(Western Everplains) Expedition or Shirking Active Duty (24th Board)

While she wasn’t the best soldier for the job, she knew that there needed to be initiative for this to get moving. If that meant she had to strike a light and venture down with the relatively silent girl and her cursed book then so be it. Finally she struck up a light, rather than cursing the dark ignorance that surrounded her commanding officers, and marched herself down the first couple of steps before looking back a little warily. "The stairs appear to be sound. If we are to get this expedition underway, we will need someone to take the lead."

Of course when she said this, she looked at Alice with her constant companion. "Would the young lady care to lead? You seem particularly anxious to see what mysteries await at the bottom of this ancient staircase.” Maybe anxious wasn’t quite the word to use, but from the archer’s point of view it appeared to be accurate. She couldn’t see more than three steps ahead of her feet when she looked down the underground corridor, but when she moved the torch to light the way further she stepped aside. “After you, Miss Alice.” Apparently being a baker was nothing to sneeze at in terms of a civilian job: she’d built more muscle in three months working in her shop than she did in six doing military conditioning. That was her opinion, at least. Either way she was capable of handling most anything that posed a threat, provided it could be taken down with a knife or an arrow. Into the depths to greet a brand new learning experience then . . .

Being a scout and not being first down the rabbit hole?! Unthinkable. He thought carefully about this and began looking at the walls and ceiling, as he expected going into an underground area there were support beams which he saw they were free from water damage but age still affected these. He called down at the members below and said quietly "I will scout ahead from the support beams".

He then leapt an unnaturally high distance onto the one above him which had delivered a resonant creaking noise down the tunnel, but he began hopping from beam to beam which was around 7 feet in distance, sometimes making elaborate somersaults like a trapeze artist only saying excuse me as he passed over Alice's an Lourna's heads and continued on apparently into the darkness.

He didn't like it down here, it wasn't just dark, it felt dark, as if something were generating this unnatural darkness and he noticed something familiar, as if he'd felt it before, he began thinking back stopping some 10 beams down and thought about that strange girl and that book. It was odd but it wasn't in his nature to give into superstition, he had a job to do and would do it, money was all he wanted an he was sure to get it regardless.

Getting further and further from daylight was a little unsettling, but that feeling was easily overwhelmed by her amazement at how old this place had to be. The man over head was just asking for a thrashing the way he was haphazardly leaping about near the ceiling. Maybe he’d fall and realize quickly that showing off like he was had been an ill-planned idea. When at last she felt a platform underfoot instead of another step, she jammed her torch into a crack in the wall then stepped to the side and restrung her bow. Lourna began to feel a disturbing tingle running down her spine and carefully stepped around a few strange looking markings in the ground at her feet. The writing wasn’t coherent sentences, they were symbols, which made the archer shudder visibly at remembering similar ones found everywhere in her homeland.

She silently danced her way around a myriad of those little symbols and paused as she took in her surroundings. There wasn’t much to see so early in the voyage, but the fact there was anything down here to find was incredible to her. “What are these symbols all over the ground? More of your island’s magic?” The girl knew better than to expect an answer, but when the stone above them crumbled slightly and dropped onto one of the more prominent runes, she was on edge immediately and worried for the safety of the scouts ahead of her. Behind her, she could tell Dekhovra was getting frustrated, but she knew she couldn’t do anything about it. This was the worst part about not being in Surahnian territory: helplessness. The entirety of the party was at the mercy of the necromancer child and her ominous devil book. The effect of the rune was not immediately clear, which was never a good sign, but there was an echoing clatter up ahead. Willow Mother have mercy. . .

"Oh the extent of my ignorance is boundless." Was the first sentence to fly from Lourna's lips after everything finally died back down and the tingling in her spine quit, and in her shock she'd simply said it in her native tongue. She knew better than to think that she was an expert on magic just because she was raising a dragon: not by a long shot. However, having Sinyaya around would have made her feel more at home in her current predicament: if not for the sake of having a creature with her that knew magic almost by smell, then to have the comfort of the baby dragon's constant purring. Her selfish wish however did not go unchecked as she quickly shook her head and turned her focus back to the corridor in front of her. Echos of sounds perhaps half a mile down the tunnel faintly reached her ears, causing her to pause now and then with every new sound to try to determine the source. Her nerves had yet to fully get the better of her, but after what had just happened she was clearly not as calm as she could have been.

