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"It's mostly gonna be talking to my fellow Doomies and sneaking around where they probably don't want me. Those don't seem like your kind of thing, Nik."
Rinika ponders for a moment and suddenly her eyes go wide. "Baraxx, you might be on to something there. Maybe something that can help us both out. I gotta do some research."
Rinika looks at Baraxx and pokes herself in the chest with a thumb. "He outranks me. By a lot. And yeah, the Armory is probably one of the most dangerous places to attack in all of Sigil. Everyone is armed, everyone can fight, and everyone knows that their time is going to going to come sooner or later so they won't much fret over their own lives. We'd need an army to fight everyone." She scratches her hair thoughtfully. Her tone seems to indicate that she's more worried about the chances of being killed than she is about killing a bunch of her fellow Doomguard.
A dark look passes over Rinika's face as she looks to Baraxx. "You ever thought about going back to those pits and killing the ones who threw you Hole?" She takes a sip and gnaws on the fescue. Her next words come out as barely a whisper. "I know where to find Schrodinger. He's a high ranking Doomguard. I nearly saw him once, before he disappeared. I'm getting close, so close I can feel it sometimes." She balls one paw into a strained fist, and her Spot floods into it, showing dessicated muscles tensing. "And when I get to him..." She trails off, leaving her vengeance to the imagination.
Rinika accepts a few sprigs of the fescue and absentmindedly chews on it. As soon as her drinks arrive, she downs the whiskey in two gulps and then frowns quizzically at the cider before shrugging and taking an exploratory sip. She grimaces but continues to sip. "Ew, too sweet. Okay. So you wanna know about the Box. Well, I can't really tell you the why, or the how, but I can tell you the what." She takes a drink and sighs, but doesn't continue until she scans the bar for any Doomguard agents. Then she begins her story in a conspirationally low voice. "When I was still pretty small, I was abducted from the village I lived in. I barely remember it now. And when I woke up, I was in a box. It wasn't much bigger than a coffin. Pitch black inside. And every now and then, it was filled with..pain. Hurt. That same feeling that we all felt, or at least I felt, in that temple in the negative energy plane. It started slow, and short, but eventually it would last days, maybe weeks. It was really hard to tell. I had no way of keeping track of time, but I'm sure I was in there for years. Eventually I found that I was able to see in there, not that there was much to see. The weird negative field stopped hurting so much. And this," She motioned to her Spot, which she concentrated for a moment to keep on her cheek, "appeared after what must have been the longest, strongest exposure to the field yet. It started small, but it grew." "I didn't have any company while I was in there, but I could hear what was going on outside. Lots of magical research, most of it was far beyond my understanding but I started to pick things up. While there were a number of different voices over the years, one was almost omnipresent. The others referred to him as Schrodinger. I never did see him but I would recognize the voice anywhere." "I went through a lot in there. Fearing for my life, lamenting my old life, raging against the injustice of it all, accepting my fate. Eventually, after I found myself able to see, after everything that I'd learned about planar magic, negative energy, and the mystical bonds that linked them, I started to push the limits of the Box. After months of working, I managed to get a panel open. It didn't give me a way out, but it got me to some of the mechanisms that bombarded me. I started tinkering. I thought I'd figured out how they worked. Eventually I was able to supercharge one of the emitters, which I thought would..." She gulps down more cider and scowls. "Well, it surprised me. The next time the field fired up, something resonated and it tore open a gate. I popped out into Sigil, and had...a lot to learn. I met Jek not long after." She shoots Jek a tight smile, and looks around for any reactions or questions.
Rinika begins to order when her Spot zooms across her face. "An aCIDER ANd a pot of whatever stewing." She frowns, considering the conversation to come. "And a whiskey."
"My friend we are quite satiated as we have just killed more rats than our bellies have room for. Bur for a mere 5 gold pieces, I'd be more than happy to tell you where you can find a whole cartload of fresh rat corpses, still warm!"
Rinika stares at the Migrus locker for a moment, and its not quite clear if she heard the conversation. A shiver cascades across her fur and she looks to between Nik and Baraxx. "Lets grab some food and find a place to sit and drink. Where all of us can sit and drink. And I'll...I'll tell you about the Box." She'll steer everyone to a place far, far outside of Doomer territory for this conversation.
Rinika is quite impressed watching the display of carnage, but she turns her nose up again at the mention of eating the results. "If you must have streetmeat, there's a decent stand about 3 blocks over. These are too...gooey." She walks over to Jek and holds his shield up to him as she continues to list other nearby streetmeat vendors along with speculation about what their meats might actually be. She absent-mindedly pokes Jek with the edge of the shield until he eventually gets better and takes it.
Rinika casts a spell and the shadows surrounding her take on a gnawing hunger. Vampiric Shadow Shield. Her eyes roll back in her head for half a second as her spot begins to channel power directly from the negative energy plane, sending it careening across her with renewed Vigor.
Then she moves up to the rats.
Rinika casts Aura of Doom and wiggles her bum in anticipation, crouched and ready to pounce with a feral smile across her face.
Rinika glances over at Baraxx. "I don't suggest trying them." Then she crouches down and wiggles her butt a little bit in anticipation of hunting some rats.
Rinika leans against a wall, idly picking at her teeth with a claw and trying not to brood over the possibilities of a mysterious box discarded in a Sigil trash heap. As one of Baraxx's tail-propelled pebbles whizzes by her, her own tail darts out and whacks it back in Baraxx's direction. The motion startles her, and she looks down to see that her spot has taken residence in the tail and returned the pebble on its own accord. She chuckles nervously, but curiosity gets the better of her and she lets the game continue, watching out of the corner of her eye as it goes on.
