Closed There Will Be Blood [Sanea Labyrinth] (Guest Storyteller)

[Aren]

Aren couldn't help but offer Nivel a surprised smile, even in the dire straights they found themselves in. The little Pycon had heart and guts to spare, he was forced to admit, but more than that she seemed truly unwilling to abandon her companions. The tiny creature's indignant insult made the giant feel like a fool for ever doubting the courage that lay beneath Nivel's clay chest, and all he could offer was a respectful nod in appreciation of her insistent aid. Unfortunately, not everyone behaved with the same composure as the smallest of their number, "Help... or get out of my way." This was the only warning the Akalak was willing to spare Asen, his eyes flaring with the urgency of his task. He feared she wouldn't listen, and that he'd have to remove the half-Dhani from his path using force, but luckily the headstrong girl had decided that getting out of the way may have been a good idea after all. It was exceptionally fortunate, the warrior knew, because the amount of time that might have taken could have spelled disaster for the already tenuous plan which seemed to be the only chance he could see for their survival. Amassing all the Res he could, as quickly as he was able, took a great deal of concentration and the Reimancer did not notice much else that was happening around him. It was almost more than he could bear, the idea that that they would all die here, but the thought that his family would be amongst the victims of this damnable trap threatened to collapse his throat. This fear didn't help in his task, but he managed to finish weaving the spell which, he hoped, would be sufficient to at least weaken the door to the point that it could be smashed down afterwards without too much effort. The plan seemed to work brilliantly. Aren's lightning burst (for lack of a better name) had rocked the wooden door to the hinges, and Garland and Nivel had proceeded to hit it like a pair of living battering rams. Amazed that the Pycon was capable of producing such an incredible amount of power in her little body, the Akalak's jaw opened wide as he saw the pair fall through to the other side. Although there was a tentative smile on his face because of the apparent success of their plan, Aren's attention was soon drawn to the fact that Sayana should have been right behind Nivel and Garland when they went through the door. What the hell was she doing? As the mercenary looked around, he noticed where his Eypharian fiancee was at the same time that he felt the ceiling make contact with the top of his head. "There isn't enough time!" Aren suddenly thought, realizing that Sayana had been dragged towards that damn indentation by his former lover. There was no way to get her out in time, and thought he might have made it himself if he dived for the opening, the azure giant would rather have died than leave her behind. A forlorn smile decorating his face, the Akalak mouthed the only three words he knew which could accurately communicate what he felt in the small amount of time they had left. He didn't dare close his eyes, wanting to make sure she was the last image burned into his retinas as he was crushed, but it turned out the sentimental gesture was unnecessary. They weren't crushed. They didn't die. The sense of relief shared by the group was palpable. The stone slab which was to be their doom retracted itself as he felt a macabre laugh pierce the air, and he recalled an exchange between Nivel and Asen. They seemed to be under the impression that the place was alive, if he remembered correctly, but the idea seemed ludicrous. Of course, when magic was involved, nothing was impossible. Trailing after Sayana, Aren hesitated at the threshold of the battered down doorway. Looking back at the blazing room (courtesy of the six armed woman), his eyes floated towards the retracting ceiling for a moment, "Quite the sense of humor you got there..." He muttered. Stepping through, Aren was rushed by Sayana before he even had time to think. "We're safe now. We're safe," He whispered, cradling her shaking frame in his embrace. He knew they couldn't go home, yet, though. Soon, however, Sayana noticed that she had been injured, and the warrior also began to feel the pain on the top of his head. He felt they had made off like bandits in this particular instance, though, and Sayana's angry diatribe was almost humorous, considering how much worse it could have been. When the Akalak's gaze found Asen, however, any trace of humor was wiped from his visible expression. Taking her by the arm, he attempted to drag the girl some distance away from the others. "We can't allow ourselves to panic, and we absolutely CANNOT allow ourselves to be divided when the situations calls for unity." Speaking in a hushed tone, Aren's golden eyes bore into the Dhani's beautiful blue orbs with resolute certainty. "Do you understand?" His jaw clenched and it was obvious that the experienced warrior wanted to hear her say it. "Do you understand?" He repeated emphatically, wanting there to be no room for equivocation.

