Well, I am quite afraid to say that this update should have been much happier. All of the rolls seemed to be turning out nicely in everyone's favor, but I suppose luck is fickle friend to have. It is constantly changing, constantly in flux and constantly in motion. While we can try our best to assign some meaning to it, it is as random as could possibly be. One of you has met the reaper this evening, as much as it does pain me to announce. I shall try my best to explain the events as they happened, yet I fear that I may not do this justice...
Death has claimed her second victim; hope that you, my child, are not the third.
December 28th, 2016 - Coventry Horrors, Fifth Floor Andromeda almost ignored Aloise, instead addressing Seraphina's questions first. After all, she hardly knew the former, while she had hired the latter to investigate her father's death. There was a certain familiarity there.
"It's the demon, Mephistopheles," Andromeda explained, before handing over the copy of
Dr. Faustus. "It seems he terrorized Christopher Marlowe in his lifetime, inspiring this play..." Hanson, of course, was not as forthcoming about the demon's name. He got a dark look in his eye when Emmie asked him about his familiarity with the demon. Finishing (in a nearly violent manner) his coffee, he set the mug down with almost too much force. "Yeah, I know the son of a bitch. He put me through a bunch of pain and shit--but not nearly as much as I caused."
Andromeda then turned to address everyone, as she begin mentally thinking through the answers to their questions. Fortunately, Emmie already handled the lack of police presence.
"The hotel's been in my family since 1867," Andromeda explained.
"My father's owned it for thirty years--before that, my grandparents. And then my great-grandparents before them, and so forth...The wardrobe's been here since we purchased the hotel, I believe. I'm not quite sure I know much else about it..." she finished, struggling to think of anything else to help them.
The glass in the window then broke. A bullet sailed on through, the cause of the destruction. Aloise instinctively threw herself down to the ground, dragging as many other people down with her. She managed to get Emmie down safely, the others out of reach. But it wouldn't have done any good--there wasn't enough time to react. One moment the window was pristine--the next it was shattered. A body fell to the floor with a crash and Andromeda gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
Keenan saw that it was too late. The shot had gone straight through the heart, and as he glanced towards the window, he saw the nearly impossible shot that had been made. There was a water tower across the road, with a platform and ladder near the very top. Squinting, he could just make out what appeared to be a sniper. A sharp double knock on the door caught Hanson's attention, as a piece of paper was shoved under the crack, followed by the sound of hurried footsteps.
"It says 'guess again,'" Keenan said, his voice hoarse as he showed the note to the survivors in the room.
"Did they sign it?" Aloise asked, blinking back tears, but it was no use. She could continue to soldier on and fight, but that didn't mean she wasn't human. She had lost two friends that day.
"Nope," Keenan replied, shaking his head. "But whoevah this is, they're makin' a statement."
Andromeda, meanwhile, crouched down next to the corpse. She closed Seraphina's eyes and looked up at Emmie, knowing that no one deserved to see this.
"This wasn't an accident," Andromeda said softly.
"They meant to kill her...They shot her through the heart." "Maybe we should discuss this elsewhere," Aloise reconsidered, looking over towards Emmie. With the girl's guardian gone, Coventry was hardly the safest place for her.
"She deserves to be here," Hanson snapped, his voice filled with anger. He hadn't said a word since his conversation with Emmie and it got him a few looks of apprehension. An uneasy silence settled over the room, only to be broken a minute later. "Whoever did this shit, they mean business. And like it or not, Emmie's part of that now."
December 28th, 2016 - Cirque Anomaly Boris seems positively thrilled to get rid of the journal. He chucked it at Lilith's head, the journal hitting her dead-on in the nose, and leaving a bit of a mark. Clapping his hands together, Boris gives a bit of a bow, before looking around, as if he expected an adoring audience to be present. "Bah! Everyone's a critic these days," Boris lamented. "Go ahead, go ahead, sweet thing! Look through her journal--see the little
bitch that tiny
witch was!" He then cackled and proceeded to congratulate himself on that play on words.
The contents of Folly's journal, once inspected, will be moderately helpful. The journal lacks dates, with each entry titled with seemingly random information. On some days, it is a location, such as a district or a town. Others, a color. Others, a phrase. A few entries will stick out to Lilith-- "the Accident," "February 30th," "Voices in My Head," and "The Great Gatsby."
(Send a PM for excerpts of those entries if desired) December 28th, 1929 - Coventry Horrors, Attic Fairfax blushed a bit, rubbing the back of his head. He seemed positively humbled that Eudora thought he was the inventor of the wardrobe. "That's awfully kind of you," Fairfax replied, fiddling with his goggles then just as she mentioned them. "I'm a friend of Amiyra's--pardon, Folly's--and she told me about it. I've been trying to figure out how it works, but..."
He paused for a moment, motioning his hand at the wardrobe--the wardrobe that had just engulfed Liam, showing no response despite Eudora's shoutings. "I haven't the daftest idea how it works. Maybe you've got an idea or too, Miss Eudora?"
December 28th, 2016 - Location Unknown The cloaked figure is in too much pain to even notice the holy water, but it does not seem to add to the torment. Struggling and writhing against the chains, the inhuman scream only continues, broken up every so often with pleas for help. "Please, before he returns!" the cloaked figure begs. By this point, Liam will be able to make out more of the form of the figure. From what he can tell, a teenage girl is underneath the cloak, begging him for rescue.
