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So many doors yet to open... and here's just one of them...
In the midst of all the luxury - in fact, just across the hall from one most decadent ballroom, lies the Rugosa Chamber. It bears none of the rich reds and greens of its namesake, but instead is a portrait in charcoals... Its floorboards are bare as the day they were laid, save the light coating of dust that remains virtually invisible until the light of midday streams in from a window set high on the wall.
That window, in fact, houses a large circular fan, the kind that whispers a subtle undercurrent of perpetual whoosh-whooshing, and stirs the drapes that hang like funeral shrouds at odd angles from every part of the ceiling.
Those dusky curtains create a maze, of sorts, through the room, diffusing the occasional light and making hiding places in an otherwise empty chamber... empty, that is, except for the large circular cushion in the center of all that veiling... Schönen's bed, and the small pallet that lies beside it, the place where her faithful cherub sleeps.
Only one other decoration embellishes the room, on the north wall - Leviathan's signature, a circle with the pointed, inverted star, the head of the black goat, burned into the paneling at her own touch. A closet houses all the rest - a carpet bag containing the tools of her trade, some ink bottles and needles, pliers and propane torches; the few pieces of simple cotton clothing she requires (this is not a woman to fuss over wardrobe, after all); and the wooden practice dummy, her mook jong, which has yet to find a home among the many still-empty rooms in the house.
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