Spiritual Successor(Ambrose)
Date: 2025-09-13 21:02
(Spiritual Successor(Ambrose):Ambrose)
[Sat Sep 13 2025]
The Mist-Choked Courtyard of Castle Camelot
Emerging from the tunnels into the larger cavern, Camelot looms — majestic and mighty, yet crumbling and all but abandoned.
Nowhere are the dichotomies of Castle Camelot more starkly evident than where the tunnels open to the sprawl of the Courtyard. Getting here required traveling deep underground, and yet here, the ceiling of the cave can’t even be seen for the haze of misty fog, thick like a rainy day in Britannia. And despite this, too, somehow sunlight filters through it all.
Despite myths and legends about it persisting centuries, it is now all but abandoned and choked with mist — and yet through that very cloying haze, it is quite easy to imagine those glory days in vivid detail.
It is night, about 61F(16C) degrees, and there are clear skies. The mist is heaviest At Birch and Mariner/span>/span There is a last quarter moon.
“Children,” Arachne scoffs in harmless needling at Annabelle, but she nevertheless scans over the layout. “I wouldn’t attempt it, personally. The fog is too thick to give confidence for a smooth ride. At least, not for me as a rollerskater. I wouldn’t know what was in the mists.”
“You may not have seen her balance,” Ambrose lauds Annabelle for Arachne, with a nod toward the latter. “I pushed her through a handstand on a tightrope over a spike pit, once…” But that’s breezed past as he emerges from the tunnels into the Courtyard and they catch up with Sofia, taking a moment to survey the looming castle from these ancient, mist-laden grounds. “… always looks… different, and wild…”
Annabelle doesn’t notice the tinge of pain as she clasps her fingers to gawk at the space beyond. Or maybe she is, there’s a whole face-mask veiling her. Her eyes lid faintly tired. “It’s so sick though..” She musters, gathering both her response and her comments and fusing them into a single remark.
Sofia hears the approach of the group in the distance and takes the opportunity to start moaning and groaning like a ghost off in the distance, flailing her arms over her head and waving from side to side like an inflatable at a used car lot.
Dovie’s eyes grow large and round as they arrive in the mist-choked courtyard. She looks about, curious. “Wow, I was definitely not in this part of Camelot last time,” she murmurs.
For all the warnings that have been given, and for the pantomime out of Sofia, this part of Camelot — wherever this is — does somehow feel occupied, even in its stark and eerie emptiness. Regardless of how the mind tries to rationalize them, those shapes are unmistakable, and so is the feeling of the being watched. Heard. Judged./span>Alice peers around as they enter the courtyard, eyes wide – she swiftly retrieves her codex to start taking notes on what she’s seeing. She scans the horizon, too, eyes drifting across the walls of the courtyard, lingering on each stone in turn. She pays special attention to the mist, of course. “This is incredible,” she says, her voice low as she squats beside an interesting piece of architecture. “Real knights did real knight stuff here?”
Arachne gazes ahead through the shrouded mists toward Sofia who debuts her solo as a car lot inflatable, well-groomed brows slowly lifting. “Her hobbies are more impressive than mine,” she remarks to Ambrose about his fond account of Annabelle’s misadventures, gray eyes slowly scanning over the layout before her head turns. “… What is that sound?”
“Like brag about wealth and trek across the country on horseback, issuing mercenary violence.” Annabelle confirms to Alice pessimistically, though with no less awe. She blinks to Arachne, tries to follow a sound with her ears, but shakes her head slowly. “My ears aren’t cool like yours, I don’t think.”
Slowly parsing a path, first without worry toward Sofia — no undeath for the necromancer to detect, after all — and then off toward something he might perceive in the mist beyond her shoulder. “… real knights, yes — the Round Table chamber is around here somewhere. I doubt we’ll…” He falls silent at Arachne’s behest, tilting his own head a little. “… yes… heard it… before…”
Dovie glances at Arachne, her head turning towards the sound with a look of concern. “Be on guard,” she murmurs.
Alice tilts her head, looking to Arachne, then to Ambrose. “I don’t hear it,” she whispers, voice kept low.
“Always,” Arachne promises toward Dovie. At Annabelle and Alice’s lame hearingness, the monarch kindly describes, after a moment of deliberation, “Metal striking metal, it sounds like? Perhaps a blacksmith is nearby?” she hazards in quiet proposal toward the nurse, another orb of light sent into rotation around her head to illuminate the mist-shrouded area.
Sofia steps through pea soup of the mists as the group comes closer, lowering her arms and replying to Dovie and Arachne, “Oh, I was just playing a prank, with the moaning and all. I don’t hear or see anything myself, I guess I just got here ahead of you. Doesn’t seem that spooky here if I’m honest.”
