Tomb of the Lost

[kilnarak]

[ Ari is a good boy who doesn't wanna hurt Marche or Edge. But when Sara falls he rushes to give her space to breathe. He wants her and the others to leave the room so he can burn the dark away. ]

Ari held back, kept to the corner with the others. He wanted to move, to do something, he didn't like just standing here. He knew where Marchelute was, but the worry that going nearer would hurt his mate held him back. He could wait. He could wait until Sara told him that Marchelute and the presumably friendly man-with-a-knife-who-had-maybe-stabbed-Hau had left the corner. Or at least until Marchelute had left the corner.

And when they had left, when they had moved safely away... then he was determined to burn out all of the dark in the room. He wondered if the statues would burn, was there any cloth clinging to them, anything flammable? He was considering that, watching as Sara ran back and forth to scrawl a bloody message in the dust. He didn't see the red flame, at least not immediately - it was behind him. He didn't examine the mural, it didn't seem important.

And then something happened. The statues seemed to be moving - he wasn't sure if it was a trick of the low-light, how he had felt they were moving earlier, but they seemed to be closing in on Sara. He couldn't tell where Marchelute and the knife-man were, all the dark blended together. He could only hope that they weren't close, as he was pretty sure that Sara had just run out of time in the dark. He didn't wait for any direction, he sprinted forward toward her, the fire bright in his hand. The others still had their bubble of safety with the torch, now Sara needed one.

He grew the fire in his hand as he ran, then willed it to flow over his body, wreathing his arms and shoulders in flames. He touched statues as he passed, trying to leave fire on them - he wasn't sure it would stay, if there was anything for it to burn, but maybe it would work. When he saw the statue that had grabbed hold of Sara, he loosed a jet of flame at it - hopefully it wouldn't burn her!

"A-are they gone? Are they far enough back?" He hissed as he approached her, worried. He didn't want to hurt them... "If-If they are... Y-You should go back to the others and-and get out of here. I'm... I'm gonna burn it all."

[tsukikoko]

[OOC: Sara gets mad. When she realises Ari is running over she scrawls a quick RUN in blood with the hand not currently held by a statue. IF Ari's fire does something to stop the statues, Sara runs away towards the others, thinking they may have to take their chances through the snarling mould door. Otherwise she slides the seeing glass towards Grace and Hau, tells them to grab it and begins to shift into a rhino.]

The time between Sara's arm being grabbed, her looking up into the 'face' of her assailant and parsing her situation, couldn't have been longer than a second or two. But for the shifter, already running on adrenaline and simmering anger, her world moved in slow and incredibly detailed clarity. She traced from the stone fingers, up the minute cracks threaded along a clay arm and by the time she was looking at the statue's face, Sara's expression was flint-eyed disdain and wrath. There was still fear, yes, she could not help how her heart hammered in her chest, or how dry her mouth became, because she knew how little time she had in the blackness, unable to breathe.

But she was so fucking done.

They had been put in a position of hurting one another, killing each other, just by mere existence. Now she would be killed in some brutal fashion, or have to watch those who might try to save her get hurt, or die, in the attempt. Meanwhile, if the fire were to come closer, Edge and Marchelute could be harmed yet further. Where in earlier years, Sara's reaction would have been one of panicked terror and desperation, now she felt only protective rage at the sheer audacity of it all. Why did people have to keep suffering this way?

"Alreet ya fuckin' wanker, this 'ow it is?" She hissed, aware of how small and choked her voice was, yet still threaded with viciousness. A shift bubbled beneath the surface, fuelled by her anger even in the face of how this place had twisted her powers, tried to make them wrong beneath her skin.

But before it could take root, out of the corner of her eye she saw Ari's fire moving, charging towards her.

Now she felt fear. Real, gut-wrenching fear for the two spectres of her friends, who likely had no idea what was happening. The shifter twisted, threw her tail towards her free hand in order to smear her palm in no small amount of blood. Then she reached for the floor, smearing a message that was in no way neat, but was certainly legible.

RUN

Sara needed Marchelute and Edge to move, get away from the nearing light, to save themselves before Ari accidentally killed them. She could think of no greater tragedy than a mate accidentally killing their partner; the spotted man would likely not forgive himself if such a thing occurred. But, other than her blood note, there wasn't much else the shifter could do to warn them. The fire was closing in, Ari trying to burn the statues in an effort to help her, another soldier was closing in. She would have to deal with the situation at hand now.

If Ari's fire successfully drove the clay soldier off Sara and she wasn't burnt to a crisp, the shifter reined in her shift, having realised that she might draw the ire of whatever entity despised her powers, which might draw yet more danger to her group. She darted away from the soldiers, trying to keep out of whatever grip they might be trying to re-establish on her, while replying urgently to Ari.
"No, no! They 'adn't left, they were reet beside me, like. Divvint burn the room!" Grateful for the breathable air he brought, but desperate to get his fire away from where her friends might be, the shifter tried to convince Ari to come back with her towards Hau and Grace. Given the living statues and lack of time they had to figure out a way around the group's lethality to one another, Sara found herself thinking they might have to take their chances with the snarling mould door. Perhaps they could find something through that door to solve their predicament, break a curse, who knew what. But they would have to try and reconvene with their friends later, or risk multiple fatalities.

