8 April 1872, Monday

~Early Evening~

The MacGreggors, Mr Frazer, Miss Wilhelmina, Mr Salmalin and I arrived at the Doverton Abbey to find that George Plank had been found unconscious in his uncle’s study. He had already been moved to his bedroom on the fourth storey by the time we gained entry. The rest of our partisans arrived not long behind as subsections of the League had been called in variously by Constable Betts, Mr William Plank, and Mr John Plank.

Mrs Cuthbert and Mrs MacGreggor saw to the unconscious scion of the estate. Mrs Cuthbert reported that Mr George’s soul was missing from his body. She was able to follow its trail back to Sir Robert’s study. Mr Frazer, Wilhelmina, and I were assigned to search that room. Wilhelmina and Mr Frazer determined that the painting of “Jacob’s Ladder” did indeed hide some sort of safe or passage as Mrs Cuthbert and I had seen in the history spell. It was, of course, securely locked. I could not determine if there were any magikal trip-wires on the entrance. I surmise that any minor wards or alarm spells would likely have dissipated without Sir Robert to remove them and I should be able to detect any major workings.

I took some notes while waiting for Mr Frazer and Wilhelmina to figure out the locking mechanism. Soon the painting was swinging open, revealing some sort of storage room. The Greek cross or crux immissa quadrata we had seen in the history spell was present and was glowing an eerie green. Just as both Wilhelmina and I started toward the opening, we heard a tremendous crash on the main stairs. Soon Lady Cowperthwaite’s voice floated up to us apologising for the mess.

Mrs Cuthbert was called to come help someone else.

When I looked back into the room I saw Wilhelmina with the cross in hand. I was just about to berate her for being reckless but caught myself when I noticed the asbestos gloves and complex eye protection she was wearing. The eye protection appeared to double as a portable microscope. Her examination revealed that the cross was made of two types of peridot that had been fused together. One section of darker peridot made up the vertical bar the other, lighter in colour, the horizontal. According to Wilhelmina, the crystals appeared to be fused in a suspiciously natural manner. There were no cut lines and no breaks between the crystals as one would expect in a man-made artifact.

I could feel a presence within the crystal and, when I concentrated, could trace the soul thread leading from the cross to, we presumed, Mr G Plank’s sickbed. Wilhelmina and I decided to take the cross to Mr G Plank’s room to see if that would bring about any change in his condition.

We met Inspector MacGreggor on the fourth floor. He was apparently searching the entire floor for any sign of what might have struck down Mr G. Plank. We set the cross down next to Mr G. Plank’s bed and determined that their was no significant change in his condition other than a slight thickening of his soul-thread.

The Inspector showed us an artifact he had found under a table in the hall outside Mr Plank’s bedroom. He said it started to glow green when we approached with the cross. Wilhelmina examined it with her lenses. It is a shaped like a small plate, approximately 3 ½ inches in diameter. The back is corroded bronze that I would estimate as either being over 500 years old, or having had been exposed to an unusually corrosive environment. The front looks like green enamel with a pattern of a sun, moon, and stars done in gold. The gold figures protrude slightly above the level of the ‘enamel’ surface. Wilhelmina suspects that the enamel is actually some form of manipulated crystal inlay. On the back, engraved in the bronze was the inscription “Ex lumen ut manus” which we translated as “From the eye to the hand.”

Since the Inspector had mentioned that the artifact seemed to glow in the presence of the cross, we carried the disk into Mr Plank’s room to observe its reaction. It did indeed glow brighter. Wilhelmina reacted rather strangely, and when I asked her about it she said that the disk had said, “information source within range”. I had heard nothing but remembered Wilhelmina’s interaction with the Swan boat and other Atlantean artifacts and am resigned to the fact that most members of the League can see, hear, taste, or smell things that others cannot.

Mrs Cuthbert had returned by this point and was observing our progress or lack thereof. Wilhelmina tried using the disk to command the cross to release Mr Plank however the device tried to move her soul into the cross instead. Mrs Cuthbert called up her patron saint and he blocked the move. That ended further untutored experimentation with the cross and linked plate.