Dovie frowns a moment, scanning the faces of her compatriots. “Does anyone feel… off? Perhaps… overly emotional?” she suggests. “We’ve got to be honest with one another.”
“Nope,” Alice reports proudly, looking to Dovie with a bright smile. “I feel great, in fact. I’m pretty much at the top of my game, probably.”
Annabelle quirks her face under her mask, answer Dovie with a thoughtful, “I think I’m generally described as like ‘overly-emotional,’ if I’m being honest. I’m a little deaf to stuff right now, though.”
“I sense that… there’s a lot of emotion…” Dovie’s brow furrows, “I can’t be sure from whom, but the best way we get through this is with each other, so if anyone is feeling extra… emotional, please speak up. We’re all here to support one another,” she adds.
“But-” Annabelle raises a clawed finger with a poised lecture of her head. “Yep! Mental health is an important aspect we tend to forgo in favor of killing mist monsters for blood-favor, so if anyone’s feeling sad..”
“Please consider qualified mental help.” (encourage)
Annabelle encourages you..?
Sofia regards Annabelle thoughtfully as she shuffles along with the group, pondering Dovie’s intuition. “Can’t say I’m feeling anything out of the ordinary myself. Besides the fact that I’m maybe a little bit concerned some wild animal hasn’t jumped us already.”
Arachne shakes her head at Dovie. “No, I do not,” she admits in apology. “I’m not surprised that there could be a lot of emotional inertia here, especially since there’s spirits still lingering here.” Her weight shifts, tucking her hands into the pockets of her cargos as she comes to stand beside Alice.
As if on cue, the mists eddie and whirl into the silhouette of a person, unmistakably so — but without any fine detail to them, it is just a bemoaning spirit wisping despite the lack of any breeze, intangible and incorporeal.
Bits and pieces of them start to congeal more and take shape, along with voice behind their whines, frail and brittle but not bitter./span>/span30You hear what was–(waS?)–could-have-been–(could be).”
On the other side of the group, a distinctly different, feminine whisper answers/i>is.” But that voice is sourceless, to the untrained eye.
“What is?” Annabelle/span>Dovie stares at the figure of mist, her mouth wide open, a gasp escaping her as there are words and whispers. Or are there?? She squeaks. “G-ghost!”
Nigh immediately, Ambrose is, for lack of a better way of putting it, overwhelmed. The man’s whole thing is seeing and hearing things, especially spirits and the occult, and with this many crowded around in the space, he’s more occupied keeping mental tabs and performing the subtle finger-motions to prepare an emergency banishment, if needed, than to engage verbally.
“hat is it that you feel then?” Arachne queries of the apparitions manifesting, then casts a glance aside to Annabelle who asks a similar question, a hand outstretched to pass a calming hand over Dovie’s shoulder, murmuring, “You’re safe.”
Alice perks up as the mists whirl, lookg around with not quite a panic, but certainly a heightened awareness. Her eyes are open, and her pupils dilate as she focuses her senses a little further. “Ghosts…?” she echoes Dovie, looking around to see if she can prove it,even as she brings her ringed hand up, ready to mance if necessary. “If they are… they’ll show themselves…”
Sofia glances to the wisps taking form curiously, evidently not nearly so phased by this as Dovie, nodding a gentle bit of agreement over to Arachne’s query. With her arms crossed, she grins over to Alice and says, “Don’t need to rush ’em, they’ll show themselves in due time. Not like they get to see from an awful lot of new people, they’re probably much more bored than us living.” She glances back to Ambrose for good measure. “Or, unliving as well.”
“There’s a lot of them,” is all Alice manages to report, before her voice catches in her throat. She finds herself glancing down at her fingers.
Dovie finds some solace with Arachne’s steadying hand, only to tense up as Alice references ‘a lot of them’.
“We… the many we who have been cursed to remain,” laments the lesser of the spectres, still outlined and silhouetted in the mist. “What gives you the right to be here? To plunder what we sought to protect?”
Another wisps into being, angled off toward a crumbled section of castle wall. “Or to rewrite our stories, told to shape your own views?” They glimpse into being and tear away on bits of unseen, unfelt spiritual wind. “– know not what they do –”
“– why they do it –”
“While maybe true in a broad, generalized sense, I’m actually here because it sounded really cool to see!” Annabelle claims, earnestly, to the ghostly winds. “Your architecture is really great and I’d like to experience it as thirty miles per hour on a little board with four wheels that spins when you kick it!”
“We’re not here to rewrite any stories! We’re here to learn. To hear your stories and protect your legacies,” Dovie offers after Annabelle.
