Emesha Vehrnawp and her son the Viscount Arpad Vehrnawp were the last surviving members of the ancient Dhampyr house of Coldsolace and, though they could not live in it, of course, Coldsolace Keep was their birthright. Where the scions of most historic houses might expect to face the dramas of social engagements and maintaining the upkeep of their estates, the Counts and Countesses of Coldsolace had the solemn duty of maintaining the Hypostatick field around the keep to ensure that none of the Liches ever escaped to wreak havoc on Shadow, with a fair degree of success. Their day-to-day lives revolved around Hypostatick machinery and observations of the keep’s reluctant inhabitants. Emesha added her observations to a voluminous tome begun by her forebears, whilst Arpad preferred to stick to the aspects of Hypostatick Philosophy that the role required.
Unfortunately, that is where their differences first arose.
The first evidence Emesha had that Arpad had become involved with the Noble Society of Hypostatick Philosophers came during the height of the Lakhma crisis. As the sky was filled with roiling clouds and coiling tentacles and Emesha was busier than ever making sure that the Hypostatick field wasn’t compromised by the phenomenal amounts of Hypostatick energy being unleashed all the time, Arpad would instead spend his hours in his private basement laboratory and sending messages by homing bat. She intercepted one of these messages by accident once when one of the bats flew too close to the field and fell to her feet as a charred little corpse. She had been curious about her son’s activities, though had always given him his space - it did not do to smother one’s heirs too much – so she sneaked a look and was extremely surprised and then more than a little worried to see that it was addressed to Doctor Rosetta Barkham and contained detailed research about the locations of various obelisks which might pose a threat to them. The letter was quietly destroyed and Emesha tried to think nothing more of it.
After Lakhma’s defeat and the ensuing silence from any members of the Noble Society, Emesha began to hope that Arpad would turn a page and leave the whole business behind him, but she was to be quickly disappointed. Only a week after the skies cleared, he summoned a cadre of former Noble Society lackeys to the Lodge which had become their ancestral home once the keep was repurposed. He did this quite openly, declaring to all Coldsolace that he was going to see the Noble Society reborn to further the goals of Hypostatick Philosophy. Emesha was appalled.
Those who answered his summons were a disreputable bunch – those too low in the Noble Society to have suffered the same fate as the others, now jumped-up and high on their own ignoble exaltation, or those, like Arpad himself, who had supported the Society at a distance, too cowardly to do so publicly. Emesha could only watch them come and go from the lodge with disdain.
But then, not long after that, came the day that she discovered evidence of what was, in her eyes, the ultimate betrayal.
She had been looking through the logbook, auditing old entries. The majority were in her own hand but just a few were written by Arpad and it was one of these from some time ago that took her notice. It was clear that what was written there now was not what had been written there originally. A clumsy act of deletion had taken place and over the top Arpad had written an account of a Lich which had destroyed itself by interacting to vigorously with the Hypostatick field.
The first part of the issue was the Emesha could not recall the event in question, but when she double checked the count numbers from before and after the event there certainly had been one Lich missing. But why had the entry been changed? She decided to confront her son about it directly, sure that there would be a very logical answer. Unfortunately, now that Arpad was a rising star in the new Noble Society, it turned out that there was and he was not at all ashamed to admit it.
“I released one of them,” he said matter-of-factly over the breakfast table, not even looking up from his newspaper.
“You did what?” Emesha was, for want of a better word, aghast. No Vehrnawp had released a Lich on purpose since the creatures were first imprisoned in their keep. “What on earth were you thinking?”
“M. Marveille of the Noble Society requested it for one of their projects and I saw no reason to deny him.”
“But you saw reason enough to conceal that you had done it?”
“Well,” he replied, suppressing a yawn, “I knew that you would not approve and there was no point antagonising you, then.”
“Then what has changed?”
“Circumstances,” the viscount replied, finally looking up. “I am now the Grandmaster of the New Noble Society of Hypostatick Philosophy and I see no reason-”
At this point the Former Baron could not contain his mirth.
“Grandmaster?” he laughed, “Grandmaster!? Your boy sure does have delusions of grandeur, doesn’t he? Why, I haven’t even heard of this New Noble Society!”
Emesha seemed a little put out. “If you’d let me finish my story, Franck, darling.”
“But of course, my dear. But. Of. Course!”
“I see no reason whatsoever to deny any connections I might have had with them in the past. Besides, I need no longer live in fear of your interference.”
“And why might that be?”
“Because, dearest mother, I’m disowning you. I planned to tell you this evening, but now is as good a time as any. I’d like you to pack your things and leave the lodge before noon, please.”