Mrs Frazer sought us out. She had joined her husband to search the study for further clues as to what might have caused both Sir Robert and Mr G Plank’s collapse. She had found two books to bring to our attention. The first was a manuscript in Latin purporting to be an account by Alfred of Snodbury (a 5th Century monk) of an encounter he and the members of his order had with “Eve, the Mother of Our Race”. The figure of Eve appeared to them and presented their Order with knowledge which included a scroll, a glass, and a key. These three objects were depicted rather crudely and with an inattention to detail that is nearly criminal. In the picture all we could make out, was a rectangle (presumably the scroll), a round object (variously referred to as either a glass or an apple), and the last a four-pointed star (possibly the key). Mrs Frazer had found a small slip of paper in this book with the words “Ex lumen ut manus” written upon it. In addition to the Latin phrase, there were other strange characters lined up with the phrase, as if the second group of symbols were being used as a substitution code for the Latin. We found no other references to they symbols in that book or the next, and more interesting, book.

Mrs Frazer had found a book that might give us more insight into how the cross and plate might work. The book was bound in a very strange way. It opened out in two directions to form a cross of its own. It was rather unwieldy to use, we ended up opening it on the floor where we could spread out. This book, too, was in Latin, but a very idiosyncratic Latin. We spent quite some time on the book before I was able to spot that some of the phrases used were very similar to the atrocious Latin that Rimbaldi used in many of his documents. That gave us a foothold in the document as a whole.

While I was working, I felt a disturbance in the local magikal field. It seemed that a mage was coming to the door. I made my way downstairs and felt a small surge of magik. Our visitor put the Influence on Mr Smethurst to get him to let him in. Mr Smethurst found me on the stairs and introduced Mrs Frazer, Mrs Cuthbert and I (for they had joined me) to a Major Powell. I took an immediate dislike to his high-handed manner (as evidenced by the spell placed on Smethurst). He was also quite sure he was the only man for the job. Mr Moody had provided him with a letter of introduction that leant unwelcome credibility to his tale of having been sent by the Lord High Warlock’s office.

After some consultation with Lady Cowperthwaite (Sir Cosmo was still unconscious, from the blow to the head sustained only a few hours previously during the great staircase debacle), Major Powell was admitted, at least partially, into our confidence. I introduced him to assorted members of the League, primarily Mr Frazer, since I thought the Major’s talents might be best used in sorting out the late Sir Robert’s study.

Mrs Frazer felt it was past time she saw to her babies. I returned to translating, but without her company, my work was rapidly overtaken by the one of the naps my Condition has made me so unhelpfully prone to.

I awoke to another commotion in the downstairs hall. This time the visitor was our old Friend, Mr Ramsey. He was in a state. He had heard that Major Powell had been assigned to our aid and had caught the earliest possible train. He confirmed Major Powell’s identity and credentials, however, it is Mr Ramsey’s experience that the Major pursues Rimbaldi artifacts without regard to the danger to others such pursuit might engender.

This news rather lit a fire under me. I reported to milady and then, Lady Cowperthwaite, Mrs MacGreggor, Mrs Cuthbert, Mr Ramsey and I made our way as rapidly as possible to the study.

We found the Frazers’ dog, Turgenov standing guard at the open painting. The recessed area behind the painting turned into a low passageway that led to a set of stairs.

We arrived in the middle of chaos. Somehow, Wilhelmina and Mrs Wooster (with the inadvertent help of Lieutenant Wooster) had disappeared in a strange flash of light and a metal column of rings that appeared from nowhere.

Some members of the League were congregated around a pillar that Wilhelmina had worked on just prior to her disappearance, others were examining the panel that Wooster had touched, initiating the distressing event. For the sake of our sanity, we chose to work on the assumption that Mrs Wooster and Wilhelmina had merely been transported to some unknown location, as contemplating their untimely demise was much too unsettling.

I joined Ruth in attempting to translate a circular inscription on the floor of the chamber. She and I both recognized the letterforms as those she had found on the scrap of paper in the monk’s manuscript. After much thinking, and some help from Mr Ramsey, all we came up with was the phrase: Cautio subsisto foris crocus uersus dum orbis es strenuus. Which, roughly translated meant “Caution, remain clear of the yellow circle while the rings are active.” It might possibly have been useful, if Wilhelmina and Mrs Wooster had not already demonstrated the dangers of remaining inside the yellow circle.
The one useful thing we did get out of our time spent translating was a much more complete idea of the coded alphabet. We have all of the vowels and are lacking only eight of the letters of the Latin alphabet that the code appears to be based on.

Major Powell was making himself quite unbearable during all of this. He was insisting that he knew how everything should be handled but would not share any of his information. He then acted surprised that we didn’t believe he could be of any use. It was then that I realized one defining characteristic of members of the League of the Golden Clematis, we are all willing to help out in a crisis. We might be noisy, nosey and inefficient, but we have a good record of getting the job done nevertheless. Major Powell showed none of that innate generosity of spirit.

