside, the water freaks him out, and I know I won’t be any help.

It takes a while before they all pop back up again, and most of them are bleeding, but the spell they learned is apparently really cool. Cool enough that Klyce convinces Remy to go swimming, and Maribeth goes down, as well. I guess it’s called Alter Self, which wasn’t what they were after, but is probably better. The boys then ponder trying to drown again, to see what happens. Klyce thinks it’s ridiculous and not worth the risk. Eventually, they decide not to test the school’s protective magics.

Next, we head to the Library because Nat and I want to look up information on dreams. Mine haven’t gone away, despite everyone elses disappearing after the big fight. The rest of the group go looking for spells, as usual. Maribeth climbs a little too high and knocks over an entire bookshelf, which starts a chain reaction. Between Nat and myself, we manage to stop the tumbling. We’ve never been so glad there isn’t a Librarian in there. The books on dreams are just as dry as every history book we’ve found here, so there’s no hep there.

Remy and Gerhardt find words on a shelf, and thus ensues a very strange scavenger hunt between shelves, the card catalog, and weird old books. I think at one point they squeezed an orange over a book, and then threw dirt on it. Eventually, they ended up with eight books all together and when they opened it they found the spell for Nystul’s Magic Aura. Seems a rather boring spell to me, for all the trouble it was, but Dalish thinks it could be rather useful, or at least fun.

That night, we all get fancy invitations on our doors to Philomena’s Birthday Party on Saturday. She even left fancy clothes for Nat and Klyce. Klyce was Not happy about that, and threw them into the hallway. Given our station, and our families, everyone but Klyce decides we have to go, and work on what gifts to bring her.

With Nat’s family being so far away, I ask if Nat wants to get ready at my house and ride with me to the party. This does not please my parents, but when do I ever? Nat doesn’t wear what Philomena provided, but a suit brought from home. Philomena’s estate is HUGE! And Oliver is here! Oh, he’s so Cool. I couldn’t possibly Talk to him! He’s talking to all the cool upperclassmen.

We hang out like we usually do. Maribeth asks about getting a job at Klyce’s bakery. She’s very worried about her mother. Klyce gives her a very hard lesson in wealth and the lack thereof. Poor Maribeth, I’m sure it’ll all be fine. Even if her brother is a jerk. We wander around the house a bit, enjoying games, fingerfoods, and drinks until Philomena finally shows up.

She welcomes everyone very politely while her parents look on, as only indulgent parents can. Philomena invites us to go riding, and even though I’m in a fancy dress, I have to go. It’s been so long, what with the servires being so creepy. Dalish and Gerhardt come with me, though, so I don’t have to be alone with her. It’s quite a lovely ride, such grounds her family has!

When we get back, everything has gone crazy again! Nat runs out to us yelling about a dead body in the conservatory. Philomena is so angry at him, like he’s the one who did it. We all head inside to see what is going on. Philomena at our heels, until she grabs Klyce and drags him angrily away. I have no idea what that is about, but then the police arrive, declaring that they will take care of everything. Thank goodness.

Danger, Voices, and Dreams

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After Maribeth gets a note at dinner, she disappears for a few days. I’m tired of watching everyone else search out spells, so I spend most of the week studying in our lounge, waiting for her to come home. But I keep having these weird dreams…

Everything is GREEN, and I am running. It almost seems like a jungle, but even more green than that. I’m running and there are voices all around me. Not like the steam monsters. I can’t understand them. The dreams come every night, but they aren’t scary. I don’t know if I’m even running away from something or to something.

When Maribeth finally comes back to school, I message her to make sure she’s okay. She tells me her grandfather has died. I tell her we aren’t doing the thing anymore, and she says good or she’d have to stop us. WHAT??? But I let it go, I don’t want to know what she means. She says she still isn’t sure if she can talk to us. Might not be safe for either of us.

