As the light from Coraline's lantern flared into the darkness, Caleb made his way around the barn. "Wild animals eat and live different than domesticated ones, Miss Hawthorne," he explained. "So they have a different smell to 'em."

The ground was covered with a thin layer of hay and dust, and various tools and ranching implements were piled up in a corner, some leaning against the wall. Some way into the room, Caleb found a door that opened to below. Peacemaker at the ready in one hand, he opened it carefully. The area below smelled of rot and decay.

"Clear," he said. "Miss Hawthorne, a bit closer with the light." The light revealed a set of wooden stairs leading below where strange symbols were scrawled on the ground, and what appeared to be a block of stone hewn directly out of the ground on top of which was the mangled corpse of a wolf. A few books lay nearby.

Daniel walked over to peer into the lower level, then frowned at what he saw. Speaking of witchery

The barber descended down the wooden stairs to get a better look at the hidden room they had discovered. Seemed like it might just be an animal sacrifice. But maybe there was more.

"Sky Dog, you see anythin' like this over at the other celler?" Gabby asks.

"No. The first room of that cellar, it...hurts, to my spirits and my...feeling, it hurts," the shaman responded, hugging his chest and frowning deeply, as though pressure on the bruise would distract him from some other pain. "This I like less. It is more than a wickedness of one that does not know what they do, it...goes down deeper."

"Dalix, it would be well to burn what is here - while the sun is strong," Sky Dog advised, casting a look to Morgan to see whether he was of similar mind.

"I can't say this is usually down the alley of things I look into, but I don't like it one bit. If you think we should burn it, Sky Dog, I'm good with that," he said.


"And then we should check out that other cellar."
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:59, Wed 24 Sept 2014.

Daniel picked up one of the books and nodded at the sentiment, though he didn't make any immediate move to leave. Instead he opened up the oldest of the books to see what it might say, while handing one of the others up to whoever might be curious about its contents. "Thur all the same book. Jus diffrnt dates."

Taking a book from Daniel, he looked at the cover. "How To Serve Your Man," Caleb said, reading the title before opening it with the shake of a hand to look through it's contents, wedging it open with a thumb.

"Looks like a cookbook to me. Recipes." He held it out for either Gabby or Cora to look over if they wanted.

Snarling, Sky Dog loped across the room to bat the proffered book back down into the cellar. "No more. No more here: this is bad work."

Shoulders back and body braced, the pale youth stood between upper and lower floors like a dog ready to fight. He rounded on Morgan, colour high in what could be seen of his cheeks above the bandanna, but only gestured down at the butchered wolf with his free hand in the manner of one pointing out an atrocity.

"There must be ending of this." His blue stare shifted from Morgan to Daniel, fierce as a sky too clear-cold to snow. "I am the shamán Sky Dog: my name is known in the Upper World, and the Lower. I say this."

Daniel looked confused at the change in Sky Dog's demeanor. "An endin of what now? Yer sayin' we can't look aroun' afore we torch it?"

Sky Dog pointed with his knifetip at the symbols scrawled around the cellar. "This doing. It is awake, the...medicine."

He stepped nearer, jaw set under the cloth. "That you are alive, to put your body near it you risk that the Lower World will take the scent of your blood; that some large wickedness will follow you; that scavengers will come after. Many spirits. You will do harm to yourself and to the Middle World, with the weight of them, and to the shadows of the world, with all the dark ones near together. It would not honour the saint that looked well on you in the Upper World, Dalix, to be as careless."

Still somewhat tense, the shaman swapped hands with the knife and reached as though to clasp Daniel's forearm. "Do you give me to see your hands here, Dalix...they will be washed in blood if not in salt water."

Coraline sighed deeply.  "Well I almost understood that, though I do think it is a load of rubbish."  Pointedly ignoring Sky Dog's cryptic warning, she walked down the stairs and lifted the lantern up high to get a better look at the walls.  She picked up one of the books and opened it.  "Is it a cookbook for cannibals, you think, or a secret spell book for demon worship?  In any case, we should get to burning after we go investigate the other cellar.  They are waiting on us, after all."

Korpi had discovered a distinct lack of bats, frightened peasants, rats, or other fun things that occasionally hid in haylofts. She edged on down to see what the others were doing, considering whether she'd ferried enough pickled eggs back to the horses.

Sky Dog looked furious with something like fear: that was unusal.

"Witch, you go too far," the shaman growled, his voice deceptively soft. "My person it is well to mock, for you are an iron devil of little knowledge for even one world...but if you set no honour to my work," the young man's eyes narrowed. "I will cur- no, I will criticise you more loudly, if you ask for it or not, yes? It is said."

Sky Dog remained where he was over the cellar, guarding the way up from below. "To injure your own family, it is your buisness. To spread true harm to the world, it is made mine."

"Whoa!" Gabby yelps as Sky Dog gets angry. He also had been about to take one of the books, but the shaman's anger made him rethink that.

"Sky Dog, d'ya reckon we oughta finish explorin' the other place afore we torch this here barn? Or look around more to be sure this is all of it and there ain't no other hidden surprises that might lurk around? Might be soemthin' a fire might miss, and I think we oughta be thorough destroyin' this place."

