text: [Themes: horror, horror]
  
  You take a deep breath, climb the ladder and poise yourself. You're not sure how you're going to be able to get your sister out of there, but you're confident that the first step is going to be stealth; going in there like a bat out of hell is going to lead to a quick death more likely than now.
  
  > If you didn't find the dagger, click here.
  You start to lift the hatch from the opposite side to where the hooded figures are standing so that the hatch will hopefully hide your entry to the room a little.
  
  You get really nervous the higher you lift the hatch, especially when you can't see the hooded figures to know if they have seen you or not. When the hatch is almost upright, it starts to slip a little and you panic as you grab it back to stability; you grab it with your other hand just as it started to fall and you breath a silent sigh of relief. Luckily the slip happened silently and the chanting never faltered, maybe luck is on your side you wonder.
  
  Your adrenaline is really surging through you now and your muscles are begging for you to run, use that adrenaline to get out of there, but you're not leaving without your sister, that's just a truth that you've known since you first read the letter they sent you.
  
  You get both of your feet onto the attic floor, still crouched as low as you can manage and you wait until you feel your mentor climb up into the attic too before you lower the hatch down, although you leave it only half covering the hole as you need to get out of here quickly once you've got your sister. You move as quietly as you can to the back of the attic, away from the hooded figures, still at a crouch and turn to look over at the circle of what you're sure now are cultists.
  
  > If you found the notes about who was needed for the ritual, click here.
  You think back to the notes you found in the parlour earlier and realise that might be quite important. What did it say again?
  
  Blood of an innocent. Magical blood, family connection.
  
  Find an apprentice, we don't want anyone with any real power here.
  
  Night of the full moon is the most powerful.
  
  They need magical blood as well as the blood of an innocent, which is why they sent you the letter, to get you to come here of your own accord, and it's why they chose your sister as the innocent, to make sure you would come. Now you're in the attic, you're giving them everything they need for their ritual, but you can't get your sister out without being up here. What you've also brought though, is your mentor and they have no idea she is here, you can only hope that makes all the difference.
  
  Suddenly, your mentor appears next to you, crouched down just as you are, with her eyes closed and chanting. You start with panic when you see her appear like that, you don't want the cultists to know she is here! She is obviously spellcasting though, and with nothing else happening, you realise that she hasn't just appeared to everyone, she has extended her veil to include you as well. You're not sure if she can listen to you whilst she's casting the veil, which obviously takes a lot more concentrated effort than just veiling herself, but you try anyway.
  
  "They need me for the ritual as well." you whisper, your mouth very close to her ear so as to only be audible to her. "We need to get her out without letting them grab me too."
  
  There's no response from your mentor as she continues to crouch there with her eyes closed and chanting. Then you notice a tiny nod and you can only hope that was her way of agreeing with you.
  
  "Ok, so we need a plan." you whisper hopefully and look at your mentor again. She continues on chanting and you wish more than anything you were back in the laboratory being taught by her again, no matter how hard the lessons were, they always made sense, you always knew what you were meant to be doing even if you couldn't do it.
  
  "Well, there's about a dozen of them," you whisper, trying to count the cloaked figures, "if we just try and take Amelia, even veiled, there's enough of them to stop us."
  
  You crouch there looking over at the circle of figures and wistfully whisper "If only I could look like them." At that, your mentor's eyes flick open and she looks right at you, nearly making you fall over backwards in surprise before she disappears.
  
  "Yes!" she whispers back to you and you wonder what she has planned now. You're feeling very exposed now, no longer veiled, but the circle of chanting cultists don't seem to be paying any attention to you luckily.
  
  You feel an energy falling over you and you realise it must be your mentor's doing. You look down at yourself and see that your brown apprentice robe is now black. You pull the hood up and find that it has deepened like the robes of the cultists, so that it now hides your face completely.
  
  "How do I look?" you whisper to your mentor but she doesn't respond; keeping up her veil and maintaining the robe change must be using up all of her concentration like the double veil had.
  
  You stand up and try to emulate the postures of the cultists in the circle, upright with steady shoulders, robe hood well forward but head up straight. You're still not sure how you're going to play this out, but you're feeling like you have a chance now.
  
  You stride confidently over to the circle of cultists and as you approach, you get a view of what they are surrounding. In front of the cultists is a seemingly random array of black candles and other small objects which you can't make out. There is a white symbol painted onto the floor which swoops around and has a line intersecting the curve.
  
  In the middle of the shape created by the lines is your sister, lying on her side, bound and gagged with tears silently running down her face.
  
  You see a gap wide enough between a couple of the cultists and go to stand in between them but before you get there, you realise that you're not chanting as they are and that might give the game away. You quickly try to emulate the sounds they're making though they don't seem to be making words other than Langdown in the middle of it.
  
  "Ffloo mwaf gralk Langdown wahg ftah" you say with them.
  
  "Fnloo mgwaf grthalk Langdown wgahn ftag" you try the next time.
  
  "Fngloo mgwnaf grthalkth Langdown wgahnag fhtagn" you manage the third time.
  
  "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Grthalkpth Langdown wgah'nagl fhtagn" you flow into saying just as you reach the circle and stand between the cultists. They don't seem to even acknowledge you arriving there.
  
  You stand in the circle of cultists, chanting their strange phrase with them a few times whilst you decide the best way to do this. You look around the floor at the various ritual objects being used and you see a bone which has been carved into a shiv which looks to be your best hope. You take a deep breath and step forwards towards your sister scooping up the bone shiv from the ground on the way.
  
  You sister starts to write about in her bonds, clearly terrified and you hate yourself for doing this to her, but it's the only thing you can think of. You crouch down and pull her up into a sitting position and position the bone shiv in front of her throat with your other hand holding her by the neck. The cultists haven't moved but their chanting is getting louder and you manage to suppress a shiver. You draw the bone shiv across her neck.
  
  You were expecting to get some blood trickling between your fingers then but your bluff hasn't worked and the bone shiv wasn't sharp enough to cut your hand to look like you had cut your sister's throat.
  
  In your desperation of the only plan you had not working, you pick up your sister to instead try and run with her to the exit. The cultists have realised that you're not one of them though and several of the cultists jump in towards you with two of them managing to land on top of you. One of the cultists produces and dagger and uses it to slit your throat before you can do anything about it.
  
  You never got to see if your sister got away or not. You could only hope that your mentor was able to do something to save her at least.