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

[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.