a goose

OOC: Short jam with @Leaf

IC: Ronan (Dark Walk)

"Ronan, Fe-Toa. Three." She took a step forward, and reached out mentally - she could see the source of the spikes, along a rail either side of the slab, but she was curious as to whether there were other triggers or connections, or more spikes still loaded.

More flechette was loaded in a gearing mechanism, ready to rearmed if the gears turned back past a certain point, but for the moment inert. The gears themselves seemed to be rigged and weighted to be spun by elemental control, nothing so inelegant as Skri's wedge--rather, a stone and iron duo of gears were present, either capable of whirring to lift the gate up with the proper control.

There was another connector on the gears, meant to trigger if the chains went fully the other direction.

"Hm." The significance of the second connector was beyond Ronan, but - caution being key - she used her powers to wedge the gears in place, before reaching past the door to see if she could pick up on any other immediately relevant traps.

Nothing sprung out at her.

"We're clear for now. Good work with the Hau." She didn't look at the two Toa closest to the slab as she spoke, instead keeping her eyes trained on the substance on the floor as she began to walk towards it. Once she was close enough, she crouched down, and held her hand above it, not quite touching - important, surrounded by all these traps, to check that it truly was what it looked like.

IC: Ronan (Dark Walk)

Ronan looked at the slab with visible apprehension, a rare break from her stoic demeanor.

"L.T.? Have you actually heard from your source since they went in here?"

OOC: @Leaf

IC: Ronan (Dark Walk)

Ronan felt the ease in pressure immediately, and nodded her approval. Almost simultaneously, the metal in the passage began to shift - the erstwhile wall almost seemed to turn into a puddle on the floor, fluidly transforming first into a blank canvas, and then into a series of fairly thin pillars, placed at strategic locations along the passage. With that additional reinforcement in place - a little extra caution never hurt anyone, after all - the false door tore down the middle, as if the metal were a sheet of film being stretched from its edges, and the hole continued to grow steadily wider. Around the doorframe, the metal grew thicker, carefully reinforcing the entrance, and - knowing as she did that the door had been fake anyway - Ronan made sure to create as ample an opening as possible for her fellows.

When she finally opened her eyes, her forehead had begun to bead with sweat and she was breathing a little heavier - partially from exertion, but primarily from the focus she had spent on manipulating the metal so precisely. She allowed herself a victorious grimace as she looked upon her work. Not bad, for our first obstacle.

OOC: @Leaf et al

OOC: Short jam with @Leaf

IC: Ronan (Dark Walk)

“Ronan, if you would?”

The Fe-Toa nodded, and stepped to the front of the group. Dim though the light was, she took a moment first to carefully examine the passage and door, looking over them for any external hints she might be able to see without stepping into the iron passage.

The walls themselves were almost perfectly smooth, unnaturally so--not forged or hammered into place, but grown, slipped into the earth and used to hollow out a small alcove in the Dark Walk. Similarly, the door was almost entirely flush with the wall, only the thin outline of three of its borders possibly indicating that it was, in fact, a door, the shadows cast by those lines obvious in the flickering, whispering light of the Lieutenant’s lightstone.

Of course, all of the illusion of perfection was destroyed by the collapsed iron sheet covered in earth and vine scraps lying in the floor of the hall, shorn, torn edges surrounding the opening into the alcove itself. Edges that were sharp and jagged enough to tear at flesh just as they tore at the light shining dimly past them into the hall.

Ronan nodded again, this time to herself. Those spikes would likely be the first priority, but she refused to leave anything to chance - it wouldn’t be the first time she had encountered one trap laid bare, in order to lure the one disarming it into another. She reached out her hand, palm open, and closed her eyes, keeping the image of the passage at the forefront of her mind. She imagined the metal in front of her, and she reached into it, felt its curves and edges, crept along each inch of its surface and pushed below it, became it. What are you hiding?

The response of the metal was whining and upset, strained by the earth it supported and weakened by the loss of its brother wall, so horrifically ripped from aiding its companions in their heavy task. Moreover, the lines surrounding the door were fake etchings. There was no door where they lay, only a particularly weak section of wall.

“Onu-Toa. Need some backup.” Ronan neither opened her eyes nor turned around. “Reach into the earth above the iron ceiling, try to hold it in place - the passage is rigged to collapse. Hopefully won’t come to that, but I don’t take chances.”

OOC: @ARROW404

On 10/12/2021 at 11:14 AM, Geardirector said:

IC: Trava (Pala-Koro)

4 minutes ago, Wotz said:

IC: Kuhrin (Lake Pala North)

IC: Kaelynn (Pala-Koro)

Without shifting her gaze, Kae raised a finger to her mouth, signalling for Trava to be quiet. She was sure, this time, that she'd caught a glimpse of someone - Huna user, or... Volitak, maybe?

She began slowly to lower her hand, and then, without warning, flicked her wrist; a gust of wind blew towards the hidden figure, enough to potentially knock them off their feet.

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

"##### you, dickweed! Go #####ing- UGH!" Learu lobbed a rock at Xar's Death Cloud, then yelled a few more curses for good measure, before finally crumpling against the rock wall behind her and huddling into a ball. Stupid ####ing idiot ##### ##### #####er. Stupid. Crying over a #####ing bird-brained, #####ing obtuse #####ing shitprick. Stupid.

