Unknown location. Durst family residence. Late morning.
"C'mon, c'mon... open, you little fucker..." mumbled Karrid, working at a padlock on a door in the attic. The team was arrayed behind her, waiting for her to work the lock open. "This has gotta... son of a BITCH!" she yelled as she withdrew her pick to find the tip snapped off. "FUUUCK!" Karrid stood up and kicked the door in anger.
"Karrid, Karrid! Calm yourself, dear sister," said Ashara, blanching slightly from Karrid's whirlwind of curses. "Getting angry at the door won't open it." He did so dislike whenever she got worked up like this. It was unbecoming of such an important young lady to have such foul words coming out of her mouth. The woman was his sister, and he could not tolerate such crude, lower-class behavior.
"I know, I know, I just- UUURGH!" Karrid let out an angry groan as she knelt in front of the door, taking a fresh set of picks from her hip pouch. "This fucking lock, I swear... they'd better be hiding something really fucking good behind here..."
As Karrid worked, Theronicus motioned for the group to listen. He said, "My compatriots, we still haven't seen any sign of a way down to the basement, and we haven't heard any sign of this monster. I find it highly unlikely that an entrance to the basement is all the way up here - do any of you have any ideas?"
"Dude, it's rich people," said Sans, taking a drink from his beer bottle and tucking it back into his robe. "They make, like, the weirdest houses possible." Ashara scoffed, and said, "That's ridiculous. Wendell Manor has-"
"GUYS!" yelled Karrid. As they turned around, expecting to see the lock picked, they saw her still working. "Can you guys, like, talk quieter? I- FUCK! I need quiet when I'm trying to figure out these FUCKING PINS!"
Theronicus lowered his voice and said, "Do any of you have any ideas? Alex, could you check for secret doors, or anything else we might have missed?" Alex nodded, but then Ashara said, "Why not go out and make those children outside show us the door to the basement?"
Theronicus sighed and then addressed Ashara, "Because the children don't feel safe in here. There is no way that I am going to make them come in here, closer to the monster." As Ashara opened his mouth again, Theronicus interrupted, "That is off. The. Table. I will not make the children come in the house." Ashara prepared to say something, but thought better of it when he heard the intensity in Theronicus' voice. He opened and closed his mouth a few times like a goldfish, then finally said, "Well, I... well, I suppose you could just ask them where it is and not make them come in-"
"PISS AND SHIT!" yelled Karrid, "FUCKING SHITASS LOCK BROKE ANOTHER ONE OF MY FUCKING PICKS!" Karrid threw the broken pick against the wall and let out a wordless yell of anger. "I fucking... Who the FUCK made this FUCKING lock? I swear, whatever key fits it must be..."
Karrid paused, the look of rage on her face slowly melting into curiosity. She slowly reached into her hip pouch and withdrew the key that she had taken from the library. She looked at it, gritted her teeth, and said, "I. Fucking. Swear. I fucking swear to whatever divine fuck is watching... If I broke two of my picks just because I didn't remember I had taken this..." Karrid inserted the key into the lock and turned.
The lock popped open.
Karrid drew in a deep breath, about to unleash another volley of curses, and then slumped. "I am... in too much fucking disbelief right now to be angry." She pushed open the door and the others went through.
The room on the other side had two dusty wooden beds that could fit children. A dollhouse that looked a lot like the house that the group was in laid on the floor, alongside two small skeletons, wearing familiar clothing, with one clutching a very familiar doll.
"Wh-" Theronicus tried to say, shocked beyond words. "What... no..." He stood still for a moment, and then reached into his backpack, trying to find the doll that Thorn had given him, as if seeing it would dispel whatever was in front of him. He couldn't find it.
Theronicus swayed slightly, his heart dropping. He nearly fell over, but Kat caught him and balanced him upright. "Theronicus?" she whispered softly, but he didn't respond. After a few seconds, he turned around and ran out of the room. Kat followed him, and after a few seconds, so did everybody else.
It's not possible, Theronicus thought as he ran down the winding red marble staircase. He had just seen them outside... a few hours ago? They couldn't have spent that long in the house. Not long enough for them to...