Turning to focus on the specter who asks what right they have to Camelot, Sofia strolls up to the spirit in question and produces a blank card from her bag. “I attend to this castle by divine right through blood succession,” the Italian confidently declares in her gown, flashing the card to the specter as if it would explain anything. “As you can see, I have been certified as the most legitimate living heir of Arthur himself and have come to survey these lands. I trust we’ll have no issue passing here?” Perhaps it’s a lie, but it’s a confidently enough stated one.
Sofia clarifies for the ghosts in the midst of her flagrant lie: “You may refer to me as the Lady Pendragon.”
Dovie raises an eyebrow at Sofia, blinking in surprise.
Annabelle looks at Sofia, for a moment, having the reality of her world crash around her at how legit those like 5th-8th century records are because they totally did that.
Arachne mirrors Dovie’s reaction, head falling to a slight tilt at Sofia’s bold declaration. The monarch folds her arms loosely over her vest, expression betraying little as she waits to see if the specters of Camelot will take the bait.
Both of those former offered reasonings earn silence, and the very mists of Camelot themselves do naught but writhe for a moment, as though they were ruminating over these answers.
Another breeze gravitates the apparition toward Sofia’s proffered identification, though it dissipates before it reaches her.
And then, whispers. All around. Many of them, the same voice, dissonant with itself.
“– stories have been warped in all –”
“– Pendragon line has been snuffed –”
“– Mordred made sure –”
“– Once and Future King –”
“– sister?”
“– sister –”
Even those without clairvoyance might be able to see the smoky blur of a silhouette emerge from its exploration of Ambrose, instead gliding through Sofia to investigate this claim deeper./span>Dovie decides now is a good time to bow towards Sofia. “Lady Pendragon is our fearless leader. We are here to support her, of course.”
Sofia closes her eyes and spreads her arms, allowing the blur to approach her, to pass through her, without hesitation, exhaling a calm breath.
Alice drags her gaze from the ghosts to Ambrose to Sofia, finally, her eyes widening a little further as she starts to finally recognize what’s going on. “One of them’s trying to possess us,” she informs those around her in low tones, retrieving a pouch from her belt that contains an exorcist’s best friend: purified salt. She keeps it close, though, watching Sofia and querying, “Sofia…?”
Likwise, when Ambrose watches that form move, his hand goes to a matching pouch of salt at his own hip, identical to someone. But no move or word’s made out of him, yet, just… watching.
Likwise, when Ambrose watches that form move, his hand goes to a matching pouch of salt at his own hip, identical to Alice’s. But no move or word’s made out of him, yet, just… watching.
Annabelle wants to say something, but she doesn’t quite find a clandestine means to deliver her words. She watches Dovie bow, but sticks strongly to her guns of honesty.
Sofia casts a glance over to Alice with a thin smile, brows slightly furrowed higher up, and rolls her shoulders slightly. “I’m still me,” she assures the warden. “There’s… something else in here, but I’m still me. Like I understand the concept of Yuri, if that’ll convince you.” She shivers slightly, glancing from Dovie, to Arachne, to Annabelle, trying to assure them she’s just fine. For now.
Dovie holds a hand over her mouth, blushing. Someone has clearly explained it to her since she first started asking people why they were so interested in the Russian spaceman.
No sooner does Sofia finish speaking than that most defined spirit emerges out of her, a more cohesive form but no more coherent. She is at once a young and fair maiden, and a wizened crone. Both playful and serious as a car accident. There is something uncanny about her, and the way her form bleeds from one to another, impossible to nail down fully. “What gives you the right to banish me from my own demesne?”
The form flits into Alice again, finding her rife for possession, perhaps. The words echo… from her(?) Not her mouth. Just… an indeterminate area around her. “I laid my judgment on them by birth and by deed. Who are you to judge me?”
Though the spirit itself does not seem that incensed — its words were demanding, but not threatening — the other faceless, formless spirits drifting about in the mist indeed seem to be a little more riled as time goes on.
Dovie/span>/spandoes not look convinced one way or the other, but remains poised to do so. “Not unless necessary,” he deigns out of the corner of his mouth to Dovie.
Ambrose does not look convinced one way or the other, but remains poised to do so. “Not unless necessary,” he deigns out of the corner of his mouth to Dovie.
Alice sucks in a little breath, bringing her hands up to try and guard herself, as if that would stop a ghost. It doesn’t, of course, but she looks for the source of the voice with a little bit of serious concern, especially considering the other ghosts in the area. “I-… I mean…” She starts to lower her salt, shuffling it back towards a pouch, though not in just yet. “Ghosts don’t… ghosts shouldn’t linger. Why don’t we talk about that, before we bring up banishments…?”
Alice is more broadly asking the ghosts, rather than asking Dovie, of course.
