[Flashback, Voco] I've seen things...

[Tarot]

Timestamp: Spring of 509 AV
Location: ???

The air reeked of blood, unbearably so. Voco couldn't move. He had been all but annihilated. All that was left of him was a head, staring blankly at a ceiling of bleak grey stone, leaking humidity in slow, measured droplets.

Around him were the signs of magic and carnage. The laboratory was an improvised one, but whoever had set it up must have known a thing or two about world magic. A large circle lay near the center of the room, carrying the subtle but unmistakable smell of a recently activated Summoning circle, albeit overwhelmed by the more disgusting tang of gory death. Where the circle had been drawn with chalk, an overlay of blood had obscured a good third of it. Glyphing marks, probably for basic safety, adorned the floor. They had obviously failed badly at their task.

The bodies were hard to recognize. They littered the floor, though there were probably fewer of them than it might appear at a first glance. It was just that they had been dismembered to such a degree that they seemed to be everywhere. Voco would possibly recognize a couple specimens of Anashian fauna, but that was it. Pieces of them had ended up on old wooden shelves, inside overturned pots, and on top of hastily scribbled notes.

It was a sad welcome into the world that had given birth to his race, to be sure. It was a lesson, a warning, and a promise of even more terrible things.

[Voco]

Voco did nothing but stare and think for a long time. Where am I? What has happened? Those thoughts ran rampant through his mind for awhile, before he shut them down. Control. Purpose. A new form, yes.

Voco then spent the next five minutes, willing the mass that was his small clay head to change. It proceed to elongate, loosing diameter and gaining length, until he was an almost 2" long worm like shape. The nexus, the core energy that was himself, moved along with the transformation. He retained his forward looking eyes, but now he could actually manipulate his body, turn and move. He surveyed his surroundings.

Some of this Glyph work, is mine. But not all of it. There are two other styles, though both are similar to each other. Were similar. His inchworm body continued to travel the room, seemingly not bothered by the gore and humanoid remains he moved through. Voco was looking for something, but did not think he would find it among the carnage.

After what could have been hours, he finished his exploration of the summoning circle and its intended-to-protect Glyphs. Too hard to tell where a mistake may have happened. The chalk is broken in too many places. Too many errors, interruptions. I must find clay. This form is... taxing. Voco started then started his search outside of the circle. He was looking for a Focus and its Trigger. No door, no stairs. Complicated magic. Magic for entrance and egress? Likely.

[Tarot]

Voco crawled through the carnage, literally the only live creature in the room. Whatever had caused this had killed everything in sight, even things that were clearly not of a Summoned nature. A rat lay in a corner, neatly split into two identical halves. Were Voco to seek any sign of life here, he would find none. Even the occasional cockroach, the spider, the fly, all dead, in a manner suggesting that they had been picked off one by one. Methodically. Big bodies had big cuts. Tiny bodies had tiny cuts.

He found his own, as well. Precisely, he found the twelve locations across the room where his clay lay scattered. Most of it was soaked with blood and gore to the point of uselessless, but he would be able to absorb a little if he so wished... just enough to take on a humanoid form. His destruction had been recent. The bad news being that whatever had caused it might be near.

The more he explored the room, the clearer it was that the slaughter had not been the work of claws, or even swords. There was no real sign of pressure on the wounds, and the trajectory of most slashes was an arc of some kind, but these bodies here had been severed mathematically. If Voco had days to spare and the motivation to study the remains, he would perhaps discover that even the proportions of the cuts were not random.

As for the victims, there were humans among them. He found two different heads, eyes open in shock and disbelief - a man and a woman, both young. Interestingly, there were half a dozen chairs scattered all over the place. Either some were here for decoration, or the numbers did not add up.

In the end, Voco found what he was looking for, hidden behind the corpse of an unidentified alien animal reminding of a miniature cow. It was a simple pressure-based Glyph, but he might be disappointed if he cared to activate it. It would merely cancel an Illusionary effect cast on a section of the wall, revealing a bloodstained iron door. Luckily, it seemed that he would be able to squeeze through the underside if he tried hard enough.

[Voco]

I do not remember creatures from Anashis being so violent. He absorbed what clay he could find that was not covered in gore. Though his clay was reddish on its own, the idea of consuming blood made him... nervous.

Voco was almost tempted to stay and study what had happened. Almost tempted, but the overwhelming need to find new and unbloodied clay drove him to try his efforts and sneaking under the massive iron door. As he neared the meeting of the floor and door, he willed himself as flat as possibile. Uncomftorable. More troublesome then the last form. How I wish for a body.

Once on the other side of the door, Voco hoped to find his freedom. And some clay. And maybe, his memories.

[Tarot]

What Voco found on the other side of the door was not necessarily freedom, but it might be a step in the right direction. There was a long, dimly lit corridor that reminded Voco of something, some place had seen before and had once been familiar to him. The layout of this building, while different, struck a nostalgic chord within the Pycon's heart of clay.

The place looked like it had been seen centuries of abandonment but had recently been repossessed by someone who had made minimal efforts towards making it functional again. There was the occasional newer piece of furniture amidst the remains of a far more ancient past. A worn out, rusty shield was still hanging on the wall, almost about to fall but still displaying the insignia that had been entrusted to it. Azure field, a silver gauntlet with its fingers curled around a golden star. The word "Alahea" was still visible underneath, whereas the motto "Let us reach the sky" was harder to make out.

