Scene Listing

||

Scene Schedule

||

Scene Schedule RSS

Owner	Pose
Priscilla	For once, things are how people left them in the Painted World. That in of itself is a testament to the growing finality of the decisions those who meddle with it now face, and of the seeming permanence of the mountain of dark scars that had piled upon it in all the years they had barely witnessed. After such a length of time, Enark's colossal rainstorm has, of course, petered out, or else simply been swallowed. Though the superficial signs of shallow, environmental restoration can be seen here and there, they are the only heartening sight. There is precious little that can be done to alleviate the unsettling aura that lays thick over this surreal pseudo-space of stagnant cold, off-coloured light, tingling blasphemous remnants, and ancient murders and suicides.     At the very least, the unwholesome and incomprehensible things that had crawled from the dark last time are nowhere to be seen, likely drawn back into the crushing oblivion that surrounds the mountain like a silent lake. No lasting battle damage appears to have stuck either, despite the employ of firebombs, ice magic, and plasma missiles. No scorches or craters seem to remain by now, or they are at least too small to be visible, demonstrating a heavy self-correcting ability of the Painting, and thus the extensiveness of the events that must have lead to its permanent corrosion.     The things that have stuck are few. Doors previously opened are shut again, and tools removed from the workshop have somehow found their way back to !Andre's table. At least, the statue remains in the position it was configured to, and the iron gates it had warded remain open, though the hideously misshapen corpses, previously obliterated, seem to have reappeared at its feet, spat back out by the Bonfire with no other place to go. The odder thing that has stayed the same is that the anti-gravity batteries the Flotilla had set up by the cliff last time still seem to be running green, according to their initial scans. Whatever those 'things' were last time, they either had no desire, or no ability, to destroy them.
Reiji Arisu	In some way, it's perhaps expected that the Painted World seems to have snapped back in the way that it did. The lingering aftereffects of Enark's storm are at least... heartening. A sign, perhaps, that this place may yet still be redeemed. Or maybe that's a false hope? They'll find out soon. Reiji makes his way into the Painted World wearing a quiet, thoughtful expression. Isn't it strange? That the damage has been restored, but those lingering effects of Enark's magic still remain. The door remains unsealed. So then, something within the Painted World still wishes to be that warm, peaceful place it was meant to be, so many years ago. A pointless, naive dream? Perhaps. Perhaps not. "Priscilla," Reiji calls, knowing all too well that this place's mistress must be here, somewhere. "Lead on. We'll do whatever it is we can." After all, she's the one who knows where they must go.
Xiaomu	Xiaomu seems a little less comfortable venturing back into the Painted World than she was last time; unless Enark's purifying rain actually purged some of the death - or undeath - that was lingering around before, the preponderance of everything 'snapping back' means that's going to be a threat again ... Unless, of course, taking advantage of remembering what happened the LAST time through here means that they can avoid provoking the ghosts into rising up and trying to bury the living again. Still, the statue seems to have stayed in its rotated position, so the sage fox breathes juuuuust a little easier for seeing that. She's *still* packing her handguns and some Shinra Special grenades, though. And she has Suiren as usual, the sword hidden inside her staff like always. She's taking some pains to stay alert and aware of everything around herself and Reiji, in any case, even as she lets her partner take the lead and do the talking.
Kushiko	Time and time again, they've returned. This time felt a bit different, somewhat more... somber? At least when it came to how it went for the Tenno. She was extremely mute--even more than normal. The sense of being 'hollow' somewhat radiated from her, and it was a feeling that seemed to bother her companion, a massive-looking hound that'd be at home being a horse for a halfling elsewhere. She made a slight whine, it's batlike snout flaring lightly as Kushiko herself progressed. She piloted Valkyr--or more appropriately, the voice inside her wouldn't allow anyone else /but/ the berserker Warframe to be the one who was here. They would not brook the risk of something that should not be happening again. Not that many people here truly knew that her presence, her being /stabbed/ was not something that should've happened--though, hell, maybe people were just multiversally jaded against the absurd happening. It didn't matter. Nonetheless, she took in the terrain up top; being down in underneath the statue, plus getting stabbed in the heart meant she had not had much of a chance to actually /see/ what went on up there before she went down. In both ways. There would be a slight nod given in Reiji's direction when the opportunity presented itself, but for the most part, she was tacit and waiting for both direction as to what she could do--or more appropriately, waiting for a threat. Didn't help that her thoughts were still in a darker place than most.
Captain Flint	At first, Flint made his mission here a personal favor to Priscilla. Pursuing that mission has cost him the support of his crew, but he's continued. First, because he realized Priscilla's hardships were strikingly similar to his own. At the whim of the powerful elite of her world, everything was taken from her, ruinous elements introduced to her world like trash carelessly thrown into a pristine river. He empathized with that. He'd had nearly everything taken from him by the powerful elite of his world.      Upon his last visit, some unknown force threatened him--threatened to take the last good part of his life away from him. Now, his conviction has only increased. Whatever force made that threat is going to die having never fulfilled it. Flint arrives in the painted world, again without his crew. He's a little later than usual, but not by much. The cutlass which hangs at his side looks different, somehow. Perhaps there's a new coat of lacquer on the scabbard, or perhaps the counter guards have been polished.      "Andre sends his regards," Flint says to Priscilla. So, that's what it is.
Eryl Fairfax	That things are as they were when they left (mostly) really does rub in the fact that this is the 'end of the line' so to speak. Eryl pulls his cape about himself. Not for defence against the cold, his body doesn't register it. More for comfort. Desolation has been his whole life for a long time, but the Painted World is something on a whole other level.     He looks around at those here with him. Some driven, most haunted. This place had done a number on them all. Just more to the reason why they need to finish this. Give them closure, else the memories would fester in them all.     As Reiji asks Priscilla to lead, he gives the man a tiny shake of the head. As if to say 'don't put too much upon her.' "There was one place we never got to give a proper look," he mentions. "What lies at the end of the bridge. We were too busy fleeing last time to properly examine the area."
Tomoe	They are marching closer and closer to the source of what has ailed this world. There may be nothing that can be done, or maybe there is. She intends to find out and do what she can here, she's not about to bail, even if there is a measure of fear in her. She'll arrive and find nothing is trying to kill them at the moment, which is a very welcomed change. She's still concerned and she looks around for a moment. "We should not sit around for long." She'll shoot Kushiko a look, it's not an bad one but a thankful one had she been alone that day? She likely would have been dragged into the void if not for the Tenno snapping her out of it for a moment. She then looks to Eryl for a moment and nods to the Grand Master of the Paladin. "Your right we should check this out and we need to bring this madness to an end." She'll fall in with Priscilla is up front if she leads to be ready to intercept anything might attack Priscilla as they move forward.
Staren	The painted world's wishes? Staren doesn't ascribe will or agency to such things without clear evidence.     He does, however, ascribe murderous intent to those... things... that are now nowhere to be seen. He did not have a chance to acquire a weapon of darkness to use against them, so he'll have to hope destroying their voodoo toys on sight will do. He shows up as a robot -- He doesn't know if it will help but doubts it will make things /worse/. If nothing else, he can jump out of this body to a tablet given to Priscilla before they enter, although he'd still like to recover his stuff later if it comes to that.     Now, what was it they needed to do here? Ah yes. Study the bonfire and figure out how to access the greater metaphysical rules at work here through it. "We need to study the bonfire." He reminds the others, although he won't go off on his own to do so.
Starbound Flotilla	The Starbound Flotilla is here! Oddly, this time, lacking their mecha and other suchlike. The initial, quick scan for the anti-gravity stations is done, and they now have a much more relevant interest, which is to check over the concentrations of strange, dark energies found in the chasm. On the way into the castle, Seft turns her sensors on it and Moonfin listens again for those whispers, and together they try to understand if there's been any change in that regard. But if Priscilla leads, they'll be following!
Carna	Enark's is a face that has been present for all of these expeditions so far. But it is a face that is changed. He looks far more gaunt than usual, and instead of the same sort of anemic pallor of a dead man, he has a sort of life-like, if incredibly sick, coloration to his skin. Faint red blotches mar his otherwise pale flesh, his eyes still show signs of redness from twice in a short period of time pushing himself so hard that capillaries burst and filled them with blood. He looks pretty miserable as he staggers along, and more than once heaves and has to go off somewhere to barf blood.     That he still hasn't recovered yet after a week has passed is worrying, given that with a dead body, recovery should be based solely upon how much healing magic is pumped into him, and not any sort of rest time. But at least he's not unconscious or whatever that was.     His bodily appearance is not all that has changed, however. He has tied his long black hair back in a low 'business-ponytail', and swapped out his highly identifiable blue robes for something more modern. He looks more like a librarian than ever with his white shirt, and black tie tucked into a blue sleeveless vest. Slacks, shoes, all that clap-trap of a 20th or 21st century Earth. If not for the obvious signs of sickness, he'd seem almost normal.     Though senses for this sort of thing continue to betray his nature as a spirit in a corporeal state, even if the spiritual energy associated with him has been increasingly distorted of late.     Carna truly embodies Enark's slogan that the Dead never truly change. Regardless of whatever small steps she may be making as a person, outwardly she looks completely the same as always, though with a bad hunger in her eyes that is more severe than is typical. Her own nature as a predatory undead has rarely been more evident. She gave up every speck of spiritual energy she had accumulated and not yet spent to invest in her own abilities for that rain spell. It has left her even emptier than usual, and eager to replace it.     As she scans the environs, standing guard over Enark as he hacks and heaves into something that hopefully won't be ruined by doing so, she is almost testing the Painting mentally. Urging it to send something her way she can eat. She says nothing, but the killing edge to her attention is, much like for those who can sense the changes in Enark while so much else stays the same, likely a very unpopular sensation to those who can detect it.     "Why are we here again?" she asks tensely and a bit irritably. "Did someone assemble a means of healing this world, or of removing whatever has altered it?"
