SoS B1 C6 X3: Static
The hunt for the energy cells was a slow and painstaking one. They spent precious daylight weaving around the city ruins in search of the houses Savanu had suggested, but all they found were ashes, or moldering old homes that had crumpled under the constant dampness and storms over the years. It looked as though Dessir had not gone quietly to the grave. In front of each home were wooden stakes -- most often a fence post -- carved with the names of those who had lived within. Savanu had kept busy.
Their third house held promise. It was a stone and oak manor on the edge of town, tucked back a ways into an orchard that had overgrown and died multiple times over the years. The ground was mucky and muddy, and the house seemed to sit at a tilt, but otherwise looked sturdy.
"No sense in us all going, want to send a scout?" Narissa asked. "Maybe there's some cigarettes inside..."
"Here's hoping. We'll send in Laemon. If he finds something interesting Immuena, Tskhan, and I will check it out. I'll make sure to grab any cigarettes I should find." Allarah flashed Narissa a small smile.
Laemon stole off into the house, blade in hand and hood scarf pulled taut. He kept the line open, rattling off everything he saw as he saw it. He wasn't about to omit a single detail in case anything was of interest.
"Thick ground cover, mostly soggy, no crunch. Good. Wooden house with cobblestone base. Likely not much water damage, door is a bit warped though, wedged shut. Taking window."
He didn't even grunt as he scaled a tree to the second story and shimmied out onto the balcony before slipping in through a sliding door window.
"Bedroom, dark, 4-poster bed."
"Smokes?" Narissa interjected.
"None, looking, gonna have a limited supply myself," He spoke as though in a trance: monotone and quick. "Lots of mold. Loves the old wood. Porcelain. Trinkets. Breaker switch. Following conduit."
Silence.
"First floor. Odd smell. Old death. Shrine to Bast... sorry Allarah, moldered. No good. I can grab the sacrament if you like,"
He waited for her response, then continued his search.
"Another conduit. Into the floor. Didn't look like there was much outside for energy boxes. Hm. Missing something."
Dull thumping.
"Doesn't sound like a basement. But I feel it in my gut."
A long silence followed. Almost worrisome in scale. Then they heard the rattling of some sort of lock. The slow thud of feet on soft wood. Dripping sounds.
And then, nothing. Well. A sort of nothing.
Just a minute of heavy breathing, rhythmic, without exertion but heavy all the same.
And then two.
"Laemon?" Narissa.
And then three.
"Laemon!" Dimmu yelled over the com. Static buzzed the line... then, it cut out. The lights in the trundler flickered.
"Tskhan, Immuena, were leaving now!" She dropped her pack, making sure to grab the gun from it before running towards the exit.
"All of you?" Narissa called?
As she was bustling around in preparation, Allarah saw Dmitri consoling his smallest crewmate aside from Immuena, the quiet, diminutive one who'd yet to speak a word the entire journey. She was buried under her blankets, trembling.
She stopped only a moment doing a final check of her gear. "What's wrong?" She asked Dmetri not wanting to startle Agata further. If he refused to answer, she wouldn't hesitate a second longer in leaving.
He grunted and waved her off. "None of your concern."
She gave a curt nod and glanced at Agata. "If she's not feeling well, get her whatever she needs. Not like you would have needed my permission in the first place." She hesitated a moment at the door looking into Agata's eyes. "You feel it don't you? Will you be alright?"
Agata looked at Allarah, horror in her gaze, then at Dmitri, and back again. She shook her head violently, and pulled the blankets over her head.
"She's just stressed," Dmitri said, resting his hand on her covered shoulder. "I'll tend to her."
"Alright. I'm sorry then." She grabbed Tskhan and Immuena and left the Trundler, running for the building.
Allarah hammered on the door. Years of water saturation had wedged it into place and molded it to its frame, and hammer after hammer of her kinetic vectors weren't making much of a dent except to wedge it further the frame and cause a great ruckus.
The house responded. The trees waved. The eaves screamed. A shutter rattled so violent that it tore itself off.
"Allarah, lift me to the window with the vectors, then follow up the tree with Tskhan. Or Tskhan could break the frame of the door." Immuena piped in, following the torn off shutter with her eyes
"Fuck that door!" Allarah yelled, eyes snapping to Immuena. She stopped hitting the house. "Alright. We’ll be close behind."
Immuena didn't know how to react to Allarah's outburst. "I'm not worried if you two are right behind me." She said in a flat voice. "Just prepare the spell properly and avoid overdraw." Drawing her gun and knife, she took a few deep breaths to ease her tension.
Immuena felt the textureless pressure of Allarah's kinetic bands wrapping around her and lifting her up to the balcony Laemon had climbed in. The inside was dark, and Immuena needed a moment for her eyes to adjust before she could see through the murk. She was in a master bedroom, though it was mostly the bed that gave it away, as everything else was all akilter or splayed over the floor.
Immuena rushed downstairs, scanning the ambient meta for disturbances and the surroundings for Laemon.
Tskhan after climbing in the window offered a hand to help Alarah up.
The manor was filled to the brim with Meta, Immuena sensed it collecting and swirling around, collecting, coalescing, and lashing out with random casts. A glass narrowly missed her head and broke against the wall. The coffee table table was floating about a foot off the floor.