[Garland]

Aren's fire sent the door in flames and him and Nivel took that as the signal to ram the door. It took a little while, but eventually the door caved in, and with the force between the two squires, they were sent into the other room.

Garland had fallen flat on his face, but turned to see the ceiling slowly coming down on Aren's head. He pushed himself up and rushed back to the door, it probably wouldn't have done much but he was ready to help hold up the ceiling while they would try to get Sayana to the other room.

Luckily it didn't come to that. He saw the rocks above noticed that it starting going back up. He breathed in a sigh of relief and let the others walk into the rooms. He would have quickly ran over to Sayana and hugged her if he had a choice, but it seemed that she quickly went over to Aren.

He looked over the room they were just in and saw that it was starting to blaze. "Welp, we're not going back that way, and it might take more than all of us to push that block out of the way." He said to Nivel, Sayana and the others needed to some time to relax a bit.

He was about to breakdown himself, but he was determined to get out of here alive to see his family.

Family...

What a strange word, he had never had a family before yet he was willing to die for them and he was determined to get out of this place alive. The eerie laughter from earlier was just haunting, the voice sounded so disturbingly happy, they had almost died and it was somehow joyous to the voice. "What a petching arsehole."

There were three paths that split, one had roses and vines and smelled like the previous room, the other was dripping wet, the floor had puddles one could easily slip and possibly die... Not the most glorious way to die but he had seen a few people fall down stairs and die, most of them were drunk, but still... It could happen.

The last one had a bitter smell, maybe a dead body? No, it may be something else, but the smell just made Garland's nose wrinkle in disgust. "Where are we going Aren?"

[Asen]

The loud crack of the door rang out over the screeching of stone against stone, though Asen's relief was short-lived. The ceiling was still falling and it didn't look to be stopping, even as it hit the top of Aren's skull. She had to get Sayana out, she had to save her even if it meant she herself died trying.

She turned to reach for the multi-armed woman and found that she was on the ground in a defensive position, all six arms occupied with protecting herself. The half-Dhani was just about to grab one of her high wrists and yank her out of the indentation when both she and the screeching stopped. It simply stopped and held its position for what seemed like an eternity before it made its way back upwards.

Stone didn't just do that. It was huge, it was heavy. That only solidified Asen's theory that the Labyrinth was a living thing, some kind of monster whose lifeblood were the vines and the trees and the stones. The squire shivered at the wind. Was it laughing at them?

She swore under her breath at the 'petching stupid' Labyrinth, standing with wobbly legs. What kind of squire was she, panicking in the face of death? Knights didn't do that. Knights were supposed to be brave, bold, and if she was going to be one she had to exhibit those very same characteristics. Shame on her for being a frightened child.

Of course the burning room was a problem, too. Asen picked her way through the flame with much less fear than she'd shown before. Fires could be contained, fires could be put out. She cast a quick glance over to Sayana and Aren, setting down her pack to check the contents. Nothing was too badly damaged, only a bit jostled. All in all she and the rest of the group were okay, though Sayana seemed pretty shaken up.

The blonde nearly jumped out of her skin at her name. She looked up at Sayana, though more importantly the finger jabbing at her. "I- Sayana, I- Okay," she replied. There was no arguing with her, and she didn't want to perpetuate the stress they all felt.

Aren did, apparently. The half-Dhani had stood when a large, blue hand grabbed hold of her arm and hauled her bodily away from the rest of the group. She tensed up, trying to jerk away. Blue. There's blue. And he's holding onto me. Please, let go!

The blood drained from Asen's already-pale face and her mouth dried up. The world seemed to move in slow motion as a high-pitched ringing began in her ears and her thoughts went fuzzy. Her heart thudded in her chest in an uneven rhythm.