In the course of the next mile or two she ended up walking, she saw skeletons and ancient weapons long dead and rusted over: some of which were to the point of turning to dust with no provocation. This was proven when she kicked a pebble and the skull it hit crumbled from the impact. The whole business felt more and more foreboding as time went on and more of those runes kept showing up on walls and on the floor. Lourna made doubly sure to avoid stepping on them for fear of causing another issue like what happened when the ceiling came down. Oh she wished she had stayed in her shop now, but too late to have second thoughts.

Raven kind of zoned out after the echolocation, he felt some kind of pulse but it was alien to him, this didn't stop his actions of jumping from rafter to rafter however, just kind of made him blissfully unaware of everything else around him. The only thing he remembered was being pulled under a barrier with rocks bouncing off the top and the Surahnians rising as quickly as they were pulled down, but Raven was pulled from some distance in the air and now saw what happened, a booby trap for the rune sat straight in front of them.

Raven simply got up and smiled weakly at everyone with a small call "Everyone still alive, well thanks to the little girl here we are I suppose." But his words fell flat as everyone moved off from him, cracks in his demeanour started to show, so now his near faultless genuine smile was met with crescent moon eyes that made him look more psychotic, but that didn't stop him from revelling in his near death experience, if he was fully aware of himself he could've easily avoided the rockfall, but he wasn't. Now down the way he heard the same noises as Lourna as he approached her and clapped her on the shoulder, secretly he wished for a battle but she was visibly uncomfortable if not frightened at the concept of a fight, he said to her gently in an attempt to calm her frightened exterior "These old stones could have holes that resonate sound, it could just be the wind my dear, try not to worry until you see a cause for concern".

Now not on the rafters for the sheer purpose of wishing not to die of another cave in he seconded the file of the group as they headed further into the cave. Coming to the forboding corridor that Lourna destroyed a skull in Raven spotted something wrong and grabbed the neck part of the leading guard, yanking him backwards. After the Surahnian had finished blasting insults at him and calmed down Raven observed the walls he thought something was wrong with, behind cobwebs and dust, there were several holes about the width of a finger, and several 'loose' tiles.

After raven pressed one into the floor, the area around it was flooded with a hail of small knives, which Raven recoiled from then composed himself before patting the soldier on the back

After observing Raven and his antics, she began to suspect he was perhaps a little off in the head. This was of course just a suspicion, but there was an unease in her posture reminiscent of someone who'd just been through a round of dry heaving and was on the verge of regurgitation. When Raven stepped on a tile and a flurry of knives whizzed across the corridor, that sealed the deal for Lourna. "Permission to walk ahead of the group to watch for traps, sir?" This was considering the fact that she was also a few years younger than most of her superiors and also was not trained to be a walking fortress like the guards armed with swords. Not to mention she was sick of being caught in the middle of things like magic spells and barrages of flying daggers. She'd been good about avoiding them thus far so what was the problem if she could be a better guide?

Having an assassin constantly flirting with her wasn't helping in the least either. It kept distracting her! As useful as armed guards were, her curiosity was now determined to force her forward despite the feeling that she was shaking in her boots. There was a small part of her that desperately wanted to prove that she belonged in the military, as early on she knew she'd made mistakes that caused people to look at her as if she never met expectations. No sooner had she taken a single step when a shriek was heard down the corridor that reminded the archer of a banshee. After a quick downward glance to make sure she wasn't on a rune tile, she readied an arrow and watched the gloomy pitch black tunnel for signs of movement from whatever made that hideous sound.

The creature, or monster depending on how everyone looked at it down the line, was perched on a support beam waiting for the faint light from the torches to come closer. While neither human nor capable of actual speech, it had a large set of cat-like red eyes that faced forward with teeth made to puncture its prey rather than tear off chunks of flesh. Its saliva, in tandem with the bite, acted as a blood thinner. Its skin was translucent white with only a thin layer of hair, making its skin feel like suede. It looked like someone had taken a bat, an albino human, a cat, and a lizard and combined them with blood magic. A truly gruesome thing to behold, a species long since forgotten by history, and now quite unaccustomed to human contact.