temple of leaves | to be perfect is to be hollow

[sumptus]

WHO: Everybooooody (yeeeeah)
WHAT: A group of Riftwatch agents take a field trip back into the Temple of Zazikel, to do a more thorough examination of the Gate now that they're not distracted by half the team disappearing. OOC post here.
WHEN: Right now
WHERE: Temple of Zazikel, in the Grand Necropolis, Nevarra
NOTES: CW: fire, implied drowning in ESCAPE, non-descriptive mention of a baby crying in ENTERING. Please use content warnings in your subject lines, especially for child and animal-related stuff.

1. ENTERING THE TEMPLE
They've been here before. Some of them, anyway. Through the towering stone halls of the Grand Necropolis and winding canyon paths beyond, down, down to something more ancient beneath. An elven site that serves as entrance to an Old God structure between the two.

Their Mortalitasi guides lead them to the entrance to the Temple of Zazikel, and those who have been there before might remember the way forward, though known, is not simple. A labyrinth of narrow hallways roll out before them, mirrored black onyx walls that slice their torchlight into a thousand wrong turns. The sound of their own footsteps bounces behind them, in front, around this corner or that, their own voices echoing and distorting as if taking on new shapes.

—is that a baby crying? It can't be. This far underground? Must be an animal. It doesn't sound like an animal. It brightens around a bend and fades before you can reach it.

A low hum drones out around them to replace it, the further they go, constant and unshakable as if it's coming from inside their own heads, or perhaps radiating from the stone ceiling above them. Not a song, but— bees? Lightning bees? (Some Rifters may know it.)

The deeper they go, the more they find that isn't quite what they remember. Loose rocks and broken pottery underfoot are abruptly interrupted by a bone— no, a tree root the size of Barrow's forearm that catches someone's boot. Stumbling past it causes a snick-crack of glass beneath someone's foot, and on the rough-hewn wall beyond is a steel shelf, screwed directly into the rock and filled with neatly-arranged bottles, baring clean little labels and a sharp, antiseptic smell.

And then there's an aravel. One minute, they're walking through a tunnel narrow enough to touch both sides at once, and the next veilfire torchlight is bouncing off wooden planks as long as a house. Sails stretch up fifteen feet to flat stone ceilings that seem to swallow masts and fabric alike. The chamber is barely wide enough to contain it, and at its other end the passage narrows back down so far they'll need to turn sideways to get through. A ship in a bottle.

If it's a remnant of the elvhen structure, why are its boards so fresh? If it isn't, how did it get here? Why is it here?

They've been here before, haven't they? How could they have missed this? What else have they missed?


2. THE GATE
Eventually, they do find the Gate. It takes longer than it should, but not quite long enough for anyone to reconsider the mission. There's important work to be done, after all, and a few strange occurrences don't amount to much in the face of what happens if Corypheus succeeds.

Maybe the whole world looks like this room. An open, lifeless expanse below a pulsing void. Blight twists in a perfect circle around the Gate. The channels in the floor have dried brown with old blood.

They know something about how the other Gate behave, and the time Riftwatch had spent on this Gate last time weren't wasted -- but they had other priorities, like half the team disappearing. This time, the equipment is set up, the notebooks come out, and it's down to business. 


3. ESCAPE
Supplies packed, notebooks stowed, they're well into the tunnels again before they see anything odd. Which is, in itself, odd. They'd discovered the aravel not long before the tunnels widened out into their main chamber, but on the way back, it's nowhere near as close. Neither is anything else. They walk for thirty minutes, an hour, in hallways so dark they seem to suck the light from their torches, passing nothing but cold black stone and oppressive silence.

Then there's a crackle. A soft pop, fizzle. Metal clanks heavy against metal in the distance, the jostling of armor and heavy boots rushing at them, and when the party rounds the corner to face the oncoming noise they find the aravel ablaze.

Flames engulf the room. Heat buffets the group, smoke billowing across the ceiling and descending lower every moment, forcing Riftwatch to run along a wall that suddenly contains not one exit, but infinite.