Carna	Enark wipes his mouth with an already quite-stained handkerchief (one of several he has in his belt of pouches and storage cases) and says queasily, "That would be a neat trick. And I think that is what I stumbled upon, thanks to Sir Staren, right before all of those things pounced upon us." He gestures around with the red-stained cloth, the dead blood already turning to black, spreading from the older stains towards the newer. "Lord Tharmas modelled his Painting off of this one. Lumiere is also a system of cycles, which are presently broken. There are souls unable to move on, trapped in a world that almost seems not to want to go back from how vigorously it defends the path to renewal. Fire -- or Light in Lumiere's case -- is a rare commodity, and nothing like what it once was." He gestures to the Bonfire.     Taking out a pair of eye glasses and perching them on his nose, Enark puts away the handkerchief and retrieves his own notebook from another pouch. "Los made a prophecy. One that saw far into the future, and predicted accurately who would come to save Lumiere. Lord Tharmas, I believe, looked deeper, saw where we would come from, and realized that this Painting was much like Lumiere itself. So when he created the Painting based upon it, it was the one of most prominence, of the most vast scale, because -- and I am not certain of this yet -- it could be used as a simulation of how to fix Lumiere." Enark flips through the pages, trying to show diagrams and writings to Carna, who glances at it and then turns away. "You see here how--Err. Well." He turns to Reiji. "You see here there are the same resonances? Time, Water, Blood, Ice and Snow, Light and Dark... I think that Los saw only the end result and the key figures, and maybe a handful of visions that were described cryptically. Lord Tharmas, like we Blue Scholars, wanted to know more. So he created a simulation that would test the chosen Six, to see if we could purge a corruption, or a manifestation of that Painted world's will, or otherwise discover a solution to remedy it."     Enark seems quite excited as he describes this. He waves it in Priscilla's direction as well if she's in the immediate area, and Eryl's, and Staren's, and the Flotilla's, and basically anyone who will listen to him. "We are doing it in reverse order, using this world to determine how to solve that one -- though most primarily to help Queen Priscilla -- but whether we heal this world first or that one, it will prepare us to save another world either way. And if we succeed at that, then we can also save Lumiere, perhaps even by changing fundamental aspects as Sir Staren's double thinks can be done, but without such extreme measures."     Enark goes over his notes a bit more and then says, "I heard others mention that something had been done to Lordran itself, to change it, fix it, mend its cycle, whatever. If we can fix the Painted World of Ariamis, and also Alouette, then the dual experiences of those involved in mending Lordran, and the Painting, may be of use in fixing Lumiere as well!"
Carna	Enark appears to be quite pleased with himself. Then Carna pops a hole in it.     "Was this the same Painting that Lady Finna said you all died in infinitely?" she asks, seemingly having not been paying attention, but at leat catching that much.     Enark nods reluctantly. "Yes, though we eventually got out of--"     "The ones who were meant to fix that other world were the Unpainted. They were supposed to be the ones who Tharmas chose to solve Alouette and then Lumiere. When you all tried, you paid a steep price, failed, and forced one of those who should have done it to pay your price in full to save you."     Enark frowns. "We were the ones originally meant to--"     Carna turns towards Enark quickly, takes a few short steps, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and lifting him off the ground easily despite his greater stature. "Use your head, scholar." Carna hisses. "You are so blinded by your admiration for your god, that you do not see what is right in front of you. It is like when you were desperate to believe that Lordran and this Painting were modelled after Lumiere and the Painting there! You have completely reversed your position and still you dig for explanations that will make your Lord of Silence faultless and all-knowing!"     Enark struggles with the hand supporting him but can not break the iron grip or even make Carna's arm move. She might as well be a statue. He protests hotly, anger and fear winning out over sickness. "I have not reversed anything! I acknowledge that my initial suspicions regarding the paintings were incorrect, but Lordran and Lumiere are separate worlds! One is not a model for the other! It is their very similarities that led Lord Tharmas to--"     Carna shakes Enark violently, still one-handed. "SHUT UP ABOUT HIM." Carna almost never yells. She has demonstrated a burst of anger, of emotion, perhaps once in the entire time people have known her. She pulls Enark in close, looks him in the eye, and hisses in an icy cold tone, "Your god failed. You failed. You and the rest. Not only did he fail, but he abandoned you, and that other Priscilla, and all of your duplicates. He, and those like him, abandoned Lumiere when it stopped being convenient to care about it. He LEFT. You are not going to find him here, he will not appear magically when you solve some riddle he left behind, he is GONE, and just like the other gods he. Is. Not. Worth. Our. Time."     She holds Enark there for a couple more seconds then releases him with force just short of a throw, sending him staggering and stumbling and sliding back to fall into the remnants of one of those rain puddles, staining his new clothes.
Carna	Carna stares down at him, crimson eyes still wide and hungry. "Gods can't help us. If we are going to achieve anything, it shall be at our own hands. Focus on here, and now, instead of the past." Then she turns away, cloak sweeping out, as she starts marching off to wherever the fuck to do whatever the fuck and probably kill the first hostile thing she sees. The baby steps she had taken in giving up her energy for Enark last time seem to have backslid now. Or perhaps her disdain for gods manifesting is itself a form of progress towards becoming something more than a normal Lantern. Not all progress is necessarily beneficial.     Enark slowly collects himself, getting up out of the puddle, and picking up his notebook to avoid losing his writings.     He looks to everyone else, hiding humiliation and fear behind a queasy smile. "It is only a theory."
Priscilla	Priscilla does not look happy to be here, but what else is new? Though last time in this Painted World had been something inadequately described by the word 'horrible', her demeanor uppon arriving once more is slightly better than it was before, when there was no expecation of something so terrifying happening, like the nameless, formless threat were somehow a preferable alternative to the crushing melancholy of looking upon the past yet again.     A tiny crack in that worn down and deeply unhappy facade appears when Flint forwards Andre's regards, but it is a brief ghost of an appreciative smile, as not even the blacksmith's earnest concern holds much weight in this frigid, ancient, and assuredly lethal mystery. "I advise not toying too greatly with that which thou find this time, Sir Arisu, Sir Fairfax, lest thou wouldst wish a repeat of the time last. Whatever it is, I almost feel it slumbering once more, though shallowly and fitfully. Split from one another as thou see fit, but go not alone."     Perhaps thankfully for Enark and Carna, Priscilla is well away from the two of them by the time they begin their falling out. She has heard plenty of the Blue Scholar's theories by now, and pays them no especial mind, thus by the time the Lantern starts ripping into him, she's already far across the castle grounds with others in tow, heading for the bridge Eryl had indicated he wished to see again.     It's odd how last time the dead had risen from the snow and competed to climb to the surface to murder any outsiders on sight, for no crime greater than walking around, yet following in Priscilla's footsteps, nothing bothers to come near them. The phalanx doesn't bother raising its many heads, like a sleeping dog as its owner walks past. The Hollows trouble them not either. Stepping through the looming iron doors, and through the cavernously vacant stone halls of a central keep, stripped bare of all livable things long ago and with its stairs to the upper floors destroyed, the crow-cursed don't even come down from their perches.     On the opposite side, they emerge onto the wide and long, impossibly unsupported, and breathtakingly high and unsafe bridge; the kind that would normally serve as a wagon road to a far-off peak. Here, Hollows dressed as soldiers mill about in numbers, amongst which are blatantly the overmassive Berenike Knights in their colossal armour, standing to attention as if guarding the empty tower at the end, but having long ago lost their minds. None of them stand in Priscilla's way. It might be a trick of the eye, but it /almost/ seems like they stiffen to attention. On the bottom bridge as they are, they can look back and up to the broken, higher bridge, and see the resting corpse of the improvised undead dragon, looking as if it had crash landed 'successfully' on the peak, been killed immediately, and then frozen there for good.     All that greets them at the end is that desolate wind, the distant howling, the very quietest place in the ambient noise of whispering and eerie song, and a short, almost plank-like drop into the only safe patch of blackness they had made their escape through, scratched up and down with esoteric text engraven across the snowy stones.
Priscilla	Lingering behind with the Bonfire, whether to study it or argue over it, finds little immediate difference between it and those that dot the landscape of Lordran outside, as its strange and incomprehensible equivalent of ley-lines or somesuch, supposedly linked to the First Flame, distributing light and life, and collecting dead souls, all throughout the continent. Of course there is only one here; there only needs to be one.     Like any other, it burns on a mound of white ashes and scattered bones without consuming them, left behind as a reminder of the Undead sacrificed to rekindle it. The ubiquitous, never quite explained style of coiled iron sword is jammed into its center as usual. The area around it is bathed in gentle warmth, a sense of safety and respite, and a very faint distortion of time, including very vague glimpses of phantom discrepancies in the world around, if one sits by it for a while.     With the proper instruments or magical knowhow, there seems to be nothing amiss. Its directly felt influence diminishes by square law as one departs from it, until it becomes undetectable background 'radiation' by the time one can no longer here its phantasmal hum and chime, but trying to be thorough, one would find that its influence terminates /extremely/ abruptly the moment it reaches the bridge, or rather, the abyss beneath it, perhaps explaining why the world across the chasm has shrunk and melted into an indistinct, dream logic landscape, with nothing living to be seen, only heard at an eternal distance.
Priscilla	Moving to the cliff edge, or else scaling the masonry to the extent that it is safe to get a lay of the land, others can see the anti-gravity engines thrumming away obliviously at the shores of the abyssal sea, almost cheerfully indifferent to their predicament in a strange flight of fanciful anthropomorphization.     Specifically, they're somewhat dented and scratched on the outside, and surrounded by discarded pieces of mildly harmful scenery and small tools, like the kind of aberrations had attacked the group before, but unlike the /disgustingly/ heinous damage they had inflicted on those they had assaulted with the slightest touch, they've done next to nothing to the machines. It's as if the mob briefly tried to destroy them, but suddenly possessed similar or less ability than normal human beings to damage the advanced machinery with the improper tools available to them, and shortly gave up.     More importantly, it seems the constant rumbling of the intruding gravity inversion has had . . . some sort of effect on the blackness below. It's hard to fully comprehend visually, as the eye, as well as the brain, is typically poorly adapted to making sense or shape of impenetrable nothingness. It'd be like saying one can see the texture of a black hole. Nevertheless, there is the distinct, unmistakable impression of a sort of depression or hole or vortex, or perhaps more aptly 'whirlpool', in the sibilantly hissing and seething depths, where the substance of the substancelessness has been gradually swept aside, twisted around, and thinned out. It seems to go quite a ways down, and may perhaps even be relatively clear for much of a descent, though it seems the generators cannot penetrate all the way to the bottom. An attempt to explore the chasm floor, one of extremely few leads anyone has at this point, absolutely would involve a short dip through some of that heart-poundingly foreboding blackness, shallow as it is near the bottom.     It might be a fancy of the imagination, but staring /really/ hard, it almost seems like there is something . . . glittering, down there. Sort of. It isn't /visible/. It just kind of seems that way. The kind of thing where one immediately questions if they had seen anything at all, and hesitates for a while in deciding to pursue it, or rationalize it away as nothing.
