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The fog only got worse, though Mark seemed to be navigating through his phone with relative success. "Okay, five minute break," he sat down in the dirt-mud and opened his laptop again. "So good news, we've covered like twenty feet. We only need six-hundred more to go to our destination."

In the distance there was a strange noise, a low rumbling sound.

"What was wh-"

- And then the ground began to sink underneath them, the only warning the jarring feeling of everything shaking horrifically. It was a slow process, but immediately, Mark grabbed a hold of Gretchen by the arm and pulled her as upright as possible before shouting for her to run. It was impossible to tell how fast the ground was sinking or where it started, everything just white mist, but every step she took she could feel the dirt softening underneath her, as if collapsing into some large sinkhole.

Time became irrelevant as they simply ran, and at some point they reached a forest, the trees barely visible through thick fog.

At last Mark sat down again, breathing heavily. "For the record, this is like my fifth mission today, so no comments about how awesome and in shape I am okay." He sat down again and opened his laptop. "Well, we're totally off track, about five kilometers from where we're supposed to be. Just keep your eyes open like super wide open okay?"

Was it Gretchen's imagination or where there immensely long, dark shapes coming from the forest towards them?

A kid was looking at him.

Well to elaborate, an extremely goth kid and his goth friend potentially sister.

"That's the one," the girl (Zoe) confirmed, pointing one perfectly black nail-polished finger towards Dylon.

"Fine," said the shorter of the two, "let's bag him."

Before Dylon could ask he was knocked out and immediately dragged away. Nobody else seemed to care much. When he woke up, he would be at the lighthouse portal, tied up tightly with Runic rope, blindfolded.

"Tell us everything or die," said a glum voice from in front of him.

"Tell us everything and die," corrected the second female one and there was the feeling of something blunt pressing against his head. It felt kind of like the blunt end of a stapler but could have been the barrel of a gun if Dylon got really creative.

She was moving before she realized what was happening, propelled by Mark's urgency and the grip on her arm. Then she could feel the crumbling, unsteady quality of the ground beneath her feet as they ran, and that had the trainee charging into an all out sprint to keep on Marks heels. She wasn't sure if he knew where he was going, or had just blindly picked a direction, but either way, getting separated was not an option.

She ran until her lungs burned, and then kept going, fear rising with the seemingly growing density of the fog that surrounded them. As if the zombies shambling around, and the ground collapsing beneath them weren't bad enough on their own.

When they finally did stop Gretchen dropped down beside him, chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. "I'll-" Pant. "Keep my praise to myself then."

Peering at the laptop screen, she tried to make sense of what Mark was looking at, turned her attention out into the fog at his suggestion. "Super wide. Got it." Not that that would help her see anything. It was thick as pea soup. Trees and brush looming in the haze. She frowned at a particularly dark spot, head tilting and eyes narrowing as she watched it. "hey, Mark...?"

The soft grass was practically shaking with the rise and fall of footsteps now. Mark was still typing madly. "Oh, boss is in some sort of cave, I guess we should follow him."

Thud.

"Did you know there's Fear signals around us? I wonder if they're close?"

Thud.

"Man, I'm hungry, let's get something to eat or something."

The massive shape of a tree covered in faces, branch-arms extending outwards, brushed against Mark's shoulder without him ever noticing.

Using a mix of dismissing Vahn when he needed to wriggle out of his binds, and summoning him again to cut a few more of the loose ropes, Dylon finally managed to free himself.

Dylon hastily got to his feet, keeping his katars summoned as a means of defence. He breathed in and out with a tremble, backing away from the creature, hoping that maybe it would just go away on it's own.

"Emo brats.... where are you..." Dylon mumbled, looking for the portal within the foggy surroundings. Was he dumped here on purpose? Who would ever think to find him?

Undying: 10/10
Dylon: Free!

"Dude," Mark said, not noticing the close encounters with the shadowy kind at all, "no need to rush this okay. Perfection can't like, can't be rushed." Behind him, the shadows creaked and groaned, like an old ship docking against a shallow seabed.

It was just fog now and Mark was giving Gretchen a little more resistance. "Hang on. Why- why is there someone else here?" If Gretchen peered at Mark's laptop he could see a blinking shape that clearly read HUNTER in the middle of a bunch of red FEAR signal shapes.

Gretchen shot him a very harrassed look, and made a wild gesture at the fog where there had been, moments before, something lumbering towards them. It seemed to be gone now. The trainee grumbled softly under her breath, rubbing at her brow with the back of her hand. "I was keepin' you from being mauled by a giant whatever the heck it was" her accent was thickening under distress.

She would look over his shoulder at the screen though as he announced there being another hunter close by, and frowned at the little dot on the screen. "I take it there isn't supposed'ta be?" There were an awful lot of the other tops clustered close and right on top of the hunter dot. "We should help them."