Closed Down the wall.

[Sinvala Chrysanthemum]

Timestamp: Summer 33rd, 513 AV

Sinvala stared down into that darkness beneath her cavernous home as though trying to pierce that perfect darkness brought on by both the distance from her and the sheer depth of the gorge. She was wrestling with herself, her convictions, and her morals and sense of self preservation. She knew the rumours of the darkness and the stirrings of great beasts and insects that never saw the light of day or even the illumination of opalgloam light.

A practitioner of macabre magic, Sinvala had often ventured to unfamiliar territory above the only city she had ever known for the medium of her grossly morbid craft. Animal bones were her only findings during those ventures, and animal bones were hardly the best tools to work with when she wanted to carve a permanent circle into them. Sinvala didn't know if she could reach down into the pool of carcasses below her home and turn the remains into something else with her craft but she wasn't above trying.

With a heavy sigh, the woman made her way from the strand leading to her house into her actual house, crawling on all fours to take advantage of the Symenestra's natural ability to cling to surfaces before she made it in doors, in which she stood up and began to rummage around for the things she might need for a sojourn into those unknown regions beneath her home.

While she was one to discount the rumours of giants that ate the bones of the surrogates, Sinvala wasn't foolish enough to leave her lash at home when she might need it to fight off the blind insects she suspected were likely larger than usual due to their lifestyle down below. She slid on her thin cover of armour and coiled the lash around her body, from shoulder to waist, due to lacking a belt she could actually tie it to. She placed on her knapsack after that which carried her few food rations, eating utensil, and carving knife for when she found remains she could use and attempt to carve circles into the bones.

Once packed, she hesitated as the distinct feeling of anticipation swelled and broke into a great sense of doubt. She knew she was going to do something dangerous and might die, become lost, or grow mad as others had done before her.

Her resolve beat down her doubts, though, and Sinvala inhaled deeply as her fangs throbbed with hunger for the adventure she would soon embark upon.

OOCDoes this look adequate to you, Poison?

[Poison]

Symenestra could see in the dark. They were not blind, like humans, helpless, but the darkness below Kalinor seemed to be harder to penetrate, more complete. Nothing lived there. There were no opalogems, no torches and candles, and thus everything was black and white and grey, alien, slightly frightening. Many had already travelled down below, and many had been lost. Just the season before a little boy had wandered into the caverns under Kalinor. Avarys Anthurium, the owner of the Weft and Warp had once sought refuge in the caves and hidden in his house for days after his return, refusing to speak with anyone.

Ghosts were rumoured to live there, bats and spiders and strange frightening monsters. There were rumours of the remnants of a lake, miles under Kalinor. Some said that the underground was filled with skeletons, the skeletons of all the surrogates that had died since the founding of Kalinor. Those unfortunate human women never received a burial. After they had done their duty and given birth to their venomous children, their bodies were thrown off the Web, discarded like trash.

As Sinvala made her way to the edge of the city where countless paths led further into the underground along the cavern wall, people watched her. They wondered where she was going, what she was doing. It didn’t happen often that a Symenestra travelled below Kalinor alone.

Kalinor was a comparatively small city, and its population was ever dwindling. Many houses at the edge of the city had abandoned a long time ago. There was nothing there now but the occasional vermin or a ghost. It was quiet there. The only sound that Sinvala could hear was the sound of her own breathing. It smelled differently as well. She could smell the earth, the rocks – the caves of Kalinor had a unique smell – and apart from that, moisture – and a hint of rot.

[Sinvala Chrysanthemum]

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Sinvala was accustom to the dark and the quiet. She could feel the eyes that watched in their silence and did not long for words. She could feel the radiating heat of curiousity as she dared to do what most others had long since deigned far too dangerous. She was going Down. Deep. Below.

The opalgloam she decided to take along with her lay swaddled in the cloth of her bag, ready to be removed when she got to the deepest bowels so she might possibly pierce the dark with her wide eyes more clearly. She could imagine the sound of the thoughts of her watchers as she began to traverse the long way down the wall of the cavern to those fathomless depths below the home she has always known. Strands of black hair dangled around her face as she went down, head first. Her bag threatened to slip off her slim shoulders with every movement as she went deeper and deeper.

The silence was as deep as the darkness that edged the slick walls before her and clouded her vision the further down she got. She thought she might slip and tumble down into the bowels of the cavernous depths. The scent of the earth around her, the slime of the wall, and the stale air, was nothing compared to the growing scent of fetid meat. She suspected that to be the bodies she was seeking as the reeking odor continued to sour the air she breathed.

The end of the descent might be near, but the prospect of slipping was still a very heavy threat for the girl.

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[Poison]

Fortunately Sinvala did not slip and fall even though the path that led away from Kalinor and into the underground was steep to say the least. It led past the abandoned houses at the edge of the city and past the Blue Grotto where the Symenestra often came to go swimming or just to be alone.

It ended in a place that Vass Vervein, the head of the Ochya had once called „the end of the world“ when he had travelled underground with an expedition the season before, a ledge that was about ten feet wide. No path led deeper into the underground from there. Sinvala would have to find her own way across an almost vertical wall of rocks from now.

The smell of rot was stronger here. If Sinvala looked around, she would find that she was not alone. The corpse of a human was stuck on a rock at the edge of the ledge. She had been dark haired, that was all Sinvala would be able to tell. Parts of her belly had been liquified by the venom of her baby, and maggots were crawling over her body.

Apparently the Symenestra who had been tasked with getting rid of her corpse hadn’t thrown her far enough – or maybe they had just aimed badly.

There was nothing else that was worthy of note on the ledge or its vicinity though. There were just sounds where there had only been silence before, whispers, in no particular language, coming from deep below her. Something was there … or maybe it was just a trick of her mind …