Captain Flint	So, whatever's here is sleeping? He's tempted to go looking for it, to put an end to it in its slumber. But, he doesn't even know where to start. Enark and Carna, apparently, have even less of an idea--but he might turn that to his advantage, in his search for answers. The captain approaches the scholar.      Flint affixes Enark with a discerning gaze, seafoam eyes taking in the sickly fellow. "She's not entirely wrong," he says in his low, English rumble. "But I have a lead you might find interesting--something that'd help you put your mind to the present." One hand resting on the hilt of his cutlass, Flint motions with a backwards nod of his head towards the castle. "Something in that castle turned a man to stone--and whatever it was, someone else thought it valuable enough to steal. It might elucidate the state of this world, provide us a means of restoring it, or of freeing it from the clutches of the darkness that chokes it." Flint shrugs his shoulders slightly.      "Or, it might not. I'm going to find out. A mind versed in the occult, like yours, could be of use, if you care to accompany me." The pirate looks towards Carna, departing in search of things to destroy. Or, the unspoken words say, Enark can go with her. Flint turns and makes for the castle proper.      As before, he spends most of his journey sidestepping the undead rather than confronting them directly, though if Enark does decide to come along he'll stop to defend the scholar were necessary, or show him ways to sneak past if needed. Unlike before, the smithy isn't the destination. Whoever broke in there would've taken Andre's work somewhere--and if they didn't take any of the masterfully-crafted weapons, it must've been with the intent to study what could turn a man to stone.      So, this time, Flint tries to retrace the steps of the would-be thief, searching the castle grounds for a library, an orrery, an observatory, anything that a 'court wizard' might have taken a magical artifact to for further study.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl leads the way towards the bridge at first, but pauses when the background noise of bickering hits his ears. A sigh is trapped by his lips pressing together before he says, "One moment, just need to check up on the stragglers. We'll catch up," he promises before briskly jogging back.     He's just in time to catch Carna storming away from Enark, and reaches out to grab her arm as she passes by, trying to ensnare it in an iron grip. "At present, we are in a place rendered toxic by outside issues coming in and permeating everything about it. This toxicity manifested itself the last time we were here, and nearly slew the lot of us. So I cannot help but question the logic of immediately starting an argument about outside issues here. Do you wish to bring those wraiths upon us again? Or are you merely so short-sighted that you cannot help but haphazardly wield your opinions like a bludgeon at every opportunity?"     He turns and regards the undead with a long, pointed stare before releasing her. "Don't do it again," he adds before going and helping Enark out of the snow. "Chin up sir. Any attempt at a solution is better than none." Only now does he rejoin everyone at the end of the bridge, running fast so as to remain within Priscilla's 'sphere of influence' as it were. These are still undead, and undead are not known for their keen memories. They may forget that he is 'with her' in time, and then he'll have to fight his way through.     Once he's caught up, he kneels down at the edge of the cliff leading down to the patch of 'safe darkness' and peers into it. "There's something I always wondered," he begins. "Why does the Painted World even have an exit? If the gods wished it to be a place where things could be thrown in and forgotten, why did they not do something about this part? I know the outside had the Painting Guardians, but I don't think they could have stopped a dedicated outbreak if those within worked together."     He rises, and looks to Priscilla. "During one of our jaunts to the past, it was mentioned to me that the exit was known of, and utilized, but that we would need permission of some kind. Would you mind elaborating on that, if you rememer?"
Staren	Well, Enark's theorizing by the fire, so Staren listens attentively. Carna speaks up with objections, and a theory that Enark's god chose their unpainted doubles to save the world. Intriguing. When all is said, though, he holds up his hands. "God or no god, whether there's a connection to Lumiere or not, we're here today to make progress towards fixing this painting. And the next step towards that is studying this thing." Staren waves a hand at the bonfire.     He turns to look at it.     ...     "...So, how do we... interact, with it?" He starts to pace around it. "It has a connection to the cycle of life and death here, or I guess just death now, but... how do we... see that? Damn it, this is exactly why I built the Second Gauntlet." He stops walking, and looks down at his left palm. "Maybe I need to build something again, but... how?"     I'm stuck, old friend.     The robot catboy kneels by the fire, and prays for inspiration, even if it drives him mad for awhile.     ...     He doesn't feel any different. He doesn't feel mad. But he feels like he should do /something/. He reaches into the fire, pulls out some ash, and starts spreading a magic-looking circle around the fire.
Reiji Arisu	"Well, one way or another, we need to know where we're going," Reiji answers with a slight shrug. he glances back over his shoulder as Eryl lags behind to help Enark up out of the snow. Good. That would have been... Bad. The Blue Scholar is not precisely the most effective in a fight, and the last time he was left alone, he nearly burnt himself out! Best to retrieve him now. Still, the danger in the air remains palpable even in Priscilla's presence. At any moment, the darkness sleeping here might respond to their presence. It didn't seem to pay any heed to her proximity to them the last time. If it stirs again... Well. He's glad Xiaomu has come along with him. They might just need their trump card today. "I'm rather curious as well," Reiji says, peering down into the tremendous void beneath the bridge. "Isn't it strange? Is it a coincidence that that... strangeness is below as well? And besides that, do you remember, Eryl? It used to be that a pine forest thrived in the valley. The exit is here, but was it always?" "Well. Regardless," he shakes his head slowly. "I think perhaps the Painting Guardians might have kept vigil in case anything wanted to sneak out. But the fact that there was a way in and out suggests that it was meant to be used."
Starbound Flotilla	"Alright Moonie, whatdya got for me?" "It flows, but does not disperse. It is... Clinging to itself." "What, ye mean it's tryin' not to be undone? ...I see something glittering." "/Everything/ try to not be undone. Isss how sssurvive." "Then we find a way to undo it." "Anxious. Something glittering? This is not a treasure hunt, and I... No, I can't see it myself. But, the contours of the anomaly we've induced mean maybe we can find a safer passage to explore."     The Flotilla made a promise and they intend to keep it. Nothing new, nothing added, nothing forced on the world. What they intend to do is use their knowledge and their skills to work with what they have. There's resources here to craft with, and there's resources, one hopes, yet uncrafted. They head through, and descend ravenously on the forges, and do their best to locate and thoroughly scavenge crafting equipment. If the influence in the Painting doesn't like them leaving things behind, they'll focus their efforts on working inside it, using their extensive history in building up from scratch in the wild.     Assuming nothing interrupts them and assuming materials are on-hand, it'll impossibly take them about five, maybe ten minutes of work to stock themselves up on gear and equipment -- all of which they well intend to leave here, of course, rather than take -- which they'll be able to work with their Space Hole. They need to find a better term, they'll be able to work with their Gravitational Anomaly.     The plan is to see if they can fully restock most of their basic equipment -- using their own designs for mobility boosters and scanners and other suchlike, mostly Glitch technology that works well with medieval-era materials -- using what's on hand here. "Seft's plan is appropriate. Let us do our best to avoid angering the influence of the strange, bleak dark, by using only what may already be found here. Let us come to understand what it will do when investigated, and then let us construct some manner of appropriate environmental protection, that we may enter its depths and its core, and put this matter finally to rest." Moonfin says, elaborating on the plan to both the Flotilla and to anyone else who may be interested in what the Flotilla's doing.
Tomoe	It also for the best Tomoe is upfront to miss the falling out between CArna and Enark as well. She's pushing forward now and she wonders what might await them now. She'll find out soon enough as they make thir way across, she's uneasy it feels like the bridge should not work. Yet it does, thankfully soon they are across and she sees there are Hallows that may need to be handled. Then they just pause for a moment, did some vestage of whom they used to be respond to Priscilla? It could damn well be possible, she's not certain but /Tomoe is silnt as they reach a pause, the howling wind is not lost on her and she feels the cold and soon realizes she's stared at it too hard for a moment and pauses. "Wait is there something down there...I swore I saw something glinting..."
Xiaomu	"Highly recommend that people not spend too long staring into the abyss," Xiaomu says wryly, "since with or without being a proper noun, it does tend to stare back into you after a time. Or it just feels a lot more creepy than a lack of anything has any right to." *She* certainly isn't paying too much attention to the inky vastness below: just a quick glance down, as if satisfying herself that the 'emergency exit' is there in case it needs to be used, and then focusing on what passes for solid ground. The engravings hold juuuust a little more interest to her. As for the bonfire? She doesn't focus too much on that either - warming her hands briefly, or at least going through the motions. She'll let Staren do more hands-on investigation if he's so inclined. Enark's theory and Carna's rather pointed rebuttal draw a measure of attention, and the sage fox actually makes a conscious effort *not* to let her eyes glaze over at the theorizing and counter-theorizing. "Different worlds, different gods, different metaphysics," she points out. "Maybe subtle, maybe drastic, hard to tell until you start messing around with them. What's this about 'doubles,' or am I happier Not Knowing? ... And maybe yeah, focus on *this* world, or pocket thereof, while we're in it. Especially do not taunt Happy Fun Gods because they're rarely happy *or* fun when they notice mortals taunting them." Or immortals, for that matter. If Xiaomu had a piece of fried tofu for every youkai who's suffered divine punishment for showing insufficient reference to the kami, she might have enough to keep her happy for a while. "My best guess is that it's an escape hatch in case something threatens the Painted World as a whole," she says to Reiji as far as the fact there's an exit. "Not to be used except in the most dire of situations ... probably something most of the residents aren't even supposed to be aware of. A back door for visiting adventurers like us, or something. I mean, would *you* jump into a pitch-black chasm if you didn't know for sure that staying up here was a definitively worse option?"
Kushiko	Few things are going to bring the faceless, eyeless Tenno from her reverie. Truth be told they're just as content as to follow Priscilla's lead when the time comes, though her instinctive aspect to look over people means she's not as quick to progress. Not that her actions, nor demeanor change when Enark has to go off and barf. Merely content is she to ensure he doesn't lag behind, or something doesn't jump out at them. Silence reigns like nothing else, however, when he speaks. Even more, when he practically gushes about it, but it's not out of disinterested. Exhaustion, perhaps? Or perhaps feeling like she's not got what's necessary to do anything about it, not like Eryl, Reiji, Staren. Besides which, a few of those thoughts of what she is--truth or not--seem inclined to seep into her again. monster. Some of her thoughts linger back to what Velka had told her, and those pieces of information collected together with what others learned. Something about Ariamis' heir, something about his devotion to that Princess. Yet perhaps not. It feels like some of those pieces are finally coming into place, though for others and not her. She lacks the mysticism, but something Eryl mentions gets her to square her proverbial shoulders--that what they bring in matters. So she straightens, and seems to go stock still for a few moments. Meditatively, perhaps, before affixing her attention neither on Carna or Enark, and progressing forward, following after Priscilla in that noiseless fashion of hers. It's could be a little unsettling if anyone bothered to pay attention. While she did not bring Nova nor Mag, there's enough of her instinctive understanding of physics--including things that should not be that she can bring her full sensor suite, her Void-derived /understanding/ of space-time fluctuations. The instinct rises possibly to simply /jump/ down there, to throw all manner of caution to the wind, but even that seems to make the Kubrow let out an irritated /whine/ at her Mistress. The members of the Flotilla speaking prompt her at last to speak. <"Allow us to enter first then. If what we can do to protect ourselves is something it can overcome..."> She crisscrosses her arms, summoning up and /wreathing/ herself in Void energy, so known as Valkyr's 'Hysteria', causing the very air itself to hum violently around her, fingers now adorned in claws born of pure light. It's then that she jumps over, aiming herself to the whirlpool, but telling Kubrow with a slight gesture to linger with Seft and the others.
