Brazen Wolfe Tabletop

The Carafion

14Carafion

“I’m telling you Jess I have a bad feeling about this” Steve babbled as he walked past another bookcase that appeared to be filled from top to bottom in empty glass phials.

“Shut it Steve, this place has been abandoned for years. People only tell us to stay away because they feel bad about looting a dead mans workshop.” Jess snapped back at him, the torchlight shimmering across endless shelf upon shelf of empty glass phials, each one a bit different in hue and size but all roughly the same shape. Stopping in front of a collection of a few different phials on a workbench she started to stuff them into the bag tied to her hip.

Steve jumped and shrieked causing Jess to whip around drawing her dagger. “Over there,” Steve shuddered and pointed towards a bookcase. “There was something there, something moved.”

Rolling her eyes Jess stuffed a fifth phial into her bag before going to investigate. Judging by the level of dust on the shelves no one had been here for years. “You fool, it was nothing. Probably a mouse, look at the dust! Nothings been touched for years..” Jess stopped, cut short noticing the circular shape in the dust where a glass phial used to be. Touching the circle where there was a perfectly clean circular imprint it was obvious that something had been moved from the shelf recently.

“Did you take one of the phials?” Jess asked, staring at the bookcase with the missing Phial. When Steve didn’t respond she whirled around “Answer me damnit, did you take..” she stopped staring at empty space. The last space she had seen her childhood friend, well, acquaintance, was a bookshelf next to the desk she was taking phials off of. The bookshelf itself was missing almost all the phials, a few lay broken into pieces on their side towards the back of the shelf. “Steve! this isn’t bloody funny. Where are ya?”

Moving forward and examining the shelf she noticed the same thing as the other shelf, a dusty shelf with many little rings where no dust has gathered. Looking down at the ground she looked for signs of where Steve had wandered off too, noticing his footprints finishing in front of the bookcase she squatted to look at the the peculiar marks on the ground, as if something heavy had been dragged backwards and fast enough that they had left the ground.

Drip, drip, drip.

Swatting at the back of her head Jess wondered why water would be dripping from the ceiling, it wasn’t raining and when they left, despite the moon being absent, it was a clear enough night. Looking up she dropped her torch to cover her mouth in horror. Steve swung backwards and forwards, his face frozen in panic while his body was wrapped in a cacoon of a glossy white liquid that appeared to be solidifying. Forgetting her torch she ran from the room, pushing through the door to get far away from the cursed workshop as she headed towards the town. As she left the door she felt a sharp pain in her side like a red hot knife lancing her flesh. Ripping her shirt up she looked down to find a spider like creature burring its face into her skin and the glass like carapace that covered its body and legs seemed to shift and liquify as it began to coat itself and the flesh around where it was biting. As she watched in horror she watched as the phials in her open bag began to creep open giving birth to eight spindly legs and a wicked head with large mandibles. she went to throw her bag to the ground but with a sickening feeling in her stomach her arms wouldn’t respond. As she fell to the ground she felt a numbness spreading from her side where the creature had buried it’s head, she could only watch as several more of the glass phial-like creatures scurried from the open door to the workshop. As her vision faded and her body stopped responding completely the creatures began to spray her in strands of a sticky glass like substance before she witnessed them, as a collective, begin to drag her paralysed body back into the workshop.