I was very glad I had omitted mentioning the Plate that Inspector MacGreggor had discovered to Major Powell upon his arrival. Mrs Frazer had been give custody of it earlier in the day, in the hope that she would be less likely to inadvertently activate it and incite the removal of her soul.

I had just about had my fill of Major Powell and was close to resorting to Mrs Frazer’s tactics of kicking ostensible allies in the shins when Sir Cosmo arrived. We all talked over each other for a while in trying to explain all that had transpired while he was unconscious. I introduced Major Powell to Sir Cosmo once some of the hubbub had subsided. While the two of them took the other’s measure, Mrs Frazer and I consulted, sotto voce, about the Plate.

She decided to experiment to discover if the Plate would interact with the devices in the laboratory as it did with the peridot cross. Her experiment was unsuccessful so she slipped the device to Sir Cosmo when Major Powell was otherwise distracted.

Sir Cosmo had agreed to Major Powell’s plan to try to remove Mr Plank from the peridot cross and reinstate him into full control of his body. Mr Ramsey, Mrs Cuthbert, Sir Spencer and Mr Salmalin were assigned to help Major Powell, and keep him from causing too much trouble.

Once the Major was gone I explained how Wilhelmina had seemed to interact with the Plate. Sir Cosmo examined it and then set Mrs Frazer to drawing him a diagram of how various cables and crystals had been hooked up when her party had arrived here.

Incidentally, Mrs Frazer mentioned that we are directly under the dead circle of grass on the estate. When they arrived in the cavern they all felt ill until Wilhelmina changed the way one of the machines was hooked up.

After Sir Cosmo looked at Mrs Frazer’s sketches and the scattered remains of unused crystals that had half of their length removed by the glowing circle that took Wilhelmina and Mrs Wooster, he asked if any of us had seen similar crystals around the estate during our various searches. Both Mr O’Flaherty and I could remember specific places in the house that we had seen such items so we were sent upstairs to fetch them.

While Mr O’Flaherty and I were looking for the exact spots we had seen crystals (not an easy task in a house the size of Doverton Abbey– especially given the sheer number of artifacts Sir Robert had filled the house with in his years as its master) I felt an odd surge of magik. Both Major Powell and Mr Ramsey were raising power separately. I was deeply concerned that something was beginning to go wrong with their plan to rescue Mr Plank. Knowing I could not make it up the three flights of stairs before whatever power was raised would be used, I pressed Mr O’Flaherty into service and we began raising our own small store of power. I felt a sudden surge of power from Major Powell and an answering one from Mr Ramsey.

Before I could think, Major Powell struck at us. I used what power I had collected (if not for the inherent properties of the Abbey itself and the many magikal artifacts stored therein, it would have been even less) and blocked his spell. No further attacks came so Mr O’Flaherty and I both made as much haste as my Condition allows to the fourth floor.

We found Mrs Cuthbert and Mr Ramsey unconscious under a spell of sleep or some such and not otherwise harmed. The glass in the window of the room was missing, as was Major Powell and my husband. I turned right back round and took the four flights of stairs as fast as I dared.

Mr O’Flaherty and I went out the front door and around the side of the house. There we found Major Powell broken and unconscious at the bottom of the wall. My husband, blessings be, was intact. He had managed to fight off Major Powell’s magical attack and had punched the odious man in the jaw and out the window. He had then jumped out the window himself to try to save the Major and Mr Plank’s soul from harm. He managed the second, as the cross was in his custody and undamaged. I noted that Major Powell was, rather to my surprise, still living, if barely.

I had just asked Mr O’Flaherty to carry the damaged Major into the house and secure him while I returned to our compatriots, when we heard a very strange sound like wind over metal, followed by a bright flash of blue light. The des Brabants arrived out of the light, their carriage coming to a sudden stop, while at the same time seeming to stand still. It was rather hard on the eyes.

The Comte assisted his Comtesse from the coach. I went to greet them while Mr O’Flaherty carried the Major into the house. With a mixed sense of foreboding and relief, I showed the Comte and Comtesse in.

While we were on the stairs, the Comte asked me why I had used a lethal amount of power against an opponent. I said, first, I did not intend to use lethal force, I was matching the power used against me, second, he struck first.

The Comte went on to say that I should use the second answer first. Self-defence is always allowed. It was only then that I remembered he was likely a member of France’s version of the office of the Lord High Warlock– I do not know how jurisdiction protocol works among practitioners of magik. I feel oddly comfortable around this man– a feeling that I need to guard against since he is married to Lillian, French, and a mage of great power from a discipline I know nothing of.

