ph_logs | [Closed] Inner Sanctum

[Closed] Inner Sanctum

Who: Dr. Elias Coldwood (

arcanegrasp) & Shen Qingqiu (

xiaoxiuya)
What:The investigation of Dr. Coldwood's home
When:Early December
Where: The Lighthouse
Warning(s): [ Will add as they become relevant! ]

"...No, I understand completely, ma'am, but surely you can just tell them it's a bad idea, couldn't you?"

Dr. Elias Coldwood paces the living room of the lighthouse, sending stone in hand and brows furrowed so deeply that it looks as though it could give him a headache, growing more exasperated by the minute. Adventuring parties, goddesses mercy, he thought he'd be free of the scourge of adventuring parties getting tangled in anything they could find in such a small town, but apparently he'd have no such luck. It seems like the off-worlders have been inspiring the locals to take up arms and carve their own paths where they're able. Where there is danger, there are people who want to face it, and where those people are, there is a desperate need for information so they don't get themselves killed for no reason. Even in the evening hours, apparently.

"Right, of course. Yes, no, I understand," Elias sighs. "I'll be there shortly. ...Yes, yes, I'll bring the antivenom, just in case. Goodbye."

The sending stone dims, and Dr. Coldwood lets out a short groan that is nothing short of profoundly irritated.

"When it rains, it pours, does it not?" He half-jokes, tugging on his coat and collecting things off of a cluttered end-table, snagging a few journals off of the bookshelf. "First the roof leak, now the adventurers... I swear, they can't leave well enough alone with that goddesses-forsaken wyvern. I suppose that's what happens when a small town gets one, though. No one knows how to behave when megafauna get involved."

The ins and odds are stored in his satchel, which is slung over his shoulder. An apologetic smile back towards Shen Qingqiu follows it.

"Feel free to take the rest of the evening to yourself, if you'd like. We'll pick back up where we left off tomorrow. Just be certain to lock the door behind you, if you don't mind. Enjoy your night, my friend!"

And, in his great hurry, he barely waits for a response before he's out the door. Boot-clad footfalls fade distantly once they're off of that first stone step.

-

Without Dr. Coldwood's presence inside of it, flitting about to and fro amid all his work, the house seems shockingly still. A long couch and aged armchair sit before a fireplace, old embers hidden behind a short metal screen. The dining table, mostly cleared through the help of his assistants in organizing, sorting, and filing his collection of notes away, bears a single magically-lit lamp. To the far end of the room, round stairs begin to climb the wall upwards, towards the lighthouse, to Dr. Coldwood's private dwellings, then further up to the lighthouse's lamp itself. On the other end, a sloping stairwell to the basement descends into darkness, a lamp sitting on a short shelf to be taken down when something is needed.

The entire cluttered-but-comfortable home is, for one of the first times that isn't fleeting moments, left open to prying eyes. The only question is the same beckoned by an empty canvas to its artist: where to begin?

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These don’t seem to be the words of a man trying to lie. The little he’s said so far has been true, but it feels off, as if he didn’t really remember he had these items. It reminds her a little of the man with the match found at the burning of Larkin’s manor.

He hadn’t much memory of that event. The difference is that Elias has admitted the journal is his, but the writings are older, and this knife is apparently only vaguely familiar to him. Neither of those seem to be lies, but she’s running out of ideas on who could be the mastermind in league with the demons.

“How long has it been since you have seen either?”

"Years," Elias explains, opening the journal once more, tabbing to the final page of it. "It's been... six years, since I'd put this one away. I don't often revisit them unless the need arises."

He then turns his attention to the dagger. He seems resistant to the idea, but eventually pushes himself to lift it, the deep frown on his face evident even beneath his beard. His thumb traces the side of the blade. "Throdogoth ph'nglui vulgtmor," he reads aloud. There's no hesitation in the pronunciation; it all flows easily, with practice. He abandons it as quickly as he'd lifted it. "Glory in sacrifice."

There's a beat. That tension doesn't ease, even with his gaze averted from the dagger once more.

"I suppose it would be too convenient to believe if I told the two of you that I do not know what this language is, nor--- why I know it. But that is what it says."

