ataraxionlogs | over the river & through the woods

Before they cross the river, Our Intrepid Explorers find their first serious opposition. It's not that the jungle is easy-going. There's plenty of pitfalls and sudden swales and low-hanging branches, plus vegetation to bodily hack through, plus the enduring humidity and the feeling of loss that may engulf one or two of the explorers. Back at the main camp, the ranks were thin and getting thinner.

Physical exertion is a good cure for despair. Good fresh air, good sunlight. The zest of the quest may restore some spirits, and as the morning of their second day out dawns fair and bright, the chittering of jungle creatures makes for a cheerful backdrop. In the canopy above, about fifteen little creatures leap from branch to branch, keeping pace with the line. They might be new, to those of their party who haven't ventured out into the jungle. To others, they may be more familiar, though still rare enough for this attention to feel unusual. Sure: it's a little adorable, at first. Then it starts to get a little creepy. The creatures grow bolder, range down lower in the trees, and their noise gets louder. Glimpses through the leaves and branches reveals signs of disease, patchy feathers, bloody eyes, the loom of sharp shoulderblades twisted well above their little heads.

Then one of the creatures drops out of the tree onto someone's shoulder, assault from above, and that's when a very concentrated series of hells break loose.

Gavroche has been following along for hours now. It would have been simpler if they'd just agreed to let him come along to begin with. But he really needed to know what was out there. And with Carolyn disappearing there were very few people left who would try to stop him.

At night, the sound of the jungle might be more unsettling. Everyone here has likely grown used to sleeping a thin wall away from the great outdoors, but that was before the great outdoors was mobilising against them. Now the call of animals sounds more forbidding: desperate, angry, a little crazed.

If they dare a fire, it's probably good to keep the flames low. If they dare conversation, it's probably good to keep that low, too. If they dare to sleep, they should probably post a watch. Restlessness is nearly a given, even for their boldest.

Alert is what he'd call it, if anybody'd asked him. Restless implies needing to move for the sake of moving; he just has a lot to keep an eye on, is all. Jungle isn't the easiest territory to survey. His night vision isn't what it used to be. Their enemies are small, and everywhere. And watching.

So he doesn't pace, even if he'd like to, but he doesn't sleep either. He sits still, sometimes a little unnervingly so. He keeps his eyes open. Under double moonlight, he cleans the day's gore from his knives with a gentle, rhythmic scrape. (Maybe it's a calming sound, instead of ominous.)

After, when his weapons have been thoroughly cared for, he sets to maintaining the rest of him — chews on some lizard jerky, rehydrates, stubbornly ignores the stiff ache in his shoulder, the usual. He doesn't get a whole lot more talkative, but anybody else still up is liable to get a canteen rolled over against their boot sooner or later. Drink something, you look terrible.

Rey doesn't sleep much. About an hour or so is all she really needs to keep herself moving. When she does sleep, she sits upright with her back up against a tree, her arms folded over her chest with her legs sprawled before her. Despite her quiet snores every now and then, she's a light sleeper.

Which is why it doesn't take much to rouse her awake when she hears the subtle movements of someone else close by. Finding it impossible to get back to sleep afterwards, she decidedly sits on duel watch for a while. While she isn't armed and not so protectively dressed with her tanktop and cargo pants, she is hardly what you could call defenseless. Even when she had slept, there was an air of vigilance about her.

Some time later, she finds a canteen of water kicked her way. She pauses, blinking at it as though trying to figure it out, before going for a much-needed drink. A muttered thank you follows.

Then, shortly afterwards, she finally speaks up: "Can take the next watch, if you're tired." Though she feels that she may already know the answer.

A beat passes. It's only day one; he doesn't need sleep yet, not in a way that registers, but he does sometimes since unplugging, and he will on this trip. It's easy to forget. Difficult to plan for. He's not leaving the watch to just anybody, though.

"Training?" he asks, not taking his eyes off the jungle. She's more disciplined than the others, he's noticed that much. A better fighter.

It isn't much of an answer, but it's about what she could expect from someone who looks like this guy. There's an odd, familiar air about him as well.

At his question, she just shrugs a shoulder. "Something like that, yes."

Is it really training if you've had all the experience downloaded into your brain?

"Something like that?" he presses, sliding an eye over to her.

Because privacy is all well and good - there sure is plenty he doesn't want to talk about, but as far as he's concerned this is a mission, and he has acceptable parameters to satisfy, and he's going to need a little more information than that to decide if they are.

"Well. Own somewhere around two centuries' worth of different soldiers' memories up here." She taps the side of her head. "So, again, it's 'something like that'. As in, was able to bypass most of the actual training part."

He stills. Well. Alright. That's at least double what he's got.

A nod, slight. "Still gotta practice. Teach your body all the stuff in your head." Right? His voice is gentler, not like he's grilling her anymore, just saying. He could be wrong, about how it works for her. Maybe it wasn't the way it was for him. But he's watching her now with an abrupt increase in intensity, like he's just discovered she's made of answers, if only he can figure out the questions.