Thump-thump. THUMP-thump. Thump-THUMP. Thump-thump. The girl's knees almost buckled under her as the blue filled her vision. There was so much of it, so much and she couldn't get away. Aren's voice was warped by memories and shifted into a huskier tone that spelled out danger and-

"Do you understand?"

Understand what!? Please, just get away from me! Let go of me! The halfbreed's mouth worked like a fish out of water and she couldn't breathe properly. She could only get little sips of air down. What was wrong with her!?

"Do you understand?" came the question again. Asen pulled back on her arm again, this time using her other hand to try and get her captor away from her. Her hunched shoulders and her struggling made it clear that she was not okay, and yet she still couldn't break free of the Akalak's grip.

"Yes, I understand!" she said, her voice cracking. Tears had welled up in her eyes and when she finally, finally slipped out of Etnava's azure grip she backpedaled quickly until she stood as far from him as possible.

Except it wasn't Etnava. It was Aren, and she had been so caught up in the past that she had failed to recognize his face. How was she so stupid!? She needed to get it together, and fast. But it wasn't her fault, succumbing to a panic attack. She just thought it was. She thought she was broken.

Once the attack subsided and her heartrate returned to normal she remained at the back of the group. Voicing her opinion was probably not the best thing to do at the time, but if she had to pick she would've gone with the flowers. The tunnel with the bitter smell could only mean trouble (all of them could, really) and she didn't trust the water dripping from the ceiling to actually be water. If further problems arose, they could just light the flowers on fire.

Again.

[Nivel]

With the impact Nivel could feel the door shatter in half as she broke through it and shot out into the open air. Her crushed body tumbled along the maze floor, when she finally stopped she reformed and freed the pypole that had become lodged into her chest during the ordeal. From her vantage point she could hardly see anything but the grinding of stone had clearly not stopped. She climbed a small stone and saw that the other three were still in the cave with no time to free themselves. An overwhelming sense of hopelessness and despair filled the pycon’s nexus as she watched what she was sure would be her friends final moments. she wanted to shout in horror but no noise came out of her.

Suddenly the ceiling stopped falling just enough to hit the giant blue giant on the head, Nivel let out a deep sigh of relief. The panic didn’t completely subside until everyone was completely out of the death trap, but it was quickly replaced with the realization that she had failed her friends and the knight hood. She fell to the ground like a rag doll as her nexus agonized over all of the mistakes she felt she had made. She didn’t say anything or do much emoting but the pain and doubt were there.

She was pulled out of her self pity by the dispute happening between the others. It seemed like Asen was in distress over her actions during the trap too, except to her surprise no one was being very supportive.
“Hey!” Nivel cried out “Let’s just focus on getting the petch out of this horrible place, and not on who made what mistake.” The pycon’s emotional outburst was really more intended for herself than anyone else.

Nivel scurried up closer to Asen and took a deep breath. “losing your head in a dire situation is natural and while it it may have not seemed like the best decision now, I think what you were doing was very selfless.” The mage squire bowed her tiny head in acknowledgement

“Anyway, Lets pick a path” Nivel said breathlessly as she looked at the options, knowing that they would likely all lead to danger. There was the pathway with the awful smell which nivel wasn’t in the mood for investigating, even if she felt that it could very well be the safest since it was clear this maze was meant to toy with people. The second pathway was more cave like and would most likely house the zith, although Nivel wasn’t as interested in making friends as she was earlier. The last option was a deceptively calm looking path filled with flowers, it was very likely to be the most terrible.
“Well none of these place’s look like they’ll be fun at all…but I suppose we have to pick one of them” Nivel paused for a moment “The pathway with the flowers looks nice…how much do you bet it’s the most dangerous” Nivel’s joke was intended to lighten the mood but it definitely didn’t raise her spirits.

