The Haunt of Danzig Ruin

Lost Boys

Nora lit a nearby lantern and did her very best not to panic. But how could she not?? It was just her left all alone by a fire that was soon to be extinguished.  At first she believed Fitz to still be upon her pallet, until Nora took a closer look and uncovered a knapsack instead.
No. Keep your wits. They could not have gone far. Petrich is bound to be somewhere near. He would not just leave you. . .right?? 
             Nora shouted out their names one by one, but the heavy rain was drowning her voice. She then concentrated to reach out to Petrich with her mind and found nothing. That meant only one of two things. He was either unconscious. . . or dead.  If they were at the point of being fully bound, Nora would immediately know. But at this point she could not, and she wanted to scold herself because of it for no good reason at all.
            Whatever the case, either alive or dead, she must find him.  So, she took up her lantern and packed her small messenger bag of odds and ends from her knapsack including extra candles and matches.
             Although Nora knew she was not as gifted in trailblazing as Leon Stephanotis, she found she had a fairly good mind for directions and map reading.  Just as the others, she had spent much of her time studying each layout available of Danzig Castle, from its fortress beginnings to its ruinous end.
Nora made for the northernmost upper rooms. It was a good area to begin her search, for it was the most intact. It also orientated her for the less structurally sound library/archives where the celestial document most likely would be located.
All along the way she called out to Petrich, Fitz and Leon. Still no answer but the heavy rain. She again reached out mentally to Petrich, or to whomever would listen to her pleas, but to no avail.
Upon finding the upper rooms that was said to have belonged to Crinoline Danzig, Nora found a door standing half open. Her heart leaped in relief, for surely she was close to finding somebody. But when she came around the door, expecting an entry, Nora stopped short at a solid brick wall.
She could do nothing but stare at it dumbly. Surely there had been some mistake and in an act of renovation, the doorway must have been a part of what had become a solid wall to the other side. Either that, or instead hanging Crinoline Danzig, they had walled her inside, slowly starving to her death.
The mere thought of being practically buried alive chilled Nora to the very core of her being. Nothing frightened her more than to be imprisoned, then left to be forgotten.
The bricks and mortar were shoddy, at best, and upon closer inspection, none too stable. Bits of the mortar looked to have crumbled away, enough for Nora to wonder if she could just reach out and. . .
             Her hand rested against the middle of the wall of brick and with only a single shove, several bricks fell inward. Nora jumped back at the sound and the black gaping hole she had created, large enough for her arm but not much else.
           After a moment, she worked up the courage to shove at the other bricks. Some held fast, but others fell away relatively easily, and soon there was a hole that was big enough for her to actually crawl through to the other side.
         But before Nora acted upon crawling into the dark unknown, her lantern light fell upon the pale, angular face of a crouching figure staring out back at her from the other side of the tumbled bricks. Nora let out a sharp gasp and fell back onto her rear end.
From what she could make out, the face had jet black hair sweeping low across its forehead, above haunted eyes encircled in shadows of exhaustion. It had thin lips pressed in a line.
         The lips then parted and asked a question in a hard, unfriendly voice, but in a language Nora could not understand, but the sound reminded her of the heavy Kush accent of Adelaide, the barmaid at the tavern.
Nora could only try to answer in her native Leidenshaftlichen tongue, hoping that this stranger could understand it as well as Adelaide.
She placed a hand on her breast. "I am Ellenora Hodgins. I am here with others on an expedition."
The fine brow of the stranger furrowed and the mouth frowned. With a bit of concentration, it spoke in slow, broken Leidenshaftlichen. "You came with the scribe?"
Nora sighed with relief and nodded eagerly, "Yes, I did. We-"
"No, Shh!" the stranger interrupted, leaning forward and scanning the hall, first right, then left. "Come in! . . Szybko!"He shook his head in frustration, apparently trying to find the word that she could understand. "Quick! Quickly!" He moved away from the entrance, back into the dark.
