Mokley

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

Sunny watched, quiet, while Aro's rigid posture relaxed -- while she looked outside of herself for what must've been the first time in a long time -- while her expression shifted from sour to (very slightly) hopeful. Something terrible must've had hold of her mind, to have trapped her more completely than this cave ever could. Maybe now that a light was here to shine on it, it wouldn't be so frightening. Sunny offered a heartened smile. "Good to meet ya, Aro!"

A shadow blocked the sunlight, and Sunny tipped back her head and laughed to see Nyte -- with Laphi curled in her arms -- floating gently down toward them. Sunny laid an arm across Aro's shoulders and stepped back with her, to allow her comrades room to land.

"Aro! This is Nyte and Laphi!" she announced as Nyte's armored feet touched the grass; her arm had never left Aro's shoulders. "Laphi, Nyte! Aro's gonna come exploring with us! Look at this!" She raised the lantern again, waving it at the glimmering ceiling and the drawings on the wall. "There've got to be some old secrets or relics down here! C'mon!"

Finally releasing Aro, Sunny led the way slowly down the precarious spiraling stairway. From the stairs it was clear that the grassy island had nothing to support it, but was only floating steadily at the center of nothing at all. The stairs themselves were slightly crumbled, and though they were wide there was no banister to prevent an imbalanced explorer from toppling into the dark below.

Sunny didn't notice the flash and blink of dim white lights in the distance -- like big eyes that had seen them and turned away.

The floor wasn't terribly far, and soon Sunny walked forward onto the stone bottom of the cavern, and waited there for the others to make their way down, craning her neck to see what there was to be seen. "Who do you think drew those pictures and built the stairs?" she said quietly; their voices echoed ominously in the dark.

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

@Tenma Tendo I love that!! :D The Fool is excellent representation of Sunny, in so many ways.

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

Sunny grinned up at the stranger, took the proffered hand and hopped to her feet. "Thanks! I'm Sunny, by the way. Up there are Laphicet and Nyte. We're a vagrant coterie -- currently without a name, but we'll decide on one soon. Are you all right?" Sunny peered through the gloom at Aro's face, which to her seemed twisted in pain and misery. The vagrant offered a comforting smile. "Sorry for dropping in on you. The woods don't seem to like visitors much. Hopefully we're not about to be eaten or something." She laughed, and finally let go of Aro's hand to explore the perimeter of their grassy island while they waited for Laphi and Nyte to rescue them.

After a few moments, Sunny dropped to her knees and craned her head over the edge to peer down into the deep, deep dark. When nothing revealed itself, she sat down, unhooked an oil lantern from her backpack (both of which she'd brought from the walking-house) and lit it with a flint spark. Firelight soon cast a flickering illumination on Sunny's and Aro's faces. Sunny grinned up at Aro and brought the lantern to the edge again.

She looked up, and gasped.

The lantern-light cast a bright starry sky of reflections in the cavern ceiling -- like diamonds gleaming in the rock above.

The nearest wall only barely caught the light of the flame, but Sunny could make out very old finger-paintings of human figures ... and what appeared to be enormous animal-gods towering over them, with lines of sunlight streaming from above, marked by ancient orange paint.

Sunny's foot caught on the edge of something; she looked down to see a weathered stone staircase spiraling down from the grassy island.

"Guys?" she called up to her friends -- to Laphi, who she knew would hear her. "Change of plan. You might want to come down here! This place is really old! I think this is where we're supposed to go!" She spun around, raising the light to Aro's face, and grinned. "There's something we're looking for that might be in this cave -- something with runes, we think. Hope you don't mind waiting a little for that rescue -- why don't you come exploring with us?"

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

From their position, Sunny could only hear the vague sound of a voice echoing up out of the crevice -- but luckily Laphi was there to hear and translate.

Sunny waited a beat, her eyebrows raised while she returned Laphi's gaze. She could see that he was hesitant to move unless someone else took the lead -- of course, he'd never really been given the chance to make his own decisions before, had he? She gave him a soft grin. "Think we should go help?" she asked, encouraging. Sunny looked up to Nyte as well, her smile a little sharper, before she headed through the brush directly for the crack in the ground.

"How'd you get down there?" Sunny knelt at the edge and looked down, her hair hanging in thick locks around her curious face. All she could see was a figure sprawled in the grass far below. ...Wait. Grass? Underground? "Don't worry, just don't move! We'll get you out!" She hopped to her feet and turned to her comrades with a confident smile. "Nyte, Laphi, did you find --"

Sunny never finished her sentence -- an angry tree root had suddenly struck up out of the ground, grabbed her around the ankles and flung her sprawling over the edge and into the dark crevice. The coterie captain hadn't time to realize what was happening before she was plummeting down between walls of stone, wind rushing past her ears, light and warmth fading. She landed hard on top of Aro, knocking the wind out of both of them.

The tree root returned to the soil as quickly and silently as it had come. The trees all around Laphi and Nyte seemed to shift places behind their backs. The forest was watching -- and it wasn't kind.

Sunny groaned in pain and shifted off of Aro. "I'm -- I'm here to -- ow -- rescue you!" she tried, and coughed, peering up at the sunlight high above. "We're okaaay!" she called up to Laphi and Nyte, waving a hand at them.

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

Naw there's no wait, no worry! :3

Speaking of wait, though ....

From next Friday through the following Wednesday I'm gonna be traveling! Will have my laptop and wifi, but we'll see about posts. x3

Disneyland Advice?

@Chasebloodcrest Sounds like you've been to the front lines and lived to tell the tale. I am now making plans for a full suit of armor.

Lantern

@drewccapp@c3p-0h I've been absent awhile -- needed to get my head on straight, also a severe case of burnout -- but I'm back, and I feel like leaving this unfinished is blasphemy, haha. We're so close.

