Welcome to Gaia! ::

Her swift descent into death was not as deadly as Hanna had imagined. She landed painfully, yes, but more painful than the impact and resulting mountain of sand was the smell. She was already feeling light-headed from barely sleeping last night, waking up without breakfast, struggling to climb the sliding sand, and giving herself a decently serious injury on her inner thigh. Now it felt as though she were living inside a rotted corpse stuffed with other rotted corpses who had died after dining on a buffet of rotted corpses.

Adelphe, the bulking twin blade that she was, was mostly submerged in the gooey substance. Hanna, dearest, if you don't get me out of this muck immediately, I assure you I will find many ways to make you regret it. Stand up. A gag rose in Hanna's throat. She didn't want to throw up -- what kind of ungodly splashback might it yield? -- but a part of her wondered if her own scent of sick would be more comforting than this scent. It was, without a doubt, the most putrid thing she had ever breathed.

Carefully, Hanna wiped one hand clean on her jacket and then used it to pull her scarf back over her nose and mouth. She stood shakily, but the surface was uneven, pulsating even. It rocked something like the ocean. Before Hanna could do much, she needed to do something about the wound on her leg. Holstering the Lady, she wiggled out of the remains of her tattered tank she wore under the t-shirt.

It was nearly impossible to see. But after a few attempts, she managed to recreate the makeshift bandage she had lost earlier. Hopefully this one would do better by her, at least until she could get to real bandages -- if she ever did.

Perhaps worse than the smell was the sound. The hollow clicks unnerved her; it meant guests. "Does anyone have a light?" Hanna asked to the darkness. She kicked herself for quitting smoking now. It had seemed like such a good life decision at the time, but that was before she became a Hunter. Her boots had filled with some mystery liquid when she had fallen, and each shift of her weight brought an unpleasant smush.

Injury or not, Hanna followed her instincts and took a few tentative steps to the left, hoping her blind search might turn up something useful. Like a way out of here. Though, if this thing was alive, she highly doubted she wanted to meet its backdoor.

"s**t," Hanna cursed suddenly into darkness. "My foot just hit something... non-squishy."

Carefully kneeling, she felt across the surface -- a solid rectangle. It reminded her of something strange, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Was it... a weapons tablet? The idea seemed to troubling to voice out loud, especially without any light to guide her. Still, Hanna planned to hold onto it. At the very least, it was a blunt object.

Or a grave marker.

The hunter winced suddenly. Her wound was worsening; she could feel it. Whatever the strange liquid had been, Hanna felt certain her wound was now infected.

No battle yet and you are already so wounded... a pity, Adelphe drawled. Hanna chose to do what she normally did: ignored her.

Hanna has picked up and decided to a keep a strange-maybe-weapons-tablet object!
HP: 25/40

stormy hp: 45/50

The darkness, the bugs, the fetid stench of the dead and dying, the inability to breathe, the mere shock of opening her eyes and seeing it all, or what she could--it proved to her the one piece of paranoia she had fought so hard to keep back.

She had never left that artifact mission.

It was more than sensory overload and it was worse than reliving a nightmare: it was finally waking up to it. She was dying still. no, she had always been dead. Her moments on the surface, the way they filtered through her mind in and out like a dream, now it made sense. Nevada hadn't died, it had been just part of an elaborate, complicated set of night terrors. She had not asked Ian to break her and sate his bitterness. She had not screamed and lashed out at Evan before vomiting in his room to spite him. She had not avoided Gale and all other physical contact for three weeks, smoking and barely sleeping and hardly remembering what food tasted like, mindlessly journalling and pouring herself into the pages until tearing them made them bleed.

She had always been down there with the insects, where she belonged. She'd never left to find the light.

Stormy all but crashed in the fall and wanted nothing more than to get away, get away, get away--but her body wasn't responding. She fell and slapped the ground and felt her head snap forward painfully, but she didn't get up. The only sign at all that she was still conscious were the wide eyes locked in a terrified, vacant look ahead, and the rapid, shallow breathing that nearly had her sucking up passing insects and bits of rended flesh, or the collection of fluids all around the swallowed hunters.

Never left, never left, never left--

Not even her weapon could stop the mental mantra.

And then it all suddenly stopped. The air was still and Zascha felt he could stand now. Recalling Gothsmog from her weapon form to become an earring once more. Even so he was still on edge. Ready to call her back out if need be.

Mark's arrival and apparent surprise confounded the Trainee. A curious brow raised. And then he was gone. Pulled beneath the sand. s**t. The shriek caused him to whirl around towards where the maw was. It wasn't gone. No, this wasn't over.

As Hannah flew by, he reached out to grab her by the arm but she was pulled from his grasp to quickly. Luckily for Zascha his coat was wrapped pretty tight around his large frame so she wouldn't be able to pull it off. Unluckily for him it distracted him enough that one of the semi-transparent arms wrapped around him and quickly drug him beneath the sand.

Giving him barely enough time to take a gasp of air before he was gone from anyone's view.

And then he hit something squishy, landing feet first. The softness of it nearly sent him falling forward on his face but luckily he caught himself before that even happened. It was pitch black. Zascha blinked his eyes trying to get them to focus, to adjust to any light source that might be around but there was nothing.

