1.1 - In Search of Sanity - Prison of the Mind

Finding none of the shapeshifters lurking in the room, Razhel leaves and returns to the hall. "Nothing." She says quietly. "Let's keep moving."

Razhel heads north up the halway, toward the shadows there. If there were shapeshifters in this area, it would likely not be in the broom closet next to the barricade.

The group heads north through the hall, the light from Elias's shield continuing to illuminate the path before them.

Ahead of you to the north, in the dim light, you can see that most of the northern section of the hallway has collapsed into a heap of dense gray rubble. Surviving doors lead off to the west and east.

On your right is a toppled wall between this hall and what appears to have one been an office. Debris-cluttered desks and tipped lockers lay strewn about the room along with several bodies.

As you near you hear faint sobbing coming from the office to the east. "Help, please help," a grandmotherly voice calls towards the illumination of Elias's shield. An old human woman, perhaps in her 60's, lays on the ground amidst the rubble, one hand help up to shield her eyes, the other worrying at a gruesomely fractured leg, bone jutting out through the skin. "Please," she calls, "I need medical care. My leg..." Tears stream down her face and she appears to be in a state of desperation, agony, and fear.

Elias carefully enters the room and moves towards the trapped woman. What happened to you? Are there any enemies around?

"No," she says between sobs, "I don't think so. I was trapped under the rocks, up the hallway, for so long. I got loose and crawled here, but Gods, my leg. It hurts so terribly."

Razhel eyes the bodies strewn about on the floor, keeping up her defenses as she examines them to see if they were human corpses or something else.

Elias still moving cautiously bends down to check the old woman's injuries.

Grim covers Elias and Razhel with his crossbow as he too gives a cursory glance down at the dead bodies.

Razhel and Grim both look over bodies. Several appear human, though they bear claw marks and signs of more extreme trauma that in some cases make identifying them difficult.

In total, you also find three bodies of creatures much like the 'doctor' whom you first encountered. Now in their true forms, these creatures are slender and frail with gangly limbs and half-formed facial features. Their flesh is pale and hairless, and their eyes are vacant and white, staring blankly without the hinderance of eyelids. These bodies are riddled with crossbow bolts.

Meanwhile, Elias checks out the wound of the injured woman. "Oh thank you," she says with a relieved sob, "Are you a healer?" Elias finds that the would appears rather typical of a compound fracture, one of the principal legbones jutting out of the skin. He instinctively looks for something to stop the bleeding.

Why did that question sound ominous? Why wouldn't it? Everything else was ominous. Ominous was practically bleeding from the walls and bubbling up through the floorboards around the bodies of shapeshifting murderers. The ominous was obvious, that much he knew, and he had tried to know in the other room before but he also had to see. Could he?

"አስማትን ፈልግ።"

He first reached out with the same strange sense as before to try to descry the unknowable in the current room and then in the gloom beyond.

"I'm going to try to... to light our way further than the shield."

Then he made a small motion like lighting a match.

"የዳንስ መብራቶች"

Four ethereal spheres of violet-jade light floated near the doorways ahead of him.

"I think those are mine. Pretty."

I'm mot sure if I'm a full-fledged Healer, but I do remember some of my lessons. Now when I set this, I'm going to have to put your leg back in place. I'm not going to lie to you, that will hurt. Elias gets up and looks among the rubble fir some splint materials. Once he finds what he needs, Elias returns and kneels down next to the injured woman. As he sets the materials by the woman he speaks to her again. Tell me about yourself? What did you do before all of this went crazy?

Razhel, wanting to keep moving, steps over to the door on the left side of the hallway, opens the door, and looks inside.

A look of concern appears on Elias's face. As he looks over the woman's injuries. Something doesn't add up. You said you were trapped under the rubble for a while, yet this wound appears to be relatively fresh. Also as severe as your wound looks, there's not nearly enough blood to match its severity.

Elias slowly stands up as if he's stretching sore muscles, when in actuality he's preparing for trouble.

Grim listens to the old woman's story. A lot doesn't add up for him, like if she'd been trapped under the rubble from the beginning, how did she know about a camp? He raises his crossbow and prepares to fire.

Razhel flexes her fists and steps through the doorway, as she listens to try to determine the direction of the noise she hears within the room. She searches the darkness and shadows with her superior vision looking for signs of movement.

The old woman reaches her hand out as if about to ask for help to stand when her eyes lock onto Elias's. Something passes across her face, then her eyes flick over to Grim. Suddenly the woman vaults herself upright, showing incredible poise. She smiles a wide, toothless smile as the skin under her chin pulls tight and her skin grows smoother in many places. "A shame," it says in a voice that fluctuates between grandmotherly and hollow, "We could have been friends, you could have helped me meet those lovelies in the camp." You realize her arms now terminate into terrible claws as she, it, prepares to attack.

Grim maneuvers over to the edge of the broken wall to use as partially cover and braces the side of his crossbow's stock against the wall. He fires a bolt as fake granny.