She wrapped her wings around her a little tighter against the cold, her tears still turning to ice before they'd even left her face. Had to take the heat with him too. #####.

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

"Sorry, I'll go wallow in my remorse for a while and then drown myself. What would that even accomplish? You're mad that people died, you're mad that I'm not dead. I didn't kill the others. Everyone who did is already gone. You're angry and you're grieving and you want someone to blame, so you're putting it all on me, as if I personally have the blood of everyone my father or Aclaraung killed on my hands." Aru clenched her claws into fists - trying to reason with Xar was infuriating. "You know what I think? I think you blame yourself. I think that's why you're so furious, why you're self-harming with your own plasma, why you want to push away the only other person who's been through what you've been through. You blame yourself for trusting me, or you blame yourself for not stopping it from happening, or some other stupid reason, but either way, you're stupidly blaming yourself, correctly recognising that as stupid, and then throwing those emotions in whatever direction you can without interrogating them."

She went silent for a moment.

"I mean. That's what I think, anyway."

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

"How the Karz am I meant to answer that? Gee Xar, I haven't really thought about it! I can't say it's something that's occurred to me." The frustration in her voice was rising, fuelled by Xar's own anger. "Not everyone spends all their time sitting and thinking out this long internal dialogue about why they do what they do. I just... didn't."

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

"I dunno dude, you're the one asking me to justify not killing you. You have to admit it's a weird tack to be taking."

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

Aru rolled her eyes. "Haven't you ever heard that phrase about looking a gift Ussal in the mouth?"

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

Aru furrowed her brow. "What the ##### kind of question is that?"

IC: Learu (Some Mountain)

"Well... yeah." Aru shrugged. Her tone had lost its previous confidence, the self-righteous fervour slipping away now that Xar wasn't providing an equally energetic opposition. "And if I'd died in that cave, that would've been that. No more or less than I deserved."

IC: Aru (Some Mountain)

"We're not different. We're not better than any of them. Shite, you gathered a friggin' army to come slaughter Ignotus and anyone who stood with him before you found out he was already dead!" Aru moved to a spot where she could directly face Xar, avoiding the glob of plasma in the process. "You killed my father because you had no choice. It was that or die, and it always was. Throwing him behind bars, sealing him in a cave, it wouldn't have changed anything. It wouldn't have stopped him."

IC: Learu

"Hey, that's good. Let it out." Learu sounded genuinely approving, and with her face out of Xar's eyeline, he couldn't see how his words had stung. "This is peace, Xar. Doing the right thing doesn't always feel good, but I tried to end the threat the Mystix posed to everyone peacefully before, and all it did was delay it. And then when Ignotus died, my father's head sprung up in his place, even worse than he was - imagine a future of that process, endlessly repeating, and tell me the rest of the world isn't better off without Mystix. Karz, look at Aclaraung - he and his dragons are some kind of Mystix all their own and he's still a monster. We're all screwed up, Xar. It's in our blood."

IC: Learu

"I literally just told you I didn't have any hand in what Aclaraung did. And you know what? Yeah, I did want us extinct. I don't regret that. But just because I wanted it doesn't mean-" Aru bit her tongue and cursed quietly. "Ugh, nevermind. Wallow and blame me if you want to. But we both wanted peace, and you know that."

IC: Learu

Learu settled on a perch above Xar, almost but not quite out of sight. "You can't look at me? Because our species went extinct while we weren't looking? Yeah, alright, grand. I'm sure you can find some other person who's the last of their kind to talk to. Not like it's an incredibly unusual experience only we have in common."

IC: Learu (Outside the Dragon Nest)

Learu remained airborne, circling above Xar. "What, so you can go throw yourself off a cliff in peace?"

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

Shitshitshitshit-

Before she knew what she was doing, Aru had dived over the ledge. She brought her wings in tight to her body, trying to fall as fast as she could, to reach Xar before he reached the ground -

And then he spread his wings and swooped up.

Aru laughed. She couldn't help it. She would have sounded delirious were there anyone but the mountains to hear her, laughing until she cried, her tears swept away into the air by the very wind that carried her up - up behind Xar, and then above him, still laughing, quieter now, but still laughing. Still laughing.

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

Aru did the only thing she could think of:

She splashed water in Xar's face.

"Hey! Earth to Xar! Don't you ####ing dare check out on me now."

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

"I went back. I knew he was telling the truth, but I went back to the caves anyway. It's been years, and he burned everything away, but you can still feel it. You can still..."

Aru turned her nose away from the sizzling pan.

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

She looked at him, silently pleading once again, begging him not to make her tell him. But Xar's face was resolute, and she broke.

"...it's just us, Xar. We're on our own. It's just us."

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

Aru shook her head, gently. "I... didn't ask him how he found out. When I woke up. But he told me the rest."

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

"...you don't remember." Aru took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, searching her mind for the words and coming up empty at every turn. She wasn't there, for the aftermath. Aclaraung had told her himself. "Aclaraung... I hadn't spoken to him. I didn't know."

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

"You still don't ####ing get it, do you? We don't have people anymore. No one else left that cave, Xar. Just us. No one to contact, no one to cast us out. It's over. Really over."

IC: Learu (Dragon Nest)

"Do you know how many bad people won't hurt anyone again thanks to what happened in that cave?"