01-15-2017, 11:42 PM
“It’s really all very fascinating! Look, here,” Brandon said, drumming out a nervous rhythm against one circular rune with his hand. Selena leaned over to look, hair falling in a dark curtain over his shoulder, tickling his elbow; the astronomer swallowed, stammering a bit when he continued. “T-this language isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before— except for in my books, of course! Reminiscent of Greek lettering and mathematical symbols, at times, but mainly comprised of interlocking circles and lines…and then there are the etchings….”
“But what does it say? ” interrupted Smith, who was leaning against one of the two pillars sloping against the cavern’s threshold, polishing the pointed end of his sabre. Cobwebs spiked haphazardly about the entire room between dripping wet stalactites, the alarmingly big egg sacs seeming bulbous and distorted in the gloomy light.
White cap fungi spotted the ground in frilly, wave-like patterns, like breakers amidst a dark, sunless sea, and softly glowing plants lined the walls in much the same fashion as torch sconces might line the halls of a palace. The natural shaft that lay ahead of them lead downward and to the north from this central cavern, the sound of trickling water echoing against the dew-moistened rock walls.
Somewhere along its many twists and turns, apparently, was an underground spring; and now that Tell, Burgess and Roland had moved steadily on ahead to investigate, so was the rest of the astronomer’s company. Piers, the youngest of their group, had volunteered to remain behind and keep watch over the dogs and sleds, fearing what might lie hidden in the ruin’s shadowy depths.
Brandon cleared his throat, looking again at the strange murals and glyphs lining the walls. “Well, it says—“
“Shit and hell and fuck!”
“Erm, no,” murmured the astronomer, glancing up from his inspection of the runes with a baffled look. He tilted his head in mock contemplation, then, the rounded lenses of his reading glasses flashing wickedly under the light as he grinned. “Not exactly….”
Selena had to stifle her laughter with a hand, cheeks lighting up with mirth. “And hopefully not in that order!”
They all glanced over at Amber, the source of the outburst. To their surprise and slight disgust, she was covered in some strange neon green fluid, the ooze gleaming as she tried to flick it off from her fingers. Her face was twisted in revulsion as she glared down at the drops of it that had splashed onto her shirt.
Jade was crouched beside their makeshift fire pit, her large white canine lying across her lap. She had been settled comfortably on the cave floor for almost half an hour, playing with colorful squid dolls stitched to have perpetually smiling faces alongside Rebecca. Thankfully, Jade was near enough that she was able to clap both her hands over the impressionable young girl’s ears by the second word out of Amber’s mouth.
Blinking down at the Little Sister with wide green eyes, Jade removed her hands. “Please don’t repeat any of that,” she whispered urgently, biting her bottom lip in dread. “If Nealaphh asks, you didn’t hear a thing. ”
“Okay!” Rebecca chirped pleasantly, booping Bec’s snout with one of the squid plushies. There were already several precariously stacked on top of his head, seeming much like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The First Guardian huffed noisily, nearly sending the tower toppling to the floor, but tolerated the absurd treatment.
Amber groaned, rubbing a hand across her face as she slumped in defeat. “Ugh, this stuff is so gross… it smells like rotten eggs!” By this time Brandon, Jade and Selena had moved over to investigate, Smith following shortly behind and wrinkling his nose in distaste. Rebecca happily continued playing with her toys, stuck in her own little world.
“Where did it come from?” asked Selena, ever the reasonable one.
Sighing, Amber flapped one hand at something hanging over her shoulder, scowling balefully up at it. “That thing.”
They all moved forward to look at the strange dark purple object attached to the cavern ceiling. It seemed mostly organic, shaped like a chrysalis and with thick resin oozing from its sides, but the distinct glowing along its sides indicated something far more unusual. Soft blue lights emanated from the inside of the cocoon-like sac, pulsating at a slowed rate. Almost like a…. heartbeat? Before they could take the time to investigate it further, however, the sound of quick footsteps clapping against the ground rang out from the direction of the way out of the ruins, accompanied by several muffled shouts.