If Ari's fire did not discourage the statues at all, the shifter's transformation spread like wildfire across her skin, lethargic in execution though it might be. Wrathful invisible presence be damned. It had hated her shifts before, but right now, she didn't care. Her anger demanded something large and predatory, a dragon springing to mind, but with the confines of the room, instead she had to turn to something smaller, though by no means small. A rhino's bulk, she hoped, would prevent the clay soldiers from keeping their grip on her. With weight, power and a horn on her side, Sara even considered how she might shatter and crush them.

Should she survive long enough to complete the shift, that is.

[Pearl Dragon]

[Kira rummages around for a femur, or other long and strong piece of bone, and helps mangled-man get some of the gunk off of him.  She will help him just enough to where he can help himself before backing quickly away just in case he decided to make a grab for her.]

Kira squeezed through the narrowing space, intent on moving forward as quickly as she could to put as much distance as possible between herself and the thing that had been hunting her. She saw an opening before her and made a b-line for it, realizing only a moment too late when the floor dropped out from under her the moment she stepped through it. Kira tumbled forward, and landed hard on her good side with a wet splat. The ground beneath her is a sticky, muted grey and she pushed herself up with a groan, accepting the onslaught of renewed agony as it beat its now-familiar drums in her jaw and open wounds. She peered around the room, wincing, and tried to sniff at the air. The overwhelming stench of rot, accented with an old cinnamon and clay, met her. The space was another hallway of sorts, and she already didn't like the long gashes that decorated the walls, nor the giant armored thing lying prone on its back amidst the bones and debris scattered about the area. She froze at the sight of it and stared fearfully at it, waiting for it to move or get up at the sound of her fall.

After a moment of scrutinizing silence, the giant neither stirred nor rose from where it lay, and now she was able to make out some pretty nasty wounds in its body and armor. She could only hope it was dead. Edging around it, back against the wall, Kira began to make her way past while giving the thing a wide berth. It was only when she'd managed to get past it that a slight movement from somewhere by the door made her jump nearly out of her skin. Kira spun, nearly tripping over a skull to face the man slouched by the doorway. Her own gold eyes met his, wide with terror. Her heart began a new sprint in her chest and a tremor raked through her body.

Although, the man also remained where he was for the most part. He was very much alive, that she was certain, but his own body was also decorated with deep wounds, and a large grey mass lay across his lap. Her ears slowly perked forward, eyes shifting up and down his form from the thing in his lap, the gash in his leg, and finally to his face.

"What? Never seen a sludge beast before?" He asked, and she flinched anew at the sound of his voice which strained, despite his attempt at humor. Kira shook her head slowly, still transfixed. She looked timidly at the grey mass, noticed how the skin of his chest matched the same sickly grey color, and then swallowed back a whimper. He didn't seem readily dangerous, but....after everything.....an internal struggle of whether to help him or not warred within her. She could help him, after all the white-faced boy had helped her. Surely that meant not everything in this place was dangerous? With one last look back at the dead giant, Kira pushed one leg out towards a pile of debris to feel around with a foot until she found a long enough bone, perhaps a femur. When she found one, she shuffled a little closer to the man, pausing every so often to gauge whether or not he was going to make a sudden move. If he didn't, she would get just close enough to push at the grey mass in a shoveling motion to try and push some of it away. She would do this just enough to where he could get the rest on his own before backing quickly away to a safe distance, watching again with uneasy terror as he freed himself.

[NightshadeVII]

[OOC: Edge is sad to learn that Sara hadn’t seen Faolan, bu he still heeds Sara’s words and runs towards the third door, telling Marche to come with him. He will attempt to open the third door, so that the two may seek cover.]

[Vaitris]

[OOC: Hau needs something to do so he asks Grace to help him prop open the door to the treasure room so they can make a quick retreat if needed.]

Hau hated this, despised every second of it. He was totally overwhelmed, attention torn in half a dozen different directions, trying to monitor at least as many potential threats. And how many of those would end up to be misguided allies as well? What should he worry about first? Worry about most? Or worry about at all? The encroaching dread? The suffocating darkness? The red flame that seemed to be lingering behind Grace? The shadow-that-was-supposedly-friends across the room? Or…

Were those statues moving? Hau squinted into the dark, his mind very reluctantly coming to accept the fact that they were. And they were reaching for Sara.

Well, fuck. Surprise and terror ran roughshod over his thoughts in quick succession. But even faster than that was Ari, who plunged into the clay army with his flame bared before Hau could recover enough sense to protest. He should’ve objected when Sara first dove into that deathtrap, but he had a feeling it wouldn’t have done much good.

As much as he wanted to follow, to be of some assistance instead of a liability, he knew he shouldn’t. He had no way to help them and doing so would only make the situation more dangerous for everyone. But he couldn’t sit still, he had to work towards something, or panic would consume him. He cast about. Sara and Ari would need an escape route. And so would he and Grace if the soldiers not currently occupied decided to come after them as well.

“Help me with the door.” Hau tugged on Grace’s arm again and motioned back towards the treasure room. The door to it was heavy stone and the bigfoot’s strength would move it faster than he could on his own. Once they had it propped open, he’d check on Sara and Ari. Hopefully by then, they’d be beating a hasty retreat.

[jarahamee]

[Cassius addresses the disembodied Sarkany voice, and would look for more escape routes in this new room. He also checks the bag to see if there is anything of use in it.]