Carna	Carna seems to be going off on her own somewhere. Except Eryl grabs at her. She permits it, but the hostility level radiating from her ratchets up several levels. Being attacked and being denied are two of the things she hates most, and this is coming very close to both. But she does not draw her weapon to strike, which would be a mistake on many levels (whether she would care or not aside in the moment aside). Her gaze when she looks back at him is, while volatile, wide and hungry, almost desperate, still the look of someone (or something) with sanity intact.     "I will avoid altercations within the group. I agree that is to all our benefit, and that of this world. It would have been better had that altercation not had to occur, or occurred in a different manner. But do not touch me again, or you will initiate the very thing we both wish to avoid." she says back rigidly before the two head in different directions. The Lantern then goes to investigate the bridge. She knows she went too far. She didn't reason through the process and determine 'this is the only way to get Enark to drop his attempts to get the attention of his sensei-sama or whatever and validate his own existence', she just reacted on emotion because she is sick of gods and their meddling, she is hungry and feeling especially vicious, and the only reason she is even functional right now is because she has regained enough of her sanity to be able to tell the difference between being irrational and doing what comes naturally to her.     This was her own mistake, not part of her nature as a Lantern.     So she tries to focus from here on out on holding onto that sliver of self she has uncovered, that pieces of anger and resentment, and the desire not to see someone important to her keep throwing hope into an abyss that is going to just swallow it up every time he pins his expectations on a far-fetched idea. She holds onto that, even if it leaves her angry. Because it's a distraction from her hunger.     And it's her hunger, not her anger, that might lead her to doing something regrettable here.     Like going after all those Hollows on the bridge. Where those who follow after or go ahead of her might avoid them, she draws the Chainsword of the Dusk Sun and uses it to swing out at the guardians like a long-range axe-flail, or to try to 'ding' enemies with a straight-line throw, to try to knock them off the bridge. "I was in the forest last time," she reports on the radio, via whispering wax skull. "Does this bridge have some historical or geographical significance?"
Carna	Enark smiles gladly, trying to push off the lingering emotions swirling with him, and the doubts that Carna has elicited about his reasons for doing all this. "Thank you, Sir Fairfax. Captain. I will do my best." He journeys along to help investigate occult matter with Flint, though responds rather quickly to the comment about turning Andre to stone. "Would that Dark Ember not have been the cause? That was the influence that seemed to start all of this, yes? Not to offer more of my theories, but if this world was wrought by a divine being, then something that is anathema to gods might have been adversely influenced by its keeping and forging. Especially given that Sir Fairfax opening the box and exposing this world to it was what led to our first ejection from the world. ...Or was it the second?"     He is not especially fight, though is capable of wielding Murmurs of poison for damage and debilitation. Something he demonstrates if necessary, along with casting a shield of water to surround all of his allies he can. Those he go off before he can get to them, like Priscilla, may not receive one, but otherwise, there should at least be that damage buffer to soak some attacks for a while. He seems considerably drained just from doing that though. No more giant rain storms on this trip.     "That rain seemed to be effective though," he says, as though responding to someone, even though the idea was only in his own head. "All the right elements were here. I know we are trying to reduce disruptive outside influences, but if we could just unfreeze that lake or create a small sea or something... Maybe an artificial moon... I could multiply that spell many more times in strength." He rubs his face. "But that is... Impractical. The present. Yes, I shall focus on the present. So, the Dark Ember. Anti-Divine substance in a world crafted by a divine being? Any potential connection there which might be remedied?"
Priscilla	Flint's task isn't easy. Were this place still bustling with life, or at least still replete with living arrangements and functional as well as habitable spaces, it might be much easier to intuit which room is for what and which corridors see what traffic going elsewhere, but that isn't the case anymore. Useful supplies were long ago burned through. Tools and furniture were stripped out of rooms as the occupants died, or they were quarantined off. Many have been sealed off to the point that everything inside has rotted away, or the mad inhabitants destroyed it. They're barren, broken down, sterile, and with little indication as to their former purpose, fit for only an archeologist.     His best guess leads him to the mark by coincidence, however. The closest to any of those things he can guess is the spiral tower that is by far the tallest structure in the whole of the castle, not heavily walled up like the other buildings, but practically composed of stacked layers of pillars and arches, indicating it was meant to be looked out from. The endless helix of stairs is badly broken and covered in ice, to the point Flint will have to use his grapnel, but near the topmost layer, he finds one of the extremely few collections of personal affects that seem to remain here, and 'collection' is certainly an apt descriptor.     It looks as if someone had grabbed a number of things of apparent use and hauled them all the way up here, one at a time, over quite a while, as almost a sort of magpie nest, across stairs too badly shattered for the Undead to climb, and eventually settled into something as close as comfortable as they could get, under a roof that still works, and too high for the wind to really reach in. There's an extremely faded rug, so worn that whatever colour it was is no longer possible to discern, surrounded by a handful of tapestries much the same, and some very old chests, a dresser with a frosted-over mirror, a chair, bench, a small bookshelf packed to bursting with books so heavily read they've started to fall apart, a handful of general tools, many strange and esoteric items, and small personal affects such as combs and pins.     What he might notice after a moment is that there is nothing like sleeping arrangements, nothing that indicates any food was brought up, and in a handful of drawers are what look like young girl's toys. A stone block and a literal small anvil (how the hell did anyone haul that up here?) on the opposite side of the church bench indicate he's in the right place, judging by smithy tools (and more than a few he won't recognize) and the unnaturally black fire marks that radiate from a clean square impression in the floor.     The conclusion is pretty blatant. After !Andre had died, Priscilla had taken it, and in this motley imitation of a living space, clearly /used/ it. Used it highly successfully, in fact. Unlike him, she had clearly survived the occultic energies completely unscathed, for whatever reason. It's nowhere to be found now, though. Probably locked away in a vault in Lordran or something.
Priscilla	Priscilla herself is, of course, with Eryl and the Shinra agents. "Thou art correct that it was not intended that there be any way to exit this Painted World, or at the very least, there was no way meant to be known. What thou see before thee is the extensive work of an outsider, learned in such strange arts and history as I cannot describe, who sought to open a way, and didst succeed to a degree. I knoweth not what manner of magic or loophole was capable of such, but since then, late into the lifespan of civilization atop this mountain, those who had dwelled not long enough within the Painting to be bound within its fabric were, briefly, able to taketh leave."     "It was . . . seldom exercised. Those who came here had nothing left for them outside, and it was only once in a great while that any stumbled here by ignorance, by curiosity, or by quest, with no need of a haven from a world they yet had a place in. Most of those who entered in the latter days were of that sort, many with less reputable intentions. Some I didst see away, many others met their deaths by mine own hand as a matter of necessity. To this day, I am not entirely certain what to maketh of the strange passage that man was able to find in this world, but a part of mineself wishes to believeth that Ariamis had intended this; that he had purposefully left some small gap or mechanism to alloweth departure, some day far in the future. He didst seemeth the sort to hope. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the strange man left the command of these glyphs to mineself. Those who wouldst flee the Painted World whilst its mistress wouldst alloweth them not to leaveth, most likely for matter of theft, didst meet their end upon taking such a plunge."     The glyphs themselves don't /seem/ overtly magical, and this is a place known for its bizarre, shimmering texts that appear across time and space and summon phantoms of living and dead heroes to fight. They match exactly to Staren's previous research that he had shared, into old human prayers that predate worship of the gods, locked away in Anor Londo's off-the-map vault with all the other Deep Lore only the reigning Lord is to know. They don't seem to be the components to a spell in a formal sense, arranged haphazardly as they are, but something about their significance, or perhaps the faith that went into writing them, repels the darkness just around them, or perhaps, creates a blind zone that the darkness doesn't recognize, like the kind of 'civilian deflection' spells that are used by some agencies to keep normal humans out of dangerous supernatural zones, except in reverse.
Priscilla	Staren's little ritual has no inherent meaning here. In an indistinct, simulated, malfunctioning little pocket reality, stained with uncountable layers of forgotten meanings and human impressions, nothing about it especially stands out, and there is a very significant chance that nothing should come of it at all, given the lack of true connection to the outside world, from which his patron's domain stems.     Maybe, then, the fact that he experiences anything indicates that the element of madness is strong here, or that some unquantifiable and mysterious aspect of the Painting, just beyond description, wants him to.     The experience could be called 'spiritual', in the kind of "carbon monoxide poisoning-fueled aboriginal spirit quest nightmate" sense. It is astoundingly brief, happening in the space of what feels like a split second, but subjectively much longer, as if his brain augmentations had kicked into overdrive. It's a full assault on the senses, drowning out everything he can perceive at the moment, even through his digital means, and replacing them with something totally fabricated.     The light of the bonfire swells and grows, becoming a towering blaze that is several times his height, but no less elegantly quiet, such that the flames twist and spiral upwards into the trunk of an ethereal, brightly glowing tree, which spreads its fiery, flowering branches across the sky. Glowing routes of molten warmth and tranquility fork throughout the earth, visibly spreading across the entire mountaintop, which now shimmers with the steady rise of tiny embers flickering in and out of existence on an invisible updraft, connecting every part of the mountain into a sprawl of luminous tributaties that all come back to this same spot, souls siphoned into the roots, brought up the trunks, and released as shed petals. It's a completely surreal experience, but somehow, it would be difficult to disagree with the descriptor of 'beautiful', as well as oddly soothing.     However, its meaning becomes quite blatant. The tree's roots terminate completely at the cliff edge, extending only a few feet into the black and empty air before they seem to wither away instantly; no not wither, they've been gnawed away. Its branches seem to be the same way, swaying into the center of the peak as if constantly blown by a strong wind from the chasm, constantly pushing its growth inwards, not allowing it to spread over the gap, and trapping the phantasmal ecosystem completely on this one mountaintop, surrounded inescapably on all sides by the dark.     He can actually feel it, even. A cold, cold breeze unlike anything like the natural wind of the mountains, blowing past and over and through him, crawling over the lip of the stones like an icy fog and pressing inwards as a physical wall of pressure, jealous and possessive, and yet clinging in a way that almost seems 'afraid'. Anything spiritual or metaphysical trying to go behind this tiny, isolated island of light and solid reality would be effortlessly buffeted back by the seething, invisible, formless storm that waits beyond, marooning it here like a stormwracked isle in an arctic sea.     If it's like that on the other side, it's no wonder the First Flame's adjusted rules do not penetrate into here. Though the Painting itself has been opened, this dark and unwholesome power here keeps its ruined heart firmly separated by force, refusing to surrender its Bonfire or the Undead inhabitants tied to it.
