CLOSED

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Barrow, Ellis, Richard, & Wysteria
WHAT: Ill-advised Rift tampering to summon a magical cat.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Beneath Darktown.
NOTES: Blood and probably gore, will update as it goes.

Deep beneath the bowels of Darktown:

Shades stalk through acid green-limned ruins towards the sound of combat, standing water strangely still around the ripples cast off by their lurching pursuit. Behind them, the veil pulses where it’s freshly slit, a half-submerged rift spilling Fadelight across the surface, filtering through the shadows of confused fish.

The water is only knee-high, but it’s everywhere, weighing at armor, dragging at feet.

A scream echoes through the chamber, rising shrill through the darkness, cycled into rounds by the stone ceiling carved out far overhead.

Raised up some ten feet, seated crisscross on the platform of a crumbling statue, Richard Dickerson pauses in his incantation to watch the skeletal shape of a terror demon unfolding itself slick from the water before him. His left hand is still amidst a snarl of inky black smoke, palm turned up to the dagger in his right, the incense in his brazier alight with green embers. Near eye to eye with the demon at this height, he flashes the point of the blade swift across his life line and squeezes his fist.

Blood dribbles and hisses into the brazier.

The incense bursts into green flame.

YOLO.

Comments

[thereneverwas]

The temptation is there, but its strength is lacking. Barrow is busier with fishing around himself, and with the sight of the little cat paddling about, unnatural and magical though she may be.

"Aw," he intones, before he can stop himself, "little pusspuss." Dickerson can't be all bad, if that's his choice of familiar.
Whatever the fuck that means.

In the event that the bow has drifted, Barrow keeps poking around the vicinity of where Dick is searching, but believes him when he says he saw where it fell.

[heorte]

Ellis will not bring this up now, but if the bow isn't found, then maybe in a few weeks he might find himself compelled to ask: had she taken her chance to evade archery lessons altogether going forward and pitched it into the water?

But in the present moment—

"Here. What's left of the big toe," Ellis tells her, gaze darting down to Richard and Barrow to track their progress. He's kept tight hold of Wysteria's hand, the gleam of her anchor muffled by his palm, and he doesn't let go until she's steady and more or less balanced to duck to the side to retrieve the thaumoscope.

"She needs a bath," is Ellis' contribution, pitched to carry, as he sits back down alongside Wysteria and tips the thaumoscope towards her. He's a little damp, but thoughtfully has kept from dripping onto the equipment.

[heirring]

Thought is, she thinks distantly, a very charming name for something pulled from the ether and made out of magic. It is so charming, Wysteria decides, that it is going to successfully distract her from the thrumming pain in his arm and the light headedness even as she takes the thaumoscope into her custody.

"My papers are just there as well if you would please, Mister Ellis," she adds, waving toward them with her right hand as her attention drifts down to where Barrow and Dickerson are dragging the cavern's floor.

"If you can't find it, no matter. It is only something from the Gallows' armory. I doubt anyone will even notice it has gone."

[nonvenomous]

“I’ll see to it,” Richard calls back.

Thot craws back at Barrow like a raven in the water, stirring along with webbed claws, stubby whiskers all a-prickle. She is strange, as cats go: leggy and sleek, with overlarge ears and protruding fangs. Her eyes are as wide as they are wide-set.

“Here.”

The bow: Dick twists it from the water and an earwig nearly as long as his forearm slides off the far end. As he’d disengaged from Wysteria, he aims to disengage with the bow, holding it out for Barrow to take. Expectant.

“She needs a bath,” he will repeat, in naked hope of excusing himself to attend to the more pressing matter of his slimy cat.

[thereneverwas]

"We all do," Barrow grunts, charmed in spite of himself by the weird little creature, and accepting the bow without complaint. He holds it up, waving it to Wysteria so she can see that it's been recovered.

"Shall we return to the surface?" he asks, as ready as anyone to get out of here, "...have a pint by the fire maybe?" The second request is all in undertone, something he deeply wants but for which he does not, perhaps, need all their company.

[heorte]

Archery practice is back on the menu, boys.

Though Ellis' nod of acknowledgement to the bow gives way back to Wysteria as he returns back to her, sheaf of mercifully dry papers in hand. He doesn't sit, but one hand sets at her shoulder gently, calling her attention as much as attempting some silent comfort.

"Aye," is for Barrow, even though Ellis hasn't looked back down at him.

"Should we go find Tony?" is for Wysteria, an proposition that doesn't actually preclude the possibility of a warm fire and a good meal. It doesn't even require discussion of her hand, but Ellis would gamble on conversation turning to that way of it's own accord.

[heirring]

Later, she will be irritated that the bow was found at all. And then after that, she will be irritated at her irritation, for surely there is a whole host of replacements on hand within the Gallows, and so losing the thing in a slimy old waterlogged cavern would hardly have interrupted her accessibility to the range. 'Oh, well. It's just that I had only gotten so used to the other bow. I couldn't possibly pick up a new one now--'

But for the moment that is neither here nor there.

"I shouldn't trouble him with anything just yet. I've to write up a summary of our findings first," she says in absent answer to Ellis. Already with the papers in her possession, she has summoned that ever present pen and has begun to transfer the thaumoscope's readings to the page. Louder then, for Barrow and Richard's benefit: "I think that is a capital idea, Ser Barrow! Mister Dickerson, we will collect your things from here and come down unless you would like to fetch them yourself."

[nonvenomous]

The sound of streaming water marks Richard fishing Thot out of the lake like a sodden black towel once she’s been rubbed down; he turns his back to the others to cradle her belly up in the dark. The better for him to examine webbed toes and bat ears, the cord of her tail while she purrs and stretches to press cold, filthy pawprints at his cheek, under his chin.

“Please,” is his answer for Barrow and Wysteria both, distracted.

He looks over properly after a second check confirms the findings of the first, watching Wysteria from afar for evidence of any wincing or wobbling. Something he probably should’ve done before sliding into the water to play with his cat.

“It’s just the brazier up top.” And his satchel at the statue's toes with most everything else.

[thereneverwas]

He could very well just trundle on out alone, but Barrow instead politely opts to wait, hammer slung up over his shoulder as he watches the others situate themselves.

The faster they're out of this cave, the better.