The strange creature formed, and quickly. As Cassius struggled, then, wrenched hard, the bag came free in his hands. He didn't know what was in it, and right now it didn't matter. Faster than he would have liked, the creature formed itself, and reached out with an arm. His reflexes may have been fast, but they weren't fast enough to avoid the slime-creature's strike. His flesh burned and boiled beneath the creature's strange, half-formed fingers as if it was made of caustic material.

Run suggested the Beast, and likely wisely. The hair on his neck was prickling, and the strange creep of anxiety he associated with fight or flight rose in his chest. He wanted to fight, but how could he fight this thing? Was it even alive?


Then he heard Sarkany's voice. Or at least thought he heard it.

"Sarkany?"

He half-turned his head as he retreated towards the door. The young Draconic being had already gone beyond. He was not sure whether this creature would continue to pursue them, but it would not hurt to close the door behind to buy some time. And of course, to move onwards and out of this place to put more space between them and the creature.

He examined the room, dismayed to see the strange being already following them. What way could he go? He extended his instincts to look for anything that drew his attention, and put a hand in the satchel. What was of note here? Anything for this room?

[Marshmallow]

Might have thought that I posted already whooooops. Placeholder until I can flesh this out after dinner.

[Summary: Marche has only enough time to worry about Sara's stilted messages, and Ari, and the lack of reply about Draggo for a moment. Something dreadful is on the move, and even more pressing: the flame is moving too. Moving and spreading, lashing out as if to attack. Their safe zone shrinks considerably, and Marchelute hisses as it scalds him all over again. Survival becomes more important than answers, and he ducks out through the door with Edge to escape the flames. ]

[Sharei]

[OOC: Draggo looks for writing on the alter, realizes there's a monster and tries to exit via the second doorway.]



The juvenile tipped his head curiously at the alter and its tiny carved feet. He reached to pick one up, side-eyed the statues and then thought better of it. He took his hand away without having touched anything and went around to the other side of the alter to look at it from a new angle. Maybe there would be writing of some kind? This didn't follow any of Archie's traditional formulas, and he was starting to realize that there was something far more sinister at work. Kanagi was here somewhere too, wherever this was. Was Sohl? Marchelute had been. 

Gotta find the others... he thought, and glanced up at Cassius to ask the officer what he thought they should do. That was about the point that he saw the door opening, saw the creeping grey, and a shiver of fear rushed down his spine. 

They could come back to examine the alter later.

"This door!" he called. The dragon rushed to the still-closed door, the only other avenue of escape that wasn't occupied by monsters, and pushed it open.

[beastly]

Ooc: grace tells the others what the flame said, and helps Hau.

Grace still feels rather weak, but she devotes her remaining energy to help with the door. She doesn't have any better ideas.



"That fire, it-the? She was talking. She said that we stole powers and now the are... mad? And we need to give them back.... and then she said it was too late. " she explains who she was talking to.

[MP]

Ari, Sara, Hau, Grace:
Ari's items: hunting horn, human effigy
Sara's items: old spear, broken knife, seeing stone
Hau's items: maned pelt, human effigy
Grace's items: burning torch, rusty knife

The shadows wither back as Ari ignites the center of the room. In the blaze of new light, the group can see that the rows of soldiers continue to the opposite end of the room. They can see a rack by the door there. See the faces turned their way. In that same light, Sara, Ari, and Grace can also make out a fourth door set in the far end of the lefthand wall - the same wall as the hallway door. Hau, however, doesn’t seem to see it.

The clay bodies in Ari's path have failed to catch, but their armor is another story. Ancient silks and drawstrings are ablaze. Lamellae glow with heat. The gauntleted hand around Sara’s wrist is searing, its straps alight, blackening her skin. The statue doesn’t release her. Doesn't move at all. The soldier looms over her. Its fellow has frozen midstep, indifferent to the licking flames. Now that the moving shadows are gone, the soldiers are motionless.

With a low crackle, the straps burn through and snap. The gauntlet slips off the statue, off of Sara's wrist. The hand beneath has cracked from the heat, and something black can be seen through the clay, stinking like burnt leather. Like her own cooking
hand. It's a stiff grip, but breakable now that the brittle clay is cracking.

The statues in the wake of Ari's fireball are heating too abruptly, too much. The air around them, baked by fired metal and lingering felfire, is like a furnace. Some of the statues crack in the heat, sending clay shrapnel flying. Ari is lucky enough - agile and skilled enough, he understands with a reckless exhilaration - to have dodged the exploding statues. Sara is less lucky. Jagged shards pepper her face and body, opening stinging gashes as they shoot in all directions. There are corpses within the shells - blackened, withering shapes twisting within the fire. If Sara doesn't pull free quickly, she could end up in a similar state.

Meanwhile, when Hau and Grace open the trove door, the same rush of dizziness overtakes them - worse than before. The smell is sickly sweet. They can both hear the low, persistent hiss. Hau, despite his fading injuries, feels an overpowering wave of nausea. The world around Grace seems to spin, blurring the room's four doors into eight before her eyes.


Kira:
Items: king's seal, carved fragment

Beyond a pleasant 'Ah, thank you,' the man makes no move to engage Kira. Perhaps he can't. When the sludge is removed, the tops of his legs are scarred with the same angry rot. He, however, is busy looking at the burbat. Yellow eyes move over her wings, her ankle, her crooked jaw. The man pushes himself further upright. Heaves the sword off his lap.

