Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived Avenpeak Mountains

as written by barney_fife

Nagala quickly protested, while struggling up the crates to get to her feet.

"No, we need to head directly to the ship, it is unacceptable if the AI core falls into enemy hands or is lost, we have to attempt to recover if it we can." Nagala protested, before she turned to look at Cinaed.

"The Temple can wait, we have more pressing matters." She added now to her feet and struggling to take a step. "We mustn't tarry Jason, let's get going... I'm tired of waiting with my thumb up my ass." She commented, while slowly reaching down towards the rifle, grasping it and pulling it around her shoulder. "Complete our objective... and find a way out of this place... hell maybe that ship can help us figure out how to get out of here." Nagala explained, taking a step forward while holding her stomach.

"Jason... Do we take him with us?" She said, nodding to the Taiyou. "I vote we leave him here, let fate decide what to do with him."
 
as written by Script

"I don't have more pressing matters!" Cináed burst out, his voice raised almost to a shout. After a moment, his expression shifted briefly from an angry scowl into surprise, as though shocked at his own volume, and he shrunk down again somewhat. His eyes remained set in a determined frown, however.
 
as written by Tiko

"Centaur do not fly," Amethea retorted with a loud snort at Bahamur's offer.

Truthfully, there was little chance of the centaur even being capable of such a feat.

Meanwhile Jason's scowl deepened, and he was starting to understand the meaning of the phrase herding cats. Not only had Bahamur not answered the actual question he had asked, he had Cinaed acting like.... well an emotional teenager, Amethea glaring daggers at Bahamur, and now Nagala who it would seem had gone from approving of the plan to hole up here, to demanding they leave immediately in the span of five minutes.

He pressed a hand to his brow before he spoke out abruptly.

"We're not going anywhere," he told Nagala bluntly. "Neither of you are in any condition to travel, and unless you have come across some new and pressing information that we didn't have five minutes ago to justify completely changing the plans we just made and that you where content with five minutes ago, then we're not about to go charging off blindly through the mountains at night on a whimsical change of your mind. You can barely stand up - let alone help us carry supplies. So short of someone lending some new revelation we're sitting tight."

He was starting to suspect the woman was bipolar, and her flipping on a dime was beginning to give him a headache. His irritation was plain to see in his growing impatience with her moods.
 
as written by Vaifal

"You lot are a hostile bunch, it's very interesting..." He noticed that Jason avoided Nagala's statement that she didn't want Bahamur's attendance, this was good for him in some ways but he knows the issue may come up later, but deciding to take it as he comes Bahamur wanted to press to other issues in the room.

"I'm sorry but I havent actually encountered a Centaur this close before Amethea... I could find a way using my metal control to make you move at an even speed to us if that's any different to you?" Sighing with then end of this statement, his eyes closing while a deeper sigh came out, smoke streaming from his nose as this happened, if any of them looked closely they would see a glowing light at the back of his throat.

"Now can we all stop being abrupt? And can we try and develop something where we work together?" He looked back over to Nagala and stated further. "And I think you could really do with giving me a chance."
 
as written by barney_fife

The admiral promptly made a face to Bahamur's response, before she slowly shook her head. "I wasn't talking about you; I was talking about him." She said, gesturing to the Taiyou soldier who was bound and sitting silently in a corner of the outpost.

"That's the man who injured me, put three bullets in me." She commented, making her way to sit on one of the crates.

"Gods this hurts..." She grumbled. "So would much rather be on a Rev right now."

"New and pressing information; if we're lucky the AI managed to land the ship without completely destroying it, I want to get to the AI core before someone loots the ship." She said, frowning. "Unless you want to explain to the Imperial Navy why some foo-foo magic dragon fairy beast steals an Imperial warship, and uses it to launch a terrorist attack against the Empire." She said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I want to go home too, screw this place, this place could burn for all I care." Nagala added, before she scoffed. "Ever been to Langara, Jason? Lot better than this slag heap of a place you call home, at least I could call for help on Langara, you see... we have a magical thing called infrastructure, and we don't magically get transported places... and about that." She said, standing up once more. "I'm going to assume that my team went for help, I guess help's not coming since we're not in Kansas anymore, are we Dorothy?"
 
as written by Tiko

"Well, maybe you should have stayed on Langara then," Amethea snorted loudly.

