"Q, everyone," Ozzy speaks up. "What do you lot know about illusion magic? Could they be puttin' this drought show on fer us? 'Cos otherwise, it looks like nobody's home. Reckon we should go in and make sure they don't need any help." Ozzy grins at the thought of kicking in another door.
"The drought's all kinds of wrong...but I don't think it's an illusion," Red says slowly. "The lack of sound could be, though. I could try looking into it."
Red focuses and puts a invitation out there for Lady Luck to send a few hints of sound his way, some hint or gossip of what's going on inside the house - but all he gets is a sudden gust of wind blowing straight into his right ear - and carrying a mosquito with it.
"Shit," Red hisses, and he crushes the mosquito in his ear with his finger. "I got nothing." His face is a rictus of disgust, and his finger comes out with blood and wax on it.
"Not to draw hasty inferences from incomplete data," Martin says, "but I'm fairly sure there's nothing to get - the place is probably exactly as deserted as it looks. Q, Lucius, how about the three of us scout ahead the old-fashioned way?"
"Well, at least it's dry hereabouts. Makes for a better spot o' sittin' than what I was expectin'," Ozzy agrees, sitting down on the nearest stump, rock, or other dryish, flattish bit of land.
"No kidding," Anton says. "Not a bad break from knee-deep in muck with stuff trying to crew me up and spit me out. So far, anyway." He find his own sitting place. "Be sure to give us a call if you run into anything," he says. "Hate to miss out on more of that....fun."
Q nods and draws his sword, its fastidiously polished surface gleaming like in the noonday sun even in the dim light of the swamp. “I’ll check the upper floor windows and join you at the back.”
Lucius pulls his own knives - each a shade longer than Q’s whole sword. “If you think you can keep your little paws from tripping over every loose floorboard,” the assassin cracks from under his hood.
----
As Q flits up towards the second story of the plantation house, Lucius and Martin each take a surprisingly similar approach towards the large white-washed building - crouched down low in the overgrown and browning lawn. Lucius is bent over, moving in bursts as the breeze blows the grass towards the house, letting the motion of the wind through the lawn conceal his motion, while Martin is down on all fours, creeping with his muzzle pressed low to the ground and body held flat, with his whiskers twitching as he stalks through the grass and only the occasional flicking of his tail visible above the grass at all. Surprisingly, it’s Martin that appears at the side of the house first, and he watches with some amusement as Lucius tucks and sprints the last ten feet to the house.
Still, there is a creepy as hell house to check out. Q flutters down from above and silently shakes his head - nothing visible upstairs, at least nothing moving. The threesome bound up the steps and to the front door. A mental round of rock-paper-scissors ensues to see who’d be the unlucky chump to actually open the door - Lucius loses, and reaches slowly for the door. It’s impossible to see his face under his hood, but it’s not hard to imagine a grimace of concentration underneath its shadow on his face. A quick jiggle of the handle reveals that the door is, in fact, unlocked. Rather than dragging it out, once his hand makes contact with the handle, he quickly shoves the door open and leaps back - and nothing happens. Lucius and Q both shrug and all three step into the foyer.
The foyer certainly isn’t lacking for proof of recent habitation - an array of boots and umbrellas sit in a drip pan by the door, a decanter of whiskey on a table nearby with its attendant cut crystal glasses, fine carpets on the floor, and wood furniture and paneling glistens slightly in what little light makes it down into the interior. There’s barely a speck of dust to be found anywhere - and yet there are no footprints in the long rug running deeper into the house, no creaking of feet walking about or even lying in wait. Everything is immaculately maintained and of the highest class - just with no one around to keep it that way.
“Been in empty houses before,” Q whispers.
“But this is new,” Lucius finishes.
Martin declines to comment on the weirdness, but sticks his muzzle out and starts to sniff the air - he's no bloodhound, but the first sign of a house that's actually being lived in should be the double smells of food and fire, either of which could lead them to the inhabitants.