"You weren't with the others," he says. "And they already burned the dark. There's a new batch of us, isn't there?"

He pauses. Taps his jaw, crinkling his eyes in a sympathetic expression.

"Hard to talk, I know. You don't have to answer."

The man heaves himself to his feet, the sword clattering sideways. It's a massive slab of metal, oddly notched at the edges, and too large to be meant for any human. The man regards it for a long moment. Then, though his hands tremor involuntarily and his leg half folds with the effort, he stoops to retrieve it.

"You should move before another gray shows up," he says, nudging the sludge with one foot. "Nowhere to run in here."

The door beside the man is ajar - unguarded, now that the man's attention is elsewhere. Kira can slip past him if she's fast. With the state of the man's legs, it seems unlikely he could catch her, even with her injuries.



Edge and Marchelute:
Edge's items: simple knife
Marchelute's items: falconer's gauntlet, silver chain

The firelight blots out the bricks, the bloodstained warning - even the mural's glow. It sears Edge and Marchelute's backs as they run. Boiling skin. Crisping scales. Smaller fires and dull red glows are forming in the center of the room, spreading the deadly light. And the door won't move. Not fast enough. The stone is heavy, reluctant to open under Edge's slender, scalded arms. It stutters over rough bricks. Catches on something on the other side. It's only when Marchelute joins Edge and sets his weight against the door that the resistance gives and it begins to swing in earnest. By then, it's too late.

Edge, the smaller of the two and the first to move for the door, has escaped the worst of the damage. His body is blistered raw by the fires, the pain a pulse through his limbs. But he's functioning at least. There was no one to shield Marchelute, whether by size or lucky positioning. His wings, the first point of contact, have been burned to skeletal claws. His back and shoulders are a mess of blackened, weeping flesh. Bones show through the back of one heel where he braced to push the door. Unless the two find a quick means of treating the ifrit, he looks unlikely to live.

They're in a small square room that Marchelute has seen before. Bare, empty walls. Twelve empty graves set in the ground. A second door in the lefthand wall. All altered. The residue has gotten worse since the ifrit last came this way. Pustules have formed in the corners, crusted the walls, spilled into the waiting graves. It was this that blocked the door. Edge and Marchelute can feel it, still accumulating. In this room. In the rooms beyond it. It feels like a heavy snow, massing the longer they watch it fall. The worst concentration is just beyond the other door and to the left. They can feel a second concentration farther out in the same direction. There was a third even farther beyond that. But as they sense it, this last spot abruptly cuts out. It's a relief to feel it - a clean mental spot amid the pulsing, crawling discomfort.


Cassius and Draggo:
Cassius's items: burning torch, sturdy rope, scholar's note 2, half-eaten cake
Draggo's items: broken flint necklace

Peering closer at the altar, the dragon can see faint carvings around the indentations, worn nearly smooth by time. The lines around each spot resemble the rays of a sun. Only, there are small heads protruding from the ends in alternating patterns: top; bottom; top; bottom. No rays - arrows. Some point out from the indentations. Some point in towards them. But without the artifacts themselves, however, it's difficult to say what these mean.

The door is fully open. The grey mass is shuffling through. Beyond the statues, the altar, and the lone door across from theirs, Cassius sees nothing of obvious use against their pursuer. There are no mechanisms, no unusual scents, no other objects. It seems this room was mean for some ceremonial function, and nothing more.

His newly acquired pouch contains no weapons or noteworthy artifacts. Instead, there's a folded scrap of vellum, crackled with age, scrawled with strange, geometric letters that shift into his native language before his eyes:

There are many signs of Its affliction, but I have never seen an individual display more than one - a hollow mercy. They all come to the same fate in the end. Some of the afflicted are simply better at delaying it. Many have grown furtive and strange, traversing secret paths like rats in the wall. The fearful among us call it selfishness manifest, and from a functional standpoint, I might agree. These afflicted seem unable, or perhaps unwilling to share these paths with others. A shame. It's growing stronger all the time, and such shortcuts might have been invaluable to us.

The second object is a small, square cake with the consistency of hard tack. It looks horrendous, filled with lumps and discolored at the edges. But it's the most wonderful thing he or the dragon has ever smelled. The scent rises off the crumby mass as if it's freshly baked, and their jaws ache with a sudden rush of saliva. Someone else evidently felt the same; there's a large bite out it, leaving only half the cake.

Proceeding through the next door, the dragon finds himself in a narrow hallway leading to a four way intersection. The walls are set with broken metal stumps, and the floor is littered with twisted holders, splinters of wood, and the corpses. Curtains line the walls of the north and south hallway, from which the two have come. These curtains are peeled back, and the mummies spill down from raised alcoves behind them. The bodies are, half in, half out of the space, tied together so closely that the entire row slumps out like dominoes. Their bound arms reach as if to crawl the rest of the way out. But the mummies are motionless. Their twisted necks and spindly fingers line the sides of the hallway like a leathery fence.

[Pearl Dragon]

[Kira is reluctant to just leave right away, and instead holds up her objects in a questioning manner. Perhaps the man knew what they were.]

