T - Vyn, Kari, Bee

[Nathalia]

((Something sounds out behind Zeki...a voice, dark and poignant...whispering his name.
Neither of the others seem able to hear it, though...odd.
It sounds urgent, desperate and it seems like it might be coming from...out in the hallway?
It sounds out incessantly, calling him to it, he can almost feel the pull in his mind in the desperation of the voice...
Is it Vir?

The Queen's chambers seem empty save for the normal decorations...though it seems unusually cold and- Oh, look!
A sweet-looking little highland mixed Ace is curled up in a basket with her kitty feet in the air, frozen like everyone else.
How adorable, Wulfram could make some good money off of that...it could also make a good pet for his new little Lolita, should he like...maybe on the way out he could nab her...don't see Aces that pretty that often, not unless they're horses bred for show for the nobility.

Odd though...a dresser in the back seems to have been flipped over, as though someone were in a horribly foul mood...and...is that smashed glass?
Maybe you should move deeper into the Queen's chambers...they're pretty amazingly huge...

Wulfram seems to have found something...so has our little Puffin:))

Broken Candlestick: An odd tingle ran through this SD's spine at first touch and a small power welled up in the back of their mind. Once a week, they are now able to summon a lit and beautiful candlestick from nowhere. The scent of the candle is tailored to their taste that day and, should they like, it is edible.
The candlestick cannot be put out by anything by the caster, who either puts it out at their leisure, or waits for it to go out on its own after two hours.

Wulfram's Curse: Upon the book being opened, something leaped out of the pages and latched onto his face for a solid and probably quite frightening minute! The thing seems like a thick and glutenous liquid and eventually is absorbed into his nares and vanishes.
He is no longer able to write correctly and will require a scribe in order to write.
Otherwise, everything he tries to write will consist of oddly scribbled words that say nothing aside from "I was rifling through the Hearts Queen's drawers and found this".
He will not be aware of this curse until he experiences it for the first time, and the curse will sometimes come out in beautiful script or other languages...but it always says the same thing.

((Out in front of the Hearts Court...a Card awakes...and then another...
Jerome and Jarvis sit up slowly out in the guards quarters.
Headaches are incredible and plentiful here, it feels as though the insides of their skulls are being rubbed down with sandpaper...
Eugh.
Odd though...everyone seems to be frozen and there's blood out back and some of their staff are beheaded out there!
What's going on here!??
Hey! There's a light on up in the Queen's chambers...maybe they should take a look...))


~Nathalia

[Kitty]

Ugh, what had he been doing last night exactly? He could tell by the lack of a foul taste in his mouth that he hadn't been drinking the night before.... but where had this incredible headache come from? It felt... odd, like something was rubbing away at his very skull. He picked up a hand to rub the back of his head as he sat up, opening his eyes slowly just in case it was a hangover.

He put his ears back for a moment in confusion, the guards quarters? Why was he out here.... sleeping? And... on the floor? He stood up carefully, yes.... he still had his bipedal form so he hadn't been dreaming up everything, but.... that really didn't answer any of his questions. Well, maybe he should wake someone up and ask them?

Beo wasn't here so he stepped over to the first face he recognized as a good friend and started trying to shake the Highland Collie awake.

Jackson, wake up.... I need to ask you a thing or two.

Nothing. He gave him another shake, and then two... then three.... still nothing. This was strange..... was he dreaming this? He backed up a few steps only to trip over something warm, fuzzy and huge before landing squarely on his rear on the floor with an alarmed squeak.

The Akita had been trying to will the headache away before he got up. He didn't remember going to sleep last night so... he must have been really tired. That happened sometimes when he played 'games' with Sergei, the little biped could be a handful sometimes. However, when the chipmunk tripped over him he jumped up onto all fours and backed away, spewing threats in a thick accent and a language Jarvis didn't understand.

He calmed down a bit when he recognized the scent of the chipmunk, it belonged around here so he wasn't one of them out to slit his throat or anything, right? He snorted indignantly at the man before turning and attempting to leave when he paused, one large paw held in the air as his ears twitched forward. He tilted his head to observe the scene with his remaining eye and backed up, thick fur bristling as he did.

He spoke slow, trying to get this... 'common' out as clearly as was possible so the other Jack could understand him.

Somezing is.... not ok.

The large canine crouched and stalked out the door, tail high and stiff and the fur down his spine bristled. It felt almost as if he was back home... except for the weather of course.

The chipmunk stepped out behind the canine and his jaw dropped at the scene outside, oh... oh suits.... why? This... this was awful. Had Xiven gone the course of Serafino? He'd heard stories of the old Queen....

We.... we must inform.... her Majesty Xiven.

