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Post by tsukikoko on Nov 19, 2019 18:15:10 GMT -6
[OOC: Sara backs up a little from the giant sword man, aware they need the sword but unsure she can help get it in her current state. Notices Ari, Cass and scarred man. Gets closer to them, very quickly apologises for taking the sword and asks if any of them know how they're going to get the notched sword because they're running out of time.]
Hau was dead.
After everything they'd tried, all she and the young dragon had done in an attempt to save him, he had died anyway.
Your fault.
Again the needling thoughts, worming through Sara's psyche, cutting through her. She was useless, always had been, what would her stubbornness change now?
Though Kira had opened the door and a once invisible group were abruptly clear as day in the opposite doorway, even though an unknown child crouched before the sun door, for a while the shifter did not see. She stared down at Hau's body, shaking from exhaustion and raw emotion as she laid him down. Just like the others, there was nothing she could do for him now, but still she didn't move. Tears pricked at her eyes, a choking sob built in her chest.
Yet still, something pushed in the back of her skull; an instinctive need to survive, a drive to help the young dragon and Kira, now they'd found her again. Though a not insignificant part of herself considered how much easier it would be to lay down and let the grey creatures have their way, another (luckily larger) part, forced the shifter back to her feet.
When Sara did finally look around herself, the sight of that massive, sword-wielding humanoid made her take a step back. She didn't think she'd have been able to fight it at the best of times, nevermind in her current state. But the sword... the notches and the size of it. She glanced at the sun door, saw a mirror image of such a blade already lodged in one side. But not only that, she saw the child...
And people she recognised.
Ari. Cassius. The scarred man she had previously only been able to perceive through the seeing stone. Her gaze cast down to the sword still held in her hand, the one she had taken when trying to help him. He was still alive. Would he know more of this place?
Something flickered to life inside her. Not quite hope, but as close as she might get.
Warning Kira and the young dragon back from the sword-wielding creature with a frantic wave of her hand, Sara made her way towards the other group. They were running out of time, the room was filling with grey creatures. But perhaps, there would be just a few seconds for this. She glanced at the child, wanting to reach for and comfort them but unsure whether they were another facet of this place. There just wasn't enough time.
A whine formed, but the shifter tore her eyes away from him. Instead, when she thought herself close enough to be well heard and understood, Sara called out. "Ari. Cassius!" Then, to the scarred man, "Eee, man, I'm sorry I took ya sword, like, was nowt else I could think tah do tah 'elp ya." A frantic look at the encroaching enemies, before she barrelled on. "We 'aven't much time. 'Ave any of ya a clue what tah do with that?" She pointed at the giant in the other hallway, then at the sun door. "We need the sword."
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Post by Pearl Dragon on Nov 19, 2019 18:20:09 GMT -6
[Kira begs the armored thing to help, but not sure what good that'll do! XD]
Kira felt the key settle in place within the lock and uttered a small gasp of joy as it clunked into place and released the door. Kira pawed at the space where the door began to open, prying it apart with practically her entire body until she stumbled into the space beyond.
The moment she was able to, Kira did a quick scan of the room. Her eyes immediately settled on a familiar form, the same giant armored creature as what was in the other room but this once was not wounded or dead. In fact, it's blue gaze settle on her and the others, sending a cold shock through her system. This thing, she realized, was eerily similar to her old Masters. Kira felt her legs lock, her shoulders hunch almost immediately into a submissive posture. She raised both hands, almost unable to control herself and reached towards the thing.
"P-Please!" Was all she could manage, although every number of plea, apology, and cry for mercy crowded her throat. Her legs finally gave way, dropping her to her knees as she looked up at the thing. "Help! Be help get out!" She begged finally, at a loss as to what could even be done at this point.
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Post by okami1reeka333 on Nov 19, 2019 18:27:02 GMT -6
[OOC: Tries to figure out a way to help the group, suddenly feels painless, decides best option would be to shove Draggo back into the room: rolled 13]
He racked his brain as he heard the sounds and the responses going on within the room occurred, he needs to help them, come on, think! they are in trouble and need help, one of them was already dead from the sound of bone cracking and breaking and the sound of flesh ripping. like a hollow back cracking against stone. As he focused on a solution he failed to realize he started to feel no pain. nothing. An unwanted level of clarity and lack of morality washed over him as he thought.
