Ghost Rage, Episode 9a- Vote Now!

You step in front of the old woman, and she looks at you with terrified eyes.

“What’s going on?” you say.

“I…I didn’t know!” says the old woman. “I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know! I just carried the letters, like milady told me to do. I didn’t know what was in them. I didn’t know what was going to happen.” She starts to weep, wringing her hands. “Please, please, it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault…”

You realize that she’s not talking to you. She doesn’t even seem to see you.

And then your skin starts to crawl, and the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Some necromancers did some bad things to you as a child, and ever since then you’ve had the ability to sense the presence of active sorcery.

And even as you feel the power building in the air, some invisible force seizes the old woman, drags her backward, and flings her through one of the townhouse’s windows. The window explodes with a spray of glass and broken wood, the noise drowned out by the woman’s scream of horror and despair.

Followed shortly afterwards by wet, ripping sounds.

You race up the stairs and dart into the Karbonos townhouse, daggers in hand.

By the time you get there, it is too late. The door and the shattered window open into an expansive, airy atrium, light streaming from a skylight overhead. The old woman in the maid’s dress lies in multiple pieces across the marble floor. The mess is considerable.

You see the sigil painted on the wall in blood, the same sigil you saw over Lord Julian Trimogena’s remains, the same sigil tattooed, though inverted, on Moresti’s face.

Moresti starts to swear in Szaldic. You don’t understand what he’s saying, but you hear the word “mavrokh” over and over again.

A whimper reaches your ears, and you see a young woman of about twenty slumped against a marble vase, eyes wide with horror. You met Lady Chrysana Karbonos a few times before, at noble balls, and she always seemed like a typical young noblewoman of high Nighmarian birth; aloof, haughty, and dripping with arrogance and condescension.

But now the arrogance is gone, utterly gone, replaced by stark terror.

“Oh gods,” says Chrysana, staring at the remains of the maid. “Oh, Cornelia. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Didn’t mean for what to happen?” you say.

“I…I…I didn’t meant it!” wails Chrysana. “It was just for the money, don’t you understand? The money! He didn’t mean anything else to me. She…she was sick, everyone said she was sick, no one ever recovers from bloodburn fever. So what was the harm in it? But I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Again she seems to be talking to someone else.

“I’m sorry!” says Chrysana, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please don’t, please don’t, I…no! No!”

Again your skin crawls with the presence of powerful sorcery. Unseen force seizes Chrysana, lifts the shrieking noblewoman three feet into the air.

She’s going to get ripped apart…unless you can think of something clever right now.

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