Welcome to Gaia! ::

The portal lead them directly in front of the Death lead's office. Said occupant of the lair was visible seated on his desk, clearly waiting for some sort of result.

The journey back to the Death lead's office was not a long one, thanks to the portal, as it deposited them neatly outside Caelius' office as he glared at them from within.

Shiloh followed Kostya into the room, though he took care to make sure he was nearby the door, and he waited for either Kostya or Caelius to say something, to break the awkward silence but no words came, and Shiloh tugged idly at the collar of his jacket, casting a quick look at Otto. He was, after all, a full Death hunter, it stood to reason he had better ways of dealing with your highness than they did.

He wasn't sure how any of them would get out of this if Kostya didn't come clean.

Said Nice Man looked up. "And."

Thank Otto.

Shiloh continued to say nothing, watching with a marginal bit of relief as Kostya pulled out the key and held it towards the Death lead.

The Death lead was already reaching for the key when he paused. Slowly, a little too slowly, he stared straight at the Moon assistant. "You touched it." he repeated, in that sort of tone that suggested More Plot Devices Were About To Happen But Also Included Caelius and Suffering. Frankly, with over ten years of experience in his current line of profession, it was a surprise onto itself as to how Caelius possibly thought trainees wouldn't touch the thing when they were explicitly told not to. At this point, he pulled out a long sword from the drawer, about three feet tall, rather thin and narrow and set it on the table.

"Your hand, Konstantin. The one that touched the artifact."

Sometimes, some people just really did the wrong thing at the wrong time. Granted, to Caelius, everyone did the wrong thing at the wrong time, but there were various degrees of wrongness that applied to various things and Kostya had probably just stumbled upon an Extremely Wrong Thing at the Worst Time.

The Death lead, just about to possibly let Kostya slide, suddenly stopped. He then reached for the key, still wrapped up, and attempted to pick it up. Attempted, because the second before contact, the whole artifact simply crumbled into a pile of fine black ash.

Seconds passed. Surprisingly, nothing exploded. There were no Moon trainees flying out of windows, or ethereal spirits floating around handing Mark items. In fact, the Death lead just sat there and stared straight at Kostya with a sort of impassive expression that would have been more impassive if it wasn't Caelius and his power of You Are ********> suggestion.

"Otto. Shiloh." He wrapped the cloth around the remains of the artifact, and moved it off to the side. "I want to hear from you two first as to why everyone ******** up. If I even suspect you are withholding information at any point, all you will be penalized instead of just one."

Bittiface

sammpai

astrazilla

Shiloh stared between Kostya and Otto, and then dared to glance at Caelius, not surprised at all by the Death Glare™ that he found on the lead’s face. Fortunately, Otto chose to go the tattling route before he did, and Shiloh nodded as Otto explained.

“Exactly what he said, there were voices coming from the key, and Kostya touched it, then we were sent somewhere to a jungle where you were young, just a trainee I think, and the girl that was with you, Kels, wanted to explore this cave and asked us to accompany since we had weapons, and assumingly we had to get back somehow so the cave seemed like a decent place to start looking, as there was no way to know if that universe’s leads were hostile or not. Kels was lost to the cave monster, and then a man named Liam saved all of us, including that version of you, using a giant scythe, asked us some questions and then gave us the artifact and sent us back.”

Shiloh’s recounting of the story wasn’t nearly as hurried, but though he tried to be quick and to the point, somehow he didn’t end up any less rambling.