Although he spoke low, Kira still jumped at the sound of his voice.  When he made no move towards her, she resumed her cautious work.  She could feel his eyes on her as she pushed at the last chunk and backed away.  At his question, she only stared at him.  Others?  She hadn't quite seen others besides the monstrous things that were currently stalking about.

As he pulled himself to his feet, Kira took another careful step back and watched him regard the heavy metal blade.  She looked down at the weapon, ears lowered and wondered what it could be.  It was huge, and for a moment she watched with morbid fascination as the man bent to pick it up despite his injuries.
"You should move before another gray shows up.  Nowhere to run in here."  He said, now occupied with the blade.  Kira looked to the door, then back at him.  He still hadn't made any move to harm her and he was the first so far to even speak to her.  She studied his injuries and felt a pang of worry and longing, not quite wanting to just leave.  Instead, she uttered a small, pitiful noise and held her own two objects up to him.  She couldn't speak, but her eyes held a question in their stare, perhaps asking if he might know what they were or what she was to do with them.  She even risked a small, timid step towards him.

[NightshadeVII]

[OOC:As they get to the other room, Edge asks Marche to sit down, before searching the room for anything that can be used to clean, bandage or otherwise treat the ifrits wounds. He also tries to slash at a few pustules, trying to see if that works.]

The relief Edge felt from getting away from the fire was short lived at best, like a lightbulb barely managing to flicker to life after being broken. The room they now found themselves in was just as charming as the rest, lined with graves and covered in pustules. A grim thought struck the Darai that these graves were for them. For him, Faolan, Sara, Marchelute and whoever else had ended up in here. Wouldn’t surprise him if that was the case.

Still, it would be best if they moved on as quickly as possible. Edge had someone to find, and quick. On top of that neither of them knew if the fire would come back, or if they’d run into another horrible creature, like the one he had seen last time he saw the scarred man.
But when he looked back at Marchelute, he quickly realized that they weren’t going anywhere just yet.

When he saw the other’s wounds, he froze for a moment. Those wounds, the way that flesh had been burnt away so mercilessly, with no regard for the victim, the way skin sizzled and bubbled, bright red. It was way too familiar, reminding him of air full of smoke and ashes, fires reaching high into the night sky, turning tree trunks black and reducing leaves to cinders dancing in the wind. He could taste metal and soot in his mouth, could smell the burning wood and the charred flesh, could feel the heat on his skin, making it harder to breathe, his vision blurring, eyes watering. It was something he could and would never forget, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
He had to shake his head, closing his eyes for a moment to remove himself from the memory. There wasn’t time for him to get overtaken by trauma here, no matter how strongly it pulled at him, no matter how much deeper the claws of those awful memories were beginning to sink. It was in the past, and yet... all this meaningless torture, the violence and pain without purpose, the fear, the terror and the many questions there was to this place, it was different, but similar to what had been all those years ago. Similar enough to remind him at least. But the Darai knew that if he didn’t keep these thoughts in check, his chances of finding Faolan and getting out of here would be even worse.

“Please, Marchelute, sit down...”, asked Edge asked softly, reaching out to place a hand on the other’s arm, but stopping himself, not wanting to inflict pain on the other, “we need to do something about those wounds before we move on.”
If we can do anything, thought the darai. All the had was a chipped knife and the clothes on his back, neither of which would be of much use when it came to treating wounds. Edge did have some experience with first aid, at least, but it would be difficult to put that knowledge to good use if there wasn’t anything useful to treat wounds with here.

So he began to search for bandages, salves or anything that could be used to treat the others wounds. Without even thinking, he avoided the pustules as much as he could. When he got close to a couple of them, he tried slashing at them with his knife, testing if that had the same effect as stabbing them. But still he kept an eye out for anything that could help the ifrit.

[jarahamee]

(Cassius takes Draggo's hand and would lead the way into the curtained Northern entrance. He does not run but he does walk quickly to ensure that he is not trapped in the room beyond, making sure he moves carefully and with awareness of his surroundings, holding the torch out in front of them. There is no time to share his information with the young dragon just yet.)

Cassius put his new acquisitions back into the bag. Now was not the time, especially as their new friend the slime monster came up on them to give less than a friendly greeting. Now, if he had only left that bag of not-so-useful stuff behind, he would have been much better off. Maybe they could have lost it, but not forever.

Was there a winning state in this place? From the note, the winning state appeared to be...becoming one of those creatures. Or maybe, going mad. What had this world come to? He longed for order, or maybe Isaac. Or both. They were there to ground him.

Well, for now, this child grounded him in the present, and he had someone to protect. He reached behind him to gasp the young dragon’s hand to guide him. Not so firmly he could not escape but rather to provide him with guidance. Get out of this situation, serve the populous (already failed this one), and survive.

The Beast steered him towards the curtained area. Perhaps they would have additional cover in that area. Hopefully it was not a dead end. Maybe they could better defend themselves there, but would it matter if this thing just needed to sense them to find him?

He turned back to look behind him, hoping he was not damning himself in the process. If nothing else it gave him an idea of how much farther they would have to hurry forward.

[tsukikoko]

[OOC: Sara wrenches herself free and instinctively begins a shift to Saljir because she fell into a burning ring of fire. Many things hurt. Makes a run for the new door that's appeared, since she really doesn't want to go back to the snarling door. She hopes that Edge and Marchelute managed to make it out of the room.. somewhere, before Ari's fire went off. Raises the seeing glass to look at whatever lies in the room beyond the new door and yells for the others to follow. Allows the shift to continue in case more of the clay soldiers come her way, also because it's very hot, while she's waiting for the others.]