As he moved his feet, he felt something hard tap against the toe of his boot, so he bent down to pick it up. Running his fingers along the edge, its shape reminded him of a weapon tablet. Much like Gothsmog's. He quickly pocketed it before something, or what seemed to be someone, staggered into him.

Reaching out he grasped Nora by the shoulder to steady her for a moment while he continued to try and get his own bearings. "You ok?" Disregarding their current predicament for the moment.

Zascha HP: 30/40
- Keepin that weapon tablet

Gale HP: 55 / 60


He felt as though he'd never left the Sahara.

The fall sent Gale tumbling downwards; his feet hit the floor with a sickening crunch and a grotesque splash; and his legs immediately gave way, Gale falling forward and sprawling among the wreckage of wherever they were. He was terribly grateful for the thick coat and the gloves he wore, in spite of the heat; but they wouldn't last for long, and he could feel the nausea rising in his throat.

"Stormy," he croaked out, his voice rough, grated like sand. He swallowed hard, trying to ignore the way his stomach was churning unpleasantly and waded through the dark liquid, desperately searching her out, for any sign of her, for anything -

A voice - but it wasn't Stormy's.

"I'm fine, Nora," said Gale, and there was a small flash of white light as he summoned Jinhai, the sniper rifle appearing in his right hand. The weight of the weapon was both familiar and comforting, in spite of its inability to do much more than act as a walking stick at the current moment.

Something bumped against Gale's knee, giving him pause - a familiar shape, small and square, and it was only when he reached out and picked it up that he realized just what it was - a weapon's tablet. He pressed his lips together and shoved it into his coat to look at later, continuing his search for Stormy.

"I'm looking for," he started to say to Nora, and then he saw her, just ahead, lying on the ground. There was a series of splashes as Gale ran towards her, his heart in his throat, and then he was kneeling at her side, uncaring of what exactly he was kneeling in anymore.

"Stormy," he said, and touched her cheek, shouldering the rifle so that he could grip her shoulder with his other. "Stormy."

stormy hp: 40/50
inventory: x1 runic bandages

Touching her at all turned problematic. She didn't hear Gale: she heard his ghost come back to convince her again that it wasn't worth it.

With a small shriek Stormy thrust him away and began madly crawling backwards, driven mad by the return of the darkness. For all she knew, it wasn't even her arms she was using anymore. Maybe they were someone else's. There had been bodies and bodies and bodies, it was entirely plausible she was using someone else's. There were other voices now: probably a new chamber. someone else was calling for Gale, though--that was a little anomaly, but barely a blip in the midst of her panic.

She hissed in pain as she ran across something metal, grasping at it and feeling its form: tin, box, a clasp. Inside, a roll. Bandages. Stormy wasn't entirely sure, but she thought she was crying with relief at the thought. Good, good. Something.

She then covered her ears and shut her eyes tight even though there was no difference in vision doing so, continuing to breathe sharply as her heart pumped like she had gone through an olympic event.

HP: 30/40
Inventory: Runic Flashlight

Banana had suddenly, violently joined whatever it was Camille found herself standing in as she hit the pit and stench overwhelmed her. Darkness closed in all around her and the sense of wrong was so familiar that she wondered, for a moment, if maybe she wasn't back in Wonderland. Maybe this was some sort of really bad, really intense, really...long...nightmare? But there was never anything like this in her nightmares. They were all mundane horrors from movies and stories, not the exhausting struggle through the sandstorm, not this sticky hellpit that made her empty stomach clench again as she dry-heaved.

But she wasn't dead.

That meant that Peyton might be in here somewhere! "Peyton?! Peyton are you in here?" Calling out into the darkness she could hear something. It was an odd clicking noise, uneven and above her head. Before she could puzzle too much about it there were suddenly more noises, more voices, more bodies. More than once her voice had been called out and it made the redheaded trainee exultant. That was Jasper's voice! Peyton's! She didn't know Nora by name but easily recognized the voice. Was that Hanna as well?!

"I'm here! Where are you guys?" Shuffling about in the darkness she fell, splashing about in liquid that was far too sticky, far too wet, but there was something there. It was metallic and when Cami's fingers moved over it she realized it was a flashlight! Turning it on, however, proved to be her greatest joy and greatest regret. She shone it in Jasper's direction so that he was illuminated, covered in blood, and with millipedes surrounding the cavern over his head.

Of course there was only one thing to do at that point! She screamed.

Gale HP: 50 / 60
Inventory: x1 weapons tablet


Her shriek hurt not just his ears, but his heart as well. It was difficult to see the real expression on her face, or the deadened look he knew would be in her eyes, but that didn't mean that he wasn't about to back off so easily. He knew, all too well, the horrors of the Sahara, and so did Stormy.

He also knew leaving her alone was worse than being rejected by trying to help her.

Gale ran after her, of course, sloshing through the disgusting liquid at his feet that he wasn't thinking too hard about. He found her a moment later, kneeling in the midst of ruin and clutching a box with something in it. Making his way over towards her, the gun still held in his hand, Gale crouched beside her. He didn't touch her this time.

"Stormy," he said flatly. "Listen to me. I'm real. I'm right here with you, are you listening to me? Stormy are you listening to me?"