Fable - Ask Unwinding Threads

[Liliana]

Vel Luin

"This is so BORING." Liliana lamented, chin resting in her hand as she sat just outside Warehouse 316A on the docks of Vel Luin.

"My parents didn't send me to the Academy to become a guard." She continued to complain. "This is ludicrous."

She had only been on duty with the others for about two hours, and for half of that time had somehow managed not to complain. Now that night had truly set in and the quiet of literally everything around them was there Liliana couldn't help but be completely overwhelmed with boredom. There was nothing going on. There was no one here. There was absolutely no reason for them to be standing out in the bloody cold.

A rush of cold wind ran through the docks, flowing from the ocean and cutting down to the bone.

Liliana shivered, scowling as she pulled her fur coat a bit tighter. "Proctor Denrith can get absolutely fucked."

The Initiate said with a scowl, glancing down the way of the warehouse. None of the Guardsmen were there at the moment, likely going on their patrols to some of the other docks.

"I'm going inside." So what if they were told not to? She was a daughter of House Lorel. Her family practically owned half this city, or rather, her cousin did. Not that it mattered much anymore. Elise was the only Virak remaining, and that meant sooner or later she too would be...well, someone would need to run things.

"No secret is worth my being cold." She declared, turning on her heel and heading towards the door.

 

[Trix]

Trix already had her fur lined hood pulled up the shield her delicate skin from the harsh icy winds blowing off the port. Vel Luin could fall back into those choppy waves for all the young Dreadlord cared. It was a miserable bit of rock that had produced nothing worth mentioning, despite what its inhabitants seemed to think since the revolution. There had been an obnoxiously large statue going up in the city square when they had arrived to one Talus Morid, one of the main figureheads of the rebellious Dreadlords. She wondered how long it would take them to find the root of the weed she had encouraged to thread through the stone and dig it out. Months probably. With any luck it wouldn't be until they had nearly finished and would have to start again.

She'd have much rather been watching the stonemasons in their doomed task than the empty warehouse.

If Lili hadn't broken the silence Trix most certainly would of; her bloody arse was going numb.

"Finally," she hopped off the stonewall they'd been sitting on and shoved her gloved hands into her deep pockets. "I've been wanting to know what this secret is since we got here," there was absolutely no question in her mind that they were going to look.

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney had been voluntold that she would be guarding the warehouse by her dearest friend, Liliana. The evil bitch knew that Delaney would be miserable but she also knew that Delaney would, indeed, go with her. Misery loves company and shit. She was extremely miserable and cold. She leaned against the wall as her tendrils of shadow floated around her legs and arms like pet snakes waiting to be sicced on their victims.

Like the other two women, she had a large fur lined coat on and the hood was pulled over her long white blonde hair. She looked over at Liliana as she announced that she was going inside the warehouse and pushed herself away from the wall. "I don't particularly care what is inside, but I am over this cold. Let's go."

Delaney started to follow Liliana and Trix towards the warehouse that they were supposed to be guarding not going inside. Oh well.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"No, no, no, wait!" Kristen said, holding up both of her hands in an entreating manner for her fellow initiates to stop. And she lowered her voice, as if worried she might be overheard, despite their only company being the cold northerly winds from the docks. "We cannot do that! It...well, to be frank, it is strictly against our instructions."

Against the rules set forth for them! Proctor Denrith had been clear and specific. Kristen was not sure how the other three girls had gotten assigned to this task, but Proctor Magomo had conferred with Proctor Denrith to get Kristen on board. Local guard duty. Simple, he had said. He had also added in a manner that made Kristen blush with embarrassment: Initiate Pirian, you cannot possibly fuck this up.

And now Liliana, Beatrix, and even Delaney were attempting to, ehm, fudge the assignment.

