17 May 1870, Tuesday
~afternoon~
We have reached a stopping point. I am beyond exhaustion and in some sort of suspended state. We are still in the caverns under the labyrinth but much has changed since my last entry in this book.
The time we spent in the labyrinth was disorienting, confusing, and distressing. The spell of Protection that we placed upon the party was not strong enough to prevent us from being led astray, by, what Mr Ramsey guesses, was a Nightmare spell. Not long after we entered the Labyrinth we all became dizzy. Once I recovered from the dizziness and disorientation I found myself alone in the dark..
I was unsure wether it was wise to call out and draw attention to myself. I rummaged in my pack and came up with one my ritual candles and my package of safety matches. I had forgotten how uncomfortable it is to hold a candle without a holder. Fortunately my gloves gave my hands some protection from the hot wax.
Moments after I lit the candle I heard the reassuring sound of Owen’s barking. I called out to him and heard his claws tapping on the stone as he came out of the darkness toward me. I asked him if he could hear any of the others. He barked in the affirmative and we set out in search of them.
Mrs Cuthbert, Miss Sinclair, Owen, and I were the least affected by the spell and we were able to find each other in short order. We found Lieutenant Wooster singing in the darkness. It was a rather bawdy tavern song but he has quite a nice voice. He babbled something about his sister the Lord Admiral. We assured him that it was not true (as much as some us might wish it were) and that we were still in the caverns on St Damien Island. We then continued our search for the rest of our party.
We were dismayed to discover that Sir Cosmo, Mr Caine, Professor Gordon, Miss Gordon, Mr Hardy and Mrs Cleves could not be located. Near the end of our search we sang hymns to help our friends find us. Well Miss Sinclair and I sang hymns, Mrs Cuthbert, Edward, and Lieutenant Wooster, who really has a fine voice, sang more a ‘popular’ version of the lyrics. Perhaps it only matters that we made a distinctive noise, for, except for those noted above, we were successful in finding our party. Of course, Wooster felt quite lost without Mr Caine, and everyone remaining was very disheartened by the absence of Sir Cosmo.
No one discussed the Nightmares the spell had induced in them, though Mr Salmalin was found carrying an utterly distraught Miss Chigwidgeon.
I was forced to remind her that Mr Salmalin was one of a, greatly reduced, number of people who could actively defend us, should we be attacked. With that she regained her feet.
We were searching for him, when, Mr Ramsey found his great coat, stained with blood, and Mr Cuthbert found clear marks that showed a body had been dragged from the site.
Miss Chigwidgeon swayed on her feet and I caught her by the elbow before she went down. She regained her composure with great effort and knelt to examine the coat.
I must confess, that, had I not been in her company, I would have despaired. Instead, I became very angry. I became even more angry once Miss Chigwidgeon showed me a letter Sir Cosmo had kept in his pocket. It was addressed to her in his hand and was an earlier draft of a letter he had delivered to her aboard ship.
His love and longing for her is clear in this draft and I take it from her that the first one she received was considerably more formal and less revealing. It is not clear what form this love will take but, at that moment, I could not bear the thought that they might not have time to find out. I was furious with whatever force had separated Sir Cosmo from us, and I also found myself angry at Sir Cosmo for getting himself captured.
I must note that Miss Gordon found us not long after Salmalin and Miss Chigwidgeon. She was carrying a pair of broken spectacles and was very concerned that all of her party wall still missing. She babbled something about Mrs Cleves being strangled by the cotton that we’d been using to lay down a trail. We could only hope that her memory was clouded by the Nightmare Spell. Though, at that point we had seen no evidence that Mr Hardy or Mrs Cleves were still alive and we knew that Mr Cuthbert and Dr Wilson had been induced to fire their weapons while they were under the influence of the spell. We could only hope that those missing from our party were merely lost and not injured, or worse...
The trail led us to what appeared to be a wall. It quickly became apparent that the labyrinth was rearranging itself as we moved through it, rendering all of our precautions useless. It seemed that, not only were we hopelessly lost, we were cut off from Sir Cosmo.
While the others discussed how best to get through the rock, Mr Ramsey, Mrs Cuthbert, and I worked one of Mr Ramsey’s History Spells. With it we were able to see an invisible Opponent dragging Sir Cosmo through the door. Unfortunately, we did not see anything of how Our Opponent opened or closed the door. We did learn one thing of use, as we saw the door slide open and closed and were able to gauge its width as five feet, using Sir Cosmo’s body as our rough guide. We relayed this information to Dr Wilson and he was able to use it in his calculations when modifying one of his rockets into an explosive charge.
