Centoriel

[Drannin]

(OOC: Do we go on or keep waiting?)

[Graybeard]

(OOC: Do we go on or keep waiting?)

OOC: I'd say go on, although I hope that Jim will eventually write something for Kureji in response to the question. Could Argus find something interesting to do to keep his mind off whatever Kureji is saying? That was what I was going to have Miguel do if necessary, a little later this evening...

[Drannin]

Argus got to his feet, not really listening to Kureji's response. Instead, he looked around at the building he found himself in. Spartan, but functional... and reinforced magically. The stones had clearly had their structural lattices rearranged to provide greater strength and endurance to the structure. Precision work... someone knew what they were doing.

Looking around, Argus put his hands on a wall, and cast his senses into it, searching for irregularities. Such as... that one. A peculiarity in the floor... underneath one of the springy benches. Interesting technique. I'll have to examine it later. Walking over, with Kureji's voice yammering in the background, Argus bent over and slid his hands under the bench. Definitely a trapdoor. Could be something beyond... let me see if I can override the mechanism. Argus set to work, hoping that something of interest lay on the other side.

Meanwhile, Harker carefully stuck his head around the entrance, careful not to let Kureji see him. Master and familiar had a common fear of Mesuinus.

[Sareth]

"Dragon?" Lillith looked surprised. She looked back and forth between Sister Rose and Brother Miguel. "I thought dragons didn't exist? But then you mentioned batteries. Was it a mechanical dragon?" She glanced out the door. Her eyes widened as she saw the wreckage scattered about. "Oh..."

Unfortunately for her, no further answers were forthcoming. Before Sister Rose or Brother Miguel could try to straighten her confusion out, they were engulfed by the strange woman's chatter. Lillith tried to follow it, but ever time she looked at the woman her senses screamed out that there was something seriously wrong, to the point of distraction. Eventually she gave up and wandered over to beside Argus.

"Um, what are you doing?"

[Drannin]

"There's something here," Argus murmured back to Lillith. "Some sort of concealed trapdoor. Well-hidden. Well-locked. I'm trying to work out the locking mechanism and override it." This was coming from a man who was kneeling motionless on the ground, with his hands on the floor. Magic was weird, sometimes. "It's taking time because of both complexity... and the fact that I'm still a little tired from that stunt I pulled earlier." A self-deprecating smile. "I'm getting too old for this nonsense."

Argus hesitated. "Uh, sorry about earlier. That... was not as successful as I had hoped." Oh, weave, let her have forgotten that crack about her eating habits...

[Graybeard]

Sister Rose's eyes weren't just a manifestation of an unusual magical skill; they also could be powerfully expressive. At least Brother Miguel caught the clear signal that they were flashing to him as the girl's narrative, which had trapped Rose in a corner of the building, grew weirder and more incomprehensible by the moment: get me out of this. He nodded almost imperceptibly, then went over to where Argus was examining the trap door.

"Kureji, excuse me for interrupting, but Rose, can you come look at this?" he called, and Rose joined them, gratitude evident in her face. He motioned Argus to stop his examination of the mechanism. "Before we go too far with this thing, I think Rose and I should check it out for wards. If it has anything to do with the Veracian military, we should be able to recognize any of the standard denial wards we use." He didn't add that detecting them shouldn't take more than about half a second, nor that the mechanism was so totally unlike anything he'd ever seen in the military that there was absolutely no way this construct could be modern Veracian; the idea was to do something to break the chaos. "You see anything here?" he asked, then mumbled a Truth spell under his breath -- he really didn't care if anyone was fibbing here, but giving the impression of spell-casting to check for traps might be handy.

Rose's eyes said she understood the ruse, and she mumbled a quick Empathy spell of her own as she pretended to "inspect" the door. "Nothing that I can see," she said. "I think we're OK to open this -- if we really think it's a good idea."

As she scanned the room with her Empathy, she was struck by the complete uniformity of the sense that came back to her: ANYTHING to get away from that girl. Except for Kureji herself, of course; from her, the eagerness and excitement was so intense that Rose almost didn't need the spell to detect it.

Why do I have the feeling that we're going to regret this? both Veracians thought silently, as they moved back to let Argus fiddle some more with the mechanism.

[Sareth]

Lillith stepped aside for the two Veracians. She was more than happy to let them get a closer look at the door. If there were any traps, better that they should find them than that she did. If they were Veracian traps, they'd know what to do. And if not...

Her eyes slid to the crazed woman bouncing at the back of the crowd. With her there making the spirits hide, there wasn't much for her to do. If she tried anything, she'd get in the way. Even trying to talk to the spirits would likely prove futile.

[Graybeard]

Argus' tinkering with the trapdoor suddenly bore fruit, as it popped open with an almost musical twanging sound. No torrent of magical death energy accompanied the twang, nor a cloud of toxic gas, nor a barrage of spikes; the door simply opened, and that was that.

"Almost an anticlimax, eh?" Brother Miguel joked. Truthfully, he'd been more than slightly nervous about what they were getting into here. To all indications, whoever had built this blockhouse had been more interested in keeping people from getting in, at least from the direction of the other ruins, than getting out, but still, trapdoors didn't have the best reputation for being user-friendly. Well, it was open, and nobody had died ... yet.

What lay beyond didn't look all that exciting, either. The light through the skylights wasn't as bright as it could have been at midday, because of the rain clouds that were still passing through, but it was still ample to show a vertical shaft that descended 15 feet or so to a landing. What was at the bottom was less clear, lighting being what it was, but there were indications of a passage heading generally in the direction of the vast outdoors pit. A dust-covered but thoroughly functional set of ladder rungs protruded from the wall of the shaft; getting down to the landing shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Yes, it really is an anticlimax, Miguel thought. Looks like we've opened a door to a maintenance level for that golem or something. He was just about to say something flippant to that effect, when he noticed Sister Rose staring at something on the back wall of the shaft, not far below the level of the trapdoor.

Rose had had similar thoughts to Miguel's when the door first popped open, but they didn't last long. From her perspective, she could see something that the others huddled around the door couldn't: a sigil inconspicuously carved into the back wall of the shaft, away from the ladder. I've seen that before...

Without thinking about it, Rose said those two words most dreaded by explorers in this world, or any other.

"Uh, oh."

[Drannin]

Argus looked down silently, with Kureji still ranting in the background. "I see it," he said finally. "Looks familiar..." Argus paused, and looked around. Confusion etched his features. Wasn't someone missing?

"Um, has anyone seen Sasha?" he asked, suddenly concerned.

[Sareth]

Lillith looked away from the dark pit everyone was staring down. The blackness was impenetrable to her anyway. She was uncertain what Sister Rose and Argus were seeing.

"Sasha?" she asked. That must have been the quiet girl who hadn't said anything to her when first the group introduced herself. "I don't know." She looked around, seeing no sign of her. "You don't suppose something happened to her?"