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Post by Kidney on May 11, 2020 19:07:31 GMT -8
The Naga adjusted herself again, slithering forward with a much more prose-oriented approach, hands held tightly against her bust. She was becoming more regal, and locks of her dark hair began to grow and fall against her sharp-featured likeness. She was, strange, and less fervent. "Leaving this place empty...handed." She said, a crackling sound leaving her throat.
A blistering roar through the tunnel made her jump, feathers sprouted from her form, fresh and dry, and her face drew back in a soundless scream, her mouth open far beyond human limitations for a moment before she turned her attention back to the two, and took a deep breath. Quickly, her form reverted, but her slitted eyes remained trained on Aurora and her bleeding compatriot. "That misery would be something." She spoke with due contemplation. "The way out..." She said, reaching forward, hand extended, claws noticeably jutting from her fingers. The Gem, it left Aurora's hand, and floated to the hand of The Naga. "is the stars."
Like the orifice of a terrible wyrm, the roof itself opened. Stony ceiling ripped like paper, and thin ribbons of saliva-like liquid dribbled to the floor. Her eyes grew alight at the sight of the night sky, straight up. The stars were especially bright tonight, and at the moment Semyon looked up, a shooting star flew across the dark expanse.
Semyon gasped, in awe. "Aurora..." He began, pointing to the night sky. "The Stars hold all the answers."
The Naga slipped into the darkness of the other side of the room, her eyes aglow in the blackness. It was the last thing Aurora or Semyon would see of her, her form disappearing, leaving behind two glinting embers in her pupils, but even after a moment they too snuffed themselves out. In that same moment, a single wet rope like that from a ship's rigging fell into the chamber, dangling near the metal frame and waving slightly back and forth.
--
The Beast would hear nothing more than dissonant whispers, and the sounds of mouths opening. His scream was unfruitful, but his roar echoed up above himself, and still, the scent of coin reeked from the tunnels above. His powerful legs would propel him high enough, and the scent of crab accompanied the gold-smell. Perhaps more food, or plunder.
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Post by rosallora on May 11, 2020 20:14:47 GMT -8
[Aurora]
"If she's telling the truth-" she says, but when she looks back down, those ambery eyes are already fading into nothing. "...I guess we'll have to take her word for it." The rope isn't something she wanted to deal with right now, however.
Aurora looks back at the other chamber, where the howl had come from. "The man-beast is still alive. What do you think... worth grabbing?" Sure it's another human life that she should cherish above all else but also she's suffering from glass lacerations and she wants to get the fuck out of here. "This is a lost cause, Semyon. We're not getting anything out of this. We don't even have any damn fish."
She rubs a hand across her mask, holding back something like an overdramatic sob. "I just wanted a nice bed! Is that so much to ask for!"
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Post by EloHim on May 12, 2020 16:44:27 GMT -8
[Kallikantzaros]
He jumps up, letting his claws do the work as he climbs up to the tunnels in the ceiling. The smell was less nasty than the smell of iron bars that he was remembering, so he was curious to see where it would lead.
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Post by Kidney on May 14, 2020 17:38:08 GMT -8
Semyon's eyes grew alight with a fire of elation as the rope fell, and then quickly fell back to vacant, pain overcoming his understanding, and then remembering he'd have to climb with glass in his back. Though, it didn't feel quite like glass. It just burned, and Semyon hated it, even Aurora's musings added little to his relief.
Semyon's thoughts on The Man in the room behind them were few and far between, he'd been eaten by The Crab, and he heard it clatter to walls already, and scrabble back to its hiding place. He pitied the man, life within a coffin must have been abysmal, at least his death was respite from eternal prison. He looked to Aurora, and placed a single hand painstaking on her back. "I...am sorry. This is a mess I did not want." He said, taking credit for the expedition's lackluster reward. He looked tot he stars, and frowned heavily. At least skyward lights would guide them home. "There are better expeditions to take back home, once we get there."
He began to tread towards the rope.
--
The tunnels above were tight, but traversable, understandably only going one direction for now, that being the opposite from the second room. The Beast would find little room to move besides forward, but he would first find a downward hole, one that led to a membrane and mucus-slicked room, from what he could see. Though, the pelagic walls continued into a smaller room in which he could spot a barnacled chest and a wall of vines.