"That's enough, everyone," Jason growled. "We're staying here for now, that's final."

Nagala had already supported initial plans, and fuck all of they where going to run off into the night when she could barely walk because she decided to abruptly change her mind a minute later, he reasoned.

"You'll get your damn ship part once you can actually travel," he added.

He looked then to the newest arrival.

"And you... you can stay for now. You can accompany us to our destination, and provided you haven't given us cause to mistrust you before we arrive, we can discuss your proposal then," he told the man before addressing Cinaed last. "In the morning we'll go check out this temple of yours, Cinaed."
 
as written by Script

"Thank you." Cináed replied quietly, letting out a deep breath and pulling his blankets close. In the morning, they could fix this. There would be a way. He closed his eyes, shutting out the rest of the room and their arguments. He wished that Rae was there. He'd know what to do, after all, ancient magic was his thing. But he wasn't, and all the wishing in the world wouldn't change that.

Before long, the exhaustion remaining from his ordeal at the temple claimed him, and he slept.
 
as written by barney_fife

"Don't get killed." The Admiral retorted, before lowering herself back into her original spot, scooting slightly more closer to the fire, before she tore open an MRE, throwing it into a steel cooking pot she had set up over the fire.

Once she finished, she would try for some sleep.
 
as written by Script and Tiko

The following morning...

The icy mountain wind cut like a knife through all of Cináed's layers with every gust as he and Jason made their way back down to the ancient temple. Despite his constant shivering, the teenager was steadfast in his resolve to brave the cold. It was a cruel and alien sensation, for someone who had stumbled through the Icy Peaks towards the Elysian Vanguard's temple to the point of exhaustion and felt nothing so much as a chill. His every extremity was going numb, but the bite of the frost was scarcely a distraction from the dull ache in his chest and the pit of his stomach.

When the cliffside entrance to the temple loomed before them, Cináed couldn't help but note that it seemed a little more ominous than it had last time. Perhaps it was just his memory of what had happened here, that made the shadows seem to stretch farther and the dark feel all the darker.

The runes and flames that had responded to his and Amethea's entrance did not make themselves known this time, and the pair had to rely on flashlights to light their way. The pool of healing water shimmered where the lights passed over it.

"There were lights, last time." Cináed said softly, "And the runes glowed. I don't know why they're not doing it this time. Maybe it's something to do with Amethea breaking the mirror."

Jason knelt down next to the water but he couldn't make out much down below the murky water, even with the flashlight in hand.

"This the water you mentioned?" he asked.

Something with the properties to heal injuries could be potentially valuable... but they had no way to know if there where any adverse affects associated with it. Amethea hadn't yet shown any ill affects from touching the water, but after Cinaed's experience down here... it would be best to treat everything with an element of caution.

Jason stood back up, taking care not to touch the water.

"Where was this mirror?" he added as he flashed his light around the room.

"This way," Cináed gestured towards the doorway in the wall of the room near the pool. "And yeah, that's it. It healed Amethea's leg and my arm."

He started forwards for the room with the mirror in it, squinting against the darkness around his light. The room itself had changed little from his memory - bare, but for the mirror frame that stood in the center and the shards of glass scattered around it. He hesitated in the door before stepping forwards.

"This is it. I ..." He trailed off as it occurred to him that he had no idea what to do next. Rebuild the mirror? What if touching its shards made things worse? How would he even go about rebuilding it?

Jason knelt once more, this time beside the fragments of glass. Judging from the bits of glass that had been trampled into fine powder beneath Amethea's hooves with no apparant repercussion to the centaur, he wagered it was safe enough to touch now. Likely its magic had been expended already, or destroyed along with the mirror. He gingerly picked one of the larger pieces up and turned it over in his hand but there didn't appear to be anything remarkable about it. It was just a broken piece of mirror.

