Endless Sea (Alaki Nuva)

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) "Your eyes?" Joskander chuckled mirthlessly. "Dahkapa, you should have seen your eyes a moment ago. You looked like one of them. Like the last thing left to break in you finally went and broke." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

Haven't found a good place for Cephala to interject, so I'm letting you guys guide things for now.

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) It took almost a minute before Joskander found his voice again. "Dahkapa, you worship a death god. You know what I thought you meant." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) Because you were talking like a cultist. Because I didn't like the look in your eyes. Because you're scaring me. Because this place is scaring me. Because I hate this place and everything it stands for. Because I remember burning buildings, and I know something wrong happened in one of them, and something's wrong here too. Because I miss my friends and I want to see them again. Because I thought you were a friend and now I don't know anymore. Because I don't know you and I never did. Because I've lost the ability to trust ever since I saw you again in Ta-Koro. Because I've been carrying the world ever since I watched Ko-Koro burn. Because I feel responsible for everything you are and everything you do. Because I don't understand what's going on. Because I'm lost. Because you're lost. Because I wish I'd never come to this god-forsaken island no I don't no I don't stop that stop that what is WRONG with me Joskander looked down at his fallen brother, eyes narrowed, shoulders rising and falling with every heaving breath. A thousand thousand answers to Dahkapa's question flitted through his mind, rattling the edges, screaming to be heard. Had he been any less tired, he would have let them all out. The tablet in his hand had cracked upon impact with Dahkapa's face. A second crack was forming right alongside it, widening rapidly beneath the Toa of Air's gauntleted grip. Joskander sighed and let the tablet fall. "Before I answer that question, I want you to answer one of my own. I want you to define the word 'sacrifice' for me." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) Joskander stared. The gears in his head were groaning. Speeding up? Slowing down? Who knew? He was always bad at metaphors, and he had better things to worry about than figuring this one out. Chief among those better things, of course, was the fact that he was presently attempting to slam the Brotherhood's instruction tablet directly into Dahkapa's crazy smiling face. After spending the entire trip as a paranoid wreck, it was almost liberating to finally do something incredibly stupid and poorly thought-out again. OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) It was not long before Joskander trudged his way back up the stairs, but there was eternity in his eyes as he stepped back out into the sunlight. His moved as if his armor was twice as heavy and half as articulated as it had been but a few minutes before, and he was clutching the stone tablet in his hand hard enough to dig marks into its weathered surface. "I think you were almost right," he muttered as he approached Dahkapa. "Saw a few marks on the ground that gave me the impression there used to be bookcases there- or some kind of shelving, at least. Nothing anymore, though." He regarded the tablet he had looted as one would a bloodied knife. "This was the only thing I could find that had writing on it. It doesn't look like scripture, though. More like an instruction manual. For..." His eye twitched. "I don't wanna say it. I think you got a pretty good idea, though." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander Wasn't sure what you were hoping Joskander would find down there, if anything, so I picked something I felt would be relevant. If you were fishing for something else for him to find, do let me know!

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) "...I hope that from now on, the truth of Ak'rei'an can be spread with words of reason, not coercion. Maybe then followers of Mata Nui won't respond with such excessive force." Joskander shook his head as he gingerly trotted his way down the frozen steps. Maybe, huh? he thought as he watched Dahkapa outpaced him. You hope, huh? You know, when you first started talking at me like that, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. No clue whether you were trying to play me, or you were just insane. Couldn't take a word you said at face value. Now, I'm starting to think you genuinely believe every word of what you're saying... and that scares me. Because there's no way in all the world that you'll be able to convince your cultist friends that what they did to you was wrong... or convince people like me to forgive them. And I have no idea what you're going to do when you realiOHNOOHGODOHMAN- Slip. Both Joskander's feet gave beneath him, and suddenly he was skidding head over heels down the last few steps and crashing face first into the floor. By the time he had picked himself off the ground and reassured himself that he hadn't gone the way of that poor old Skakdi at Obsidian Outpost, Dahkapa was already easing his way through a broken wall and- oh no- a hidden passageway. Never a good sign, one of those in a place like this. "Dahkapa!" he called as he stumbled out of the ruined halls. "Brother! Wait up!" Squeeze through the passage, jump down the hole, don't trip, don't trip, down the stairs down the stairs, down the stairs- He saw the room before he saw Dahkapa. "Oh." For a few moments he just stood there on the stairs, squinting into the chamber, trying to catch a glimpse of its innards, instantly regretting it whenever he did. Then he slowly walked down to stand by Dahkapa's side. "I can search this room for you, if you want," he murmured. "But I don't think we're gonna find anything worthwhile down here." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