He turned his attention on the one who stated 'I'll help' . The one from earlier, who ran out with the other one. The unsettling thought of pushing him away from the others seemed like the best option at the moment. He sounded in pain, shuffled as if something was wrong, he was slowing them down. . .
In an attempt to hasten the group up, he opted to use the pressure of his spiritual force to shove the young man back into the room. the unnatural orange fire of his seeming to sporadically pop as he willed himself to move against the young lad. Anything to get him away from the others, towards the approaching knight that seems to loom a few strides behind them.
To the dragon, it would feel like a firm shove towards the towering nightmare fuel inducing figure from the direction of the ornate door.
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Post by NightshadeVII on Nov 19, 2019 20:08:40 GMT -6
OOC: Edge goes through the door on the right.]
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Post by kilnarak on Nov 19, 2019 21:04:11 GMT -6
[ Ari is unhelpful. He tries to go to Sara, it doesn't work, so he goes back into the room and goes into the corner to have a panic attack. ]
Something was happening in his peripheral vision and behind him. Ari didn't stop moving to look - surely it was because of the massive serpentine thing behind him. A column buckled, then cracked, splintering and falling. Chunks of stone from the ceiling rained down. Ari's focus became the doorway - door frames were stable, weren't they? That's what made them safe to shelter under during earthquakes, to keep the ceiling from falling down on top of you. At least that's what he had been told as a child.
Sharp bits of stone flew past, cut into him, narrow scrapes on his cheek and arms when he raised them to protect his eyes, across his chest and hips. Somehow he made it through the tumult of falling stone to the doorway, and he braced himself against it, waiting for the world to stop quaking.
It was only after the dust began to clear that he became aware of the world around him again. There were two men standing in front of him - the scar-faced stranger who had beaten him into the room, and another scarred man who stood in front of a hole in the back wall. Ari blinked at the both of them blankly, still trying to process what had just happened. The men were looking past him, at something in the room beyond. The serpentine monster? Ari abruptly flinched further into the room, turning and stumbling back a few steps toward the scarred men, worried about what monstrosity lay behind him.
Chunks of stone littered the hall, blood near the door - his - and chunks of... stuff from the gray-thing that had been chasing the scarred stranger. But beyond that there were people - people he hadn't seen there earlier. Sara was immediately recognized, and then the dragon Marche had adopted - as he looked at him, something clenched in his chest, hard to breathe, and he fought down a hitching sob. Sara held a bloody body; Hau, his head half-caved in by fallen stone and a long spear piercing his chest - there was no hint of where the blue-haired man's friend had gone, the... Sasquatch? or whatever she had been. And beyond them a small furred creature, almost like a giant bat - that one was unfamiliar, as was the boy crouching by the door.
"S-Sa-" Ari began, the name choking off in his throat. His heart was hammering in his chest, he needed to remember to breath. "S-Sara! Y-You're... y-you're okay..." He took a step forward, then another, past the door frame and into the hall... but as he crossed that threshold the others abruptly faded from his vision, all of them save the boy. Ari froze a moment, then back-pedaled quickly into the narrow room again, blinking as the group reappeared once he was inside. That was... unhelpful.
"S-Sara there's a big- a big thing c-c-coming, l-like a- like a snake, it-it chased me." She probably already knew, if it was as close behind him as it had felt. It was probably already in the room. Unhelpful. "I-I don't- I don't know what to-to do. I-I... I'm s-sorry," he felt tears springing up in his eyes. He backed away from the doorway, bumped into the first scarred man, flinched away, then skirted around toward the very back of the room, near the fallen giant.
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Post by Sharei on Nov 19, 2019 21:25:39 GMT -6
[OOC: Draggo agonizes over Hau's death and then sees the giant sword-wielding set of armor. He stops being able to function and just stares at it, pale and afraid, as he is shoved into the room with it. He has a panic attack.]
