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 Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 6:19 pm
Sirona squinted and surveyed their surroundings, Alcyone's words sending dozens of spiders down her spine. She could agree with Saiph's statement. Then where was their Lancelot? She frowned, but it was quickly turned upwards at the mention of finding a way out.
"Definitely!" Sirona cheered. Most of her fear had diminished due to their newly found torches. She pranced hither and thither, albeit wary of scattered bones and abusive equipment.
Sirona abruptly skidded to a halt, her pink mary-janes squeaking in anguish. An Iron Maiden stood before her. The Queen of sadistic devices. Never had she been confronted with one in person, besides monotone pictures in plump textbooks. Her curiousity had been piqued, and so she held her torch closer to the weapon.
Each protruding spike and nail possessed a cursed gleam. Frightened, Sirona stepped back. It was then that something else caught her eye. Something that was behind the Iron Maiden herself. "Hey guys! What's this? Come check it out!" she shouted.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 6:56 pm
With the separation and movement of the flames allowed the room to be seen much more clearly than before. Indeed, the torture chamber they were combing over had the distinct feel of a terrible secret, the kind you keep locked away by a hidden door behind the bookshelf in the farthest room to the east. Alongside the splatters of long-dried blood were spools of cobwebs, emphasizing exactly how long it had been since someone had last stepped foot in the place. The walls curved around the senshi, there were no corners or doorways immediately visible aside from the hall they had entered from.
Alcyone was about to scrutinize a frightening throne made of iron and protruding jagged spikes when her attention was diverted to Sirona's exclamation. "The iron maiden...?" She maneuvered around the sailor soldier of healing to have a closer look. Lifting her torch above the area in question, she jumped a step back and stifled the urge to scream. ".....skeletons...lots of them."
There appeared to be five incomplete sets of human skeletons. Once the likely victims of the chamber, their bodies were left to rot and decay behind their final destination within the maiden's painful embrace. It disgusted Alcyone to see that the people responsible for the massacre didn't even bother to bury the bodies, or even throw them out; they were just shoved aside until another was added to the pile.
"Oh my god," She stated, covering her mouth with a gloved hand. What she meant to say was, I really hope I don't puke everywhere.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:03 pm
A few of the skeletons crumbled a few seconds later after being moved, clattering into a pile of bones and dust in front of them. Two of the skulls hit the ground, and, briefly, rolled together in the same direction before being stopped by their own jawbones. One of them had a complete set of teeth. The other had not been so lucky.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:16 pm
As soon as Alcyone mentioned skeletons, Saiph knew she didn't necessarily want to look. Instead, she stepped closer to Alcyone and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. She watched the two rolling skulls, feeling a perverse and morbidly amusing desire to grab one and start quoting Shakespeare. Instead, she let her mind go still as she stared blankly at the dusty remains. They had no way of knowing if the people responsible for this were still around. And judging by the bones that were left, these folks had dispatched adults. They'd find a trio of frightened girls easy marks unless she made sure they had an edge.
Fingering her length of chain meditatively, she silently handed Sirona her torch and went to inspect the spiked chair.
"Weapons," she muttered to herself. "We need weapons."
A couple of testing kicks proved it to be on the wobbly side and she went to work with her chain and foot, kicking and battering until a spiked arm came loose. Servicable club, check. Only when she had finished breaking down the chair and piling everything that she could think of as a means of protection between the other two senshi did she turn her attentions to the two skulls, walking over to them and gently picking them up and setting them respectfully to the side.
"I'd give you both a proper burial if I could," she murmured, shuddering at the toothless one and wondering aloud if the Nameless had lost their teeth to torture as a means of extracting information. After a moment, she turned serious eyes to her compatriots.
"You two ain't gonna like this, but we need every possible advantage. Look for weapons, keys, anything useful. Loot the bodies, if we have to. And we take that stuff," she pointed to the pile she'd made, "with us as weapons. Pick your poison, girls."
((OOC note: edited out the branding rods))
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:21 pm
The skeletons, unfortunately, were empty of any such thing -- for all that the dungeon had a great deal of violence to offer, so far it didn't seem to offer much in the way of instruments of violence. All that remained were the bones themselves and the iron maiden.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 7:53 pm
To a certain extent, Sirona had expected the crumbling of the skeletons; they had to be decades- heck, maybe centuries old! For some seconds, Sirona's eyes turned to the rolling skulls, an eyebrow cocking at their direction. But by the next, she devoted her full attention to her new companions.
Sirona obediently received Saiph's torch, and cringed at her following actions. She was absolutely correct, they needed to defend themselves- from whatever was lurking in the shadows, and they would have to improvise. The fellow sailor scout deserved a golden star, albeit a sticker!
It was only when Saiph picked up the two skulls that Sirona had an immediate epiphany. Cautiously grabbibg them from the pile, she held each skull in one hand. "Umm..." she started towards the direction of Alcyone. "Could you hold this?," she raised the toothless skull. "I'd just like to try something." she added a slight smile, to assure the senshi that she hadn't gone mad. Yet. It would probably have no meaning at all, but the girls were looking for clues, right? "On the count of three, roll it towards that direction." Sirona ordered. "1...2...3!"
If her intuition was wrong, the skulls would make efficient self-defense weapons; her type of poison.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:19 pm
The skulls rolled in the direction they'd been pushed, as would be expected from skulls: however, as they lost speed they inclined a little bit to the left for a few cobblestones before rolling to a natural halt.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:25 pm
The touch of Saiph's hand gently squeezing her shoulder caused Alcyone to jump in surprise. Her head turned to face her ally, thankful that she had an ounce of compassion and that she was, in fact, not a skeleton brought back to life through dark magic. "Thank you," she murmured before letting her eyes followed the girl back to the torture chair. Using its rotten wood and aged sharp metal as weapons was definitely a smart idea, and Alcyone could almost kick herself for not thinking of it while she was there.