His tone was of such urgency that Nora got moving without any further questions. Once she was completely inside, the stranger reached out and closed the door, and even quickly replaced the toppled bricks.
Nora turned a small knob at the base of her lamp which intensified the light to bring the whole area into better view. The rooms behind the bricked up door were the most intact of Danzig Castle that Nora had seen thus far. Other than the inevitable damp, it merely looked long abandoned with the cobwebs and many decades of dust on the otherwise sound fixtures.
"Are these. . .Crinoline Danzig's quarters?"
The stranger finished replacing the bricks and stood at full height, which had to have been just over 6 feet, but somehow seemed taller given his long lanky frame. "Yes." he answered simply.
If she had been taken out by a mob and hung in the courtyard, why the bricked up entrance? Nora wondered. Perhaps it was their way of keeping her spirit out? The answers to such questions would have to wait, for more pressing issues were at the forefront.
"Who are you?" Nora asked, but then gasped, for she already knew the answer, ". . . Tim?"
The stranger looked at her a moment and nodded.
Nora covered her mouth and breathed in deeply. "Oh! Your sister, Adelaide, we met her in Kush! She hoped we would be able to find you! She feared you were. . .well. . . not safe."
Tim's already sharp features hardened still. "I KNOW these mountains," he explained in his broken Leidenschaftlichen, with some Kush words thrown in as well. "I came with all I needed, whereas others did not. I came to help the others who have been lost! I search and I search for Davin Rowe! And I shall find him!"
Nora listened, at first a bit frightened of his defensive tone, but then saddened. She knew only too well the fate of Davin Rowe. Nora chose her next words carefully.
"Is Rowe a friend of yours?"
Tim nodded. "From my university. We are. . ." Tim paused and looked down at the ground, "He is my milosc. . . very close to my heart." He then looked up at her. "But even if he was not, I would come to help search and find others who are lost. Kush authority will not search, those," And at this point Tim rambled off some words in Kush that Nora could only guess were quite harsh about the Kush police department.
"Yes, Adelaide informed us that the police were no longer taking to the trail to find the lost. You've been very brave to take it on yourself. But why did they go so unprepared in the first place?"
Tim rolled his eyes. "Why? They are of the cult, of course!" He tapped his temple. "They push the obsession in here to come to Danzig."
"Who pushes? Who are 'they'?"
"Notables. High professors at the university. They push and push. The obsession, it takes hold, like a fever. And then Davin and others go and get lost and. . . But I will search and find him. I will!"
"Yes," Nora answered sadly, "I know you'll do your very best." Her thoughts then turned the first question he had put to her and she started, wondering how in the world she could have gotten so distracted.
              "You asked if I came with 'the scribe'. Where is he? I've been searching myself."
               Tim nodded. "Yes. I saw your party enter from out the rain, far above I saw you."
               "And you knew one of us was a celestial scribe?" Nora asked. Petrich was dressed in traveling clothes as they all were, nothing like the special attire he wore for Grand Showings.
              "Yes, fair hair man. Mustache. Okulary." Tim made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and lifted it to his right eye, to charade spectacles. 
              "Yes, he is, indeed, a celestial scribe," Nora confirmed with a smile.
               Tim shook his head grimly.  "He should not have entered into Danzig."
               "Not enter? Why? Is he in danger, being here?"
               "Those of the cult say scribes are most in danger. To be in the presence of the tapestry is dangerous for many. MOST dangerous for scribes. It knows scribes can bring about its undoing." Tim looked at her gravely. "You mentioned he was lost to you."
              "He is. I've lost all in my party. I awoke alone."
               "Then he must be found." Tim replied urgently. "Find him before he is in the presence of the tapestry!"
                Nora grabbed her lantern as Tim hastened away, apparently taking another route even their maps had not shown.  As she hurriedly followed behind him, Nora asked again, "But how do you know he is a scribe?"
              "Crinoline told me." he answered simply.