The Castle (Rebma, for the heck of it, but don't hesitate!)

[Boog]

"We're fine," the frog replied, backing away from the creature, "Although indicating the shape we were already in as fine is starting to seem like a rather poor joke."

[Aisha deCabre]

Having entered the chamber with the others, Aisha regarded the sight before them with as much curiosity as the others, coming upon it.  That's the one...? she thought, narrowing her eyes while looking the dead-looking bat over.  She'd have thought he didn't look like much, if it weren't for the fact of the voices coming in as clear as ever.  There must have been something once to the chains and parchment that held him still, Aisha wondered while keeping between Gareeku and Mel, and watching the wolf carefully work the bonds.

But when he started to actually move, she fought the sudden urge to jump back a couple of steps.  The eyes still looked dead though the bat was suddenly healed.  She stood straight, hopefully not having the need to draw her weapon just yet.  They did just save him at any rate, whoever he was.

"We should probably ask you that," the panthress said cautiously, but seeing as how the adventurers were the trespassers, she decided to change her words around and nodded her head.  "I'm Aisha."

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel wasn't seeing quite the same view as the others. Where they saw chains and parchments and nails she saw magic. Dark magics. Whoever put the bat in this place had worked very hard to make sure he stayed. He was wound round and around with wards and curses like an escape artist would be wound with ropes and chains before a performance. Yet, like the escape artist, he was wiggling himself free. She was certain that their interference had only changed the timeline by a century or two, not the final outcome.

She was less surprised than the others when the bat began moving, she had seen the force the magics tied to this spot, but she was no more happy about it, despite it being their objective. Unlike Aisha she was unable to keep herself from moving a half step backwards as the man looked them over. She found herself now clutching her wand with both hands, as if it was a talisman rather than a toy. The only comfort it could give was being one of the few spots of bright magic in the sea of dark. "I'm Mel," she whispered, with an automatic bob of a curtsy, when asked her name. Drilled in manners held even when thoughts were scattered.

[Stygian]

The freed bat laughed smoothly, and glided around to a side beam to get away from the gap beneath him. He flexed his fingers before his eyes, seemingly not paying attention to his feet smoothly tripping about the chasm below, and stepped down from the side of the well.
   "And snowy here? Does he have a name too, or is he just the manservant?" he asked, and looked surprisingly appreciatively at Mel's bow. And at Mel herself. It might have been just a bad feeling, but it felt as if his gaze lingered with her, as if he was somehow aware that something was wrong with her apparition. What was worse, the general sensation of his darkness, besides from the fear and spine-tingling, was slowly becoming less specific and harder to read. He had to be masking it, or it was something that happened when he regained his strength. In either case it was bad, probably, just like the fact that with him freed those magical bonds that held him had drawn back and begun behaving very differently. All around, the magic was starting to react. And Mel could just tell that was a very bad thing.
   Then, the man seemed to decide something, and made a fluid bow to them.
   "My name is Sebastian. I'm sorry if the look of things put you a bit on end, but it was hardly something that could be helped," he said, and grinned slightly. Then he looked at his clothes. "Humm... I guess I really do need a cleanup. But there's more important things to do..." He began walking back against the stairs up.

[Gareeku]

With widened eyes, Gareeku watched as the bat awoke, looking into his eyes with the same orbs of darkness the statue of justice has only a short while ago. As the bat descended, the wolf flipped back off of the well and back onto the floor.

Watching the bat, who had introduced himself as Sebastian, Gareeku kept the same neutral expression on his face.
Have I done the right thing...? he wondered to himself, before narrowing his eyes when the bat referred to him as a manservant. Nevertheless, the wolf decided to introduce himself.
"No, I am not a manservant. My name is Gareeku Manoko." he replied, bowing politely as he spoke. He could feel the darkness radiating off of the bat, reminding him of the darkness that lurked within him too.