Nat tells me of more weird dreams, but maybe about the future. Moments later in class, Maribeth asks Malden if mana can cause strange dreams, and Nat and I both snap to attention. He voice is Loud. Maybe her grandfather dying gave her her voice back. Malden says mana can cause strange things to happen to a mage who has had too much. He says sometimes mages need to dry out and not use mana for a while, but advises her to see Raltus if she’s feeling ill. She asks permission to dry out, and I wonder what she was doing while she was gone for three days.

Maribeth asks if mages can make other mages dream things. Malden says yes, but it’s illegal and frowned upon. Then everyone gets into an strange discussion about legal and social consequences, and how you would prove such a thing, and how enchantments can protect you. Then we talk about the Certimun from the weekend. It’s a social consequence, I guess.

After class, I tell Nat that I had weird dreams too, and Nat heads off to talk to Professor Aleria. Apparently Aleria made Nat stare at the lake without looking at it for his lesson. But then the dream came again and Aleria said to Find It. We all have a big discussion about the insanity of this. We all agreed to stop looking for the mana smugglers, but this sounds like it’s going to drop us right down into it, and then we’re All going to Explode! This is crazy!

Maribeth drops a note at our dinner table asking us to come to her room late tonight, and for Nat to leave the pin or don’t come. This is strange, but we agree to go. All but Klyce, anyway. Maribeth fills us in that the Maggia had threatened her grandfather, that’s why she stopped talking to us. But he’s dead now. She says she’s had dreams of her grandfather saying she should have stopped us, but the explosion and fire is only a set back. She thinks it wasn’t a dream, but a warning. She doesn’t want to be involved with them, and her Mom is alone now.

Remy mentions the fire at his house. Maribeth says that her grandfather was given a severed horsehead. That the Maggia knows what happens on school grounds. Then she looks at Nat and says that other people have that pin, and we could be being tracked or listened to with it. Nat insists that it isn’t magical.

We all have nother arguement about protecting our families and not getting involved. Remy won’t stand aside, he’d rather fight. Nat tells everyone about the dream and explosion. Nat will try harder to see details tonight. We might go check it out, but then we’re going to run and get adults. We can’t fight Maggia, but we have to help if we can.

After class, we head out into the city to go find the dock in Nat’s dream. The first one we go to is very busy, and we keep getting shooed away. Seems to busy for secrets, so we go on to the next one. There are lots of shut-up buildings here, and Royalist graffiti, and workers with red armbands. The boys detect magic and find one building full of it, so we go around for a better look.

Nat looks without eyes and feels an urgent pull towards the building. Looking for real, sees men in fullplate climbin up and going in.

Klyce stops Nat from charging in and we hastily make a plan, just like in Sanctum. And just like the game, nothing goes quite right. I play messenger, though, keeping everyone connected and up to date. Gerhardt and Remy send in their familiars to get a look inside. There are definitely crates filled with jugs of mana. A strange small boat enters the warehouse from the waterside. There are 5 guys talking in Italian waiting. The fullplate guys climb around the rafters, spying on the men. The boys are already changing the plan.

They talk Maribeth into going up in disguise, knocking on the door, and pretending to be a lost little girl to draw some of them out. The familiars then see five Asian people climbing out of the boat and walking up to the men. They argue about deliveries and customers, apparently the firey explosion did hurt their business. Maribeth knocks on the door and interrupts their conversation. Everyone pulls weapons then freeze and the Maggia leader comes to open the door.

Maribeth does an amazing job of playing her part, and he calls over a guy named Lou to take her out of there. With the odds changed, the Asians spring into action, killing two of the three remaining Maggia, and the fighting begins. Lou is carrying Maribeth away, and my job was to keep her safe, so I run off after her.

A short while later, there’s an explosion back at the docks and I run up to Lou and demand he give me back “my sister.” Not wanting to know what the explosion was, terrified of what we might find, Maribeth and I head back to school. The rest of them, thank mana, catch up with us, being escorted by the previously absent guards, just before we get to school grounds.