Shen Qingqiu exchanges a look with Valdis, seeing his own discomfort mirrored on her face. "Do you remember where you got this dagger? How long have you had it?" he asks.

Valdis doesn’t like the memory issues one bit. It reminds her too much of how Fenrir messed with her head, destroying everything to ensure she and the others had no memories to fall back on. She doubts Elias did this to himself and still feels nothing like a lie, only hesitation and perhaps a little fear.

Hearing the words leaving his mouth along with the translation just deepens the mystery. If Elias is the Chaos God, his powers are stronger than her own if he’s able to deceive her so well. Somehow she doubts that is the case.

“And do you have more recent journals?”

"I don't recall where the dagger came from, no. I found it some time ago, and... to be frank, looking at it isn't a pleasant experience. I'm not sure if either of you two have felt anything like that?" Elias asks, a gentle, hopeful edge to the notion.

"But, as for journals, I do. One is here, in fact!" A second is taken to fish into his bag, and a newer notebook, though no less battered from use and time, is offered, left on the table for the two to look at their leisure. "Though this one isn't all that old, I'll admit, so it's mostly field notes, occasional reminders, budgeting, and, ehm. Grocery lists. But! You're welcome to see it, all the same."

Edited 2025-02-19 00:29 (UTC)

Shen Qingqiu checks the journal, but doesn't see any sign of suspicious writing about the goddesses or mysterious eldritch runes. He gives it back to Elias with a thoughtful frown.

"Doctor Coldwood..." he asks slowly. "Do you ever find yourself missing time? You find yourself somewhere and you can't recall how you got there, or perhaps you suddenly look up in the middle of a task and realize you have no idea what you've been doing? Does that sound familiar?"

Valdis doesn’t need to check the journal herself, she simply reads Shen’s emotions as he looks through it, but she’s not surprised when he finds nothing.

Elias’s hopeful glance doesn’t make her feel any better about this, but she has nothing to add to her companion’s question right now. Rather, she lets the wheels turn in her head, trying to find some connection somewhere between what she’s read in old files.

"Well, I think this does happen to... everyone to an extent, doesn't it?" Elias gives an uneasy chuckle. "I've not got any notable missing periods of time, if that should put your mind to ease."

He stows the newer journal once more, taking the time to consider that, his frown turning thoughtful.

"I assume you mean to think that I've got a lapse in time from finding the blade," Elias says, casting one more glance to it. "And while I admit I don't recall where it's come from, I don't find myself missing any time that I could have found such a thing. One day it was simply... there, in a stored box of my old things. As if it'd always been there. As it strains the mind to look at for any long period of time, I... saw to it that I wouldn't accidentally stumble upon it again."

"I see."

Well, this just got a whole lot more complicated. They found someone with ties to the cult, all right, but the gaps in Elias's memory raise the possibility that he is only a mind-wiped stooge with planted evidence. But at the same time, a surviving cultist might have chosen to have their memories wiped, turning them into a sleeper agent...It's just not possible to be sure with the information they have.

"We may have more questions about the dagger and your journal later," he says quietly, returning the dagger to its bag. "But for now, why don't you tell me how to look after that creature of yours? It seemed rather volatile when I encountered it earlier."

Valdis glances at her partner, assuming he's thinking the same things she is. Elias does not seem to be the mastermind, but there is solid evidence pointing to him being one of the remaining cultists. She's tempted to go speak with Linette on the matter, if anyone would know something about the cultists, it would be Linette.

Her attention shifts to Elias when Shen asks about the creature.

"Before that, what is she?"

The creature didn't feel like something natural or normal, and based on Elias's ties to the cult, she's not certain it's capable of being a kind one.

The question brings about Elias' first signs of any true, sincere reluctance. He tenses, and for a moment, it seems as though he might fall silent, perhaps demand someone to be in the presence of what he says, or try to lie and dismiss whatever the creature is outright, to come up with some intricate excuse that would justify it's existence.

It's written all over his face that he cannot find such a justification, though, save for the truth.

"...She's something entirely unique, in and of herself. I've never seen anything like her in all my life," Elias begins, quieter now. Almost somber. "I don't entirely recall how I came to find her. It's little more than a dream to me. A... seed, if you'd believe it. Almost a strange growth of something our world could not comprehend, and the promise that its potential far surpasses its meager current form, if given the time, space, and blood it requires to grow."

