Welcome to Gaia! ::

Several days of nothing changing; dense magical fog and a monster that terrorized them at night when the sun went down. A few people had gone missing but with their limited resources there wasn’t much any of them could do to try and find those who were taken.

As of yet nobody had really stepped up to be a leader, to assign tasks to individuals or groups for patrolling. Everyone was simply doing their own things with their own factions, which was fine, she supposed, but it wasn’t really getting then anywhere.

While a group of people messed around playing King of the Hill or whatever that game was called… Sidouer picked herself a few apples, stowed several in her subspace pocket as a snack for later, then set out into the woods again with the hope of finding another piece of metal with a rune like symbol. Perhaps if she could find a few more they could be pieced together like a puzzle and might offer some answers about this place; or even better… a way out.

Her wandering eventually led her to a Pluto Squire reaching up to pull something off a tree. “Hey,” she called out to him from about ten feet away. “Find something interesting?”

Sidouer walked over and took from him the talisman. She turned it over in her hand several times yet none of the markings looked vaguely familiar.

“No, sorry. This is the first time I’ve seen something like this” She replied then handed it back to him. “The closest thing I’ve found that’s similar is this,” Sidouer opened her subspace pocket and pulled from it the piece of metal with cuts carved or cut into it.

“I don’t suppose you may have found a similar piece? I’m thinking if I can find more like it we might be able to piece whatever this once was back together and learn something about this place.”

“It was at the base of some fallen tree.” In this forest there were no real landmarks to go by; no boulder out of place that you couldn’t just find again somewhere else, no waterfall or creek, no abnormally large tree they could use as a guiding point to start drawing out a map. “I was going to rest for a bit and ended up leaning against it, some moss had grown over the top of it.” Jabbed her pretty good in the thigh but at least her skirt covered any cut or scrap she may have received.

“What about you? Were the ones you found in the same general vicinity or more spread out?” It could just be that she found hers after he had already collected his, which might mean that her piece might go with his.

“Hmm,” that was a concerning thought to consider, that the marks he left were being erased. Was something out here following him? Or, was it perhaps one of the people brought here from Destiny City thinking that it would be funny to pull some sort of stupid prank and sabatoge his efforts in making sense of this place? Either way it made her consider setting a trap to see who was behind it.

“Sidouer,” she replied then took his offered hand by way of a formal greeting. His grip was firm but given how he presented himself she wasn’t entirely surprised by it; more business-like rather than a friendly handshake, not that she minded since she herself wasn’t exactly eager to fool around and have fun like the fools dancing back at the village.

“I have no idea how we got here. But I think whatever it is that’s been trying to break into the homes or kidnapping wayward wanderers, whatever that beast-thing is… it might be a key.” It’s like this place was littered with hints but nobody had an idea on how to decode any of it. Scrap pieces of metal with runes, talismans, an empty village where the only living thing was some non-youma creature that was trying to pull them out of the town… or kill them… honestly she had no idea what happened to anyone that was taken.

“Honestly, I’m half tempted to try to set a trap to catch it.” She wasn’t exactly sure how best to go about it since this place was obviously its home and she couldn’t sense where it was at. Hell, it could be watching the two of them right now and both of them would be none the wiser.

“I haven’t seen it, no. But the ******** kept me up all night the first day I was here. It kept trying to claw its way into the house I was in. Thankfully the doors and windows held but I was worried the walls were going to collapse.” Certain that the latches wouldn’t hold, her and Verda had moved furniture in front of the doors which may have helped some but she suspected that the creature-like-beast was probably too large to fit through the window which might explain why it didn’t seem to bother with trying.

“We could probably find a shovel, or something similar to use, back in the village and could dig a hole. You mentioned that you thought your markings were being covered. We might be able to use something like that as a lure.” At the very least even if it was able to escape there should, in theory, be some evidence of it falling in. Otherwise one of their reluctant compatriots back in the village might find themselves in a world of hurt for trying to interfere with their attempts to get out of this place.

“Close to seven and a half years now.” Perhaps it was a bit childish to include the ‘half’ but at this point it felt more like a lifetime. “You’d think by now I’d be an eternal but the cards didn’t exactly fall in the right places for that to happen.” Yes she was a bit salty about it; seeing people who awakened around the time she did and yet for one reason or another no mauvian had approached her to tell her she was finally ready to become eternal. Not even Arthur had hinted at it and there didn’t appear to be any sort of set rules or guidelines on what she needed to do to get there.

“I’d like to say that this is uncommon but if it isn’t Destiny City being invaded by alien races creating dopplegangers of everyone, or being pulled into the Negaverse to find some code, then we’re the ones being yanked off to who knows where like last year.” She shook her head, clearly exasperated by the whole thing.

Confusion and Chaos was the way of the game and all they were, were pawns.

Sidouer followed behind him, keeping pace easily enough while being careful not to slip on damp moss in these stupid heeled boots.

“I primarily just hunt youma. The monsters that go bump in the night that are responsible for several of the ‘animal attacks’ we see on the news. Most of the ones I’ve encountered have been feral beasts, incapable of speech. However, there are some with a higher intelligence.” There was one, if not two, here in the village. She had spotted them when she left the house this morning, one had blue horns and scales and the other had large wolf-like ears and paws. Strange thing about them was that they wore outfits similar to other agents.

Something she’d have to look in later, discreetly of course…

“What about you?” She turned the questions on him since he was at least of a similar strength as she was, clearly he was powering up with some frequency.