Sara's world was aflame.

Her eyes felt too dry, each blink brought no relief, while her chest burned from the cloying vapours of searing fabric, drawn in from quick, ragged breaths and her heart racing beneath her ribs. At first, she didn't feel the burn, too preoccupied by the many lacerations across her naked flesh as clay exploded into shards around her.

And the bodies. Blackened, charred, flickering into her mind's eye as she screws her eyelids tight and turns away from the shrapnel. They hang before her, yet the shifter finds herself wondering if they too are people, trapped here, unable to see the world for what it truly is. Could they be like Edge, like Marchelute, only in a different form?

Next moment, a searing, white-hot pain lanced up her arm, accompanied by a persistent throb that only seemed to penetrate deeper as time progressed. She began to scream; not a high-pitched cry, but a deeper, involuntary sound, like a wounded animal. Muscles spasmed, she wrenched her hand back from the source of her most pressing injury, shattering yet more clay in the process. Her wounded skin rippled, dragging forth a form without conscious thought. Sara had no idea storm dragons had a layer of heat resistance, but in the wake of the fire and her burning flesh, basal instincts took over. There was not enough space in the room for a full dragon form, but the Saljir would fit.

In a whirl of ginger hair and a flailing tail, striking at the clay soldier even though it had stopped moving, Sara ran, sprinting for a door she knew had not been present before. In the back of her mind, she hoped Edge and Marchelute had escaped the room and that the receded darkness was not due to their demise. Worry for their safety gripped her, but she had to escape the flames and if they could avoid whatever death trap the grey mould, beyond the snarling door, might be, that would hopefully be all the better.

Near throwing her whole weight against the door, Sara hastened to open it, though with distance from the source of her pain and through some manner of automated response, she rose the seeing glass to her eye once the door was partially ajar, aiming to see if anything else lay on the other side.
"Everyone! Ower 'ere!!" She yelled, trying to get the attention of her companions, to warn them away from the trove door. They shouldn't go back there, not with another route open.

The shifter waited by the new door, still allowing her lethargic shift to progress. If more clay soldiers came for them, if she had to experience further heat and flames, she would certainly prefer a form with more fight in it. If nothing else, the scales might provide a covering for her burned skin, which currently hurt so badly her arm quivered from it.

[kilnarak]

[ Ari is gratefully unaware of the damage he did to Marchelute, but he is unhappy about the damage he did to Sara. He intends to follow Sara into the new door but on the way to that he will try to knock down and light aflame as many statues in the room as he can. ]

The statues did burn, or at least their armor did, but it wasn't enough. At least the flame seemed to halt their movement. Ari shoved at the statues nearest him, his shoulders wreathed in flame, trying to knock them down - if he couldn't burn them, then maybe he could shatter them. He felt a pang of regret as he saw what the proximity to the fire did to Sara - but there was nothing he could do to help that.

His resolve to stay in the room and burn it all away had faded somewhat, and when Sara scrambled for the newly revealed door he found himself following her. He continued to try and shove down statues as he passed - if they were broken, maybe they wouldn't be able to move when the dark closed around them again? At least since their armor burned, there was something that could keep light in the room for a little while.

While Sara fiddled with the door and the seeing-glass, Ari turned his attention to gathering and throwing fire onto as many statues as he could throughout the room, resolving to burn away as much dark as he could before they fled the room.

[Sharei]

[OOC: Draggo is made uncomfortable about the mummies and hesitates. He then follows Cassius, allowing himself to be lead along.]


Mummies. Again the juvenile hesitated, the same as he had when confronted by the room filled with graves. The corpses, even more so than the creatures, made him nervous in a way only dead things could. Dead things that he fully expected to get back up, at any rate. And there were so many of them!

The dragon took a half step backward, but Cassuis' hand closing over his made him look up at the scarred man. He nearly flinched away, but the scariness of the tomb itself loaned him the courage he would not have otherwise possessed. This human was the only safe thing he'd found, and the only protector he had. So the juvenile allowed himself to be pulled along, hastening his steps and trying his best to keep out of reach of the mummies in case any of them went to grab at his feet.

"What does it want?"

[Vaitris]

[OOC: Hau abandons the trove door to try and follow Sara and Ari to the hidden door while avoiding the soldiers and the fire as much as possible. He'll attempt to take Grace with him if she doesn't hear or follow on her own.]

[Marshmallow]

[Summary: Marche is hurtin real bad. Due to the extent of his wounds, shock begins to set in, making it hard to concentrate - but also making the pain more bearable. He tells Edge that there's nothing here, and they need to keep moving.]


There had been a horrible, heart-stopping moment wherein the door refused to budge. A moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, where he felt acutely aware of each scale seared away by the spreading flames. In that moment, Marchelute was struck by the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, of how terribly ironic and absolutely absurd it was that he should die by his own flame. If he'd had the breath for it, he would have laughed.

Then the stone finally gave beneath their combined effort and weight, and both he and Edge tumbled across the threshold and away from the deadly firelight.


