< From East To West | Ex Pulplogs | Sometimes You Get Sucked In Too >
ST While Corve, Carmine and Xar forged ahead into the air-filled passages of the catacombs Myrrh had elected to remain behind and study the sunken cemetery and see if he could determine by what means the passages that the others were exploring remained filled with air rather then water. Corve had been unhappy about leaving his friend but Myrrh insisted.
Corve is always unhappy by some turn of events or another, and has become rather used to it. It doesn't make things easier, just simpler.
ST Inside the air-filled passages the two Solars and the Dragon-King found no trace of corpses or ghosts. The shadowland that had engulfed the city of Electrum does not extend into these passages and the three explorers have returned to true Creation rather then that death-tainted halfway land.
Xar`Rex tromps around underground, his stone hide blending in somewhat with the stone walls.
Carmine walks through the catacombs next to Corve, peering curiously at the walls, very glad of the feeling of true creation once more, the shadowland had brought up unpleasant memories...
Corve "We've got a problem. Unless we plan on staying the night down here, we'll have to move fast, or we'll end up in the Underworld; and I, for one, don't want to go there again any time soon."
Xar`Rex "It does not feel like the shadowland outside."
Carmine "It doesn't, no."
Corve "Now, but if we enter the Shadowland at night, and leave it at night, we get stuck in the Underworld." He knows this much from his little trip with Carmine.
Carmine "...Oh, yeah."
Xar`Rex "So.. we wait until day to leave?"
Corve "Looks like it," he says, taking Carmine's hand.
ST The white-grey stone of the tunnels extends forward for a considerable distance beyond what they've walked since passing the door where Myrrh stayed behind. Several times the passage has split off into branches but so far the Circle has chosen to take the straightest path. The only variation in the greyish, unclean stone of the walls is that occasionally the tunnels enter into vast chambers
ST The past three chambers the Circle has entered and departed have been empty of everything but torn bits of tapestries hanging from rusted hooks on the walls, smashed bits of furniture and torn, water-worn pages of books scattered around. Nothing usable or legible, just ruins left by scavengers and pillagers.
Carmine "What are we even looking for down here?"
Xar`Rex "I do not know. Evidence of why it fell?"
Corve "Mmhmm. Maybe we'll find the statues down here- I don't know. The Red Coated Lady told me I'd find clues down here."
Corve "... and something that the cult fears."
Xar`Rex "We are not the first to come here." he gestures to the ruins. "I hope it is still here."
Corve nods slightly as they keep walking, keeping a sharp eye out for anything that might give him some sort of clue as to the room he was trying to find.
ST The next time the tunnel they are following opens onto a room the place is a vast vaulted space with ribbed ceilings and huge stone columns so thick that Xar and Corve could not encircle them with their arms together. Over 100 of these vast columns support a ceiling that rises so high that it surely must pierce the surface of the fallen isle.
ST In fact...the ceiling is invisible in darkness. The three explorers may actually be looking at the bottom of a Shadowland. The fuzzy edge of where the Shadowland's influence is lays somewhere in the air above them.
Xar`Rex leaps into the air, and checks out the area from above, looking for patterns, or anything around the ceiling level
ST But of more immediate (and reachable) interest is the forest of columns. Each column has four niches carved into its base at chest-height. Each niche holds some small bauble or item. A vase, a petrified rose blossom, a sculpture of coral or stone.
Corve stares up at the darkness. "Huh. I didn't know Shadowlands could float..."
Carmine frowns up at the ceiling, before the gleam of something in one of the columns catches her eye "Corve, look!"
Corve raises a brow, and moves towards one of the columns, to proceed carefully studying each of the artifacts that he finds in each niche. "Huh..."
ST The item that caught Carmine's attention is a gleaming silver statuette of a nude man holding a dragon above his head.
Corve turns his head a little and finally spots the statue. "Oh... wow. Yeah, that might do it."
Corve "Xar! Get down here, buddy."