Captain Flint	"That's my guess," says Flint to Enark on the cause of Andre's petrification. "Perhaps strong enough to be a suspicion. Hopefully, our search will lead us to something more concrete than supposition."      After a frustrating, but thankfully short search, Flint finds what he's looking for. He pulls his coat close, as the cold certainly penetrates where the wind can't. The evidence is... fairly obvious. The small girl's toys, the books so worn with use as to be falling apart, the lack of those things any living soul would see as necessities. "Priscilla," he mutters. "This is her room--she took it here to use it, somehow. Enark... if you're right, if this /was/ the Ember, and if its presence corrupted this place, then it's possible whatever she did with it exacerbated matters."      The captain's seafoam eyes land gently upon the drawer full of toys, and his usual determined scowl softens, slightly. Of course, Priscilla was once a child. Having that knowledge in the back of one's mind and being face to face with it are two different things, however. It doesn't look as if anyone's been here in years. He approaches the drawer and carefully begins extracting the toys, some of which are worn from centuries of merely existing. These had value to Priscilla, once. She's had so much taken from her--the least he can do is give them back.      As he rummages, Enark brings up the scythe Priscilla uses. She bothered to bring an anvil all the way to this tower, and clearly used it... perhaps it was the Dark Ember, after all, and perhaps Priscilla's scythe is where it's 'been' this whole time. Unless such things last after they're used to forge weapons. "Removing the influence of alien objects and actors couldn't hurt," he says.      "Killing this... entity might be more direct, if possible." Flint nods towards the bookcase. "Anything useful?" He'll give Enark time to look around. Once the scholar is satisfied and has done his thing, the captain will nod towards the door--doesn't seem like there's much else to be found here now that they've solved the mystery of Andre's petrification.
Priscilla	About what one would expect happens when Carna decides to start a fight with the Hollows. Actually, it's probably worse. After she gores the first couple of Hollows, the soldiers lining the bridge are quick to react. Rather than coming at her in a violent, hungry swarm, as she might expect from Lumiere's closest equivalent, the hollow-eyed, burn-branded dead men cluster together, forming ranks burned into what remains of their memory, probably held in their last moments. They close off the stone bridge completely, directly and intentionally preventing her from making progress to rejoin Priscilla at the end.     In that formation, two rows manage to launch a volley of arrows at her, fairly well aimed, and with extremely little room to move either way. Further direct attacks from her are thwarted by one of the Berenike Knights standing at the vanguard, ridiculous slab of metal of a shield at the ready, who deftly blocks swings of the chain sword with resounding clashes of impact. A second of his number advances along the walkway, picking up speed like a locomotive, and dipping his gargantuan flanged mace such that it drags across the stones with a trail of sparks. Closing in at high speed, he swings the weapon up into an uppercut that is practically a golf stroke, with requisite force to send Carna flying high and far enough to crash through one of the arches at the highest reaches of the tower, near Flint. Of course, a normal human would be literally liquefied completely and mostly just hit the back wall like a red water balloon.     Whatever lingers below the fringes of the invisible vortex the Flotilla dally at the precipice of, it doesn't stir for their efforts of assembly. New lines, protections, boosters, and all such come out one after the other in tense and unsteady quiet, or at least as quiet as it can be when the ominous 'music' can still tickle their minds' ears. They have some last minutes to add anything that suddenly inspires them, when Kushiko decides to take the plunge first.     Valkyr disappears into the pit as a shining beacon of Void energy, the strange and inimical place of cosmic darkness from which it originates still managing to stand out brilliantly against its surroundings, for the inherent 'life' of it. Measuring her progress, she falls for quite a distance. For Kushiko herself, it feels like a lot longer.
Priscilla	At first, the wind rushes up into her face, drowning her audio in the howling of a fast-fall skydive, and whipping past her in icy turbulence. Pretty quickly however, it disappears altogether, leaving her suspended in eerie, silent, weightless free fall, as if she'd suddenly cleared an airlock and gone tumbling out into the vacuum of cold, black, empty space. The mountain rock ripples out underneath her, steadily expanding and racing forward as she approaches the widening base, and eventually, it spreads to the point that it makes contact with her, leaving her to either smash into it face first, or employ her claws to make a more graceful stop. The mountain is wide enough that a vertical drop from the top doesn't go straight into the valley, but it does bring her right to the edge of the gravity well's borders; perhaps for obviously the same reason.     The blackness around her is not mere darkness or shadows, nor is it a void or form of nothingness. It is not the Dark of the Abyss, or the dark of utter oblivion, but a wall. A tangible, 'material', almost physical sea of something living surrounds her, silently and invisibly spiraled into a tunnel like something similar to a vertical equivalent of the Biblical parting of the Red Sea. It feels as if it has volume; like millions of tons of blackness could crash down and drown her at any instant, were the anti-grav engines suspending it to give way. The world above is a tiny spec, and adjusted to the dark, her 'eyes' can almost, /almost/ spot things behind the surface, the screen, the veil, the looking glass, that surrounds her on all sides. Gliding, rippling, surging, swarming, squirming things. The far away shapes of things seen at the crushing abyss at the bottom of the ocean.     She can also see the glimmer, almost plain as day. Ahead of her, the vortex terminates, and a thin 'river' lies in her path, where the air, or perhaps space, is no longer clear. The 'something' around her flows slow and shallow here, as if there is some kind of 'air bubble' on the opposite side, just out of reach, almost intersecting with the 'bubble' artificially created up above. Beyond that frosted glass of living nothing-substrate, she can see the faintest glittering of what appear to be . . . stars? Perhaps? Like something sealed in a flooded, primeval cave, never before discovered by humans.
Staren	As Staren draws a circle, he vaguely feels he should do something with the nanites. Is it true inspiration, or just paying too much attention to random thoughts like a ouija board? The unpredictability and uncertainty of trying to use divine power are why it's his last resort. Perhaps things would be different if he'd befriended a god of something other than 'madness and inspiration' -- perhaps a sun god that could send down undead-bane rays of light on command would be more reliable, for instance -- but he doesn't pick friends by what powers they give.     As he tries not to second guess himself, he gets a freaking VISION. Directly to his mind (his soul), not recorded, unable to do anything but watch... but it doesn't last long enough for him to worry about being trapped. And there is something... serene and comforting about the beautiful sight. He looks over the tree, trying to look for details, for clues... And, well, it provides him with imagery that is not the least bit subtle, which is just the sort of clue he likes: It is very clear that something in the chasm -- weren't the Starbounders trying to poke at the darkness there, now that he thinks about it? -- is preventing the bonfire from connecting to things outside.     And then he's back in reality. The warmth and beauty gone, the sinister wind hidden.     Nothing of the vision remains. He can't prove to anyone it happened. He's kind of uncomfortable dealing with such things, and of course there's the bigger question of... what exactly did that? Was it Morg? Oh wait, he can just ask him later. Right now... he's been granted a clue, and by Morg he's going to follow it!     At this point, Staren realizes that Enark and Carna left him all alone at the bonfire :( No matter. He can track the device he gave to Priscilla, but what he'd really like to do is find the Captains' device. Exploring the Dark could best begin there! He starts running towards where he thinks he remembers it being.
Kushiko	For what it's worth, Valkyr is /remarkably/ good as choices go for falling incredibly long distances. The catlike berserker Warframe has a pretty good ability to land from incredibly stupid degrees of heights without actually, you know, making a sickening crunch. Nothing to do with that catlike tail that's drawn close, nope. Nonetheless, as much as she can give a tell-tale sign of where she is at--that pinkish energy providing quite the excellent beacon--both visually and sensor-wise--and /ugh/ this feels wrong. Kiras, far above her, is not all that happy with this somewhat reckless maneuver, but what could one do? Kushiko in the meantime brings her arms close to herself in freefall, making herself briefly a missile. A distant thought wants for having her Archwing; any of them would do right now, however that's made even /more/ prominent when it feels like she's floating. Which is a very familiar sense--if she could, if it were POSSIBLE for Ordis to be guiding her Liset in here, she'd deseperately desire an Archwing. Mercifully (relatively speaking) with the mountains upcoming, it dawns on her she's /not/ quite in the vastness of a starless space, but something more tangible. And to that end, she shifts, and starts to curl herself into a ball, more to control her descend, the spinning momentum being used to bring her claws down--both her hands and her feet--in such a way that the landing she makes is criminally graceful. If, you know, leaving nice big /furrows/ of hewn mountain in her wake. It's enough of a graceful landing that she recovers as if she had merely fallen twenty feet instead of twenty billion feet. She looks up--as much as she /can/ look up, before looking towards the glimmer. She almost traces her finger-claws along the weirdness of it all, the black 'sea' that's been parted down here. She has to marvel at it a bit. More importantly, she has to let her Warframe's systems document REAMS of data to upload to the Flotilla, and to that extent, Staren's systems as well. Which is kind of silly and weird, given where she passed through. She resists the impulse of this blackness, this sea to be a big, red, candy-like button to be pressed, instead focusing on the glimmer itself that she can see. She dismisses her Hysteria aspect--not wanting to inadvertently present hostility to the forces that be down here. What she does do is channel that energy of hers, the energy of the Void--something that causes varying parts of her body to seemingly 'dance' with that energy, rippling within electrically as she approaches the 'barrier' as it were. And simply tries to touch it, to see what happens when something interacts with it. Her energy is a weird thing as is, maybe it might have an analogue down here that makes it similar enough.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl did not respond to Carna's threats, he merely carried on.     Upon the end of the bridge, he listens to Priscilla's tale. "So the creator had hoped this place would be a temporary asylum, not a prison, nor a grave. A place to withdraw for a spell..." He stares down at the path of safe darkness.     "I wonder if it could be moved... made to descend to the bottom. Would all this darkness spill out of the Painting? If it were moved somewhere safe where it could be dumped... perhaps exposure to the new way of the First Flame would dispel it. Although, the risk of settling and needing to be dealt with anyway is too great."     And then, over the radio, the Flotilla communicates that their experiments with gravity emitters may have found something. "I will go take a look at that. I recommend staying around here as much as possible. Should the dead rise against us once more, evacuate immediately."     He heads out to climb up to where the Flotilla made their nest, only to see that Carna has drawn the ire of the bridge knights. He lets out a long, aggravated sigh, before breaking into a run. He skirts around them and jumps over those whose girth keeps him from doing just that. If she wants to throw a tantrum, let her. The adults have more important things to do.     He soon scales up to where the Flotilla wait, and peers down at the swirling vortex. Even with Original Face, it's hard to make it out. "Though I commend her for being brave enough to go first," he says, gesturing down at Kushiko. "Don't you have drones or somesuch for that kind of thing?"