What do you think?

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

@Jade113 I totally missed an obvious opportunity to mention the flitterdids being attracted to Nyte's shiny armor. x3

Dragon's Mask

*clickCLACK*

Nina pressed close against Riley while the dumbwaiter shifted and whirred. It dropped a half-inch, rumbled, then -- with a squeak and a churning noise -- began to climb upward. The square entryway dropped below, and Riley and Nina ascended into darkness.

The walls of the dumbwaiter shaft were cool and metallic and smelled like copper and salt. The squeaking of the mechanical pulley filled the shaft, but as she moved up and up Riley could hear other sounds across the walls of the floors that she passed:

A shuffling, snorting, coughing noise of someone or something eating.
The soft chimey ring of a music box plucking a gentle tune.
A low mechanical hiss and groan, accompanied by commanding shouts.
The faint choke and sniffle of someone crying.
The murmur of a distant television, and a frothy voice chuckling.
Whispers. A thousand faint voices across the elevator shaft wall, all speaking quiet and at once.

When the whispering faded and fell below -- when Riley's dumbwaiter had ascended long past it -- silence fell. There was no longer anything to hear but the squeak and whirr of the dumbwaiter.

But then, finally, was another sound: wind.

As she ascended higher, the howling rush of wind grew louder.

The walls of the dumbwaiter shaft were no longer metal now, but wood. She rose past smooth slats of pine and knotted oak.

*clickCLACK*

Everything stopped.

Wind rushed outside, but distant. The stillness was almost deafening. Nina barely moved and barely breathed.

In front of Riley was a set of slatted folding doors that could be pushed open with little effort. On the other side was a perfectly human-sized kitchen. Sunlight streamed in through pear-patterned curtains, pooling gently on clean counters and scrubbed wooden floors. Dust motes drifted lazily in the light; it seemed no one was home.

"What if she doesn't want to help?" A young boy's voice could be heard just outside.

"She most probably doesn't care a lick about helping at the moment," said the fox. She grinned a little, though, and tilted her furry head at Arthur. "Because she don't know you just yet. How's she goin' ta know she wants ta help you if she don't know you? A stranger don't have any responsibility to see you home -- but a friend! Ah, a friend will go to the ends of the world to get you back to your own soft bed. How're you intendin' to go home without makin' a few friends on the way? It's a long way to go just by your lonesome." She poked her nose a little closer to the boy. "The gold lady is lonesome too, I've heard."

Whistlehowl Star {always open!}

"There's got to be something here somewhere!" Sunny dodged a long-reaching flower and scrambled up the sloped side of a boulder to peer over it -- but there was nothing to see except the fluted white trunks of ferny trees, flowers the size of horses leaning sideways by their own weight, and curiously spiraled stone structures that shone like the night sky, looping up out of soft and squishy moss like statuesque serpents. The air here was thick with moisture and the pungent aromas of the heady flowers; sunlight filtered and flickered through the canopy, casting a golden dappled glow on the shifting grasses.

This was the place on the map -- their next destination, finally reached after days of hiking and hitching rides with friendly wagoners, camping under the stars or in a gracious farmer's barn. Finally -- their feet sore and the sun hot on their skin -- Rymoln Wood was all around them, but it occurred to Sunny that they had no idea what they were looking for.

"Helloooooo!" she called into the dense forest, hands around her mouth. Sunny turned suddenly, certain she'd just seen something move -- but there was only a tree. She was certain that tree hadn't been there a moment ago.

There was something about these woods that constantly felt out-of-place, but she never actually saw anything moving.

Sunny felt something tugging at her hair, and she waved away a little orange flitterdid -- pudgy, squeaky, buzzy things the size of dragonflies that liked to steal whatever they could get their tiny paws on. A lazy swarm of flitterdids had followed the coterie since they entered Rymoln Wood, and Sunny had warned her companions to keep close anything small and valuable.

There was no birdsong here -- no sound of toads or insects or wildlife. Apart from the flitterdids, there was little wildlife to be found at all -- just the hush and creak and rustle of the trees and flowers in the breeze. It was as if nothing lived here at all.

With a yelp, Sunny leaped suddenly while a stray vine snapped away from her feet. It would have caught her ankles if she'd been any less vigilant. "Watch where you step!" she called to Laphi and Nyte, and she stopped in a grove of spiral-stones to turn and check on the others. "Find anything yet? I get the feeling these woods are trying to catch us or eat us." The sentiment was said with a grin. "Is it just me or are these trees moving?"

*CRACK*

The trees shook and shuddered with a sound like the strike of lighting or the split of a gigantic egg; the ground beneath their feet shuddered from a sudden impact. The flitterdids scattered and zoomed in all directions, spooked. Sunny smiled wide. "There!" she shouted, speeding off in the direction of the great noise, crashing recklessly through the mossy brush. "This way!"

Meanwhile, Aro would find herself laying in soft pale grass, bathed in a pool of sunlight that only reached her through a new split crevice in the rock high above. All around her, wherever the sunlight didn't penetrate, was darkness -- but she would get the feeling, by the way the space smelled and the way sound echoed faintly whenever she moved, that she had stumbled into a cavern that was far more enormous than it at first appeared.

Should she explore the place where she had fallen, she might find that the grassy spot where she stood was only as big as the floor of a small cottage -- beyond that perimeter it dropped off suddenly into a dark abyss. She had been lucky to have fallen upon this little island of safety.

On one side, shadowed by the thick darkness, was the beginning of a precarious staircase that spiraled down ... and down.

Aboveground, Sunny skidded to a stop when she spotted the crevice in the ground; it was the shape of a hungry mouth, or a hollow eye, gaping dark among the heavy flowers and shifting trees. "Helloooo!" she called again -- this time, hopeful.