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 Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 7:59 pm
Considering the door was finished and, most likely, cured, setting a torch to it was probably not going to be a fruitful endeavor. The flames licked at the door, which failed to respond in any meaningful way.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:15 pm
Dude took the torch from Nemesis' hand. All that touching it to the door had accomplished was a small scorchmark, as trying to set fire to a thick-grained door of cured wood would only accomplish charring and irritation. The torch wasn't hot enough. Dude was rolling his eyes heavenwards.
"My name," he said gruffly, "is General-King Charonite of the Dark Kingdom." Pitch dripped from the wood, and he was turning away to set the torch standing straight in an empty brazier nearby. "And doors like this don't catch alight. You don't set a lot of fires, do you."
As though he had only announced that he was Jim from next door, he was turning to impatiently try the handle again. By the sound it was locked, and from the inside. "s**t," he was saying, and now banged his closed fist against the surface.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:33 pm
"Oh." <********>, which was the unspoken word behind her soft exclamation. She didn't protest as he took the torch out of her hand, instead staring at the door pointedly. The realization that she had not been entirely willing to stumble upon herself made her stomach sink and the color drain from her face. Had she really let... General-King Charonite out of a cell? Seemed so. Her thoughts after this weren't very intelligent, consisting of '********', 'godammit', 's**t', and a tasteful variety of other cuss words.
"Oh," she repeated stupidly. All logic pointed out that she should be in serious trouble right now. Yet, Charonite was still simply looming over her. He hadn't made any inclination towards hurting her, had been acceptably nice (if not frustrating), through their adventure so far. He had told her that they would find her brother. She sucked in a sharp breath and stood up. Her gaze flickered back to the taller man, though didn't lift high enough to view above his shoulders.
Everything else is irrelevant, she told herself. Outside of this place the rules may be different, but right now, she decided that who he was did not matter. No one had to know that she was hanging out with Charonite and letting him help her. It wasn't like there was anyone else here to witness her with him. Together they had to find Damon and get out of here, and that was that.
"No, I don't, but I figured it was better than doing nothing." Her voice was a little sharp, her posture a little tense, but she was resolved to not let the information get to her. She could think about her decision later, whether it was a bad or good one. He'd probably show her if it was the best choice in the world or the worst possible one.
"Open sesame?" she joked with a dry little laugh. Nemesis glanced around the room, trying to see if there was anything useful. It didn't seem like. "We're stuck, aren't we? We're stuck, Dude - I like it better than Charonite, just the way it rolls off the tongue and all."
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:45 pm
'The room' consisted of two rows of about ten individual cells in total. If any help was to be had, it'd likely be in those.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 8:50 pm
"I don't answer to 'Dude'," said Charonite shortly. "If you were one of my Lieutenants I would've left you on a windswept crag to die."
But he sounded more distracted by the door and it was an empty threat in any case. When he realised nothing was going to give, answer or open, he turned around into the room instead with a tch! of irritation. The cells stretched out in front of them. The General-King advanced to the nearest one without preamble.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:03 pm
She sighed loudly, and just a little bit pointedly. "Fine, Charonite," she relented, though she hated saying the name. It was discomforting, a blaring reminder of who he was. 'Dude' would have been such an easier name to call him. "I'm a senshi, I was pretty sure that you would react less kindly than you do to your Lieutenants." Nemesis watched him turn around to inspect their surroundings more closely, and following his example, she trailed after him, her arms folded grumpily against her chest.
She passed by the first cell - she could leave that one to Charonite (it had a body in it, and there was no way in hell that she was going into a cell that was occupied by dead things). "You meant it, right? We'll find... my friend before we leave." She opened the cell door and slipped into the hardly human-sized space. It was as if she expected things would change now that she knew who he was. Absently she kicked at some old, tattered fabric with the toe of her shoe, not really willing to touch it with her hands.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:17 pm
The first cell door on this side of the hallway was marked, oddly, on the door of the cell with an iron engraving in the shape of an axe; the skeleton inside gave no clue as to why this might be.
The second cell door was engraved with a noose.
The third, a scroll and a quill; the fourth, another noose.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:26 pm
"If I said I'd do something, Nemesis," said the General-King, "I meant it. Don't question me on that."
He was moving from the first cell to the second, ducked back and looked at the first again. "Axe," he said under his breath, moving to the second. He seemed to be the sort of person who had to say a word aloud to remember it. "Rope -- noose. Scroll, quill. Noose." He was moving along each door, from the fourth to the fifth, touching the engraving briefly at the fourth.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:34 pm
The fifth on this side was marked with a book.
