Effectively barricaded inside the house now, the place feels more oppressive than ever.
“Well,” says Malvick, “I guess now we hunt down one of those strong undead auras Li Kao can see.” He looks over at the priest. “You can still see them?”
Li Kao nods, pointing one thumb up and one thumb down. “Malvick continues. “Okay then, unless anyone has any reason not to, I say we head upstairs first. We’ve already checked out most of the second floor anyway so we know what we up against, sort of. And besides, we haven’t found any stairs to the basement yet.” When no one objects, Malvick unslings his bow. “Right,” he sighs, “back upstairs.”

With Malvick in the lead and Li Kao right behind him to guide the way, the party creeps back up the stairs. On the second floor, Li Kao indicates that the aura is still coming from above them, somewhere north east of the main stairs. Malvick grumbles as Li Kao relays the news. “What, in the attic? On the roof?”

Li Kao shrugs. “I don’t know my friend. But the aura is definitely coming from above. Another staircase would have to be centrally located, architecturally speaking, so lets follow this hallway around and see what we can find.”

After a short search the party does indeed find a narrow staircase leading up to the attic. The faint sound of a woman weeping can be heard echoing from above.

They ascend the stairs. The attic is cold and damp, but seems to have escaped much of the decay and vandalism that is rampant through the rest of the house. Selves of old books line most of the walls, and a few crates sit in the middle of the room. The ceiling slopes down to only four feet high along the northeast wall, leaving room for only a small window, while to the southeast, a mould-encrusted pillar of brick marks the passage of a chimney. A full sized mirror in a dark wooden frame of coiling roses leans against these bricks, angled towards the tiny window.

Collapsed in front of the mirror, weeping into her hands, sits a woman in a tattered and filthy red dress. She is turned away from the party and the light from the little window is poor, but Malvick can make out long patterns of runic tattoos on an exposed calf and arm. She has long pale hair. Malvick suddenly recognizes her as the dancing woman from his vision downstairs. He starts to go to her but Li Kao puts a restraining hand on his shoulder and shakes his head in warning. He whispers that this woman is the source of the undead aura they have been tracking.

Just then Sasha pushes her way to the front and looks at the figure in front of the mirror. Her voice cracks. “Seoni? . . .”

**Mood Music**

Yola storms to the door, clearly unnerved by the attack from the haunted manticore and frustrated at being unable to face a flesh and blood foe. She throws open the main door, steps onto the portico, then stops dead in her tracks.

“Uh, guys?” she whispers, the anger draining from her voice to be replaced with dread. “You need to see this.”

A thousand avian eyes turn as one to look at her as she steps back into the house. On every stone of the ruined outbuilding, and lining the path to the manor perch hundreds of silent ravens, all staring in unison at the group sheltered in the manor’s doorway.

Li Kao moves past the others to stand next to Yola. His sight still augmented by the magical scroll, he sees the auras of undeath surrounding each bird. They cover the outbuilding like a black carpet. . .

The group follows Li Kao back to the main room with the stuffed manticore in it. He seats himself in roughly the centre of the hall, behind the huge trophy, and in front of the stain of darkly coloured mould, and takes out a scroll. As he begins to read and chant, Xer and Sasha continue to banter back and forth.


As the two continue to flirt with each other, Yola snorts and begins to pace the room. “There it is again,” she says to herself. “Does anybody else smell burnt…hair?”

Li Kao stands up. He scans around the room and lets out a low whistle. “That scroll lets me see undead auras. Minor undead, like zombies, give off a faint glow, while stronger creature give off a glow that can bee seen through walls.” He looks up and down slowly, his gaze detached as if he is not really seeing what’s in front of him. To him the house looks almost alive. The pale green of residual undead auras shift dimly, like phosphorescent shadows around the room. Two very strong auras burn through though, one coming from somewhere above, and the other from somewhere below. Also troubling are the dozens of weak auras shining through the front of the house – as if coming from outside the main doors. “That’s very odd. Maybe we should see what’s going on . . . By Irori! Yola, look out!”

Suddenly the slowly shifting residual auras all coalesce with blinding speed onto the stuffed manticore. Only Yola and Li Kao see what happens next.

The stuffed beast suddenly lurches to terrifying life. Its fur burst into flames, it rears back on its hind legs, and the grotesque humanoid face warps and stretches until it resembles a furious red-haired woman. She turns on Yola with a withering shriek of pain and rage, and the scorpion’s tail whips around, engulfing Yola in flame.