Caleb sighed at the discord, which seemed to be rearing its head all the time.

"Sky Dog, she does make a good point. If Randolph is by himself over there, we might want to see to that situation before we start burning things. Like Gabby said, we're gonna need to be thorough."

Sky Dog canted his head to get Gabby in his peripheral vision. "The way down is at the back of the house: it would be well for you all to go there, before Darling and Whateley are exploding the doors. I will set Our Friend to devouring this doing and come after."

He squinted briefly into the rafters. "Anything not devoured, it will be hours in the sun when it is running, or ended by smoke if it is a born creature."

"Right," he said, not for the first time understanding about half of what Sky Dog was saying, moving to the room's exit. "Anybody comin' with?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:33, Thu 25 Sept 2014.

Coraline waved a dismissive hand at Sky Dog's torrent of words, not taking him seriously in the slightest.  As a woman from her general social standing, she had been subjected to far more criticism than the shaman could ever hope to heap upon her.  Taking a look about the room and thumbing through the book, she finally tossed it onto the floor.  Skirt in hand, she followed Caleb up the stairs, but paused near Sky Dog, standing far closer than she'd ever gotten to the man -- close enough that he could seek the flecks of amber in her eyes that glinted in the light.

Quietly, she spoke in slow, clear Evenki.  [Language unknown: "A santinrom naha nd ure siill plriwh, illou lepr To, ar o ekin o lathouort hasithreadin korlinthi, verol e peivhi moest olck ticoveundthower fohoni whrien.  M nce om stenmi as, anen liour tanaof ck stroreear oneng wer pe ast thistatic nceessera ho, li na k laou oneiniouad us.  T ticro wheau plicte, thoul tin ilbe redleseau il es t olinec eau eauredure ul ntihouant som enconsthi t ie ons il p caame he e ioonpr stroerkorhat st niall overutwilous po andorteau mitrta.  P oul unme waesho iouiv nill ous iv evedaynce, are se eese lin a ngte."]

There was a subtle, hard change in her expression.  "And don't ever call me a witch again."  Pulling away, she moved to the exit and slipped past Caleb, exiting the barn and heading for the house as a brisk pace.

The shaman smelled of woodsmoke, tea and deer and young male sweat, the penalty of his too-pale skin being apt to burn through anything but thick wool or buckskin.

It took him a moment to show surprise at normal speech so deep in a foreign land, but Sky Dog clearly ignored the itching in his ear to pay attention. Cora might as well have addressed a wild wolf or the rock below for all the expression that made it to his eyes, however. In the shadows of the world, the Black-Feathered One cawwed himself hoarse with unheard laughter.

Sky Dog rubbed the frown mark between his eyes when she had gone and gave Dalix a little time to get out of the pit where someone had pinned and torn the flesh from their brother - sister, even.

Briefly, he had a vision of a snowy plain beneath a sky like swan's down and himself toiling across it, his helper spirits all bundled to his chest inside his coat. Grief for the old shaman came and went like the sigh of the sea within a shell. I cannot do this/I must.

Gabby, being near Sky Dog at the time, cocks his head and frowns at Cora's stream of words. "Showin' off yer witchery ain't a good way o' provin' you got the insight an' responsible nature needed to actually fight this here evil." He mutters, really more to himself than anyone else.

He looks at Sky Dog. Slowly, haltingly, he begins to speak a few words he'd picked up. [Language unknown: "A...nire...m sanncewil. N...haomne...andei...thekstse."] he says, then looks over at Danial. "Danny, I reckon we don't want to leave both Darlin' and Whateley alone with each other too long. What say you and I go back the other way, help 'em out?"

He heads ou the door of the barn, and heads off back towards the house, following Sky Dog's directions.

Caleb shrugged and left with Coraline.

Daniel took one last look around and then put the book he had been reading into his pack. He shouldered it back on and then headed up and out with the rest of the posse, curious about the next underground area they would discover.

Crouching above the hatch, the shaman pulled his bandana down about his neck to give Gabby a weak, wondering grin, though his look at Daniel was only disappointed.

Sky Dog stayed crouched when the others were gone, massaging his temples and trying to ignore the ache across his chest.

"Kor," Korpi sympathised, curious about what the light had shown but wary enough to know that bad work was afoot.

Sky Dog sighed and set to collecting anything that looked like it might burn.

Korpi flew outside to watch as her brother gathered armfuls of hay, walking very carefully across the floor to dump them into the cellar. The wooden-handled iron tools followed, then any loose boards that could be pried by a determined and tense young man and fragments of strayed wood.
 he asked, dust-greyed from the work.

Korpi whet her beak against the barn guttering and mused on whether the task was entertaining enough to be bothered with, then tried the view from the top of the barn whilst Sky Dog called the flames into the makeshift pyre, greeting them with a prayer and a handful of salt.

The fire took quickly to the dry hay, and quickly began to spread throughout the small room.

Sky Dog propped the hatch partway open to improve the inferno's draw, hastily backing away from the fire and the dusty floor. He watched a little while from the barn's shadow, then turned away for the back of the house, raising an arm for Korpi.