Credit for Boxcode goes to Estrellir Konrath

[Matthew]

The flame had barely been lit by Sayana's dropped torch before it was dealt with, dozens of vines whipping from the ground to simultaneously smash down upon the sudden threat. It was snuffed almost instantly, the Labyrinth proving that it was more than capable of dealing with such nuisances.

For a moment it appeared as if one of the more subtle traps in the room with the falling roof was about the snare the group. Sayana turned upon Asen with a sharp command, even if the Half-Dhani had made the most logical choice. There had been a chance that the others would not have managed to break through the door. Putting Sayana in the small groove upon the floor had been a sure method of making sure she stayed alive at least for a little while longer. But the Eypharian certainly didn't agree with that concept, did she? It was a rift. A crack in the group. A weakness.

But then Aren found it fitting to try and unite the group once more. The Labyrinth focused on him for a tick, unsure, attempting to see if his small talk with Asen would further drive the group apart or serve to unite them once more. It was quite interested to see how she reacted. Her response had been abnormal, spurred by something the Labyrinth had no way of understanding. Was it something that could be taken advantage of? As Aren moved away and Asen moved to the back of the group, the Labyrinth continued to simply observe.

Sayana would find no other exits between the trees and behind the vines, only managing to reveal more vegetation. However, while the walls were quite high, they certainly seemed to have enough handholds and footholds for the group to attempt to climb if they so desired. It might provide an easy route out, or it could provide a nasty fall. The only other options were the tunnels.

The flower tunnel, the water tunnel, or the smelly tunnel? They had yet to decide. There was certainly no rush, though. It would make it much easier on the Labyrinth if they just decided to stand around. Hopefully they'd starve to death.

[Sayana]

While at the time Sayana had been too concerned about fleeing the room, which could either fall down again, erupt in flame, or have those nasty vines come alive to choke her, she could now ponder the strange and almost instantaneous behaviour. This wasn’t an ordinary place and she absolutely did not trust the plant life. The Eypharian looked up at one of the massive walls of vegetation and was able to pick out various handholds she could potentially use but if the trees and vines here were anything like the ones back in the room, who was to say that they wouldn’t start moving enough to make her fall and snap her neck?

“I don’t trust them anymore,” she stated referring to the vegetation that she had earlier proposed to push through or cut away. “This place wants to petch with us. It already has.” She glanced back at the previous room with a scowl.

“Now if I were this place trying to toy with you, I’d distract you, tease you, lure you into another trap. Though I bet all three go to the same petching place. But if I were to have to pick, I’d go with the stink-fest. There might be monsters or at least something physical I can sink my daggers into. I don’t want more petching flower games. Nivel is probably right. The prettier it is, the more dangerous. Seductresses tend to be the same.”

She had calmed considerably from their flirt with Dira but anyone could still see that she was on edge, her eyes darting about as if to see more vines moving. Or something worse. She opened and closed her high right hand testing to see how it felt. It hurt but she’d manage. At least the bandage would keep it clean. Sometimes she wondered how people got away with only two hands at their disposal.

“Aren, Nivel, I think you two should lead the way,” Sayana stated after several moments of being quiet. “It looks only wide enough for one person at a time. Might as well have two pairs of eyes instead of one looking for danger.”

Although she preferred to take the stinky tunnel despite the unpleasantness of it, if someone had a convincing alternative she would follow along after. These were her friends after all and she also have expected for all of them to lead to the same place. So long as they all went down the same tunnel. She’d object heavily to see them split up at all.

[Garland]

"I second Sayana's choice. The stink tunnle might lead to something bad, but let's face it, all of these tunnels would most likely lead to something bad."

He stepped forward, covering his mouth and nose. "I should take the lead with Nivel, Asen should guard our back. Aren should probably stay with you Sayana." He said and picked up Nivel and placed her on his shoulder and led the way. The smell was getting stronger and stronger as he ventured onwards.