Watching Sebastian leave, Gareeku turned back to the chains he had been fastened to with narrowed eyes, a white flame beginning to burn in his hand.
"There is dark magic on that. It's changing, and I think it's changing for the worse..." the wolf muttered as his eyes were kept locked on the cross that Sebastian has been trapped on only minutes beforehand.

[Cogidubnus]

Cog kicked the armor behind him and grabbed the coin out from the pile. Light flooded the dark room, and the shadows were pushed back to the darker corners of the area. Despite himself, he laughed at Jeremiah's comment. "Amazing how the definition of good changes like that, eh? Perhaps, asking if you were dead might have been more appropriate." He looked at the strange woman and shook his head. "She, certainly, is not alright..." he murmured. He swung his blade in a wide arc, trying to get the blood from that demon-wolf off it, and sheathed it quickly.
"If you don't mind me asking, you actually don't look very good at all." he said, sitting down. "And that blue woman...what was that?" he said, fishing around in his coat for something.

[Stygian]

"Then bring it!" called the bat back to the wolf. It seemed that he could easily hear him even with his back turned and already ascending the stairs. "I shall make use of it. And I would suggest that we leave here now. We have little time to waste, and I am not the only thing that lurks down here." As if to answer his words, a slight swooshing sound came from somwhere very, very far down in the dark well.
   The bat slowly began to pace up the stairs and out of the crypt.

[Boog]

Jeremiah looked away. He didn't like talking about his Condition very much.
"She's... A curse. A part of one," He shrugged and grinned sheepishly, "I'm not exactly used to this sort of thing. I'm an art teacher, or at least I used to be. A student of mine of demonic descent showed up at school angry in general; attacking students, teachers, all that stuff. Killed twenty people, and tried to curse me. He kind of botched it; the backlash broke his arms, and I'm carrying around five different magically created personalities. He was able to go on with his life afterward, seeing as a jury of his magically inclined peers didn't see what he did as so bad," the frog spat the word 'peers' as though it was a curse, "Meanwhile, I had to quit my job because the curse doesn't listen to what I say at all. Two are sycophants, one thinks I'm unable to look after myself, one's too scatterbrained to think beyond twenty minutes into the future and one's legally in-goddamn-sane," he looked very angry now, barely paying attention to the here and now, "So because of that student I've got a quintet of magically-inclined loonies who sap my own magical power, meaning I've got less to work with than even the average being, plus nobody seems to know anything about how it works, and to top it off, that brat gets to go on with his life and maybe do it again while I'm trying to find a place to sleep in haunted goddamn castles!" About here is where Jeremiah noticed that he was starting to seem a tad short of temper. Panting, he shifted the girl in his arms in an attempt to make her more comfortable and coughed, collecting himself, "Her name's Nex. The others are In, Plic, Cab, and Bal."

[Cogidubnus]

Cog shook his head. "Wizards are bastards. I-" he stopped short, leaving something unsaid. "I'm sorry to hear that...I have somewhat a distaste for mages as well. Especially irresponsible, double-crossing bastards who sling around their power it was butter on toast." He blanched, somewhat realized Jeremiah was a magician of sorts too. "Present company excluded. This place is old, though, and something left this mass of shadow. Perhaps we can pluck a secret or two from the ruins of this place. Somebody had to put these shades here, after all. Perhaps he left something."
He fished a silver cross from out his jacket and let it hang on his hand. "You think she's coherent?"

[Boog]

"It's not mages I have an issue with, just bastards. Creatures who are thus able to get away with being bastards in particular. No offense taken," the frog raised an eyebrow and smiled a little at Cog's statement; Do I really seem like a full-blown mage? I just have a trick or two. Huh. At the mention of the girl's contition, his expression turned worried, "Good question. Best way to find out is ask. Hello, miss?" he looked at the young woman with concern evident on his face, "You okay, miss? The monsters are gone, nobody's going to hurt you. Are you alright?" If she isn't, a bit of hypnosis could convince her she is. Just enough to calm her down so she doesn't hurt herself.

