Sarah's RequestEins leaned on the door hard trying to open the apparent stone with force before, suddenly, it gave way. Swinging open quickly Eins manages to recover her footing just before Kasim got to have his wish about saving someone from a bottomless pit. The sound of the stone door falling was also unexpected, it looked as if someone had just braced it where it had been removed before, now on the other side of the door the four could see what was invisible from the other side. It seemed that the Dwarves had used a little force themselves and the hinges had been ripped from their housing.
And so now the stone door was sailing down into the deep pit and Eins, Kasim, Naream and Andrea were faced with a bridge without so much as a safety rail. The wooden boards were half-rotten, the damp in the air could almost be tasted and the scent of tallow burning were all symptoms of what they saw next. In the centre of the 'pit room' was a standing column, upon it were many candles burning from the skulls that served as their sconces and closer to them than away were a pair of dwarves in fine chainmail with dwarven war axes in hand and...
Vacant expressions. Pallid skin. One had brown hair and beard while the other had a dark red hair, beard... and eyepatch. Carrying Tower Shields and War Axes they seemed vacant for a moment until they suddenly seemed to notice the door spinning into the Dark. Suddenly they take up defensive postures and their eyes sharpen... slightly, they still seem as if they are not quite all there. And they both speak simultaneously, Andrea can sense something else behind them, some depth into the temple. She could almost point to the source of it as it forced the dwarves to speak, unlike Naream who sensed nothing at all. "Turn around. Leave." The twin Dwarven voices demand.
Across the bridge Kasim can see, reflected in the light, another doorway of interlocking iron, and a pair of levers on this side of it, and ominously nestled between them he could see shackles attached to the floor. Empty... for now.
Carnival of ChaosAs Christoff heads for the inn he attempts to sense for the mage that must be the source of all this, and yet he could sense only an overwhelming aura and stink of magic, where he had expected to find a spark of light, a source of the matter, all he felt was an omnipresent almost sweltering or drowning amount of magic. Hanus meanwhile looks to Tristan. "Be prepared for anything, this is nothing like I was expecting, but whoever is responsible for this has a sick sense of theatricality, the absurd and is 'playing a game with us.' Don't attempt to predict whatever the mind capable of this is thinking, it is a fools errand. Whatever it is however, expect the flamboyant." Aneura meanwhile, and sensibly, was simply preparing for anything.
Christoff's experiment panned out better, and worse, than expected. He sensed nothing as he brushed up against the performers, theatrical illusions, but at the second attempt a crow screamed for his face and only a quick dodge preventing him from getting a nasty scratch for his efforts, while at the least the performers seemed more pretend than real, the crows at least were very capable of real harm, what else might be?
But finally they made their way to the Inn, and its door opened for them. Within it looked like any other Inn you might expect. Except for several things. For one, most Inns don't have a half dozen people standing on boxes floating in the air with nooses around their necks. At a second glance the whole team realised that they were not just people, they were children, and Hanus gasped as he recognised one of Alexandria's nieces amongst them. "Welcome to the show." A voice remarked.
The voice was clearly male and yet the flamboyant pink clothes and flowers in the headdress made him look like one of the performers of this sick carnival. The image moved instantly several times. Whoever it was puppeting the illusion had to be close, but couldn't be sensed by any of them. "Welcome to my Carnival. Now before any of you are so foolish as to try and attack, these six lovely children are standing on boxes of hard illusion, bear in mind that the nooses around their necks are not. If you approach them I will drop the boxes and they'll have a very real hanging."
Three of the illusory speakers now stood on the 2nd floor railing. "This carnival is special. Within it there are several big surprises waiting to annihilate the town, but I am not without a sense of fair play. For each I have created a main attraction. IF you can defeat the attraction, you can reach the surprise and put an end to it. But there are rules!" He pointed dramatically. "One person to each attraction, attempt to work them as a team and i'll set off the surprises early and if you survive you'll have to be the ones to explain to Queen Alexandria how you got her family annihilated so thoroughly. There are four attractions. One each."
Small illusion signs appeared near the team.
"Gauntlet De Pendules. Galerie des Glaces. The Circ De Cauchemar, and the La Galerie Tournage." He remarked. "Each has its own dangers. If you fail, you will die. If you succeed, well, your prizes will be waiting here for you." The tone of voice screamed that he was smiling beneath that mask. "Choose champions of the thrice damned Renalta. And choose well. For each of you have a single task to perform, and to fail is unacceptable isn't it now."