text: [Themes: horror, horror]
  
  The letter was hand delivered but you didn't see by whom and it was certainly after the last post would have been delivered. Checking your pocket watch you notice it's much later than you realised and it is fast approaching midnight; this was something which happened all to often when your head is buried in your studies. You turn the letter over and you see that it was sealed with a purple wax seal you don't recognise. The insignia is a large letter G with what looks like a tentacle wrapping itself about the letter. Your name is written in neat letter across the front, with such precision that you could almost believe it was done with a printing press but the strokes of the fountain pen are detectable enough that this was certainly written by hand.
  
  You don't often receive unexpected correspondence and when you do, it's usually a bill you managed to forget would be due; your head is usually so caught up in your studies that it's easy to forget these day-to-day trivialities.
  
  There's something about this letter which sets you on edge and you can't quite put your finger on why you feel so uneasy about opening it. You hold it up to one of the candles you have burning by your desk. You can't tell much more than you could before but it seems like there is a letter inside and perhaps that's the edge of a watermark you can see on the envelope. You don't think you've ever been sent correspondence in a watermarked envelope before and that uneasy feeling isn't getting any better.
  
  What do you do with the letter?
  
  [Author's Note: In a slightly steampunk, Cthulhu-esque setting. You're an apprentice wizard and you find out your sister has been kidnapped. You need to rescue her from the evil cultists!]
  
  > open it straight away.
  You take the letter to your desk, your fingers tingling slightly where they touch the paper. Perhaps you're just being paranoid, it is getting late and it's probably just your imagination anyway. You break the seal of the letter and what feels like a train hits you in the face and you go flying across the room before everything goes black.
  
  You can hear a woman's voice saying your name and you gradually realise that it's your mentor. She's shaking you by the shoulders and sounds different, she sounds scared. You force one eye open, if only to stop the shaking and she collapses with what looks like relief. You open both eyes and take in your surroundings.
  
  You're at the far side of the work room as your mentor calls it (the laboratory as you prefer) and you can see your desk over on the other side. All around you are broken bottles, spilled liquids, squashed boxes and even a shelf lying on the floor, its contents smashed and ruined. As you become fully conscious again your back tells you that you must have hit that hard and your nose feels like it's twice the size it should be. You raise a hand to your face to feel the damage and your arm protests with a sharp pain; you look down to see a shard of glass from what was probably a bottle sticking out through the arm of your robes.
  
  "What..." you mumble groggily, "what happened?"
  
  "I was hoping you'd be able to tell me." said your mentor, not unkindly but there was a note to her voice which you knew meant that she wasn't happy, and no wonder with the destruction in the laboratory.
  
  "The letter." you manage to say, remembering now what had happened. "Where's the letter?"
  
  "Letter?" asked your mentor. She looked around and saw the innocuous looking envelope on the stone floor near the desk. "I see it." she said, "Is it important?"
  
  "Did this." you manage to say, though every word causes agony in your face.
  
  "Really? A letter managed to do this?" asked your mentor, suddenly sounding less annoyed and more intrigued. "That is most unusual, I wonder what was used." she muttered as she made her way across the room to pick up the letter from the floor.
  
  "No!" you cry, "Don't touch it!". But your mentor already had it in her hands and was turning the envelope over with a look of fascination on her face.
  
  "How interesting." she said, now completely absorbed in examining the envelope and seeming to have forgotten about your fragile state entirely. "What did you do to trigger the attack?"
  
  "I just opened it." you reply, "I haven't even seen what's inside yet." You grab a piece of cloth from under the fallen shelf next to you and tie it around your arm as tightly as you can, above where the glass shard is sticking out from your robes. "Any chance of a hand here?" you ask as you contemplate pulling the glass out of your arm and you're not sure you can bring yourself to do it on your own.
  
  "Hmm?" she responded glancing up at you. "Oh yes, of course, I do apologise, this is just so, interesting." She still had hold of the letter as she moved across the room to you.
  
  "Can you just grab this and pull?" you ask, grimacing already at the thought.
  
  "Is that safe?" your mentor asks.
  
  "We'll find out." you whimper as you screw up your face and brace yourself for the pain.
  
  Your mentor puts a piece of cloth over the glass, plants her foot on the floor, grips the shard of glass and in one swift motion, pulls the glass clean out of your arm.
  
  The pain is sharp and it feels like your whole arm is on fire, but you pull back your robe sleeve and wrap another cloth around the wound and the bleeding soon stops.
  
  Once you've managed to extricate yourself from the furniture and your mentor has got you safely seated into your bed, you ask her for the letter.
  
  She seems reluctant to hand it over to you, professional curiosity you suppose, but she knows she must and she hand the envelope to you, the weight of the wax seal causing the envelope to flap open.
  
  As you open the envelope, you can see that the letter inside is acid green and you take the single piece of paper out of the envelope and open it up and read what it says.
  
  Your heart feels as though it has stopped and your breathing is halted. Your sister, your baby sister.
  
  Your mentor asks "What does it say?" when she sees the look on your face and when you don't respond she takes the letter from your fingers as when she reads what it says for herself. You hear her gasp when she sees it.
  
  Your brain starts to come to life again and you look at your mentor and as "What time is it now?". It's only then that you realise that she isn't in her usual daytime attire, in which she would have her pocket watch always attached to her waistcoat. She was in fact, in a nightgown and you blush and look away politely as the inappropriateness of seeing your mentor so attired strikes you.
  
