Welcome to Gaia! ::

Babylon gaped at the hologram - that definitely was not what he'd expected the panic button to do, but he could work with this. "You're Raziele," he said, recognizing the woman from the vision he'd had in his own wonder's crypt. "Or - you're modeled after her." He doubted that in all its infinite knowledge, Mercury had the ability to preserve souls in machines like flies in amber. There was no ancestral guide at Mistral - its knight was reincarnated.

He walked over to pillar and circled it, his eyes drawn to the palm-print on its top. When they first realized Mistral was booby-trapped, they'd talked about finding the security node and keying people in. This looked to be it, and if it was - no one else would have to die. "Is this the security system?" he asked the hologram. "Is this like the badge we found a few weeks ago?"

Slipping off one of his gloves, he stepped a little closer to the handprint. "How does it work?" he asked, holding his hand over it. "Is it genetically coded?" That would explain needing blood. "What do you mean, dregs? Does the system need more power?"

He glanced behind him to the burnt-out device they'd just come through, the one that had claimed Cove. That seemed to have taken out the last of the power. But - he had magic to spare. "What kind of power? Electricity? Or magic?"

Babylon hissed and drew his hand back, rubbing his palm. "Is that it?" he asked the hologram. "Am I keyed in now? Is this what will keep the traps from attacking us?"

If only, he thought piteously, they'd come to this room first! But thinking that would not bring Cove and Degrasse back, and none of them had power over time. The dead would have to stay dead. Noble sacrifice and all that. Not that thinking that made him feel any better. He'd lead Cove in here. He'd charged ahead through the crackling arch. He'd lead Cove to his death, and it could have been any of them. He could have killed himself with his recklessness, or Niflhel, or Hvergelmir, or--

It didn't matter that some of them were his friends and some of them were near strangers, Babylon decided. They were all worth the same. "I think this is the thing!" he called. "This is how we give ourselves security clearance." He looked to Hvergelmir, crumpled on the floor, Niflhel's arms wrapped around her. "Niflhel, can you bring her over here? We've got to get everyone keyed in."

Niflhel looked back towards babylon and looked around the room. "We can. . . " He said before taking off his hat and throwing it through to see if anything would happen - if the machine was still active his hat had metal on it.

"The metal on my hat should help us know if it's active or not." He added before looking at the Hologram and talking loud enough where it could hear him. "If we add blood to power this 'security system' will it still attack us?"

TW/CW: Reaction to character death!

Mimisbrunnr followed the group into the next room, and made an audible noise of relief after Babylon passed between the pillars and seemed to receive no more than a mild shock, and then two others did, too. That wouldn't be too bad - as she'd discovered, she was pretty well insulated, so she was well and ready to go through after Cove and Hver and Nif.

Until the trap actually activated, and suddenly, all that was left of Cove was a hand.

"No," Mimisbrunnr said, her voice cracking in panic. No, it couldn't be true - he'd just been comforting her, he couldn't be dead too! She stared, frozen, at the strange hologram, distantly listening to it describe security systems and clearance.

When the power flickered again, she shook herself loose, and walked forward. Whatever had killed Cove, at least, had been quick and painless - one moment he was alive, the next, gone. She could handle that, if it activated again when she walked through despite it not reacting to Niflhel's hat.

"Babylon," she said, and there was something frighteningly determined in her voice, "if this thing reactivates and kills me, I want you to find my girlfriend and tell her I love her. Her name is Marie Colton."

And then she walked between the pillars.

Babylon sighed and marched across the room. He waved an arm back and forth between the coils, demonstrating exactly how dead they were. "Power's out on these things, and I don't think it's coming back on," he said, waiting for Niflhel to rise and bring Hvergelmir with him. "Look," he sighed, crouching in front of of Hvergelmir and putting a bracing hand on her shoulders. He'd positioned himself squarely in the wall of light's path, to make a point.

"Right now, our best bet is to key ourselves into that system," explained Babylon. "The Labyrinth's security is programmed--"

The lights went out, and then came back on. Babylon glanced to the coils on either side of him. Still inert. He sighed. "The Labyrinth's security is programmed to ignore people who are meant to be here," he explained to Niflhel and Hvergelmir, working of as good an understanding he had. "And right now, inputting ourselves to the system is the best chance we have for getting out through here without any more trouble."

He turned, watched Mimisbrunnr pass unimpeded through the coils, and called, "Tell her yourself!"

"Okay," he said, turning back to Niflhel and Hvergelmir. "You ready to go?"

Hvergelmir looked at Babylon, crouching between the coils that framed the Wall of Light to prove their safety. (He was so brave, he was always so brave.) She looked at Niflhel, who was showing her concern out of the goodness of his heart, for no other reason than because they'd one shared an experience neither of them could remember. Because any reason was enough of a reason to reach out to another person in the midst of tragedy. People were counting on her to pull herself together.

And then Mimisbrunnr had done it, too -- and she hadn't put her blood in the system yet, it wasn't like it was just ignoring her. The device seemed well and truly off, things seemed momentarily safe. You can't stay here forever, she thought. She looked at the coils again and nodded.

"Okay," she said, without smiling, and got to her feet.

It wasn't easy, walking through the coils where Cove had been incinerated. His hand, wrapped in cloth and cradled in one arm, felt like a bad luck talisman, trying to defy fate by walking it past the coils that had tried so hard to bar his passage -- but she didn't want to leave it behind. Hvergelmir curled her free hand into a fist and tucked both arms close against her stomach, shoulders drawn up tensely. With her eyes squeezed tightly closed, and hunched over like she was walking against a strong, cold wind, she forced herself across the invisible line of the Wall of Light and to the other side.

When it was done, she let out a long breath of relief. Only after she'd settled her nerves again (as much as they could be settled in a situation like this) did she finally open her eyes.

One of her hands was bleeding slightly. She looked down -- there, beneath the newly scarred, pink skin tissue of the Cosmos star on her palm, were four matching crescent moon cuts, not deep, where she'd dug her fingernails hard enough into the heel of her hand to draw blood.

Hvergelmir stepped forward and pressed her hand -- the one with the Cosmos star, the one that had held Cove's -- to the panel.