Hungry The banker stands up. He stretches. He says I'm getting hungry. And I won't get fed sitting here Lumpy walks to the cave exit on the right.
Luna tries very hard and concentrates...
For just a second, you can almost feel some sort of weight settling into your hand. But you get excited, and the feeling goes away as you lose concentration.
The tunnel Sterling walks down is fairly short, which is good, as there's little light down it. At the end of it though, a chamber opens up, which has similar flames as the other room, but instead of 3 large ones, it's a dozen smaller ones almost like sconces on the walls.
The round chamber has small alcoves with furs piled up. The furs look fairly fresh, rather than old and ratty.
In the center is a small green bush with dark red berries on it.
Luna sighs heavily in disappointment at her failure then goes to follow the others to the cave exit.
Another test. Please tread carefully. Lumpy examines the furs
Neri spends some time at the water, washing his face, hands and coat, anything he can reach, really, with a quick pass at a bath. Hungry was a thing, but it was better if they didn't all go down a poorly lit hallway at once, and besides. No guarantee of food. And besides. He was as tired as he was hungry. Fighting Zombies was great cardio.
Neri would find something to lean against to rest his eyes in the meantime.
Kong drinks, then follows Sterling...growling.
Lumpy runs his fingers through the fur. These are high quality pelts my friends. He laughs as he gathers up many. The banker picks a berry and pops it in his mouth. The feeling of nourishment filled him. Interesting
He gathers another berry and heads to the fountain. He tosses some fur to Neri. Here make a proper bed for yourself. And oh this will fill you up. Lumpy hands Neri a berry.
Making a place for himself, Sterling cozy's up. He falls asleep almost immediately
"We are going to sleep here, so close to those...Things?"
Luna looked to the wall that the undead were previously blocked at.
"I'll take first watch, try to make my weapon show up." Luna spoke uneasy.
Lina staggers down by the waterside. Speaking takes too much energy, so she doesn't. She half-falls, lowering her face into the pool, and takes a deep gulp of water.
She was amazed at the feeling that coursed through her. For the first time since she started pulling that gem out of the wall, she can think clearly. After a bit of marvelling at this new feeling, she joins those who went for the furs.
"I think Mr. Lumpkins has the right of it. We're obviously part of someone's game here, we should develop a strategy for getting out. I suspect playing along will simply bring us deeper into it."
Still, she popped a berry into her mouth and curled up on some furs.
"I'm up for second watch."
Harry will eat one of the berries, since he already watched the guinea pig test it.
"Don't reckon they are going to come through now if they ain't already, but I can take a watch if people think it's necessary. "
Sleep...I suppose...is goot. Wake me when you need.
Kory gathers a handfull of berries, but after gagging on the second one, he puts the rest down, then lays on some furs.
Zese berries...are strange.
Neri kept his eyes closed as he ate the berry, after taking a look at it. He assumed it was safe, after all, someone surely knew whether it was toxic or not, if they were feeding it to him.
He smiled in surprise, reminding himself to thank the hunter.
In response to Luna, Those things can heal. Probably there are other magical things to worry about as well. If we're going to have to fight something, I'd rather it be with the magical healing water at our back, than at theirs."
Paul follows, stooping low for a quick drink from the pool. "I nearly formed some force weapon myself in that last battle." Paul analyses the situation trying to form the weapon again and again.
Kong : A scyth with a skull motif. The blade is bright blood red and seems to be made of crystal. The shaft is a light dark wood that's almost black.
Harry : A heavy warhammer made of a dull green metal with a scale motif on the side. The shaft is the same dark wood that Kong's scythe is made from.
Jacob : A long strait fencing sword made of a bright yellow metal. It is perfectly balanced.
Lina : A heavy metal lance with an ornate hand guard. It has a metal handgrip for use when not on a horse.
Luna : A long bull whip made of what looks like leaves rather than leather. However, it seems harder than steel. It is very light, and the last foot of the whip has razor sharp bits of steel woven into it.
Paul : A long straight wooden rod, 5 ft in length. It's perfectly balanced around the center. The wood is heavier than one would expect, and feels slightly damp to the touch. The wood also has a slight green sheen to it.
His heart raced, the action a blur to him. Jacob watched the dead rise, weapons materialize, and defenses enacted as he stood mainly in shock. Meanwhile, he tried to make sense of the whole thing. However, hypothesis after hypothesis failed.
Trying to make this like a Halloween? Yet the weapons they had and gems dismantled that conjecture a bit. A fantasy setting? No, they all looked human.