Marchelute didn't want to stop here. The fire was still too close for comfort, and the shock and adrenaline were still pounding through his limbs, demanding that he keep going. But not even halfway across the film-covered room, one leg faltered and he stumbled to an ungraceful stop amid the empty graves.

In that moment of pause, the blistering agony of the experience caught up to him. A long, low groan of pain escaped him through clenched teeth as he tried, despite Edge's words, to regain his footing. The skeletal remnants of his wings twitched at his back, the scorched tendons were pulled taught, curling the digits into a tangled mess of blackened bone and sticky, seeping flesh. His damaged leg looked like someone had skinned a wax figure, and then set it before the flame. He could see bone, but part of his mind refused to accept that the injury was his. Pain was becoming shock, and as the seconds ticked by... things didn't seem to hurt so much anymore. Rather the opposite - a dull numbness was creeping into his limbs. His mind felt sluggish, distant, and in a detached sort of way Marchelute knew this was bad. He settled, trying to satch his breath and recollect himself. But the room felt wrong, everything was wrong, and they couldn't linger here...


Movement caught his eye. His attention refocused. Edge as moving, searching the room. But Marchelute had been this way before. He knew there was nothing of use, but it took a few seconds too long for him to force any words out past the clench of his jaw.

"Wasting your time. 'm fine. Had.. Had worse," he ground out, the words slurring as he spoke. "Nothing here... Should keep moving."
 

[MP]

Kira:
Items: king's seal, carved fragment

The man looks from Kira to the objects in her claws. Then he leans the sword against the wall, slowly, so as not to alarm. He reaches out to take the items. Turns them over in his hands. He tips his head at the carvings on the stone fragment. Runs a thumb over the socketed back of the disk. His eyes light faintly.

"This," he says, raising the disk. 

It nearly falls from his hand as another tremor runs through his fingers. He offers the items back to the burbat. 

"There's a table with a slot like this. Back there." He nods at the hole Kira crawled from. The corner of his mouth slants, half rueful, half grimace. "But I wouldn't go through again in a hurry."

The door is the only other exit, and this seems to be the man's intention. He steps around the fallen giant, digging a small dagger from the grey sludge and then retrieving the odd, notched sword. He speaks to Kira as he goes, the words a soft undertone. Hitching slightly.

"Can't do much for y-your wounds, I'm afraid. You need blood. Grey stuff. Comes in little vials." He holds up his thumb and forefinger, demonstrating an approximate size - only a few inches in length. "There aren't many left, I think. Not unless we bleed a beast for it."

He smiles at the burbat. The expression is understanding. Almost sympathetic. It might be reassuring if not for the talk of monsters.

"But we'll see what we can find, hmm?" He turns and picks his way through the open stone door. Rubble from the gouged and blackened walls litters the threshold. The grey sludge oozes across it in puddles. The man steps over it and rounds the left corner. His voice drifts from beyond the door.

"Maybe there's something -"

He abruptly cuts off.

Kira can make out a closed door opposite her own, at the other end of a long, open stretch. To her right, there is another door, closer, and far larger - a massive circular portal carved with a sun symbol. She can see two slits on either side of the circular door, deep, and with odd, notched edges. But the space to her left - the rest of the room, her now silent companion - is hidden by her open door. She'll have to venture out there to see what lies around the corner.



Edge and Marchelute:
Edge's items: chipped knife
Marchelute's items: falconer's glove, silver chain

Without the soothing light of the mural, their burns seem to redouble in agony. The locations of the residue, a constant ache in their heads, grate in their heads like screams. The firelight may be deadily, but the light off the mural was a comfort - a balm, noticeable only now that it's gone.

It's hard to see much through the accumulated crust. Harder when one is working with a broken dagger. When Edge slashes through the nearby pustules, some of the greasy smoke belches into his face and eyes. It stings like sulfur and leaves his eyes with a gummy, unpleasant feeling. But he feels no further effects, and the knife's edge apparently works just as well as the point. With every pustule popped, the two feel their shoulders unwind. Some subtle tension in the room departs. Although the rest of the tomb still reads as a growing mental ache, their current room feels clean. It and the spot somewhere to their distant ten o'clock feel like islands of serenity amid the growing strain.

In the near right corner from their door, while slashing another pustule, Edge uncovers a scrap of vellum. The letters are geometric and unfamiliar. But they warp and blur into his own language as he reads:

- that all the signs are sure. News to celebrate, if only there was time. But the western front is gone. Men like animals. Entire cities eating themselves alive. I'm not a superstitious man, but I think It knows his gift is waking. It's moving faster. Even the court is showing symptoms. We must do more until he's strong enough to -

Close by, Edge also finds a plain knife - this one unbroken. Short of the pustules themselves, however, there seems to be nothing else in the room. Certainly nothing with which to treat the ifrit's wounds.

Strangely, the touch of the residue no longer seems so terrible to Marchelute. Though the pustules are pillowed around his weeping flesh, he feels nothing. Feels as if he could simply close his eyes and sink into them like water - an unfriendly thought, but a strangely welcoming feeling. A hungry feeling, crawling beneath him. 

Should the pair choose to keep moving, their only options are to risk returning to the mural room or continue to the lefthand door, which is closed and so far silent.