“But… but I’m still the Countess!”
“Indeed, but that hardly matters now. Why, it’s hardly mattered these past few centuries. I’m not sure why you should be the exception now.”
“But-”
Arpad stared at her very intently. “Mother, if you do not do as I ask, I will ensure that you are made to.”
At this, two of the most disreputable-looking members of this ‘New Society’ appeared through the door behind him, their eyes filled with violence.
Emesha left as meekly as she was able.
“And so you see, I have been locked out. I no longer have the access that I used to and that is going to be a problem when it comes to getting you inside the keep.”
“Oh, my dear, dear, Emesha,” the Former Baron said sadly, all trace of his earlier amusement gone, “it is so hard a thing to be betrayed by your nearest and dearest, is it not?”
“Yes. I feel I much better understand your position all these years, now – but, say, now that Tiberius is presumably dead, can’t you be reinstated as the Current Baron Von Spektr?”
“I suppose I could,” said the Former Baron slightly wistfully, “but no – I’ve had quite enough of all that. Besides, Tiberius has forever tainted the Grand Chateau for me.”
“Wouldn’t it be rather useful, though?” Gulliver asked. “You know, ‘avin’ all of ‘is equipment and books and things?”
“And forsake the Colony? I wouldn’t dream of it!” He shook his head vigorously. “But what about you, Emesha? What are we going to do about you?”
“What is there to do? I’m locked out of the Lodge, kept away from the Keep. There isn’t anything I can do, is there?”
“Surely you must know a back way in that Arpad doesn’t, though? You always were good at keeping secrets.”
“Well,” the Countess replied after a moment’s thought, “there is one way in he might not have secured – but it is rather dangerous and it would require some very specialist equipment.”
Gulliver gulped, but the Former Baron seemed merely to sigh with contentment.
“Oh, Emesha,” he said, “you do know how to make an old man happy.”
Gulliver sighed. He’d have said something to express his current misery, but there was no way either the Countess or the Former Baron would be able to hear him, encased as he was in an over-sized brass and leather diving suit with a hose connecting him to a cacophonous air pump chugging away on the deck of the small fishing boat Emesha had rented for their use. The boat was being tossed about by ferocious waves, perilously close to Coldsolace’s imposing cliff-face, whilst Gulliver, Emesha and Franck plodded along the seabed towards the entrance of a submerged cave.
It was incredibly dark and murky; what little light Gulliver’s hypostatick lamp produced being swallowed up by silt from the seabed as the waves churned and large, sinuous shapes flickered through the chaos. Gulliver was struggling not to be mixed up with it, even weighted down as he was, and it was all he could do to inch his way forwards until he began to encounter the hard rock walls of the cave entrance, which was where he’d been told to stop. A few moments later the hypostatick glow of his companions emerged from the silt and he breathed a pumped sigh of relief, though the next part was going to be trickier.
Just a few feet ahead of them, though it was impossible to tell at that moment, lay the hypostatick barrier that kept the Liches inside Coldsolace Keep and it still needed to be circumvented if they wanted to get inside themselves. For this, Emesha had rigged up their hypostatick lanterns to interrupt the flow of the barrier, but to work, they had to be applied to the barrier with considerable care as making the two come into contact too suddenly or with too much force was likely to call a small (and under the water, potentially catastrophic) explosion. They also needed to use all three lanterns together. With the amount of turbulence and silt surrounding them right then, Gulliver wasn’t sure how that could possibly be coordinated.
Franck took the lead, once he was vaguely within sight, plodding the few extra steps towards the barrier, which became suddenly visible in the light of his lantern: a sheet of rippling purplish energy which the ocean seemed to batter itself against. Gulliver could see that the water beyond it was much less murky as he followed a couple of steps behind. Emesha was also following, just a little to one side.
Franck raised his lantern and Emesha did likewise. Gulliver, who was, by now, standing right in front of the barrier moved to do the same, then fumbled his lantern so that it slipped from between the leather-gloved fingers of his diving suit. He watched in unsurprised horror as it dropped towards the seabed, tossed this way and that by the tumultuous current, the barrier mere inches away. And then it wasn’t.
It happened so fast and in the midst of such murk that Gulliver was never sure exactly what occurred. He only knew that there was a blinding purple flash, a rush of current which sent him hurtling forwards in a torrent of silt into waters which had, a moment before, been clear and still and then he saw the rocky wall of the cave looming before him, felt himself smash into it with tremendous force and was dimly aware of water leaking into his suit before his vision clouded into oceanic depths.
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