Yanis had long sent Arryn back to the mortuary college. The younger mortician was too much of a distraction for the ghosts she interviewed with the corpse candles. She stoked the campfire and glanced upward. The omnipresent fog obscured the familiar ribbon of stars, revealing just a wall of grey at the edge of the firelight.
Five ghosts, and she had managed to resolve their ties in the process of getting information. There was that at least. But the ghosts had been typically cryptic with regard to how they conveyed that information. She didn't know what to make of this 'dark road into the void' they kept talking about, or the 'blacker than black' cold figures. She suspected that she might have been entirely wrong; there may be no goetics here, just old ghosts that are transforming into demons. But what forces were gathering these demons and to what end?
She adjusted the fit of her purifier armor, the long period spent sitting by the campfire having caused some of the pieces to feel wrong when she stood up. Yanis supposed she wouldn't get anything done here in the shadow of the dead war machine, so put out the fire and began her hike back to Father Oren's mortuary college.
---
She sensed something was wrong when she arrived. It was a subtle wrongness that tugged at her senses. And she cursed herself for forgetting that the corpse candles were great flaring beacons to the dead. Yanis was not sure what she might find inside the stone building, but she would need to check anyway. She drew her sword, just in case.
The candles that lit the hallways at night had been snuffed out, leaving Yanis to fumble blindly in the claustrophobic darkness. A chilly hand gripped her heart when she heard Father Oren's voice.
"Sister Yanis! Welcome home!" The voice was wrong; forced, lacking any of the warmth of humankind. Worse still, no human she knew of could see in darkness like this. She reached for her satchel but in this darkness she couldn't see the thing she needed and the armored gloves made it impossible for her to accurately feel for the banishment seal.
What used to be Father Oren was on her before she could raise the sword in a last ditch defense. She was hurled down the hallway with ease and she could hear the clatter of all the trinkets and tools hit the floor as they spilled from her open satchel. Her impromptu flight was stopped when she slammed into one of the stone walls and felt something give. She heard a hideous screech as she got up and tried to orient herself, bringing a bitter smile to her face. It seems somebody stepped on shattered remains of a holy water vial. Getting to her feet, Yanis barreled towards the entry doors, grunting as her shoulder slammed them open. At least out here the diffuse light of the moon, even in the fog, allowed her to see.
She turned around, her heart trying to burst from her chest and her limbs shaking from the shock of the attack. Yanis was expecting Father Oren or Arryn to emerge from the black depths of the building, and prepared to strike them down. Instead, a rock struck her from behind. And then more rocks. She turned and realized that there were more humanlike shapes coming from out of the fog. They were closing fast too. More possessed?
There was no way she could deal with a mob of demon-possessed people. So Yanis ran, back up towards the ruins and the remains of the colossus, away from the unfortunate people.
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