In the Lake that Should be Sea
8th of February 2007 A.D.
"As confident as I have to be, this is the right thing to do. Embermane did not deserve to be mutilated in the plots of the Fallen," you answer without missing a beat. About to add what you'd do should he turn to malice and be deaf to reason you fall silent as the priest gives a short sharp nod. The right way to go about it after all then.
"I'll check the files, have someone check the files, they are under lock and key, few copies of them made least they come to the wrong kind of attention."
"Couldn't you just make a lot of them, hold them in many places so that the enemy would have little hope of destroying all of them?"
"If only we had an infinite number of trustworthy souls willing to fight this battle," Father Forthil answers wearily.
It's the damn secret again, never enough people, never the right answers to hand because you have to hide monsters from the world. Maybe if people knew the kind of war the Church, or parts of it at least is helping to fight across the world they'd be a bit more supportive. It's one of those things that isn't spoken of often, but all too clearly seen in lowering attendance. Faith isn't as easy as it used to be, maybe because they are hiding away the miracles.
***
"You think all telling people that Hell is indubitably real and the Devil's Own walk abroad would do is make them go to Church more?" Lash picks up a chocolate truffle a she speaks, though she isn't smiling as she is wont to do when taking that tone. "Remember the Wars of Religion?"
"Not personally," you answer dryly. "God doesn't really care about all that does he, that was all the greed of prices and the misunderstanding of prelates..."
"And now..." she raises a finger. "There is one more side in the war, the position that this or that piece of doctrine does not matter is
also doctrine and when you know for a fact that devils are trying to deceive you any piece of doctrine could be a Trojan Horse. Today it's grace alone, not good works, tomorrow it's making sacrifices of Baphomet."
"Wait," you narrow your eyes. "Isn't that a medieval Frankish corruption of Mohamed?"
"Yes, hence my point, men will
invent demons for those they dislike to supposedly worship, imagine how much worse it would be if they knew what was out there."
"So why don't the Fallen just rip the curtain themselves?" you ask trying to look at the other side of thing.
"Because no matter what man, invested with free will might choose to do with such insights in the long run in the short run they would invite a reaction." She corkscrews her finger vaguely skyward. "One they would
not enjoy."
Is that what all of them think or just Lasciel you wonder, The Great Chicago Fire isn't what one would think of as subtle. Still that's not what you'd come over to ask. "D'you know of anything about the prison itself on the lake? I don't know if Harry told you but it's meant to have a five pointed star at its base."
"A warning that he'll probably die if he goes there before he picks up the Coin in full, though of course that might be a lie I was led to believe the better to sell it. One interesting thing is that the threat was supposedly from the White Council as much as the defenses of the island."
"And you are just
letting him look for it?" Your eyes snap to hers shocked.
"I trust Harry to be a good bit more clever than my other self assumed and I trust you to keep him out of trouble if that fails," comes an answer more plainspoken than most you can get out of her.
"But do you know where it is?"
In response she takes a faintly tourist-y map out of her purse and flips it open to where she had circled an area of the map in red. "Closest I can get."
Close enough, you think. If you join with the water of Lake Michigan you'd be able to feel the shore in that area and end up on the shore of the island with no name.
***
The next person you seek out is Lydia that evening. The white walls of her home rising up among still leafless trees accompanied by the sighing of the wind which if one listens to closely almost sounds like the baying of hounds rather excited hounds, that soon show themselves to guide you to the door. Inside you are surprised to find a meeting of the Order of the Cauldron going on where one of the hounds who had not come running to the door was introducing themselves to a new and intrigued company, at least they are intrigued now. Odds are good it had started more tentative.
"Hi Molly I wanted to call you but Clippy told me you were at dance... recital, no that's not the word. Show?"
"Urgh, yeah, Hope's in the ballet phase, hopefully not for much longer though."
But I'm trying to show Mom and Dad that just because there are more of you that doesn't mean you don't have time for family in original iteration, you add only to your self.
"Can I use your library to look for something?"
"Better, I'll help." You recognize that smile from the mirror. She's found something new that she can do.
The library itself is as dark and somber as ever, not so grand as to seem a showpiece, not so small as to be called an ordinary sort of study, that messy middle ground filled with leather tomes that had known the touch of who knows how many hands aligned in an order as purposeful as it is hard to guess at.
"There's an island on lake Michigan with no name, a prison for beings out of time, if you have anything on that...."
Before you had even finished speaking Lydia had raised her arms upwards, a cold wind rising with them. Books rattle in their places like bones in their coffins, the dust in the pages now given voice. The whispers grow and grow again, though never in any ineligible language, or maybe its in all of them that had passed dead lips. Then a black nameless book falls from the highest shelf yet floats down like a leaf on the wind right into Lydia's hand.
Your friend flips it open and reads slowly since she has to translate: "Upon the Lake That Should be Sea stands the Island that should be a Mountain, keeper of those things bright and protean which the world can no longer endure, yet which cannot be Cast Out for in the doing too much would be given to Those Beyond that they did not know before. Power is there that can break the Fate of the world, or reforge it. Once there was a dwelling-of-men there, once the island listened to harvest songs and delighted in the laughter of children and it was content in the children-of-earth it guarded, but in the Year of the Lord 1854 the deadly bile..." she frowns. "I think this just means 'Cholera', anyway cholera washed them away on black tides. None know the cause only that it became more perilous by far to tread there..." she stops again, longer.
"What?" you ask at last.
"It's just a note in my father's hand that says 'Kemmler', my father says that's a good reason to leave sleeping monsters lie, but that seems foolish to me after all I've seen. Sleeping monsters tend to wake up."
As if on cue another book falls down from a high shelf and this one slimmer and newer. "The new guardian managed to persuade one of the local men-of-business to open a canning factory on the island in the hopes of returning the spirit of the place to greater tranquility though it served him little in the end for the mortals were..." another stop, this one to edit less than polite terms you suspect. "Superstitious and foolish. They gave to the island only fear and anger so that is all they received in return."
"So the spooky prison for monsters likes... people?" you half ask. "We can probably find people for it."
"We are people right?" Lydia is obviously ignoring her father. "We should go and greet it."
What do you do?
[] Wait to learn that the Church might know about Father Francis
[] Find the island by entering the lake and go there
-[] Write in with who
[] Write in
OOC: Porter does not remember more than what he told you, that there was something in the water that did not help with the fire. He spent a lot of time alone and it was not good or his memory, or rather his ability to distinguish things outside of his nature and those of the other elements. 