Smith immediately leapt into action, coat sweeping outward as he rushed to stand beside the door, sabre drawn and at the ready. At this everyone else in the room went rigid with tension, their minds braced for a fight. All eyes locked onto the entrance.
To their surprise, it was only Piers. The boy looked paler than if he’d seen a ghost, panting and hunching over to clutch at his knees as he stumbled in.
“Dwarves,” he gasped as he looked up into Smith’s hard face, almost sobbing out the words. “Three of ‘em. Heavy weaponry, hadta leave th’ dogs. Right behind me—“
His words broke off as a blur of spinning metal caught him across the back of the head with a heavy kuh-thunchk. Stricken unconscious immediately, Piers slumped to the floor, the back of his skull flooding in a spray of red and his fair hair matted with blood. The throwing axe that hit him clattered across the stone ground, the wedged blade spinning round and round.
Selena rushed over to crouch beside him, glancing up as Smith moved to fill the entryway in a whoosh of fabric. Her fingers remained steady as she dabbed at the cut, her hand coming away glistening with lifeblood. Thankfully, the cut wasn’t too deep and Piers was still breathing, but it could spell trouble for the boy if they didn’t apply some slapdash field medicine to it as soon as possible. Head wounds always bled the worst, she knew, and his color was already beginning to turn sickly.
Grabbing him under the arms in a tight grip, the soldier grunted as the kid’s deadweight body fell heavily against her, hauling him over to where the others stood. The Space witch had collected Rebecca at the first sign of trouble and tucked the little girl behind a nearby boulder for her own safety, Becquerel standing nearby with his ears standing at attention and his back ramrod straight. Brandon had his funny little butter knife in his hand, and if the situation wasn’t so dire, Selena would’ve thought it was cute. They all huddled together behind the boulder; it was a rather convenient place to offer cover-fire from, if you asked Selena.
Eyes wild and hair flying in staticky strands around her face as she leaned out, Selena brought up her crossbow and carefully took aim, a thick bolt shooting over Smith’s shoulder and out into the dim passage. A shout, which was either made in the dwarven language or by some idiot gargling mouthwash mid-battle, bounded off from the cavern walls; shadows undulated wildly over the rock as the dwarf assassins moved ever nearer, sneaking behind stalagmites to avoid being struck by Selena.
They all flinched at the first clash of metal against metal; one of the dwarves began forcing Smith backward, a heavy battle axe wrapped firmly in his iron grip and screeching painfully against the human soldier’s sabre. Smith couldn’t hold out against such a fearsome onslaught forever, the thinness of his chosen weapon unable to defend against brute force for all its lightning-quick finesse. Sweat beaded across his brow as he tightened his legs, preparing to turn tail and return in a flurry of silver slashes, hopefully without having his back cut open.
The dwarf bared his teeth in a grin, eyes gleaming feverishly and the frazzled brown hair on his face giving him the look of a rabid dog. “C’mon, then! Is that really all ye’ve got, a fairy blade? Pah!”
He spat a thick globule of saliva into the man’s face. What a dirty trick! Thought Smith as his grip faltered, grimacing. The hilt of his sabre was cutting into his palms and his arms burned as if they were on fire.
A splintering sound pealed out as another crossbow bolt thunked into the pillar nearest to the dwarf’s ear, tiny bits of stone shrapnel cutting fiercely at his cheeks and face. Howling, the dwarf clutched at his eyes and fell backward, giving Smith barely enough time to fall back and return to Selena right as all three of the dwarven assassins flooded in.
Breathing heavily, Smith swiped the spit off from his face. “What do we do?” he murmured, sinking into a fighting stance and casting a wary glance towards the dwarves. “We can’t rightly win this, not with Piers hurt like he is, and there’s a child with us, for heaven’s sake! What do we do?”
Selena cast a glance at Brandon, Jade and Amber out of the corner of her eye, the three of them steeled for a fight but unsure of how to intercede. Brandon and Jade, it seemed, because of their priorities of protecting their secrets and Rebecca, respectively, and Amber because of the promise she had made to Tell about not acting rashly. The female guard glanced again towards their opponents, briefly meeting the eyes of the one she’d missed by a hair’s length with her shot. His eyes were reddish and had numerous little cuts around them, the sight filling her with a mingled sense of satisfaction and dread, for he sneered angrily upon seeing that she was the one to fire that fateful bolt.