Was it cold? Yes, it was cold. Proctor Magomo likely knew it was going to be exquisitely cold, hence another reason why he sent her along. More "character building." And while she had come to see that there was a hearty dose of truth in Proctor Magomo's methods, still, to her fellow initiates' credit, yes, this cold was most unpleasant. The biting cold born of the night and the sea's winds seemed to gnaw right through the heavy cloak Kristen wore over her armor.

But the rules were the rules! And Kristen couldn't fudge this up!

Kristen, half-heartedly walking after the trio, continued to state her case through lightly chattering teeth. "Maybe we could construct a fire?" She didn't even know how any of them would get that done. "O-Or perhaps have purchased for us additional garments or blankets?" She didn't even truly consider where, at this hour, such purchases would even be made. Nor the silliness of the four of them wrapped up in bundles outside the warehouse, as if the dock were one of their bedrooms and they were having a girls' party.

"Surely there must be a way without abandoning our post. Right...?"

Liliana Trix Delaney Lennox

 

[Liliana]

Her hand stopped as she clutched the door of the Warehouse. Her features flat as slowly she turned her head and looked towards the scion of House Pirian.

Liliana stared at Kirsten with all the flat emotion of a statue.

She'd known from the moment the Pirian girl arrived at the Academy that she would be a problem of some sort. The noble Houses, whether they liked to admit it or not, were still playing the game. Minor, Major, it didn't matter.

Those who were in power for over five centuries did not simply give it up. Lorel, Virak, Urahil, even Pirian would attest to that. If not publicly, than most certainly in private. Liliana was as confident of that as she was anything else in her entire life. As was her father.

Both of them were certain that Kirsten was not just here for her stated reasons.

There was a game being played. Some sort of plan put into place.

Liliana hadn't been able to figure out what, in fact she'd hardly been able to figure out Kirsten at all. From what she could tell the girl was an utter buffoon wrapped in a cloak of incompetence. Had it not been for her cousins instructions she would have had Ignatius kill the girl already with one of his concoctions.

It would have been much simpler. "Kirsten. I want you to think for a second."

She did not use the Weavings, she did not need it.

"Do you really expect me to stand out here in the cold?" She asked. "Do you expect Trix to run around looking for firewood? Do you expect Del to root through trash for some blankets? All so we can shiver together like a pack of wet dogs?"

Liliana shook her head. "Of course you don't. Because you're not a fucking moron. You're better than that, you're a smart, composed, woman of noble birth. Now shuttup and go inside, or stay out here like a wet dog."

 

[Trix]

It was always goodie-two-shoes, look-at-me-aren't-I-a-fucking-role-model Pirian.

Trix didn't bother to hide the way her eyes rolled when the other girl begun to climb aboard her mighty steed of self righteousness. Lils had far more patience for her than the Umbra girl did. Kristen would have just been not too politely told to fucking stay out here then and freeze. Turning her back as the blonde tried to make the other see reason, the initiate turned her attentions instead to the warehouse. Of course checking the door handle revealed it was locked but fortunately for the lot of them it was made of thick and sturdy oak. Pressing her hands flat she closed her eyes and focused.

The door ever so slightly begun to shrink. Enough so that the lock no longer fit and it swung open inwards to reveal a dark corridor lit with warm torchlight. Liliana was still trying to convince the stupid whelp to get her arse moving as Trix stood to the side, lazily leaning against the door. A cruel smile twisted her lips suddenly as an idea took her and lazily she formed a hole in the bottom of the door just wide enough for a dog or a slim girl to crawl through.

"Leave her be - we should be all more like Kristen. The perfect little dog," she drawled and gave Kristen a vicious smile. "I've made her a little flap should she want to join us, now can we please get out of the fucking cold?"

 

[Henk]

Henk had been doing his very best to ignore the bickering of the women standing guard at the warehouse with him. Honestly, five dreadlords for such a simple assignment seemed a bit excessive to the scar-faced boy, but he only took that to mean whatever was inside the building was of utmost importance to their keepers. Despite that evident importance, it was growing clearer that escaping the biting Vel Luin air was more imperative to his fellow initiates than following their orders.