Yet this was more than a joke. As they rested by the water, calm came over Jacob. "I don't know what the people who did this want with us. But they must want people for something! We are too different to have more in common than just being warm bodies. The rest are cold, and I hate to say it, but I don't this our capturers' motives are aimed at preventing us from turning out that way."
The night passes peacefully enough. Nothing attacks the group, and nobody wakes them up. Those that take watches have a very boring time.
They do realize there's a limit to how long they can have those weapons materialized. It varies for each person, and each person is fatigued for minutes at a time afterward.
The other exit from the pool room is a long but unbranched tunnel. As the group moves forward, a dull roaring sound gradually grows. Finally though, real light spears into the cave. Stepping out, they find the roaring sound is the most massive waterfall any of them have ever seen. A wall of water a good 200 ft across pounds down 50 ft away from the ledge the cave comes out on. The water falls from several hundred feet above, to what looks like 10 times that far below. The wind generated by the falling water tugs at their bodies as they stand in the opening of the cave entrance. Water mist coats them from head to toe, plastering hair to their bodies.
The sound of the water is deafening, rendering speech impossible. There is what looks like a ledge leading off to the right. To the left, the ledge ends, and a few hundred feet away the cleft in the rock face that the waterfall is falling into closes, so that both halves of the canyon join.
Once around the bend to the right, the ledge dries off rapidly, becoming much more sure footed. The ledge is about 20 feet across. From the ledge, you look down over what looks like a forest, several thousand feet below. From your vantage point, you can see what looks like a shimmering wall several miles away that reaches from the forest to the sky, almost like a permanent heat wave.
Below in the forest is a clearing large enough to be visible from here. There are buildings set up in a circle around a small lake in the middle of the clearing. Details are impossible to make out from here.
The ledge continues on, and seems to start down at a shallow angle before cutting back in a switch back. Anyone brave enough to look over the edge can see the ledge zig zags down the side of the mountain for as far as they can see.
This ledge is quiet enough to hear people if they speak loudly.
Neri moves along the cliff face, nonchalantly, watching the others as he goes, to ensure that they do well. Anyone that looks even remotely endangered, he takes under his wing. (Aid another if someone has shown themselves to be clumsy previously).
Neri is perfectly at home with heights, not even remotely worried about himself, looking over the edge, and then showing the group a zigzag pattern with a finger.
"On top of the world." he says, most probably to himself.
Sterling follows Neri, but is very cautious. He crawls along the ledge
Luna had spent most of her watch playing with her new whip once she had been able to summon it and noted how quickly it drained her to use, after a while she awoke Lina for the next watch then eat a berry and another drink before bed.
Luna follows after Sterling in a crawl not wanting to risk falling to her death after the escape the day before.
"Buildings? Maybe more people that ended up like us?"
If Neri can successfully hear her, now:
"I didn't get around much inside. Were there other places gems were already taken from?"
You could run the gauntlet of undead to find out
Neri just sighs, and lets the question hang in the air. Maybe someone else had a more useful response. Dang it, Chia Pet.
When the scythe first manifests, Kong almost drops it.
My gott! Fantastic...
He holds it up, turning it, and examining the crystal.
...zo...strange...
Harry is going to crawl it. He knows better than to take chances in a situation like this.
Following along...Kong growls at the ledge and walks out along it...
I sink zere were gems in all when we...arrifed.
Neri nodded his thanks to Kong. "And if they all had them, then we have to assume that either we're the first to enter and leave... or that the gems regrow to attach to new people. In which case we may wind up with Chestbursters before the show's over." He paused looking to Lina, wincing slightly, as he remembered her way of receiving the gemstone. Kind of an inverted Chestburster. He never should have watched those terrible movies.
if you think the gem inside you hasn't been fished out of corpses and added back into the reliefs countless times...I have a stock you might like to buy
I don't know wat to zink...but I doubt jour stock hass value, here.
Kong keeps his eyes up...looking at Sterling, for the moment.
See? Kong gets it.
Invigorated by the magnificent waterfall next to them, Jacob uses his rekindling of energy to focus on the dexterous task required of him. "No problem, Neri! Thanks for the pointers."
Wow. With a view like this at their disposal, what could they want with us?
His mind raced. Jacob had been good in school,but his real talent was interpersonal. Motives, ruses, and posturing were wall part of business and the politics which he involved himself in. Yet, with a sickening feeling, the word used before stuck.
Game.
People with resources like this didn't need them. There could be no common ransom, no common organ use, no common talents. What was common was their differences. A wide array for selection - like food at a buffet, or, closer he assumed, to horses at a track.
