Re: Xing Caverns

[SamSeven]

She wished her ankle didn't hurt so much. She didn't dare try to fix it without any light, lest she do more damage.
"I don't think that will work this time!!" She had the sense of space around her. The ceiling was too high up for Rei to be able to safely come down through. And besides, she didn't need either of them falling over the same ledge she had, which she was pretty sure, was the wall she was now leaning against.

[Yoyo]

Rei smiled and placed her left hand on the ground. "Make sure you're against a wall or something. Multi-tasking with alchemy isn't my specialty," she called before she activated the transmutation circle on her palm.

The earth began to move up and to the side creating a little bowl where her hand was. Rei frowned and forced the earth to extend down. If all worked well, a relatively small column of earth would be descending from the ceiling of the tunnel below her. Before long the alchemy stopped - there was no more rock in the small vent she had made - and Rei had a nearly perfect circle about the width of her hand at her feet.

"I have a light up here. Don't suppose you can see it," she said, smiling to herself.

[admin]

Ace moved back to Rei and gave her a poke in the ribs. "How's it going with Dwyrin?" Ace asked hurriedly. "I found an exciting hallway that leads to somewhere!"

[SamSeven]

"Ah, it looks like a gigantic stone flashlight. Thanks," she called up to Rei as she began to think about the actual mechanics of fixing her ankle.

Can't be that hard, right?? She sat down with her ring and made her cirlce before clasping her hands around the injury. She had been right, it wasn't that hard. But as bone and cartiledge mended, it sent a shockwave of quick, sharp pain up her leg.

She leaned back against the wall and let it pass then called out, "Did I hear something about an exciting hallway, up there??"

[Yoyo]

Rei sighed. "I suppose we're going to continue exploring then? Well then, how are we getting you out of there, Dwyrin?"

[admin]

Ace handed Rei some rope.
"Uh, yeah, I found a, uh, hallway, like, you know? And there were skeletons all over the place and some had backpacks, some didn't, but I found this in one of the backpacks," Ace shrugged. "You know, whatever."

[SamSeven]

Standing, testing her handi-work, she looked around as her eyes adjusted more. The walls of cavern she was in disappeared into the darkness far away.

"I have a better idea!!" She shouted, "Why don't you guys come down??"

[Yoyo]

"I don't even want to know why you were looking through some skeleton's backpack," she informed Ace as she tied the rope to a sturdy rock. With some minor alchemy, she widened the hole in the ground to the size of a person and threw the rope down. She then swung down, reaching the ground in a few moments.

Upon landing, she quickly stepped out of the way, certain Ace would not have the decency to avoid landing on her. She looked around the cavern and nodded. "Wow," she whistled, grinning. "Looks like we can have some fun down here, too."

[admin]

"I am glad we all appreciated the rope," Ace said as he climbed down to the bottom.

Ace stared at the large cavern and shrugged. "It's dark."

[SamSeven]

"I didn't know we brought rope. And of course it's dark - that's a prerequisite for caves."

Dwyrin placed her hand against the nearest wall. It was cold, but oddly smoothe. "My vote is that we follow a wall instead of wandering out into the middle of dark nowhere," she suggested.

[Yoyo]

Rei held out her left arm, electricity still sparking from it and illuminating the immediate surroundings. "Sounds like a plan. I vote we let the man go first so we can cower behind him when a monster leaps out to eat us."

[admin]

Ace wandered to the front of the group and shrugged. He followed the smooth wall on the cavern for a while and could hear the two of them following him. "I wonder if there's any food in this cave," he asked himself. "I'm hungry."

[SamSeven]

Always prepared for food emergencies - since that one time she had to walk around in the snow with nothing to eat - Dwyrin pulled a bag of jerky from her pocket and handed it to Ace. "Here ya go."

She stopped short as her fingers ran over some unusual roughness in the wall. Asking Rei to put her glowing automail arm closer to the wall, she examined it, made a face and stepped back in her suprise. "Look! Carvings. I think it's...No, I don't want to influence your ideas. What's this carving of??"

[Yoyo]

[[ "Do you know where the red balloon floated off to? *camera pans out* "Where is it? Right in front of us?" ]]

"My stomach must be taking over my mind because that kind of looks like a steak," Rei commented, frowning and rubbing her eyes with her right hand. "On a more logical level, it looks more like some sort of writing. Pictographs, to be more accurate."

[admin]

Ace ate his jerky and stared at it. "Uh, that's ancient stuff. Before even Xing, stuff. No one but a few really old geezers could read that," Ace continued. "Too bad. Maybe they had an Ancient Exit sign with an arrow pointing out-"

Ace paused as he saw a marking and dragged Rei's arm closer. "That, looks like a picture of a dragon, doesn't it?"

[SamSeven]

{ Ah, there it is!! }

"Either a dragon or a really big dog." Looking at the size of the little stick figures around it, Dwyrin was loath to believe something that size was a housepet. Not only that- "Is that a figure in it's mouth?? Oh, no, it's not. It's just a couple limbs stuck in it's huge, pointy teeth."

[Yoyo]

"Oh, good, at least it's not a fully human. Only minor carnage," Rei agreed, nodding. She stepped away from the wall and looked down the tunnel. "Think that thing is still alive or will we just find its remains at the end?"

[admin]

"Even a giant dog hopefully doesn't live too long. Um, but, one of you can feel free to go first," Ace coughed as he looked at the dark wide cavern.

"This room would be big enough..."

[SamSeven]

Another one of those 'small' rumbles resounded through the cave system, shaking the floor. The surrounding darkness seemed to somehow be encroaching on their light, and a slightly sulfer-like smell filled the air.

"I really hope that's not a volcano or something," she said with a flat expression. "Oversized dogs I can deal with - but a rushing surge of liquid hot death?? Not my style."

[Yoyo]

"Agreed," Rei said, thinking back to the lava river they had crossed earlier. "Unfortunately, I think we might be in for the second of the two. We should probably move on soon if we plan on getting out of here without being cooked. I'm hungry, but not that hungry."

[admin]

Ace pointed. "You guys had us come down here and we've been heading down, not up, since we got here. So if there is a volcano here uh, we're not really in a good situation for it."

He shrugged as he started walking. "Not that it matters. We're here, so let's get going."

[SamSeven]

Aside from the shuffling of their feet and the occasional water droplet, the room was silent. There were more carvings, but she wasn't sure she really wanted to stop and look at them.

Dwyrin struck a dramatic pose, pointing off into the darkness. "Time to get adventurous," she announced, then in a much smaller voice mumbled, "since we're going to die down here, anyway."

[Yoyo]

Rei smiled at Dwyrin's side comment and matched her pose, left arm forward to light the way. "Then on we go! Let those who knew us think of us in a good light!"

[admin]

Ace smiled at their comments and pressed forward into the dark cavern. The path around the wall winded and dipped in odd ways. At times they would have to duck over an overarching piece of cave and at others they found themselves leaping from ledges to follow it. Still, Ace felt reluctant to leave the wall as it was their only sure means of finding their way around, and at least they wouldn't head in a circle.

"Hey," Ace said as pointed at something that had caught his eye. He was sure he had seen something shiny ahead of them for a brief instant. "Did anyone else see something?"

[SamSeven]

After a few moments and after running over the situation in her head a half dozen times, Dwyrin was still very confused. How did we end up back next to a wall??

Ace interrupted her thoughts with his question, and it immediately put her on the alert. "What kind of something??"

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