From the pile that was made, she reached for a piece that was once half of the arm-rest, a few good nails and spikes still hammered through. Not only would it deal a great amount of damage with the spikes and blunt wood, but it would also wreak infection in the rust or imbed a pretty nasty splinter. Suddenly Alcyone was happy that she'd have to have all sorts of immunizations vaccined before flying out to Destiny City. She was very sure she had her tetanus shot and was good to go for another 10 years.
"Hm?" Her thoughts were brought back to Sirona, who was patiently waiting and holding...two of the skulls that had fallen from behind the Iron Maiden. She moved her new weapon to her torch-baring hand and curiously followed her example by rolling the skull along cobblestone floor. She wasn't surprised to see them go at length (it's what spherical objects tend to do), but a short veer to the left had her thinking. The two skulls that had originally fallen to the floor had also rolled, albeit not as long as the ones that were thrown.
Maybe there was something on the floor causing them to move as such.
Taking the make-shift bat with her now-free hand, Alcyone crouched to the ground and shed light around the area where the skulls had inclined.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:34 pm
Oh now THAT was interesting. Saiph held up her own torch, watching the skulls roll and veer ever so slightly. Quickly wrapping her chain around her arm, she siezed part of the chair in one hand and held the torch aloft with the other. Moving forward slowly, she studied the floor near where the skulls had come to rest. Was the floor uneven there? It was difficult to tell in the flickering torchlight.
Pacing around the skulls, she paused occasionally to stomp her heel against the stones, listening for a possible echo to indicate a hollow space. As far as she could tell, the floor didn't look special. But then again, she was not especially experienced in dungeon crawling.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:36 pm
There didn't appear to be any particular indentation in the stones, or raised part, or anything else that could indicate a reason immediately here for their rolling -- however, Saiph's instinct struck true, as on every stone she stamped her foot, the floor seemed to ring hollow.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 2:48 am
To Sirona, it was neither interesting nor curious. The fact that the two heads leaned to the left mortified her. But, at this point, it was clear that the secret did not lie in rolling skulls.
There was lack of a conversation, but in fact, this made all three pay particular attention to the details. An eyebrow was raised as Saiph clacked her black boots to the stone.
For a moment, she simply listened. "What do you think is down there?" Sirona inquired. It had been made apparent that the floor was hollow; which means there had to be a void of the sort, right?
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 6:05 am
There was a moment of trifle disappointment as her fire did not give way to any answers. The floor was just a floor, dusty and grimy and now covered in small shoe prints from the group going through the chamber. She stood up and turned to find Saiph stomping on the ground like a hoe-down, though more interesting was the drum she was dancing to.
"The floor is hollow!" Alcyone gasped as she rushed towards her and stomped a foot on the floor to get that sound again. "There must be another room, or a stairway, or something. Maybe it's our way out of here. The real question is, though, is how do we get there?"
Doubt was placed lightly on her shoulders as she did a final scan around the room. Nothing seemed to stick out of place in a chamber full of torture devices, or maybe she just didn't know what to look for. "What if we split up to find a switch? Or maybe we just need to continue stomping until the floor breaks through. You want the honors?"
Alcyone waved her hand at Saiph to continue to do what she'd been doing, and then gestured to Sirona to look around the back wall with the spiked chair. "Sirona and I will see if we can find some kind of small switch," she said as she leaned closer to the iron maiden. The skulls had given away the secret of the floor, perhaps there were other clues lying about in the same area. She reached out her hand and started feeling up the wall behind the skeletons and the torture device.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 6:39 am
Snorting mirthlessly, Saiph couldn't help the tiny smirk that flickered briefly across her face. Apparently Alcyone had a sassy streak. Not that this was a bad thing. It helped make the darkness a teensy bit more bearable after all. Still, she'd read enough adventure stories in her childhood to know that they still needed to be extra cautious. And if good old Indiana Jones had taught her anything, it was to suspect the presence of a trap and possibly snakes if they let their guard down.
"Could be a stairway or room," she agreed amiably. "Might just be a pit too."
She struck her heel on a couple more stones as she thought.
"Either of you ever see The Last Crusade? Remember the floor puzzle? Indy had to step on the stones that spelled Yahweh or bad s**t would happen. Maybe look for old patterns on the floor too...?"
Saiph was rambling. She knew she was rambling. She couldnt' really help it. The darkness and steady sound of dripping water was making her nerves raw and prickly. But her own recollection of the movie had made her pause in her tramping. If there was a puzzle in the floor, she didn't really feel like accidentally mis-stepping and killing them all. As she stood there, another insidious little thought wormed its way through her mind.
"Let's not get too far out of each other's sight, okay?" her voice was wavering. "I'd hate to lose you guys after I found you."
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 11:24 am
The floor sounded hollow everywhere they stamped, with no particular pattern -- nothing gave way under their feet, though, thankfully. It appeared the stone was thick enough here at least that it didn't threaten to plunge them all under the floor if they stomped too hard.
Away from the other two slightly, Alcyone's fingers found some kind of indented marking on the stone wall: however, she'd need more light to know more.
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Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 7:37 pm
"When I looked at the floor before I couldn't find anything, no grooves, no patterns..." Was her response to Saiph, moving her hands slowly up and down the wall. "Though it never occurred to me that it could be a trap. Perhaps we'll need to--wait a minute."
Her deft fingers fell within the ridges of the carved markings within the wall. She leaned as far as she could without touching the skeletons on the floor, but it was too dark. "....I think I found something..."
Without moving her hand from the wall (lest she lose her spot), Alcyone brought her torch as close as she could to the grooves.
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