[center][h3]Dead Zone Hinterlands - Curien Mansion[/h3]
Harry’s [@Eviledd1984]  Amaterasu’s [@DracoLunaris] Chosen Undead’s [@Simple Unicycle] Level 11 Big Band (19/110)
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1411[/center]

With no semblance of either rhyme or reason beyond the ghoulish specters at their back to drive them forward, the explorers scrambled through the labyrinthine Curien Mansion in a mad dash for freedom. They dashed and blundered through dozens of rooms, passing by other monstrous maze denizens like clowns, slimes, and bedsheet ghosts so fast that they barely even registered the intrusion. Without the agility or athleticism of Heismay, Amaterasu, or Kit, Band and Harry in particular smacked into plenty of walls, doors, and furniture as they hauled ass, running fast enough that they almost threw themselves into pits more than once. With so much cumbersome loot on his person, Harry would doubtlessly be doomed by his greed unless he ditched a few items, especially once a coilhead joined the pursuit, its feet tip-tapping behind the team with terrifying speed.

With Heismay and Amaterasu in the lead, they reached the library before the others, but while Heismay managed to slip through the wolf wound up waylaid by a book-hurling poltergeist. Luckily she managed to turn the tables on the ghostly miscreant and escape, but she left behind quite a mess for Kit, Band, and Harry the next moment. Band spotted the specter, but didn’t register the threat -what would books do to him, after all?- until he remembered that one hit against either Kit or Harry would trigger Galeem’s influence and doom them with a forced fight. “Aw, hell!” He slowed down just for a moment, but his mind kept racing. There was no way to block for even one man, let alone both, without screwing himself in the process. He could only think of one solution.

“Sorry, buddy!” He launched forward toward Kit with a burst of speed, then slammed a Brass Knuckle into his armored back. The knight went flying through the library and into the next room. Then Band rounded on Harry, who was still bleeding from his gnome encounter, and launched a Friend Heart right at him. The moment it made contact, he grabbed Harry in his bell and flung him after Kit. He had stopped only a brief moment, but it was enough for the team’s pursuers to catch up. The coilhead slammed through the door, then stopped cold beneath Band’s glare, blocking the doorway for the other specters. Band backpedaled through the other library door as fast as he could, then slammed the door shut and locked it behind him. “No time to explain!” he yelled, shooting a Friend Heart at Kit as well. This was a bad time to restore his acquaintances’ memories, but right now they had bigger things to worry about. “Go, go, go!”

A moment later, the three reached a familiar obstacle: the hallway divided by a pitch-black pit, with only one plank spanning it. Heismay and Amaterasu were already on the other side, and for the others it was dangerous but doable, but for Band it was outright impossible. Just after he slowed to a stop, he heard a door explode behind him, and grit his teeth. There was only one thing he could do, and luckily the situation had generated plenty of dramatic tension. “Gang way!” He hopped into the air, deploying massive bits of instrumentation until he resembled a giant French horn. “Super…sonic!” Band burst forward in a [url=https://i.imgur.com/NTXvqE0.png]bassy blockbuster[/url], rocketing across the gap, down the hallway, and straight through the wall. It blew apart, and Band shot out into the open air from the mansion’s second story. With a trail blazed, the others could follow him out and down into the courtyard below.

A moment after Band burst from the house, the top hatch of the atom popped open, and Stein emerged to stare at the Seekers with eyebrows raised. “Hot damn! Thought you all bit the dust. Who’s that?” He gave Heismay a quizzical look, then glanced back at the mob of zombies streaming from the mansion. “Oops, one sec.” He ducked back down, and the next moment the Atom’s neon-green laser blazed forth to obliterate the shambling dead in one sweep. Their ashes joined the dunes arrayed around the Atom, suggesting that Stein and Tesset had been dealing with zombies since the others left. “Ah, nevermind, we gotta go!” With that the Atom began to reverse across the courtyard, building up its momentum until it could turn around and smash through the perimeter wall again. Band and the others hustled after it, leaving the dead -and the shadows peering through the second-story hole through the sunlight- in their dust.

Several minutes later, the procession came to a stop a safe distance from Curien Mansion on the wooded slope by the river. Heismay and Amaterasu were in pretty good condition, but Band and his pipes were wheezing–his chassis wasn’t built for locomotion like this! As he and the others recovered, Heismay double checked everyone and gave an approving nod. “Looks like everyone made it out in one piece. Well done.” He seemed especially appreciative of Amaterasu. “And you impressed me perhaps most of all. What a magnificent creature you are.” 

Having climbed out from the Atom, Stein hit the ground nearby. “So, what did I miss?” Despite his sunglasses, it was easy to discern that he was keeping his eyes on the group’s newest member, who seemed hesitant to answer.

“This is Heismay,” Band stated matter-of-factly. “He ain’t the one who’s been takin’ kids, I don’t think. Said he does know who’s takin’ ‘em though, and that we oughta go and get the full story ourselves.” He straightened up. “Speakin’ of. Where we headin’?”

The Eugief cleared his throat and pointed up the mountainside with a wing. “Up there.” Above some rocky, river-carved canyons towered a distinctive [url=https://i.imgur.com/Tpd2NAl.png]pointy peak[/url]. “Witch’s Nose. We’re looking for a cave beneath it. Follow me.”

Band glanced at Kit and Harry. “Easy, fellas. I’ll tell ya everythin’ in a minute.”

Heismay led the way farther up the slope along the river. It turned out that the river flowed down the mountain from a small mountainside lake surrounded by tall rocky cliffs and pine trees, itself fed by picturesque waterfalls. After the dingy, claustrophobic confines of Curien Mansion, the natural landscape was an especially beautiful sight, but getting across it to Witch’s Nose would be difficult. Band could see several possible routes both across the lake and up the bluffs on the other side, but it would be tricky going, especially if the team ran afoul of any critters in the area. 

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/ZNrFDNL.png[/img][/center]

At the same time, though, traversing the area would be a simple yet tedious enough task that there would be plenty of time for small talk. While Heismay could easily reach his destination by himself, he seemed willing to slow down and stay close to the others, which gave Band a chance to try and get to know the mystery man better. Before that, though, he needed to follow up on his friend hearts from earlier.

“Kudos to y’all for not freakin’ out back there,” he told Harry and Kit. “Sorry to do that, but if anyone’s attacked while they’re still under, they’ll be forced to fight, and that woulda cooked y’all’s goose back there.” Band took a deep breath. “So, this is the World of Light. A messed-up patchwork world made of bits an’ pieces from every other world, includin’ yours and mine. You probably remember what happened now; Galeem went and wiped it all away. But that ain’t the end of the story. I’m with a group called the Lost Numbers, and we’re fightin’ back. If we’re gonna set thing straight, we gotta fight Galeem itself, which means takin’ out all the guardians it’s got in our way.” He shrugged. “But that’s all big-picture stuff. Right now, I’m just tryin’ to get to the bottom of what’s goin’ on in Martira. Once we’re done, I can call our ride to pick us up. So just focus on what’s straight ahead, ‘kay? One step at a time.”

That meant getting around -or across- the mountain lake, and finding the cave entrance Heismay described. Heismay himself seemed both troubled and perplexed by everything Band said, as if things weren’t fully sinking in. Nevertheless, he kept his thoughts to himself for now, and jumped onto the first floating log to start making his way forward.