ST Xar feels it may be a good idea to stop flying, at least for the moment. There are things moving around up in the shadows near the ceiling...probably Hungry Ghosts.
Xar`Rex dives, pulls up, and drops down neatly on his feet. "What is it?"
Carmine "It's a small statue ... but it caught my eye ... there seem to be a lot of them."
Xar`Rex tilts his head, eyeing the statue they point out
Corve "Look at this," he says, showing the Dragon King one of the statues.
ST The other three niches in the column that holds the silver statuette contain a small ivory vase without carving or adornment but still elegant in its own simple way and two bones: a long one that looks like a leg bone thicker then Corve's arm and a sharp, curving tooth that looks like something from Xar's long-ago ancestors. Back when they were about ten times bigger.
Xar`Rex "It is quite pretty." He finds the tooth a bit more interesting, however.
Corve snatches the statue in one hand and examines it, trying to see if there's anything he's missing. "Come on, talk to me..." he's well aware that that is a dragon, and not a serpent... but still. One can hope.
Xar`Rex "Maybe it is not a good idea to move them..." he says as Corve snatches it up, to no effect.
Corve raises an eyebrow at Xar in query.
Xar`Rex "I thought it might trigger something." he shrugs.
Carmine "What were these catacombs for anyway?"
Corve "I'm not sure," he says, taking another look around.
Xar`Rex checks out the enormous tooth, as Corve's moving of the statue doesn't seem to have brought the world crashing down upon them.
ST The statuette is a masterwork of silver crafting with every detail of the man captured perfectly. There's something familiar about the tiny man's face and figure. He's never met anyone who resembles this man but it still bothers him.
Carmine "What's that, Xar?" Carmine peers curiously.
Xar`Rex "It is a fang." he shows it to her. "Like mine, but much bigger. I would fear the creature big enough to have this."
ST The dragon held aloft by the man is clearly dead, its head lolling and obvious wounds carved into its body. Its blood streams down the man's strong forearms and his mouth is open in a yell. The expression could be one of triumph or sadness with equal ease. Something in the pose suggests triumph over grief, however.
Corve shakes his head. "This is strange. I've heard about catacombs, but up in the sky they're used for more work, storage, and other things. There're no places like -this- though." He sighs, tracing his finger along the dragon in the statue. "Strange..."
Carmine "What's so strange about it?" She says, considering that perhaps the thing with the claws so large would be interesting to fight...
Xar`Rex looks over at the statue, comparing the tooth to the serpent to the man, in relative size... maybe it came from the serpent?
ST If the dragon was the owner of that tooth then the man would have been much bigger then Corve, nearly Xar's own size. But that isn't impossibly large for a human.
Xar`Rex moves around the column, and inspects the vase, wondering if it was involved as well
ST Upon a closer look the vase could be made of bone rather then ivory but it wouldn't be any type of bone Xar is familiar with. It looks simple, almost plain except for the fact that it was obviously made by a very skilled craftsman and made lovingly, with great care.
ST When the Dragon-King peers inside he notices the vase is almost full of a greyish, dusty material.
Xar`Rex sniffs cautiously... "Ashes?"
Carmine "Ashes?" why would ashes be important?
Xar`Rex "Ashes of a hero, or a serpent?"
Corve raises a brow. "Cremation," he says, noting the questioning tone of Carmine's query. "These -are- catacombs, after all."
ST They smell like it, so they probably are. The vase isn't very large, but the ashes are fine as dust and firmly packed into their container. There could be a considerable amount inside.
Xar`Rex "Ashes of a hero, or a dragon?"
Carmine makes a note to ask someone about Cremation later, and looks at them curiously. "Maybe they were the heroes ... we already have things from the dragon here..."
ST The huge leg-bone doesn't look like it came from any sort of dragon. If anything it looks like it would belong to some sort of insanely massive human.
Xar`Rex "The hero must have been very large. My size. See how the size of the bones compare, and the statue?" he points out the correlations
Carmine "Oh, yes." She frowns at the bone. "Well, that bone is human ... if humans even got that big. Perhaps he ate too much yabyab."