After the spirit escapes her body, Sofia lightly fans herself, letting out a gentle breath. “I don’t know, she seems a reasonable enough sort. Much less frantic than most of the ghosts I’ve met. I’d be more than willing to hear her out, to understand why she’s still lingering, guarding a place like this.”
Dovie nods in Sofia’s direction. “I’m game to hear them out,” she tells the others with a look back at Alice, watchful in case of any funny ghosty business around the Warden.
After stating her peace to come here only to respect and hit tricks, Annabelle does try to take a rock. Just a bit of loose stone, nothing missed, for a piece of helpful information.
“Wooooow..” Annabelle mumbles over a truly broken and decrepit stone, hefting it in her hands like a little ball.
Arachne turns her head to look over toward Annabelle, having been a silent observer, slowly drifting forward toward the woman. “What have you discovered?” She chimes in question after Dovie.
Annabelle whips her eyes up to Dovie, snapping straight out of her thoughts. She’s really begun to quirk her eyes insidiously at the little rock. “Oh. It’s old. Like-like, a thousand seventy-nine years old.”
“Ma-magic.” Annabelle coughs out at the both of them, wiggling her petrified bracelet. “Just. Old place. Feels old- you ever touch sand? I’ve touch sand, now sand..” Her brows lift in the doozy of sand’s age, almost judgmental.
Alice grimaces, gritting her teeth as her eyes occasionally flick between her compatriots, then at nothing at all. She tries to blink something away, but she doesn’t seem… TOO distressed. Just uncomfortable. She frowns, looking to Ambrose. “If I do anything weird…?” she asks, urging for a little guarantee.
“Wouldn’t that be young for a rock?” Sofia supposes back to Annabelle with a wry smile. “Like wouldn’t most rocks be millions of years old?”
“Not anymore than a shirt is dated by its materials.” Annabelle deconfirms with a swift shake of her head. “I mean, this is interesting but um- Ghost. Old ghost is like. I dunno, just – priorities? I can talk about how old stuff is later I just I got distraaaacteeeeeed..” She lults out.
Airily dredging out of Alice to recongeal in an ephemeral haze aside her, drifting in the air, winking in and out of existence, the specter of Morgen le Fay at last croons, “The stars draw too many parallels to be ignored.” Her pale eyes watch Annabelle’s interest in the stone, and then pivot to Ambrose. “Cambion,” almost accusatory, before she swivels back to Alice. “… and his apprentice who has surpassed him.”
She looks to Sofia for a moment, studying, and then it’s Arachne, and then Dovie. “… I do not know how the others line up. Surely one of you is the betrayer.” But she points no fingers at people; only to the northwest. “… and you know well of curses. As do I. I am why many of these are bound as they are, and my work is yet undone.”
“Well our intent is to research and understand, right?” Dovie asks the group. “Let’s ask it for more info-” She blinks at Alice. “The what? What is your work exactly? There are no betrayers here.”
Annabelle is just a little relieved that she’s not the Judas of the group, a hand to her chest. She didn’t think she had it in her but you never know. “I’m sorta a Lancelot.” She admits.
The claims of parallels have Ambrose looking first to Alice, and then in consideration of the others present. “I trust the ones here the most in my life,” he agrees with Dovie, preemptively defending the lot. There’s little suspicion or accusation behind his own eyes, save a moderate dose toward Morgen herself.
Arachne cuts her eyes toward Alice, mouth rounding into an expression of mild confusion. “What makes you think that there is a traitor in our midsts,” she questions tentatively, turning to share a look of uncertainty with Dovie, as though her cousin would have all the answers.
That name was the wrong name, apparently. It stops Morgen cold in her tracks, and her gaze slooowly peels back to Annabelle.
“Or like you know.. A peasant?” Annabelle suggests meekly, holding the stone up, proffering it. “Lik-like you know I just. Look, I- he’s the only other name I know.” She admits quietly, sniffling.
Dovie watches Morgen turn towards Annabelle, her eyes growing bigger as she picks up that vibe.
Alice furrows her brow, looking around at the others, but her gaze lingers on Ambrose. “Surpassed…?” she wonders quietly, mostly to herself, then shakes her head, and instead cranes to try and get a look at this so-called ghost. “Why did you bind these ghosts here…?” she asks, adding to the peppering of questions.
The squeeze of Annabelle’s eyes, in lieu of the mood, has her dull for a swift second before she snaps back to reality. Thankfully, still finding purchase with gravity.
It’s saccharine and cloying, the way Morgen lauds ‘praise’ upon the named Knight of the Round Table, the wisping unseen winds ephemerally lurching her toward Annabelle. “Lancelot — most pure and chaste of Arthur’s knights,” caustic edge seeping into the stressed words. “Lancelot, who was so pure and noble and true that he broke my curse over the Val. Freeing the oathbreaking and untrue knights I had cursed.”