Cassius and Draggo:
Cassius' items: burning torch, sturdy rope, scholar's note 2, half-eaten cake
Draggo's items: broken flint necklace

As the door to the altar room falls shut behind them, Cassius and the dragon catch a parting glimpse of the crusted figure. It's still striding after them. Its sightless face is fixed on their backs. But it's moving slowly, its pustules pulsing sluggishly, like the sides of an old toad. It's falling farther and farther behind, and their final glimpse of it shows that it hasn't even reached the closing door. There's still no sign of it when the pair reach the door at the north end of the hall. The memory of its eyeless face lingers in their heads, and the knowledge of its presence crawls down their spines, but it apparently can't keep up with a healthy victim. 

The two are now in a massive hall, much longer than it's wide. It feels oppressive; the ceiling is so high that all they can see is darkness, which gives the room a claustrophobic feel despite the vertical space. The place feels watched; there are columns along the left and right walls, carved in human likeness, their hands are cupped to form braziers filled with piles of wood and pitch. There are doors on either side of the one they entered through, set in the left and right walls just before the columns start.

The floor of the room is dusty, streaked in places with parallel brown smears. Some are long and straight. Others curve. One skims past a column, which is chipped and cracked at the base.

Towards the back of the room, the floor rises in tiers, two ramps flanking a central set of stairs. Two clay chariots stand at the top, flanking this path. It seems that the charioteers once held spears, held at arm's length and angled to form an archway over the stairs. Their hands are raised in identical fists. But only the righthand spear is present. The other charioteer is empty handed.

Beyond the chariots, at the end of the room, there are three more doors: two identical doors to the left and right, set with ornate locks, and a massive circular portal in the center of the back wall, carved with an image of the sun. This central door is flanked by two large slits in the wall, deep and with oddly notched edges. 

The righthand door at the end of the room is open. There is a hush to the room, abrupt and furtive, like something holding its breath. Cassius sees nothing of note. The dragon, however, catches a familiar fleshy pattering at the back of the room. Looking toward the open far right door, the dragon sees a glimpse of pale flesh behind a column. Tiny bloblike shapes are hunched around something on the ground. The object looks like a large notched sword - but maybe not for much longer. The rats dig their nailess, flabby paws into the blade. Their jaws are opening, gums flexing, as if to push it into their mouths. The dragon can hear their slithery whispers, grating, gloating over their prize.



Ari, Sara, Hau, and Grace:
Ari's items: hunting horn, human effigy
Sara's items: old spear, broken knife, seeing stone
Hau's items: maned pelt, human effigy
Grace's items: burning torch, rusty knife

The statues are heavy, hard to budge. But their armor smokes and catches where Ari touches them, and one teeters under his momentum and near-manic enthusiasm. As the two shifters reach the doorway, the tipping statue crashes into its neighbors. Their fall sets off a domino effect that brings down half a dozen statues. Clay cracks. Rusted weapons snap. The blackened mummies spill onto the floor, felfire licking at their backs. Motionless. There's no sign of movement in the remaining shadows.

But there is presence in the room. A weight, prickling and unclean. The whole group can feel it rolling over them. Hau and Grace recognize it - the sense of hunger, of closing in. Of countless eyes turning in the dark to fix on Sara.

Whatever is closing in, Sara is unable to see it. The lens is blocked by something. Many somethings. Gray residue is forming around her like a swath of clouds. Only, clouds don't pulse - don't cling to her scaled skin like leeches. She can see the crusted pustules rise and fall in greedy, revolting movements. Can see the grey residue bleeding out from around her, spreading over the floor and the soldiers and towards the unexplored door. Should she lower the lens, it's gone. She sees nothing. Feels nothing. No sign of the spreading plaque. It's crept even farther when she looks through the lens again.

Unlike the other doors in this place, the new doorway is nothing more than a raised frame. Beyond it, a long hallway stretches away into darkness. It's sparser than the intersecting hallway of before. There are no torches on the walls. No curtains. No features at all. The passage has a raw, organic look, as if it's been dug out rather than built. It leads straight ahead, no branches in sight. Sara and Grace and Ari stare right at it.

Hau, however, sees an empty stretch of wall. Ari's fire and Grace's torch light the immediate area beyond doubt. The kitsune feels as strong and alert as he ever has with the warm weight of the idol in his hand. But none of it helps his vision. The others are staring at...nothing. Just a lot of bricks and heat and smoke. The smoke, thanks to the many burning artifacts and the low ceiling, is a stinging fog in the group's eyes and lungs. Every breath threatens a coughing fit. And still the spot is still nothing to Hau but a plain wall.

[Jarahamee1]

(Ooc: Cassius ponders going through the right door, would discuss opening the middle and the left with Draggo)

Cassius has no doubt the strange pustule-creature would be back in no time if they were to hesitate too long. He held onto the young man’s hand until they reached such a room and paused.

The Beast did not like the feel of this place and reminded him to be wary, but wary of what? There was so much in this room, but nothing moved. No eyes stared at him. Only silence.

On the far end of the room, round each side-door there were two notches, like there had been two spears, but the other spear was gone now.

No keys presented themselves to him here. Just bread and silence. Perhaps somewhere the central seal would find itself. And what had notches like this?

He stared at the open right side, contemplating. No easy solutions here and the farther they moved from the pustule creature, the better.

“The right side door. We should put space between ourselves and it. It looks like we need a seal to open the middle one, and I am not sure how to open the left. I would say maybe the spears but there’s only one now..”