Carna	Carna actually expected them to stand around and get picked off one by one. When they don't do that, she expects them to remain staggered and approach slowly and cautiously, some of them rushing in to melee while others stayed back to dance back and forth with shield and weapon looking for an opening, and others still hanging back to do ranged.     Using the melee opponents as cover from the ranged ones by using superior mobility was the plan at that point. That she can not progress further is an annoying problem, but she needed those souls to fill the empty pit in her stomach. That maddening hunger is exactly what led her to do something like this.     She has to take the edge off, even if there's no such thing as doing so.     She takes several arrows while trying to dodge-roll backwards out of their trajectories. They hurt, obviously, but as the shafts snap off as she rolls over them, leaving broken arrows and their tips buried in her body, she is more concerned with the incoming melee combatant and trying to simultaneously avoid his strikes and use him as cover. She isn't so amateurish as to just sit there while a big knight-type enemy comes charging up and swings his huge weapon at her.     But her need to use him as a wall combined with the narrow amount of space to dodge within, leads to her being smashed and killed, losing the handfull of Dead Lights and souls she had managed to recover, and dispersing into a spirit mist. The gnawing hunger of a Lantern claims yet another victim. And so soon after starting to get her sanity back.
Carna	Enark, unaware of this, nods thoughtfully, having many of the same feelings as Flint on the matter of the room they come to (maybe. Psychic empathy is not one of his powers, but the cognitive dissonance of 'Priscilla the Leader' versus 'Priscilla the Person', perhaps exacerbated by not being one of those who knew her when she was fresh out of the Painting, is laid bare. He still has trouble reconciling it emotionally, of truly grasping that this child is the same person as the one he knows, but up until now he had perceived this much like a simulation. Like the events on Halloween, like the Painted World of Alouette.     The Priscilla of Then was a character, a figure of the past, and not really 'real' to him. Now he has no choice but to examine that perception and accept it is inherently flawed. But self-examination has consumed too much of his time here already. Even as he realizes that, he engaged in it, feeling guilt and uncertainty.     He was clinging to the past. Trying to project his desire to see Tharmas again onto things. And also attempting to invalidate the idea that Count Kord had proposed, that Enark himself was a mimic. Mimics don't bleed, and he had done an awful lot of it. But that wasn't enough was it? If he was a 'perfect' Mimic, then that's within the realm of possibility right?     That concern plaguing him now while he's supposed to be helping Priscilla is just yet more evidence that he has spent too much time trying to help himself, to salve his own guilt and doubts, even as he claimed being here to aid his commander and friend.     And that realization just makes him feel even worse, in a downwards spiral of self-blame and self-hate, until he finally snaps out of it when he has to cough more blood into a handkerchief. "Stop it." he whispers to himself. "Focus on now."     The Dead might not change... So let that work in his favor by holding onto hope that Priscilla can make this place a proper home, or whatever she wants to do with it. And that means putting his head on straight, and Fixing things.     "I am going to save us some time. I generally prefer not to do this because I enjoy reading, but it is simply more efficient." He places his hand on the bookshelf. "And I am not here for myself." He releases a grid of power that scans the bookshelf and all of its contents, copying a template of it and its books to memory. He wasn't sure if it would work this way, to be honest, because he has never tried to make book mimics (can you imagine that kind of nightmare in a giant library?).     But it's there now, not only the contents of the books, but also their structure, and that of the bookshelf they rest upon. That extra information isn't needed, but it's there regardless.     "Storybooks, history texts, tomes, manuals regarding various useful skills..." He squints as though that will somehow help him see better the information in his brain. "And something in a language I do not know. One of the more recent books. I would have to compare my notes to see if it matches anything, though based purely on recollection it may match what was seen at the bridge."     He sighs. "I wish Crow was here. With his expertise with smithing and the forge, he might have had insight into all this with the anvil and such."
Reiji Arisu	"An escape hatch, yeah. Or something to make sure that a child Priscilla would remain safe, but a learned, mature, Priscilla, one who could finally fend for herself against the schemes of the gods, could find her way out." Or rather, that's just what Reiji can surmise with an optimistic examination of Ariamis' character. He was a kind man, it seemed. "So the runes allow a gatekeeper to open or close the portal as necessary," Reiji says as he examines the scrawl in the stonework. "Hmn. So why then has the bonfire here not been able to connect with the outside? If this portal allows for humans and gods to pass intact, then surely it should allow souls, flame and dark passage as well." He pauses to think, then draws back, shaking his head. "Well. It's probably being obstructed by that dark power from before. It's thousands of years old and incredibly powerful from a metaphysical standpoint. If we had more time, I would have liked to have found a way to bore a hole through, to properly connect this world and the outside. But I'm not certain that we do-- and trying anything haphazard might just strand us in here." After all, the darkness is quiescent for now, but who could say whether it would remain that way? Regardless. Something to keep in mind. "I'm curious as to whether that necromancer left anything of use near his dragon," he says, then, moving back away to investigate the enormous corpse. "Who knows, maybe he found that ember?"
Starbound Flotilla	"Construction sequences complete. Efficacy at seventy percent." "Caring at zero percent, this is one of those totally binary situations." "Floran think, we ssset up for hunt properly now." "Aye, our friend down there has a great need for an entrance and an exit." "I shall be doing my best to establish an entrance system to facilitate some entry and exit, but any defenses against hazards will fall to Seft." "Hopeful. It might be the case that we won't need that in the first place. Let's work on the entryway!"     Moonfin and Seft immediately set about leading work on the precipice of their anomaly. The rest of the Flotilla, despite the differences among them, fall in line quickly, and what winds up being constructed is a rather strange setup. With wood and stone taken from the terrain and long-ago harvested from surroundings, they intend to build something that actually fits right in with the local architecture in a rather stylish way, a sort of leaning archway that poses itself right over the edge and descends into a precarious-looking but actually rather safe passageway down, providing both an elevator on thick iron rails, and a set of stairs, all lit by dramatically flickering torches and constructed in the local style.     The hope is that this gesture of appeasement will please whatever "thought" processes were involved in forming the hostile response from before. It's a symbolic gesture of acceptance of what it said, and adherence to a promise: They will not leave new things, and all they will do is keep what is here, even if a few rearrangements are necessary. They manage to take in all the data from Kushiko's datastream, unless the darkness impedes even that, and work to modulate the architecture to work precisely along the contours of the data to find a path of least resistance.     Eryl gets a smug look from Moonfin. "We possess some drones, but to use them here would be in poor taste." He says. "Not only have we made a heartfelt promise to no longer leave our pollutants and add to the pain of the Painted World, but we also must do our best to understand and analyze the effect that this substance, this influence, has on the mind, as the effect was quite substantial. No, we shall not make use of drones for such a matter; volunteers who accept the risk of braving the frontier before we complete the architecture of retrieval are undoubtedly of far greater utility. Also, I rather like that Tenno. She behaves much like a Hylotl... In a few ways, at least." Damn, Moonfin said he actually thinks well of Kushiko! He barely thinks well of anyone. Must be all the asian influences in her stuff.     "Hopeful. We're still receiving the data, we'll take all of it into the design! Ms. Kushiko, I'm going to try to lock onto you and bring the area under construction down to the barrier. If you find any ways to open it, we will try to set up something to keep it open in preparation!"
Tomoe	She looks at Valkyr jumps in alone into the void. She mutters, this is stupid this is crazy but she's not going to leave her to go in alone. "Well in the words of a famous gamer, time's up lets do this." With that her wings flare out and she flies after the Tenno not wanting to leave her own there alone, this isn't the best of ideas while Tomoe can fly down she's going to have to find another way up but to be perfectly honest she doesn't feel right about not leaving her friend behind. The last thing she notices as she leaps away is Carna getting into trouble there is a muffled curse and little she can do now, she does have faith in Carna to get herself out of this though as she falls into the void, she will attempt a light spell but as she gets deeper she ... knows this dark she's experienced it before at least she thinks she has. "Kushiko?!" She calls out as she tries moves to stop her decent before her wings finally give out. "... I couldn't leave you alone in this and ... I been to the Abyss ... before." It's going to take her a moment to get her bearings
Captain Flint	"He might have," says Flint with a shrug. The captain doesn't know Crow, but he can't say whether or not his presence would be helpful. What he does know is that Enark's presence was absolutely helpful. "But he isn't here. You, on the otherhand, have trivialized work that would've taken me hours on my own. Don't discount that." Some of those are storybooks--it makes sense, given that Priscilla grew up in this place. He'll have to talk to Enark about those, later. For now, it's looking like there's nothing else to be done in here.      "We should regroup with the others," says Flint. "I hope you'll not mind taking the short way down." By 'the short way,' he means making use of the grapnel. The tower was meant to be looked out from, which means there's no shortage of places the barbed hook can find purchase. Flint descends first, clearing the way for Enark if necessary, one stack of arches at a time.      It takes some time, but with luck, not nearly so much as the initial ascent. And once they're on the ground, Flint will head for the construction project the Flotilla's making. Unlike most of their work, it seems more like it blends in with the world. This... could be his chance to kill whatever's causing this. With a hand on his cutlass, he nods to the captains and steps onto the (hopefully) Painted World-friendly elevator.
Xiaomu	"Could be that making the Painting 'permeable' to those phenomena or forces would have made it easier for somebody to force entry," Xiaomu points out to Reiji. "I mean, was this meant to be a sanctuary or a prison? Sure, a lot of people came into the Painted World to use it as the former ... but Priscilla was sent here because the gods feared her power, right? That sounds an awful lot like 'prison' to me - or 'exile' if you prefer, but the effect is the same: keep her away from beings who were scared of her."
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl gives Moonfin a long stare. "There is a limit to keeping well-meaning promises. I think Priscilla would be happier with everyone coming out of this at the expense of some scrap at the bottom of a cliff, as opposed to someone falling because you had a promise to keep."     He looks down again and says, "But if she volunteered, who am I to object?"
Priscilla	"I am not confident that this is something that wouldst 'spill out' so easily, Sir Fairfax." Priscilla says, staring into the same void as him, with a tense and faraway look. "I knoweth not entirely why, but I believeth not this something what 'wishes' to leave. In so many ways, it is polarized across the ways its ostensibly closest relative acts. This is not the Abyss. Not quite. Not the true Dark of the Primevil Man. It wishes not to expand and grow and take and covet and welcome with open arms. It is bound here of its own volition. It clings to what is within and rejects that which lies without. It lingers . . . waiting? Perhaps?"     Her frown deepens just to the point that it almost looks like a normal, expressive person's frown, before the crossbreed shakes her head and moves back from the ledge. She resolves to try and look a little brighter for the back and forth between Reiji and Xiaomu. "Thine own theories art as good as mine. Perhaps better. The Dark was not quite so bad whence this exit was first dreamed up. As nostalgic as it may be, I wouldst ill wish for it to close, as I wouldst be all alone again before long." Priscilla tries to look like she wants to laugh at that, but the moment is short-lived.     Nothing particularly stops Reiji from getting up to the second level of the two-layered bridge complex. This layer of the bridge is unoccupied, save for its colossal occupant corpse, and without railings or pillars like the one below. It appears to have been badly damaged by the dragon crashing into it, effectively skewering itself down the middle with the broken and jagged end of the stone walkway, and shows signs of fierce combat afterwards. No corpses of any kind remain, but a handful of possessions lay scattered about the dragon's frozen, eyeless, rictus skull. A handful of them are clearly occultic in origin, probably belonging to the precocious necromancer-in-training that had flown the thing here, only to cause a catastrophe. The only thing that seems especially out of place is a rather large and fancy shield, of untarnished silver and unweathered red paint, styled rather ornately with the crest of a teardrop of blood. It is blatantly magical to Reiji's senses, though not in a way that particularly matches up with the character of necromantic magic. More like a ward or protection of some kind.