Xar`Rex "Hmm yes, the yabyab would do it." he nods thoughtfully.
Corve continues to study the statue, taking in every line, every curve, each carving on the silver. It's haunting, the way he can almost remember; no matter how far back or how deep into his mind he goes, the memory always seems to be out of reach.
ST Carmine does some mental calculations. If the tooth is from the dragon and this leg-bone from the hero...well, the man would have easily topped eight feet in height and been almost a pace across the shoulders.
Xar`Rex eyes the vase dubiously, then thinks back on all the stuff he's burned down to ashes, and reconsiders. Yeah. That could be him.
Carmine "Somewhere between me, and the yabyab giants in size, I think."
Carmine frowns at herself. How did she know that?
ST It startles Corve when something clicks. He doesn't remember the face properly because he's only ever seen it in reflections and only seen the reflections in dreams and half-remembered moments. But for just a moment he remembers staring at that face as it watched him from a polished glass mirror and he remembers feeling the pain from the scar that crosses the man's chest.
Corve "Ah! Crap!" he says, almost dropping the statue. He catches it in midfall and looks at it again, one hand holding it and the other rubbing his chest as if in pain.
Carmine is instantly at his side "Corve? What's wrong? How did you get hurt?"
Corve "I didn't... well, not now... it's..." He points at the statue. "It's me. It was. I don't know for sure, I just remember -being him.-" He frowns.
Carmine frowns at Corve, and puts a hand to his forehead to check his temperature.
Xar`Rex "You were very large." he observes.
Corve looks at her with a 'oh, please' look. "I'm not -sick.- I just... remember being him. At some point. Look, we all reincarnate... somewhat. From what Myrrh's told me, anyway. It's possible I was this guy... part of me, anyway... a long time ago."
Corve "Isn't it, Xar?"
Xar`Rex is very matter-of-fact regarding reincarnation, as it's what all Dragon Kings do. "Of course. You returned to a new life. I have done so many times over."
Carmine looks confused. So there was the chance she was /someone else/ in addition to the woman she was before cult ...
Xar`Rex "You humans remember so little of the lives of your past, it is odd."
Xar`Rex pats Corve reassuringly, likely leaving a bruise.
Corve "I was kind of refering to my -Solar- past, Xa- ow."
Xar`Rex "Oh, sorry." he looks vaguely embarassed. He's not used to being *quite* so strong yet.
Xar`Rex guiltily removes his glaws from Corve's shoulder.
Corve "Uh huh. Just don't take my arm off..." he says, rolling his shoulder a little. "Anyway, from what Myrrh's told me, Solars are seperated into two people. Our human selves, before we Exalt, and our Solar selves, who fuse with our bodies when we Exalt. So this could either be one of my Solar incarnations... or my human one. C Onsidering? the feat he's accomplished, I'm guessing the former."
ST As fascinating as it is to peer at a silver statuette of one of Corve's past lives as a freakishly large nude warrior, there are ninety-nine other columns in the huge gallery.
Carmine **
Xar`Rex "Well, shall we take these with us?"
Carmine After one last look at the nude silver man that was once Corve, Carmine wanders off to see what catches her eyes on other columns.
Corve "I don't see how it could hurt to leave with some of these," he says, pocketing the statue and then following Carmine.
ST Once again, something shiny catches Carmine's eye as she wanders into the gallery of niches. Instead of a silver statue of Corve this one is a small amulet carved from a diamond. The amulet is fashioned in the shape of an elephant standing atop a turtle and it looks to have been hewn from a single stone. The entire thing is about the size of Xar's eye.
ST The amulet is attached to a silvery-gold chain, probably electrum, and hangs from a hook secured to the top of the niche.
Corve wanders up behind Carmine to examine what she's seen.
Xar`Rex takes the tooth, the femur, and after using some spare cloth to tie closed the opening of the vase, that too.