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Post by rosallora on May 14, 2020 19:25:03 GMT -8
[Aurora]
"I'll say it's a damn mess," she says, still looking back towards the other cavern. His hand wasn't exactly wanted, but it wasn't bad either. It was just comfort in a time where she really didn't need comfort, and definitely needed to get the fuck out. Aurora doesn't want to spend any more time here than she has to. "HEY!" She shouts, her voice echoing off of the cold, wet stone. "YOU! MAN! MONSTER-THING! WE'RE LEAVING!" If he wants to come too, then that's up to him.
She looks at Semyon, and there's a pinch of concern. "Are you even going to be able to climb that thing."
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Post by EloHim on May 15, 2020 18:59:01 GMT -8
[Kallikantzaros]
He pushes forward through the tunnels with grunt and growl...the tunnel's damp air slowly gaining heat as he walks along. He looks upon the hole,deciding against jumping back down, instead going forward.
His eyes trace the room as he smells the air. The chest...small food uses those to keep things in. Many things... good things. Things to lure small food with...or reward it when it brings more food...then he hears the noisy voice. That one was nasty...felt nasty. Like a stones getting hit against the cage. A rumble goes through his stomach...and the beast smiles crookedly.
"BIIIIIIIIIITCH!"- he half-growls-half-belches out into the tunnels behind him. Yeah, he sure showed that voice who's the boss here!
He grabs the chest with his left paw, grasping it with ease... whilst swiping at the wall of wines with his right. An extra passage or a hiding spot - he's getting rid of that uncertanty.
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Post by Kidney on May 18, 2020 19:03:33 GMT -8
Semyon's eyes were cast to the ceiling, Aurora would notice. He was smiling, just at the edges of his mouth. "Yes. I think I can." Where Aurora could also see, Semyon's back seemed to be leaking seawater from his wounds. It may have been what caused the burning, though she didn't know about that, and Semyon didn't care much to tell her. His eyes, still, were cast the starry sky, and he took in its vast wonder with a small amount of awe, and he took a deep breath. The scent of forest and sea so gently caressing each other, accosting and mingling with each other's lingering odors. It filled Semyon with a sense of purpose, and he reminded himself that he did indeed need to climb the rope.
His ascent was arduous at first, but it grew easier as The Rus pushed through the overall sense of discomfort. In his mind, it was uplifting to yank oneself up a seawater-soaked rope, both literally and emotionally. He smiled at that, his intricacies exposed slightly, the man's unending love for nature and its strange mingling with items man-made apparent. He seemingly was more comfortable now than walking hours before.
The rope remained strong, and Aurora simply had to climb it. Semyon didn't seem to care if she stayed down there or not, but in reality, he did. He really did.
--
The chest was nothing much, but still heavy, to the Beast. Its contents shifted the way gold did, rattling ten thousand times within that great oaken box. The metal bits dug into his palm, a reminder of the chest's age and wealth. In its place was a spot of bare stone, and broken coral.
The Beast's paw raked across the vines with much success, the dark green things smashed and cut aside.
The sky was as starry as it had been when he had been imprisoned. Dark and ambient, forever and everpresent. The Beast remembered this. Eved could remember where some had said a town was, his voice faint in the Beast's mind, though still it murmured in the dark. The Chest in hand, and the Night exposed. The Beast could see a cliff-hugging path ten feet below him, and the flushing sea licking at the edges of the cliffs and the sandbars.
A thin wisp of smoke trailed from the top of the forest miles off.
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Post by EloHim on May 19, 2020 11:24:54 GMT -8
[Kallikantzaros]
He looks down... then up. A quick decision. Going down was not an option. Upwards... with only one arm free. A difficult task, especially when the other arm was clutching a hefty wooden chest.
The claws scrape against the stone as he climbs up, bursts of movement and jumps allowing him to scale the wall and get all the way up.
He could smell the humans...small food was close. He shambles over to the hole, the chest on his shoulder, held by his hairy paw. He's not that hungry to kill them immediately... but who knows...maybe they'll try to attack him, make him angry and die.
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Post by rosallora on May 19, 2020 16:09:55 GMT -8
She wrinkles her nose as his curse echoes through the cave. Well. Forget him, then. She doesn't know why she was trying to be nice in the first place when all there was to be nice to was a terrible, awful, smelly little man.
Aurora watches Semyon ascend, dripping water and blood but still climbing like it was nothing at all. The woman took off her soiled, ruined gloves, and grips with bare flesh onto the rope. She pulls herself up, the weight in her chest telling her that this really was all for nothing. There'd be no pay for fish that weren't caught. She doubts they'd be rewarded for killing a creature that no one asked to be killed.
