Snippet #2823277

A great many things happened all at once. The loud, piercing roar of Anna's pistol rang through the air as she fired; Father Mycroft jerked back in his seat milliseconds afterward, the bullet smashing into his skull with great force; the other robed men all made noises of alarm and started to rise; Margaret and Charles all leveled their pistols at them, while Sonia turned to deal with their guide; overall, it was a great scene of chaos and pandemonium.

And then all at once, the lights went out.

Snuffed out by some unseen, invisible force, the candles lighting the room all extinguished at the same time, bathing the room in darkness. Shouts of alarm echoed through the blackout, and the sound of a scuffle sounded out as Sonia tussled with the maid. Then just as suddenly the fighting seemed to stop, and all was silent.

Then, just as suddenly as they had gone away, the lights came back on. The candles flickered back into life, their flames illuminating the room once more.

A most curious scene would meet Anna's eyes as she surveyed the room in the aftermath. The robed cultists, the corpse of Father Mycroft, the maid that had escorted them...

They were all gone.

Vanished without a trace, gone as if they'd never been there at all. The only evidence that they had been there at all, in fact, was a few turned over chairs, and a laid splatter of blood dripping over Mycroft's chair and part of the table.

"What the hell?" Sonia was the first of the Dogs to speak up, bewilderment clear in her tone as her eyes searched the room. "What was that? Where did they go?"

"I...I am not sure," Margaret murmured beside her. She glanced back and forth between the two main exits of the room: the door they had come through, and a door on the far left well that led to an as of yet unexplored pathway, or antechamber, or separate room entirely. But neither door looked disturbed at all, and they hadn't exactly heard any of the cultists physically leave the room.