But it gets deeper, as she grows nearer. “… Lancelot, who would not falter for me because he was having an affair with Guenevere — who brought ruin to the Court.”
But she makes no aggressions on Annabelle after that closing of her eyes. She merely turns back northwestward. “There is our answer, then. Lancelot.” Alice’s question earns a look aside. “Their sentences are as varied as their crimes. Some could be let be. Others, I may be convinced.”
“I’d imagine who considers whom a betrayer would differ from person to person,” Sofia/span>“They may be long dead,” the entity accedes. “But the wounds they cause fester, and more of them exist. My work remains unfinished. Either offer your assistance, or leave the condemned to their fates.”
“Well, when you explain the truth, we don’t like him. Or her. Not even going to deign to say their names,” Dovie decides, hoping a little buttering of words might calm the spirit. “Where are these untrue knights? How can they be found?” she wonders to the entity.
“I’ll help,” Alice offers meekly, trying not to become a possession target again. “I’ll help you deal with the ghosts.”
Annabelle takes the stone. A piece of Camelot in her pocket, that’s just where it’s going to go. She doesn’t offer her aid, just scratches at her cheek dully.
“Ere I unbind myself from my quarter, rescind to here… I will find passage, should an altar be bled for me,” Morgen le Fey claims, wisping along through the gap in the stone wall. “Come — we make haste. I will know you, I will help you, and you will help me.” It’s not wholly clear whether those are demands or pleases, an attempt at a bargain… it’s at least an invitation. “What seek you? Knowledge. The Val, the Knights — in Brittany. I can lead you. Perhaps… help break a curse in the process.”
For his part, Ambrose just watches the spirit, a little hesitant and a whole lot guarded, when he looks askance to Alice for direction. The sparest of shrugs.
Less than thrilled, Annabelle still does her job as an Orderite and procures equipment that she hands to the Master of Scrolls with two hands. “..Nothing wrong with being pure.” She grumbles.
Alice widens her eyes as she listens. Are they being bossed around by a ghost? Nonetheless, she glance at the others, looking for any signs of strong dissent, before she, too, shrugs. “I-… well. I suppose we’d better help her out,” she declares, nodding to the others. “Is everyone okay with helping the ancient kinda mean ghost?”
Dovie/span>/spanSofia squints a little as Morgen pleads her case, scratching at the tip of her nose thoughtfully. “Well, I mean, not sure I need a lot of her knowledge, but… maybe she could give you some Merlin tips?” She asks this of Alice, with a glance sidelong to Ambrose for confirmation. “I mean ultimately she’s not that mean, I’ve seen much meaner ghosts. I’m sort of inclined to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.” There’s a short breath of a laugh back to Dovie, as she concludes, “Lady Pendragon decrees we push forward, how about that?”
Dovie gives Sofia a dramatic bow. “As the Lady Pendragon doth decree.”
Looking from Alice to Dovie to Sofia alike at each of their weigh-ins, Ambrose tilts his gaze past to Arachne and Annabelle, head giving a mild tilt. “I’m down. It is not demonic, but remember not to sign anything, consider the words of any agreements, so on, so forth. ‘Djinn’ rules.”
“Worst case scenario, we rip a banishment and never come back to Camelot,” Ambrose tacks on.
Annabelle’s brows twitch with a touch of a sigh. “Camenot.”
Dovie nods slowly at Ambrose. “Heard. I’ll take things as seriously as a fae bargain.” She stifles a chuckle at Annabelle’s comment.
“No objections here,” Arachne sounds off softly in agreement, a hushed breath of amusement lost at Annabelle’s zinger. “You would make a killing in Hallmark.”
“Okay,” Alice agrees. “Onward, then.”
And onward they go, with Ambrose leading the way. Since it’s getting late, the next room will just be transit.
Annabelle is just a little fluffed up by the good reception of her joke. Watching, sorta, the spirit or its coalescence, she eyes the ground behind as the group walks.
With their spirit guide along, it’s not hard to find the dip behind the rubble of a collapsed turret, and the room within.
Dovie’s eyes sweep around from the courtyard into the outer area of the protective walls, peering towards the forest itself afterwards. She blinks as the markers seem to disappear as new ones arise until they reach the ravine. Dovie takes a deep breath, her hand clutching her backpack shoulder strap close.
Forget the ravine, Dovie follows the ghost leader.
Annabelle looks into the cauldron, and politely says no words of the cook.
Sofia lifts her her skirts slightly as they ascend the turret and lets out a thoughtful noise, remarking, “This part of the castle is in terribly good condition, given its age. Almost like it’s been cared for.”
Dovie nods at Sofia and points, as discreetly as she can to the big black cauldron, with something bubbling up inside.
