The party sat around discussing all their magic items and capabilities. Some items were swapped from hero to hero. Armania came up with her preferred list of spells to use for the final day. After the discussion the party took a night's rest and awoke refreshed with Ofraham still in their midst.
Queen Cassilda ask them if they were ready to visit the Carcosan version of Thrushmoor and when the group emphatically stated that they were prepared. Cassilda teleported the group and they arrived near the shore of Avalon Bay. The queen immediately cried out in a startled and tortured scream and flickered out of existence.
The skies above the alternate Thrushmoor were dark and stormy, but also hazy in a manner that appeared to have little to do with the weather. The clouds roiled and raced across the two muted black suns. The wharf, nearby warehouses, and fishing boats were all indistinct, like an animated watercolor painting done with faded pigments. Despite the appearance of strong winds that lashed at nearby trees and a driving rain, no wind or rain could be felt and the town was eerily quiet. Standing just where Cassilda was before she vanished, the translucent image of the Pallid Mask flickered into existence in her place.
“Hello,” he said derisively, “we meet again.”
After waiting a minute with a smug look on his face he continued.
“Something bothered me during our last encounter. You were supposed to be dead, couldn’t quite reconcile how you were here. You see, I have since learned that you died in the Dreamlands. You were the victims of the one who calls himself Lowls, urged on in his actions by the Mad Poet. Yet, here you were in Carcosa and you were the death of me—a distressing paradox, one that the King has now acted to correct. Carcosa, you see, haunts the dreams of mortals throughout the universe, and the Dimension of Dreams transcends time. Simply put, everything you are and everything you have done has been naught but the dreams of dying minds, an alternate timeline where you woke up from your amnesia to fight a cosmic battle against the inevitable.
“Even now, the Briarstone Witch sends her minion, the Tatterman, through the dreams of Ulver Zandalus to put an end to you and this alternate continuity.” The Pallid Mask laughed dryly. “Ironically you were also phantoms of truth, but now those phantoms are laid to rest.”
The Pallid Mask turned and walked away, fading from sight as he did so.
"But what you say is exactly what has happened!" Armania shouted at him.
He turned back and looked at them one final time before he disappeared. Ursina noticed that he appeared startled and disconcerted at this declaration.
A moment later the heroes received a faint telepathic message from Cassilda, though she was nowhere to be seen.
“He tells only the truth he wants to believe. I still sense you and something strange on the isle near you. Go there. Nowhere else, because you’re running out of time! Make your own truth!”
"We seem to be out of sync with reality. Can anyone feel the wind or the rain?" Ciprian queried.
"No. I do not feel any wind and I am certainly not getting wet," Gavril answered.
"Also, I cannot hear the waves pounding the shore. It seems that would be making some noise," Erevel noted.
Surveying their surroundings, they observed a strange corona of light shimmering over the Briarstone
Isle and feel a strong, intuitive urge to go there. In their current state, they found they could simply fly across the water with ease.
Arriving at Briarstone Isle they saw several large oozes wandering around outside in the yellow haze. The asylum was hazy and indistinct like the rest of the nexus, but a chilling sense of familiarity grew as they entered the Entry Hall. The hall was deserted but they could easily move through the walls and doors. Heading to the west they found the survivors huddled in the chapel with Winter. The guards were at the barricade with crossbows. The weeping eye was attached to the door leading to the Entry Hall. With each room and corridor that is passed by there was an eerie sense that this was not the asylum as they left it, but as it was before they woke up.
Ciprian led the group through to the basement cells through the chute which ended in a pile of dead bodies of doppelgangers, inmates in rags and doctors in white coats. Entering the actual cells the party saw themselves stupefied and unconscious on the floor of the cells.
They observed a tall, thin figure in the garb of a doctor drag and pull one of the survivors onto the table and strap him down. The heroes find they are helpless to intervene as this occurs on the Material Plane and they are somehow ethereal or incorporeal. But they can overhear the doctor speak.
