Assuming everyone has made it to the upstairs room:
You find yourself in a large room, much like the Tower segment below. It is circular, except for one segment where the curving wall becomes flat. This flat segment is lined with shelves. The shelves are largely empty, although there are a few very brittle-looking books stacked here and there. Through the shelves, you see a mural painted on the wall behind it.
There is a desk placed in front of the shelves, with a single chair. The desk bears a writing set: a very dry inkwell, nib holders, pen knife, wax, and seals, all set in small compartments in a lacquered tray. The desk has a few shallow drawers. They are locked.
The entire floor is otherwise empty. The dust is entirely undisturbed, except for a clear trail of tracks left by Wikerus.
After tentative exploration with your peripheral vision, you are pleased to see that the ceiling here is not another riot of putti, but red velvet tapestry.
The shelves and the obscured mural are very long, but the shelves are empty enough that it is easy to get a fairly decent view of the picture, especially if you walk some distance from the shelves. It is a scene. There are crowds of figures to the left and right had edges, framing a generally open area and three central figures. There are phylacteries, ribbons with speech, emanating from the central figures' mouths.
Several shelves have been dismantled by Wikerus and Jake, revealing more of the painting.
The chipped and faded painting depicts a theatrical stage, littered with an eclectic assortment of improbable and no-doubt highly symbolic props. Towards the wings of the stage are gathered great crowds of figures in equally significance-begging costumery. In the center of the composition stand three figures, actors dressed as women—a maiden with a spindle of silver thread, a mature woman with a basket of lots, and a crone with shears. Each has a ribbon painted around their necks, leading to a silver metal key, embedded in the surface of the wall. From each mouth unfurls a phylactery.
The Maiden: "Heed, lusty seeker of unopened paths—my key opens your grave, unless Lachesis speaks true. Then, my path welcomes you most sweetly."
The Woman: "Of we three, poor actors and ill-fated, at least two speak their lines falsely."
The Crone: "Wouldst thou seek kisses from a skull? My key opens the path you seek, unless Lachesis speak false. Then, I offer only death."
Wikerus steps forward and touches the embedded key belonging to the actor portraying the grown woman in the middle, even as
Jake calls out for him to stop.
The key is smooth and cool to the touch, but the texture quickly turns dry and chalky as the actor's hand moves across the surface of the fresco and closes around the key. Squirming smears of ancient pigment, each a different shade, crawl and crack and run sideways across the wall's surface in shocking contravention of all Nature's laws. They do not glisten and flow like new paint. It is instead as if dry streams of grains, infinitesimal and rushing, poured across the brushwork features following the wall like bright-dyed filings swimming over a weak magnet.
Neutral greys and umbers from the shadows on the far right of the actor's face where it turns away crawl on a steep diagonal towards its upper left, where they pool to a blot of shading such as you might get to one side of a nose if whomever it might belong to looked straight at you. Radiant Chrome Yellow and Lead White bleed from the actor's golden wig, forming an irregular bright patch with contours roughly like the rightmost cheek if it were slightly moved so that it was illuminated. The actor's face is turning slowly, still within the surface of the fresco, to regard you with a gaze that is head-on. New creases of Payne’s Grey coagulate at the corners of its eyes as the lids, formerly downcast shyly, flutter open with small flakes of paint falling from fresh-created wrinkles. At the edges of the figure’s mouth, also migrated up and to the left now, dimpled cracks of mingled Ivory Black and crimson crinkle into being as the pale lips part and the painted portrayal of Lachesis, the measurer of fate and the caster of lots, speaks.
The banner trailing from her mouth changes with the movements of her lips to read,
"You have chosen precisely and well."
The figure steps from the surface and to one side, revealing a key hole set into the wall. The key is inserted and the actor/Lachesis looks over his/her shoulder at you with a quiet smile. The key is turned.
With a deep groan, the entire frescoed wall lifts up, like a proscenium curtain, to reveal a stone staircase nearly identical to the one that led up to this room.
The actor stands there, among your flesh and blood and wood, perhaps uncertain what to do with himself after so long in one position.
Actions!
Next post: Monday morning, around 10m EDT, 2pm GMT
