A few days passed, and the group members focused on some personal pursuits.

Kathrine, Gerald and Molly discussed what recently transpired and what they might do about it. Gerald and Kathrine had spent some considerable time in the library. There, Gerald was reminded of where he'd seen the word "Excalibur" before - it was a the name of a sword belonging to a legendary English king called Arthur.

It was the following monday when George finally met up with them again. He'd been busy at the docks for quite some time, but work was drying up. He told the others that a lot of ships had been coming into port lately, but that almost none were leaving. The dispositions of a lot of the sailors and captains were inexplicably edgy and defiant. Many of the ships in the London and India docks were marked as being "in violation" by the harbor masters, but the captains still refuse to sail out - to that point that there are a large number of boats anchored in the Pool. George had also seen more than the usual number of fist fights, and they tend to get brutally violent much more quickly. There have been a number of gruesome murders on the Isle of Dogs, and the docks district as a whole has a desperate and dangerous feel to it. The others exchanged looks and some short comments and then decided to tell George about what had occurred the previous week.

George, predictably, didn't really believe them. He seemed to assume that they were either telling him a good story, trying to pull some sort of prank, or they were losing their grip on their sanity. They showed him the statues they had covered in a locked room, but he wasn't impressed by much more than their artistry.

The others weren't entirely surprised by the difficulty in convincing him, but it was still a bit frustrating. They asked George if he knew any of the locations of the strange murders and he told them he did know where one of them happened. Sure of what they'd witnessed so far and confident that these strange new events at the docks must be somehow related, they decided they would go take a look around the scene. Tonight. And George was coming with them.

The Isle of Dogs is a peninsula in the far east of London made into an "island" by the canals that run into the India docks near where its base. Being on the far east side of the city, it is also about the seediest area in London. It is all but a shanty-town, composed of one and two-story, wooden buildings - run down inns, taverns and apartments - crowded along narrow, winding streets - and the further inland one gets, the worse it is. As George guided them through the docks district, they noticed a lot of people in the area, mostly sailors, and the social atmosphere was very tense.

They arrived at the narrow alleyway where George had heard one of the murders had occurred. About halfway down the alley, there was a step up to a broken door. On the wall next to it, there seemed to be some scrapes through something that might have once been a drawing or writing of some kind. On the ground next to the steps, a splotchy, dark discoloration that was probably a large quantity of blood.

The group was still looking around the area when Kathrine felt a strange chill descend upon the area. Kathrine defocused her eyes. She'd found that, with some concentration, she was able to see things that were there, but intangible - spirits and ghosts. When she did this, she saw a very tall, translucent man standing over Gerald's shoulder.

When she spoke to him, he seemed startled. Her friends who were examining the scene also seemed somewhat taken aback, as she was staring into space, talking to herself. Kathrine asked the man, who was called Elston, about what was going on here. He told her that a few days ago, he'd seen two men murdered here, and the strangeness of their deaths kept him here. They had come down this alleyway and banged on the door. It was answered by a woman. They exchanged some heated words, and then the woman did something which caused two monstrous dog-like creatures to appear which proceeded to tear the two men apart and then disappear. The woman smirked and closed the door. Kathrine also asked him about the mark on the wall. He told her he remembered seeing it. He traced the outline of a symbol on the wall where Gerald and George were looking, but he told her there was more to it than that.

Kathrine's conversation with an imperceptible entity was beginning unnerve her companions before she "snapped out of it". When her senses returned to the material realm, she found them all staring at her. Gerald said "When we get back, we need to talk."