Martin's whiskers twitch as he sniffs the air, and as he concentrates in on what his nose can pull in, the scents around him start to peel away in layers. First is his companions: the dust of Lucius' chalk bag, the bitterness and acidity of his poisons, and a bit of funk from the robes he's wearing, and Q, smelling like sweet nectar and flowers - with an edge of cold steel. Then the immediate surroundings: warm and oiled wood, brushed cotton carpeting. A few rooms over, the kitchen - no, wait, the main kitchen. He smells the faint remains of food, but nothing there now but potatoes and root vegetables - not even the smell of rot. Here and there in the house, a fireplace, none used recently, but all kept well-clean - no hint of ash blowing through the house. In fact, it takes a moment for Martin to realize what's missing from the now-three-dimensional picture of smells around him at first - decay of any kind. For a house with no hint of recent habitation, the house smells remarkably clean. But, with one final whiff, Martin pulls in just a hint of rot, coming from...somewhere? It's hard to tell where, it's so faint, and when he turns to follow it, it vanishes.
Martin's adventure starts by tapping close to Lucius and giving him a whiff or two, then stretching up and craning his neck to capture Q's scent, then all but licking the walls and the carpeting, all to learn their scents and exclude them from his scan of the house. With his foodfinder properly calibrated, he gets down on all fours and creeps along the floor, smelling the air that has settled down there for ash - and finding none. Still on all fours, he creeps toward the next door, smells the air blowing underneath it - hmm, food cellar in this direction, but no fruits or meats or herbal smells, just stale root vegetables. He stands back up, catches a whiff of something rotten - and then tiptoes around the room, head switching from side to side as he tries to recapture that smell, even flicking out his tongue trying to fan more air into his pharynx, but all to no avail. With a final sniff and sigh, he turns to his companions.
"It smells wrong," Martin whispers. "People used to live here, but haven't for some time - no new fires, no fresh food stocks. What's left is so stale it should have rotted away a long time ago in this air. Something is rotten, but I can't figure out where. And I don't smell anyone but us in here, either. I think we can call in the others now and search the place properly."
Q isn't particularly weirded out by Martin's display - the same cannot be said for Lucius. Possibly because he's known the monk for longer, possibly for other reasons, his behavior at the moment seems to not be settling too well with the assassin. But once Martin finishes stalking around the room, rubbing his nose against things, he nods to Martin's report, and simply leans out the door and lets out a loud whistle.
At the piercing sound, Anton pulls himself to his feet and stands, waiting for Ozzy to join him before heading to the front door of the house. "You think there's any chance they've found anything that makes this place less creepy?"
"At this point, a basket o' puppies would just make it worse by virtue o' the dichotomy, and make no mistake," Ozzy replies, walking up to the house with Anton.
Lucius walks out of the plantation house and over to Ozzy's side. "Martin's starting to act...more strangely. It's concerning."
"Strange how?" Ozzy replies.
"Less like Martin, more like...well, a rakasta," Lucius says. "He was down on all fours, sniffing the floor a minute ago."
"I reckon if I had a nose what could smell like 'is, I'd be onna ground too and make no mistake. And if I could sneak like you, Lucius, you wouldn't see me kickin' in doors all the time neither. The lad's just usin' the tools he's got. He still seems like Martin to me." Ozzy thinks for a moment more, then adds, "Well mostly like Martin. That transmogrification magic ain't exactly my specialty, especially when it's ingrown to folk like rakastas. But unless he starts drippin' black ichor and goin' fer our throats, screamin' 'bout Asenath, I figure he's all right."
Lucius doesn't say anything as they walk up the steps of the plantation house. He pauses as they stand on the front porch and looks up at Ozzy. "All right, then. But you won't mind if I keep an eye on him anyway." It wasn't phrased like a question - but it didn't need to be, either.
Ozzy grunts and heads inside for a "proper search", which to anyone still outside sounds like a chain gang with crowbars.
Anton's less convinced by Ozzy's statement. Sure, what Martin's doing might be normal for a rakasta, but that doesn't mean it's normal for Martin. It raises the unsettling question of what the monk is now. Philosophical questions of identity aren't something he's really equipped to handle, or even phrase, and it seemed like rakasta were..all right, anyway, so he just throws a wary look at Lucius as they enter. "Did he seem...normally strange, or strange like he needed something done about him?"
"Not sure if 'normally strange' is something one can be, but he still seemed like Martin, if that's what you mean," Lucius replies. "Just a lot less human."
Admiral Duck Sauce