Priscilla	The archway proceeds apace. It is a risky business, doing what the Flotilla do. Kushiko already seems to be in an intensely, unnervingly precarious position down below on her own, so the added stresses of threading an entire complex structure through the same eye of the storm are far from welcome. The void churns uneasily around them, swirling in a way that becomes a dull roar just outside their perception, like an echo they cannot hear, or the background noise of a star a million light years distant, so low drawn out as to be unrecognizable that it's there. It is a dangerous feeling, full of ominous suspense, but nothing as of yet lunges out from the blackness to take them. No morbid eyes appear in the dark to carry away those who follow them down the stares and rails, and drag them off to a horrific, unknown grave.     It ends with Kushiko at the last, snowy steps of the mountain that see the light of 'day', as thin of an arrow of weak and ghostly celestial glow as it is. Tomoe's wings steadily lose power as she descends, until finally they sputter out completely, leaving her nearly stranded at the bottom, were it not for the oncoming construction. The reality is that there is nowhere else to go in this oppressive tunnel of the maddeningly unknown, frustratingly elusive and vexatious in its true nature even after all this time, and yet too aggravatingly dangerous to simply find out the hard way. There is an endpoint they have tunneled all the way down to. They have a way back, but no routes to either side. Most of them have felt their leads on the mountain above dry up, and see no other way forward. Kushiko is the first to ply it, however tepidly.     Kushiko is not wrong in her thinking. Her open channel to the Void did always have a strangely resonant effect with the strange gates and paths to the Abyssal realm beyond the realm of Fire. It has had odd reactions in past, largely benign, not of indecipherable meaning, before, as if the two somehow distantly recognized the touch of the other.     This isn't that. It bears all the hallmarks of being that, but where the Dark recognizes the Void, it lashes out. The lilac energy awakens something behind the liquid obsidian curtain. Gravity not unlike that which had drawn those here kicking and flailing into the Painted World the first time sinks its fangs into her fingers and wrist, and then begins to pull. The surface 'splashes', in a way that hurts to try and visualizes, recursively rippling back on itself and parting to swallow the Warframe it has its grip on, stringing her through the current she had tested. Where it thins slightly to do so, the glimmers beyond grow slightly brighter and more visible, just a little bit closer. but the 'river' of Dark substrate in her way has her in its undertow. Her world is no longer up and down, but backwards and forwards, and shortly thereafter, the energy meter assigned to Valkyr begins to deplete, slowly at first, but gradually accelerating.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl watches as Kushiko advances through the thick Dark miasma. He taps into the data he's transmitting so he can presumably see the Dark lash out in response to the Void, grabbing her and siphoning her energy. This won't stand. Immediately, he backs up from the edge of the cliff, Original Face gauging distances and geometry for what he plans to do in a split second.     "Catch us," he instructs others watching as he breaks into a run before diving off the cliff and into the whirling vortex far below. On the way down, his Ungraspables emerge, engraved with titanite forged by the Dark Ember. He hopes against hope that they might grant him some degree of resilience against it. He plummets, and goes to grab on to Kushiko's frame, before reaching around to the small of his back and pulling out... a power cord? He looks all over her surface, looking for some kind of inlet. If he sees one, the plugs' prongs reconfigure to match and he plugs it in, allowing her to draw from his own KOAN Core to keep herself powered until someone else can do something.
Staren	Now they're here, and it seems they're all going to go into the not-abyss. Worrisome... Staren sticks another tablet to the top of the elevator supports, and then sees Kushiko getting grabbed by darkness... Damn it! He goes ahead and jumps down himself. Planning to use wings to slow his fall a bit, but even if he just crashes into the floor, this body should be able to take it. If he can reach the bottom before Kushiko is drawn away, he tries to grab her and pull against the darkness!
Captain Flint	Flint initially has no idea what he's seeing as he reaches the bottom of the chasm. Kushiko's technology is nowhere near familiar to him. Were it not for Eryl's sudden entrance, he'd have no idea that she was even in trouble. What lies beyond is clearly something of importance, and yet the force which surrounds them seems to have an interest in keeping them from it.      The pirate's cutlass rings with an unusually resonant hum as it slides free of the scabbard. The dim light provided by the torches behind him illuminates white titanite engravings along the blade. He's wanted to test Andre's handiwork since he arrived, and since his last visit here, he's been quietly scheming, searching for some way to strike back at the force that threatened Miranda. This is an opportunity for both.      Flint charges forward and swings the cutlass into the miasma, hacking away at it like an explorer clearing brush with a machete.
Reiji Arisu	Well! This is... Approximately all the things that Reiji expected to find sitting next to a giant, rotting dragon corpse. Almost. The occult implements were certainly expected. The other bits-- especially the strange, magical shield-- were perhaps not so much. What is this doing here? Did one of the knights guarding the castle in those days use it to defend against the corpsey goliath? Reiji furrows his brow and lifts the shield up onto his shoulders. It might not be his specialty, but it might just come in handy against whatever might be down... there. Or not. Unless somehow a blood-guarding shield protects against whatever it is a formless, wrathful, lonely darkness can throw at them. "Well," Reiji says as everyone begins jumping one after another off the world. "I think I've found just about everything to find up here," says every explorer ever moments before waltzing into horrible danger. "Xiaomu, let's join the others, shall we?" And so Reiji goes to leap into the void. Because why not, right? Right.
Starbound Flotilla	"Yeah, I'm really not liking the way this stuff gets antsy." "Hmph. It's a hazard zone. Don't know what we expected." "Anxious. It may not be really responding to our negotiation from before." "Wouldn't expect it to. Kindness is just something to take advantage of." "We will grant it peace however it must be granted. Descend properly, it would seem the others shall need assistance."     Eryl makes a simple demand, and the Flotilla does their best to oblige. Grappling hooks come out, and hook into the elevator's rail, firing straight down towarsds the pair and giving them, or anyone who grabs at them, the opportunity to grab on and reel in... Or if the tug is strong enough, reel away with a chance to exit in the future. "Worried. Is the barrier reacting in a hostile way? Is there a way to pass through without hostility...? We need to shift the modes and behaviors of the barrier, or maybe it's not even a barrier..." Seft mutters, anxiously and nervously. She descends as well from the arch, which has reached the zone of the barrior and is now actually pretty well functional as an entrance and exit.     Moving with heavy robotic weight, she pulls out a big brass scanner, which sparks dramatically when she points it at the barrier, and flicks through tumbling physical displays to indicate data. She's trying to see if it'll let them through with less hostility if activated with smaller bursts of less voidy energies, something that doesn't enrage it.     If she can find something, some energy type, that draws less rage, she's going to try to flood it with a heavy elemental sort of emitter, and interrupt the hostile action by passing right through, hoping that her grappling hook will manage if things truly are too dire beyond it.
Kushiko	On the one hand: hooray! The Flotilla and Tomoe making their way down--albeit with some considerable effort all told, is a very, /very/ good thing. It was a risky prospect, being here alone, but doing things alone was something the Tenno was fairly well accustomed to. <"Tomoe!"> she calls out and back; given the way her wings and more would not have the power they needed to get her down. At least with the Flotilla making their construction, they were able to make something stable here. Unfortunately, she does not have altogether that much time to actually greet, or confirm, or really /do/ much of anything. Seeing as the idea was basically 'let's poke it' and maybe be a little bit more proactive about what they're doing here, she's doing just that. The 'unfortunate' part being not so much the sucking in of her Warframe, but the way it happens. The Dark wrapping and gripping and gnawing at her makes her first try to recoil away from it. At first, the impulse is to keep /pulling/ away, moreso when it starts to drain at her energy and endurance. Thing is, the longer she's possibly in the grip of this ... /river/, the more she might be able to progress downward--er, forward? It's hard to say for certain. Unfortunately for Eryl, he learns there's no really /obvious/ kinds of inlets for energy, nothing for cabling and the like as she grunts from surprise, <"What are you--"> before making another noise of irritation from the energy drain. On the one hand, she should be /glad/ of the possibility to recuperate her energy thanks to what Eryl's doing. She could reach and sortof configure in a weird way for him to let her absorb some juice. On the other hand, it could take advantage of the fact there's /more/ Void energy afterwards, when converted and fed off of that KOAN core. On the other hand, that momentary intake of energy is something she could use, at least before it's gone again. Reaching to get a grip on Eryl who practically jumped on her to begin with, she uses her other hand to launch an energy-based (probably not the best, but what can she /do/) grapple further down the 'river'. It's a hope she can latch onto something, surface wise, and basically yank herself and Eryl forwards at much further velocities--and maybe even try to get themselves to the glimmers at the end of the tunnel without letting the Dark drain her further, to say nothing of Eryl who's getting the chance to piggyback.
Xiaomu	"This seems like a really bad plan," Xiaomu says cheerfully, "but I haven't got any better ones. HWA-CHAAAAAAAAA~!!!" That last is said as she leaps with Reiji. If the shield is big enough, she's hanging onto an edge or something as well; otherwise, she's just falling in formation* with Reiji. (* - They're trained professionals. Do *NOT* try this at home, kids!)
Tomoe	As the void land for lack of a better ide takes some shapr or seems to as Tomoe finally comes in for a landing just as her wings flicker out. she's going to have to trust in the Starbounders to get back out. She takes a moment to look around at this place it's strange to be fair but hopefully, she can follow her Tenno friend's lead as she gets ready to go. "Couldn't leave you alone down here my friend. Wouldn't be right, to do so." She also hears and sees Eryl make his one hell of an entance too. R "Are you both okay...." She'll try to make for them if she's able to even if she has to bust out her own Parkour to reach them in some fashion, to keep up with her comrades as they make on ahead.
Reiji Arisu	It's okay. Reiji and Xiaomu are experts at jumping off from very high places. "This is a perfectly reasonable plan," Reiji says as the world rushes by all around him as he jumps boldly into the abyss. "It's not the first time we've jumped into an endless gaping eternity."