Arachne presses some errant strands behind an ear, a few tentative steps taken away from the group to venture toward the cracked and aged caken shelves lining the wall, carefully skimming over their contents with interest.
“Oh…” Alice says, following Annabelle’s gaze as the group enters the room, though she scans the entirety of the area, eyes wide with wonder. “This is like a real wizard tower,” she says, marveling. “I need a wizard tower…”
“You could pay for a really lonely penthouse.” Annabelle offers to Alice by means of the world’s sad anticlimax, or perhaps merely somber climax. “Personally, not a fan of heights. Gimmie a pit.”
Dovie chuckles at Alice, looking around the room snoopily.
The air of Camelot is always thick and redolent with mythos and magic, and it is no different in here; almost as though they were the quarters of a fae, it is not hard to see Morgen la Fey as that fair maiden, the young apprentice to Merlin, suddenly working to stir the cauldron near Annabelle. Or to pantomime like she is, at least. “The Cambion’s apprentice, talented necromancers both,” she hazards as she mixes, eyes drifting from Ambrose to Alice. “… I was Queen of Avalon, land of apples — you with the pomegranates.” Whatever that’s about, she doesn’t elaborate.
Rather, her eyes swivel on to Annabelle. “The healer with a mysterious background, whose role gets twisted to the whims of those rewriting history.” On the spirit’s eyes bore to Arachne instead,. “The Queen and the Knights, one of whom, so pure, so true.” Caustic.
And then they’re on Dovie and Sofia, bouncing between the two as though one or the other might give her more information. “… I do not know how you two factor in.”
Dovie considers the entity a moment, glancing at Sofia before offering, “Well, that is Lady Pendragon,” she gestures to Sofia, “And I am a merchant. A merchant of wares both of fresh wares, and of-” she pauses a moment, “Of fowl too, I suppose.”
And if anyone had anything in particular they were trying to track down, this might be the kind of place that someone would keep a relic like that. Maybe Morgen could be convinced.
Sofia glances sidelong to Dovie for an explanation that comes quickly enough, and quickly nods her agreement, telling Morgen, “I wish I had a better frame of reference for you, but you know, I’m just discovering my own history as I go along here, learning more about myself and my past at every moment. Perhaps that sounds like someone you know.”
“Cambion…?” Alice wonders, then her hands reach up to the earrings dangling from her ears, cupping one oddly. “What’s wrong with pomegranates?” she wonders, looking from the cauldron over to Morten, then scanning around. “I mean – not that important. You said your work wasn’t done. We’re here to help finish it, right? As long as it’s not…” She trails off, daring not finish.
Annabelle considers her own place in the narrative, looking down at her gloved palms and can scarcely refute her general roll, at least. “You think so? Well. My name’s Annabelle. I. Don’t know.” She lilts off.
“I dunno. Something about Persephone.” Annabelle absolutely butchers on behalf of the pomegranates.
The ghostly apparition’s eyes hold on Sofia at her words, then Alice at hers, and end up on Annabelle. “Sometimes you must but give a nudge in the direction the stone’s already rolling.”
“Yes, scalpel, not sledgehammer,” the spirit preempts of Ambrose.
Dovie stands aside as the others debate, instead continuing to snoop about the room.
just sends a look back to Morgen at that (correct) called shot, but he does not speak up, himself. His own attention turns to Alice, the gears behind his eyes visibly turning at the conversation. And perhaps other bits unsaid.
Ambrose just sends a look back to Morgen at that (correct) called shot, but he does not speak up, himself. His own attention turns to Alice, the gears behind his eyes visibly turning at the conversation. And perhaps other bits unsaid.
“Do you remember fond parts of your life, at least?” Annabelle asks the churning spirit above, resting on that thought above all others.
Sofia gives Ambrose a knowing smirk as Morgen co-opts one of his many catchphrases, and moves over to plop on the edge of the uncomfy bed, straightening her skirts out and watching as Dovie snoops around, just happy to take things in for the moment.
“I remember much of my life and after fondly, and for those times, I would do the rest of it over a thousand times,” the spirit answers back down to Annabelle. “I will continue until it is finished, and when I feel I can properly rest, and it will all be fond.” A beat, and the venomous edge creeps back in. “Regardless of how the stories tell it.”
Arachne tilts her head to spare a glance back at the spirit, meeting its gaze head on the moment that their eyes bore into her. “And which role am I? The Knight, or the Queen?” she wonders, making no move to deny his assertions, instead drifting through the room, idly taking stock of the room, before circling back around toward Dovie. “Do you see anything of note?”
“Depends on when you are asking,” claims the would-be prognosticator spirit. Perhaps just an artful dodge. The chambers don’t appear to have anything out-and-out valuable, unless one wishes to lug a kettle of gross soup or a set of shelves Goodwill would refuse back up to the villa, but it’s possible there are relics stashed about.
