Marianne caught the preacher's gaze and looked uncertain about what to do. How would Gula react if they cut down Basil's tree right there by her fountain? And then there were all the demons, both those right in front of them and those hidden in the shadows beyond the path.

But Basil was sure to have something up his sleeve and if they waited for him to make a move it might be too late. She slipped the gun into her bag and quietly grabbed the machete, watching for the right moment.

The adventurers watched as the tall, dark-haired woman next stalked to the fountain, and pulled a golden cup from her pack.  This she used to scoop up some of the water and drink, elegantly, and then she moved to a lean, very spiky-looking bush towards the north, to make it a blood offering.

Hornby's normally easy-going smile was long gone, and the expression that replaced it was cold and hard.  He turned back towards Brother Clary, and spoke in a low tone that was just loud enough for McCurdy and Marianne also to overhear.  "One of us is going to become a demon," he said. "And the only thing that can bring it down easy is that cross.  By the code, I cannot help you."

(GM: Spot hidden, % dice please !)
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:56, Sun 25 June 2006.

Marianne nodded. Was this what her vision had meant? She had a million questions to ask, but perhaps it was already too late for them.

"Captain, which tree is Basil's?" she asked quietly. "And which one of this group is Sawney?"

"I cannot tell you, I am bound by a code that you are not," Hornsby said in a low tone, to Marianne's first question, though Brother Clary and McCurdy could hear him, "And Sawney is the mad old man."

As they stood there, Lafitte moved next to the fountain, scooping up a handful of water with more elegance than Hornsby had done, and drank.  It would only be a matter of time before Basil Ringrose took his turn at the fountain...and who knew what would happen when the last of them did so...or indeed, if any of the three adventurers decided to take their chances for immortality...or damnation.

Brother Clary watched the proceedings with righteous indignation brewing deep inside his lanky frame.  "Consarn it," he muttered to himself.

He carefully took note of Ringroses' position, looking to see if he could discover where the cross and his Bible were, and if he could cross the distance to the bushes quickly enough before anyone could react.

Brother Clary determined there was ample time to circle the fountain and get close to Ringrose, or indeed, to any of the other people there around the fountain.  And, given the constantly changing light, he would also be able to get a good look at the shadows being cast.  He set to sidling over towards Ringrose, who made no move against that, or indeed, in reaction to.

Marianne looked from Hornsby to Hawksmoore with a slight frown, her focus shifting back to Basil almost immediately as she noted the preacher circling around towards Ringrose. She approached the old man, trying frantically to guess which tree was Basil's. Marianne remembered only one Sawney from her history lessons, but she had a bad feeling she was about to meet the very same one in the flesh.

McCurdy was in a daze. He was clenching his fists to clear his mind of all the madness. He was clenching so hard that his fingernails were cutting into his palms. He could feel his blood slicking his hands and it helped to clear his mind. He was trying to watch everyone at once and realized it was not necessary. The European woman was here for herself and did not seem to care for the others. The old madman - Sawney or De Leon, the captain had said - seemed lost in his own world and the young Doctor Corazon was more worried about her father than anything else. The German pilot seemed to care not but for his own concerns as well. McCurdy was not quite certain where Lafitte’s interests lay, but he didn’t seem to be a threat at the moment. That left Ringrose and De Vega.

De Vega he would try to kill at the slightest wrong move, otherwise McCurdy could not care less about him. But it was Ringrose that he finally settled upon. Ringrose was the man that stabbed him in the jungle; Ringrose was the man that did something to Liza; Ringrose was the man that had the cross.

McCurdy moved finally. He knelt beside Hawksmoore quickly and removed the water flask from his pack. Then he stepped up to the fountain pouring the water from the flask as he approached it. He stopped at the edge and gazed into the water of the fountain. He looked at Liza then, at the distant gaze in her lifeless eyes. No matter what happened to these people now, no matter what happened to the world outside this godforsaken jungle - no matter what happened to him - McCurdy and Ringrose were going to settle this thing.

McCurdy dunked the empty flask into the water and let it fill. Then he looked at Ringrose and removed one of his pistols from its home, resting it lightly but readily in his hand. His finger caressed the trigger as he stared at Ringrose. He held the water flask close to his chest, droplets of the water of the fountain dropping slowly to disturb the serene surface.

“You gonna drink, old man? And offer your blood to the bush that sustains your immortality?” McCurdy smiled crookedly and the light in his eyes was almost maniacal. “It will be the last drink you take... unless you undo what you did to Mrs. Waters.” His tone left no doubt as to what he intended if Ringrose did not restore what he had taken from Liza.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:36, Mon 10 July 2006.