The opposite-facing row was marked, respectively, with a coinpurse, a pillow, a noose, a noose, and a scroll.
Altogether this made for the layout:
AXE - NOOSE - SCROLL - NOOSE - BOOK
COINPURSE - PILLOW - NOOSE - NOOSE - SCROLL
The one Charonite had been broken out of was the second one marked 'noose' in the second row. None of the other cells were open -- thus, it was impossible to see what was inside them.
It seemed like it would be a taxing effort to open all of the cells. Perhaps if there were some way to determine what the symbols meant.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:47 pm
The white-dressed Negaverse leader stopped at the midpoint between both rows of cells, arms folded across his chest, staring off into nothing. He appeared to be thinking. He thought silently now, eyes narrowed as his gaze swung from door to door, no sound coming but the quiet crackle of the fire on its bed of pitch and wood.
"Noose repeats," he said, sounding as though he was barely restraining his impatience. "Scroll repeats twice." There was a mutter underneath his breath that sounded a lot like 'bullshit.' "Look inside my cell again."
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:50 pm
"All right," she responded simply, about to tag on a 'thank you' before she remembered that this was Charonite. She had thanked him enough, he didn't need to hear another one, and she didn't want to add something else to her list to think about later. Nemesis wanted to ask him what they would do if they couldn't get out of here, or what they would do if they did and still could not find her brother.
But, it was something to ask when such a thing happened. She stepped out of the cell, watching Charonite briefly, curiously before she noticed what he had noticed. She stared at the engraving of a noose, lips turning down into a small, thoughtful frown. "What, ways to kill yourself and leave some parting words? Nice, we're being given suggestions on how to off ourselves if we are stuck here."
She was not the most brilliant thinker of the century, or the centuries before it.
Walking down the line of cells, she took note of each symbol. It... was definitely strange, and really, it was the only thing they had to go on right now. "What the hell - this is stupid," she concluded, turning to face Charonite as she came upon the fourth noose-marked cell. "Right, you do all the thinking." Her thinking wasn't getting them anywhere. With a sigh she moved to the only open cell, slipping inside it and beginning to rummage around. "Really, this is stupid. We're going to be trapped here - yay."
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 9:56 pm
Charonite's cell, marked 'noose,' turned up little but the inscription written there before and a marked count of days, dwindling into rubbed-out nothing after eighty or so. There was no sign of the prisoner who might have inhabited it before him, if in fact there was any such prisoner at all.
No -- wait. There was something written on the other wall.
In the same chicken-scratch script, as if it had been scrawled without light:
I have done nothing wrong.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:02 pm
"There's nothing here, duuuu... Charonite," came her initial response, even though her gaze was still searching out the cramped cell. "Oh, wait." She paused, noticing the small writing on the wall. It wasn't something she'd usually pay particular interest to... but with nothing else giving any hints in the cell, she turned to it, finger brushing over the words light as she read them aloud. "I have done nothing wrong."
Well, maybe that wasn't as helpful as she thought it would be. She frowned, impatiently tapping her fingers against the cold stone. "Do the keys work for any of the other cells, like the ones with the noose symbols? It worked for this one, maybe it'll work for the others?" Nemesis could easily give up on one thing and pursue another if she thought it hopeless.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:03 pm
Charonite had moved forward after her, blocking up the doorway. One hand reached up to touch the message from before: I try to listen because the other prisoners swear that it's true... He ignored her irritated impatience completely, and returned with the torch so that they had more light.
"We're not going to be trapped here," he said. "If this was just a trap we'd be dead. Stop yapping." (He didn't sound that angry, just resigned. Really, it was much the same as being trapped in a room with Hematite only without the right to cuff him upside the head.) "But you're right. Take the keys and open up the next cell."
They jangled on his belt where he'd stuffed them; he was still reading the first note.
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Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 10:12 pm
He told her to stop yapping, and it made the temptation to yap just that much more irresistible. She was only made slightly appeased when he told her that she was right. "We still can't get out of here yet - and if we don't then I'm pretty sure we die. So, it could still be a trap." She glanced to his belt where the keys were hanging, looking mildly displeased that he wasn't handing them over to her.
"Of course I'm right," she was muttering as she quickly snatched the keys from his belt, slipping past him and outside of the cell to try them on the next one with a noose engraving. He could spend all day reading cryptic messages, Nemesis certainly didn't think it would get them anywhere.
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