  "I believe it's around midnight." she replies, "though I confess I don't know exactly."
  
  You go to your desk and find the small clock you keep in the corner of it, behind a small stack of books and papers. It was twenty minutes after midnight, and whomever had delivered this letter knew you had enough time to be able to get Langdown Hall but presumably delivered it so late so as to try to ensure you were alone, or dead if the magical booby trap was anything to go by.
  
  Do you go to Langdown Hall?
  
  > go to Langdown Hall but insist you go alone.
  You pull up in the taxicab outside the gate to Langdown Hall. You pay the driver and he leaves with the horses at a trot. The gates look imposing as you stand there alone in the dark and start to question whether it was wise to follow the instructions of the letter and come alone as you have.
  
  You push the gate to the grounds and it makes an eerie creak as it swings open. You look around nervously, wondering if you're being watched, wondering if an ambush is laying in wait for you.
  
  You step past the gate and onto the path which leads up to the grand, old stateky home. The house had been without an occupant for a number of years after the family who owned it died out and the distant relative they left it to wasn't able to pay for its upkeep. The stone of the building was black with ornate windows and rounded towers at the corners. Everyone knew the building but there were varying reports of the size of it inside. Whichever rumour you chose to believe though, the house was indisputably vast and imposing.
  
  You reach the heavy, oaken front door and peer around you. The sky is clear and the full moon is bright, lighting the grounds surrounding the house well, but also casting deep shadows. You take a deep breath, grasp the large iron door knocker and slam it into the door three times. The sound feels deafening in the silence of the night, but no other sound follows as you listen for a sign that someone heard your knocks.
  
  You stand there, waiting for something to happen but nothing does. Finally, you decided you're going to have to try the door. You turn the handle and push the door and it opens with an ominous creak.
  
  "Hello?" you call as you enter the foyer. Your hand is still on the door handle; having something solid in your hands and being connected to the exit makes going into the house a little less terrifying, though not by much.
  
  The light from outside casts itself into the entrance hall enough for you to see a sweeping staircase leading to an upper floor. Peering around, you also see there is a door to the side and underneath the stairs it looks as though there is a corridor leading further back into the house.
  
  Suddenly, the door is wrenched from your hand and closes with a slam, knocking you off balance and you fall into a small table by the wall, knocking it over and whatever was on it clattering to the floor.
  
  You pat your hands around in the dark, trying to find the wall to help you to your feet, and as you do, your hand falls on something which must have been on the table. You pick it up and wait for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. It looks like a notebook. Perhaps you'll be able to read it when you have light to see by again, for now, you place it in a pocket of your robes.
  
  You get to your feet and call out into the house again "Hello? I'm here. Amelia? Hello?". Your voice echoes a little in the grand house but there's no sign that anyone heard you.
  
  Which way do you go?
  
  > go up the stairs.
  You head back into the entrance hall with your candle held out in front of you. You can see the table that you knocked over by the doorway lying on its side and as you look around the room you now notice that there is not only the door you had seen on the right hand side of the entrance hall as you came in but also another on the opposite side too.
  
  Which way do you do?
  
  > go through the door on right.
  You keep your hand on the wall as your make your way around the edge of the entrance hall until you reach the door at the side. You try calling out "Hello?" one more time before you turn the handle and open the door.
  
  The room has a large window at one end and the moonlight is illuminating enough of the room for you to make out that the walls are lined with shelves of books. You step into the room and you're relieved this door hasn't closed behind you at least.
  
  You walk up to the shelves nearest the window and you read some of the spines of the books. They seem to be about various schools of thought regarding the magical arts and you even recognise some of them from your mentor's collection. You pull one of the books out and it's covered with a layer of dust as thick as the leather cover. You put it back on the shelf and cough in the cloud of dust you stirred up.
  
  One of the books then catches your eye as it has some symbols on the spine which look very familiar. You pull the letter out of your pocket and hold it up to the book.
  
  the book reads.
  
  the letter reads.
  
  All three of the symbols on the book are clearly on the letter as well. What can this book be you wonder to yourself. You pick up the book and immediately notice that it is only covered in a very thin layer of dust, this book hasn't been here for very long.
  
  You turn the book to face you and see that the cover is simply a huge eye with no further writing on it. You turn to look around you and just as your eyes are leaving the book, you're sure that you see the eye blink!
  
  You stare back at the book and the eye looks just as it had, an obvious painting of an eye and in no way a real one, but you're certain you saw it blink.
  
  What do you do with the book?
  
  > open the book and read it.
  This book might hold answers about who has taken your sister and why. You open the book and sit down on the floor, spreading the book open on the carpet in front of you in a patch of moonlight.
  
  As you turn the pages you see that the writing is a mixture of what looks to be latin and many more of the same strange symbols. At the centre of the book is a larger page which unfolds to show a drawing where the symbols feel like they're moving around the page and with an eye at the centre of it all.
  
  It feels like the eye is boring into your very soul and you can't take your eyes away from it. As you watch, the eye turns red and grows bigger. You can hear it's voice now, speaking a language you don't understand and yet you somehow know what it is saying. You belong to it now, you belong to this place and you were always destined to be.