He flashed his light around the room next, searching for some hint as to what this room was, but it remained bare of any useful information. There where some engravings on the walls, and runic markings on the frame that once held the mirror, but they weren't of a language he was familiar with.

Ghrigorian perhaps? They where known for their runic language, and penchant for forging items that were possessing of mystical properties. Unfortunately Igtrid was among those of the party who where missing, as was the scholar woman who might have been familiar with the language - if it was indeed Ghrigorian at all.

"Where you two down any of the other halls?" he asked.

It was unlikely they would find any answers in this room, but perhaps there was more to the temple yet that might shed some light upon the situation.

Seeing Jason touch one of the shards without any harm coming to him, Cináed followed suit. He lowered himself to touch the glass hesitantly, then when nothing happened, he took a firmer hold. There was still no response. Not even the burning sensation he'd felt before. Just broken glass.

The mirror was gone beyond repair, crushed, and a pang of despair wormed its way into Cináed's heart. He fought it back. They would find a way to fix this. They had to. "We didn't go anywhere else. This was the first room we went to, and then ..." he left the rest unspoken. Suffice to say they hadn't been doing any more exploring.

"Do you think maybe there are other mirrors? Or ... something, at least?" The younger boy turned to move back towards the exit to the main hall, stopping only to glance to either side and identify the other doors in the chamber. There were four others alongside the one that had held the mirror.

"I don't know. Let's look around a bit more. Just... don't touch anything," Jason told him as he too rejoined Cinaed in the center chamber.

"I wasn't planning to..." Cináed mumbled softly, "I think I've learned my lesson on that front."
 
as written by Tiko

Some time later...

The passing of time proved largely uneventful after the excitement of the first day, but still there was no sign of the missing members of their party nor of a means to return home. Nagala was on the mend, but far from a hundred percent and it was all Jason could do to keep her in bed resting. Supplies had been inventoried and while he was more than confident in their food stores he was concerned as to the missing medical supplies. The med kits that had been inside with them had been largely depleted in tending to Nagala, leaving them unnervingly short on antibiotics and other important necessities.

Nagala's injuries had shown no sign of infection though, and provided she didn't go running off through the mountains before her body had a chance to fully recover she would probably live.

Jason himself largely spent his time working over their maps trying to determine where exactly it was they had ended up. None of the geographical features he and Amethea had spotted out in their brief scouting efforts matched up to anything within the Icy Peaks of Terra. This of course lent the question of.... where exactly were they if they weren't in Terra. He occasionally jotted down some notes in the small book he kept tucked in his jacket - a log of their trip.

There was also the matter of the Taiyou prisoner, and he was often found throwing glances towards the captive, mulling over what they would do with him when the time came to depart.
 
as written by Script

Over the next few days...

Cináed hardly spent a waking moment anywhere other than the temple. Long after Jason, Amethea and the others had given up trying to decipher anything from the markings and the different rooms that lay within, and stopped accompanying him there, the teenager refused to quit. He knew the layout of the ruin better than his own home by now, and his journal was filled with diagrams of every chamber and every statue within. Every rune he could find was drawn out, along with every apparent sentence or phrase they appeared in.

He spent long nights when the others were asleep, after he'd been forced to return to the tower and the warmth of the fire by the encroaching cold of the dark, poring over his notes in an effort to glean something - anything from the ancient language that could help him. But he wasn't any sort of linguist. They were just symbols to him, no matter how he attempted to make sense of them.

Initially he'd heeded Jason's advice and avoided touching anything, but as the deadline that the expediton leader had given him to their departure loomed closer, he grew more desperate. He began pushing and pulling at anything he could find, searching for anything from pressure plates to secret doors. He supposed he was lucky that there weren't any traps, as one might have expected from an ancient temple. Though, to be fair, he doubted that many temples really did have deadly traps - it'd hardly do wonders for encouraging the congregation to attend.

He spent an entire day trying hopelessly to rearrange the mirror, as though he might somehow will the cracked glass back together, and that was ignoring the fragments of it crushed to dust by Amethea's hooves.