While we were working, Mr Salmalin grabbed a crowbar from Edward, inserted it into a crack in the rock and pulled. I was surprised that Salmalin would try to break solid rock by himself. I was stunned when he succeeded. He exerted so much strength that he forced a crack lengthwise in the rock and broke Edward’s crowbar. Things are so muddled in my mind that I am not sure why we did not try to use magik. We had just cast a successful spell but I remember feeling that it was a bad idea to try to open the door by magik. I do not know why such a feeling came over me at that point. I wonder, if even then, the evil in this place was confusing my thoughts.
It took some time for Mr Cuthbert, Dr Wilson, Mr Salmalin, Lieutenant Wooster, and Edward to make a sufficient hole in the rock for the charges. During this time Mrs Cuthbert, Miss Sinclair, Miss Chigwidgeon, Miss Gordon, and I retired around a bend to preserve our hearing from the ringing clang made by the pounding of iron into rock. Miss Sinclair donned the ear protectors that Edward had made for her some time ago.
Some good came from both the wait and the noise, because Professor Gordon and Mr Pryce found us. Miss Gordon was quite relived to find that her Father was safe. He was tired from his time lost in the tunnels but had suffered no injury.
Mr Pryce seemed shaken but unharmed. His Nightmare had centred around legions of Undead killing the entire party and leaving him unable to rescue his brother. However during the Nightmare he felt his brother speaking to him. He had a very strong sense that his brother was on the cusp of death, and that there was another prisoner with Andrew. His brother said, “The pillar can be turned. The pillar must be turned before the Army is raised.” Mr Rupert felt that this was not a part of the Nightmare but rather a true communication from his brother. We can only hope that we will be allowed to put his word to the tests.
Sometime before all this happened, Mrs Cuthbert found a small orb in the passage-way when she picked it up it lit from within with a cool bright light. She handed it to me and it brightened further, though I could feel some of my own energy fade as the orb brightened.
I suggested that she handle it no more than necessary, and, though I was grateful for the light, it was difficult not to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. We had no idea of its origins or the risks of its continued use. On the other hand it was a vast improvement on carrying a candle in my bare hand, as I had been up to that point. Even through my gloves, the hot wax stung as it dripped. The candles I had in my pack had been intended for ritual purposes and not for carrying about!
By our new light, I was able to get out my writing things while the men worked on the door. I had thought to update this record but, instead, felt compelled to write a letter to Sir Cosmo as a response to Miss Chigwidgeon showing me his letter. It is a trifle overwrought, but it expresses my feelings well enough that I do not feel a need for a second draft. I am still uncertain if I will give it to him...
Not long after finishing the letter it was time for the charges to be set, and our makeshift explosive to be tested against the stone door.
It worked well enough, though it made a terrible noise in the cavern, and dust and small rocks rained upon us. If I had not already been so full of anger and fear on behalf of Sir Cosmo I would have been terrified that the roof would come down around us, as it was, we quickly gathered up our belongings and made our way though the rough hole we had blasted.
I continued to take notes of the compass readings and other notable features as we trekked through the long tunnels. It is a habit of mine from other adventures (admittedly much tamer adventures than we were currently embarked on). Even though the passageways might be rearranging themselves behind us I was convinced the information could still be made to be useful. At the very least it might make an entertaining academic exercise to take the notes Miss Sinclair and Lieutenant Wooster took, combine them with my own and see if I can reconstruct some sort of map of this place.
However, that was not in my thoughts as we followed the tunnels and the trail that Mr Cuthbert, Miss Sinclair, and Owen were able to discern with their various tracking skills. I sometimes envy Miss Sinclair’s more physical gifts, she seems so... fearless, I think is the word I want. Maybe it has something to do with being a governess... nothing seems to stop her. She and Edward are very well matched Teacher and Student.
I know from checking my watch and compass that we walked for at least an hour following the trail. Eventually, the rough-hewn stone gave way to smooth passage-ways. The stone was so polished it reflected our lights and we could see further along the corridor. I took little note of the ornaments that lined the walls and decorated the stairs we descended. I was focussed on the path ahead to Sir Cosmo.