Fleeing down one leads to a smooth tunnel that slips beneath your feet, the ground freezing despite the blistering wind at your back. An icy lake spools out in front of you, and underneath there's something moving — someone still alive under there.

Down another hole, gnarled roots bend up to tangle feet. Their sturdy trunks stretch impossibly tall into the dark, and where their limbs split it almost looks like human arms, hands, fingers — faces locked in the bark, their jaws twisting wide in silent screams.

Tunnels seal up to split groups. Walls close in. Floors fall out from underfoot. Riftwatch is scattered, and as their fears begin to sculpt the walls around them, time stretches. Do they have enough water? Enough food? How long have they been down here? Do the hours pass with no sun to mark them? If you fall asleep, who's to say it isn't forever?


4. AFTERMATH
Whether it feels like hours, days, or years, eventually the temple releases them. Those who threw off the shackles of their inner demons may find themselves crawling up through fistfuls of sand and gravel, beaching themselves on the open ground beneath a bright blue sky.

Those who didn't free themselves from anything in particular may not find so easy an exit, but exit they do. A wall gives way into the bottom of a crevice, and while there's no easy path to freedom, there is a sliver of daylight, and walls close together enough to shimmy up. Thankfully, neither exit is far from the other, and those too exhausted to climb may get help from those who escaped first.

The Mortalitasi will need to be notified. Something will need to be done about the spirit who caused this. But first, everyone finally has a moment to breathe.

Comments

[altusimperius]

She grabs for his arm, and in his panic, the flame goes out. It's for the better, most likely, since the last thing either of them needs right now is to be on fire, but being plunged into sudden darkness isn't a big help either; another anguished sound and Benedict tries to pull away, only to lose his balance and bring them both to the ground.

Almost imperceptibly, the light from far down the way casts itself onto them: everything is still dim and shadowy, of course, but there's enough contrast now that Benedict can see the shapes of the fungus even without his fire. He gives a strangled sob, bereft; how could he hope to fix this, is it even worth fixing? Will he be covered in it as well?
As he pulls his arm away, a bit of fungus flakes off from Abby's hand and falls to the damp ground.

[armd]

She holds onto him tight to keep him from throwing her off and in the sudden dark and tangling of feet, the fungus making it hard to breathe or see or move, they crash into the floor. It's all the same to Abby. They could be on the ceiling right now and she wouldn't know the difference, only Benedict's wrist in her grasp and the sound of him struggling to get away from her when she won't let him.

"Help," she says, urgent, the actual sound of the word a disjointed mess, "Help—"

When he flakes off that first bit of fungus from her he'll find her underneath it, skin unbroken, normal.

[altusimperius]

He attempts to wrench away again with a sound like a frightened animal, shuddering at how the fungus feels when it chips off Abby and onto his own skin, but Benedict-- despite his panic-- begins to catch wise when it bounces off him harmlessly. There's Abby's arm beneath, bare and healthy, and he looks at it uncomprehendingly, then up at her face. It really is here in there. She's still... here.

Hunching his shoulders and holding out his fingers in a delicate (if tremulous) pincer motion, he reaches to peel a bit from her face.

[armd]

Abby's always thought of herself as somebody who would take herself off to die alone if she got bitten and started to turn, she's imagined the situation so many times. I'd deal with it myself. She's said this aloud to other people. The reality of the situation is desperate, clingy and she can't make herself let go of Benedict. If it would save him she would but he isn't breathing funny or choking on whatever is crowding Abby's throat, he isn't overwhelmed. He's scared, like she is.

When he peels the muck from her face it comes off her mouth and nose. Abby gasps suddenly, coughing as damp air rushes into her lungs. She turns and thrashes, reaching up to scrub at her face but she's so coated she can't get any purchase on what's left.

[altusimperius]

Benedict gasps at the same time as Abby, frightened by the suddenness of their success; she thrashes away, and he hisses "wait," tentatively reaching out to stop her from scrubbing at herself so he can do it with greater precision.

"You're still there," he whispers, as much to himself as to her, as he starts to clean her face, and whatever disgust he may have felt is overridden by the optimism of seeing his friend unblemished beneath the rot.
"Hold still. Hold still."