Ah, but Miss Pirian, bless her heart, was still fresh-faced and eager to carry out her orders to the letter. Say what you would about her method of joining their ranks, and many had, but the claim that she did not strive to obtain the results expected of her couldn't be made. That the others were being harsh with her was to be expected, yet Henk did her the favor of allowing her to fight her own battle, at least until Trix began working on the door of the warehouse.

Only then did the older boy clear his throat, peeking over his shoulder at the rest of them. Trix and Liliana, neither of them got along particularly well with Henk, his quiet demeanor likely contributing to that. Delaney... he knew very little about. She seemed just as irked by the presence of the other girls though. "Don't you think you're being rather childish, Trix? If you and Miss Liliana are so cold, would it really be so difficult to ask the one of us with light magic to keep you warm?"

Turning on his heel, he reaches out and pats Kristen on the shoulder lightly before moving his hands behind his back with a sigh. "Whatever is in this warehouse is obviously important. The fact there are five of us here as well as a door lock implies that something powerful and dangerous could come for this. By removing that lock and going inside, we put ourselves at a tactical disadvantage."

Heavens, he was beginning to sound like Dorian. Waving a hand, the space between his gloved fingers glowed brightly for a moment. "If it's really such a problem, I can heat up the space around us without us having to compromise our mission. Somehow though, I suspect the cold isn't as much of a factor as you claim. You just want to see what's inside, don't you?"

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney stopped walking as soon as Trix started being her normal bitchy self towards Kristen. Yes, the Pirian girl was annoying but Delaney had taken a weird liking to her. Perhaps it was because everyone else was so mean to her. Kristen was Delaney’s little baby bird and she protected her. She had only threatened a few people to leave the girl alone. Now Trix was being a child, but before she could say anything to her, Henk spoke up.

“I just want to be warm. You and Kristen can stay by the door if you are so worried about the tactical disadvantage.” Delaney started then looked at Kristen, “or getting in trouble.”

Delaney walked through the doorway that was no longer blocked by a door. She threw a glare at Trix on her way by, her tendrils of shadow starting to reach out towards the initiate. She pulled them back in before she started a fight that would not get her warmer faster.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen pursed her lips as the little dilemma settled in. Liliana was right, of course, she had suggested solutions that were hardly feasible. She was a touch crass about it, but right she was. Beatrix, on the other hand, was simply being overtly mean-spirited! Were all Umbras like this?

She was quite thankful for Henk and Delaney, though. This assignment would have, frankly, been unbearable if it were only her, Liliana, and Beatrix. Strange as that was to think about; with all of them being of noble blood Kristen would have thought they'd all get along splendidly. It could have been even worse though. What if she were on this assignment with Ignatius, Charon, and Bull? The thought alone sent icy shivers down her spine that rattled her shoulders.

To Henk she gave a glance and said, "Oh? You can do that with your light magic?" If only she'd known she wouldn't have made a fool of herself!

Delaney, though, was intent on getting warm. As intent as Liliana and Beatrix. And Kristen would be lying if she said that Delaney's willingness to enter the warehouse didn't encourage her to do so as well. Proctor Magomo's queer advice back in Vel Acan came back to her: if you're going to be wrong, everybody needs to be wrong together. And...well, say some people of ill intentions did come by. It was better if they were all together, whether it be inside or outside the warehouse. In this there was clear merit to what the Proctor had told her.

Ahhhhh! It was so...incredibly...painful to willingly break the rules!

Kristen bit her lip. Pinched her eyes shut. Then relented.

She called to Delaney, "We are coming too."

And then to Henk she said, "Well, I...I suppose it would be warmest with your magic and while being inside the warehouse, would it not?"

Her face was one of apology, as if the long features on her countenance were trying to tell Henk that she was sorry for coaxing him along into this. But she'd go in and join Delaney when he gave his answer. Whether or not he opted to come with them all or not.

Liliana Trix Delaney Lennox Henk

 

[Liliana]

Liliana dealt with Henk's interjection the way that she usually did; by ignoring him entirely.