One room could not be ignored, however. We came to huge gallery of statues. There was only one that represented what I would consider to be a human. The others were either ape-like parodies of humans or beings that were beyond my experience. There was one being that looked somewhat like one of the Hindi gods, however it was green, instead of blue, and had only four arms and two swords, while in the Indian Statues I have seen the gods usually have more arms and the extra arms usually hold a diverse assortment of items, depending on the god or goddess represented.
The other remarkable statue was that of an overly thin being with an overly large head. It had only two arms, and was gray in colour, and seemed to be mostly made up of legs and head with a curiously rounded or barrel chest. If one could picture an oval barrel... However, the very remarkable thing was that this statue held and orb of similar colour and markings to the one Mrs Cuthbert had found. Edward was halfway up the twenty foot high statue before Miss Sinclair called him back to us.
We followed Owen through the gallery and down some more stairs. Abruptly, Owen, who had been running ahead of the party, yelped and ran back to us. Taking this as no good sign we pulled out our various weapons. I had my cudgel and Miss Gordon my fencing sword. The door was only wide enough for three abreast. Once we saw what awaited us, we tried to use that to our advantage.
In the room, blocking our further progress were eight dead warriors of terrible aspect. Dr Wilson took one look at them, pulled a golden torque from his pockets and tossed it to me. He said that it had belonged to the creature that attacked him during the Nightmare time. Necromantic magik was streaming from it and I could not help myself, I jumped away from it, and to my later embarrassment, shrieked in horror. There is just something so vile about the aura of such magik, it is hard for me to describe without feeling shudders run up and down my spine.
It takes longer for me to write this than it did to happen. We quickly formed into three groups. Mr Cuthbert, Dr Wilson, and Lieutenant Wooster blocked the door and pulled out their guns, while Edward crouched at their feet with his own Rocket Gun.
Dr Siannaig paused to ask the evil creatures if they would please let us through. When that offer was rejected he joined Miss Sinclair and Miss Gordon in gathering up stones to throw at our enemies should we run out of ammunition.
Mr Ramsey, Mr Pryce, Mrs Cuthbert, and I immediately began preparations for the Turn Oni spell that we had used the other night. I was so immersed in the spell that I did not see or hear much of the battle our friends waged. I do know that by the time our spell was cast, Dr Wilson was quite badly injured, and all of the Eight were in various pieces.
Unfortunately the pieces were still moving. Between our Spell and Dr Wilson’s realization that the pieces stopped moving if the torques were picked up by living people we were able to control the situation. Mr Ramsey mentioned that such devices had been know to take control of dying people and make them into such creatures as we had just dealt with.
One of the torques had its gems blown out by some careful shooting by one of our men and it no longer had the glow of evil magik about it. I suggested that the rubies be prised out and destroyed to neutralise the magik and Edward set about the task with good will. He had suggested that the gold might make quite a good college fund, and that seemed a very sensible thought, should we be able to remove the taint placed there by Our Opponent.
Edward and I worked on this project while Mrs Cuthbert healed Dr Wilson of the worst of his wounds and Miss Sinclair and Miss Gordon went about very methodically breaking the bones into tiny pieces and scattering the piles of ashes. Miss Gordon had thought of using her lamp oil as weapon against the Eight and some of them had burned quite nicely. Once all the gems were prised out and destroyed the bodies stopped trying to reassemble themselves, quite a disgusting process to watch, and became inert at last. We set fire to the remains and continued our search for Sir Cosmo and Mr Andrew Pryce.
Another set of stairs down led us to a pair of engraved bronze doors. They pictured warriors in combat and we were not terribly surprised to find that their appointments matched those of the warriors we had just fought. Mr Salmalin and Edward wanted to open the doors and be on our way. I wanted to see if we could look beyond them and see if more of warriors were waiting for us. Mr Salmalin fretted at the time it would take to cast a spell. I wasn’t happy losing time either but, we had already used much of our ammunition and since spells do take a while to cast it would be nice if we could get a head start on Our Opponent for once! Fortunately Mrs Cuthbert remembered that she had her crystal with her. Instead of spending precious minutes spell casting she was able to concentrate for a moment or two and see what lay beyond.
I must put this record aside for a moment. Miss Gordon and I are being asked to provide translation services.
Proceed to 8. Compelled to write
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