"You have drawn from the fountain, Mr. McCurdy," Basil Ringrose spoke in the most austere and gentlemanly tones, his gaze as mellow as his voice.  "It is your turn to drink, and to decide to feed the earth from your blood and take you own place among us, as immortals - or near to it, as near to it as any man can aspire.  With it you accept the risks we all did.  Refuse...well, I must admit, I have never seen what happens to one who took Gula's tears and refused her bounty.  What's that saying, something about no fury like a woman scorned ?"

But he did then shift his gaze to Liza Waters. "Ah, the dear old bird that she is, a game one too," he said, with a smile. "She's been a little useful, but not much, I confess.  I don't mind losing her as a servant.  Feed her this - you'll have to jam it down her throat, but it should still work.  I wouldn't waste any more time if I were you."  Basil Ringrose reached into his still-spotless waistcoat, pulled out a small porcelain flask shaped like a skull, and tossed it gently to McCurdy....leaving him to drop either the pistol - or the flask of water, to try to catch the little flask.

De Vega did not move, but watched McCurdy keenly, as if curious what the man would do.  Sawney scratched his disorderly thatch of hair.

It was not a difficult decision which to drop in order to catch the elixir for Liza. The pistol was probably the most useless piece of equipment to use against this lot of lunatics. Besides, he had another if he needed it. McCurdy's hand relaxed and he let it fall to the ground as he adjusted to catch the skull. The detective caught it and looked at Ringrose squarely. His left hand held on to the waterskin as if it was a weapon.

"If it doesn't work. She won't be the only one that doesn't leave this place," he said, matter-of-fact. He had made up his mind what he was going to do, demons be damned.

Brother Clary swallowed (for the moment) the righteous indignation bubbling up within him like so much bile.  Blasphemy! he thought to himself.  He began looking all the more earnestly for any sign of the cross and his Bible.  As he looked, he took a curious glance at the odd-shaped shadows on the ground, changing as if through a monochrome kaleidescope.

Marianne smiled slightly at the challenge in McCurdy's voice as he spoke to Basil. How she had wanted to give that murdering bastard a piece of her mind when she had seen him standing so coolly on the other side of the fountain. But survival took precedence at the moment.

She approached the old man and spoke in low, urgent tones. "Mister- Sawney or De Leon, whichever name you go by - please help us, or we will be dead in a few minutes. The cross is our only hope. Do you know where Basil has hidden it?"

Brother Clary watched the shadows shift and change.  They
became one thing, then another - some hideous, some normal as
any shadow he'd ever seen.  Then he noticed something else; the
faint shadow of plump little Gula, dancing around the fountain
and waving at him, as much so as the gemlike dragonflies that
flittered around the area, as if it was some sort of game.
Perhaps, to her, it was.  He wanted the cross, and his bible;
it was clear that Basil didn't have the bible, for it would be
noticeable...which meant he must have left it somewhere.
Someone like Basil would be careful about such things, to be
sure....shy of searching Basil where he stood, there was no way
to be sure of where the Lupino cross might be.  But Basil
Ringrose was a person that liked to trick other people....and
Hornsby had implied there were rules that the pirate had to
follow...but not the three adventurers.

Marion edged up to the strange old man, who flashed her a
tentative smile.  "The mapmaker ?" he responded, in a soft
reedy voice, flicking his wandering eyes over at Basil, who was
still speaking to McCurdy.  "The mapmaker is a clever one,
Miss...I don't know where he would put it.  But I do know his
tree - it is the one by the Lady's left boot."

Jack McCurdy had never seen so cool a customer as Basil
Ringrose, who only smiled faintly at the threat.  McCurdy's
firearm lay on the ground, having clattered onto the stone with
a resounding echo.  "As you wish," he replied mildly.  The
little skull vial was in McCurdy's hand, and the other flask he
held contained the tears of Gula.  "But I should choose to
drink, if you wish to trifle with me, my lad.  You'll need all
the help you can get."
(GM: Is McCurdy going to drink, or not ?  Please decide with
your next post.)

From back on the path, there was a sound, someone struggling to
run with a very bad limp.  It seemed to be a man, dressed in
bloody rags, clutching a pistol, and he seemed to be hell-bent
on getting to the fountain.  He was too far away for his features to be clear.

The soft-spoken old man didn't seem mad in the least, nor was he even remotely like the Sawney and Ponce De Leon she had learned about in history. And he had left her with a riddle to solve, at the worst time. The lady's left boot? Was he referring to a statue of Gula? To the fountain? To the Baroness or Dr. Corazon?

"Would you point it out to me?" she asked, looking around her urgently for a tree that fit the description. "I don't know to which tree or lady you are referring."