The Comte, Mr O’Flaherty and I arrived at Mr Plank’s room to find that Mrs Cuthbert, Sir Spencer, and Mr Ramsey awake and oriented. Mrs Cuthbert stopped arguing with the Comtesse long enough to confirm that Mr Plank’s soul had been returned to his body. She suggested that he might be very disoriented when he woke. Apparently the peridot cross retains impressions of all the beings that have been stored in it and Mr Plank was exposed to all of them while he was trapped in it. Major Powell had mentioned earlier that Mr Plank was conscious within the crystal and very confused.

I am very irritated at the Lord High Warlock’s office for sending such an obnoxious and traitorous man to assist us. Instead of providing any useful service he sneered at all of us for our lack of knowledge and then attacked Mr Ramsey, Mrs Cuthbert, Sir Spencer and Mr Salmalin in his vain attempt to steal the cross.

Mrs Cuthbert and the Comtesse argued out in the hall while the Comte and I chatted. I sent Mr O’Flaherty downstairs with the Cross and the pink crystal we had managed to find before all the ruckus with Major Powell. I also included a note to Sir Cosmo and Lady Cowperthwaite asking if they would like the Comte’s assistance in this matter.

The Comtesse stormed in at one point, saying “Fine! If it will make you happy!” or some such. The she ‘forgave’ Sir Spencer for shooting her after she tried to kill my husband at the French Embassy Ball. Then they both stomped down the stairs to see if further aid could be provided to Major Powell.

Soon Lady Cowperthwaite returned with Mr O’Flaherty and invited the Comte and Comtesse down to help with the problem of retrieving Wilhelmina and Mrs Wooster. The Comte helped us search the premises for crystals before Lady Cowperthwaite escorted the couple down to Sir Cosmo.

I searched a few more rooms for crystals and found the one Mr O’Flaherty had remembered. Sir Cosmo had made a great deal of progress by the time I checked in with the group working downstairs.

I made the mistake of sitting down for a few minutes and woke up some time later on the hard floor with a bit of a crick in my neck. It was well past midnight and apparent we would be working though the night.

Sir Cosmo and his helpers were able to get the machine working. We sent up some food with a note to Wilhelmina and Emily saying we would activate the device again in ten minutes. It was a very long ten minutes, but Sir Cosmo activated the machine a second time and four figures appeared in the circle.

Two were our lost sheep and two were very odd. The first new figure was a mechanical man that collapsed upon arrival. It looked exactly like the ‘Vessel” from the Rimbaldi papers I spent the past few months studying. The other figure was very hard to describe, in part because its aura overwhelmed my perception of its physical form. Its aura looked like a reduced version of the “Angels” we have encountered. It was not so powerful as to over swamp everything else in the room but it was difficult to look at for long periods.

What followed was a very perplexing conversation. The “Angel” being introduced itself as “Semkhet”. From what we were able to glean, it is a being that belongs to a larger entity it calls “Kahash”. After many attempts to hold some sort of reasonable conversation with it, Semkhet suggested that, in order for us to understand one another one of our number would need to become “Kahash”. After much more enthusiastic volunteering by more members of the league than I expected, Mr O’Flaherty was selected to host the part of Semkhet that budded off. The new Semkhet moved into Mr O’Flaherty in a light show that even Mrs Frazer could see– if she hadn’t been so busy trying to disentangle herself from her husband’s firm grasp. She was one of the volunteers, and Mr Frazer tried to physically stop her from stepping forward.

Truth be told, I was tempted to volunteer myself, except that my skills are likely going to be needed to extract the part of Semkhet that budded off once this is all over.

Once the new Semkhet had taken up his place in Mr O’Flaherty we had a marginally more comprehensible conversation with the original Semkhet.

All the while Wilhelmina was tinkering with the Vessel. At one point during the conversation she asked for the peridot cross, saying it was an integral part of what she was working on. It must be a measure of our distraction that it was handed over almost without comment.

In summary, here is what I understood Semkhet to say (though Mr O’Flaherty).

– It came to our planet a very long time ago and budded, giving a part of itself to a young healer in the Nile region.

– That part of Semkhet was captured by Rimbaldi in the 16th Century and placed in the vessel. Somehow the Vessel was transported up to Semkhet’s platform above the earth, but without the major crystal component– the cross, or storage device.

– That part of Semkhet also managed to escape Rimbaldi’s control (or just waited until he died?) and has been moving from host to host as the years past. I’m not very clear on this part but it does seem more and more likely that the missing part of Semkhet is with Evie Botley.