The Solandrian's ears flipped back and pinned themselves against his skull. If things like this were happening outside, what was going on inside? He'd grown rather fond of the little hybrid and concern flooded his thoughts. There would be hell to pay if his little buddy had been harmed in this, whatever this was.

Come zen, ve go.

And with that the large canine took off, heading straight toward the palace doors. He wasn't going as fast as he could, stupid freaking headache, but he was still running faster then the chipmunk could really keep up with... although he did try.

[Bee]

Zeki.

"Do you. Do you hear that?"

Zeki, it said. Zeki, Zeki.

The press of the words against his mind was sudden, and soon settled into being unceasing, forceful. He dropped the little toy he had been holding. Exploring the chambers seemed abruptly, terribly unimportant.

Zeki, she said. Zeki, Zeki, Zeki.

There were two options here. Either more frightful strangeness was occurring, or he had been down the road to total insanity this entire time and had not even realized it until this final snap. The voice sounded distorted but...familiar. The voice sounded like Vir.

Zeki...

He turned to the door. She had a location. He could go right back into the hall and she would be there. She needed help. It was logical, wasn't it? He had been driven to this place by the feeling that she was in danger. Didn't it follow that if she could somehow communicate feelings, she could communicate words?

"Outside," he said, urgently, almost more to himself than to Wulfram or Devika, moving without thought to the door. "She's out there."

[Vyn]

It was spectacular how many things happened at once, especially when none of these things were appreciated.

As Wulfram stuffed the note back into the book, something leapt from the pages and collided with his face. The crow let out a terribly graceless squawk, scrambling at his face for a minute before the fluid simply sucked into his nostrils. The man sat there for a moment, eye twitching. There was no telling what the hell that thing had been but it didn't seem to have any nasty side effects. Maybe it was simply meant to be a scare tactic to keep nervous little servants from snooping? Wulfram could only hope.

He took a slow breath, waiting for a random spat of horrible pains or magically induced death, but everything seemed to be fine.

Until he caught what Zeki was saying. "She's out there." His first instinct was to find Devi, who was... climbing a dresser? and then frustration set in. What the hell was going on here? He slammed his hands down on the desk as he shot to his feet, clacking his beak at Zeki. "Who ist outside, Zeki? Zhey're all frozen!" He shot around the door and made a beeline to Zeki, aiming to grab the taur by the shoulder if he kept going and, if necessary, restrain him from going out.

[Kari Muffin]

Devika wasn't going to get an answer to her question it seemed. Her ears pulled back and she jerked with surprise when the crow squawked. She didn't particularly see what was happening but she noticed something had crawled up the man's nose.

And Zeki was saying something about someone being outside. Her ears panned forward. She couldn't hear anything and she had the largest ears in the room. The puffin's foot brushed up against a broken candle stick as she went to hop down. It was hard to miss the tingle up her spine that made her stumble.

She brushed herself off and pushed her ball out of the drawer. "There's no one out there. I can't hear anything." It hit the ground with a clank. Wulfram seemed to be handling Zeki, and there wasn't much else she could do besides continue to look around for something that might help them.

There was no one in here besides the three of them. Which seemed odd. Wouldn't they at least find the Queen in her chambers even if she was frozen? The Puffin noticed the turned over wardrobe as she wandered deeper into the room. Why would someone do that?

The things wasn't all in order. It was clear that something had happened. Maybe the Queen had been angry about everything that was happening in the palace? Something had clearly been smashed from the shining bits of glass on the ground. The puffin nervously glanced back at Corvie and the Tulgey.

"I don't think the Queen is here but there are signs of someone being here...besides us."

She caught the sight of something shiny out of the corner of her eye. She craned her neck to peer at the bits of glass on the floor.

[Kitty]

The solandrian hesitated when they reached the door. The guard out here was asleep as well, slumped against the wall as if the two of them had simply fallen asleep on the job, except that they were eerily still. He peered back at the chipmunk, who'd caught up with him now, and nodded his head toward the doors.

You vork here, you first.

Jarvis didn't have much time to feel sorry for these two guards before the big canine was giving him orders again. He didn't quite mind the fact, the canine didn't know these people as well as he did, so he didn't have to feel anything for them. It'd keep his head clearer, and make good decisions. At least that's what his father had always told him about not letting things become personal.

He nodded and opened up the doors, stepping in and peering around. Quiet, eerie, eerie quiet. He put his notched ears backward, this was stranger still. But... the Queen..... maybe she was immune?

The Queen.... this way! Let's go.

And the chipmunk started to make his way toward the Queen's chamber's. If that many of the guard had been in bed when whatever happened had happened, it was a good bet that her Majesty had been as well.

This time Jerome followed, not minding where the chipmunk was leading him. He thought he'd saw a light up there and maybe, just maybe it'd be her quarters. The big thing was that it was a room that was higher up so if it wasn't, it narrowed down their search. He just didn't know the halls well enough to do his own search.