He had one thing in his mind right now, they needed to get out of here, they all had something more important than their lives at stake here... well except for Nivel and Asen. Aren, Sayana, and Garland all had families waiting for them, he needed to get his friends out of here. The ground felt strange, and so does the wall, he couldn't quite understand what was happening, but he felt dizzy, like the walls were moving him around, or maybe it was just the Adrenalin wearing off.

"Ughh... I hate this place... Let's get out of here as fast as we can." He pulled out his hand-crossbow and loaded it. He aimed it forward, the tunnel was narrow and that would make it easier for Garland to hit something with his crossbow.

[Asen]

Nivel's words were appreciated by Asen, though not as much as they would've been if she didn't think the clay creature was pitying her and just trying to make her feel better. She merely grunted and decided that she could put herself to use by looking around.

High walls, lots of handholds. The halfbreed didn't fancy herself a climber, but she could probably manage if they wanted to try and get themselves out that way. As it happened, they didn't. They all seemed to decide on the tunnel that smelled of waste and something rotting, which was the opposite of what she wanted to do. How surprising. She may as well go back and get crushed by the ceiling again, because there was no way in Hai she was going to say anything that didn't bode well with the rest of the group.

Having no one else to talk to who shared her opinions, she simply began to mutter to herself under her breath. "What a petchin' surprise. We en't goin' into the flower tunnel. It's already tried to kill us once with the damned flowers, it en't gonna try that again. I bet y'all are just tryin' to spite me."

A thought occured to her as she spoke. "'Course I en't gonna put it past the thing to make the flowers have deadly pollen an' whatnot, an' I s'pose burnin' it on purpose en't gonna make it happy."

Oh, and now they trusted her to guard their backs. A scrawny blonde who could barely lift her own weight, and they thought that she'd be able to fight off anything that attacked them. How wonderful. They probably just wanted her to shut up and stop tearing the group apart with her stupid actions, and if she was in the back she'd be the first to be killed if they were attacked from behind.

At this point, however, she figured that was probably a good thing. What was she, other than Zith fodder? She had no real fighting skills to speak of (other than her hands and feet) and she couldn't charge into a group of Zith like Garland and Aren could. Sayana most likely hated her guts and probably wouldn't mind seeing the squire's body torn to shreds.

The half-Dhani's shoulders were hunched and she felt absolutely miserable, her body language clearly conveying her self-deprecating thoughts. Nevertheless, she agreed with Garland. "Yeah, sure. I'll stay back here an' guard y'all's backs."

[Nivel]

Sayana seemed to agree with Nivel’s statement about the flower route being the most dangerous, and the pycon hoped she was right about her statement. Nivel made a note to to keep her jokes to herself in dire times, so they didn’t wind up leading her into a pathway filled with unpleasant smells. She hoped the stench was there to dissuade investigation and not put in place as a warning to take the happy road filled with flowers. She wanted to read the auras in area to help the group be more informed about their decision but this place was filled with ominous auras that continued to keep the mage feeling tense and fearful.

“Okay the stinky route it is” Nivel sighed and walked over to Garland so he could pick her up and place her on his armoured shoulder. She would certainly give his hand a chill from being on the cold damp ground but she knew it wouldn’t bother him.
“If you see a big nasty, throw me at it so I punch it right in it’s ugly face!” Nivel proclaimed to Garland with a touch of pluck. She tried to forget the all the drama and fear weighting the group down, she was a squire and had to set an example or at least pretend to. Suppressing the fear didn't do her much good and Nivel found she had gained a bad case of the hick ups in the process. She bounced a little on Garlands broad shoulders with each high pitched hick up, but tried her best to pretend like everything was normal.

“Actually I think that Aren should be in the *hick* middle, so he can be near Sayana and help out with both ends. It’s likely that this place will try to surprise us *Huck*, we need more than one person taking care of the back.” Nivel suggested, then quickly glanced back at Asen who seemed to be muttering under her breath. “I’m certain that as a fellow squire, Asen has some excellent fighting skills but she might need some quick assistance if we get ambushed *Hick*.” The pycon hoped that she could make Asen feel more included, it was clear even to a clay homunculus with a little understanding of human emotion that the other squire was feeling neglected.