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Post by MP on Nov 20, 2019 2:04:19 GMT -6
Almost everyone: Sara's items: human effigy (2), general's sword Kira's items: carved fragment Draggo's items: broken flint necklace, sturdy rope, scholar's notes (1, 2), hideous cake (3), runed heart, simple knife, seeing stone
The scarred man looks to Sara. Then to the opposite hallway. He says nothing. Judging from the old scars and the more recent patches of rot still scarring his neck, perhaps he can't. Instead, he kneels beside the fallen knight, running a hand over the ruined plate - over the gaping cavity, where a runed lump at the center of the chest has been split down the middle. There's no apprehension in his face. He shakes his head, looking almost sad. Then he retrieves a shard of rubble from his feet.
The man looks up at them. Strikes the hand of the dead knight with the shard. The stone splits on the impact, not leaving so much as a scratch. Then he points at Sara - points at the blade in her hand. Mimes stabbing it downward on the hand. He raises his head, staring pointedly across at the remaining knight.
Outside, the wall of grey slithers closer, cresting the first tier. Then the second. Stairs vanish one by one beneath a thousand crusted arms, and a serpentine, mutated grey can be seen merging in and out of the body of it. Parts of a single whole. The entity masses higher. Crests above them, the many mouths yawning and closing as if in anticipation. It's reached the top of the stairs now. Crawls to the very edge of their platform. And there it stops.
The crusted edges seethe over stone. Testing. Withering back. The entity seems unable to approach the sun door. It encircles the highest tier, concave at the center, lingering closer along the edges of the walls. Through the constant agony in his head, Ari can feel that it's still gaining ground. One flake, one pustule time. But its progress is so incremental that its progress is all but unnoticeable. The group doesn't appear to be in immediate danger. The sense of hunger - of frustration - is a palpable taste in the air. The boy watches it all from his place by the sun door, as still and unseeing as a corpse.
In the new hallway, the silence has broken. The burbat and dragon have crossed the threshold. Their noises hang in the empty air. And with a groan of ancient joints, the knight answers.
The great notched sword lifts from its resting place, the flames licking silently along its edge. The knight steps forward into a ready stance. Then, with a crash of plated boots, it begins moving toward them. Slow. Heavy. Gaining speed. The sound of its footsteps echo eerily in the enclosed space.
The longer she holds the scarred effigy, the more Sara's burns have gradually improved. By now, the wounds no more painful than a minor kitchen burn. But the same may not be true for the others in a moment. The living knight is cumbersome, clearly reliant on size and momentum and the cramped confines of its hallway. But there's a deadly weight behind its movements. If it reaches her small companions, if it lands a blow, no amount of healing in the world is likely to save them.
Edge: Items: broken knife (2), silver chain, grey vial
The first thing Edge hears as the door opens is the garbled baying of hounds. Two blackened shapes are snarling at him, rasping breaths through withered gums and yellow teeth. The hounds are submerged to the neck in the residue, gestured toward him by the half buried mummy behind them. Helpless to reach him. The residue has buried unknown mounds on the righthand side of the room, and it piles almost two feet high at the lowest points on the floor. The crust is simply too thick for the hounds to make proper headway. Too crowded.
All around the room, there are towering shapes pulling from the residue, parts of a single distorted whole. One crusted grey. Then another. And another still, until there are five in all. From what he can gauge from their featureless heads and shapeless bodies, the entities seem to have been moving toward the door in the lefthand wall - the only other exit. Now, however, they're turning after him. Moving toward him with the same brainless quality of a creeper growing toward sunlight. Some are too far to reach him yet. But others seem to have entered the room not moments before and are standing by Edge's door. The nearest, the largest, is a massive growth. Raised to its full height, it piles across the entire left side of the room, half engulfing its smaller brethren. This and one of the smaller entities reach out as Edge enters the room. The two greys - one with a distorted human hand, the other with an amoebic wave of sludge - close around each of Edge's legs.
The corruption is an agony in Edge's head. The corrosive touch of the entities sears deep into his legs, through the skin, eating steadily into muscle. And the entities are pulling at him with a horrific strength, threatening to drag him down. Should they succeed, should Edge fall and be submerged within the residue, it will surely mean his death. Even if he keeps his feet, failing to escape the entities' grip will soon leave him unable to run - easy prey for the residue or the hounds still struggling toward him.
The overgrown piles just to his right may offer some kind of tool if he's willing to risk time and flesh to dig through the corrosive crust. On the other hand, he may be able to fight through the door and escape, provided he can fight free of the dual grip.