It was all for nothing. As the end of the last day drew close, he leaned back against the wall of the ruin and slid down to the floor, the last vestiges of hope he'd held slipping from him. He cried tears for a loss that he still didn't fully understand, before trudging back through the dark to the tower.

Once there, he excused himself from the rest of the party and found an empty room, where he knelt. He produced a small candle from his pack and set it on the floor before him, before clasping his hands and closing his eyes.

"Dawnflower..." he whispered, "The day is done and the earth turns cold and dead without your healing flame. I light this candle in your honour, that you might gather strength and return to us the nourishment of your fire." He struck a match that he'd found in the supplies and lit the candle, before continuing. "Lady of the golden sun, I know I don't pray as much as I should these days, but please, hear me out. I'm ... so lost. I hurt more than I've ever hurt before. I don't know what's become of me, or why I feel like half of me is missing. Please, just ... give me a sign of what I must do. I can't go on like this."

A tear rolled down his cheek, and as it did, a cold gust blew through the room. The little candle flame flickered wildly in the wind, and died. Cináed stared at it, biting his lip to hold back a sob. If that was the sign, then what hope was there? He screwed his eyes closed, unable to form any more words.

Then he felt something. A small heat, just before him. He opened his eyes to see the wick of the candle smoldering, before ever so slowly, the embers returned to fire. He stared once again, open-mouthed, before taking a deep breath.

He straightened his back and clenched his fists. It was a sign. Even a quenched flame holds the hope of returning to life. He would endure, however long it took. He would be whole again.

"Thank you." he whispered, "Everlight, so long as you endure, the sun endures. So long as the sun endures, we endure. I will endure."
 
as written by Sokka and Script

Ejon walked into the room and noticed Cinaed kneeling before a lit candle. "You doing alright kid?" He asked.

He hadn't spent much time around the others as of late. He was spending most of his time tending to what was left of his animals. For now though he wanted to see how Cinaed was doing it seemed the teenager like himself was always off doing something or another, but Ejon hadn't bothered to ask Jason what to do.

He could have gone back to the main room but he didn't feel like hearing Nagala's seemingly never ending spiel on why they should kill the Taiyou prisoner.

____

Cináed looked up with a start, flushing slightly red and quickly wiping the damp from his cheeks with his sleeve. "I- I'm alright." he stammered, taking a moment to put the candle out and begin to pack it away. "I was just praying. For answers." he went on, more quietly. "I don't suppose you know what happened at the temple, exactly."

The teenager took a breath as he straightened. "I lost something there, a part of me. That's why I'm so cold all the time. I never was before - I put it down to my fire magic, but ... I don't know. It feels like I've lost something more than just that. I feel ... empty. Hollow."

He sighed. "I've spent almost all my time since we got here searching for an answer, and I've got nothing to show for it. All I have left to do is pray."

____

Ejon nodded, "I've heard bits and pieces about what happened."

"I'd say I understand but magic is confusing to me. Maybe though it will come back, do you think it might be this place wherever we are now? Could that be affecting you magic you talk about that mirror but maybe it's just a coincidence? Was your magic working before then or did it ah erm leave you when this Mirror broke?"

Ejon leaned against the door frame and tried to offer a comforting smile. He wasn't too used to dealing with others problems normally he just talked to his animals.

____

"It's not just magic." Cináed said, "When I touched the mirror, I ... saw other things. I couldn't pull away, it burned me. When Amethea smashed it, it stopped, but by that point whatever it did was done. I passed out and woke up back here."

He shook his head, "Besides, I could still use my fire before then. I didn't feel like ... this, before then. If it were just losing my fire I wouldn't be so distraught. It's more than that."

The teenager ran a hand through his hair, sighing heavily. "Imagine ... the feeling you get when you've lost a loved one. That horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach, that ache in your chest when you first hear. Imagine that, but all the time. That's what it's like."

