What meet his eyes, is a neighborhood neglected to the extreme. A slice of land forgotten by all but a scant few.
After half a year gone, one of those few parks several block away as once was habit, but now needed a mental reminder to do so. Out of his town car, and walking the blocks, everything, it seemed was like it was, except the deceptive house that stood sentry Above the Kingdom Below. The house with it's faded siding, crooked shingles, and rotted wooden...everything, used to give way to a home that was worn, but clean and cared for. The furniture had once been new
ish, now each piece was rotten, sodden and home to vermin and
worse.
Moving from the crooked door in the entry, through the decayed house to the living room, where once there'd been a pile of corpses, then a clean inviting space, had returned to the corpses once more. A mountain of animal bodies lay here, in varied stages of decomposition. Near the pile
lay heavy stains of blood. Continuing on to the once familiar steps to the shadowy, out of the way corner where the Door sits. Still locked, and the only thing that that seems to still be cared for in this rotted ruin.
There's a faint hope, one clouded by cynicism and pragmatism, he doesn't truly believe that his next action with prove fruitful, but he tries and finds that his key still fits. Still works, Alice Hart hadn't changed the locks, and so
Robert Cross enters the portal to the Realm Below.
Metal grated stairs lead farther down, and down, and
down, until a landing abruptly shifts his momentum as he take in the fork, though the choice has already been taken from him. One path is open, the other's tunnel has collapsed. The open path leads to the Caldarium. The place
She built. The dark serenity the bathhouse gives off already presses against him, only to recede, like the tide.
Eyes scan the area, the flames that Gilroy requested be kept lit is still flickering, off to the side is a
very familiar sleeping bag, and sitting in the middle of the room is a figure, colored the water's glowing blue and the flame's flickering orange-red.
Alice sits meditating in the room, she hears footsteps, but there is nothing of Lyssa's lyrical voice to meet her ears. A familiar scent teases her nose - charred skin and burnt hair, but
the Hunger gnaws at her, and this wouldn't be the first time she imagined something like this, and she knows it wont be the last either, so the Blind Doll moves not, and gives it no mind.
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