He turned to the others, looking away from the beautiful vista. He'd tried to summon his weapon yesterday, that was even different. He laid his premise bare for them.
And his conclusion: "We're being used for sport."
Jacob : A long strait fencing sword made of a bright yellow metal. It is perfectly balanced. ** spoiler omitted **
The forest below looks to be a mixture of coniferous and deciduous, with the coniferous concentrated closer to the mountain (including the lower slopes) and the deciduous farther away from the mountain.
Lumpy looks back at Jacob, He gives a noncomittal shrug. We could speculate any scenerio at this point. It did seems odd to Sterling that the gem did not try and communicate with his subconscious while he slept. That vexed the banker.
Kong is a decent climber...so he starts looking for a way down...slowly scanning the mountainside...
Ve need to get down...this zig-zag...will take many hours.
This she could do, at least. Ledges were cakewalk.
"My question, is why everyone is assuming malicious intent? Aside from the zombies. And the burning alive. And the buzz-saw..."
Neri pursed his lips. "Right. Anyway. They fed us, gave us a place to sleep, and mended our wounds. And gave us nifty weapons to defend ourselves with. Certainly, we had to jump through hoops to survive, but we had to do that back home, too, I'm sure. I bet a lot of you guys actually went to high school, maybe even college, in order to fit a specific role, probably not even really chosen by you? How is this any different?"
"From where I stand right now, I don't see any bars to this cage. I see a whole lot of open land I can live on. No doubt something weird happened, and likely someone arranged it. Maybe there are strings attached, but I think we can get clear of all this and do what we want. "
It becomes apparent that the group had exited the cave in the early morning. The sun rose steadily on the horizon, slowly arcing over as it steadily moved toward them.
As they zig and zag down the mountain, the day goes by slowly. By the time it is getting dark, they have made it half-way down the mountain. There is no food this time, although they do pass regular small grottoes designed for camping out.
A cold camp that night, and a hungry one, no food on the stone mountain. The next day, the group makes the forest. But the coniferous trees offer nothing in the way of food. It does however, offer some oddities.
Harry is notices three deer standing in a small clearing off to one side, a buck and two does. If he had a rifle, he could take them down for food. But then as he's about to point them out, the buck raises it's head from what it was doing. A long strip of furred meat hangs from it's mouth, it's muzzle bloody. The buck slowly chews as it watches for danger. The two does keep their muzzles buried in something gray and red that might once have been a wolf.
"Ok, people, there is something seriously wrong with this place. You might want to keep those weapon things close to mind. I just saw a coupla deer eating what looked like the remains of a wolf. This ain't Kansas no more Dorothy. "
knowing he can summon a hammer, he spends some concentration on trying to pop out a Remington 700 in .308 for a bit, but that goes nowhere.
Can you think of any reason we chould not eat the deer? I'm hungry...
Kong readies his chain...
"While it might look like deer, the completely different diet doesn't exactly scream deer to me. Then again you can eat predators too, so you're welcome to try and down them for the meat. I prefer to get game at a range, but you're welcome to try up close. Just fair warning, antlers aren't put on a deer so they look pretty on my wall. "
"Well, the officer has a gun, right? Maybe she has some ammo left, and doesn't mind feeding us?" Neri suggested, showing that he was certainly not a hunter.
"Alternately, we can't be too far from the town. At this point, I'm expecting all the houses to be made of gingerbread, anyway."
"Yeah, I assume she's still got that, but it's a SIG P226, and those use 9mm. That's a pretty marginal round for large game, and again you have to get in close. Heck, I'd feel better using a bow. She's welcome to try, but I'd be sparing with that ammo since I don't think this little town is gonna have a Cabella's with a nice ammo selection. "
Vat little town?
Kong raises an eyebrow.
"I'm guessing the buildings we saw in a clearing from back up on the ledge were a town. Of course they could be abandoned for all we know. "
...I zuppose ze real question is...are we sure ve are headed toward it. Cities, I know. Woods...not so much so.
Kong starts moving toward the deer...slowly...
As Kong starts to move toward the deer, the buck sees him, and steps between him and the carcass. The deer's ears fold back, and as it drops the scrap of meat it was chewing on, it bares it's teeth, showing a mouth full of razor sharp fangs.
The two does also move to flank the buck, their ears pinned back, and more fangs on display. The buck makes a coughing type cry and lowers it's head even further, razor sharp antlers pointing at Kong and company.
Perhaps we can scare them away from whatever they're eating without having to full on fight them.
"Yeah, Harry's right, cop gun. Don't think it'd do much more than annoy it."
Still, she drew it as the deer started to bare it's fangs.