The miserable expression on his face was a sharp contrast to the constant smiles that Ejon would have seen from him in the days beforehand during the expedition, and around Windcrest. He'd been a veritable fountain of endless youthful good cheer, but now? He just seemed weary and broken.
 
as written by barney_fife

By now the Admiral had all but completely recovered from her wounds. She was able to move around, a slow walk but she was able bodied none the less for now. The wounds had scabbed over, the nanomachines making quick work of the remaining scar tissue to provide a seamless regeneration.

After a moment inventorying microfusion cells for the weapons, she made her way over to the teenager, tossing him an arctic camouflage jacket, before she turned to Jason.

"While you guys have been gone, I've been surveying the area." She said, gesturing to a small survey drone that had been resting against the stone wall. The drone looked like it was small enough to fold up and fit inside a backpack. However, there was blood spattered on the drone's chassis, and a small hole through the side.

"I tried to map the most viable path down the mountain, Jason." She said, holding out the Dataslate showing a jumbled mess of data. "But the drone's Avionics took a hit in the fight, it's useless." She said, taking stock of the outpost's occupants in the other room, and huffing.

"Another thing; That kid's going to get us killed, when we set off, he can't be gallivanting off all willy-nilly, or I'll shoot him myself for desertion." The Admiral added with a huff, gesturing to the adjacent room before crossing her arms over her chest.

"He needs to soldier up and quit being so damn mopey." She added.
 
as written by Script

"Doubt you could aim with your head that far up your own ass." Cináed muttered angrily, "Don't pretend you have any idea what you're talking about."
 
as written by Script

"No one's shooting anyone," Jason answered half-distracted.

The constant bickering was worse than mediating children at times. At least Cinaed had the excuse of still actually being a child he thought wryly.

He was currently sitting by the hearth working on jotting some notes down regarding the days scouting with Amethea. The pages where rapidly filling up with everything from logs of their journey to rough sketches of strange animals and plants they had already encountered.

If they had stumbled upon some new and strange land, he wanted to be sure he recorded everything. The loss of their scholar was unfortunate, as he didn't quite have the eye for this stuff that she had, but it was better to focus on what they did have rather than what they had lost.

With that seen to he closed the book and returned it to the inside pocket of his jacket.

"We're setting out as soon as the sun is up," Jason said. "I suggest you all get some sleep."
 
as written by barney_fife

"Hopefully not." She commented off hand before Cinaed's rebuttal echoed in her ears.

"Doubt you could aim with your head that far up your own ass."

Her face almost immediately contorted into a scowl, her hand going to her weapon as she passed a pair of crates. She was storming towards the doorway to the room Cinaed had been.

If Ejon was still standing there, he would be the first to feel her wrath as she attempted to shove past him, with much of her strength having returned, the shove would come with quite a bit of force behind a woman of Nagala's stature.

If she managed to shove past Ejon, the teltale whine of a powered Disruptor pistol followed, as she swiftly brought the weapon up and likely against Cinaed's forehead.

"Words like that bring summary execution in the Imperial Military; insult me like that again and I'll kill you where you stand." She said coldly.
 
as written by Tiko

Jason's eyes rose as Nagala's hand went for her pistol, and he too stood grabbing his own pistol. She barely made the doorway with her pistol only half-drawn from its holster before he had his own leveled on the back of her head. It might not be a disruptor pistol, but he wagered a bullet to the back of Nagala's head would prove just as fatal to the unarmored woman.

"Don't move," he warned her. "And you two, get out of the way," he told Ejon and Cinaed.

If this went south, he didn't want to risk hitting one of them. If they had any hope of surviving in this place, Nagala needed to learn right here and now, that he meant every single word he said.

"I believe I told you the next time you point a gun at someone, it better be in self-defense, or because I told you to. Put the gun on the floor. Now," he growled.

For being Aschen military she seemed woefully incapable of following a chain of command he noted with irritation. If she didn't like the situation, she could piss the fuck off and find her own way back - by herself. He may have been willing to save her life when she was bleeding out on the floor, but she was alive and healthy enough now that he wasn't giving her any leeway on disobeying orders.

