ph_logs | [Cult Follow-Up] Well, That Was Weird

CONTENT WARNINGS:
Violence with religious overtones, cult activities, gore featuring eye trauma and glass shards.

Well, That Was Weird

Once the chaos of combat ends, the members of the Cult of Nyarlathotep stand tense for a long moment before letting out sighs of relief. The dead are dragged aside and piled against the wall while Chloe sits on the stairs and picks glass out of her wounded face with her bare fingers. Nora Winterbottom brings her a few towels from Larkin's bathroom, much to the mayor's dismay.

"What a waste of blood," Lucy muses, tutting.

Pirnach moves toward the center of the room, rubbing his hands together, eyebrows raised, releasing a stressed breath loosely. "What a way to end a party, huh? Well, it's a shame our initiation ceremony went that way, but we appreciate the patience for the rest of you. Now that we're done dealing with those interlopers, let's say we get this show on the road for real, eh?" Looking back to Chloe, Pirnach arches a brow and gestures vaguely and broadly at the room. She waves him off.

"Yes, fine, you do it." Another chunk of crystal glass hits the floor with a clink.

Ingmar brings Pirnach the book from the altar. The thinner, paler man is now shirtless, revealing a massive web of tattoos forming a collar around his neck and extending down over his shoulders, back and chest. He is covered in ceremonial designs, runes and sigils. He wears the locket brought here by Archie and Maude Brenning, the wedding locket which belongs to Linette, and stands in the center of the circle while the rest of the cultists go around to the new initiates. Pirnach speaks once more, clearly able to translate the alien text on the page with little trouble.

"O Bloody Tongue and Caliban Storm, we summon you. Up from the ageless depths of the starless void, we call upon you. We speak the words with blood on our tongues, O Soul and Messenger, that you might bear your Message unto these bodies yet uncorrupted by the vile divine. As they offer their minds and their flesh to you, Dark King, may your greatness unfurl within them, crawling up their veins like venom and spilling forth from their mouths as black bile and red death, as foul as your creeping mist upon the minds of the unworthy. Welcome them into your many obsidian and splendid arms, let their bones decorate your wicked teeth, their meat hot on your fetid breath, and let us be venerated one and all for this feast which shall empower you to wrap your broken lips around this blighted land."

As the words carry on, the final confirmation that this was never an initiation clicks into place. But there is nowhere to run now. Your body feels frozen, your feet rooted to the spot. You feel as stiff as a body in a casket, and can almost feel invisible vines coiling around you from below, immobilizing you in their embrace. Against your will, your eyes train on the circle below as one by one the cultists come around the room with blades and slice the throats of everyone who remains.

As you bleed out, you manage to have enough awareness about you to witness the last bit of the ritual. Sacrifices exsanguinating, blood flows to the center of the room in uncanny little rivers not guided by gravity and soak into the stone circle like a sponge, flowing through its carvings and up around Ingmar's bare feet. He is breathing heavily, almost panicking, as the blood climbs up his chest and neck and into his mouth. By the time he feels the desire to scream, he no longer can.

"Father of Bats, let the blood of these sacrifices serve as a vehicle for your corruption as we create an anchor with which to prepare your greatest sacrifice," Pirnach continues reading. "Once your venom permeates her pitiable flesh, her tears and her screams will stain the ground and claim this rock in your name! We name her conduit, we name her Linette! Ia, Nyarlathotep!"

Your vision swims as your own choked gurgles drown out any further words. You are left with a blurry vision of the stone hoop in the center of the room filling with black pooling liquid from which dark tendrils reach out for Ingmar... before everything fades away.

When you come to, you are back in the forest where the cabins are now dilapidated once more. You are a ghost now, with a day to discuss with your companions what you just witnessed. Once dawn comes the following morning, you will wake in the woods, strewn about the perimeter of the cabins, and you will be able to return home with a vision of the strange and morbid events which helped to put the barrier into place.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's better than nothing." Though her face says she'd rather they had a more surefire assurance, too. "I'm curious about how they all died and I'd like to narrow down how many years ago that was. If their plans really had something to do with the situation with the barrier, then... I don't know. Timescale won't help much, but more information is never a bad thing."

"Agreed." Just the one word, but firm almost to the point of vehemence.

And then a little more gently: "In the meantime ... I don't think we've properly met. I'm Cassandra de Rolo."

"You can call me CT." Lucky that her surname doesn't start with a T, really. Pretending that Constance Diaz isn't her real name would be much harder if it did. "Nice to meet you, Cassandra. Grim circumstances or no. From what I saw you handled yourself well in there."

"Thank you." A nod, a smile; she's been brought up to take compliments from strangers gracefully, even if she isn't sure she's earned them. "I'm not sure I accomplished anything by fighting, there at the end, but at least I did manage to get one of them talking earlier."

"That's more than I managed, thanks to Chloe's... quirks." The thread of genuine frustration with herself is clearer than she'd like it to be. She can't help the feeling that she should've done better at ingratiating herself for information, given her skill set. "At least between the lot of us we came out with as much as we could reasonably expect to learn, given the circumstances."

"Then the next step," she says firmly, "is working out how to combine it with what's already known to get a clearer picture. And, ideally, see if any of it can be applied toward a solution."

"Oh, well, if that's all..." comes out with a lot more clear frustration than intended, and she presses her lips together, jaw clenched, as she breathes deliberately to calm it. "Sorry. I'm— just very tired, I think."

She'd all but burned herself down to smouldering ashes by the time she'd left the Project and the next several months on the run hadn't exactly allowed her to rest. She has rather jumped from one dangerous investigation to the next.

(Not that it means she's liable to actually take a break any time soon...)

"Quite all right," Cassandra says, "please don't give it another thought."

A pause.

"I suppose the good news there is that we can't do much besides rest, until we're revived."

"I guess so." Though the idea of having no choice but to waste most of a day still doesn't settle right with her. Problems with being a chronic workaholic. "Twenty something hours to go."

[Cult Follow-Up] Well, That Was Weird

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