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Post by jarahamee on Nov 20, 2019 2:11:20 GMT -6
[Cassius stares back at the others, and then, after a strange moment, relaxes and hails them, stepping away from the hole in the wall behind him to give him some space. He also searches for something to wield as a weapon against them.]
The Beast surged out of the tunnel, turning about quickly after it exited, as if to ensure that nothing came out behind it, surging upright in a burst of pain. When it was satisfied nothing followed it out of the tunnel, it stepped away and into the center of this strange room, searching briefly for a weapon and something to bind its wounds. Its legs were bleeding, and it would need to apply pressure... But there was no cloth to do so. Well, some cloth, but it was hardly clean anymore. Briefly, that is, until before it noticed the two persons staring at it. A scarred man, like itself, followed by a sad-looking boy.
Cassius recognized a fellow warrior in that moment, and the Beast reluctantly retreated back to the corners of his mind. The Beast disliked speaking to strangers, and these were strangers who needed to be spoken to. Its nonexistent hackles rose, and the expression that greeted the two newcomers was blank and bestial for a moment, and then softened. When he spoke, his voice was gruff, almost rusty-sounding.
"What's chasing you? There's a monster in the tunnel behind me."
He was as straightforward as he could be. He spent no time dwelling on what had happened before. He could think about the nightmares he witnessed later.
As far as he could tell, people were running here, there and everywhere, and were possibly running away from something pursuing them. This was a familiar room, and he knew how to navigate his way out, but did he want to? And then...he saw the woman in the far hall, Aaron's lover... Someone he recognized, moving with purpose. But that was far from him, and this was now. He focused on the present.
Then, the group convened. There was no time to answer questions, they had to move, and from what the scarred man showed them, they had to break the knight open and take out the crystal heart.
"We have to pry open the chest piece and take out the heart to get the key-sword. Your sword might accomplish this task."
He makes a half-grimace face, and looks past them.
"I can help distract it...So you can land your blows."
He was already moving with purpose.
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Post by tsukikoko on Nov 20, 2019 15:46:32 GMT -6
[OOC: Sara tries to call Ari back, especially when it’s clear how upset he is and that they’re relatively safe from the goo creatures near the sun door. Is glad of Cassius' offer to help but realises Draggo and Kira are in with the big sword-wielder. Screams at them to get back and runs for the hallway with Draggo/Kira in it. Tries to put herself between them and the sword-wielder before it reaches them, smacks Draggo back with her tail since he seems frozen by panic and tries to stab it like the scarred man indicated.]
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Post by NightshadeVII on Nov 20, 2019 16:57:44 GMT -6
[OOC: Edge screams, trying to muffle the sound, and struggles to get away from the goo monsters (rolls 17). If he gets away he will sprint for the door at the other end of the hallway. He will use his tail and wing to boost himself and spare his legs as much as possible.]
Regret was instant the moment Edge entered the hallway. Residue was everywhere, pressing against him from all around, forcing back mental barriers, or whatever remained of them at least. Distantly, yet not so far off, Edge could hear dogs barking, and yet, they couldn’t reach him because if the residue. Not yet at least. What worried him most, however, were the massive figures in the room, moving slowly and mindlessly. An uncontrollable chill ran down his spine as he noticed how they had begun moving towards him now. He had to get out of here, and he had to get out of here now.
However, the Darai didn’t get a chance to exit the room, before the greys’ “hands” closed around his legs. The agony was instant, like a burning wave, an acidic fever in his veins, it felt like it split muscles, corroding them through simple touch. Carrion invading living flesh. An unwelcome guest. And the agony was unbearable. Edge screamed, but quickly shut his mouth and grit his teeth, incase there were other creatures here that might hear him. He didn’t want to be heard. And yet, he still screamed his throat raw, behind lips pressed into a thin line. His world began to blur, eyes wetting with salty tears streaming down his face. His mind ablaze, he couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. What was he even supposed to do about this? What could he do?
He could barely see through eyes full of tears, but quickly blinked that away, as raw survival instincts kicked in. Eyes darting around, he looked for something to help him, to pull himself away with. There was a pile, but it was under the residue, and would only cause more injury. He didn’t have time for this. So he began to struggle, violently, like a caged animal. All he knew was that he needed to get out. He had to get out, otherwise he was dead. And that death wouldn’t be quick and painless, that much was certain. He tried to pull his legs out of the greys’ grips, tried smacking them away with his tail, anything he could think of.