Mind working furtively, Selena glanced to the tunnel at her back, the gaping blackness there seeming much less frightening than it might have when she was young and afraid of the dark. If they moved backwards into the cave system, they might be able to find reinforcements or shake off their attackers. In a few seconds’ time, her decision was made.
“We fall back,” she said, her voice soft but loud enough to be heard by those closest to her. “We fall back and we find the Captain and the others. Then…”
She trailed off, eyes lowering to where Piers lay, slumped like a ragdoll at Jade’s feet. The young Witch was patting gently at his cheeks, murmuring soft words and trying to stem the flow of blood from the back of his head with the ends of her dress. She was having minimal success. His face was still hopelessly pale, not a spot of healthy flesh tones flecking his cheeks.
Taking a deep breath, Selena squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, a raging wildfire of passionate emotion burning in her eyes. She grinned. “Then, we give these sorry bastards what for!”
-
Deeper within the ruin and totally unaware of what was happening to their comrades, Captain Tell stood with Burgess and Roland at a fork in the tunnel passageway. After managing to avoid a pressure plate in the floor that triggered some kind of bizarre poisoned spike trap, they merely gazed at the utter mess littering the ground around them, scratching their heads as of to how it could have come to be there.
A few smithereens of firewood lay discarded on the floor in a pile, half-scorched and with useless crockery tossed in with it; several empty bottles of mead were carefully arranged in a circle around the black ash marks. One trollish weapon was leaned up against the far wall, the blade oozing a dark substance that might have been blood. Four bedrolls were laid out over the floor, seeming very much rumpled and tossed about. It was almost as if someone had left out from there in a hurry before the soldiers arrived.
But, the most baffling part of this scene by far was the blood splattered up the rock wall, for it brought the single most obvious and disturbing question to mind.
“Where’s the body?” asked Roland.
Tell picked up a pair of cast-off boots set inside a stone alcove off to the side, noting the title of the ruined, moldy book beside it: The Shadow over Innsmouth. “Don’t know, but let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
“But what does it say? ” interrupted Smith, who was leaning against one of the two pillars sloping against the cavern’s threshold, polishing the pointed end of his sabre. Cobwebs spiked haphazardly about the entire room between dripping wet stalactites, the alarmingly big egg sacs seeming bulbous and distorted in the gloomy light.
White cap fungi spotted the ground in frilly, wave-like patterns, like breakers amidst a dark, sunless sea, and softly glowing plants lined the walls in much the same fashion as torch sconces might line the halls of a palace. The natural shaft that lay ahead of them lead downward and to the north from this central cavern, the sound of trickling water echoing against the dew-moistened rock walls.
Somewhere along its many twists and turns, apparently, was an underground spring; and now that Tell, Burgess and Roland had moved steadily on ahead to investigate, so was the rest of the astronomer’s company. Piers, the youngest of their group, had volunteered to remain behind and keep watch over the dogs and sleds, fearing what might lie hidden in the ruin’s shadowy depths.
Brandon cleared his throat, looking again at the strange murals and glyphs lining the walls. “Well, it says—“
“Shit and hell and fuck!”
“Erm, no,” murmured the astronomer, glancing up from his inspection of the runes with a baffled look. He tilted his head in mock contemplation, then, the rounded lenses of his reading glasses flashing wickedly under the light as he grinned. “Not exactly….”
Selena had to stifle her laughter with a hand, cheeks lighting up with mirth. “And hopefully not in that order!”
They all glanced over at Amber, the source of the outburst. To their surprise and slight disgust, she was covered in some strange neon green fluid, the ooze gleaming as she tried to flick it off from her fingers. Her face was twisted in revulsion as she glared down at the drops of it that had splashed onto her shirt.