IC: Cephala (Ga-Koro docks) "Oh? I hope that means you're planning on taking on more than just us on this rescue mission, then. Two old petkeepers and a drunk fisherwoman in the Wastes? Even with the cultists gone from Ko-Koro I'm not too drunk to realize that's not a disaster waiting to happen." OOC: @Mel @Geardirector

IC: Cephala (Ga-Koro docks) "Ah." A grimace. "This wouldn't happen to be that 'Soraph' lady you mentioned earlier, yes?" OOC: @Mel @Geardirector Decided to check on old posts from the Old People Corner, and apparently this isn't the first time Soraph's come up! Gonna edit my last post too to clear up a minor bit of continuity.

IC: Cephala (Ga-Koro docks) "Oh?" Cephala frowned in thought. "Nothing planned, no- I wouldn't have asked to stick around with you lot earlier if I had obligations to take care of, y'know? I was thinking about trying to mingle with some of your cohorts earlier, naturally, but that's less of a plan and more of a 'stand around and wait for things to happen' sort of thing anyways. Why do you ask?" OOC: @Mel @Geardirector EDIT: looked up some old posts, found a thing where Cephala asked to come along anyways, decided to put it in because continuity. I worry too much, methinks.

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) "As you wish, brother," Joskander said. He gave Dahkapa a nod and took a few long strides over to the stairwell- then stopped abruptly, head bowed in thought. "While we walk, though," he added, "I've got a question I'd like answered. Who do you think had it worse? This place? Or Ko?" OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) Joskander exhaled slowly, walked right up to Dahkapa, looked him right in his violet-tinged eyes... and shrugged. "How should I know? I wasn't here. I have no idea what this place was. I have no idea what its people did here. I have no idea who attacked it, or why, or how. All I know is that your Brotherhood owned it once... and then it got sacked." He stared up through the shattered roof, up between the canyon crags, up to the glimmers of the sun above. "And I know that when they made you a convert," he muttered, "they did it not with a word, but with a knife. So forgive me if I still find myself something of a skeptic of their goodness." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander so that last bit definitely isn't how joskander normally speaks but I'm too tired right now to make it less melodramatic so whatever xP

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) Joskander watched Dahkapa sift through the ruins through hooded eyes. He didn't move to help. He had no idea what he was even looking for, and he was hardly feeling confident enough to ask. It hardly seemed like Dahkapa needed the help anyways; he was moving with a purpose, and Joskander almost wondered if his being there might actually be slowing the Toa of Ice down. "This is a page from one of the Books of Makron and Orkov, I presume... not what I am looking for, but..." Joskander frowned. "Books of who?" he said, but Dahkapa was already turning, his scowl vanishing beneath his whirling cape. "We'll find nothing here. Let us head back down. Only something underground could've survived this kind of zealous hatred." "You sure?" Joskander took a step forward, looked carefully into Dahkapa's eyes. "You seem... significantly more troubled than usual right now. Something up with what was on that paper?" OOC: @Daniel the Finlander stupid question, what did dahkapa say to joskander about the details of this fortress again, if anything

IC: Joskander (Blackrock Canyon) "Offices first, methinks. We'll probably be sweeping the whole place no matter what, so we might as well save the deepest, dankest catacombs for last." Joskander gestured grandiosely in a vaguely forward direction. "This is your expedition, so... after you." OOC: @Daniel the Finlander

IC: Cephala (Ga-Koro docks) "Putting 'razor fish' and 'towing' together in the same sentence sounds like a recipe for disaster, quite frankly." OOC: @Mel @Geardirector