[Waylaid Tours]
Dave

The guards read over the deed.

"Huh..."
"Looks real to me."
"Welcome to Castle Erebus, m'lord. Please make yourself at home."
"And... ah... no hard feelings about the, y'know, brandishing bit?"

They DID brandish at You.

Just a little bit.

They're hoping they won't get in trouble for it.

Regardless of response, one of them will take out a large iron key, unlock the door, and push it open for you.

So... uh. This castle appears to be kind of really big. It is, after all, a castle. Well. This part of it isn't really big at least. It's a large stone entry room about twenty feet square with two large sets of double doors. The outer doors, the ones you just came through, are thick wood bound in iron bands. Doors designed to take a beating. The inner doors are quite a bit more ornate, carved with scenes of great nobles past and their triumphs over the adversaries. There are several large oiling paintings hanging in here as well, depicting dour looking men (and women) of a rather noble air. Ostensibly the second set of doors leads out of the entry hall and into the grand foyer.

Honestly this castle seems WAY too big to belong to a mere baron. Maybe it used to belong to someone more important?

You get this strange, nagging sense that the castle is large enough to be a dungeon.

The sort that adventurers raid for loot and fight monsters in. Assuming you believe in such things. Honestly, how on earth did you function in the Nexus denying the existence of anything weird? Did someone curse your family or something?

What do you do?

Carlie

At first the deaconess is just nodding and tending to your wounds and then mention is made of coming from another world.

You're is given a look like you're crazy. Then you ask about humanity and that look goes from one of worried skeptics to cautious concern.

She thinks you might be dangerous now.

"Of course I'm human," the woman replies, her eyes briefly flicking to her broom. "The only things that aren't human are adversaries."

People who want to cause you, specifically and personally, harm. It has a level of familiarity and malice that a mere enemy lacks. It's probably a collective term for all the various terrible things you met out in the forest.

The woman, as she's binding your wounds, does a bit of slight of hand. You may or may not notice her slipping a small silver amulet out of her pocket and palming it. The amulet is touched to your arm as she binds the bandages.

Nothing should happen, considering that you're neither a fae nor an empyrean.

Content with that result, she pockets the amulet again and said, "Wait there a moment. It'll be right back."

Then? She returns shortly with simple set of clothing peasant's attire. She'll hand them to you-

-and then flick some holy water at you from a little bronze aspergillum while muttering a prayer.

You are now damp. And also probably not demon possessed.

Seemingly satisfied with that, she says, "The adversaries are a constant threat, unfortunately. You-"

She freezes when you mention the name Kosmos. And quickly makes a ritual blessing motion toward herself with her hands.

"That is the name of an Arch-Devil," she hisses. "Don't speak that name aloud! Where did you hear it?"

She's probably not going to answer any more questions until you give her a reply she's satisfied with.

What do you do?

Khiael

You run.

You run as fast as your legs can carry you. You even begin beating your wings, taking great bounding leaps, to cover ground more quickly. Clara bounces in your arms, muttering to herself as the corruption of The Old Flesh continues to slowly spread. She would have been doomed if not for you taking her up in your arms to speeding the both of you along. Within a handful of minutes you reach the stairs and begin scaling them with haste. With one final jump you clear the top of the rise and-

-slam fast first into the palisade around the Hamlet.

It isn't a physical thing, but rather a series of stainless steel posts that you had tried to jump right over.

The breath is blasted from your lungs just as Clara is flung from your arms. You're flung away and hit the bouncing just as Clara strikes the grass atop the bluff and rolls roughly to a stop. You're momentarily dazed, your mind reeling. What just happened? What did you run into? It doesn't make any sense. As you shake your swimming head a horrible, wrenching sensation tears at your heart as your realize what just happened.

Like your home hamlet, this one must likewise have a palisade around it. To prevent adversaries from entering the posts have the Sign of Koth etched into them.

The Sign of Royalty.

The Sign of the King.

God's own signet.

You have been rejected as an unclean thing.

What do you do?
****

"No. No no no nooooo..." Khiael moans. This has to be some kind of mistake. He's always been faithful. This isn't his fault! He didn't do anything wrong!

Why...

Why would the King cast him out NOW when he's doing something so important? When he's doing everything in his power to prevent a soul from being damned?

A small, insidious voice suggests that maybe the King never cared about him to begin with. That he has always been tainted.

Khiael stomps that voice down, shoving in into the deepest, darkest part of his mind and scrambles back up to his hooves. He bounds back up the stairs and scowls at the palisade. How can he get past it? There aren't any guards nearby that he can see. And just over the hill he thinks he can make out the steeple of a chapel.

He squints.

Scepter and Crown. The Order of Thyatira? That's one of the heterodox orders of the Church. They're kind of... right on the edge of heterodoxy and heresy. The priest at his home church often had some very fiery things to say about the Order of Thyatira. It was said that they would, in secret, cavort with devils and fae who made sufficient supplication to the King.

...which is exactly what Khiael needs right now. A little bit of devil cavorting.

He needs two things. First? He can't go running into the hamlet looking like this. He needs to-

-almost without thinking he's human again. It feels.. very strange. Like folding in on himself. He touches his hair and finds that even his mutations are gone.

Okay.

First problem solved. Second problem? He needs to get past the palisade. What does he have at his disposal? Just... time, motion, quality, and growth. Just the ability to bend reality to his whims. Just blasphemous arcane power.

But...

He's using it for a good reason. He's saving a soul.

And saving a soul covers a multitude of sins.

He bites his lip and reaches for time, motion, and quality, he needs to find the right moment where he could slip through. Just grasp the power and push.

~~Discontinuity~~

The sky is burning.

The sea is boiling.

Shapes are slithering through both.

The earth is warped and buckled, great fissures rent through it. The world reels like a drunkard. In the distance the hamlet is aflame. Something awful and beautiful and sublime is crawling through the city, Watchers invoking the Mysteries of Koth to hold it at bay.

There are no pillars because they have not yet been set. Khiael hurries a few steps forward and releases his grip, time uncoiling like a spring and allowing himself to snap back to-

~~Discontinuity~~

-the present.

One the other side of the pillars.

He scoops up Clara and takes off at a run toward the chapel.

"Don't worry, Clara, we're almost there," the cherub-disguised-as-human assures the woman in his arms.