With his leader now dead Shork now took tried to wrestle the
focus off from Danton. Although small in stature his voice was booming, a trait
Eryn found admirable. No sooner had the change of power had occurred that the
tribe slowly regained their hunger. Shork panicked, noticing his village was
about to eat their heroes. He leapt off from the table in front of the fire and
beckoned the group to leave as with him as quickly as they could. With the
group gaining distance on the encampment, the denizens had to resort to a less
fresh meal. A distinct smell of roasting fat and burning hair wafted over the
barren sphere, Shork smiled, realising his tribe would still yet eat.
He showed them to a hexagonal hole in the ground at a rough
slant to the ground. Within was a black membrane about three inches thick, that
reflected light and dust. He forced himself through it as was barely visible
from the other side. He was however again curling his finger and waving his
hand drawing them towards him. They all went through one by one, the membrane
was slimy and warm but left no residue. The air on the other side rushed past
them at a constant rate. It echoed and howled through what seemed like to Eryn
a honeycomb metal structure.
Shork told them of a room beyond the maze, although the maze
itself was a death trap. The room was vast and cavernous, filled with lights
that would transport you to other places. He rubbed his belly and pinched as
his flesh, showing the fact he ate other animals or plants, rather than the inhabitants
of No Hope and its enemies. With that he disappeared off in front as if to lead
the group, but disappeared into the gloom of the next room. Although both Eryn
and Danton could see in this low light, it was elected that Jarvi would go
first as he would be able to sense more than they could see. After their
initial assumption was proved right, with Jarvi identifying a canister of gas
which Xera held onto. The first few turns lead them down more corridors of
honeycomb rooms with the constantly airflow buffeting them. But Jarvi lead them
through webs of steel spiders, through flooding rooms and freezing rooms.
Each however had the same covering of blood and bodies from
past people who tried to run the maze to find food. They encountered soon after
the room that had shortened Danton by half, turned Jarvi's hooves purple,
growing bony ridges on Xera's arms and webbing Eryn's hands, uniform trails of
blood and clean metal, as if remnants had been cleaned, or at least attempted
to be cleaned. Eryn pointed the group towards that direction and they, somewhat
half expectantly encounter something, a construct of cleaning utensils. Some
were some sharp, others broad and heavy, but all was encrusted on a toxic layer
of diseased and decaying flesh that it had swept up from the maze. It was
dispatched as quick as the spiders and the way head of them, although back from
the construct, had been cleaned to the exit.
The room on the other side was around three stories tall,
holding a large turbine in the centre generating the wind. The room they had
exited from was part of a wall of on honeycomb rooms, each venting the airflow.
Danton spotted near the exit two corpses. He slowly approached, not wanting to
wake them if they were sleeping, or the creature if it wasn't human. The bodies
were, after a prod, dead. The women were exactly alike, twins. They were
dressed as if suited to be in the royal court but each had green stains in
their dresses. Eryn immediately took a step backwards, if there was any reason
to refuse coming down into the mines, this would have been Eryn's reason. He
explained the situation of the Neave constructs to Danton and told him to keep
as much of a distance as possible between them and him, in case they were
reactivated.
The corridor beyond split into two directions, one down a trapezoidal
corridor into more darkness, or to the left, down an octagonal shaft. Eryn
again took charge and opted for the group to travel down the shaft. Jarvi was
put first, because he opted to, and refused help otherwise. Eryn took the last
position on the decent. Behind him were wires and cords that dangled into the
shaft and onto a warped metal floor below. The glowglobe from below illuminated
the ceiling above the shaft, a cracked mirror. In the corner he could see a
bloody figure slithering over the glass and cutting itself on the fractures. It
bled through and poured onto the cables, dripping down and recoating the
already sticky surfaces.
How Eryn entered the next room he does not recall. He
however was the first into the next room, and like Shork had told them was a
room full of lights, and with Danton's brief and stupid head first
investigation into them, revealed a volcanic landscape far removed from
Thaemor's. In the centre was a gigantic octagonal pillar
that stopped in the centre of the room. With investigation and an hands-on
approach by Xera, he discovered that the room functioned as a way to lock onto
a planet to allow for something called a transdimentional
gramatrix shift. Eryn recalled he had heard that phrase before from Valma
who he summoned.