Rinika pouts and growls out, "I'm mostly annoyed about that too." Looking up at Jek, she accepts the food and gives him a week smile. "Thanks, though." Then she digs in her pockets and pulls out her, old, worn, annotated guide to Sigil and looks for a place nearby more to her and Baraxx's liking.
Rinika croaks, "My fortune for a salmon." She will attempt to lead to the closest tavern, and will try to get someone else to carry her in her exhaustion.
"Yeah, I have some errands to run and things to catch up on too. I think it's this way? And uh...Nik, can't you find something already dead for that?"
"Uhm, Baraxx, you can...Savi, you can drop my tail now. Please. I don't think we need the circle anymore. We can walk back from here."
Rinika looks off wistfully. "Damn right he is."
Rinika looks on a bit bleakly as her eyes refocus on the present. "I think it's...it's done. Whatever it was, it was trying to get to us, like some enormous version of those undead that nearly took over Crux. But as soon as the relics were gone, it turned to stone and then just...dust." She looks around a bit then cracks a smile. "Which is just the way of things, I suppose."
Rinika's hair stands on end and her tail stands up and she lightly hisses at the spying. She quickly tosses the scepter at the headband.
If possession/domination:
Rinika picks up the scepter. Then she'll move back to the group.
Rinika eyes Baraxx, considers how much she trusts him with unimaginable power, and walks over to grab the staff herself, but she stops short. "Maybe let's check for traps first."
Rinika blinks in surprise. "Nice job, Jek! I knew you could do it." She looks at the scepter and then over at Nik. "Hey, can I try tossing the headband at it? I don't know that we want anyone to be touching it when...well, when it happens."
Rinika starts to sift through the bones for anything about 10 feet long and relatively straight. "Jek, I bet you could bring it down with a bone lance and one good charge. Think you could build up enough speed here?"
Rinika notices Nik staring at Nansi and looks between them suspiciously. "I think I can slip in through the shadows. What was that look about?"
Rinika picks at her teeth with a claw. "You do happen to live in the multiverse, so...maybe try to help us help you to save your home."
"Might as well follow then."
Rinika yowls the whole way through and comes out shaking, muttering about "the box," but she calms down a bit once back out into the caves. "I don’t wanna do that again."
Rinika looks at Nik as her belly starts growling. "I hope she didn't say 'don't feed them.'" She thinks back. "No, just said to tell them where we want to go, and they'll get us there. So...we wait, I guess?"
"Yeah, give 'em the food if they can help us out." She looks up at the big blobby one. "You will help us out, right?"
Rinika slinks over to one of the tables near the combative patrons and sits on top of it, just looking at them curiously.
Rinika glares at the enemy caster with his chanting and his fruit tarts and tries to play a joke on him of her own design. As she raises her claws up with paws outspread, from the shadows on the floors and furniture between them arise strands of shadowstuff, loose at first but quickly growing taut between her claws and the limbs of the spellcaster. She whispers, "Dance" as the strands pull taut and she begins to waggle her fingers like she's controlling a marionette. After a short dance, she throws her arms to the left to pull him off balance, and it becomes clear that the strands are attached not to the man but to the spooky skeleton hiding inside of him. As Rinika gestures, the skeleton violently attempts to remove itself from his body.
Rinika casts Prayer to help offset what the droning guy is doing.
Rinika shakes her head. "In these caverns, there's no way we'd find our way back to this circus, and this is our ticket to where we need to go." She turns to Antha. "I can get you to the Outlands. I might be able to get you close to Fortitude but I can't promise anything. Thanks for the chant. I'll send you as soon as you're ready." Rinika nudges Jek in the ribs and waggles her eyebrows at him as she nods toward the Bariaur.
Rinika scratches behind her own ear. "I can send you where you want to go. Or near enough to it. Do you know? Or can I make a suggestion?"
Rinika brings up her shadow armor and wings, turns invisible, and floats off after Antha to make sure she gets an opportunity to slink off.
Rinika addresses Pirreg. "My dear friend, we don't wish to intrude into your personal business but I think you'll find that we can help each other in our endeavors. We have the answers to your problems, and all we ask in return is a little help in getting to where we need to go."
"I.." Rinika looks mildly annoyed at the interruption, but shrugs after scraping at the bottom of the popcorn barrel. "Yeah I can go ask around." She casts Enhance Diplomacy and starts asking around about how to get to other layers of pandemonium, or at least how to get to cjvilation, starting with the security.
Rinika eyes the circus with some incredulity, but she follows along with the group. As they're directed to their seats, she starts looking around for ways to recoup her losses. Bugbears, gnolls...they might be tough, but they shouldn't pose too much of a..."Is she swinging from his teeth?! That's amazing! Jek, hand me that popcorn."
"Maybe the people in town know a way home?" Nik suggests. "THERE BETTER BE A TOWN" Let's try to move on.
Rinika eventually wakes up, entirely on the wrong side of the plane. She glowers around at the group. "I hate this place and I hate this wind. We need to leave."
Trying for a third spell, Rinika...
loses a third spell.
Rinika takes advantage of the Escape Route to move away from the enormous doggie, then she attempts to strip the beast of its defensive spell...
...but again, she just ends up howling into the wind.
Rinika attempts to cast a spell, trying to keep her actions guarded from the massive monster...
Rinika looks at the lady, gulps, and then smiles her most disarming smile. She thinks really hard, "My, what big claws you have madam! Thank you so much for the offer to help but I think we're good, we're getting along okay."
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