ST When Xar picks up the femur he feels a tingling sensation in his claws but it quickly goes away when Corve turns back to see what's wrong.
Carmine reaches for it, picking it up and studying it in the light, watching the polychromatic refraction within the amulet.
Xar`Rex blinks, sets the femur down, and picks it up again
ST Carmine notices that, unlike the niches in the other column, this one has a small black dot in the grey stone under the niche.
ST When Xar picks the femur back up, the tingle returns.
Carmine peers closer at the dot.
Xar`Rex narrows his eyes, and calls "Come, here, there is something strange about this."
Corve turns around and jogs back towards Xar. "What?"
ST The dot is simply a black dot set into the base of the niche. It doesn't look painted, but very surely placed there on purpose.
Xar`Rex "Try to pick this up. It feels odd."
Corve picks the femur up.
ST Corve feels nothing odd when he picks up the femur.
Corve "I don't feel anything, Xar."
Xar`Rex frowns. "It went away when you looked at me, before. Carmine, you try."
Carmine ignores the hole for the moment and walks over, picking up the femur.
ST Once the amulet leaves its niche the black dot turns bright red, but no one is paying attention anymore. Nor does Carmine notice that the brilliant clarity of the diamond amulet is starting to cloud from the inside out with a swirling, malevolent looking blackness. She is distracted by the fact that when she picks up femur, there is no tingle.
ST Of course Corve is watching Carmine pick it up and when Corve looked at Xar, the tingle went away
Xar`Rex "Corve, look away. Maybe over there." he points.
Corve looks away, shrugging as he walks back towards the place where Carmine found the... wow. "Hey, is that supposed to be glowing?"
Xar`Rex "Glowing? What?"
ST The red dot is indeed highly noticable!
Carmine "...is what supposed to be glowing?" She asks, as she tries to pick the femur up, now that no-one is watching.
ST When Carmine picks it up now, she feels the tingle Xar described.
Carmine "ooohh, it does tingle."
Corve "Carmine... bring that necklace over here..."
Xar`Rex "Aha! But.. not for Corve. Maybe because it is his?"
Carmine walks over with necklace and femur
Corve "Hey, you two... the thing is GLOWING RED."
Carmine "It was just a small black dot when I saw it..."
Corve "Put the necklace back." He points at the place where it'd been.
Xar`Rex looks. "That necklace is ugly."
Carmine "No it's not it's ... changed. It didn't look like this ... it was shining..." she says, as she puts it back.
ST The necklace, now that they look at it, is indeed getting pretty ugly. The snarl of swirling blackness in its heart is growing, turning the elephant and turtle into black-carved beasts instead of elegant figures of art.
Corve blinks. "That's... strange."
Xar`Rex "It is not shining now."
ST Carmine hangs the amulet back in its niche and the glowing red dot turns a bright, vibrant orange that flashes rapidly.
Xar`Rex "Oh dear."
Corve "Umm... yeah, that" he says, motioning to Xar.
Xar`Rex "Is it supposed to do that?"
Corve "How should we know? You're the magic trinket expert."
Carmine nods, frowning.
ST The amulet, now back in its niche, is steadily growing blacker. The entire diamond has turned into a fuming black storm trapped in crystal and even the electrum chain is growing barbs and losing its shine.
Xar`Rex snorts. "Well I did not *make* this one."
Xar`Rex takes it back out
Corve "Yeah well..." he begins, taking a step back and unholstering his rifle. It's a defense mechanism.
ST Xar feels a slight resistance as he reaches toward the amulet but it isn't very much, only as much as a wet piece of paper would give him.
Xar`Rex frowns and pushes past it, grabbing the amulet in his claws
ST The amulet is throbbing like a living heart as the darkness inside it swirls angrily. In Xar's grip the pulsing grows more rapid.
Xar`Rex tightens his claws around it for a second, then releases it, replacing it on its hook, and withdrawing his hands. "Leave it.. I think it is best like this."
Corve "Yeah, well, it's -still glowing,- so I suggest we all be ready for -anything.- For now, though, let's keep moving."