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel looked to the other two then started up the stairs. Her motivation wasn't so much following the bat as it was getting out of the crypt. The magic was changing in a bad way and she didn't want to be down there to find out what it was changing into. Not that she expected upstairs to be better, the very walls of the castle were laced with magic. But upstairs at least had exits in case fleeing became the only option. She had used up a lot of magic battling the wyrm and didn't want to get into too desperate a battle without more time to recharge.

[Aisha deCabre]

Not much unlike the other two, Aisha didn't really know what to make of the individual they had just met.  As the bat stepped away from the chasm that only a moment ago he was tied over, the panthress stepped aside to let him through with a curious quirk of her eyebrow.  She suppressed a snicker as Sebastian referred to Gareeku as the manservant, but moreover, the mood was just...uncertain.  Her tail ring had briefly illuminated the space with a flash when he started to leave.

Shaking her head, she noticed how uneasy that Mel looked, and Gareeku's hand erupt slowly in white fire with his statement.  To her, the darkness of the crypt didn't seem any more encompassing than before, not until a soft emerald light joined in the illuminations that both had carried...her ring was slowly glowing a little brighter each second, and she shuddered, as if something had dropped from the ceiling down onto her neck.

"At least he's kind enough to warn us," Aisha said with a bit of a twinge in her otherwise calm voice.  With a glance to Gareeku, the panthress tilted her head in a motion for him to come along while following Mel...and Sebastian...up to the stairs.

[Stygian]

The bat hadn't gone halfway up the stairs before he began to hum softly, and even whistling a bit, on some melancholy melody. He closed his eyes as he walked, leaning his head back a bit, and the shadows up ahead seemed to shift and change, obscuring him and the passage despite the light emanating from the wolf's hand, and the now flaring emerald from the panthress' tailring. And then they could hear him reciting smoothly:
   "Avaunt! avaunt! from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven-
    From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-
    From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven!"
   Then he laughed.
   When they reached the chamber laying above, the torches along the walls were lit, and Sebastian was waiting for them. His clothes seemed to have mended themselves completely on their own, and a black vest and tie had been added to them, as well as a pair of polished black shoes and slim round glasses on the bridge of his muzzle.
   "This place is going to become hellish in an hour or two, I'd guess. She doesn't like to be awoken, and she's going to be furious that I'm free. We need to seal this place up, and then prepare. There is no way of getting out before then."

   The woman in Jeremiah's arms still whimpered and trembled. She seemed more calm and less panicked than before. Yet, there seemed to be something very wrong with her. She looked as if she didn't notice them at all anymore. Her eyes seemed to stare into the distance, as if at something only she could see.
   "No... nooo..." she moaned, her face growing more fearful. She squirmed in his grip. "Noooo...!"

[Boog]

"Shhh shhh shh, it's all going to be okay," Jeremiah murmured, attempting just a teensy bit of hypnosis, "Everything's going to be just fine. I don't think she can hear me, Cog."

[Cogidubnus]

Cog frowned at tried to follow her gaze, but still didn't see anything. "I think she's in shock, or something. Hallucinating." He put the cross back in his jacket. That wasn't going to help her, at least not till they could get her calm.
"Well, I don't carry sedatives. Not gentle ones, anyway." he said, tapping his hilt. "I'd really rather not put her through that headache, though."

[Stygian]

"Nooooooo!" the woman cried out in pain, and bent, arching her back with unexpected strength and starting to shake. Her eyes rolled back and she started clawing the air. That could have been chalked up to shock as well, until her voice began distorting and her speech slurring, mixing with odd words and seemingly wanting to say three things at once. And then her skin began crawling. Not shivering or anything, but actually crawling, as if something was moving under it. Jeremiah even thought he could see a face under her own, shifted off to the right. She growled, in a way that no being should be able to.