"Any of 'em decent? The soldiers."

Edited 2016-01-18 21:20 (UTC)

"Not much of an issue. Saw plenty of action before, and spar regularly with a housemate." Though her style compared to Firo's is much different. Soldiers don't tend to fight like gangsters or vice versa.

She sighs, climbing to her feet and dusting off the dirt from her pants.

"If you're asking if they were decent fighters, then yes, of course. If you mean whether or not they were decent people... it depends."

He nods. She's met his excessively high standards well enough for now.

"I hadn't thought about it," he admits. If they were decent people. "Most people aren't."

In his limited experience with both people and decency, anyway. He gives a slight, stiff shrug.

She nods, understanding. Even the 'decent' people she knows has some flaws that are rather difficult to overlook. While not all of her old selves were necessarily terrible people--

"When it comes to fighting wars, you're always a monster to someone."

--there is that. And usually it's to the people you're killing.

Everything is trying to kill them. Jack's oddly okay with that. He understands it. If something comes too close and it's not one of his fellow explorers, you kill it. It's so simple that even a child could understand.

Apparently they have one of those.

He's tired, his legs and his eyes, but he doesn't sleep. He also doesn't complain, which is somewhat surprising given his former position. But there were many nights just like this one when he wasn't a prince. He was a soldier, and he acted according, mouth shut and ears open. And a finger always close to the trigger.

It's not paranoia when you know that things are trying to kill you.

At the top of the cliff there is a tree, and tied to a tree there is a rope.

It's a nice rope, well-made, stiff fibres that would have made for a good sturdy climb except for the fact that someone cleanly cleaved it short. This will not stop our Intrepid Explorers, who have means of scaling the cliff besides an old left-behind rope, but even so. Who left the rope, and who severed it? Good questions for the group, as they assemble themselves for the descent.

"Well that's," Remus says. The originally planned end of that sentence might be unnerving or might be a rope, but both go without saying. There are all sorts of highly observant people here. They don't need sweat-sticky Welsh wizards to tell them when something is unnerving, or a rope, or an unnerving rope.

Heights aren't his most favourite thing in the world, but he pushes the trunk of the tree with his foot to test its steadiness, then puts a hand on it to make himself feel a little better about leaning over the cliff face to look down.

He's checking for bodies, for the record.

It sure is. As Captain Obvious leans over the edge of the cliff, the Winter Soldier edges closer in turn, just in case that tree stump turns out not to be so sturdy after all. Or maybe he's just gravitationally drawn to people making questionable decisions regarding their personal safety. But he does spare a glance for the rope.

"One of ours?" he asks. Or one of theirs — whoever they are, with the spears.

Gavroche is also examining the cliff. He's an expert climber. Sure, usually chimneys, but he could diversify. "The climb shouldn't be too bad... as long no one cuts the rope." The fact that it happened to someone else was... not exactly a good sign.

L has been looking at the rope as unobtrusively as is typical for him, which is to say that he doesn't mind ducking his head in and out of someone else's line of sight but hasn't done so incessantly. He frowns at the rope, examines the end, captures an image of it with his communicator.

"I'm more concerned about why it was left here to begin with. The easiest explanation is that it was cut so no one else would attempt to go down there -- but in that case, why not remove the evidence that someone has? This is like an arrow pointing in that direction.

"A number of other scenarios are possible, but the remaining rope up here is always troublesome -- if you were cutting it for a friend who had scaled down and wanted the rest of their rope to continue on with, wouldn't you try to untie it so they'd have more length? A crime of passion seems more likely, but in that case, we'll probably find the rest of the rope at the foot, maybe a body.

And if someone wants us to know we can go down this way... who? Why?"

There's nothing at the bottom. Jungle, more jungle, more jungle. Vegetation grows thick, creating a sort of screen that your arm could get lost in up to the elbow. The treeline skirts very near to the cliff's face in places, like the line of some vast green tide.

It's hard going. They follow along with the cliff for awhile, using it as a guide until they get their bearings. The dusk of the night comes suddenly, more a heavy drop than a gentle filter of pastel shadow and light. Even with fire and illumination both magical and artificial, they soon have no choice but to stop and make camp.

That's when the glowing starts.

" With a scream of grinding stone and a sudden cloud of displaced dust, it will become more obvious that the patterns depicted a door -- one that is opening, splitting into two, and sliding aside via some concealed mechanism. Inside, it is completely dark. That is, until someone brave enough steps inside, and the walls and ceiling begin to light up with green bio-luminescence like which they found outside, and similarly attracted to their presence by gathering where they step or touch, or even breathe if close enough.

What lies ahead is a long, dark tunnel, carved perfectly round into the stone. It continues on for about a minute, before opening up into a wider chamber of staggering proportions. The ceiling seems to lift up above them into darkness, save for a faint green glow, and following the walls to the left or the right will indicate a subtle curve that implies an immense round space. Headed towards the centre, the floor begins to descend in sharply carved stairs (which are about a foot shallow and several feet wide, so 'stairs' is a generous term, given scale), following the curve of the wall, descending down and down until they reach a hole in the ground at the centre of the chamber, approximately twenty feet in radius, and sealed off only with a criss cross of metal bars. Bearing in mind, any visuals beyond the meagre light allowed by the green glow will have to be helped along with their own sources of light, as it's extremely dark....."