“The Tatterman says you all must die. No survivors. All must die! The witch, she commands it!”
The victim woke up and screamed as the horrific creature began its ghastly vivisection. The doctor muttered softly to its victim,
“They didn’t tell me which ones were the important ones, though. So we start with you.”
A flash of imagery and sounds filled the heroes minds as the aeon communicated with them. It gives them the impression that time had gone askew and the creature must destroy them in order to set things right again.
The bythos gaze attack caused some dismay as it confused those who saw it. It was readily found that fire and electricity damage were reduced. With its reach and teleport ability the bythos kept the party on its toes. At one point Ciprian cast Blink and tried to kick his slumbering figure in the head but his foot just passed through the head of the unconscious figure. Gavril and Erevel tried to get close enough to attack, took attacks of opportunity as they did and then the bythos teleported away. Armania summoned a Dire Tiger to battle the creature who touched Ofraham to which Ofraham disappeared from sight.
During the battle the doctor kept up her administrations to the man on the table. At one point he screamed for the sleeping heroes to "Wake Up!" Later as his wounds became worse he again pleaded for help, “Wake up! Save yourselves! Wake up!”
"Isn't this similar to what we experienced in our initial encounter in an alley filled with yellow mist?" Armania suggested.
The group surrounded the bythos, who kept healing itself but at long last the Dire Tiger hit with both claws and the bythos fell silently to the floor and disappeared as the room once again regained its former size.
“Wake up! Save me! Help! Wake up, damn it!” the man on the table again screamed in pain.
The party began to gather but noticed that the room had subtly shifted. They felt as if there corresponding bodies may be more material to them. Gavril began to yell at the slumbering version of himself, and the younger version began to shake his head as if knocking out the cobwebs. Ciprian did the same and then all the rest of the heroes tried to rouse their own younger versions.
"Wale up! Damn it! Save me! the man on the table screamed once again.
Gavril in the cell stood up and wiped the blood from his nose as the awoken Erevel tried to kick the cell door down. Ursina tried to claw the lock but it was sturdy. Ciprian noted that the doctor had a ring of keys on her belt.
Gavril started to yell at her to stop attacking the man on the table. She wheeled around to look at him, surprised, and demands "Pipe down. You'll get your turn soon enough." She then goes back to her business, agonizing over where to make her next incision on her patient.
Gavril started to scream, "I want my turn now. Take me next, I want my turn!"
Clearly frustrated the "doctor" turned to him screaming "Quiet!" at the same time transforming her face to look perfectly like the screaming man. She then moved to the table picking up the forks and as she did the man on the table struggled against his blood-soaked bindings and managed to free one leg. Desperately he kicked the woman in the back, throwing her against the cell of the screamer and the brown haired figure. A mage hand appeared and grabbed the ring of keys from her waist. In the chaos she does not notice losing the keys and she rushes to the table, violently stabbing and murdering the man as the blood and gore flies through the air.
The Pallid Mask flickered back into existence staggering toward the younger Ciprian and shouted, “No! Stop! This is not possible!” In a roar and incandescent explosion of bright light, the entire scene disappeared.
The heroes found themselves back in the same spot at the docks where Cassilda first teleported them to the Thrushmoor nexus. The skies were still stormy, the rain began to soak their clothes, and waves rolled across the lake.
"I can feel the rain and hear the waves and storm," Ursina yelled. "Perhaps we are real once again!"
Beyond the docks, large sections of the town appeared to be missing. Empty ground existed where buildings once stood. Yet slowly the outlines of homes and business start to appear and gradually become more and more solid. The streets of this phantom town were deserted, but the cries of its panicked populace could be heard in the distance. Those cries grew steadily louder with every passing heartbeat. To the north and in the direction of Iris Hill, storm clouds circled where the manor should stand and a beam of yellow light rises from the ground and stabs into the night.
DM'a Notes: The denouement is coming.
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