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Post by rosallora on Apr 13, 2020 22:17:04 GMT -8
She listens to their voices. "The credit," she murmurs, hands drifting to her instrument. She wants the credit. The credit for the jewel... and for saving an idiot's life. "I'll give it to you," she says again, quiet in the cavern but audible to those voices who wanted so badly for her ear. "I will give you the performance you deserve!"
She turns the handle, starting slow, the drone low and echoing ruefully through the cavern, off the rocks. Aurora opens her mouth, and the song flows out, just a stream of vowels that glimmer off of the water, cold and clear and bright. Her fingers play out arpeggios upon the keys of the instrument, moving at a speed which she could not usually attain. But her mind, so singularly focused, was looking down upon that point of blue, beautiful light, seem barely through the scales of flashing fish and the floundering figure of her unfortunate compatriot.
"Darker hue, darker hue,
Come to you, come to you,
Blackish water blackest soul,
Give to me that which you stole,
Darker pyre, darker flame,
Give me fortune, give me fame,
Glimm'ring scales, a sacred name,
Come to me, come to me."
Her voice is pure, ruby lips dropping note after note into the water, her strings causing vibrations and ripples over the surface.
"Darker need, darker need,
Will I heed, will I heed,
Purest sinner, greatest vice,
I will take that which I call mine.
Darker mind, darker skin,
Give me greed, give me sin,
Azure temptation, a whisper slid,
Now is mine, now is mine."
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Post by Kidney on Apr 13, 2020 22:25:14 GMT -8
Semyon, for the first time, feared death. His eyes burned from the salt, and fish threatened to gut him with their immutable forms. But, as suddenly as they had trapped him, some relented, and he screamed and swam up, like a shark breaching the water with a seal in his mouth, he erupted from the surface, stone in hand, crawling and yanking himself from the depths, fish after fish flopping onto the shore. He yelled, "STAY AWAY FISH!" Crawling away from them, the fish flopping in his direction, each of the remaining water-beasts pressed against the the stone side the stone sat above and far away from.
Aurora's song had truly taken effect on some of them, a group of the fish, sizable in number, no longer looked to the rock. They instead, remained locked on Aurora's face, beady eyes taking in every detail.
Semyon looked to the woman once more. "You...siren." He said, flooping to his back, and catching his breath.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 13, 2020 22:43:40 GMT -8
When he breaches, she's knocked out of the trance she was in, his screeching more than enough to make one play off-key. Her hand stops, the lovely sound silent. She looks at him, dark eyes clearing of their influence. "Give me the stone," she says. "Give me what I'm owed, you savage, hairy little oaf." She takes a step forward, her chin inclined, her hair still standing proud and tall. "You would've died if not for my song - call me a siren if you like, I will master every tune that there is to by sung in this accursed place - but pay me accordingly for it. The stone will be enough to counter for your life."
She looks at the fish. "I have... a feeling these are no good for eating." The idea of the voice in her head still swirls, though it feels more like an ungraspable mist now, without sound or influence. "There is another passage. Maybe we'll have more luck there. But first." She sets a heeled boot on his midsection. "The stone."
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Post by Kidney on Apr 14, 2020 10:36:26 GMT -8
Semyon's face bore a fatal frown. "What." He said, clutching the stone tightly, bared chest heaving, vein bulging in his large hard head. "How..." He began, before shoving her foot off his frame. In another movement, he stood, and he squared himself in front of Aurora. "You will not take this from me. Never." He spoke with righteous fury, and turned away from her, walking back towards his backpack and clothes.
He took a look to his jacket.
"You." He said, voice a whisper. "Terrible, no good, bitch of a woman!" He screamed, whipping around, throwing the stone onto his backpack and grasping up his rifle once more. "Did you fucking wipe GHOST JUICE ON MY JACKET?!"