Jade was crouched beside their makeshift fire pit, her large white canine lying across her lap. She had been settled comfortably on the cave floor for almost half an hour, playing with colorful squid dolls stitched to have perpetually smiling faces alongside Rebecca. Thankfully, Jade was near enough that she was able to clap both her hands over the impressionable young girl’s ears by the second word out of Amber’s mouth.
Blinking down at the Little Sister with wide green eyes, Jade removed her hands. “Please don’t repeat any of that,” she whispered urgently, biting her bottom lip in dread. “If Nealaphh asks, you didn’t hear a thing. ”
“Okay!” Rebecca chirped pleasantly, booping Bec’s snout with one of the squid plushies. There were already several precariously stacked on top of his head, seeming much like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The First Guardian huffed noisily, nearly sending the tower toppling to the floor, but tolerated the absurd treatment.
Amber groaned, rubbing a hand across her face as she slumped in defeat. “Ugh, this stuff is so gross… it smells like rotten eggs!” By this time Brandon, Jade and Selena had moved over to investigate, Smith following shortly behind and wrinkling his nose in distaste. Rebecca happily continued playing with her toys, stuck in her own little world.
“Where did it come from?” asked Selena, ever the reasonable one.
Sighing, Amber flapped one hand at something hanging over her shoulder, scowling balefully up at it. “That thing.”
They all moved forward to look at the strange dark purple object attached to the cavern ceiling. It seemed mostly organic, shaped like a chrysalis and with thick resin oozing from its sides, but the distinct glowing along its sides indicated something far more unusual. Soft blue lights emanated from the inside of the cocoon-like sac, pulsating at a slowed rate. Almost like a…. heartbeat? Before they could take the time to investigate it further, however, the sound of quick footsteps clapping against the ground rang out from the direction of the way out of the ruins, accompanied by several muffled shouts.
Smith immediately leapt into action, coat sweeping outward as he rushed to stand beside the door, sabre drawn and at the ready. At this everyone else in the room went rigid with tension, their minds braced for a fight. All eyes locked onto the entrance.
To their surprise, it was only Piers. The boy looked paler than if he’d seen a ghost, panting and hunching over to clutch at his knees as he stumbled in.
“Dwarves,” he gasped as he looked up into Smith’s hard face, almost sobbing out the words. “Three of ‘em. Heavy weaponry, hadta leave th’ dogs. Right behind me—“
His words broke off as a blur of spinning metal caught him across the back of the head with a heavy kuh-thunchk. Stricken unconscious immediately, Piers slumped to the floor, the back of his skull flooding in a spray of red and his fair hair matted with blood. The throwing axe that hit him clattered across the stone ground, the wedged blade spinning round and round.
Selena rushed over to crouch beside him, glancing up as Smith moved to fill the entryway in a whoosh of fabric. Her fingers remained steady as she dabbed at the cut, her hand coming away glistening with lifeblood. Thankfully, the cut wasn’t too deep and Piers was still breathing, but it could spell trouble for the boy if they didn’t apply some slapdash field medicine to it as soon as possible. Head wounds always bled the worst, she knew, and his color was already beginning to turn sickly.
Grabbing him under the arms in a tight grip, the soldier grunted as the kid’s deadweight body fell heavily against her, hauling him over to where the others stood. The Space witch had collected Rebecca at the first sign of trouble and tucked the little girl behind a nearby boulder for her own safety, Becquerel standing nearby with his ears standing at attention and his back ramrod straight. Brandon had his funny little butter knife in his hand, and if the situation wasn’t so dire, Selena would’ve thought it was cute. They all huddled together behind the boulder; it was a rather convenient place to offer cover-fire from, if you asked Selena.
Eyes wild and hair flying in staticky strands around her face as she leaned out, Selena brought up her crossbow and carefully took aim, a thick bolt shooting over Smith’s shoulder and out into the dim passage. A shout, which was either made in the dwarven language or by some idiot gargling mouthwash mid-battle, bounded off from the cavern walls; shadows undulated wildly over the rock as the dwarf assassins moved ever nearer, sneaking behind stalagmites to avoid being struck by Selena.