“I’ll try to warn you if I sense anything, but this place is overwhelming and *Huuck* I don’t know if my magic will be much help..so keep vigilant *hick*”
Nivel breathed in and counted to ten in her nexus, her mind was still filled to the brim with worry and self doubt but she was doing a fairly good job of keeping it hidden. Only her hick ups really gave her hidden feelings away, and probably ruined any kind of authority her words could have had.

Credit for Boxcode goes to Estrellir Konrath

[Sayana]

OOC Note to Grader :

Since Matthew hasn't been around for about three months, we decided to call it an end. I took the liberty of writing a post to wrap things up and hopefully get some sort of monetary award (for those penniless squires in particular). I think it was agreed upon that it will range from 20-200 gm per person based on the quality of the story. Sayana will donate any of her earnings to Nivel. Also, Sayana is competent at storytelling now

As they tried to decide which of the three paths to go, something peculiar caught Sayana’s eye. Despite deciding upon a distinct order in which they would go, the Eypharian skipped quickly along the flowery path to investigate. The vines lining the path, or ‘tunnel’ had looked odd and when she got closer she saw why. Instead of a solid wall of rock or tree trunks, there was an elegantly carved archway that had made the vines covering it hang straighter and thinner than the rest.

“Come over here! I think I found something!” Sayana called out. As she peered through, there seemed to be more normal looking trees on the other side. Something akin to what they had ridden through to get to the labyrinth. Maybe it was another sort of trap but in her eyes it looked like a way out. At first she took a tentative step through the arch, and when nothing happened, she scampered out gesturing with her arms for the others to follow. Perhaps it was a design flaw, or maybe the labyrinth really didn’t want anyone within its depths and it simply wanted to convince the adventurers to leave as soon as possible. Nevertheless, Sayana and her friends soon found the place they had left their mounts and headed back to Syliras without further delay.

---

Rearing Stallion

“And then just as we got inside, a giant boulder slammed down upon the entrance blocking our way out!” Sayana explained vividly to the bard who had tasked them on the adventure. “Thankfully we brought torches and we had to start looking for a way out because all we could see was this locked door with a giant thorn through it. But the Labyrinth wasn’t going to wait for us. The ceiling began to screech as the stone above started to cave in.” Sayana made a shrieking sound with her voice and gestured with her arms all inching downwards.

“With our combined efforts we broke down the door, yet it was too late. I was going to get crushed with Asen and maybe even more of us, except… the ceiling suddenly stopped. We took no tick more than necessary to leave that place only to be faced with three narrow paths. One had these mysterious flowers, one was dripping with water and the last was dark and smelly like something had died.”

At this point she started to get creative, but first did a stern look around at her friends as if daring them to contradict her story. “We picked the flower path since it seemed the friendliest of the lot but part way down we started bickering. It seemed that the fragrance had stirred a competitive nature within us and when Garland figured this out we immediately began stomping on all the flowers. But then, hardly a couple chimes later, the ground drops out from beneath us and we plummet into a cave! And the cave has that same rancid smell as that other path…”

Sayana paused for dramatic effect and also to remember the next key point in her conjured up story. “Once we figure we haven’t broken any bones from the fall, we look around and find this huge carcass in the corner. Rotting. But then it comes alive! As we fight the rotting thing, Nivel spots a magical beating heart hidden high within the cave. With Aren’s help, she reaches it and crushes it, thus killing the magical creature. Finally, Asen finds a way out by following a trail of dripping water to the surface.”

“And what about you, Miss… Sayana?” The bard asked curiously, noting that the Eypharian had left herself out of the grand tale.

“Me? I got to tell the story.” Sayana answered with a sly wink.