– There is another part of Kahash looking for the missing part of Semkhet. This is likely the “Angel” that has been seen both in London and Snodbury. That part of Kahash does not care about anything but retrieving the missing part of Semkhet and also appears to think that the existing version of Semkhet is somehow damaged or crippled. At the very least, according to Wilhelmina, our Semkhet was trapped on its platform and unable to activate its transportation device on its own.

To top it all off, as we were having this conversation, Semkhet suddenly proclaimed that the “Shadows” were coming for us.

Apparently the “Shadows” (not to be confused with the League of Shadows) are an ancient enemy of the Kahash and have come here to kill the Kahash and free us (no matter how many actual people get killed in the process).
And by coming, Semkhet meant coming right down, down the stairs to get us. Mrs Cuthbert could feel an evil presence coming toward us. As it approached, I could sense it too.

We had brief discussion. The Vessel offered to stay behind and hold the rear. One of our party had realised that their were additional tunnels attached to this complex. Sir Cosmo figured out how to open the access-way and I dropped down through. There were no lights so I made a witch light to allow us to see.

We made our way quickly down the tunnel to where it exited away from the main house. Whatever it was that was following us did not circle back to the house so we alerted the servants that they were danger, gathered up the children and the nursery maids, loaded into our carriages and ran for it.

We didn’t get very far along the road before coming across Mr Oliphant. Unfortunately instead of a sometime ally, he was possessed by this Shadow force and was trying to block our way. He commanded his servants to attack us and we were soon joined in battle. To my great regret, Mr Oliphant was shot and killed in the melee as were his servants.

The sun was not long over the horizon and its light was nearly blotted out by some sort of enormous air ship coming at us faster than anything should be able to fly. I heard Inspector MacGreggor shout something about getting the babies to safety but I was transfixed by the giant ship. Two rays, thousands of times stronger than a ray of sunshine emerged from the ships bow and struck us.

I felt myself and all those around me die.

I was resolved not to swerve from my post. If nothing else I would stay and haunt those to come after until they had dealt with this menace. The thought had no sooner flitted though my rapidly emulsifying brain when I felt a cool hand on my shoulder, “Save us” the Comte said pouring power into me, and suddenly I was not dead.

The ship was still coming at us but from further away and I could see that there was another of me and two of Mrs Cuthbert. I heard her say something about being in two places at once (sounding oddly satisfied as she said it). For one terrifying moment I was paralysed, I could think of nothing I could do to save us all.

Then I recovered, or God whispered to me, I don’t know which. One of me used the power the Comte had given us, the other drew power from every magic user around us to form a shield that would protect us from the ungodly flames. The Mrs Cuthberts struck at the ship. The part of Semkhet in Mr O’Flaherty rose up and struck at the ship.

The moment stretched and suddenly Mrs Cuthbert and I were one person again, both of us sinking to the ground with the effort we had expended. The ship rose into the sky– Mr O’Flaherty later reported that Semkhet had steered the ship back into the heavens. Its pilot was dead, and the Shadow that had clung to Mr Oliphant was also gone.

We were alive, but just.

It took some time for Inspector MacGreggor to realize the situation but the DFT was employed to bring him, and all the babies, back to us.

Now it is Tuesday Morning the 9th of April and we are waiting on the next train to London. I have sent a telegram to Mr Moody saying not to bother to come to us, we will come to him. We have the Major with us and were at some difficulty with what to do about poor Mr Oliphant’s body and that of his servants. Mrs Travers met us at the station and Sir Cosmo gave her a brief precis of events. She has agreed to see to discreet arrangements for Mr Oliphant and keep an eye on Doverton Abbey.

I hate leaving so many loose ends at the Abbey but what choice do we have?. Forces are rising around us that have no care of the people they kill or destroy. There is a small girl hiding in London who needs our aid before she becomes the focus of a most horrible battle. Not to mention the sheer number of people that live in our most populous city– all who are in danger from these “Bigger” powers who care nothing for them except as pawns in some arcane game of power.

Hopefully the shadows will leave this place now that the first Semkhet has returned to his platform and we are taking the Semkhet in Mr O’Flaherty away with us. Maybe Mrs Travers can get help to the Misters Plank. And to top it all of, we are forced to lug the now-fragile Major Powell along with us and return him to the Lord High Warlock’s office.

As much as I am not pleased with him, I suspect Mr Moody will not be best pleased with me.

Proceed to A most disheartening sight

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