Xar`Rex grabs a friend in each hand, and LEAPS away, as far and as fast as he can!
Corve is ripped form the ground, dragged into the air by his winged, and extremely strong reptilian friend. "Xar, what the fu-"
ST Just behind them, as Xar pulls his friends to safety, there is a tremendous roar that cuts off Corve's word mid obscenity. Absolute freezing cold washes over the three as they leap away from the explosion.
ST There is silence for a moment while the three try to clear their heads. And just as Corve regains his feet he is blasted off them again, knocked flat on his back by as second explosion.
Xar`Rex blinks, and peers towards the pillar cautiously
Xar`Rex "I am glad I did not leave it out."
ST The pillar trembles, decimated by not one, but two massive explosions. Hunks of rubble fall from it and the remainder gives another shake. It's coming down. Shadows loom up as blocks of stone larger then Xar start falling to the ground around them as the column they were examining starts to disintegrate.
Xar`Rex rolls behind one of the other stone pillars, and out of the way!
Corve tries to leap away, his movements enhanced by essence. Not much, though.
Carmine dodges on instinct, then as the blast catches her anyway wonders why she bothered, fortifying her skin with essence letting the blast carry her away depositing her against a wall hard.
Carmine The wall behind her cracks a little.
ST Xar's thick hide protects him from the falling rubble and he escapes with little more then a few scuffs on his metallic scales. Carmine and Corve are not so lucky. The impact with the wall left Carmine rattled and blows from several sharp rocks had opened cuts on her scalp and legs.
ST Corve was hit in the chest by a massive boulder that pinned him in place and was shortly burried under a pile of smaller stones and dust.
Corve tries to call out from under the rubble.
Xar`Rex "Corve!" He gets to his feet, and starts throwing pieces of rubble aside
Carmine "Corve!" Carmine sprints forward, heedless of the injuries she has taken, helping Xar lift the rocks aside.
ST It isn't hard to clear the rubble away and reveal Corve's pinned body. And even the boulder that pinned the battered Brumian is easily shifted by Xar's mighty thews.
Carmine starts to look Corve over worriedly "Are you okay? How much does it hurt?"
ST And so now the Circle stands in the midst of a ruined stone pillar, bloodied and bruised in two cases, scuffed in another. Around them stand 99 columns full of treasure. And, to judge from the last experience, deadly dangers.
Corve picks himself up, scraped and cut all over. He limps a little, but looks to be mostly alright. "I'm really getting sick of having to be saved," he says, grimacing. "I'll be fine, I think."
Carmine kisses Corve's lips, filling the pair of them with magic to speed the healing of their injuries. "Good."
Corve kisses her back, feeling the warm, sunny tingle. "I want more kisses like that later," he murmurs, looking around. "So... we're all somewhat alright, then?"
Carmine smiles and kisses him again, this time not quite so sunlight filled.
Carmine nods
Xar`Rex "Yes, I am well. I apologize I was not able to take us away from the danger far enough."
Corve shakes his head. "It's alright, Xar. It happens."
Xar`Rex "We must be more careful when removing things from the pillars."
Carmine nods.
Corve "Yeah..."
Corve make sway through the rubble and begins inspecting the rest of the pillars.
Xar`Rex looks for remnants of the items on the exploding pillar
ST None of the four items from the destroyed pillar looks to have survived. And it seems that the destruction of the amulet set of another trapped item, causing the second explosion.
Xar`Rex sighs, and looks for things that are less shiny on the other pillars."
Carmine looks too, vowing to be perhaps a little more careful about picking things up
Xar`Rex "We should split up. There are many things here."
Corve retrieves the femur, and begins to investigate about the place, trying to see if he can find anything more of import.
ST Splitting up does seem the best plan to investigate the gallery of columns. Ninety-eight remain, after all. Xar and Carmine find lots of niches marked with the tiny black spot under their base along with numerous uninteresting objects. Bits of sculpture, priceless gems, statues. Xar even finds a severed human hand capped with gold in one niche.