If he managed to get himself out of it, he would waste no tim sprinting towards the door at the end of the hallway. Using his wings and tail to boost himself forward where he could, a singleminded focus on getting out of this horrible room, and away from the terrible creatures in it.
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Post by Pearl Dragon on Nov 20, 2019 19:32:12 GMT -6
[Kira is scared by all the things and tries to get Sara and company to not attack the armor dude.]
Kira watched with widening eyes as the knight shifted and then began to lumber towards them. Each of its footfalls felt and sounded heavy, and Kira immediately started to back up the way she'd come. The woman screamed behind her, to which Kira spun suddenly in shock and fear. She ducked to the side as the woman pushed her way through and then nailed the newest young man with her tail in a forceful push backwards. Kira pressed herself to the wall and edged towards the doorway before yet another individual, a taller scarred man, strode past. His sudden appearance earned another terrified cry from Kira. Everything was a rush of activity; the heavily armored thing stomping down the hall, the shadowy mass now forming all around them that she could see forming in the gallery, and the newcomers who had congregated into the current group.
Kira crumpled, trembling, as the enormity of everything finally began to crack inside of her like a dam losing its fight with a river. She struggled with her maddening thoughts, eyes darting all around in a desperate search for a way out. She was so certain that the key would have been their escape, but once again it had only led them into more mysterious and possibly dangerous areas. Kira's eyes swept across towards door, watching as the shadows swelled into undulating masses of mouths just outside in the gallery.
As the man and woman moved towards the armored creature in an aggressive manner, Kira's heart sank. She rushed forward, grasping desperately at the woman, bleating and pulling at the woman's hip and tail in urgency. "No! No!" She begged, tears streaming once more from her eyes. She was uncertain if it was the right thing to do, but was also still worried that the armored thing might be there to help them. Nothing changed the fact that she was still terrified of it, but she couldn't just stand idly by while the others attacked it.
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Post by kilnarak on Nov 20, 2019 19:56:49 GMT -6
[ Ari continues to be useless. He cries in the corner. Eventually he manages to get up and tries to examine the fallen construct for anything that might help. ]
There wasn't anything he could do. They disappeared when he left this room, he would be no help to them against the giant construct. Worse, there was nowhere left to run. The serpentine thing blocked the way he had come from, likely blocked the tunnel in the wall in this room. While something seemed to have stopped it here, it was still moving forward, a hair's-breadth at a time, flake by flake. There was no escaping it, not unless they got the door open.
The others in the room rushed out into the hall to confront the towering construct-knight, but Ari remained crouched in the corner by the fallen one. His heart still hammered in his chest, his head pounding, his breath choking in his throat. He made himself small in the corner, wrapping arms around himself, hugging his knees to his chest and trying his best to disappear against the side of the fallen construct. What could he do? There was nothing. All he could do was die.
Ari's arms tightened around himself and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will himself to wake up, to be anywhere but here. It was of little use. Finally, after the others had left the narrow room, he forced himself to let go, to get up. He gripped at the fallen armored thing beside him, pulling himself up. Then he turned to regard it through teary eyes, to examine the corpse, to search for anything that could help them, could help him. Was there anything in the gaping hole of it's chest? Or perhaps some sign of weakness in it's armor?
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Post by jarahamee on Nov 20, 2019 19:59:08 GMT -6
[Cassius picks up a handful of rubble and junk from the 'dead' knight and goes to help distract the Key Sword knight with it to give Sara an opening. He is then stopped by Kira and attempts to drag her to safety and stop her from impeding Sara. ]
"Hey, over here!"
He threw a piece of rubble at the thing to draw its attention, hoping to allow the little creature escape, and to allow Sara an opening. His legs hurt, but he admitted that he rather relished the feeling. It was the feeling of being alive. No time to bind his wounds. He would endure. It would not kill him, it would merely hurt him, which was something he could endure. He ignored the sticky, unpleasant feeling of the blood on his legs. It was nothing, and he had to focus.
This knight might kill him, but it was more likely it would reach the others first. He could not allow that. This was a narrow hallway, but he had to be able to get it to pay attention to him.
