Café de Nuit

Nerit ever so discreetly wiped her hand with a handkerchief and folded her hands away into her sleeves.

She said absolutely nothing concerning Cedolin, whether she wanted to save him or thought he was even the real Cedolin at all.

"Tick-tock," she uttered, and (perhaps jokingly in response to Tomas) sidled up to Richard.

Kerrian still looked seething, looking between the notes and the body of Cedolin...then he blanched. "It may be more merciful to kill him."

It was a rather out of place statement for Kerrian to make, but then he began to speak. "The note says " At Rue Foyle Beware of the mirrors! the Icon. The restoration Was Not What It seemed. Followed one. The Woman with Dark Brown hair, green eyes. She said her name was Anna Marie Had lesions on her neck covered her hands with gloves. I must have stumbled too close. By Ezra they killed the entire squad. There's no way out of here. I can only pray i can find some way to warn you. My mind is going. just wish I knew what it was I'm going to die for."

He rather looked like the colour wouldn't be coming back to his face for some time, at least till they were back home. "I THINK the beginning is at Rue Foyle. It might be Af, but i don't think that makes any sense. I don't think there was much time for penmanship." Kerrian saw the movement starting, starting to join with the others in making an egress.

"Again..Unless we have a way to save him, putting him in the basement might not be the kindest thing we can do for him."

"Seven," Darius says over his shoulder. "A7. Apartment number, I would guess." He voices no opinion on the matter of keeping Cedolin alive, but, apparently operating under the assumption that they can always chuck him overboard or something, the twins continue their procession down the hall.

"How are we going to hold him in the basement?" Kerrian asked, one of those questions which at first seemed to have a simple answer involving a great deal of rope. "We've seen he can teleport. How do we hold him?" Kerrian shrugged as he moved, one of those gestures of half defeat.

"I want to believe we can save him. But how do we keep him from breaking free and killing us? When does mercy become being foolhardy..." Kerrian remembered the last bits of the note. "And how do we know there's even anything left of him in there to save?"

"We will not know whether we can save him unless we try," Lia replies, "and we will not be able to try if we die on this stinking piece of driftwood! Gather the perishables, and let's get out of here!" Lia puts her words into action; she will go into whatever rooms still contain such vulnerable artefacts and gather what she can before standing next to Tomas. "You and me," she states in a flat tone. "No arguing."

"She's right Mon ami, time to move, we can decide later. If the captain proves to be dead and gone, we will do what is necessery to speed this shell to join him." Nicholas says patting Kerrian on the shoulder.

"Oh and thats a 4 by the way, look at the tail on the cross piece, which would make 47 Rue Foyle." He adds looking quickly at the note and jabbing at the offending stroke with his finger.

"Kerrian!" Lia calls over her shoulder. "About his teleporting ... Tell me what Cedolin has become, and I can perform a ritual that should imprison him. And if we know what he has become ... maybe we can find out how to turn him back. Now move."

"I'm moving!" Came Kerrian's response, possibly with a bit more growl than intended, but this sort of situation would put just about anyone on edge. "And if I knew what he was, I'd tell you. As for turning him back" Kerrian gave another shrug, or as much as he could manage with moving at a hustle time pace. "I've got an idea, I just..don't know if it would work, or just get us all killed. I can explain more when we're back on solid ground."

"You and me," she states in a flat tone. "No arguing."

"I love it when she gets assertive." Tomas deadpans, winking at the others. They've made his argument to Kerrian for him.

But he does throw in, as they rush through the hall towards the boat, "Look, Kerrian, I get it. Really, I do. But if there is a chance...this world is too greedy. It ruins too many lives, makes giving up on people the "only" option far too often. And the best way I've found to fight that grim precedent is to take these sort of risks. Sometimes it pays off." There's a pause, because Tomas has to jump over a bulkhead and he's sort of heavy, "And if there's nothing we can do for him, I'll kill him myself."

The Archeron, Parnault Bay, Port-a-Lucine; Night of March 24th, 770
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Nerit wrote:"Tick-tock," she uttered...

The Levi Mirror exploded.

Gallons and gallons of freezing sea water poured through the mirror's frame, sweeping across the wooden holds. Those of you still trying to rescue priceless artifacts quickly found your feet drenched. The water was beyond freezing, colder than ice, and yet still gushed in with all the force of a waterfall. The ship seemed to be filling faster than would be possible, and within minutes you could feel the ship begin to list, sealing the Archeron's fate.

It was a tense, nerve-wracking flight back to the gun room and down the rope to the boat. There had been more fearful escapes in your past, and ones which threatened a greater cost, perhaps, but there was a grim inevitability about the Archeron's collapse that grated upon your nerves.

"Hurry, hurry!" you could hear a voice below you, slightly tinged with dwarven sounds. The boatman, miraculously, had stayed true to his word, and was waiting for you, his craft weathering the dying throes of the doomed ship with ease. He even reached out to help you through the gunport, though he looked just as eager to leave this place as you were.