ST Corve discovers two things that he finds interesting. The first is another silver statuette in a column near the one they first went over. The huge man appears in this statuette though this time he is clothed, wearing intricate robes in the style of the high First Age. A willowy woman stands next to him, barely reaching his chest despite obvious height and grace. Between them stands a young boy with fine features and a resemblance to both
ST The second item is less personal but somewhat more important to Corve at the moment. Clearly an Artifact rather then just a trinket the glitter of Orichalcum is what attracted his attention.
Corve picks up the statue, holding it carefully. It was him again... this time with a woman. He looks at her, and the boy, carefully studying their features. He keeps the statue in one hand as he moves to look at the other trinket, the golden shine attracting him to it. "Carmine... come here for a second, love," he calls out.
Carmine wanders over from her own pillar, setting the small jade statuette of a woman clad in detail of silver back in the alcove.
Xar`Rex collects items that might be of use in future artifact creation
ST The Orichalcum shine comes from a simple band of white silk with a golden plate of vicious barbs woven into the center. A very simplistic smashfist. Below the niche is a black dot.
Corve "Look at this, love," he says, showing Carmine the statue.
Carmine looks at it "That's ...you... or him...or something again...I wonder who she is."
Corve gives her the statue, kind of hoping she'll get the same feeling about the woman that he got from the guy.
ST Carmine gets no such feelings. Nope. Not even a tingle like she got from the femur.
Xar`Rex "I wish to remove a trapped item." Xar informs the others from across the chamber. "Prepare yourselves, this may be difficult."
Carmine "I felt less from the femur..." she says...
Corve looks over to Xar. "Wait," he says. "I want to get this, too..." he says, motioning to the smashfist.
ST The item that Xar wishes to remove is a hunk of stained ore that has a curious dull sheen of rainbow colors. Spattered across it like blood drops are splotches of rust and impurity.
Corve "Wait... what exploded last time? The shining dots or the item itself? I didn't get to see..."
ST Thanks to Xar's quick action, none of them saw exactly what exploded, only the result of the explosion.
Xar`Rex "I do not know. Do you wish to go first?"
Corve looks at Xar and raises a brow. "You're the one that can fly and has stone skin, my friend."
Xar`Rex "Then stay where you are." He grasps the strange ore, and moves quickly away from the pillar, throws the stone an equal distance towards some other pillars with singularly uninteresting items on them, and ducks.
ST The black dot under the now-vacant niche turns bright, glowing red. Nothing else *seems* to happen.
Corve grabs Carmine and walks further away from the pillar Xar removed the item from. "Come on, let's get more distance."
ST The rust-tainted ore clatters to the ground at the base of another pillar and lays there, glittering dully in the light of the niches.
Xar`Rex waits expectantly for a while
ST As they wait Corve realizes he needs to find a place where he can be unseen for a short time. Nothing else happens. The dot under the emptied niche remains red, glowing. The ore remains on the ground, glittering dully.
Corve mutters under his breath something about it being a bad time to have to take a leak.
Corve "Maybe it needs to be closer to the pillar?"
Xar`Rex shrugs
Xar`Rex "Well I do not WANT it to explode." He walks over to the ore, and checks to see if it's turned strange colors, is glowing, or whatever.
ST There is no sign of change in the ore.
Carmine "Maybe you should go and get the ...thing that you wanted, she says, looking down at the statue in her hands."
Corve nods and runs over to the pillar. "Take cover, just in case," and then he snatches the smashfist, tossing it overhand at Xar. "Xar, catch." And then he sprints towards his friends.
ST The black dot under that niche turns red as well. But nothing happens. Once again, the dot remains red and the smashfist doesn't change.
Xar`Rex Catches the Possibly exploding smashfist, a bit surprised that Corvce would toss it AT him
ST Minutes pass. Nothing happens.
Corve tossed it at Xar because he's figured that the items don't explode, since the ore didn't.
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