Over the comms. "Allarah, you and yours might want to hurry." It was Dimmu. "Synna's detecting ghosts in the distance. Agata is having some sort of fit."
Immuena whispered under her breath, "Could there be rock sweat?" Then she hollered for Laemon and started frantically running to his last known whereabouts. Immuena dashed about the first floor of the house, but there was no sign of her fellow Verin. She could feel Meta pulsing up through the floorboards, throbbing like a heartbeat. No, like breathing.
Allarah stopped a moment and cast out, searching for rocksweat's corruption. If he was infected…
Through the Div bands, Allarah sensed a sort of dark and sinister magic, but it was definitely different than the air of tragedy and loathing she'd felt back in Vien. As far as she could tell by her limited experience, this wasn't rocksweat. Allarah started running down the stairs, he said he had found a basement. "Laemon!" she hollered near in time with Immuena’s second cry. Where was the scream of his blade?
There was no response from Laemon. The cacophony of meta stopped all at once, punctuated by the loud thump of the table crashing back to the floor. The only sound was suddenly them running back and forth, and the settling of the house.
This didn't slow her down as she made way for the basement. She could feel the panic bubbling fiercely in her chest. Thumping on the floor and following the conduits lead Allarah to the foyer. She was sure the entrance to the basement was hidden somewhere around the staircase to the second floor, but couldn't find any latch or mechanism in the darkness.
"Tskhan, can you light this place up?" Allarah saw the catch, but just barely, a warped panel hiding a doorway down, still partially ajar from where Laemon hadn't quite latched it right. "Immuena, make sure this doesn't lock us in. Tskhan, with me." She moved the panel and walked in. Readying her gun she called out again, softer this time. "Laemon." Tskhan followed Alarah in, sword ready.
A staircase descended down into the dark, all sturdy steps and claustrophobic, encroaching walls and shadow. The steps groaned underfoot, leading down into a stone room. Everything was obfuscated by a thick growth of dark, barbed ivy. Allarah could see what appeared to be wine casks under the ivy, the swells of humanoid shapes.
Laemon stood at a bend in the room, eyes glued to something around the corner. His expression was pained, but only just-so, caught in the moment before pure agony. The ivy wove around his legs and was working upwards centimeter by centimeter. Fresh blood ran down its thorns and dripped into the bitter water heel-deep on the floor.
"Tskhan, set fire to anything that gets near us." She whispered. Striding forward, she knew this had to be quick, like ripping off a band-aid.
Laemon went slack in her arms as she yanked him away, cutting him loose with her vectors while dragging him backwards. He was fit, but she was much larger, and his legs nearly lifted off the floor as she hauled him backwards. Blood coursed down his shoes in rivulets. His eyes were wide, expression panicked and pained but still distant.
As soon as he was pulled away, the ivy began to lash and thrash, slithering out towards them. Tskhan kept it at bay with gouts of controlled flame, burning the bushes away to reveal the casks underneath, and skeletons wrangled up within. The bones were mercifully inanimate, but told horror stories in the way the vines not only wrapped around the bones, but had bored through them, twisting them over the years into poor, gnarled things.
Back up the stairs, the room was wild again. Things flew in every which direction, and it almost seemed as though the walls were bowing inwards.
There was a pounding on the front door, a crashing knocking.
A bottle whacked Allarah's shoulder at high impact, delivering a minor bruise but no other real nuisance. Immuena sensed nothing lingering in Laemon's mind. Perhaps he was just in shock?
The door frame burst into splinters as three-hundred or more pounds of Ka barreled through, stumbled, fell, and slid across the floor on the door before crashing into an organ and cracking it nearly in twain. The organ pipes sounded off with a groan as Gruist extricated himself, looked around, noticed them, and pointed at the door.
"Ghosts coming! Run!" Behind him were the Parisan and Ral-Mi from the Valuselu pact.
"Gruist, help me with him!" She called, stress coating her voice.
Gruist was on them in a second, throwing Laemon over his shoulder, planting a massive hand on her back, and shoving her out the door. "Run run run run!" He cried, almost carrying her as well as he jammed through the doorframe and out into the courtyard.
Immuena prepared a meta immolation spell while following Gruist's panicked orders.
"Morkun, Narissa, or Tyodor, what's the situation? We are on our way." She radioed the Trundler.
"We see a glow on the horizon, there's going to be a lot of them. We might wanna go through the night to outdistance them," Narissa said. Immuena could hear the stress in her voice.
The party dashed through the soggy leaves in the courtyard and clambered onto the trundler. Narissa dialed the speed on and the trundler chugged forward, winding up quickly. "Tskhan, get ready, we're going to have to cut through the ghosts on our way out, looks like."
"Might want to start up the Meissner engine." Allarah suggested before directing Gruist to the main storage car, following him out. They needed to tend to Laemon.
Tskhan followed Narissa's orders and started looking around for a good vantage point for the upcoming battle. He considered grabbing Allarah for help but she was needed elsewhere at the moment and if nothing else he was sure she'd show up before the ghosts overtook the Trundler.
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