His roars echoed down the tunnels, and alongside them, the voices abandoned Aurora, she was alone in this. Alone now, with a raging Rus and the barrel of a gun pointed square at her chest. Down the tunnel to her left, his voice continued to ring, and for a moment, she could hear the shifting of large chains.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 14, 2020 10:45:47 GMT -8
"It's just blood!" She says, but she hurriedly puts her hands up when the rifle is trained at her, the instrument hanging about her middle, suspended by a leather strap. "It's just... blood. And yes. I wiped the blood... on your jacket. That's what jackets are for." She flexes her fingers, watching him. "Now Semyon, I just saved your horrible little life. Don't go doing something you can't take back. There's bigger things at work here. Right? Fucking... fairies, or some shit?" Her eyes dart over to the side passage. She takes another step back, too close to the cold pool.
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Post by Kidney on Apr 14, 2020 10:54:59 GMT -8
Semyon took several...deep breaths. His eyes, trained on Aurora like a shark on a seal. But he knew, in his heart, he could not bring himself to kill another man, or woman. He growled, and lowered the gun. "Ghost juice." He said, stout, final. "It is ghost juice, Aurora." He took a step forward, and set the gun down against the tunnel's wall. "Get off the side of the pool, you'll fall in."
He began to put his clothes back upon himself, cursing in his misbegotten language once more. "Give fucking respect, Aurora." He wrenched his backpack upon himself, holding the stone in his left hand. He looked towards the tunnel, "We go that way." His voice didn't raise very high, for now, instead, he kept it at a bare simmering whisper. "Try...that again, I beat you."
He began to move towards the tunnel.
Aurora felt watched. Should she have looked behind her, she would have noticed each and every fish within the pool, their eyes turned to Semyon.
What they both did not see, where the crabs and the salamanders on the ceiling doing the same thing.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 14, 2020 11:06:11 GMT -8
She lowers her hands, anger simmering in her. She wants that stone. She deserves that stone. She sang for it, she saved his life, she was the one that the voices in the cave favored. Clearly.
Her gaze was settled on the bright, blue gem. Maybe there were spirits in this cave. True ones. And if it came down to spirits, there was no doubt in her mind who they would rather see triumph. Her. The songbird, the beautiful, the favored. She would prevail, if it came to that.
Regardless... she follows, heels clicking on stone. Her eyes look to the light the stone glimmers with in the space as they make their way through the tight passage to the next open space.
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Post by Kidney on Apr 14, 2020 11:21:37 GMT -8
The two continued with no words, heavy steps taking them down a long tunnel devoid of enemies, or traps. Such was the way of a peaceful seaside cave, though tinged by strange stones and mental manipulation. Semyon's eyes remained locked on what appeared to be a turning point, and indeed it was, a leftward curve that took the two slightly deeper than before, a small decline towards an archway...with a curious amount of blue light flooding into the hallway.
Semyon held his breath as they approached. He entered the room all the same, and his eyes caught sight of a very large construction.
It was a cube, or the frame of one, held some eight feet in the air by chains that connected from the corners of it to the sides of what now revealed itself to be an immensely tall room. This...much have been the inside of the cliff itself! The Frame hung there, creaking idly with some unseen breeze pushing it occasionally, but what hung from its inside corners was a crystal glass orb, of which contained a bright blue body of water, filled, unfathomably, with dark, striped fish. Each one fought for the luxury of moving, and whatever deep within the orb lit the surrounding surface blue kept them moving, but as they did, they cast great leviathanic shadows across the wall, and now Semyon and Aurora.
Semyon took a deep breath, heavy with awe and wonder. "G-ghosts...no. Gods." He moved deeper into the room, and as he did, the stone glowed with a violent hue of blue, and the fish, all at once, turned their attention to it. Semyon continued moving, glee filling him, but fear alongside it. As the fish moved, so too did the orb, and with the orb, the frame of the mighty cube shifted, chains connected to walls tensing, and then moving, some gaining slack, while some remaining taught, pulling more length of unseen dark chain from barnacle-encrusted oily walls. Semyon looked to Aurora. "PUZZLE!" He yelled, face widened with glee, a smile on his face so large it could be seen from Mount Vesuvius.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 28, 2020 20:21:08 GMT -8
She glances to the man as he screams to the sky and anything else that could hear him. "Yes... puzzle," she says, as one would say to a child. "Very good." She walks around the edge of the room with poise and careful step, eyeing the frame and the sphere within it.