A beat. He takes in a slow breath, and lets out a shakier one.

"You two must understand, that--- that before you'd arrived, the people could not hear from the goddesses any longer. Not even the most devout among us could reach them. With the silence and the barrier, and everything I'd done to try to test it, it seemed as though the goddesses were simply... gone. That we were trapped at the focal point of a world-wide calamity, and that the Four Mothers would never be able to save their people from it again. Whatever contained us, many of us had come to understand that mortals could not surpass it."

He hesitates, but flips to the bloodied page of his journal on the table. His expression is grim when he raises his attention back to Shen Qingqiu and Valdis.

"When you are faced with an empty pantheon, a seemingly doomed world, and given a seed of divinity... what choice would you have but to plant it? To raise a godling all the way to its ascension, so that we might, someday, be free of this curse?"

"You've...you been raising a baby god in your basement? Alone??" Shocked, Shen Qingqiu slaps his open palm on the table. "Elias -- forgive me, Doctor Coldwood. Even if we set aside the moral quandaries, what sort of god do you imagine she'll be, locked up in a basement all her life, only a single point of contact, fed nothing but blood? Does that sound like a recipe for a sane and well-adjusted adult to you?"

Valdis just states at Elias as he speaks of this thing he’s created. Much as she agrees with Shen’s assessment of the stupidity, that’s not the only thing she takes issue with.

“Divinity? You wouldn’t know divinity if it kissed you.”

is not thrilled by this new information in the slightest.

“How is it that humans can’t ever do anything for themselves.”

She sighs heavily to cover the inhuman growl in her throat.

“You can’t create something from nothing and a creature fed exclusively on blood and sacrifice cannot understand the value of life. You haven’t created a god, you’ve created a predator.”

Edited 2025-03-01 01:30 (UTC)

"Wh--- no! Goddess' sake, neither of you understand," Elias raises his voice, teetering on outrage, though never quite tipping into the edge of anything besides desperation to be understood. "And you'll do well to save your judgement! Just--- just listen to me."

He lifts a hand, scratching gently over his beard, and lets out a sigh of his own.

"I had nowhere else that she could have feasibly been raised in, and--- and the nature of what she is, as I've been brought to understand it, needs blood to be sustained. She's... still just a fledgling, even after all this time. She understands little beyond her next meal, my face and voice, and the basement. I know it's not ideal. Do you---" He cuts himself off to let out a short laugh, torn between sarcastic and offended. "Do you honestly believe that I'd raise anything in a basement by choice? She's easily provoked! She's docile with me, but she's so--- skittish around others, so quick to answer threats with her teeth. Had she been found before, or goddesses forbid, attack someone, there's every chance she would have been killed. No, no, I--- I couldn't risk that. Not when the everything that's at stake is quite so high."

He catches himself, and settles, the bristling of his tangent sinking back into something solemn.

"Or everything that had been at stake. The goddesses are alive. We've known this for some time, now, and I haven't known how to proceed. I can't... I won't kill her, nor see her be killed. Surely the two of you must understand that much."

Valdis doesn't care much for his excuses, and she cares even less when he calls the creature a fledgling. That strikes a nerve that no sane man would ever want to strike. It brings back memories of the pain, destruction and suffering of complete innocents, just like that creature in Elias' basement.

"She is innocent in your plotting to replace the goddesses, if that was genuinely your goal, no harm shall come to her unless she becomes an active, immediate threat to the residents of Pumpkin Hollow."

Valdis is not convinced Elias is within his full mind, there are too many gaps in his memory concerning the journal, the language, the dagger...no, it seems too similar to the reports from Cerrit and Leon.

"Shen, I'm putting you in charge of her."

It would likely be unwise for her to interact with the creature, who knew how their respective divinities would interact.

"Now, Elias, I want you to tell me this. Are you, or were you once, a member of the Cult of Nyarlathotep?"

"I -- of course!" Shen Qingqiu quickly agrees, standing a little straighter as he tries not to stare. He'd been expecting an argument when he confirmed his intentions of looking after the creature and attempting to socialize her, not to have the volunteering done for him. Or in that tone of voice; to his cultivator-enhanced senses, Valdis feels dangerous -- which most likely means that something has angered her terribly.

