London 1802: First Shadows

The moments immediately following Robert's disappearance were filled with chaos. Kathrine screamed and Gerald reached into his bag for a pistol. As he did so, a gunshot rang out from the room, accompanied by the expected flash of light. Gerald leapt into the doorway and immediately that end of the room erupted into flames. This was followed by a loud cracking/splitting sound which echoed down the alleyway in the direction from which they'd come, which was followed by a steady, loud pounding/crumbling sound which shook the ground as it got closer. The rain and wind picked up and began blowing with increasing force down the alleyway toward them.

Disregarding the flames, Gerald jumped into the room, burning himself and igniting his coat in the process. On the other side of the fire, which was burning the vegetation which had somehow been growing around the room, he saw Robert collapsed on the far side of the room. Kneeling over him was a young girl, perhaps in her mid teens, who looked up at Gerald's entrance with an expression of pure contempt. She was very pale and dressed in grayish men's clothing which was noticeably too large for her slight frame. The only obvious sign of color on her came from a deep red flower which had been placed in her hair above her right ear.

There was a third figure in the room as well - a darkly dressed man who immediately leapt onto the rickety wooden stairway and scrambled up to the floor above, breaking a couple of the rotted wooden steps in the process. Noticing he was on fire, Gerald dropped to the ground to try to extinguish himself and managed to do so - and then immediately approached Robert.

Robert seemed to be severely dazed and showed signs of a mild concussion, but he was regaining a sense of his surroundings and trying to get to his feet. Gerald stood up and addressed the girl, asking her what had happened. The girl began replying to him, but no sound came from her lips as she spoke. It was then that Gerald noticed something painted on the floor in the center of the room - a circular symbol composed of a curved-bladed sword through a ring with a stylized splatter pattern, probably meant to be blood. Gerald was sure he'd seen this symbol somewhere before, but couldn't quite place it.

The pounding was continuing outside - and getting louder. Kathrine and Molly had scrambled to the top of the 8ft wall at the end of the alleyway and called in to Gerald, asking if they were alright and telling them that something big was approaching the end of the alleyway.

Robert had managed to find his feet by this time, and looked up to see Gerald in the center of the room, but the girl with the flower was mysteriously gone. He looked up to the broken staircase at the darkness of the landing above. Gerald called back to Molly that Robert was ok and that they were going to try to get upstairs.

Just as Molly and Kathrine were hearing these words, a large, looming being emerged from the darkness. A bipedal tree, perhaps 15 feet tall, was lumbering down the alleyway - bringing with it a whipping wind and driving rain. It had no further discernible features but for a gaping hole in its trunk near the top which resembled nothing so much as a massive, toothed maw.

Kathrine screamed again and, in a panic jumped down from the wall on the other side and began moving quickly down the alley on the other side - only barely restraining herself from a full run so as not to lose Molly in the darkness. Molly climbed down the other side of the wall as quickly as she could and followed Kathrine down the alley. By the time the two reached a point 50 or so feet away where the alley made a right-angle turn to the east, the pounding had stopped, but they were too far away to see if the walking tree was still there.

After finally managing to reach the top of the rotten stairway, Robert and Gerald made their way through what seemed to be an abandoned tenant building of some sort. They found the main entrance, but the wooden stairways that once provided entrance and exit were long gone. The two half jumped, half fell to the stone ground in the alley below and decided to head back to Allens Street.

Meanwhile, Kathrine and Molly were attempting the same thing. Having made it back to the lit street, they had calmed a little. Looking ahead to a point just beyond the entrance to the alley they had originally gone down, they saw a man in a dark coat speaking with a young girl with a red flower in her hair. They were too far away to hear anything that may have been said however, and very shortly afterward, the young girl went skipping down Allens street away from them, and the man crossed the street to an alley on the other side and disappeared from view.

Shortly thereafter, the four met up with each other again and they all decided they wanted nothing more than to be home. The group returned to Molly's bathhouse and arranged for a carriage to return Kathrine to her aunt's residence. The next day they met again - which seemed to be becoming a habit - and began to discuss aspects of the previous night's adventure.

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