She and Trix were going to do as they pleased regardless, and of course Delaney would be right there alongside them. She'd been nice enough to speak with Kristen, even offered her the olive branch of company. If the two sticks in the mud wanted to continue to with their boring tirade of rules then they could be free to do so outside in the rain.

With all the poise of a Queen Liliana swept through the door just second after Delaney, not bothering to linger longer enough to hear Kristen babble something else.

Her gaze flickered almost immediately down the dark corridor. Eyes shifting between the bare light of the torches that hardly illuminated anything at all. A frown settled upon her lips, and she shook her head. "Well this won't do."

Though they were out of the rain, she was hardly going to sit in a hallway.

Before any of the others could say anything at all Liliana stalked her way down the hall. A quiet whisper echoed from her lips, silent enough that the others wouldn't hear it. A small reserve was pulled from, and her eyes flickered with a sheen as she searched for wards using the more banal magics. When she found nothing, her hand reached out and clutched the second barrier to their entrance. The handle came down, and then the doorway swung open to reveal…

An empty warehouse, it's floor fractured and fissured in the middle, a huge tunnel sitting at its center. "Oh. It's not any warmer in here."

Liliana noted with disappointment, a groan coming from the rubble near the fractured floor a second later.

"H-help."​

 

[Trix]

Trix's only answer to Henk's knight in shining armour act was a feral smile before shutting the door and his and Kristen's face behind Liliana. If Kristen and her little lap dog were coming in they could use the flap or wrestle with the old lock themselves.

Despite it not being any warmer inside it was certainly a lot more interesting already.

She ran her fingers curiously along the damp brick wall and eyed the flames hung at equal distances along the corridor. It wasn't like any of the neglected warehouses they had been sent to before which most certainly had been stores of weapons or goods. Sometimes even prisoners of the revolution. This was... clean. And cared for. Meticulously. Which meant that it was used often for whatever it was it was used for. Which were all things in sharp contrast the huge tunnel ripping the floor in two passed the next door.

"Interesting," though her tone suggested anything other than that. At least until a voice piped up anyway. One of her twin blades as in her hand a second later. Casually she wandered round towards the source of the noise. "It's deep, the tunnel, goes down a good 20 feet," she said conversationally as she walked.

 

[Henk]

Henk sighed as the three women shut themselves in the warehouse, Trix blatantly locking them out purely out of spite for Henk's attempt to reason with her. Well, that couldn't have gone very much worse. Let it not be said that he was good with the ladies. What was worse, they'd shut Kristen out, and she had been convinced to join them; though perhaps it was better that she hadn't. Henk turned to face her with an embarrassed sigh.

"My apologies, Miss Pirian. Perhaps my dedication to orders was somewhat misplaced this time." Even if Henk wanted to follow them, the small door Trix had made was too small for him. Unless he blew the door open, he was stuck here. With a final look to the door, Henk shook his head and turned to approach Kristen. "Stay close. I can warm you."

As he spoke he began to unwrap one of his arms, exposing his skin to the harsh air before closing his eyes and raising it up to chest level. After a moment it would begin to glow, radiating heat that surrounded them like a dome. This much wasn't so damaging to Henk; he could do this all day if needed. "You've got a lot to prove to the proctors as is..." He was about to chide her, tell her it was better if she didn't go in.

But then a thought occurred to him.

"It would probably look good to the Proctors, the Initiate they have so little faith in taking action to stop the mission from being compromised."

He had no doubt that entering the warehouse would lead to trouble, he just felt it in his bones somehow. Given the situation, it was probably best that they follow their AWOL teammates. "Let's get these doors open, so I can tell them how Initiate Pirian bravely sprang into action to assist her peers."

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Ohhhh. But why did Beatrix have to go and shut the door? Was she truly serious about what she said concerning the small flap she had made? Well that was just...utterly uncalled for!