Whatever it is, he hopes it's not focused on him.

No attempts, or at least no successful attempts, are made at hiding his mortification at the idea of someone else caring for his creation. Before Elias can manage to argue, however, another sharp question comes his way. One that catches him off guard, if his brief stumbling is anything to go off of.

"Wh--- what? No, of course not. I know her nature and that of the dagger lend itself to such an assumption, but--- I've no ties to such a cult, no. I know of its existence through rumors that have been passed around the town for some months now, but nothing more than that."

Valdis laughs, and shakes her head, but it's not a pleasant laugh, if anything it adds to that dangerous feeling Shen Qingqiu is sensing.

"You see, I don't believe you. I believe you think you are being truthful, but even you can't explain why you can speak and write the same language found within the book belonging to that very cult. I think someone messed with your head."

There is a way to check, to force the issue, maybe she's even angry enough to try, but such things shouldn't be done in anger, and Shen wouldn't understand the purpose of it. Indeed, no one even knows she can do such a thing, so perhaps now is not the time to play that card. Elias isn't currently a threat.

Shen Qingqiu can do nothing but nod his agreement with Valdis's arguments, his arms crossed against his chest. "That would explain many of the mysteries surrounding this case," he says quietly, and then clears his throat. "But even if we can't prove your connection to the cult, Doctor Coldwood, I'm afraid you really can't continue on like you've been. The child must be socialized and integrated into the community, if doing so is at all possible. It won't happen overnight," he says gently, when Elias looks like he's about to have another outburst. "I have no intention of taking any course of action that would harm her or cause unnecessary risk to others. But I will be taking over her feeding for the time being, and I will do my best to teach her Emeran and gradually introduce her to others. I hope I can count on your complete cooperation in the days to come, beginning with telling me everything about how you normally care for her. And," he says thoughtfully, "I'll need to learn how to communicate with her in her native language."

Elias doesn't try to argue with Valdis; after all, how could he argue against the idea that something's been taken from his mind? It doesn't set well with him, judging by the furrow of his brow, and the tension in his shoulders.

Shen Qingqiu is right to try to smooth him over when he does, because he teeters dangerously on outrage - but he takes in a sharp breath, rubbing his face firmly to try to soothe his strained nerves. He takes a few moments, before he finally looks back to Shen Qingqiu, his expression torn somewhere strangely between indignant and very, very afraid.

"Tend to her, but know this--- she is not yours. If I must, I will make sure that your constables and Town Hall hear no end of it," he warns, but the desperation of it dampens any of the genuine threat he might have tried to make. "Integration and socialization, if possible, will need to happen under my watch, and no less. It isn't safe to try to perform any introductions without my being there, either. I say this not out of pride, but necessity. I won't have you place her in a situation where she will be put to death by negligence."

Elias swallows roughly at the thought, but, at last, gives a nod, slow and tense.

"I... can teach you, however. To speak with her. If you'll abide by what I ask, I'll teach you all that you need," he adds, gentler this time. "Please. She--- she may be a nascent god, and I'll reckon with that, should the day come, but for now... she's all I have left. I'll do all that I must, depriving her has never been my goal, but please--- do not take her from me."

“Let me make this very clear, Elias.” Valdis growls. “That creature is innocent and shall be treated as such. Any negligence on the part of my people will be dealt with by me and will not be held against her. Her state is your fault, not hers.”

Valdis will not allow this creature to suffer because people are afraid of her. In fact, she suspects that the creature will have more support than Elias believes.

Finally, far softer.

“One last thing. Does she have a name?”

The blame is winced at, but once again, not argued with. Valdis makes a fair point, as difficult as it is for him to swallow. He remembers little of the details of all of it, but she is in his care; surely, her coming to be as she is must have been his doing. His raised hackles lower, slowly but surely - and when she speaks back up, gentler this time, his expression softens in turn.

He hesitates, but answers quietly, with a hushed sort of sentimentality a parent might reserve for a sleeping infant.

"...Glory. Her name is Glory."

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[Closed] Inner Sanctum

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