What's this, what's this?

[revenancemods]

Characters: Anyone who wanted to go explore the mansion
Content: Exploration!!
Location: The abandoned mansion
Time of Day: Whenever
Warnings: None

There have been rumors of it being haunted. There have been suggestions that what's inside might not be what people remember. Which is correct?

No one can say for sure, and the mansion certainly isn't about talk. The only answer to questions is waiting inside.

So come, step in through the crack in the wall. Explore the forest and what lies beyond. The answers have to be there somewhere after all.]

Comments

[brodakota]

"Still, that's no reason to go running off like that," North said. After all, three heads were better than one, both in solving puzzles and in fighting nightmares.

"But now that we've figured it out, we can put our heads together to figure out what it is. Let's go check out the last room."

[whoseesbynight]

"Could have fooled me!" Nepeta answered with a smile. Not that she was complaining, really. She was already plenty capable of keeping up, and she certainly didn't mind taking care of the Nightmares that turned up. But there wasn't any way to deny that Wash had been going rather fast.

"Alright."

[unrecovered]

"Okay, back up the stairs." Because it wasn't worth it to keep arguing with these two about whether it had been a race - which it hadn't, jeez - when there was more to this puzzle to solve. He headed out of the dining room and up the opposite set of stairs this time, making sure Nepeta and North were with him and fighting his way through the Nightmares when they popped up. "Why do they only show up on the stairs?" He wasn't expecting an answer; that didn't stop it from being annoying as hell.

Once they'd taken out the last of the Nightmares and reached the top of the stairs, he headed over to the door and pushed it open.

[revenancemods]

This is a wide open room, distinguishable as a library only by the bookshelves that line the walls, filled to the brim with books and, in one corner, a golden vase. In the center of the room, there is a small, rectangular table with a strange symbol drawn on its surface in chalk. The symbol looks to be incomplete, however.

[brodakota]

North said nothing in response to Wash's comment. There was no point in complaining since the nightmares weren't going to listen to them. He also didn't say anything about stumbling on the stairs, and he hoped that no one would notice. With Wash racing on ahead, maybe he'd get lucky.

He looked around the room, noting that it was in a similar condition to the others, old, dusty, and unused for quite some time. The main objective now was to figure out what was out of place.

"Hey, do you think finishing this symbol will do anything?"

It was the only thing he could see. Unless the vase wasn't supposed to be there.

[whoseesbynight]

Nepeta, at least, didn't notice, mostly on account of paying more attention to the dream eaters themselves than the other people she was nominally fighting with. If North had managed to pass out entirely, then she might have thought that something was more than a little amiss. Since he didn't, she didn't even so much as think there might have been a problem.

"It might."

[unrecovered]

Wash did notice the stumble and was inwardly kicking himself for not having noticed it earlier. Between Theta's anxiety and the current set of shared dreams, North probably wasn't getting a whole lot of rest. Wash wasn't going to bring it up now - not in front of Nepeta, and not if North could hold it together - but he was definitely going to keep an eye on him.

"Possibly." Wash was distracted by his own mental account of what had been in the rest of the mansion: there had been another symbol, possibly corresponding to this one, in the dining room; there was a book on the table of the room with the drawings; the pottery downstairs matched the gold vase on the shelf. "Okay, divide and conquer," he told them, heading across the room and picking up the vase. "Nepeta, head back to the white room, grab the book off the table, and bring it back here. North, you and Theta see if you can't fill in that symbol. I'll take the vase downstairs and meet you back here. Sync?"

[brodakota]

"Sync," North replied, turning his attention to the table.

"Theta, think you can run a scan and try to find a match for it?"

Theta appeared tentatively, without the fanfare of his fireworks. He nodded, looking it over and running it through the data he'd collected. He wasn't as fast as someone like Delta, but it wouldn't take him long, since they'd seen it recently.