Henk, bless him, made the dreariness of the predicament bearable. Even a joy. There was nothing quite like a spot of warmth against the biting environs. Simple words: Stay close, I can warm you, that made her heart tingle with the comforting feel of safety. A treasure made rare, since her short stay in the Academy had begun.

Kristen, for the portion of her that wanted to stick to the rules and keep from entering the warehouse, was nevertheless welcoming of that heat Henk radiated. She hovered her hands over his exposed arm. Rubbed them together. Patted her face with them. Special attention to her red nose.

She melted with glee over it. "Oh, how delightful!"

You've got a lot to prove to the proctors as is...

"That I do."

Then he, too, found a reason to venture into the warehouse. Well, as Proctor Magomo had said. And also Kristen was keen to rejoin with Delaney as well: if peril was to find them here tonight, what better magic to have in such dark conditions than Del's own?

Kristen smiled and nodded and turned (oh but that warmth though!) from Henk and took hold of the warehouse door's rickety old latch and lock. Beatrix had down some manner of trick to open it easily. She and Henk were going to have a brutish fight with it.

"On three?" Kristen said to him, preparing to rotate and fiddle roughly with the rustic latch. "One...two...!"

Henk

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney sent a tendril of darkness towards the door that Trix had shut in Kristan’s face. The tendril slithered like a black snake across the ground and then up onto the door. It slithered in between the door and the doorframe into the locking mechanism itself, where it pulled the bolt from its locked position so the door could be opened easily. The tendril then dissipated into thin air.

The Shadow Queen stood with Liliana and Trix with her purple eyes narrowed on the tunnel that they had just discovered. Delaney heard the groan of help and raised a brow at the other two girls.

“Do we want to help? It might warm us up…” but at the same time…fuck it.

 

[Tulio]

Those around the hole in the warehouse floor unaccustomed to dark and strange places would feel the chill - quite unlike the piercing winds and biting precipitation outside the warehouse, but just as unsettling - as it nipped at the skin. As if coils of dread began to wrap around their minds and bodies. Grip their very essence. The feeling did no favors for the students that sought warmth.​

​

Those familiar would instead feel oddly comfortable.​

​

It was pure happenstance, them encountering that grim omen, and had no relation to the hole in the ground nor the cry for help.​

​

Delaney would feel a vague presence in the shadows that consumed every corner of the warehouse, but it was intimate with the darkness and hid well. It watched her closely. Eyes from beyond, crimson and glowing with a spark of chaos, clung to her and only her.​

​

The many shadows filling the building whispered to the so-called Queen of Shadows. An invitation.​

 

[Liliana]

Liliana felt nothing as she stared down at the rend within the floor, for such things had left her long ago.

The weaving's had torn apart her capacities for many things. Ripped to shreds her ability to feel true emotion of any sort. No fear touched her, no nerves could fray. She had reached out and inflicted such pain on others so many times that they were hardly there at all.

In that moment all that crossed her mind was a slight flicker of something distant. A pebble thrown into the midst of a lake. A ripple, but not unfamiliar. Her head flicked upward, looking at Trix for a moment as though searching.

Her lips thinned, and then she shrugged.

Liliana lulled hear head to the side. "I'm not here to help the cries of dying men."

She pointed out.

"I'm here to make sure whatever in this warehouse is safe. Which..." She gestured to the hole in the floor. "It's clearly not, is it?"

A laugh echoed from her lips. "We should probably figure out why."

 

[Trix]

Trix sheathed her blade and then crouched down beside the hole instead.

"Ironically, if they had told us what it was we were guarding we would be able to check if this was a theft attempt," she said with a small hint of amusement. Oh yes she would have great fun pointing out the Proctors flaws to one of the greater Archon's when the chance next arose. As it was now, they'd basically been handicapped. Tossing her choppy hair back from her face she glanced around the rest of the room with her lips pursed. It looked completely abandoned and disused so either the thing they were meant to be guarding wasn't here, or it had been here and was now gone or, they were looking at it.