[Gareeku]

"I would prefer not to." Gareeku replied as he heard Sebastian's suggest of bringing the chains. Looking back at the chains for a few moments, the wolf then exstinguised the white flame in his hand, before turning to follow the others up the stairs, though his other hand still rested on the hilt of his blade.

Who IS this guy...? Gareeku thought to himself as he began to ascend the stairs. And why was he chained up like that? Hmmm...something strange is going on...

[Aisha deCabre]

The emerald flashes came and went through the darkness as Aisha's tail swished idly, conveying restlessness.  She could feel it from everyone else too, Mel being the most silent.  She pulled the cape a little tighter over her shoulders as if by instinct, ascending the staircase with a little bit of increased speed as the dark ahead of them obscured their view of Sebastian.  I wonder just what we got ourselves into when we freed him.  Huh.  We'll just have to see, she thought, having nothing else to focus on but following along with her comrades, and the singing, still as ethereal a voice as it had been through the air a while ago.

No doubt there was a bit of surprise when, finally relieved as the torches ahead of them illuminated the eerie patches of the crypt, he was there and already looking like new.  Aisha listened to what he had said, narrowing her eyes curiously, her hand still resting near her weapons as was Gareeku's.  "Prepare for what...and she who?" the panthress nearly echoed, perhaps in as much questioning as the others.  No way out before then.  I don't like the sound of that.

[Boog]

With a yelp, Jeremiah dropped the girl and backed away.
"Cog, she's-! I-! Her face-! There's something screwey going on, Cog!"

[Stygian]

"She is a close relation to me. A cursed Archangel," the bat said with a bit of a smirk. "She's the guardian of this place since long. She was even before the place became haunted. And she'll do anything to kill us." He spoke with the utmost assurance and calm. "So we have to vanquish her, preferably quickly and painfully."

   The woman doubled over, her limbs beginning to flex and snap in very horrible ways, before she fell back on the carpet, her eyes rolling back and going all white. She moaned in a voice that was as deep as a man's now, with some odd, wailing tone to it.
   "Things in my head are weird! Of help I am pleading with impossible anguish!" she groaned, reaching for Jeremiah with a half pained and panicking, half confused look on her face.

[Mel Dragonkitty]

If Mel could have gone paler than pure white she probably would have. They didn't just have an Archangel mad at them for messing about in this place, but a cursed Archangel. Probably nuttier than several walnut farms combined on top of that. She hoped that this Sebastian knew how to stop such a creature. She was about to ask when another thought hit her. "There were two more in the party, a wolf and a frog. Do either of you know where they went?" she asked Aisha and Gareeku.

[Aisha deCabre]

"Archangel?" Aisha echoed again with a quirk of her eyebrow at the answer, before smirking slightly herself at the prospect.  And to think all we were doing was a little investigative meddling.  She shook her head slightly, her eyes wandering to the corners of the crypt, and the coffins besides.  So someone knew they were there, and now was out for their heads.  "Bueno.  More than a little deep, we've gotten now."

The panthress had started walking again, just eager to get out of the pit for the moment, when she had heard Mel's question.  Her ears perked slightly in thought.  "I recall those two...last I saw, they had stayed at the entrance, while we followed the blood trail."  Thinking of that, the question once again arose of just whose blood it was they found, anyway.  "Considering events I hope they stayed there," she muttered.

[Boog]

Things were straightforward now. This was something Jeremiah hadn't experienced all day, and was rather glad for the change of pace.
"Alright, alright, sorry about that then..." Jeremiah came closer and crouched down next to the girl, then reached for her arms and attempted to hold her still. That snapping could only be self inflicted, and sounded nasty, "What do you need me to do?"

