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[indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=#87c735][b]Location:[/b][/color] The Dungeon -- The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color]
[hr]The stench of blood would not disappear. They could trek away from the corpses, advance towards the engulfing darkness, and even fight against a ceiling that got closer to gnashing their bones with every passing second, but they could not get rid of the metallic, rotten scent. When Graves had made the almost fatal mistake of activating a pressure plate, it had returned in a bloom of red that refused to be ignored. The heat, the stench, none of it compared to the pain. Raw and unfiltered, his bellow tore through the room. They would have to approach every tile around them with caution, lest a worse punishment would trigger. 

[color=#87c735]"Graves..."[/color] muttered Alex. This wasn't a fit of anger from a misplay or some frustration from a puzzle. It was a reaction to pain. There were no words that he could say, no easy fix. They would just have to figure out a way to solve the puzzle before anyone was next.

[color=#87c735]""Pull now? So we're gonna need someone to pull a lever then,"[/color] said Alex, in reference to the riddle. A lever. Singular. 

The pressure plates. The others in his party had already begun trying out ideas, working around the restrictions posited by being mostly melee attackers. Benkei had reached the door even, reading a cryptic inscription out loud. Alex was an archer on the other hand, so his first line of thought was to think of a way to use that to his advantage.

But a different idea came to him. He had a strong affinity to wind, one that allowed him to use it in combat. Only in small doses, just enough to help him jump an extra few feet or knock an opponent off balance, but if he were to push much, much further... 

After a moment of both mentally readying himself and bringing his body close to the ground, he jumped towards the tiles in a dive tackle, his body parallel to the ground. His body was propelled by wind and began to glide across the area in an awkward motion, propelled almost entirely by the minor skill. He'd done this before, although the power it required tended to stifle his abilities. This time, however, there was something different. He could feel himself enervated with every passing second he glided. The closer he got to the other side, the more it intensified, to the point where he briefly considered what would happen if he were to crash across the tiles. 

After what felt like an uncomfortably long moment of silence, he found solid ground. It could have been more gracefully executed, but he did it. The moment he tried to stand upright was when things got strange. Whatever this tech demo was attempting to showcase had apparently included exhaustion, and the consequences of pushing a minor ability to its absolute limit had hit him like a freight train. One of his hands groped the wall for balance, the other briefly hovered over a lever... with an inscription on its base. A bow. He wanted to pull it, just to see what would happen. It sure looked interesting. The hand ended up settling on his thigh, however. 

[color=#87c735]"I can..."[/color] he panted, [color=#87c735]"I... did it! What... lever are we supposed to pull?"[/color] 

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