If they could find the tree, they might have a chance of finding the cross and getting out of here alive. Would McCurdy drink? She desperately tried to catch McCurdy's and Brother Clary's gaze to indicate she had learned something that might be useful.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:13, Thu 27 July 2006.

McCurdy could not completely dismiss Ringrose. The man was a cool one alright, cool enough to frost the air around the detective. His thumb caressed the skull on the vial like the hammer of a pistol as he considered the man's words. To drink or not? Yeah, he was going to drink. He had decided a little while back that he would if ever given the chance. Not for the fleeting chance at glory or long life, but for people like Liza and Marianne and the Padre. Simple, Just people that were up against something far bigger than all of them. And he would drink so they wouldn't have to. Besides, there was a little voice inside his head yammering something about how he probably wouldn't be allowed to kill Ringrose once he did, so they would have to be the ones to do it while he kept him occupied.

But right then he was more worried about Liza and seeing that she was well before he was going to take a drink from this so-called fountain of youth. If something bad was about to happen to him, he wanted to know she was well before he committed himself.

McCurdy tilted his hat back on his head as he looked at Ringrose and smirked like he had just tasted something curiously sweet. "You'll get your chance. Hold onto your britches." He hefted the skull vial as if showing it to someone that had never seen it before. "I'm just gonna make sure this works before I do." He tucked the water flask in his belt and picked up his gun. Then a thought occurred to him and he looked at Basil again. "I think we both know what will happen to both of us if she don't get better..."

He winked at Ringrose and turned for Liza to give her the vial.

"There's only one lady wearing boots," Sawney replied softly to Marianne.  Dr. Corazon had already departed in search of her father, and Liza was wearing sandals, which left the haughty lady who had made certain she got a drink of the fountain.

Liza Waters had to be forced to drink, and McCurdy wasn't sure if the vial's contents were of any use.  She just sat there, staring off into space.  Then she coughed, her vapidly staring eyes shutting in a big wince.  "Oh that was nasty !"  she protested, sounding much more like the spunky little old lady they had known before.  That left McCurdy with the flask of water from the Fountain of Youth.  Every pair of eyes watched as he raised it to his lips.  It was warm as blood, but settled in his belly like the coolest of iced drinks; it was the freshest, purest water he had ever tasted, and then had a salt aftertaste that made it bittersweet.

The person who'd been approaching was now visible.  Bleeding, ragged and limping badly, it was the German pilot, Hans Gruber.  He was clutching a broomhandle Mauser and gasping for breath as he hurried toward the group of people at the fountain.  It was clear he had run afoul of something feisty in the jungle.  Sawney politely stepped aside to let him pass by; he nearly collapsed at the edge of the fountain, then looked around at the rest of the people there.  "Wos is matter with this water ?"  he asked, with sudden suspicion.
The woman who called herself a Countess...or whatever, according to Liza's memory, fired off a rapid comment in German to him.

"It's got a bit of a bite to it," McCurdy said casually as he put the stopper back in the flask and helped Liza to her feet. He didn't feel any different, then again he didn't figure he would either. Not right off. It felt good to wet his whistle anyway. It had been hot getting through the jungle.

"Glad to see yur alright, cousin." He smiled at Liza as if meeting an old friend he hadn't seen in a long while. He turned his attention to Horsnby then. "What about him?" he said, indicating Hawksmoore with a wave of the canteen in his direction. "What needs doin' to help him?"

The lanky Texas preacher wracked his simple brain for an answer to the challeneg he faced.  Soon, and very soon at that, he knew that whatever demons were present at this godless place would soon be unleashed, and that he new it would be up to him to stop them, somehow.  But how?

Then, he heard the still, small voice that had aided him so very often in the past:



Assured of the rightness of his cause, he moved forward, to face Ringrose eye-to-eye.  Holding his shotgun in a 'ready' position, he studied his adversary's face for a long while.  "Well," he began to drawl.  "Alls I want to know is 'why?'  Why'd ya try to stop us, when you knew we could git here anyways?  Why did poor Billie have to die?  Why'd ya take the Cross if'n ya had no plans t'use it?  And why aren't ya tryin' to stop us now?"

And just like that, McCurdy was one of them. Marianne glared at him as he took a swig from the canteen, but she supposed she couldn't blame him for being tempted. Eternal life, near invincibility... it was heady stuff. And now it was down to her and the preacher to find the cross and get out of here.

As the preacher pointed his shotgun at Basil, Marianne took advantage of the distraction to move toward the tree Sawney had indicated, machete by her side. Was this really Basil's tree as Sawney had said? Could she really cut it down and watch Basil die in front of her eyes? Would his death lead them to the cross or would it destroy their chance of ever finding it?

