“Is everyone ready?” Scarlett asked, her gaze moving over the others beside her, stopping on Allyssa. The girl blinked, looking up from the book she had been reading, her eyes then darting between Scarlett and the entrance that had opened up in the wall.

“Oh, eh, kinda?” she said.

“Find anything interesting in there?” Rosa asked, pointing at the book.

Allyssa looked down at it, running a finger over its half-yellowed pages. For some reason, it didn’t seem to be in as good condition as the other books here. “I’m still reading through it. It seems to be a journal mostly containing this Lord Abelard guy’s daily musings. Some of his thoughts, though, they’re a bit…strange.”

"Strange as in scaring-servants-by-walking-around-in-undies-strange, or as in lives-in-a-mansion-filled-with-homicidal-dolls-strange?”

“Both?” Allyssa sounded uncertain. “I don’t quite understand all of it yet. I’m hoping it’ll start making sense soon.”

Rosa turned to Scarlett. “You know something about that?”

“Not much more than Miss Astrey will learn from that journal, I would venture,” Scarlett answered. “However, Abelard was a deranged man. That much I can tell you.”

“Really?” The bard held up a hand to her mouth. “Who would have thought?”

Scarlett eyed the woman for a moment before turning back to the others. “If that is all, then I propose we continue.”

“Is it fine if we bring some of the books here?” Shin asked, gesturing to the bookshelves around them. “There’s no telling what could be in them.”

She considered it for a couple of seconds. Books could be worth a pretty penny. And all these were at minimum 150 years old. That either meant they were totally worthless, or worth more than your average book, so it might indeed be worth gathering some of them up.

“Very well,” she said. “Bring as many as you wish.”

Shin began moving around the study, picking out books with Fynn’s help and putting them into the [Bag of Juham]. Leon was observing this with an odd expression, but Scarlett didn’t pay him too much mind. Instead, she walked along the bookshelves to see if there weren’t any titles that might interest her, placing a few inside her [Pouch of Holding] for later perusal.

Eventually, they all prepared to enter the secret entrance. Scarlett started walking down the dark stone stairway, conjuring a small fireball above her head to light the way. It was longer than one might expect, so it took her at least a minute or two, but finally, she reached the bottom. There, a worn wooden door blocked her path.

Leon, who’d been moving just behind her, reached out an arm past her. “It’s best if I go first,” he said, grabbing hold of the door handle.

She glanced back at him. “…Feel free.”

She stepped closer to the wall, allowing him to pass. The man gripped the hilt of his sword with one hand and pushed the door open with the other. Scarlett waited a few seconds before following.

Waiting on the other side was a wide stone chamber, though it was so dark that one could barely make out most of it. She gestured for Fynn and Shin to bring out a pair of lamps, then conjured another set of fireballs that she dispersed around the chamber. Their light revealed a low, vaulted ceiling, with various chests, shelves, and tables with different tools spread around the place. Lining the walls were several variants of the dolls they’d seen throughout the mansion, hanging off of wooden racks of sorts. Most looked to be unfinished in some way, missing arms, legs, or other parts, with their metal frame skeleton visible beneath.

While the half-finished dolls certainly gave the place an eerie feeling, it wasn’t quite as horrible a sight one might have feared from what was ostensibly a madman’s hidden laboratory.

Leon was eyeing the dolls closely, clearly expecting them to start moving any second now. Scarlett didn’t bother telling him that they weren’t even alive. She doubted he would let his guard down, anyway.

As the others entered behind them, Allyssa looked around the chamber. “Actually.” She spoke in a quiet voice. “We won’t run into the ghost of Lord Abelard down here or something, will we?”

“I do not think that is especially likely, no,” Scarlett answered. “There is a much higher likelihood that he is in the mansion’s conservatory, from what I have gathered.”

The girl paused, head turning to look at her. “Wait, so he is actually still around?”

Scarlett met her eyes. “Why would he not be? Have we not already encountered the ghosts of this mansion’s other residents?”

Allyssa frowned. “Yes, well, but… I don’t know. I just thought he’d be long dead.”

“Technically, he is,” Shin said. “He’s a ghost.”

She shot him a look. “You know what I meant.”

“Yes. That’s why I corrected you.”

The girl shook her head, looking back at Scarlett. “Are we looking for anything special here?” she asked.

“I am, yes. You may once more do whatsoever you wish, for the time being.”

“Oh… Okay.” Allyssa returned her attention to the journal she had carried down with her.