They all flinched at the first clash of metal against metal; one of the dwarves began forcing Smith backward, a heavy battle axe wrapped firmly in his iron grip and screeching painfully against the human soldier’s sabre. Smith couldn’t hold out against such a fearsome onslaught forever, the thinness of his chosen weapon unable to defend against brute force for all its lightning-quick finesse. Sweat beaded across his brow as he tightened his legs, preparing to turn tail and return in a flurry of silver slashes, hopefully without having his back cut open.
The dwarf bared his teeth in a grin, eyes gleaming feverishly and the frazzled brown hair on his face giving him the look of a rabid dog. “C’mon, then! Is that really all ye’ve got, a fairy blade? Pah!”
He spat a thick globule of saliva into the man’s face. What a dirty trick! Thought Smith as his grip faltered, grimacing. The hilt of his sabre was cutting into his palms and his arms burned as if they were on fire.
A splintering sound pealed out as another crossbow bolt thunked into the pillar nearest to the dwarf’s ear, tiny bits of stone shrapnel cutting fiercely at his cheeks and face. Howling, the dwarf clutched at his eyes and fell backward, giving Smith barely enough time to fall back and return to Selena right as all three of the dwarven assassins flooded in.
Breathing heavily, Smith swiped the spit off from his face. “What do we do?” he murmured, sinking into a fighting stance and casting a wary glance towards the dwarves. “We can’t rightly win this, not with Piers hurt like he is, and there’s a child with us, for heaven’s sake! What do we do?”
Selena cast a glance at Brandon, Jade and Amber out of the corner of her eye, the three of them steeled for a fight but unsure of how to intercede. Brandon and Jade, it seemed, because of their priorities of protecting their secrets and Rebecca, respectively, and Amber because of the promise she had made to Tell about not acting rashly. The female guard glanced again towards their opponents, briefly meeting the eyes of the one she’d missed by a hair’s length with her shot. His eyes were reddish and had numerous little cuts around them, the sight filling her with a mingled sense of satisfaction and dread, for he sneered angrily upon seeing that she was the one to fire that fateful bolt.
Mind working furtively, Selena glanced to the tunnel at her back, the gaping blackness there seeming much less frightening than it might have when she was young and afraid of the dark. If they moved backwards into the cave system, they might be able to find reinforcements or shake off their attackers. In a few seconds’ time, her decision was made.
“We fall back,” she said, her voice soft but loud enough to be heard by those closest to her. “We fall back and we find the Captain and the others. Then…”
She trailed off, eyes lowering to where Piers lay, slumped like a ragdoll at Jade’s feet. The young Witch was patting gently at his cheeks, murmuring soft words and trying to stem the flow of blood from the back of his head with the ends of her dress. She was having minimal success. His face was still hopelessly pale, not a spot of healthy flesh tones flecking his cheeks.
Taking a deep breath, Selena squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, a raging wildfire of passionate emotion burning in her eyes. She grinned. “Then, we give these sorry bastards what for!”
-
Deeper within the ruin and totally unaware of what was happening to their comrades, Captain Tell stood with Burgess and Roland at a fork in the tunnel passageway. After managing to avoid a pressure plate in the floor that triggered some kind of bizarre poisoned spike trap, they merely gazed at the utter mess littering the ground around them, scratching their heads as of to how it could have come to be there.
A few smithereens of firewood lay discarded on the floor in a pile, half-scorched and with useless crockery tossed in with it; several empty bottles of mead were carefully arranged in a circle around the black ash marks. One trollish weapon was leaned up against the far wall, the blade oozing a dark substance that might have been blood. Four bedrolls were laid out over the floor, seeming very much rumpled and tossed about. It was almost as if someone had left out from there in a hurry before the soldiers arrived.
But, the most baffling part of this scene by far was the blood splattered up the rock wall, for it brought the single most obvious and disturbing question to mind.
“Where’s the body?” asked Roland.
Tell picked up a pair of cast-off boots set inside a stone alcove off to the side, noting the title of the ruined, moldy book beside it: The Shadow over Innsmouth. “Don’t know, but let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
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Gamzee Makara Wrote:S’aight. After all, dogs have a tendency to motherfuckin’ bite.