"Strange. Strange." It made her skin tingle - it'd make the hair stand up on the back of her neck, if she had any hair to speak of underneath the powdered wig. The sight of the thing unnerved her. She didn't like this. This wasn't just a fishing pole and a bit of bait, a wriggling worm on a hook that she had to bear. This was magic. The kind of magic you didn't fuck with if you could afford to.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, she was out of money. So she needed those fish.
"Get out the gem," she says. "It has the same glow as the water. I bet they're related." Not to mention how the fish had stared after Semyon when he'd grasped it so selfishly. "Maybe we can get them to come to us." Her hurdy gurdy gets slid to her back, leaving her front clear and ready to go if something were to happen.
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Post by Kidney on Apr 28, 2020 20:39:27 GMT -8
Semyon made sure his eyes were locked on Aurora when he pulled forth the crystal, making sure she made no move to steal it. Siren. He smiled when she didn't, and looked towards the orb within the metal frame. His eyes were upon the strange thing with great scrutiny, though it was marred by his own awe of it all. His other hand reached for his dagger, pulling it forth. Just to be safe.
No voices echoed in Aurora's brain, simply a presence in her subconscious. A being seemingly formed of malice so conjured within her head that its influence was written on her synapses. It aimed her head towards the orb against her will. Something lurked in that orb. Something lurked in a cage of aquatic life. The next sound she heard was that of a crystal smacking against hewn stone, and the great flush of a hundred fish shoving themselves in one direction. The chains rattled, and dust kicked from the construction as the whole system shifted a foot in the opposite direction from Semyon. He had thrown the stone across the room. Its glow was brighter now, that it rested against the wall some 20 feet away, and the fish's interest kept them in one direction. From their bodies, so forced away from Aurora, she could spy a coffin-shaped structure that spanned the orb, covered in occasional fish-body, but nevertheless within the structure.
She could spy one of the many chains that held the orb to the frame snap. It's body collapsed into a rain of broken metallic links, encrusted with aggressive coral and strange barnacles. They clattered, and Semyon was silent. Terrified, and stuck in one spot. In that silent moment, two more chains snapped. And from the walls, began to ooze strange blue...ooze.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 28, 2020 20:50:05 GMT -8
"You FOOL!" She yells sharply as the crystal flew across the room and clattered against sea-battered stone. "You fool, that gem alone is worth more than your miserable life!" Then she stops, frozen, at the sound of iron being ripped from its place, great heavy chains clattering to the ground.
Every inch of her felt that this was not good. Nothing about this was good. But she wasn't borne of good places and she'd likely die in a shithole like-.... fuck, was that. Ooze? "The hell?"
She looks at the structure within the orb. A coffin. Something dead - something that needed to stay dead? A skeleton buried in some sort of magical structure with tons of treasure? Probably the latter. She looks at it, then at Semyon. "Throw something at the thing in the middle! We need those fish, we need to crack it open!" She glances at the ooze coming from the wall, grimacing behind her mask.
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Post by Kidney on Apr 28, 2020 20:58:38 GMT -8
Semyon let out a yelp as Aurora screamed, and he looked very angrily at her, looking at her face with a new kind of rage. He growled, and clapped his hands together. "Stop! Commanding! Me!" He screamed, then quickly followed her orders, he reached back for his rifle, yanking it from his shoulder and aiming at the crystal orb. He yanked back the flintlock, and fired.
The musketball smacked into the orb without much ceremony, it pierced the the fragile shell, but did nothing to crack it open, instead, it raced through it, leaving a clean hole, and firing through a chain that held the orb to the frame. Again, it snapped like twine, and with it came two more chains, the orb held by little to no chainage now, the remaining links stretching to accommodate new weight. It was going to come down.