Xiaomu	"True, but if this turns out to be the *last* time, I'll make sure to strangle you," Xiaomu retorts, still just as inordinately cheerful as before their great leap of faith.
Carna	Enark accepts Flint's praise gracefully. He doesn't have any more time to spend on himself right now. He's wasted far too much already. He also doesn't object to the fast way down. He has, at this point, suffered far more terrifying fates, including trying to approach a monster that literally radiated invasive fear.     When they are going to go down into the Chasm though, he has misgivings. The last time he saw this Chasm up-close, it was full of the dead bodies of his companions, many of whom have moved up the relationship ladder to friends. He has only mentioned this concern to Kord so far, but his was the only one among all the other corpses that was not there.     He doesn't really want to know what's down there. He doesn't want to know what the others were dumped into before him. What a sad girl trapped in a Painting had to feed her friends into over and over and over when they died trying to stop a monster.     But he's not here for him. That is something he has determined with certainty.     So as others leap down, he closes his eyes, takes a rattling, blood-wettened breath, and goes down there as well.     Whenever he reaches the bottom with everyone else, he tosses up water shields upon any who missed them before, knowing he is tapping his last remaining energies and will be able to spare maybe a handful of small-scale healing spells. He also doesn't want to agitate whatever this is any further with foreign magics.     He also takes the time to do a head count, peer up the way they came while surrounded by an alien, clinging power that he is trying very hard not to think about, not to analyze, not to let into his head, and asks, "...Where is Carna?"
Priscilla	Kushiko decides that braving to the far shore is better than fighting against the current and trying to swim back, in the metaphorical, but slightly literal sense. Eryl is taken along for the ride, and as the malevolent well of inescapable gravity takes hold of the both of them, sadly, Staren is too, despite his best efforts to do exactly the opposite pull Kushiko out of the roiling, singing, splashing, fractal quicksand in space. Once he crosses that event horizon, there is no turning back, as surely was there was no chance of changing heading when the Painted World of Ariamis had first grabbed them. Reiji and Xiaomu follow from high above. Tomoe rushes in to reach her friend. Flint swings down with his Divine token of Andre's work at the fore, swinging wildly at that dark and thorny proverb ahead of him. Seft is left to settle for her most powerful Erchius crystal (???) before the opportunity closes, as surely as Enark barely has time to prepare his buffs, and shortly thereafter, the entire team of Elites, dense in number and veteran as they are, are dragged into that howling torrent of Dark.     It's not the singing they hear on the other side. At least, not the singing by itself. As the darkness closes completely around them, it isn't a floating void that spreads out before them, nor a drowning river that rushes in around them. The world beyond is not truly shadows nor void nor water nor miasma. It is black and it is cold and it is heavy and it is dense and it is chaotic and it is lost and it is without direction or time or sense or meaning of any kind. It is blackness only defined by the even deeper blackness that swirls throughout it, invisible to the eye and inaudible to the ear, undetectable by every means, but there all the same, and one /knows/ they are there.     They are this place and this place is them. This world is the things that move and swirl through it in this turbulent, howling, ringing, disorienting, drowning dirge of inescapable black chaos. This world is little shapes. This world is moving things. This world is millions of entities that blend together into a impossible, infinite, surging tide that erases all distinction between where one tiny being ends and where the next begins; metaphysical neutronium; spiritual singularities, and just as dense and dark and nonsensical and impenetrable and dead as their comparison's sake.     They are/the world is insects. It is an impossibly dense swarm of them flying through every square centimeter of air, flitting through corners of vision and buzzing violently past the ear. They don't exist, because nothing exists here, but they are devouring locusts, they are ravenous beetles, they are murderous wasps; anything and everything that kills and consumes and lays waste to everything in its path through sheer numbers and voracious primal instinct. It's the best way the mind can comprehend it. Drowning in a black hole of devouring insects. The world is a cannibalistic swarm of infinite, insatiable, incomprehensible hunger.
Priscilla	It's not the only thing they/the world are/is. Though insects are the strongest impression, there are other layers, other flavours, other pitches and tenors woven throughout, different for each witness of this ineffable nightmare, playing on especially strong experiences and associations in the mind. The insects are tiny carnivorous fish of the tropics, crushing into an impenetrable thrashing ball of bloodthirsty teeth, where they flay flesh from bone and strip cattle into skeletons in seconds. The insects are the crackling, static-filled scream of the cosmic wind, hateful and indifferent radiation and forgotten particles of an ancient planet's creation left drifting through the void at hypervelocity, scorching and peeling and blasting away the skin. The insects are exploding fragments of glass and an uncountable swarm of flying bullets, thrumming through the air as black blurs and sizzling past the ear as doppler echoes, ripping anything caught in their way to a million tattered pieces. They are all these things and more. They are the uncountable stinging and killing and consuming and multiplying cells of some endless drifting horror of the deep seas that exterminates the ocean floor wherever the winds guide it.     They aren't just imagined, either.     There are no insects. There are no fish nor winds nor glass nor bullets nor anything else but a formless suggestion, but the danger is all too real. The shields used by many are slammed by the unfathomable roar in an instant. They crackle and boil in the scouring tide, and begin to disappear, not draining or depleting as they should, but thinning and disintegrating as dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of tiny holes appear in the surface of the water Murmurs, of the Warframe's shields, of Staren's forcefields, and widen as if the screens were eaten away by acid.     Armour is no safer, even for those wearing it as their first line of the defense like the Flotilla. The surface of any and all protective wear is riddled with tens of thousands of tiny pits within seconds, and then rapidly ground down layer by layer, dismantled and disintegrated unevenly across its various surfaces, until just like the shields, holes finally breach all the way through and let it/them in. Clothing provides an instant of respite, shredded through as a year of ravenous moths happen in freakish time lapse, and then comes the flesh.     It isn't even like eating anymore. It doesn't feel like tiny teeth. Exposed skin is riddled with such chaotic and instantaneous punctures that it feels like white-hot projectiles atomizing flesh in shallow splatters; ultra-fine particles of antimatter carrying away a little bit of someone's physical bieng a tiny bit at a time. It hurts. It really really hurts. A hundred bites/stings/cuts/shots/punctures/burns happen every second, and leave wildly streaking ribbons of blood tearing away in the current, blooming into the darkness exactly like it would from the victim of a starving shark.
Priscilla	No matter how one looks at it, there is an inescapable truth. Nobody, no matter how sturdy or skilled or clever or prepared or strong of will or body, could survive this for more than minutes at most. It attacks their survival mechanisms as if there were no difference between them. It analyzes them in an instant and applies a grinding wheel to their metaphorical HP bar. It /literally/ attacks Tomoe's HP bar. The green gauge drops faster than she's ever seen it before, fizzling, popping, and glitching with chromatic aberration and screaming warning bleeps as a Status Effect indicator she's never seen in her life flashes beneath it, as a clearly broken image with fragmented text that spells out a word she can't quite register for a moment, but which sinks into her retinas with a jarring and chilling familiarity once it does.     !LIFEHUNT!     It is no small miracle, or perhaps no miracle at all then, that the distance they cross is short enough to be survivable. Enough to leave uncountable, agonizing wounds, but survivable. They tumble one after another into the 'air bubble' beyond; the safe space of a never-unsealed cavern under the black, soul-slaying waters of this place, and finally, at last, they can see what actually exists at the bottom of the chasm with their own eyes and ears, in quiet and safety.     The ground is beneath them once more. The air is just air, in their lungs and not in their blood, inert and cold and not slashing away their very essence. The earth is relatively soft, and seems to extend for dozens of meters all around, visible as an island of soothing, pale blue light, the opposite of the Bonfire in hue, but not dissimilar in its tranquility. All around them blooms a field of tiny, delicate, pure white wildflowers; a veritable garden untouched by time or man. The petals luminesce softly, and tiny motes of sparkling diamond dust seems to rise from them. The gnarled roots of great trees so massive and familiarly bizarre as can only be compared to Archtrees perforate the landscape, often extending crazily into empty space, but they are either frozen over in meters or ice, or they are simply made of the glassy blue substance through and through, adding even more surreality to this tiny oasis of life and light. A flower garden amidst Archtrees of ice in the middle of a bottomless hell of Dark.
Priscilla	The light itself isn't a mystery though. It is cast by a very obvious source, visible to all, in a concrete and entirely non-abstract sense. Tiny little glowing specs, barely bigger than fireflies, eddy and drift in serene, dancing motions throughout the clearing, spiraling and glittering carefree through the air, shedding their pale radiance wherever they go. They don't seem to be anything but points of light, but one immediately and firmly attributes intelligence to them. They don't drift in random directions, but dance and trace deliberate patterns through the air, gradually gathering to meet the badly bloodied Elites at a short distance, practically flocking to them as if curious.     They are deeply soothing to look at. They are a much-needed anesthesia for the mind after the moments of horror just endured. More than that, their very presence seems to numb and sooth the wounds borne by all, and very slowly, only just quick enough to barely be perceived, they begin to heal them. /Reverse/ them may be more appropriate, even including damage to clothing and armour, though at no hurried rate. They twinkle and pulse as they do so, as if communicating in some fashion, at once strange and alien. No sense can be made of it, silent as it is, or at least possessing some quality of sound impossible for the mortal mind to comprehend, but matters change when Priscilla steps out of the black and past the Elites, and approaches the little, playful lights, completely unscathed from head to toe.     An unforeseen advantage, or a red flag?     For whatever reason, she doesn't quite seem shocked. Not familiar, but as if she is seeing these things for the second time rather than the first. She approaches while others are recovering, moving with a purpose, and is just about to say something, when it seems the sentient stardust knows her mind, and replies. Not in a sensible way. This place is far too many steps disassociated from ordinary reality for that. Their reply is a word that is a shape. A sound that is a form. A pronunciation that is a character. Something simultaneously heard and seen as it is understood, without quite being either. Not a phrase of any kind, but a signal. No, a counter signal. The second stage in a greeting protocol. A communication of their origin, and their intent.
Priscilla	,@                                              ,,     &                               @%      @/    @@                               @        (,    @@                        ,%    .@         @    *@                        .@@   *@         @     @     @@            %     @    @&         @*    @     ,@           (@     @    @,         @/    @      @     &&    @%     @    @%         %@    &     ,@     &@    @%     @    @%         (@    &     %@     @(    @%     @    @%         .@    /&    .@     @(   &@*    #@    @%          @@*   @*    .@    @(   @@     @     @           /@@@  &@.    ,@  @@ ,@@    %@,   @@,                 *&@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@%                               .@@%                                            %@                                              ,@                                              ,@                                              %@                                              %@                                              %@                                              %@                                               @                                               @                                              (@                                              %@                                              @&                                              @(                                               @                                               @                                               *