Scarlett turned to take in the rest of the chamber. Leon had made his way to the center, having already checked those of the dolls that were closest. Near her, Rosa walked past a doll whose face was half marble—without any other features yet—while the other half had been replaced by what looked like some sort of leathery skin that might have once belonged to an animal.

“Okay, that’s a little disturbing,” the woman said, though that didn’t stop her from poking the face.

Scarlett looked away at the sight. “In that, we are in agreement.”

Rosa turned back to her. “So, you’re looking for something down here, am I right? When you find whatever that is, what then? What are we doing after that?”

Scarlett pointed to a pair of doors at the other end of the chamber. “There should be paths connecting from here to other parts of the mansion. We will have to locate the correct one, but from there we can proceed on to wherever we may wish to go. But as you said, before that…”

She stopped next to a nearby shelf, looking over some of the old papers and books on it. The items down here seemed to have aged much worse than in the rest of the mansion, but she still found a couple of documents where the words and illustrations were somewhat legible. She read through them for a moment, then walked back over to where Allyssa was, leaning against a wall next to the entrance.

The girl looked up from the journal in her hands as Scarlett held the papers out to her.

“What are these?” she asked.

“Alchemical notes and recipes, it would appear.”

Allyssa’s eyes widened. She reached out with her hand but paused, shooting a hesitant look around the chamber and down at the journal in her other hand. “Actually… I’m not sure I want them.”

Scarlett studied her for a few seconds. Then she put the papers into the pouch on her own waist instead. “I will hold on to them for you to look at later, if you are to change your mind. The origin of the knowledge does not diminish the value it holds or the good it might do, if that is what worries you."

Allyssa blinked at her words, but soon gave a quick nod as Scarlett left her and walked over to the other end of the chamber. By now, Shin and Fynn had placed out a couple of lamps to light the place up, so she dispelled her own fires to save mana.

Passing by Leon where he stood near the center of the chamber, she gestured for him to follow. “Sir Leon. Would you lend me a hand?”

He gave her a wary look. “…Sure.”

The two of them walked over to a corner at the far end of the chamber where a set of worktables was spread out in a square. The man’s eyes turned to the three almost-completed doll frames that hung from racks at the middle of the tables.

Scarlett’s own attention passed over the instruments that were strewn across the worktables. She had no idea what most of them were. There was a mix between glass receptacles of some kind—with odd gauges and tubes attached to the sides—and different tools, like chisels and files. Some of the tools looked a lot sharper than one would expect, with carved lines running along their blades and handles.

She moved to one table in particular. It was circular and smaller than the others, placed at the edge of the space like it held a different purpose. The other tables were also made out of wood, while this one was made of a deep black stone with grooves etched into its face in strange shapes. At its top was a human skull with a strange, violet gem set into its forehead. The gem had more facets cut into it than Scarlett could count, and it looked slightly different from each angle she viewed it from.

She turned back to Leon. “Help me remove this gem.”

The man’s eyes narrowed as he saw the skull, though that didn’t stop him from stepping over and reaching out to pick it up. The skull was affixed to the table, however. It took a moment for Leon to tear it off, the sound of the skull cracking in two echoing out across the room.

An awkward expression appeared on his face as he glanced at Scarlett, but she simply waved for him to continue.

With the upper section of the skull in his hand, he then tried pulling the gem out, but that seemed to be even trickier. After a few attempts, he pulled out a small dagger from somewhere on his body—she wasn’t sure where—and used the blade’s tip to carefully pry the gem off.

She held out a palm with a small smile as he finally placed the gem in her hand. That looked like it might have taken a little bit of strength, yes, but she mostly just hadn’t wanted to touch a dirty old skull herself.

“Do you actually know what that is?” Leon asked her.

She held the gem up in front of her.

[Gem of Athanasia (Unique)]{The impermanence of death lies in the connections that bind us, embodied in this gem}

“I do, yes.”

“…And?”

She looked at him. “You would not have an interest in genealogy?”

“In what?”

“I suppose not. Or perhaps you would consider it part of heraldry. To put it in a way that you might understand, this is an artifact that remembers that which runs within our blood.”

The connections the description was speaking of were probably a reference to the blood relations between people. Perhaps there was more to it as well, but what she knew from the game was that this gem theoretically held the power to ‘remember’ the identities of those connected to a person by blood.

Although ‘remember’ probably wasn’t the best word to describe it, considering the item somehow knew about people that both it and the person themself might never have met. It also wouldn’t work unless you also had the [Memory of the Covenant], which she had sent Gaven to collect.

Abelard had clearly been able to make use of the gem for his own purposes without it, though, but she didn’t know exactly how. She wasn’t an archmage, after all. It didn’t matter to her, either. As long as it worked as it should later when she tried it, she’d be content.