"I'm going down," she announced. "At least it will be something to do," rather than lean against a fountain all day in the cold. With the earth churned up it wasn't hard to feel the sparks of distant life that was hers to command and she shut her eyes to summon them forth. Old, gnarled roots shot from the tunnels dark walls and created an eerie set of wooden steps which Trix begun to descend down even whilst they were still moving.

 

[Henk]

"Three!"

Henk and Kristen barreled through the now unlocked door with all the grace of a troll frolicking through a bed of flowers, the unexpected lack of resistance as his shoulder collided with the door causing him to stumble forward into a roll. Well, that was rather embarrassing. It seemed Delaney had done what Henk suspected she might, for Kristen's sake of course, not for his.

Rising to his feet and dusting himself off, he took a quick look around the inside of the warehouse. It was clean and tidy, as one would expect of a place housing something of great importance. Whatever that importance was remained unclear, however, in the cramped hallway, they came out into. The other three must have gone on ahead. Made sense enough.

Henk turns back to Kristen, one of his hands rising to create a beam of light shooting out in front of him to light the hallway. "Well, we've come this far, haven't we? May as well follow them the rest of the way in." What was done was done, after all. After a hushed reminder to Pirian to keep close to him, Henk leads the both of them down the long, ominous hallway to the second door. Already he could hear the voices of the other ladies behind it, but when he swung the door open, the sight he was met with was not what he expected.

There was nothing in the warehouse at all, save his peers and a massive pit in the floor. Certainly, he hoped the hole was not of his fellow Initiate's creation, but judging from the curious expression on their own faces he doubted it.

"I guess there's a bit more to this than we thought after all..." Henk made his presence known as he walked to the edge of the hole, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Who knows how deep this goes? I'm guessing at least one of you has every intention of finding out?" He raised his eyes up to Trix, Delaney and Liliana. Already Trix was on her way down.

It was going to be another one of those missions...

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Oof!"

Both of them had a pratfall upon trying to force open a door which, as it turned out, was unlatched seconds before the attempt. Kristen's armor certainly didn't help with the embarrassment, as its clamorous rattling sounded as though an ogre had swung a tree trunk into a silverware store.

"Hooray for our enthusiasm...ha, ha," Kristen said mildly, trying to cover the embarrassment up with a dash of cavalier sarcasm. It didn't work.

She stood, shedding her rain-soaked cloak and leaving it by the main warehouse door. At Henk's suggestion she gave a guilty shrug, saying in a resigned manner, "We're already wrong. I suppose it's silly to think that we could become more wrong."

At least they would be warmer inside. And, as Proctor Magomo's militaristic wisdom went: together, despite being wrong. Of course, what they found inside was...nothing. Kristen blinked, clearly baffled. Yes, there was an enormous hole in the ground, but there was nothing within the actual warehouse. It was most peculiar.

Then a chill, a dread, seemed to creep up her spine. This led into making a certain connection: Vel Acan. The hole within the library. What they'd found down there. And that thin chord of taut terror quivered throughout Kristen's whole body.

She reached over and took hold of Henk's sleeve. Weak, meager, her grip. She did this without looking at him, just sort of vaguely staring down at the hole with a gaze that stretched for miles.

Quiet and apprehensive, her tone. "Are...are we doing this again??"

Delaney hadn't been there at Vel Acan. But, by Aionus, Kristen wished she had been. Truly wished it.

Delaney Lennox Henk Trix Liliana

 

[Delaney Lennox]

Delaney looked up shortly after she was spoken. It felt like a comforting blanket of darkness had been rested on her shoulders. She was both warm and cold at the same time. She did not notice anything that her fellow Initiates did as she turned and started to walk towards one of the corners of the warehouse, the hole in the ground forgotten for now.

The darkness was calling her but it was not her darkness. No, her darkness had a different voice. This voice whispered to her and it wanted to know her. She wanted to know it too. She closed in on the corner that had snagged her attention and let the darkness wash over her as the disappeared from the view of the others.

