Signs in Blood and Bone
14th of March 2007 A.D.
As you step into the fissure, the air within somehow oppressively warm even though you know objectively it's only a few degrees different and still well below freezing you extend hand towards him palm up and fingers arched as though holding up a goblet: "For the record - you should be really, really careful about doing what I'll ask you to do right now. Please consent to me using my magic on you to improve our chances of survival."
An eyebrow arches curiously, though accompanied by a cautious nod so you continue holding out three vials color coded two red and blue: "And take these, first two are healing the second one is speed at the cost of being worn out later." You are half tempted to make it a video game reference, but from the matter of fact look your companion gives both offerings you guess this isn't the first time he's dealt with alchemical healing.
"More light in here than there should be," he grunts.
"Hmm...?" now it's your turn to wonder at the insights, but you see no reason to doubt it, adding instead that it seems to be warmer too.
The granite floor is marked with swirling patterns in grey and black, ghosts of long dead lava flows, but it is relatively flat and without obstruction, narrowing towards the southwest further into the mountain until it is only just wide enough for one person to pass though.
"I'll go through first..."
"No
need," halfway though the sentence the voice beside you grows faint as if it had somehow retreated a dozen miles away while staying in place.
Turning to look you are greeted with an apparition of mist and swirling smoke though which pearly bones shine with eerie brightness, pulsing as if to an alien heartbeat.
"I can walk though the voids between."
Far be it from you to deny the help, though he wouldn't make it far if the fomori had warded the entrance to their master's prison or if whoever made it was as concerned about things coming in as getting out. As you take the first step you feel a current of air at head level and just barely see the roughly circular hole it's coming though before the creak of something very large moving hits your other ear.
"Caught it."
'It' as it turns out refers to a rusted but wickedly sharp pendulum blade that would have bisected your head had a selectively solid hand not caught it, but, possibility of grievous bodily injury aside, that is not what catches your attention. Instead it's the crude mark in the stone just below the trigger opening. This place was meant to be passed by servants or prisoners, their heads unsplit. With eyes bowed perhaps they should have walked into the next chamber, a vaguely ovoid gap in the stone with openings at odd angles venting steam that smells of sulphor and iron or...
"Blood, it smells of blood..."
Something tells you that if you are to check every opening from this room you will find one that vents the steam from this place outside where it flash frozen into that grusome incicle, but you press o, the path clearely marked by the lack of rubble in the way. At some point in the past a tremor had shaken this chamber hard enough to cause pieces of sharpened granite ranging in size from the size of your palm to that of your leg to fall leaving most of the floor a jagged mess.
"There are other chambers, southeast and north hidden behind the mounds...."
So as it turns out there are, though 'chambers' is perhaps overstating things, cells would be more accurate, uneven dark holes, dry as a tomb and twice as dark, none of the illumination let in by the vents reaches that far and all of them comtaining scraps of clothing tools and most damingly human remains, most far too decayed to judge what might have killed them, though several are found in a state that hints they may have been praying facing a wall when they fell over. Then after the eight such dismal chambers, having concluded that their occupants must have been starved to death if the deed was done with mundane means at all you hear a moan though the cracks in the stone and a moment later another hiss of steam boiling out of the foor of the coridor as if whatever power has dominion over this petty hell resents that it had dared even so much.
One look is all it takes to set both of you running down and down and
through.
A figure sits on the firty floor, her orange jacked and pants caked with blood as she, you see the woman's face through blood and tears, cradles an older man who is very clearely dead, eyes wide and staring. Despite having blown though a wall to get here she doesn't seem to notice, despite the fact that you don't speak the language 'papa' is understandable enough.
"We're here...we're here to help. Who are you, how did you get here?" your companion manages, half shouting to make himself understood in his ethereal form.
She doesn't notice, lost to her grief.
"I can... I can
help."
"He's..." the word 'dead' dies in turn on your tongue as the darkness in his anima floods out rolling like an echo of the black sea far far below and instinct older than words tells you the kind of help he means wouldn't be stopped by something so insiginificant as mortal death.
Day Caste Abyssal Using Vessel of the First Curse 1 of 3 Essence Spent
An image you had not thought of for many months, intentionally so, flashes past your mind's eye: the Winter Knight in his horrid torments. You had then the power to strike his chains and flee into the dark with him. This man is no Loyd Slade, but an innocent, yet the deed being performed to free him from death's embrace is darker by far, one that cannot be taken back.
What do you do?
[] Let things play out
[] Stop him
-[] Wrie in how
[] Write in
OOC: Enjoy. It's good to be back.