“That explanation doesn’t make things much clearer,” Leon said.

Scarlett placed the gem into her pouch. “That is regrettable. Unfortunately, it is the extent to which my understanding of the artifact goes.”

She wasn’t lying. She didn’t know how the [Gem of Athanasia] could know who your relatives were just from looking at your blood. To be honest, she thought the whole concept was complete bull. But that was just magic in general, wasn’t it? She wouldn’t complain more than necessary. If it worked, it worked.

Leon stared at her for several seconds. “Is it dangerous?”

“Only about as dangerous as that sword you are holding.” She pointed down at the blade in question. “Any further questions?”

He met her eyes for a moment, then shook his head.

“Good.” She turned away and walked over to the other tables. Finding the [Gem of Athanasia] was her main objective here, so she would have been satisfied with this much, but there were a lot of old potions and magical instruments that did god-knows-what here. It would be a waste not to bring those along as well. Who knows what all of this might be worth? And sure, this wasn’t a game, so drinking a 150-year-old potion might not be the brightest of ideas, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were worthless.

Calling Fynn over, they spent a while just moving around the lab, pocketing anything that wasn’t broken or too large to fit in the [Bag of Juham]. She didn’t know what the storage limit of the spatial bag actually was, but until they reached it, she wouldn’t hesitate to throw more stuff in. They could always toss out the least valuable items later on if it was filled. That was the classic way of inventory management, passed down through generations of games.

As they were finishing things up, Allyssa walked up to the rest of them with a somber expression on her face. It seemed she had finished reading through that journal.

Scarlett put away another alchemical document that she’d been looking over as she watched the girl pause and move over to one of the doll frames.

For a moment, Allyssa just stood there, seemingly looking into the unfinished doll’s empty eyes. “Rosa,” she said out loud. “Before, you said that even monsters deserved pity. You also said that the dolls looked…bored, or something, right? How could you tell that?”

The bard, who wasn’t standing too far away, turned to look at her. “…I just knew.”

The young Shielder reached out to touch the doll. “…I found out how he created these. Abelard, I mean. He described it towards the end of the journal.”

Shin and the others also stopped in what they were doing, looking over at Allyssa.

“Apparently, they’re made from the souls of captured fey. Like those fairies we met outside of Temisbrook.” Allyssa stayed quiet for a moment. “He captured them, killed them, and then somehow brought them back again. But when he brought them back, he warped their souls so that he could place them into these dolls, forcing a single purpose on to them that ruled their being. It would be like an obsession to them. Their entire existence revolved around it.” The girl’s voice held a bleak tone now. “How sad is that? To have a purpose imposed on you. And there’s nothing you can do about it. They weren’t even released when he died. Instead, they must have been forced to just sit still for over a century, not even able to fulfill the only desire that they now had.”

She looked at Rosa. “How could you tell something like that from just seeing them one time?”

The bard met the girl’s eyes, then shrugged. “I didn’t. I only knew what I knew.”

Allyssa turned back to the doll. “…Despite what he did to them, Abelard wasn’t satisfied with what he had created. He wanted more. Something perfect. That’s when he found his ‘muse’.” There was a distaste for the word hidden in the girl’s voice. “I’m not sure what happened, but his writings from this point on turned even…freakier, than before. He already seemed to have this weird fixation on creating some new living thing, but after this, it almost seemed like he became as obsessed with this as the dolls he’d created were with their own purposes.”

She paused for a moment, looking back down at the journal in her hand and opening one of its pages. “‘Hair like the fabled golden shores of Zovivios. Eyes like the jewels of the sea. Perfection in the shape of living flesh.’”

A grimace appeared on her face at the description.

“‘A character that charms all those around. The entire staff is already enamored with her. Only an act of divine will could have brought her to me. The sheer serendipity behind these facts proves as much.’ That’s how he described the girl from that painting earlier. It was like she was a doll, created only for him.”

Scarlett studied Allyssa for a few seconds.

All of that was a bit more than she knew herself. She was aware the dolls were fey in origin since they shared some resistances, but the details hadn’t been described in the game, to her knowledge. This ‘muse’—the Orelia girl Allyssa had described—was also a bit of an unknown. It was possible she had been present in the game. It almost seemed likely. But she hadn’t been a major presence, if so.

Allyssa turned to Scarlett. “You said the ghost of Lord Abelard might be in the conservatory?”

“That is correct.”

A serious expression had appeared on the Shielder’s face. “Then I think I know what it is that I’m supposed to do now.”