She replied in her now sarcastic tones a begrudging
acceptance to help. She was able to interface with the consol that Xera had
used and alerted the group to the Chief Scientist in the main reactor. Eryn and
Xera asked Valma for directions and it showed them down to a set of stairs
underneath the pillar through wedged doors. Danton could only watch on the
lights danced from the portals danced in his eyes. He laid himself down on the
dark metal floor and admired its slightly blue reflective quality, losing all
sense of where he was. Jarvi called out to the group, trying to figure out
where they all gone and was directed by his hawk towards the staircase by a
series of squawks and body bobbing on his shoulder.
Bellow the three found a room of large onyx cubes of varying
sizes, suspending by multiple tubes through them from the ceiling to the floor.
Eryn recognised the material, the same from the Obsidian Spire in the centre of
Auspar, even down to the golden veins beneath its polished surface. Jarvi could
feel an energy in the room and lashed out at the cubes, slashing at the supports.
They leaked a black ooze and soon poured out of every crevice of the cubes, the
pipes and wires. It soon took a shambling form of a four legged creature
spanning the full height of the room at around thirty feet high. It lashed out at the group in tendrils with
globs at the end, smashing down with force on its victims and crushing rock
with it missed. It became quickly apparent that physical damage would not work
on it.
Eryn had managed with a fireball to set the creature alight
and had the idea to summon his hand to punch into the ooze, if would still keep
lit, and continuously burn the monster.
His
hand survived the insertion but the burning was not enough, it was slowly pounding
on the group to death with each blow. Xera used Shatter stone to attempt to
convert the goo into something more solid. It worked like a charm, and even
allowed Danton, who had glowing eyes, a few pot shots at the broader sides.
Eryn remembered a shell from a similar location under the city. He brought it
out and as nimbly as he could ran it across the join between the now solid
parts of the creature and the floor. It bonded the two materials together with
a concrete like substance, pinning it to the ground. The more Xera converted,
the more Eryn could pin down, and then all them could attack.
This combination proved deadly to the creature, as it
bubbled and sloshed to death as it slowly lost viscosity and disappeared into
the metal floor. The goo however left behind a crystal disk, which, to the
groups surprise, Valma identified as the Chief Science officer. They returned
back to the console room, although more cautiously up the ladder after Eryn's
warnings of what the creature could be, although did not mention Melch by name.
The portal room was large and echoing with the sound of the portals fading in
and out and more random and rapid speeds. Jarvi had been at the back of the
group at the time and he missed the report by Valma of an engine failure and imminent
destruction. He carried on forwards as they turned to walk up towards the pillar and on to a portal. Eryn asked if
Valma could do anything to save them, and it, reluctantly, placed the crystal
disk onto the control panel. It quickly reported that dimension would collapse
but with access codes provided by the crystal disk, the entire structure, would
re-materialise under Thaemor leading from the Feldspar Maw.
Jarvi had only heard whispers
carried from the pillar, that of destruction and dimensions collapsing.
He remembered Danton mentioning what he had seen through one of them and dived
through as the dimension around the rest collapsed. Features of their surroundings
blurred into shapes, shapes turned to colour, colour to greyscale and grayscale
to black. The remaining three found their way slowly out but not through the
Maw. They approached it from the side with Jarvan hunched over it with a
lantern. Danton took this opportunity to sneak up on his butler and to comment
on the fact that Danton had been down there a very long time. Jarvan replied as
though speaking to his master, commenting it had been almost of day and a half
he had been missing, while still looking down, not acknowledging who he was
talking to. It took a moment or two for Danton's voice to sink in before Jarvan
recognised it and sighed to himself, although pleased that Danton was safe. He
said no more to Danton but took out his notebook and proceeded to write, Danton
worried that there was list of 'social transgressions' that his butler had been
keeping score on.
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