It has been a few days since the Angel Poo incident - that is, since both Amethyst and Danielle had a strange flashback. In that time spiders have continued to infest the corridors, building their nests in corners and webbing across patches of wall. They drop down onto the patients from time to time as well, scintillating jewelled leggy visitors. To the psychically sensitive, the waves of hunger are still there; it must be affecting others as well, for every patient seems to have a good apetitte.

appetite

Amy has been busy dealing with an influx of patients. Thankfully she's gotten some aid from the residents, because there are a lot of folks showing similar symptoms. She's keeping them stable, to the best of her ability, but so far, there's no real information on how to resolve their issues. Except that hint about a plant in the forest just outside the city. The spiders keep getting odd looks from Amy. Are they biting? Are they webbing the patients? Are they hurting things? She's still trying to figure things out.

Danielle steps into the hospital eyes gleaming with a bright ferocity and gate resmbling nothing so much as a stalking beast though she tries to stick to places where patients are not in her present state of mind. finding as quiet a corner as one can find in such a place, she reaches for the pattern

Danielle rolls with advantage 1 at difficulty 15, using occult, pattern initiate.
The result is a success.

Amethyst rolls with advantage -1 at difficulty 10, using no talents or gifts.
The result is a success.

To Danielle, now that she looks, it seems there are patterns - with a small p - everywhere. The spider webs, in particular, make clumps that draw her eye and look like - if they were joined up - they would be glyphs. That is, of course, entirely and completely impossible. But it seems also to be the case.

Amethyst's explorations and checks reveal a few things. The spiders are not biting, or hurting the patients, although there are a few screams every now and again, and a lot of complaints from those who dislike the skittering things. And, amazingly or chillingly, they are only webbing over bandages and dressings.

Naturally, the white webbing over the white bandages made it harder to spot, but now that it has been seen, it is obvious.

These spiders are way too smart. Wayyy too smart. Amy mumbles as she realizes there's spider webbing over the bandages and dressing of those patients who are in for injuries of the sort. "I hope they don't try to web over the rashes," she mutters, eyes widening a bit, at the thought. "And how does a spider treat a fever?" One of the assistants points out Danielle's arrival, and Amy waves her way.

A spider drops down in front of Danielle, rotating like the beautiful jewelled drop of chitin that it is.

Danielle grips the edge of the edge of the table she's standing near as realization dawns on her "Paper and Pen" she nearly barks in a manner much to loud to be appropriate to the present setting but part of her brain may not be wholly aware of where she is as she wills the images before her to make sense or stay long enough to be copied and when the spider appears she speaks "Who are you" Lest anyone forget she's of brand's lineage, they would know it now

Danielle's call for paper and pen gets a blink from Amy. But she heads to the desk to see if there's something there. There is of course, as the hospital is keeping records. She brings it over to Danielle and passes it over.

There is a little web on one corner of the paper. Cute.

Danielle tries to copy down what she sees, the patterns, though it's harder now with the spider dancing in vision all a bit unreal and heady as she copies

It just looks like scribble, of course - so many glyphs, all interposed, all possible... Yet some of the arcs are familiar, like a road she has walked before. Wiggle the lines a bit, squint a little, and it could ALMOST be something familiar. The spider drops onto the paper. Bounces off. Heads away.

Amy looks a bit confused, but her attention is all on the patients. "Danielle? What is it?"

Danielle hms "The webs they look like something else altogether, if I look at them in groups,they're a languauge or something or a map..or.. a a..."she takes her finger and begins to trace the markings the pen has made as if trying to make a tangible connection

It could, almost, make the shape she has been looking for, if she takes just bits of it.

"Is it telling us how to solve this mystery illness?" Amy asks a bit wryly. She does look over to see what Danielle has written down as well. The spider bouncing away gets a little sidestep, just to make sure Amy's out of its way.

The spider crawls up the wall once more.

Danielle hms "No I don't think it's to do with that. It has to do with what we felt last week, which felt real, but now I'm left to wonder again if it's picking at my memory to show what I have forgotten" and she start drawing again, move that there take that away entirely inching closer to the form she recalls

Now the drawing looks less like a mess, and less like a study of where the webs are, but more like a certain image of power. It cannot ever be both at once, but it could well be that they are related.

Amy quiets now, curious. She thinks for a bit, recalling the events previously, and then she shrugs. "I can't pretend to understand, but it does seem there are strange things afoot."

Almost on queue, the feeling of hunger grows in the air once more.

*cue

Danielle hms " I don't think I ever understood it any way and i understand this even less" She blinks, hazarding what is purely an instinctual guess trying to pair the two juxtaposed sensations "Are you consuming the pattern" she asks aloud

Amy sort of freezes at that question. "pattern?" she asks, since she's still oblivious to what Danielle is seeing.

Amethyst rolls with advantage 1 at difficulty 15, using occult, pattern initiate.
The result is a success.

To Amethyst, the same thing is now obvious. The webs are, to some degree, clustered in groups that are almost glyphlike, or have trailed lines of white between them, often ending in nothing, sometimes looking painfully familiar. There are hints not of A pattern, but of THE Pattern - of an ordeal of initiation.

Danielle hms "It's hard to exp;ain. I's what mde amber as it was. The center. The source of the powr for those of great grandfather's blood. Look close at the webs. You can almost see it but it isn't the same. It was enough to help me draw the second image. i'm trying to make sense of it along with damned gnawing hunger. talking outloud trying to make it make sense. is it only distorted echoes of a memory or something more

"The Pattern," Amy says, capitalizing the letters in her head. "I did walk it, you know. That's the only time I ever went to Amber." She pauses there, as she looks at the walls, the webs, following those trailed white lines with her eyes. She glances back over to the paper that Danielle is putting together - and she says. "What if it's not consuming it exactly? What else could it be? I can see that question, but - we're trying to make things - grow. And the webs we saw on the wall seemed to be fixing it." She's now also trying to put two and two together, providing options.