Vhat if she isn't zere, zen vhat?

Well, that might be a grim prospect, it wasn't like they hadn't had people take the throne is strange ways before, was it?

We check her office, then we can worry about that. being a problem.

[Bee]

It really probably was a futile effort to try to explain the feeling to anyone else, though he felt he should give it a try. There wasn't a way to say it that didn't make him sound nuts and/or under the influence of some dark magic--and the whole world seemed rife with it. But there had to be something out there; if not Vir herself (though there was some shred of hope that said it might be her, some shade of her, perhaps), then something she was trying to point them to, maybe?

Maybe she had seen something before she had gotten frozen and could only lead them to it in a roundabout way. She sounded so haunting, so insistent. It had to be important. (It wasn't a very scientific approach to the issue, he was aware, but then the last couple of days had pretty much washed their hands of science.)

There was a hand on his shoulder but he had a hand of his own on the door, and he pushed it open a little.

"Come on, I hear a voice," he said, and in a second that sentence became even more true. There were other voices, not faint and ethereal like Virtute's but solid, masculine tones. "Um. Voices."

[Vyn]

Wulfram's eyes would narrow in clear distaste as the boy managed to thrust the door open despite his attempt at intervention. What would they have done had the magical influence on the other side of the door turned out to be a clever miscreant who had cheerfully ripped his face of upon opening it? ...Well, Wulfram would've cheerfully booted him out into the arms of his face-ravaging monster and shut the door, honestly, but thankfully that was not the case.

For now, it was nothing. He scanned the hall warily, turning briefly toward the source of the voices. Masculine, unlike the voice he'd suggested earlier. Regardless, Wulfram now knew the extent to which he would have to be careful around this man. Something more than reason seemed to be driving him and it made the crow wary. "Hearing voices, Zeki, ist not e goodt sign. Be cautious of your own mind." He glanced over his shoulder toward Devika as she spoke up. "I'm goink to search zhe remaining rooms. Since you discovered zhem, you can greet zhe guests." And, were they unfriendly, Zeki would serve as an appropriate alarm.

As he returned to the room, Wulfram's gaze briefly passed over the prone form of the feline Ace. What a high-quality pet... One didn't see such quality in the everyday Ace... But toting about extra weight could be the difference between life and death in a crisis and this was certainly beginning to seem like one. Best to travel light, valuable little things or not. His attention returned to the puffin and the signs of recent occupation that she had discovered.

He touched Devika's shoulder briefly as he stepped up behind her, studying the signs of destruction. "Seems The Queen was not happy when she left... Or, perhaps someone was looking for something..." He frowned slightly, fingers trailing through her feathers as he stepped closer to the upturned dresser to examine it.

What was going on here? And where was The Queen?

[Kari Muffin]

The puffin was vaguely listening to the conversation as she investigated the room. She heard actual voices now that the door was open, not that it was something for her to handle. Not that she was sure how to handle what she had found.

She lamely poked the overturned furniture with a toe. She jumped slightly when the man lightly touched her, brushing through her feathers. She gave him a curious look as he spoke. So the Queen of Hearts could have done this? Why would she destroy her own room? That seemed a little pointless. When the Tulgey went to investigate the dresser she decided to investigate another part of the very large suite.

It was cold. Or was that her imagination? Her feathers ruffled briefly as she nearly stepped on glass. She made a concerned noise as she poked it with a foot. Had it been from the broken dresser? It didn't seem to have any glass on it.

Fully curious she looked around for the source of the broken glass. Everything seemed perfectly normal. Vases, trinkets, a rather large floor length mirror firmly attached to the wall. So she decided to go through one of the various open doors near by, poking her head cautiously into the room first her ears scanning for any sounds. This seemed to be a proper and lavish bedroom, complete with a four poster bed and vanity set. Though considering the size of the Queen's room it could have been a guest bedroom for all she knew.

"Is it... getting chilly in here?" she finally said as she pulled hear head out of the bedroom.

[Nathalia]

((The chill Devi felt continues to descend until all people in the palace begin to shiver.
Beowulf awakens outside, sitting up and taking in the frozen and seemingly lifeless people around him...and the deserted guard post where Jarvis should be.
There are lights on in the palace, he should probably go in to see if everyone is all right.

The halls begin to echo as though someone were walking down them and a horrible feeling of foreboding begins to creep through everyone's skin. Devi seems to have found a small jar that won't open, and Zeki has located and odd little bottle with what appears to be a finger inside of it!
Eugh.
Jarvis and Jerome can hear the voices of Wulfram's small group in the Queen's chambers...but also, the sound of faint footsteps, slowly ascending the staircase...
A voice whispers, very quietly.
"So...who is in my Palace...?"))



~Nathalia