It was a motley assortment of skills, that which were just listed: from cooking to a pocket dimension, the mix of people before him comprised a group clearly accustomed to hardship. Those who were not would already have been in tears—begging, praying, denying, pleading a deaf deity from another universe to save them. Noah's expression was somber but sympathetic, if subtly so, betrayed by a creased brow and lips pressed thinly together.
"All clear!" Diamond's voice came from above, and Noah glanced towards it.
"Come with me, then, and we can talk. I suggest to you that, in what time you have here, you do not come down into these chambers again. I might also add that you are not prisoners—but to leave alone is ill-advised, and we cannot protect you from the Legion, who will most certainly come upon you like coyotes to a calf." The idiom felt oddly out of place in his speech, the rhythm of it belonging to another tongue—but if any of the newcomers looked above the altar, they would see a bovine skull hanging there with engravings etched around its eyes and horns over six feet wide.
Noah led the way up the stairs, picking up the lantern on his way by. The trapdoor above opened into a hardwood hall. The house itself was built mainly of wood, brick, and stone, a structure at least as old as his deceased father, and this hall itself was no exception: worn floorboards creaked as, one by one, they stepped into the hall. Candlelight flickered and wane beneath heavy drafts in chambers already dark, and the quality of the ancient house's crepitation resounded viscerally as moans. It was the sort of narrow passage that made one claustrophobic and suspicious; the sort of architectural looming that left a constant, niggling wonder in the back of one's mind if they were being watched, or perhaps that they were so deafeningly alone none would know if they simply disappeared.
In a word? It was creepy. Very, very creepy. Abandoned-orphanage-on-a-new-moon sort of creepy.
Perhaps more curious, though, than the generally gothic air of the place was its owner's—or former owner's—apparent propensity for clocks. All in perfect tandem, they clicked along the walls of this hall and the sitting room which Noah led them to, from small timepieces that might've better been pocket watches to a grandfather clock nearly as tall as Bo sitting across from a coat rack in the entry hall. Every sound was swallowed by the space, like the shadows themselves were starved, and so the ticking became the sole source of auditory consistency throughout.
The sitting room itself held a hearth, already burning, a couch, a couple chairs, and a coffee table. A bronze effigy of another bull skull was next to the doorway, in the center of a triangle, and the rest of the space was dominated by bookshelves, covered in tomes of various languages—the amulets wouldn't allow their users to read or write languages unknown to them, but the discerning eye could spot at least four tongues scattered throughout. A heavy, black book sat on the coffee table, lacking any clear title. Beside it was a tea pot and several cups.
"Please, make yourselves comfortable." Noah gestured to the array of seating options, himself going to stand next to the fireplace and suppressing a cough whilst indicating the tea loosely with one hand in invitation for them to take some if they so desired. "Perhaps we might start with my simply answering any more questions you all have?"
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