VI
Part Two
The Great Lake of Hali
Roby leads you through the city to the shores of Lake Hali. On the lake is the huge and impressive Palace of Carcosa. The twilight sky pulses with streams of reeling black byakhee, flying around the palace and across the face of the twin suns. You take a boat and begin to row out. Part way across the lake, the water to one side begins to ripple. Like the creature that passed overhead when you were driving, there is another enormous pulsating blob approaching – a Spawn of Hastur. It swims beneath the boat. The boat is rocked but everyone holds tight. You continue to row….a bit faster this time.
The Palace
The corridors and chambers are huge, impressive, opulent and mind-bending. As you walk the corridors, the opposite end seems to take far too long to draw any closer, but then suddenly you’ll pass through into another grand space of chandeliers, stained-glass windows, marble columns and arched doorways. You bump into some courtesans and befriend a beautiful young woman named Yolanda. She tells you Edwards is on the palace balcony. She knows the way.
Coombs
A man in a suit is seen ahead of you, Roby recognises him (as does Blossett). It’s Coombs, a murderous thug. He slips into a side door. A game of cat and mouse ensues. You can’t see him but you can hear Coombs’ snickering and drawing his knife along metal and marble surfaces. He lurches through doorways to strike and then withdraw. The doorways close up and disappear. During this unnerving game, Blossett is caught unawares and receives a deep cut. Eventually Coombs is overcome and killed. Clancy feels no guilt about delivering the fatal wound.
The Great Hall and Balcony
Eventually, you reach a great hall overlooking a palace balcony. Byakhee swoop and swirl close by as Edwards and various actors are reaching the final stage of their ritual – the scene is reminiscent of the King in Yellow play. One of the sons of Cassilda cuts Edwards down with a sword. Blood spills copiously. But Edwards rises again. His wounds are healing. The actors remove their mask and the Stranger is amongst them.
Edwards must be Stopped
Roby asks Blossett to hand over his revolver. Roby immediately tries to shoot himself. Blossett wrestles with Roby for control of the gun. Roby knows, as he called the city, if he dies, Ythill-Carcosa will immediately return to its own place. The investigators, knowing Roby is their only way out, decide the better plan is to eliminate Edwards.
Goodbye Edwards, Hello Hastur
The investigators rush to stop Edwards. Piper, Clancy and King open fire on Edwards and the Stranger, but though Edwards receives more than one bullet, he recovers from his wounds faster they can be inflicted. Stevenson charges in and brings his wrench down onto Edward’s skull. Edwards’ eyes roll upward and finally he drops lifeless to the floor. And now all hell breaks loose. Byakhee swoop and screech as the sky is ripped open and a dark shape begins to form.
Whatever Happens - Don’t Look Up
The investigators instinctively avert their gaze – all but Blossett. Blossett sees the full image, though fails to comprehend what’s happening. Within a shadowy sky of impossible colour, two voids form; each filled with unfamiliar stars. Thousands of byakhee stream into the eye-like voids. Screaming courtesans and chunks of masonry torn from the palace are lifted and fall upwards into the sky. Byakhee crash though the palace windows and roof and start tearing people apart. Run for your lives.
The Great Escape
You flee along corridors and through chambers as they’re being ripped apart by impossible forces. Most of the debris tumbles into the sky. Screeching byakhee hunt you all the way. Roby is leading you to the gardens: “It’s the only way out from here!!” Blossett is crushed by falling masonry. Clancy has the presence of mind to stem the bleed and freeing the unconscious patient, he lifts Blossett over his shoulder and re-joins the panic of the exodus. Roby now ushers you into a well-tended palace garden. There’s a free-standing door. On the ground before it is an ornate pebble bed with the yellow sign clearly visible within it, formed by carefully laid polished stones and minerals. There’s no time to waste. Roby and the investigators plunge through the portal.
Carcosa Retreats
Stepping through the doorway, the investigators are back on the shore of Loch Mullardoch. The yellow sign is laid out on the ground in a pattern of stones and pine cones. Looking back, there is a large shape of blocks and blurred colour hovering above the loch. There is a deep rumbling and the faint sound of screams as the shapes collapse in upon themselves until after a few minutes, all of the shape has folded in and ascended to an indeterminable point in the sky. And then there is a silence.
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