[whoseesbynight]

"Sure," Nepeta answered with a nod. She might not have been familiar with the specific terminology that Wash had used, but she more than understood the general idea. What he needed her to do it for was something else, but she wasn't about to argue. Instead she headed for the door without so much as the blink of an eye.

"I'll see you in a moment!"

And with that, she ducked out of the door, heading back towards the room that had been almost uncomfortably white.

[unrecovered]

Wash paused long enough to give the two of them a nod before heading down the stairs - and straight into yet another pack of Nightmares. Goddammit, he was popular today.

Cradling the vase in one hand to keep Nightmares from breaking it meant he was limited to just his handgun and his Spirits. Luckily, Melody and Fang were more than up to the task, and it wasn't long before the stairs were once again Nightmare-free and Wash was standing in the foyer. He lifted the only intact glass case, put the vase in with the other golden pottery, and put the case back into place. Time to see if this worked.

[revenancemods]

The vase glowed golden, and that same chime sounded from somewhere within the mansion.

Theta may find that the symbol in the library bears similarities to the symbol previously found in the dining room, namely that the latter could possibly be an extension of the former.

[brodakota]

"Looks like we put another thing in place," North said as he heard the chime, but his focus remained on the symbols.

"The missing one's a crown," Theta said quietly, appearing dimly beside North.

"I guess we'll need to fill it in then, and see if that does anything," North said, looking around for something to use.

[whoseesbynight]

Nepeta, meanwhile, had finished making her back to the white room, after fighting her way through a handful of Nightmares in the process. Conveniently, the book in question was easy enough to spot even on a second time through, and it was the work of barely a moment's thought to pick it up.

Fortunately, it wasn't any great difficulty to carry it back to the room they'd started in, even with the fact that the Nightmares were back. If nothing else could be said about having a sylladex it certainly made hands-free carrying a lot easier.

[unrecovered]

Part of Wash wanted to know what exactly would happen when they got the last piece into place; the other part of him figured they'd cross that bridge when they came to it. He headed back up the stairs - Nightmare-free, for once - reaching the library at about the same time as Nepeta. "Find an empty space on the shelves," he told her. "See if the book fits." That was easy enough.

"North, Theta, any luck?"

[brodakota]

"Yeah," North replied, looking over. "Looks like the missing symbol's a crown. Do you have anything to fill it in with?"

He kind of wished they'd grabbed those crayons from the white room. Those would have been handy right about now.

[whoseesbynight]

"Alright," Nepeta answered with a nod, before bounding over to the bookshelves. She did still have a few pieces of chalk in her sylladex, but all things being equal, she's more concerned about finding where the book she has goes.

It takes her a moment to find what looks like the most likely of places, but once she's found it, she wastes no time in putting the book back where it (presumably) goes.

[revenancemods]

The book glows golden once Nepeta slides it into place, and that chime sounds once again.

[unrecovered]

Wash stayed silent for a few seconds after the chime sounded, waiting for...something. He didn't know what. When nothing happened, he huffed and answered North's question. "Not on me. Nepeta, how about you?"

[brodakota]

"If all else fails, we can run over to the white room and get those crayons for a minute," North said. "I think this might be the last piece of the puzzle."

[whoseesbynight]

With the book put back in it's proper place, Nepeta wasted no time in pulling out a piece of chalk. Exactly why she had chalk on her person was something that she didn't particularly want to explain just at the moment, but it would do to complete the symbol. Or so she hoped anyway.

"You can use this! It's the last I have of that color though."

[unrecovered]

Wash stayed silent, watching Nepeta hand over the chalk. With any luck, this would actually do...whatever it was supposed to do. He still wasn't too clear on what the end point of the puzzle was.

[brodakota]

North took the chalk from Nepeta, nodding his thanks.

"I'll try not to use too much of it," He said, before turning back to the table. Theta made a hologram of the symbol in front of him, and North sketched it in quickly and quietly. Hopefully, it was good enough and wouldn't have to be completely coloured in.