CLOSED.

[acreage]

WHO: James Holden, Dick Dickerson
WHAT: Hijinks with field testing
WHEN: Time is fake
WHERE: Creepy old ruins, somewhere
NOTES: cw: SPIDERS

The rift isn't actually visible from beyond the ruins, but easy enough to find once inside — illuminates much of the cavernous space with its green glow from overhead, a rip positioned to look like a hole in the stonework, and not the Veil. Maybe surprisingly, it's quiet. None of the usual suspects seem to be clustered around it, demons hurling ice or fire; though wraiths flicker, in the corners of the space, and beyond into further corridors. A local townsman, whom they'd run into on the way up the hill, had warned of rumors of bloodthirsty creatures. He probably didn't mean these. It's not clear, as of yet, what he meant.

Closing the rift is an easier job to get done than setting up the magic gun, truthfully, in hopes of something wandering across their path in here. Tony's gravity grenades are, at least, easier to carry and transport and more likely, Jim thinks, to see use. He's pulled one out, at the pause in their work, runs a thumb over its surface carefully.

"I'd say there's probably nothing else here, but I don't think either of us are that lucky."

Comments

[acreage]

All told, if this was the only way they were going to get lucky today, it's not the worst. The only thing worse than fighting a giant spider is fighting a giant spider and a terror demon.

He'll take it.

And lowers himself back down to the ground with the closing of the rift, breathes out heavily. He'll get back up, but like, in a minute.

In the meantime, he offers, "I'm sorry. How hurt are you?"

[nonvenomous]

“Minor injuries.” Probably.

He reaches up with one sticky glove to feel up under his breastplate once he’s stilted to his feet and in so doing coaxes a grunt out of sore ribs. He’s filthy more than anything, worn ragged and damp. The details are difficult to make out in the dark.

“Are you alright?”

[acreage]

"Fine." Probably.

He sighs, then levers himself upright with a groan, favors the shard hand. It feels more normal than he'd have expected, given the shooting magic phenomenon, and better than the one attached to the fucked shoulder.

"Hit my head," and his everything else, obviously, "but it's not a concussion." His eyes catch on the shell of the used grenade, abandoned on the ground and wet with spider viscera; and he adds, wry, "That'll be something to put in the report."

Faulty lag time on at least one. He's not going to try the rest to find out how prevalent the issue is.

[nonvenomous]

Silas comes to the same conclusion after a protracted study of Jim in the dark. Double-checking in silent standoff, the angle of his silhouette inclined to the gauge pain in the anchor, wooziness, lack of balance.

A muttered spell, a turn at his wrists, and he turns in pursuit of his torch, healing himself as he goes.

“That device could easily have been the end of us.”

[acreage]

He's torn between a reflexive impulse to suggest he shouldn't have risked them both in the grenade testing, and the fact that it probably would've gone worse if he were alone. Torn, too, between a kneejerk desire to defend Tony's work and the objective reality that, yeah, they're lucky it didn't kill them.

"I'll make sure he knows it's not safe to use."

— is where he lands, and moves to stand after making that promise.

[nonvenomous]

A banged knee puts a small hitch in Silas' progress -- something he can walk off while he stifles a sigh to himself. He stoops to collect the torch and gives it an experimental swish to clear a crust of dirt and kick the flame back up across damp tar.

“Is your anchor painful?”

This plague of rifters firing blasts out of their hands.

[acreage]

He considers the question as he, moving carefully, goes to pick up the inert grenade casing. Under no circumstances can they afford to leave experimental tech laying around where any Venatori or Tevene sympathizer can find it. Not difficult to imagine, though, what's likely to be on Silas's mind; the same thought had crossed his.

"No, not really." Twinging a little, but not much worse than after any rift-closing. A pause as he considers it, green dull in the darkness, before going back for his sword. "I'm going to have to remember it can do that."

Accidentally shooting a spider is one thing, accidentally shooting, say, a wall of the Gallows would just be terrible.

[nonvenomous]

“Please.”

His resignation is distinctly that of a man who has already been somehow betrayed by an unexpected flash of green light. So is the distance he’s maintaining with his torch, though that could just as easily be due to the grenade recovery process Jim has volunteered himself for.

The light is, at least, enough to find the casing by.

“If the pain worsens I trust you will report it.”

[acreage]

The torchlight may or may not be sufficient to illuminate the faint smile that pulls at his mouth. The casing is picked up, the sword sheathed, and then there's the question of taking apart the magic gun. He doesn't yet move to do that, promises,

"I will. If anything else changes, I'll make sure someone knows."

Which really isn't an unfair concern with him.

[nonvenomous]

’Someone’ with the spine to bend Captain Holden into doing something about it, he hopes.

His disapproval at the lack of specificity there is fleeting; it would be unusual for Jim to outright lie.

More imminently pressing is the spider’s oversized corpse crumpled in the cavern with them. With the torch flared back to full strength, he tilts it to the spider.

“Will you hold this for me so that I can take samples?”

If those samples seem to consist primarily of giant fangs and venom sacs, there is surely some scientific reason.

[acreage]

No, he isn't much of a liar. He imagines he'd tell Tony, probably, or maybe even Silas himself — a benefit to being in the research division has to be the Venn diagram overlap between friends, and coworkers, and people you'd need to tell about idiosyncratic rifter/anchor-shard issues.

He takes the torch on an instinct while still, frankly, processing that request. What he feels about it is writ pretty clearly across his face.

"Why?"

It's important to note that even as he asks that, he holds the torch closer, to shed more light on the carcass.

[nonvenomous]

“She’s outsized, even for a ’giant’ spider. Prolonged exposure to the Fade might have granted the venom unusual properties.”

He’s waited until he’s slotted his dagger in at the base of the chelicerae to say so, cracking through connective tissue with a wrench of his shoulder. Fluid dribbles through the gap like vanilla pudding. Thick.

“Potentially useful,” he further explains while he works, “for medicine, or for applying to weapons with fewer moving parts.”