"Fools." Said the voices in Aurora's head.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 29, 2020 6:39:40 GMT -8
"Am I the only one hearing that?" Her voice goes shrill as she starts to panic, stepping away from the sides of the room in order to get away from the ooze. "Semyon, can you hear that?! Fuck! I'm going for it! Do something useful, would you?"
Regardless of the taunting, she doesn't heed the voice. She takes her own dagger and puts it betwixt her teeth, taking hold of one of the long chains. She walks forward and grips to it until she has to pull herself along by it, white gloved stained quickly by rust and organic material. She, with luck, would get there before it did whatever the fuck it wanted to.
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Post by Kidney on Apr 29, 2020 20:51:50 GMT -8
Semyon's guided shot was impressive, sure, though utterly misplaced, and as the ooze drew nearer, flowing down the walls like alien honey...Semyon let out a girlish shriek. "NONONONO!" He yelled, running to another of the fallen chains, but in this moment, he decided against raising himself to the orb. It's chains creaked, the orb's fish still locked upon the stone on the floor. Semyon looked to it, and began to reload his rifle.
Aurora's efforts were fruitful, her ascent up the chain was something of a natural acrobatic pursuit, and she found herself halfway up its length in little time at all. What remained of the chain's length attached to the metallic frame of the cube, but was near enough to the straining orb that one could have poked with a dagger or knife...should anyone be mad enough to do such a thing. Time seemed to slow for her, her hands grasping chain, her consciousness locked in pure focus of the goal at hand. She looked to the orb.
The great crystal ball's chains broke in simultaneous fashion with a great snap, and the orb fell from the cube. Aurora watched in close-quarters horror as the thing fell some 12 feet...and broke into a thousand shards of semi-translucent glass upon the ground, and Semyon. His cry of agony was one much earned, and sound of glass-like material slicing through his clothes and flesh were enough to warrant...a chuckle from Aurora. It wasn't her chuckle.
Semyon's body was flat to the ground, thankfully protecting his gun from harm, though his body not. All around him were motionless fish, their large eyes cast still in the direction of the stone. It was silent for a moment, and out of the corner of Aurora's eye, she spotted the shadowy figure once more, motionless itself, legless, floating above her and to her right. It's head, a shadowy thing, was turned toward her. As quickly as she observed it, she felt it leave the room. "Apes, all of you, clever apes with no knowledge of the Anunak." Said one voice, perfect and deep, like the speech of an Archdevil, or an Archdeacon.
What lie near to Semyon was a coffin roughly the size of an average man, a pale crystalline structure, on its side. Door closed, but cracked like a spiderweb, on the verge of shattering like its previous prison. Whatever lay within, Aurora did not know. What now settled around her was a scene devoid of chaos, yet still pitched on the tightrope of death. Somehow.
The walls had ceased their ooze-flow, though the remains of it all pooled at the edges of the chamber, piles of thick viscous fluid that held shape like an epoxy.
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Post by rosallora on Apr 29, 2020 21:07:54 GMT -8
"Semyon? Are you- fuck." She hauls herself up to the frame, finding a perch on an inner corner, one hand grasping her dagger and the other the metal. "At least that takes care of the fish," she mutters. She examines the scene with a bird's eye view, thinking of the way out.
"Semyon! Get up." She doesn't want to think about how badly he's been hurt. But. At least it wasn't her! If she was lucky, she'd get out of here with nothing more than some soiled gloves and a few hairs out of place. The same could not be said for her companion. But that was his own fault, diving into the pool and also being in the way. It wasn't of her doing, that's for sure.
"Let's not touch the damned thing. Anu... whatever. Just get up. And throw a few fish on the ooze. Rather them get stuck on it than you. There's enough here to carry out." And the gem, but she doesn't mention that. She was hoping that in his pain he'd forget about it altogether, and she could snatch it for herself.
"You're alive, aren't you?"
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