There were too many questions, and not enough time, never enough time. If Basil made one wrong move... she would have to cut it down. But she held her peace for the moment, waiting to hear Basil's answers to the preacher's questions. She had some of her own she would have liked to ask him, but she thought it best to keep his attention off her for the moment. As the preacher had said, Why?

Basil Ringrose had not survived for so long by chance.  He smiled a perfect, crisp smile in response to Brother Clary's query.  "Did you think that Gula is the only power at play ?" he asked in a perfectly calm and reasonable tone. "Only Hornsby and his cabin-boy seek to bring any of your ilk along to this place.  Ask them why."

Hornsby glanced down at Hawksmoore, who hadn't seemed to move at all, then looked away.  "Bide your time, Yank - you've plenty of it now.  All you need to do is to drain a drop of your blood onto the ground now, and the tree of your life will grow.  You will never age, and you cannot die, but every 40 years you must return here.  All the rest of it - I'll have to teach you later on.  "  There was some reason why Hornsby was not calling attention to Hawksmoore.

The German pilot, Hans Gruber, was asking a polite and cautious question of the Countess; Liza was frowning at some dirt on her dress, and sidling towards the fountain as if to wash with it.  "He hid it," she said, speaking to Brother Clary.  "He wouldn't have destroyed it, but he certainly would have hidden it.  If it is the only thing you can use as a weapon, when one of them turns into a demon, he wouldn't have wanted to be destroyed by it.  Or maybe he has plans for the demon.  Maybe endless life just isn't enough for him.  I know how he can be put to an inconvenience, though.  It's close, too, I'll wager - close indeed, and probably in the possession of someone else, because Basil likes to use people for his own ends."

With that, she scooped up a handful of the water, from the fountain, and immediately drank it.  "And you might well guess who's side I'm on, Basil," she said, eyes narrowing as she glared at him.  "At least now I'll be able to see my husband every 40 years, after you took him from me."  She pulled a pin from her hair, driving it into her palm, and let her blood drip onto the ground.  Immediately dusty green curls of a small shrub began to coil upwards, toward the changing light.  "If I should become what Basil wants so much - Marianne, I trust you will be quick to cut down this tree."

McCurdy turned away from Hornsby after hearing Liza's declaration and witnessing her revelation. He had clearly not expected such from her and it showed upon his face. He held out the water bottle to Hornsby and let go of it whether he took it or not. He tipped his hat back on his head and grinned. He had no idea why he was grinning.

He walked over to her side however, and just looked at her. He was still grinning. "Well, ain't you somethin'?" he said and looked at the stick pin in her hand. He seemed to have forgotten all about Ringrose and the others. "I reckon I need to do the same, don't I?"

He held out his hand as if expecting her to prick him. "I shouldn't be surprised, should I?"

Liza dropped the pin into his hand, with a nod, her jaw set and a steely smile on her face.  "I have gone round the world a few times, young man," she said, "But I have never seen enough of it.  I should say that the calibre of this company has improved, with our admittance."

Basil Ringrose then stepped towards the fountain, filling his canteen and drinking from it.  He then stepped towards the Countess, who moved aside for him, so that he could take a small penknife from his pocket, cut one finger, and feed the dusty-looking shrub there.

Hans Gruber looked at the fountain, and at the gathered company, weighing his options.  Then he shook his head, and limped away from the fountain.

McCurdy smiled at her and closed his hand around the pin, pricking his palm in the process. He removed the pin and then sqeezed his fist until he felt the blood running. "I reckon I'd be proud to have my tree settin' next to yours, cousin. If you don't mind, o'course."

He held his fist over the ground next to the flower she made and squeezed his blood free. He watched it hit the ground, wondering about the shadows he'd seen jumping from person to person. His eyes involuntarily drifted to the faint silhouette stretching from his feet.

Then he turned to look at everyone else. "So what are you all waiting for? Let's get this cocktail party rollin'."

Marianne was done with all of it. Things weren't getting any clearer, and all they were doing was wasting time going round in circles. "It's not going to be you," she told Basil with a sad smile, "But if you don't tell us where the cross is right now, you may never find out," she said. Her machete was poised to cut down Basil's tree. She was counting on McCurdy and the preacher to run interference if need be. She would give the murdering bastard exactly one second to start talking or she would start chopping.

McCurdy heard Marianne's ultimatum and sidled over in their direction. He pulled one of his gats free and held it against his chest, turning his aiming shoulder toward Basil. McCurdy didn't figure he could kill him, but he sure could knock him down. All Ringrose had to do was make a sudden rush for Marianne...