To Malvick, Xer and Sasha, nothing seems amiss at first. One moment they are listening to Li Kao, the next the older man yells out a warning and lurches towards Yola. Then Yola screams and bursts into flames!

Yola drops to the ground and rolls around as Li Kao tries to smother the fires with his cloak. They are quickly extinguished, leaving Yola wounded, but not grievously so – her clothing having suffered the worst of the heat.

The manticore has returned to its normal stuffed self. The shifting auras have also vanished, depleted for now, leaving only the two stronger auras above and below, and the dozens of weaker auras shining through from outside the house.

***

Yola has taken 14hp of damage from the burning attack. Li Kao can detect a strong undead presence somewhere on the floors above you, and another equally strong presence somewhere beneath you. Also, he can see a whole lot of weak undead auras coming from outside the house. He can use these auras to track undead, with location getting more specific as he gets closer.  Below are two maps - one of the main floor and one of the second floor.

"You know I wonder if they have hidden anything under that bed?"  Xer steps into the room.  "Sasha if you wiggled that a little less, you might...wooh..."  Xer stumbles, her head swoons, and the crying suddenly stops.

Xer:  You are suddenly transported back in time – you are a child, looking out the window at your parents below. Somehow, you know that your parents are trying to kill one another, and that whichever one of them survives will be coming to kill you next. In the yard below, your mother struggles with your father. She is brandishing a torch, and your father is wielding a long, wicked-looking knife. Your father seems to be covered with boils and festering tumors. The vision fades as quickly as it appeared. . .

Xer shakes her head and looks up, confused but none the worse for wear.  A search of the room reveals nothing of note, and no source of the ghostly crying is found.

The party exits the room and continues to move counter-clockwise around the second floor, opening the west facing double doors.  It opensonto a large room featuring two padded chairs and a long couch facing a wide alcove lined with stained-glass windows.  Several music stands lean against the southern wall next to a violin, two flutes and a large harp, all in poor condition.  The windows themselves depict a wide array of animals and plants - from north to south are a large pale and ghostly scorpion, a gaunt man holding out his arms as a dozen bats hang from him, a moth with a strange skull-like pattern on its wings, a tangle of dull green plants with bell shaped flowers, and a young maiden sitting astride a well in a forest while a spindely spider the size of a dog descends along a string of webbing above her.

Li Kao recognizes some of the pictures, but can't quite place them, so he strides into the room for a closer look.  He lays one palm on the first and mutters a prayer to Irori, and snaps his fingers in triumph.  "Aha!"  he announces. 

"Each of these windows represents a classic spell component related to necromantic magic," the pirest says as he returns to his companions.  "Scorpion  venom, vampire's breath, the tongue of a deathwing moth,  belladonna, and the heart of a maiden slain by poison."

"Ugh, kinda grisley for a music hall," says Sasha.  "What do you use all that stuff for anyway?"

"Haven't the foggiest notion my dear,"  Li Kao smiled.  "Let's open another door shall we?"

The next door,  facing north-east, opens onto a small bedroom.  The entire room is caked with a thick, spongey layer of dark green, black, and blue mould.  Sasha grimaces again and makes to close the door.  As she does so a child's voice, quivering with fear, floats out of nowhere.  "What's on your face mommy?"

Sasha slams the door shut and turns around to the others, "Okay, this place is seriously creeping me out!  Tell me why we're here again?"

Following Yola’s lead, the party ignores the rest of the main floor and ascends the twisting staircase to the second floor. After following the hallway at the top, they find themselves in an oddly shaped foyer with many doors leading off of it. The party stands quietly for a moment, unsure in the face of so many directions. Kao eventually sighs and shrugs. “Well, it is a well known fact that when exploring haunted mansions, one should always start with the south west corner. So, in this case,” he says, spinning around and pointing, “the door on the left.” With that he strolls down the hall, pauses for dramatic effect, then cracks open the south west door with a faux grimace. When nothing jumps out at him or explodes, he turns back to the others with a grin and a shrug, and opens the door fully.

The bedroom on the other side features a child-sized bed, a chair next to a toy box, and a looming stone fireplace big enough for a child to get lost in. From inside the room comes the sound of a child sobbing…

OOC: Li Kao has been studying the manor and the odd noises and manifestations that have occurred. Using his Knowledge:Religeon skill, he has deduced that there is definitely an undead manifestation within the manor, but it is unlike anything he has encountered before. He is unable to tell if it is caused by a single undead entity or many, or even the house itself.