He stared at the steadily increasing number of rescued books and tapestries with brows raised high, and a bit of a shrug. But when you put the darkened, shimmering shape of Cedolin into the vessel, the light bending around it in odd ways despite the attempts to hit his form, the boatman gave a sudden jolt.

"What is this?" he demanded, sounding almost panicked. "Why are you putting that in my boat?"

"Do you really, really want to argue right now?" Cerise asked, hopping into the boat alongside him. "Let's just go, please!"

The boatman didn't argue, and the little craft sped off across the water. He was silent this time, his paddling marred by his constant, sneaking glances at Captain Cedolin's motionless form. "Fhor that..." The boatman said at length, "you are paying me extra."

Parnault Bay, Port-a-Lucine; Night of March 24th, 770
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The Archeron sank when you were half-way across the bay. It sank silently, the skeletal vessel slipping beneath the waves, into the cold depths below. It almost seemed as if the water around it shimmered, glowing an eerie and pale blue, so you could follow the ship as it sunk beneath the waves. It was a long journey down, and a long time before the light finally faded, no longer able to escape the fathomless darkness of the ocean floor. For just a few moments, before the ship vanished from the seas entirely, you thought you saw lights below, flashing in the deep.

Still, you had recovered some of the Archeron's priceless cargo, and perhaps in time mages would find some way to recover what had been lost, though if Cerise were to be believed, it would be better to let it lie. You had yourself Cedolin's notes to lead you to this Anne-Marie, who's trail had led Cedolin to his current troubles. And you had Cedolin himself.

"What will we, we do with him?" Richard said quietly, looking at the entity's still form. It looked almost like Cedolin was asleep, almost human, save for the way the light twisted around him as though through a heat shimmer. The young Mordentishman's eyes were unreadable. "He'll wake up eventually."

"We take him somewhere where we can keep him from the public's eye," Lia replies, "and keep him unconscious. Identify just what it is that he has become, and I can perform an imprisonment ritual, with the aid of whoever among you knows the proper techniques for ritual casting. We keep him bound, gagged and all, to hopefully prevent him from attacking us again. And then we find a way to turn him back."

Lia looks Richard in the eye. "And start praying for good luck in all of this," she adds. "Because this whole mess seems like one big trap, as well as a deliberate attempt to make the University look guilty as sin in the whole affair enwrapping Dementlieu. Where was the crew of the ship?"

"We take the creature to Montmort. They have experience incarcerating mages capable of teleportation. With a stipulation that no reflective surfaces be kept nearby, they shouldn't have much trouble in containing it." Mr. Agale said matter-of-factly.

"I've got an idea, I just..don't know if it would work, or just get us all killed. I can explain more when we're back on solid ground."

"Mr. Mauganson, you make the assumption that it was ever a man in the first place. Just as a reflection is not real, we cannot make the mistake of considering this thing to be in any way the captain save its appearance until we have a better understanding of what precisely this thing is. Miss Rondelet, you seemed to know something about what we just experienced. Can you elaborate further?"

"Because this whole mess seems like one big trap, as well as a deliberate attempt to make the University look guilty as sin in the whole affair enwrapping Dementlieu. Where was the crew of the ship?"

"There are more efficacious and less costly means to discredit the University." Agale mused as he leaned over the gunwale and watched the Acheron slowly sink into the bay. "There isn't much need for a crew on a moored ship. Only a watchman, if even that." A grim smile crossed the lawyer's lips as he thought about how Latour was now in a prime position to continue his stewardship of the sunken ship.

For a moment, Tomas looks very, very...

...but, it passes. "Good thought, Agale. But how do we know that the Gendarme won't just kill him? Or worse, some noble will get the idea in his head that the thing the country needs is an army of these..." Tomas points out, crossing his arms and scowling in thought. "Lia, how long can your ward hold? If Kerrian's ritual can be finished soon, the safest thing to do might be to just keep him at the Chateau." Barring one of the other tenants calling the coppers out of panic, Tomas concedes to his wiser, more cynical self.

"It can hold until it is broken," Lia replies, sounding a little glum. "There is an element of risk in this, as in all magic. But I can set up multiple circles, if that should become necessary."

"I don't even know if there IS a ritual that can be done." Kerrian said, having managed to save two rather ornate Pre-Leon tapestries. "So much of what I do is improvising. If this thing is a spiritual corruption, I could try to deal with it, draw it out." Kerrian frowned, fortunately his countenance having returned to normal though his fingernails were now not what would fit in anyone's definition of trimmed, and quite a few folks definition of claws.

"But I don't think I could do it alone. My eyes already are opened to the real world. I THINK I could temporarily open someone eyes, but it would be dangerous, even more dangerous than it is for me, and this is already dangerous." Fear finally showed its face, only the historical treasures he had secured managing to keep Kerrian from being a fidgeting mess.

"I don't want to get people killed or worse. And with this, there's always a worse."