Tulio

 

[Tulio]

Delaney would find herself drifting through nothing, descending in a deep void as there was no ground to set her feet upon. Forever and ever, she would sink if not for a tightening grasp on her wrist that guided her out of that abyss.​

​

The Queen of Shadows suddenly fell and hit hard, dark earth as a scene took shape around her. There was a house and a pitiful fence around it. Beyond it, the ground crumbled apart, and past that, the void whispered sweetness to her. It had tempted many a witless wanderer in the past.​

​

"You ought not to listen to its sweet song," said a disembodied voice even sweeter, "or you'll never leave."​

​

It spoke from all places and no place all at once. Meanwhile, the same force that grasped Delaney's wrist before now urged her towards the house.​

​

"You should come quickly. I'd like a word."​

​

Delaney Lennox​

 

[Liliana]

"Of course we are." Liliana said in simple answer to both Henk and Kristen, acting as though the very question was more silly than not.

She glanced down at Trix, who had already begun to descend the steps she so helpfully created. "We have to be good servants of the Republic, after all."

Liliana flashed the two what might have been a smile, and then followed after her 'friend'.

True to form of being a terrible person, Liliana did not even notice Delaney's absence. In the nobles mind she had either gotten lost, hid herself in a shadow somewhere, or likely gone to pluck at some Guard who was standing somewhere.

If she wasn't there, well there was no reason to go looking. There were no fools in her little band after all, well...save for Jaxan.

As the Initiates descended into the strange tunnel, they would find that it had not been drilled or painstakingly made by pickaxes. Instead it seemed that the whole of it had been carved, the walls smooth as marble and the whole thing rounded.

Even an utter idiot would see the magic within it's creation. "Henk."

Liliana said, never glancing back as they fully descended into darkness. "Light."

As they reached the bottom of the hole, it became apparent that the tunnel stretched towards the south. Likely heading out of Vel Luin entirely.

 

[Trix]

After the last initiate was down the roots vanished back into the earth. Unless of course the last initiate down was Kristen in which case the roots would quickly begin retreating before the girl had made it to the ground. Whether Trix even seemed to notice was hard to deduce for she was already walking down the long tunnel into the shadows, a hand on the wall to help her keep her bearings. This was far more interesting than the noble brat. Of course, she understood the irony, but Umbra were far superior to snivelling Pirian.

"It goes on for miles," she confirmed for the group. Trix could feel the endless maze of roots that went on and on, far beyond the remit of her control and she was rather proud that that distance was large for someone of her age. "But it does branch out," the curve of the roots and the disruption here and there told her that there were large hollowed out spaces too which could have been rooms.

 

[Delaney Lennox]

A new type of darkness swallowed Delaney and she stayed there for who knows how long before she finally hit the hard ground. She let out a hmph as she hit. She looked around the very strange place that she found herself. This was not the warehouse.

Delaney slowly stood up and dusted herself off. She looked at the house, the fence, and then the nothing. There was more darkness.

The words whispered sweety into her ear as she was pulled by an unknown force towards the house. She did not want to go but she could not seem to stop herself. She needed to go. The voice wanted to speak to her.

She had to listen.

Tulio

 

[Tulio]

When Delaney pushed the door in, she was greeted by a blinding light, and the room she stepped into was airy and faintly smelled of cinnamon. Across from her, Tulio stood under the doorway leading out to a balcony. Casement windows on either side were open and beyond them was the glittering sand of an empty beach and clear rolling waves. One would rightfully assume it was a complicated illusion, but Tulio had no such talents.

"Hey," he greeted her with a casual wave, "I'm Tulio. And, frankly, I've had my eyes on you for a while."

The elf leaned against the doorway, "There's not much time, so I'll get to the point. You have a lot of potential, you know, like a - like wood that needs to be sanded down a little bit more. Get it?" Tulio's brows pinched together and he waved his hand, "Bad analogy. But, you do get it right? I can help you out."