He moved towards her, his own gun kept leveled at the back of her head so that he would be less likely to miss if he needed to shoot, but not close that she could turn and grab the gun.
 
as written by Script

"You would really shoot me for that?" Cináed's voice was quiet, and he stepped slowly backwards out of the line of fire as he considered the thought that Nagala was likely not exaggerating. "Is your pride worth a life? Really? I'm ... sorry for you, if that's how you feel. There can't be much room left for love."

He took a long breath in, before sighing heavily and looking away. His anger had faded with the surge of shock at realising that Nagala had really gone for her gun. He couldn't understand her, not at all. She was so ... hateful.
 
as written by barney_fife

For a moment, the weapon was still outstretched, but her thumb had run to rest on the power control switch.

"Pull that trigger, and you better pray that you hit me, because you won't get a second shot and I won't miss." She warned.

"Consider your next actions carefully, Jason. There's always the possibility this could get back to the Empire, and there would then be the possibility there might not be a Windcrest to come home to, or calls for your execution." She added.

"I'm not going to tolerate insults from your ilk, and especially from a filthy mutant like that boy."

Her hand opened up and the weapon clattered to the floor, disarmed and harmless. "You win. I'm not going to challenge you any more, you get us all killed it's on you. I will not help you, I will not hinder you." She said, slowly turning around with her hands up.

"That being said I want everything belonging to the Empire to be returned to me, Aschen supplies are for Aschen people, not ypanthró̱pous." She said, the word "ypanthró̱pous" being a Tauron slur for Non-Aschen, literally meaning less than human.

"I'll defer to you until we get back to Windcrest, and then I'm taking everything we gave your people, packing our shit and leaving for the Empire. Where I'll demand you face charges for pointing that weapon at me. So you might as well pull that trigger, Jason. Go on, seal your fate and pray this doesn't reach the Empire."

Truth told she was seething at the situation, helpless and at the mercy of someone she believed to be woefully unqualified to handle the change in situations, however a thickly accented male voice cut through the tension.

"No fight, we fighting we all dying." The voice said in terribly broken english. The Taiyou male had been quietly observing, learning as people interacted, he too realized the gravity of the situation they were in.

"We arru enemy... but we must being brothers if we being go home." He said, his broken english cutting through the silence.

"You, officeru... you, mirrishia... compriment each othah... Heiwa, peasu."

"I should have killed him when I had the chance." Nagala spat.

"Make your move, Jason."
 
as written by Sokka and Tiko

Ejon was shoved out of the way he would have decked Nagala if it had not been for the situation and for Jason's stern words. He slid to stand just beside the door way against the wall. He crossed his arms and stared at Nagala with daggers in his eyes.

"You've really got a temper problem lady, if it wasn't for Jason you might not even be here right now. Your lucky he's here." Ejon muttered between the bickering.

"You should really listen to that one though he's got a pretty good point." Ejon said jerking his thumb at the Taiyou prisoner. " If I were in charge I'd untie him and tie you up." He scoffed. "But it's Jason's call here.

____

"Don't antagonize her," Jason added with a scowl as Ejon had to get his two cents in also. "And get her gun, bring it to me."

He stepped into the room and held out his left hand palm up, waiting for the disruptor pistol to be handed over to him. He hadn't yet taken his own gun off Nagala, and he was watching her intently.

____

Ejon nodded to Jason, "I'll try not to but if she tries anything funny shoot her." He muttered as he walked forward and knelt down to get the weapon he put himself in front of her and the weapon before picking it up, not only to give Jason a clear shot just incase but to keep her from taking it as well. If Nagala did nothing he would move forward and around the room before handing the gun off to Jason. The he would stand by him in the hallway.

____

Jason checked to ensure the disruptor pistol was powered down before tucking it into his belt.

Unfortunately he couldn't take her at her word, given that her word had proven useless so far, and he wasn't much in a mood for returning the gun to her with tempers high. However with the immediate threat past - and Nagala seemingly in a more cooperative mood - he lowered his own pistol and switched the safety on before re-holstering it.

"Now I strongly suggest everyone get some sleep. Anyone not ready to go in the morning can stay behind."

He threw a glance towards the Taiyou soldier but the question still remained on his mind. What to do with him? He had till morning to decide.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top