Voco noticed several sets of footprints, which turned out to be a stroke of luck for him. The prints - especially those pointing towards the room of horrors - were laden with a rather thick clay that seemed to be edible. Apparently the terrain around this building was of a favorable type for the Pycon, and he would be able to feed earlier than he'd anticipated. As for the footprints themselves, well, there were three recent sets coming out of the room. Two were compatible with the corresponding sets in the opposite direction, albeit with much longer strides suggesting that their owners had been running as fast as they could. The third set, however, did not leave any clay behind... only blood. Calm and regular footprints, probably left by someone walking barefooted.

[Voco]

"Alahea. Familiar. No meaning." The Pycon gazed at the shield and it's insignia, pondering it for a moment. "But clay. Yes, that has meaning. Delicious clay. Though I do not imagine I am here for fine dining."

Voco quickly reverted to his previous inchworm form and moved towards the closest of clay footprints. The Pycon then proceeded to devour the clay, showing an almost frightening voraciousness as his size quickly grew. Once the inchworm form was the size of a large slug, the Pycon focused on his inner-mind on his most ready form, and then slowly shaped his body. After almost five minutes, Voco had resumed his human form, with its bald head. "Ah, much better. Now..."

"Three sets. Two the same as those that entered? Logical. And the third. Summoned? Diverse? It would seem... unlikely. But not impossible. Hmm." Voco would have shrugged his shoulders, were he prone to human gestures. Instead, he simply started walking down the corridor, staying out of the blood, and looking for anything else that struck a familiar cord within his mind.

[Tarot]

There was not much worth reminiscing about in this particular corridor. It was mostly empty and had been long abandoned, with moss invading some of the gaps in the tiling. There were sections, however, that had seen some recent activity, where the thick layers of dust that covered most of the place had been disturbed by the passage of man.

Voco saw another plaque on the wall. This was just as worn as the shield, but he could make out some words. It looked like a list of directives for the denizens of this strange dungeon.

"Shelter #159
3 Golden Rules
#1 Once the entr... sealed, it is not to be reo... any reason until the end o...megency.
#2 Stealing rati...nishable with death.
#3 Use of destr...agic is str...orbidden."

He reached a crossroads, but the corridors at his left and right had long caved in and were blocked. Whatever this place had been designed to withstand, it had worked only partially. The layout began to ring a familiar bell in Voco's mind, though... perpendicular corridors, a search for symmetry, locales branching off like veins on a leaf. He had been in a building like this before.

And, someone was crying softly near his position. The ruined metal cabinet lying sideways a few meters ahead of him seemed to be the only place where someone could be hiding.

[Voco]

"Golden Rules. Hmm. Gold. Soft, malleable, breakable. A strange descriptive for a rule." Voco looked at the plaque for a few moments but continued on his journey shortly there after.

"Perpindicular, straight lines. Strong, but not strong enough? Triangles are better. Three sides. Three ways. 3-way Circle. Longer duration. Hmm." The clay man stopped his external monologue after hearing the faint noise from within the metal cabinet. After pondering the possible consequences should something "bad" be inside the cabinet, Voco instead chose to favor the chance of gleaning some sort of new information as to where he was, or what had happened to him.

His clay fist rapped against the cabinet as he spoke, "I believe it is relatively safe outside of the cabinet. Unless the corridor is about to collapse, though I do not think it is."

[Tarot]

The soft whimpering sound stopped abruptly, and Voco got the impression that whoever or whatever was inside the cabinet, they were holding their breath and deciding whether to feign non-existence or make themselves known. In the end, the latter option won out.

A rusty metal door creaked open in slow motion, though the effort was still almost enough to unhinge it for good. The head of a freckled, redheaded boy peered out of the ruined container. He was looking way above Voco's head at first, where a man's chest was supposed to be, and naturally his eyes met with thin air. This scared the boy a little bit, making him consider crawling back into his hiding place - no matter that such a strategy would be something only an ostrich would do. Then, his eyes travelled downwards and actually saw the little Pycon.

"Is it... really safe? Really really safe?" He looked like he was about to break down any moment now. Even now, he was fighting back the tears, and it looked like he was losing the fight.

"Could it be gone for real? Oh, gods, thank you! THANK YOU! I'll be good from now on... I swear it on the Ukalas!" Tears started streaking his reddened cheeks. His bloodshot hazel eyes suggested that he'd been crying himself dry lately. He blew his nose on the sleeve of his green wizard's tunic - a very shoddy thing, truth told. Probably only a wizard's tunic in the tailor's intentions.

"I think... I think I've seen you before. You must be the Pycon we snatched last night. Man, how can you be alive? I only survived because I was walking out the very moment it happened. I hate Irlyn... he made it all sound so easy. If I only catch that bastard..." But it was pretty obvious, given his brave display so far, that he'd do nothing to Irlyn even if he were to find him.

[Voco]

If the little Pycon had had functioning eye-lids, he probably would have blinked and stared. So instead, he simply stared for a long moment as the boy nervously babbled. Ukalas sounded familiar, but Irlyn did not. The boy didnt ring any bells for his foggy mind either.

"This Irlyn, he escaped alive? Was he outside of the room, like yourself, or within it?" Voco's mind attempted to find anything he could latch onto as familiar, to build a base of knowledge from. To reconstruct what had lead up to his current condition.

The Pycon looked at the boy, then down the corridor and then back to the boy. "We should proceed to the exit, I think. Perhaps there are more survivors nearby." The clay-man didnt know who this boy was, or if he could be trusted, but he had the feeling that if he put out a feeling of authority and confidence, he could get more information from the child.

"I survived because my power was underestimated." Perhaps a healthy-dose of caution on the child's part would help too. At that, Voco started to walk down the corridor.