The woman climbs, the clear air coming into her senses. It feels like she climbs that rope forever, but she does it. She hauls herself up onto dry land, and when she does, it's dark.
She sits, her feet dangling over the edge of the hole. And she rubs one of her cheeks with her hands. Then, she looks up and notices that oh. The beast is right there.
"...Bitch right back at you," she says sullenly.
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Post by Kidney on May 19, 2020 17:23:56 GMT -8
Semyon lets out a shout as he finally reaches the edge of the hole, "T-T!" he tried to speak, but couldn't, hand out to block the creature pitifully, he scrabbled further up and yanked himself to dry land, followed by Aurora. His mind lept to the creatures he had ever seen, or read about. This beast did not ring a single bell. He let out a gasping breath, looking to Aurora, who...acted like the BEAST was a MAN.
"T-Troll! TROLL!" He yelled, pointing to The Beast. He looked to the horizon. The sun was very far away.
--
The Beast could spy the edge of the hole, and the dark, chain-and-cage-adorned room it fell into. But most importantly were the man and woman of before. They stared, one in fear and one in disdain. Not attacking, not moving. The coins in his chest rattled as he shifted, the box singed on the side closest to his red-hot frame.
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Post by EloHim on May 20, 2020 10:03:11 GMT -8
[Kallikantzaros]
"Ffffffair."- The beast snorts at her words. Food sometimes tries to be funny...and sometimes it succeeds.
He drops the chest on the ground near the woman, no longer interested in carrying this stuff around. Let the small ones handle it. He pays no heed to the loud one,as he step away and sits himself down, starting to pick his teeth with his claws. He kinda wants to toss the man down that hole he climbed out of... and he might just do that if he continues to be loud.
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Post by rosallora on May 20, 2020 11:31:42 GMT -8
Aurora's eyes almost pop out of her head when she realizing the hulking mass of fur was carrying a chest. She scrambles up, lunging for it, heedless of the glass shards in her outfit and the pain that spiked through her when she did just about anything. "What is THIS-" she throws the lid open, holding her breath.
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Post by Kidney on May 23, 2020 10:43:37 GMT -8
Semyon's eyes darted between the two creatures, that being Aurora and The Beast. His face was flexed into a deep, wrinkled frown that shifted to one of anger and frustration. "A-Aurora!" He said, looking at her darting to the chest. He feared for her life, truly, an explosive could lay within! She could explode! There could be a gnome in there!
--
Aurora's greedy hands threw the lip open, exposing the insides of the chest to her in a display illuminated by the stars themselves. The stars truly held the answers, and their bluish light revealed to Aurora two separate types of items. Within was about a one-inch layer of gold coins, most of which were piled along one side of the chest. Each of the coins was imprinted with an unfamiliar mint, one side holding a pleasant flame-like icon, the other unmistakably a moth.
What else lay within was a single, fist-sized pearl. Dark and opulent, dazzling and flecked with amber. A single crack filled with melted gold glinted coyly near the side of the round thing, and one single word gifted itself into Aurora's mind. "Take."
Nothing else seemingly settled within. This was a Crab's plunder, after all.
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Post by rosallora on May 23, 2020 11:40:35 GMT -8
[Aurora]
She grabs the pearl immediately, holding it aloft.
"Aha...a HA.... Ha HAHAH!" Her laugh was manic, echoing in the night air, down the cliff and into the sea itself, the sound plunging as it rose in pitch. She turns to Semyon, the beautiful thing in her hand, grinning from ear to ear. "LOOK!" She kicks over the chest, the coins spilling out. "Have your take!"
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Post by Kidney on May 24, 2020 11:37:41 GMT -8
Semyon's fears were circumvented by a roar of triumph! "A-AHA!" He yelled, careening towards the box with open arms, he trudged with his hands at the smallish pile of gold, taking the cold metal and pressing it to his skin. Any gold was better than none, this amount would pay off his bar tab, and would certainly gift him shelter for a a week and a half. Maybe he could pay the smith to clean his gun!
Semyon's face was the brightest Aurora had ever seen, as if some part of his dirty, trollish ugliness had fallen away in the time a great big smile crawled across his scruffy cheeks. Maybe it was the gold in his hands, and the one gold coin wedged in his mustache. It fell as soon as she laid eyes upon it, and Semyon let out a little chuckle. There was enough coin for a bar tab paid off for Aurora as well, had she a bar tab.
Semyon's eyes next fell on the pearl in her hand. "O-oh..." He said, shyly, taking a step back. "What...is it? An eye?"
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