[4-12] The Mines

[2B]

Arturia approached Carmelita as the group had agreed to split. It was clear Carmelita would never function with Okor, and Arturia had no choice but to split with Fiara. The situation was such a mess.

“Carmelita, stand back, please.” the knight stated, as the officer stepped aside, and the knight grasped the cable and pulled it back up. Slowly, she pulled some more of it out and eventually tied it around the officer’s midriff, as well as tying the briefcase with the inoculations to it as well. “That way, should you lose your footing or your grip, you shan’t fall to your death. And the medicine is safe.” the knight stated with a smile. “...However, I shan’t have such luxury. I shall bear the risk and head forth before you. I am more wounded than you are, and I have the information to relay to Amaterasu.. I have my doubts about her presence here... “ the knight stated calmly.

Carmelita was in the midst of voicing her strong disagreement, as Arturia simply grasped the cable and leapt into the shaft, taking the cable along with her weight. Carmelita had realized the idea as she slowly jumped along the wall, allowing Arturia’s weight combined to her own to take them down. They passed several openings to different tunnels within the depths.

It was a task she’d taken, knowing the risks, having wrapped the cable around her gauntlet, much like she’d tied the cable around Carmelita.

------------

After whatever had been a ridiculous amount of time descending into the depths of the mountain, Arturia could see the entrance; different from all the others, with freshly slain corpses and death. The one that Fiara and Okor must’ve meant.

“I have found the tunnel, Carmelita. Stay there, I shall enter and fasten the cable to something for you.” she stated, taking a hold of the cable as she unwrapped it from her gauntlet, and took a hold. She was only a small bit from the entrance, as the cable was hanging right against it. If only solid ground had been solid. Stepping onto the stone, the knight loosened her grip, just as the stone beneath her cracked, throwing her off balance as it tumbled into the depths, sending the knight to fall backwards into her apparent demise.. Certainly, she tried to grasp the cable, but there was one minor problem. The wound in her hand. No strong grip was granted for her. No grip of any kind. She knew it was her time, and as such, she simply called out. “Spread the cure, Carmelita! Save this island!” before the darkness devoured the silently falling knight.

[Karl Jak]

Arturia is dead and will respawn at the Fountain in 7 days

[Carmelita]

Carmelita cried out as Arturia fell into the darkness.

“Madre de dios! Arturia, no!”

Lighter on her feet, Carmelita hopped into the tunnel and stared down into the pitch darkness in time to hear a meaty thud from far below. She bent her head and wept, tears running down her muzzle and dripping quietly into the floor of the tunnel.

Her grief was cut short by a cough. She didn’t have time to dawdle, she was on a time limit. Trying to focus on the fact that Arturia was a prime, and all that that entailed, Carmelita turned from the shaft and stumbled into the darkness.

---

Now on her own, there was nothing to stop the Inspector from travelling with her cloak up at all times. The scent of singed air was much preferable to the stench of fire, death and destruction that wafted through the tunnels as an insipid miasma, and Carmelita’s stomach felt unwell enough as it was.

The dirt beneath her feet had been disturbed recently, and judging by the massive treads at least one of the people who had travelled the other way had been Okor. Carmelita flitted through the tunnel like a phantasm, padding lightly beneath the incandescent bulbs strung along the top of the tunnel.

She stumbled slightly, a gasp escaping through her clenched teeth as she hit a strut on the side of the tunnel. Her hands went to her side, where the bandaged entry wound from Fleshy’s spike had started bleeding again, and closed her eyes.

In Spanish, she quietly muttered a few prayers. She’d never been particularly religious, and if she had been the Omniverse was something that would have changed that, but growing up Catholic came with its own cultural baggage no matter how much you didn’t use it. Right now, Amber was a ghoulish monster and Arturia lay dead or dying at the bottom of the mineshaft, and a brief prayer to existence in general for their safety and healing eased the pain of their loss, even if just for the moment.

Head spinning, she made her way to her feet again and continued down the tunnel, one hand clamped down and putting pressure on her wound.

---

If not for the clock function on her eyepieces, she would have thought she’d been down in the tunnels for a while day, but the numbers put that as a lie at an hour.