He had reached the bottom. He burst through the doors from the grand hall to the foyer, and then threw open the foyer door. Panicked, he looked out, but the mist had risen around the house to the point where it was so incredibly thick that he couldn't see anything at all outside of the house. "ROSE! THORN!" he yelled. There was no response. Theronicus rushed out into the door into the mists.
The fog was blinding and cloying. It felt alive, as though it was trying to grab at him and pull him backwards. "ROSE? THORN? WHERE ARE YOU?" he yelled, a feeling of dread surrounding him as sure as the thick mists. He stretched out his hand as he ran, trying to feel for something. After running a few yards, he touched something wooden, and he moved forward, back into the foyer.
"How..?" Theronicus panted, turning around and rushing back out. After a few seconds, he stumbled back into the foyer again as Kat rounded the corner. She opened her mouth to say something as Theronicus rushed back out, only to come running back in. "No! How... I'm running in a straight line!" Theronicus cried as he moved out once more, and once more coming back in. "ROSE! CAN YOU HEAR ME? THORN? THORN? ROSE?"
His cries became increasingly desperate as he continued to receive no response. "ROSE? THORN? I... Please..." Theronicus' voice fell as he sank to his knees. After a moment, Kat sat down beside him and wiped a tear off of his face. He hadn't realized it, but he was crying.
He knelt there for a moment, rocking on his knees slowly, more tears sliding down his face. "How..?" he asked to nobody in particular. "It... how? There's... we were..."
The other four members of the group ran into the foyer, although Theronicus barely registered their presence. His mind swam with both his emotion and his failing attempts to make any kind of sense of what was happening. Karrid and Sans sat down beside him, with Sans patting his shoulder. Usually, if a warlock of Vecna was going to try to touch him, Theronicus would have recoiled instantly, but Theronicus found himself appreciative of Sans' gesture. Theronicus felt raw and vulnerable and didn't want to go anywhere. He had failed, he thought, and that failure crushed him.
After some time - he couldn't tell how long - Alex waved a hand in front of his face to get his attention. He blinked some of the tears out of his eyes and looked at her as she signed at him. "Uh, Alex..." said Karrid hesitantly, "That's... kinda cold." Alex signed at Karrid, almost defensively. Karrid then replied, "Yes! I mean, what the fuck do you even mean, 'from a logical point of view'?" Alex sighed and signed some more, to which Karrid responded, "Look, you... Huh. Look, I-I guess? Maybe?"
"Karrid, can you just tell us what she's saying?" said Theronicus. A moment later, he said, "I-I'm sorry, Karrid. I didn't mean for it to come out like that. I'm just..." he trailed off.
"Yeah, it's chill, T-wall. Don't worry." T-wall? As he was about to ask what she meant, she said, "Okay, Alex is saying we need to think about this from a 'logical point of view' and, uh, she thinks the kids outside were fake. Like, illusions or something." Alex nodded, and continued signing, which Karrid translated, "*Whatever it is that created them probably based them off of the children when they were alive. I've fought illusionists before, and their spells work best if they have a template, something that already exists, to draw from.*"
"Then that would mean that whatever created the illusion must have seen the children while they were alive," said Kat, "And it would have known what they looked like before they were, um, as they are now. Which means that it must have been here for... years at least. But what makes you so sure that it is an illusionist?"
Alex pointed to her gut, then signed a quick sentence. "Gut feeling," said Karrid, "But yeah, I gotta say, Al, that does sound kinda far-fetched, no off- what the fuck?" Karrid pointed past Alex into the main hall.
The others followed her gaze to a door that was not there before. Somehow, without anybody touching it, the door creaked open, revealing a spiral staircase hidden in the space between the main hall and the dining room.
"What the fuck," said Karrid, "Al, I think you're right. It's a fucking illusionist."
Suddenly, a scream echoed up from the depths of the stairwell. Theronicus stood up. He knew that scream could be an illusion, like the kids might have been, but even if it was fake, he would purify whoever was making these damn illusions in the scouring light of Ilmater.
The group walked towards the door. A gust of wind blew up the spiral stairwell, carrying with it the scent of death. It didn't deter any of them.
Theronicus, Kat, Alex, Ashara, Karrid, and Sans walked down the stairs, and began their descent into darkness.