The purpose of this trip, as it was advertised, is to find Weird Things, which may shed light—faint green glowing light, sure, why not—on other Weird Things, so mission half-accomplished. Weird Thing discovered, check, but the light-shedding only literal, not yet metaphorical.

The unadvertised, unspoken purpose is to find people. Too many have gone missing lately. Remus has Harry's wand, which he hits on his thigh like its contents might shift and become more responsive before making an attempt at lumos that sputters and sparks before settling into a cooperative white glow in the dark—Harry's gone, now James, and countless others.

Sirius is a dog, at the moment. Understandably. Remus wishes he could be a dog, too, in a less murderous and more simple way than normal, until James turns up and Sirius stops being like this.

They've already visited here once, with everyone else. Coming back alone means there's no one to look at Remus like he's gone a bit nutty when he says, "I'll follow you," conversationally, to Padfoot.

In the pale wandlight, Padfoot turns to look at Remus over his shoulder, a flash of glowy eyes. He snuffs, licks his nose wet, and snuffs again before he shifts off his paws and starts forward. Mud mats the fur on his chest, up his forelegs, but in the tunnel, the path is dry stone, and his nails clack dully as he trots along.

They've been here before, so they know what to expect. His nose works at the air anyways, taking in the scents of the tunnel and the cavern that's ahead. The tunnel will start its glow any moment now, a trip of some invisible unknowable alarm but in the moment, it's just Remus and Padfoot, by wandlight, a familiar scene.

Padfoot's pace starts off quick, but it's not long before he falls back to keep pace with Remus instead, falling into step beside him. Close enough that--with the swing of Remus' arm--his knuckles will brush against some part of Padfoot's coarse fur.

On cue, there's the bioluminescence; Remus holds the wand up to the wall and it lights around his hand, green trailing after as he walks. The other hand brushes Padfoot a few times and then settles on his head for a second to muss the fur there. Mostly for his own sake. Everyone else comes and goes—he's come and gone—and Sirius is still here. That's something.

"They're not here," he says into the dark. "When we get back we can try looking in the other direction. I heard walking in a spiral is best."

But useless if they've vanished into thin air.

Padfoot's ears prick and he turns to look up at him, another flash of his eyes in the dark-light-dark of the tunnel. He isn't quite feeling up to it, but his tail wags, once, an irrepressible reaction to the sound of Remus' voice. There are a few voices out there that could get a tail wag out of him nearly in spite of circumstance, and Remus' voice is near top of that list.

Everything is easier, as Padfoot. Cora, Tyke, James. Smells that colour memories. More before them. Cora, Tyke, James, and more before them. These ones hurt. As a dog, all his emotions get screwed down; the ache in his chest becomes something else, nothing smaller but a shape that's easier to get his head around. Cora, Tyke, James.

Remus. Fingers against his skull. Padfoot licks his nose again, with a quiet whine of agreement. Then, just for fun, he breaks stride to do a circle around Remus' legs, keeping tight against him. A spiral. Get it? Dogs can make jokes too.

Remus has to stop walking to avoid tripping, for a second, but he grins—a tight, brief thing, but not fake. Ahead of them the tunnel opens up, invisible in the dark but still sensed, the sudden absence of claustrophobia even though they can't quite see the walls. A few more steps and the hand Remus has held toward the tunnel wall is held into empty air instead.

"We ought to check the ship, too." He's not out of hope yet. "It could be pulling people back in to—somewhere."

A void. It's not impossible.

Grins don't have smells, or colours--even if they did, he wouldn't be able to see the colours--but the air bends around a grin. Things change, infinitesimally. Prickly fur at the back of Padfoot's neck settles a little and his gait is easier, now that he's earned that grin. If he were all dog, this would be easy.

He's not all dog. Other bits inform him, remind him. Cora, Tyke, James. James James James. The ship, the depths, a wreck he's scoured, picked through, sniffed through, bit and kicked and Summoned and pushed, in turns. Bloody finger from a cut. Sweat, angry. His fur is all prickled again and he twists away from Remus and dashes forward into the open cave, tail drooped low. These are not things that he wants to think about. That's why he's here. It occurs to him then that he's left Remus behind, but he doesn't go back just yet. The air smells funny in here, dry and damp all at once, big vast echoy cave smell. The clack of his nails becomes loud, the huff of his breath, all magnified and echoed, a dog five times his size. Perhaps he'll stay this way forever.

over the river & through the woods

A SERIES OF MONSTROUS AFFLICTIONS.

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A CAMP.

ota.

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ota!

THE CLIFF AND THE ROPE.

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FACED WITH THE FACE OF THE GLOWING CLIFF.

THE TUNNEL.

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