[Stygian]

Stygian nodded and hunched down, placing a palm on the ground. Slowly, a complex set of symbols and patterns, like an alchemist's circle, made itself apparent on the floor, scribed in flames that turned from blue to orange and red. It moved, until it went still and then settled, flashing and sending some more fire whipping out from it and starting to gradually fill the air. At the same time, snaps and cracks could be heard, as fine lines began spreading out from the sign on the floor.
   "Then we should find them if they're still alive, however improbable that is. The house will only rest for a short while before all Hell breaks loose, and that might be all the time we need. Also, get out of here. I'm going to make this place collapse to seal the well. Had too many of those things come up and torture me," he said, while straightening and going over, beginning to pace up the stairs into the chapel.

   The woman grabbed Jeremiah's collar, and with decidedly unnatural strength she jerked him close, her face twisting into a furious snarl.
   "I want you to die!" she growled, before her face turned, and she was crying again. "No! Just... please! Take them out! Please, let me die...!" she whimpered, before adding another snarl and saying: "You son of a bitch!"

[Boog]

"No need to get abusive, Miss," Jeremiah replied, automatically slipping into infuriatingly-calm-smartass-mode as he often did in the face of others losing their tempers (Often provoked by his simple outright-smartass-mode). This wasn't monsters, this was just an angry person, and he could deal with angry people.
"Now then, if you would look at my eyes, Miss, I'm sure that whatever is troubling you will go away... Be calm..." He continued to hold her down, watching what was happening to her. Now, there's things moving under her skin. Is that what she needs out? How do I get them out? "Cog? A little assistance?" He turned back to the woman, "Just try to stay with me, okay Miss? Don't let whatever else is in there take the controls. Focus on me, alright Miss? Whatever it is, it cannot control you if you do not allow it to."

[Cogidubnus]

 Cog sidled up next to Jeremiah and held the woman's arms, trying to help keep her subdued. He was surprised by the ferocity with which she was speaking, and by the strength in her limbs. "Pretty strong for somebody who just broke a limb." he said, narrowing an eye. He nodded at Jeremiah. "Keep at whatever you're doing, sir. I think I have something to add as well."
Cog stealthily took the cross from out his jacket again, murmured something under his breath, and quickly dropped the chain of the aymethst-embedded cross over her head.

[Mel Dragonkitty]

Mel follows Sebastian up the stairs. "Um... sir, since you seem to...um... live here can you give us a little hint about what we're up against? And what can be done to not end up a bloody smear on the marble floors. As part of the preparation you were mentioning."

[Stygian]

The bat flinched at Mel saying that he seemed to live in the house, yet when they actually got up into the chapel and she mentioned becoming a bloody smear he made a little smile, as if the thought pleased him. He turned and looked at her, his formerly blackened eyes having turned into a pair of reasonably normal steely grey ones, and leaned his face down a bit to look at her with an almost friendly smile, his fangs perking out just the slightest bit under his lips.
   "I would suggest you gather all the power you have, stay away from the shadows, wear a holy charm and just generally try and not die too quickly," he murred, looking at her like she could imagine he would have looked at a well-hung piece of meat. "I don't know what you are capable of, so I'd advise you follow the basic rules and help with what you can. And stay close to your friends, if you want to live."

   The girl hissed and spat as the cross fell around her neck, and began thrashing and wailing as if she was going epileptic. Half of the time she seemed to be pleading for help in her own, bright voice, and the other half a multitude of snarls and groans that could not have been her own escaped her lips.
   "I will murder you, you miserable little shit so please help me! It hurts! Aaah! We will come for you! You understand, you fucking little twit?! I can't... no! God, please! Someone, help me...! Not likely, you little whore!"

[Boog]

Concern gave way to just a teensy bit of frustration, "You. Angry one. Shaddap. Now just stay with me here, Miss, everything will be okay. It's like a shot; it hurts, but it'll help you feel better later," While the last bit was directed at the girl as a reassurance and as a question at Cog as he looked up, "Isn't that right?"

[Cogidubnus]

Cog looked worriedly at the girl and hesitantly nodded. "It's designed as a healing charm...but, I think it's particular properties in this case might be helping more than the healing magics." He said, trying to hold her down. "Crosses sometimes help like that.