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He took a deep breath, attempting to steady himself when he realized that Guelmy simply appeared amazed and astonished. "That," he began, finding a pillar to lean on for support, "Was a memory." Even he knew that this was more than just a simple memory, and the identity of the owner vexed him terribly.

"That man..." he started, turning to consider his friend. "Well, that was me, back when I lived as a god... Before I faded." Guelmy's second question could not be answered, because he had no earthly idea himself where they were.

He scoffed somewhat at his statement, shaking his head. "Then all us Fa'e should be so filled with anger that it consumes us," Naolin exclaimed, rubbing his face as if to get the mental image of her out of his mind.

Nochtli.

Try as he might, he could only remember whispers of her before today. After that memory, and in this place, Naolin could almost feel her skin against his, and her smell seemed to fill the air around them, intoxicating him. It angered him that a woman still had a hold over him, but even more so that he could only remember that memory and the swell of a foreign feeling inside of him at the thought of her.

It made him nauseous.

Again, his friend's question shook him from his thoughts. "Hell if I know." A long silence filled the relatively small room that they found themselves in while Naolin chewed through the possibilities. "Probably this place... I remember her, kind of... It's hazy..." He rambled, slightly scared of how his friend would think of him if he said this, but he felt as if he at least owed Guelmy the truth. Or at least, what he thought was the truth.

He looked both ill and furious at the same time when he finally spit it out. "Guelms... I think I loved her..."

Naolin continued to reel within himself, and eventually stood up suddenly and looked around. This room felt to small. The air smelled womanly sweet, musty, and hung heavy with magic. This magic seemed different than the first, and he couldn't put his finger on it.

His head began to spin and he glanced around him again. The walls were closer, he just knew it. Suddenly he felt as if he were in Alice and Wonderland and had just drank an odd little potion.

They had a BIG problem.

"Guelmy, is the room getting smaller, or am I seeing things again?" Suddenly, Nochtli was the last thing on his mind. Self-preservation was the first and only thing, at the moment. "We need to find a way out," he finally concluded as his eyes began to search for a door or window by directing his flashlight around the room.

The touch startled him somewhat, and he pointed the flashlight in the direction that the other teen had indicated. Hurrying over to the wall that contained the basin, he directed the light up at the glyphs over the bowl. Already, the room felt stuffier and more cramped than it had moments beforehand.

He muttered under his breath as he read the glyphs as fast as possible. It ended up being some sort of riddle that didn't translate very well into English, and he told this to Guelmy. "Something about the gift of life and passage," he finally said, frowning.

In the end, it was the faint, metallic scent that unlocked the meaning for him, and he sighed in relief (while mentally kicking himself) before handing Guelmy the flashlight so he could fish for his knife. "A sacrifice is needed," he explained.

Even in this dire situation, Naolin took the time to look at Guelmy as if he had grown another head. In the time it took to do that, blood was already flowing from his wrist and into the basin. He absently wiped the blood off of his shorts before putting it between his teeth so that he could use his hand to squeeze out more blood.

He had expected it to be a minor sort of sacrifice, but it kept flowing and nothing happened. Soon, when the small basin was nearly full and he felt slightly woozy, a horrible grinding noise erupted in the now closet sized room. Fresh air wooshed in with a rush as the door slid opened, and the Fa'e felt instantly better.

Stowing the knife away, Naolin applied pressure to his wound and stumbled out of the room. Back in the room, the blood swirled down an invisible drain and disappeared.

The room, once its occupants left, seemed to return to its original state and size as if nothing had happened. The basin too, appeared spotless.

After taking a moment to bandage his wound with gauze, Nao fished in his bag for a couple of power bars. His hands shook slight, but once he began to get food in him, the shaking ceased and his color came back somewhat. Though, he did seem lighter than his normally tan tone.

Deep amber eyes watched them silently.

"I'll be fine," he said, when he noticed his friend eying him up like a dying cancer patient. To prove his point, he made sure to keep up his usual pace, carefully shining the light ahead and to the sides of them to try and find some clue to where they needed to go.

None really came, and so Naolin continued guiding them in the direction that he felt was right. He had a nagging feeling that there was another reason that his feet were taking him in that particular direction, but his wooziness prevented him from considering this as a danger.

"No, it's not as bad," he agreed conversationally while reaching up to rub his face wearily. Just at that moment, while Guelmy studied some detail in the darkness, the floor simply disappeared from under him.

As his friend did an assisted disappearing act, Naolin continued walking along the pathway in front of him. Suddenly, as if he were in a fog, he stopped and simply stared as the walls spun and shifted unnaturally around him.

"What the ********..." He muttered, rubbing his eyes with the grimy back of his hand and blinking profusely in order to try and halt the spinning. When that didn't work, he closed his eyes and turned, or rather stumbled, around to face his friend.

You intoxicate me. The deeply feminine voice crooned in his mind.

An image of that woman slunk along the backs of his eyelids, and his chest burned violently. His eyes consequently slammed open, and he stared at Guelmy and...

Saw no one.

Panic encroached within him, and he quickly searched the area around him despite the spinning. "Guelms?" The hummingbird called out cautiously, almost painfully as he realized that while he had not been transported elsewhere, his friend no longer was with him.

Swaying, he stumbled to the nearest wall and leaned against it for support, eyes wide and head still spinning.

---

After the action of the catacombs and the reaction of the two Fa'e, the owner of the watchful eyes swiftly and obediently wound their way through pathways and the darkness. Once his nostrils filled once more with the scent of the serpentine one, he began to carefully creep along the dark tunnel towards Guelmy.

He did appear tasty.