Carmelita had walked along the tunnel, following it to a much larger, open area which had been mined in strips, creating a large cavern she looked out into. The gloop of omnilium deposits drooled from cracks in the wall, and stained the metal catwalks and electrical wires.

Up above her she could see the control box, situated on the highest gantry with a clear view of the area, and lights strung from metal poles and reusable metal pins stretched across the caverns walls. Instinctively, Carmelita raised a hand to her eyepieces and began taking pictures.

Miners, or what was left of them, lay hidden in the shadows, half eaten or torn to shreds. Some had killed themselves before hand, judging by a noose of electrical wire that hung from one of the overhanging ledges.

The raw material still lay in minecarts and buckets, glimmering in the light. Carmelita’s head pounded as she leaned closer, and the smell of singed air from her cloak turned acrid and sour. Reeling backwards, the Inspector nearly tripped over her own tail in her dizzy stumbling, and ended up puking over the rail of the gantry she was on.

Finding a supply station, Carmelita sorted through it slowly. Eventually, she found what she was looking for, and found empty buckets that had contained the paint that was used to mark out signs in the mine. Prising the lid off with her claws, she carefully poured some of the Omnilium gunk into the paint bucket before sealing the lid back on, keeping the fumes from escaping. Hoping that would be enough, she kept well clear of the remaining ore silos and continued to prowl through the mines.

---

The last time she had seen so much mining activity had been in the Australian outback, and she couldn’t help chuckle morosely to herself at the thought. Back then all she’d ended up was exhausted, thanks to the Cooper Gang handling the environmental crime and the more supernatural Mask of Dark Earth: now, she was the one doing the legwork, and it was much more exhausting than she’d suspected.

She’d had to double back several times when her way had been blocked by fallen gantries or debris, and losing the tracks of the others hadn’t helped. Eventually she found a tunnel tucked away that seemed promising, and she headed down it, looking for any sign of escape pods.

The lights became more intermittent as she proceeded before vanishing completely. Adjusting her eyes to the pitch black, Carmelita lit up her shock pistol and used it to light the way. She kept her cloak up, despite the fact her weapon’s charge disrupted it heavily, since it seemed to be doing a good job of keeping her air clean.

The fox found softer dirt beneath her feet, and in doing so regained the tracks of Okor, Fiara and a third person travelling the way she had come. Pausing to take the occasional breather, she reached another cavern just as she finally fell over, dry heaving as her stomach tried to empty itself of the food she hadn’t had.

She lay in the dirt, groaning as she struggled to keep conscious. Pushing herself upright, leaning against a cool dirt wall, she looked around her.

The cave was in fact a cave-in, what remained of the front half of the plane laying barely visible beneath the dirt. What looked like tribal humans lay in various states of dismemberment and crushed limbs, and amongst them lay the metallic body of one of the primes she’d seen aboard the plane, head stoved in by a boulder. Someone had arranged sticks over his body in a vague semblance of a grave, though who that had been she didn’t know.

She got to her feet, steadying herself against the wall as she did so. Her shock pistol lay undamaged in the dirt next to the can of raw Omnilium and the briefcase containing the syringes.

“Mierda!” she choked as she felt another wave of dry vomiting come over her. She wasn’t going to last longer like this, and knowing this her eyes fell on the briefcase she’d lugged all the way from the hospital.

Carmelita had no choice. Either she took one of the two syringes, or she wasn’t going to last much longer. Her choice made, she stalled the results of her decision, instead looking around for ways to continue.

There were two other tunnels in the cave, one to her left and one to her right. Neither looked particularly promising, so she chose randomly. She flipped her badge, and as it landed badge down, she chose the right tunnel, hoping it was the right tunnel. Making her way slowly over to the tunnel entrance, she opened the briefcase and withdrew one of the glowing blue syringes. Locating a vein in her wrist, she tapped the syringe to remove the air bubbles before injecting the serum into her blood.

Returning the empty syringe to the case, Carmelita picked it and the paint bucket from the floor and lit her shock pistol once more. She staggered onward, into the darkness of the unknown.

Carmelita uses one of the inocculation syringes on herself and chooses the rightmost of the two remaining tunnels in the cave-in.

[Karl Jak]

End of Round 12

Okor and Carmelita have left.
Arturia is a corpse.

Fiara is... Fiara'ing? (Gone)