And then he noted the small bat-like creature running towards Sara, aiming to stop or slow her... This was a delay that might be the end of them. They had no time. Cassius paused, reconsidered his mission, and attempted to pry her away from Sara, and drag her to safety.
"...This way is safe...That thing is deadly. We need to kill it to get the key."
Cassius did not know if his words would fall on deaf ears, but if he did nothing, Sara might be killed by a swing of the huge sword. They could not lose another now. He attempted to drag it away from Sara, his scarred body battered but strong.
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Post by Sharei on Nov 20, 2019 22:06:55 GMT -6
[OOC: Draggo shouts in shock and fear as the knight moves toward them. He begins to retreat, pushed forward by Sara, and scrambles away from it back toward the safety of the rest of the group.]
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Post by MP on Nov 21, 2019 4:27:20 GMT -6
Almost everyone: Sara's items: human effigy (2), general's sword Kira's items: carved fragment Draggo's items: broken flint necklace, sturdy rope, scholar's notes (1, 2), hideous cake (3), runed heart, simple knife, seeing stone
Cassius' piece of thrown rubble bounces off the armor to little effect. The knight doesn't even seem to notice as it bears down on the two intruders. Large as it is, the weight of the sword is evident as it draws back its arm. The blade ends in an odd flat tip, meant for sweeping movements rather than piercing. Given the narrow hallway and the sheer size of the creature, a single hit would surely be crippling, if not lethal, once it builds momentum. Thankfully, the would-be victims are saved by Sara's timely intervention.
Faster and and more agile, Sara's strike punches into the armored chest before the sword can come down. The knight diverts its sweep to a sideways bash, threatening to knock an attacker sideways as it retreats several steps. A black gash has been seared into the stone where the notched sword grazed the wall. The blue fire highlights a long crack across the breastplate. Sara's strike has fractured the armor, but it apparently lacks the weight to crack it in a single strike.
The knight doesn't so much as glance after the retreating dragon or at Kira as Cassius drags her to safety. The moment they're over the gallery threshold, its focus turns on Sara. It braces on the backstep, and the sword comes sweeping around, air whistling over the blade with a weighty sound as it aims to cut her in half.
In the opposite hallway, Ari's examination of the fallen knight gives him a better idea of the armor's texture. The material is a deep inky color, eerily sheened across the surface and incredibly hard. Even the shards of broken armor refuse to give under pressure. Beneath the initial shell, however, the armor has a softer, stone-like texture. Hard, but not impervious once an initial flaw has been made. The chestplate has been cracked open by a series of blows, judging from the number of gashes marring the chestplate. The gashes across the walls and the bones scattered around the room indicate that the attempt cost a number of lives.
The chest cavity is filled with odd lumps and nodes, covered with a network of runes that trail down the edges and along the black casing of the interior. Many of these runic circuits have been disrupted by the damage. The largest node, a runed lump set in the center of the chest, has been cracked almost in two by the blow that split the armor. As Ari examines the interior, this central node clicks loose in his hand. There's enough of it left to note its uncomfortable resemblance to a human heart. Save for the crack down its center, it's identical to the object the dragon currently holds in his hand. The same runed pattern. The same set of plugs at the top where the node slots into the chest.
Edge: Items: broken knife (2), silver chain, grey vial
Edge's foot pulls free of the goo with a wet sucking sound, leaving behind crusted strands and blackened flesh. His legs are raw and weeping rotten blood, but he's free to escape back through the door and into the previous room. His last sight of the buried room shows three of the five greys still following him.
The residue is thicker than ever, flakes forming on the ceiling and drifting down like rain. Although he's escaped from the living ooze, the pain doesn't fully leave his legs. Even the normal residue is beginning to burn - a faint, creeping sensation for the moment, but getting stronger. It's almost up to his hip now, thick and soupy, exhausting to wade through.
The stuff is mostly concentrated around the centers of the rooms, and thins near the walls. But if it continues accumulating at this rate, Edge will soon be unable to open the doors. If he's to avoid the increasingly corrosive residue, his only hope is to find somewhere clear of the corruption or to get to higher ground. Assuming he can outrun the entities, whose touch has begun to bleed through the door as a thick crust.
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