Episode 178 - Total Eclipse of the Heart

## Synopsis

Integrity carried the still unconscious body of Winsler towards the door of the chamber, while Serinepth illuminated the tip of her trident in a blue light. Looking around them, they saw the the mummified remains of giants on shelves in the walls around them. The door opened to an intersection in the catacombs, on the right was a closed gate, behind which was a door. On their left was a stairway leading up into darkness.

Integrity yelled for help, getting no reply. Serinepth quickly asked for her to be quieter as they didn’t know if the Cats were still listening. They went over and examined the gate, seeing it had four square-shaped keyholes. After a short debate, they decided to try and pick the gate open. As Integrity got to work, she found the locks to be more complicated than she could handle, and the gate did not budge.

Frustrated, they changed plans and went up the stairs. At the top, in front of them was a pile of collapsed stone blocking their way, and on their right was a small black door. Serinpeth opened the creaky iron door and looked inside, finding a simple, low-ceiling room with a desk and key hook. On the hook was a golden key and black handkerchief, and on the desk was a black book.

Thinking this could be the key to open the gate, Serinpeth reached in, grabbed the key, and looked at the book. She found all the pages completely blank except for page numbers. Integrity crawled in, sitting Winsler on the chair. She looked through the room, in the desk drawer finding blue chalk. She also noticed that the desk was placed strangely, as though it were trying to block the back wall. As she punched on the wall, she felt her hands go through it as she fell through the illusory wall.

She found herself in a much larger room, able to see into the previous entrance. On a table there was a small, slowly bubbling fishbowl, that seemed to be dripping a red liquid into a flask. She also saw a table with random items covered by a cloth, and a box that seemed to be leaking shadows into the room.

Integrity poked her head back through the wall, frightening Serinepth and telling her to join her in the next room. Serinepth moved the light on the end of her trident towards the box, watching as it slowly became darker until it looked like a small ball of shadow. The two examined the potions on the table, with Serinepth identifying them as potential healing potions. In the fishbowl, Integrity noticed what seemed to be heart shaped fish swimming around before disappearing again.

Reluctant to give an unknown potion to her friend, Integrity drank one, and regained some of her lost health. Using another potion, they brought Winsler back to consciousness and pocketed the others for later. Serinepth quickly explained what had happened to Winsler, who suggested he could help by copying Integrity.

Winsler walked back into the smaller room, and grabbed the black handkerchief. He looked over it, and I’m doing so unfolded it into a much larger piece of silk. As he looked at it, it seemed almost as though he could see through the silk into floor. As he cast *Detect Magic*, he found it to emit high amounts of transmutation magic.

As her friends headed down to the gate, Integrity went over to the table. She pulled off the cloth to find the smell of machinery and pieces of brass placed to mimic a skeleton, as she looked upon the disassembled body of a clockwork golem. Folded neatly behind it was a dark blue robe covered in stars. Next to it was a notebook titled “*Dissection Notes Vol. 6*”, with five other notebooks around the body. Integrity tore part of the robe, and ran out to join her friends at the gate. She showed them the scrap of cloth, they wondered what it could mean and if this was the real reason *Crowe* wanted Winsler to give the golem lectures.

Integrity and Winsler turned their attention to the gate, while Serinpeth tried to figure out the journal. Winsler conjured a copy of the door key, and together they opened all four locks on the gate. They walked through, finding a lift through the door that would take them further down the catacombs.

Elsewhere in the catacombs, Mira rolled up her sleeve to show Graist her Sheoran tattoo, and pleaded for him to tell her everything he knew about it. While in the water, the spiral seemed less black and more of an iridescent red. He stuttered that he had never seen it, and that they had only used the moon to represent Sésul. After a long conversation about their purpose in the catacombs, Mira used her sending slate to ask her friends what was happening.

They replied that Winsler was ok, and that they were descending further into the catacombs. She told them the giants might have something to do with Sheora, then immediately questioned if she should have sent that as Crowe might be monitoring their conversations. After some more chaotic messaging, they agreed to meet up somewhere in the lower level of the catacombs.

As Mira and Graist looked around, he found a hallway leading to another room, it seemed to give off a similar light to the one they were in. Going in they found a near exact copy to the room they were previously in, stepping in Mira felt almost as if she walked through a web covering the doorway. Looking at the support pillars, she saw each had carvings of a different natural phenomena: Clouds, snowflakes, fires, with three other pillars damaged beyond recognition. The pool of water in the centre was dark and murky.

Looking into the water, Mira saw her reflection looking back, and touched it with her left hand. As soon as she touched it, the water turned perfectly translucent as though purified, and all the light in the room disappeared. In the hallway behind them, they heard the sounds of scratching and scraping.

The lift finally reached the bottom of shaft, and the students stepped out to find themselves in a large room with six pillars and a large, empty pool in the centre. On the pillars, Winsler saw patterns the phases of the moon. Above a large door, Integrity saw the carving of a half moon. As she touched the wall, she felt a shiver go down her spine, and where she touched left glowing handprints on the wall.

Together they started to fill in the half moon with magical light, the door cracked again, and they heard a scratching sound behind them. Looking back into the room, they saw the moonlit, spectral forms of Mira and Graist next to the pool. In Mira’s room, she looked at the sealed door in front of her to see the ghostly forms of her friends.

Realising they could hear each other, they confirmed they weren’t dead and caught each other up on what had happened. Serinepth asked if there was also a lift behind Mira, who turned around to look. She saw black, only hands reaching around the doorway, as the massive ink Squirrel walked into the room. Through their doorway, Serinepth and the others saw a white spectral squirrel appear.

At Serinepth’s suggestion, Mira tried to colour the rest of the full moon, however no light emanated from the wall. Seeing the four students standing in the open, the Squirrel rushed with claws out to attack them.