Dovie scans the shelves and peers at the pot again, shaking her head at Arachne, “Unfortunately not,” she hums. “I shall keep my eyes peeled, however.” She turns her attention back to the spirit.
Alice looks curiously at the spirit, posting up beside Annabelle to bolster her own spirit, girded by a fellow Orderite. “Your life, your work… you remember it fondly, and you want it finished. But who are you, really?” she asks, brow raised. She has her suspicions, of course. When Annabelle retrieves some sludge, it momentarily distracts her, though, her gaze flicking over to her supposed shield.
Annabelle pours herself a bowl from the stew, thankfully already sanitized to be dealing with such hazardous waste. She blinks around at the surprised glances. “..What? I have to put something in the briefcase.”
Dovie adds to Annabelle, “Surely the briefcase can fit more?”
Why not!? Annabelle’s movements embellish as she takes another helping with some sass.
“What precisely are you planning on doing with that,” Arachne scrunches her nose faintly at Annabelle, drifting far away from the nurse as though she’d grown three heads.
“Contribute.” Annabelle says nasally, taking out a layer of gauze and wrapping it around the bowl. “It’s probably, kknnn.. Very magical.”
“And if it’s not magical, surely there’s a food kitchen that could use some…” Dovie trails off. “Some whatever that is.”
“That’s so mean..!” Annabelle whimpers, the thought preempted, an odd frustrated flush on her own ears. “It’s okay to think it but it needs to stay in the noggin.”
“I don’t know that it’s fit for human consumption,” Arachne murmurs toward Dovie after another disturbed glance cast toward Annabelle’s bowl of decades long stewed gruel.
The spectral form of Morgen le Fay does nothing to stop Annabelle’s soup theft; there is likely not much she could do, physically, to stop her regardless. Not that she deigns to. “Should she consume it, I would take that as permission to inhabit as the source saw opportune,” she answers for Arachne. For the nurse herself and Dovie, she deigns, “Do not waste it or poison the naturals. I do not need a mental conduit to a frightened peasant.” There’s not even that much noble condescension in her tone when she says it. She’s being considerate of the hypothetical gross poor mundane, after all.
More directly, for Alice, she answers: “I am Morgen le Fay, Morguine, Morgaine, Morganna, a dozen names, a thousand stories, half attributed to Sebile or Nimue — or what remains of her.”
“Not for you or me, certainly.” Dovie’s nose wrinkles. “But I’m sure someone, somewhere might be hungry en-” She takes a step back from the cauldron. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t touch it! It stays in the pot then,” she decides, at least for herself. Her eyes widen as Morgen speaks her true name. “Oh wow!”
“… when the ravages of time, and the rewriting of history, the fates being crafted by pen or power higher… until the original sworn truth eludes even you…” The manifestation of the spirit begins to trail off, train of thought disengaging from the room, her ethereal, visible form beginning to wane. It takes a lot of energy to for the non-clairvoyant to clock a spirit, purposefully, and Morgen’s running out of juice.
“Stop laughing at my thoughts!” Annabelle cries in a helpless laughter of her own, looking at the ceiling for some reprieve. Perhaps God will grant her some privacy.
Annabelle bending slightly, sucking in a breath when her laughter goes silent, she asks up to Ambrose, “but like- you know. It’s a interesting question, right?”
“THE Morgen Le Fay? Like, one of the greatest mages to ever live?” Alice asks, incredulous. Her eyes are a little wide again, like they’ve been for most of the trip. She approaches, though she quickly realizes she won’t actually be able to touch the object of her new fascination. She opens her mouth to ask a question, fails, then opens her mouth again. “And you’ve just been, like, here, all this time? I’m surprised you aren’t.. I mean.. I dunno. Ruling something somewhere. Or immortal, or…” She grimaces. The other options, she doesn’t want to consider. “So when you said your work wasn’t done, it was, maybe…” Her eyes light up a little. “Something magic?”
Sofia comes to a stand from her bedside perch and gives Annabelle a comforting pat on the back in passing, but glances askance between Morgen and Alice for a few beats, visibly processing information. What is finally elicited seems like a cautious response, saying, “Not every head is meant to wear the crown. Some are best suited to soak in knowledge, to learn more.” She glances around the confines of the room, before admitting, “I suppose perhaps this place isn’t the best suited to taking in new knowledge though… perhaps more… mastering the old.”
Waning visibly, transparency overtaking her first, Morgen becomes all but invisible to those without clairvoyance or clairaudience. The mists remain, as do the lingering haunt of her words. “One and the same, child. Avalon prospers beyond me, but my work unfinished — enforce the judgments, ensorcell the impure, unshackle the Cambions’ curses when I can.”