Danielle hms "That could be. Webbing does connect things, like the different glitches in reality we've been experiencing. I could be jumping to conclusions because you know they tried to eat us. It could also either be doing something or communicating to us what we need to do. We connected with something a few days ago, suggesting at least a portion of what we walked is out there somewhere..i don't know

*hunger* comes the whisper. *hunger* ... and it fades again.

"hunger for what?" Amy says aloud, exasperatedly. "How do we help you?" She looks over at Danielle, and shrugs. "It is perplexing, right?" Yeah, she's confused.

Amy looks at Danielle, and then at the hospital. She sighs once, and then says, "I'll be back." She heads over to the door down to the basement, unlocks it, and heads down.

The basement, like the upper floor, has multiple tiny webs, only these have not been cleaned away, and so they are more explicitly in swirls and arcs and lines. Jagged, broken, but they do resemble segments of the Pattern. They are all over the floor, walls, and ceilings, and in them, small spiders scuttle.

Scuttling spiders everywhere. "Well, if you eat me, at least Danielle knows where I went," she mutters. She tries to avoid stepping on the spider webs ... and the spiders ... as she heads towards that secret door. "Seriously, we don't speak spider," she mumbles. "What is it you want?"

The webs are hard to avoid, byt Amethyst can do her best, and then she is at the door, and beyond is a corridoer - the larger webs within have been tidied up, and now it is an entire wall of white, with little brown or bright lumps of movement within that wall. It gets narrower as she goes on. Almost like a funnel. A funnel web.

A funnel. Lovely. The petite doctor is kind of glad she's one of the smaller members of the group so far, as it means she can get further without too much trouble. She does move forward. They cleared out the corridor themselves, at least the start of it. She steps in, looking sharply at any webs she can see. Are they moving? Are there spiders headed her way?

There are certainly spiders; myriad tiny shapes. No big ones. Even the larger bodies are gone, although a hint of a dark mass within the white indicates they have not gone far. Nothing *big* is moving.

A sound like a moaning sob of hunger comes from beyond the narrowing of the webbed pathway.

Amy takes a breath, but the healer in her is very curious as to what is hungry and what it needs to eat. Hopefully not her. She squeezes into the narrowing of the pathway, seeing if she can get there.

Soon there is web below and above her, and then it opens out, and she can see downwards... she will have to climb down six feet or more, but then again, if she has come this far, surely she should go on?
Just ahead, down the slope, the corridor jinks to the left. It is dimly lit from that direction. No shadows move.

A bright spider drops in slow motion past Amethyst's face.

Amy stops at the spider dropping past her face. She eyes it dubiously. "Are you telling me to go down, like you did?" she wonders. There's a hint of a laugh then. "I must be crazy, I'm talking to spiders." Still, she's not Random's child for nothing. She looks at the way down, and then she says, "Here we go, let's find out what is going on." Or well, she can try. So, down she goes. She might be halfway down before she realizes, "Don't ask me how I'm going to get back up though."

The webs are sticky, and now her hands are too, and she is in a sticky white corridor, and... around the corner comes that moan of hunger once more.

"Ick," is Amy's comment on the sticky web. "Though I guess I can climb up that." She takes a breath, refuses to wipe her hands on her clothing, and then turns to head around the corner. "What are you? Where are you? Why are you so hungry?" Pause. "Please don't be an Amy eating monster. I don't know how I'll explain that to Gavin."

Take a centaur, half human and half horse. use that idea, but apply it to spiders, using a redheaded woman and a spider of about horse size. Then, to make sure you have it captive, cut off the legs are the upmost joint, and bind its arms to the wall. Leave for... long enough for it to be entirely emaciated. Something that is almost but not quite a skeleton faces her. The lovely fall of red hair does not entirely disguise the sunken cheekbones, the wasted flesh and mother of pearl skin that is almost as white as the webs here. The prisoner looks at Amethyst and sobs, "Hungry."

Amy stares for a moment. "Hungry indeed," she says. "I - don't know exactly what you eat? I'm Amy." Food doesn't get names, right? She hopes. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

The only answer is a whimper, "Hungry..." The prisoner sways, held up by the bonds on her wrists, trying to reach Amethyst.

"If you eat me, I can't help you," Amy says. She stays out of reach, but takes in the details. "Okay, look. I don't know why you're here, but this is not right. What normally feeds you? Help me help you!"

"So hungry..." The creature leans against the wall, where a dent in the webbing shows it has been here for some time.

Amethyst rolls with advantage -1 at difficulty 10, using no talents or gifts.
The result is a success.

Under the white of the 'floor', shapes are creeping towards Amethyst. These look about the size of the larger spiders before. The hungry ones.

The bitey ones.

Amy sighs as it seems she's not getting any answers. "Can't think about anything except - " Amy notices the creeping things, and she shakes her head. "Right, I'm out of here. You can be hungry a bit longer, it looks. And we can try to figure out what to do with you. I mean, surely you're a prisoner for a reason. I think?" Her words go along with an exit back through the tunnel, because she's foolhardy and crazy, but she doesn't want to be spider food.

The stickiness of the webs is in her favour now, for the slope is... difficult but not impossible. She makes the top of it as the first of the large spiders gets to the corridor. She makes the secret door by the time it is atop the slope.

Amy makes her way out, SLAMS the door and locks it. "Ugh. I am going to be sticky for a week," she exclaims.