It wisps with her, bleeding into the thick, mist-laden air. “… whisper for me in the dark, child, if you need speak. I will answer as I can. Bleed an altar to let me linger…”
Dovie blinks as she’s no longer to see the spirit, looking all around the room, bewildered before letting out a hum.
Annabelle watches the spirit goo, gooooo, goooooooo… Holding her leftovers without a great deal of enthusiasm. “..Is she going to stay in the house now?” She asks aloud, to someone, to Sofia.
Annabelle watches the spirit goo, gooooo, goooooooo… Holding her leftovers without a great deal of enthusiasm. “..Is she going to stay in the house now?” She asks aloud, to Ambrose, to Sofia.
“Ambrose’s villa would be amazing source material for a scripted reality TV show,” Arachne/span>/spanSofia glances back to Annabelle a bit unsure and just gives a shrug, saying, “I mean, there’s been more obnoxious house guests I suppose.” There’s a gentle eye roll back towards Arachne’s idea then, and the admission: “I don’t think any of us are quite dramatic enough to make that work out well.”
For his part, Ambrose also tracks the ghost’s egress until he tracks no more, himself. It is apparently fully gone, and he looks back to Alice, instead, for a long and lingering moment of consideration. “Might be the case,” he reports back to Annabelle after a few moments hold of his gaze on the Warden. “The ritual room is properly spirit-bound, so she will not be able to drift beyond without a host, if we decide to do that.”
Some of the haunting pallor of the mist evaporates with the spirit’s lessened presence here, giving a bit more color to everything. Further, the continued search of the chamber by Arachne might just happen to turn up a previously-unseen knife surreptitiously tucked away alongside the bed frame.
They may need to come back, and not just to case the joint and loot it for relics, but for now, more information is being acquired, the truth is being sorted out, and Camelot is a little less haunted. Directly.
“Now, what do we have here,” Arachne murmurs with interest as the gleam of a knife catches her gaze, slowly coaxing it free from its place hidden beneath the bed frame. She straightens up, turning it over in her hands with a gleam of fascination within her eyes, then carefully tucks it away into a spare sheath along her thigh. “I’ll have to disagree. Annabelle alone would be worth tuning in to, and I know Ambrose would be a fan favorite.”
Alice glances at Arachne looting the bedroom of one of the greatest symbols of female empowerment of all time, and chooses to bite her tongue, instead looking to Ambrose wide-eyed. “Are we able to help her manifest… outside of Camelot? I’d love to pick her brain on, you know… magic and stuff.”
Annabelle day dreams at a distance between Arachne and Dovie as they talk, having her own contemplation between, finally settling on the glint of metal and more attentively blinking at her name. “I’m being groomed to be an entertainer.” She divulges to everyone sadly, dropping her board to merely ollie in rebuttal to how she feels about this.
“Yes, people would be quite literally going insane to see me on television,” Ambrose considers back to Arachne with some faint amount of amusement creeping into his tone. The knife’s considered, too, but his own gaze drifts around the chamber and settles back on Alice. A nod. “We can. She could manifest in the ritual room right now. And she, like many others, is liable to hear you when you talk to yourself in the dark.”
“Let us head back. I can teach you to sanctify an altar for yourself on the morrow,” Ambrose offers to Alice, still a little at a loss for words himself, still ruminating over the events and revelations and possibilities of the evening. A smile, though, to Sofia, turned on Annabelle and Arachne, for a job well done all around, considering his compatriots in turn.
Annabelle looks around for a lightswitch, and shouldn’t be surprised when she doesn’t find one. These halls hear the truly alien noise of trucks thumping on the wheels over the partitioned slabs rotted architecture. “Mmm. You’ve got my blood, blud.”
Dovie follows Ambrose, looking around the room once more.
Arachne exhales a quiet noise of amusement at Ambrose’s words, checking over her gear, before falling into step after him. “I’ve learned something interesting about you tonight,” she remarks toward Alice while they prepare to move on.
Sofia ticks a finger in agreement to Ambrose’s assertion regarding insanity and shrugs aside to Arachne, admitting, “Maybe I just don’t need any other people or entities watching me than already are. All these zoomers, trying to monetize every aspect of their lives. Some things are better left private.” She glances over the dagger that’s attained with a small noise of amusement, saying, “Lucky finds whenever I see you on one of these things. You’re amassing quite the collection, aren’t you?”
Alice falls in line with Ambrose, choosing to make sure she walks near to Sofia and Annabelle, as best she can – once more, the Orderite presence seems to comfort her, OR they provide her with human shielding and she’s actually evil. She peers at Arachne suspiciously, though, wondering, “What do you mean? I thought you already knew I was… you know.” She makes a limp-wristed gesture.