When Koutetsu awoke, he found himself laying face-down in dirt with an odd gnawing pain in his left hand. In a few moments, it occurred to him that something was, actually, gnawing away at it.
It was too dark to see properly, but a creature, possibly the one he met earlier, was chewing thoughtfully on his hand while sharpening a branch.
"To the floor we passed before, the distance between two floors is too great for him to be more than one floor away," Armori grunted while climbing.
He stopped 6 feet from the floor. This is where scaling the shaft got tricky. Only small, still moving gears were here, so it would be hard to get a footing.
So, Armori didn't try for one, he kept his momentum going upwards, hopping from gear to gear. By the time he slipped, he already had a solid hanhold on the floor, so he pulled himself up.
"Cake," he told Leo. "It's cake."
((Did SAT yesterday so I didn't post))
Koutetsu's waking grogginess was cut short by a pain in his left hand. He forced his hand away and shouting in pain. Quickly, he reached for his katana, and quickly took a glance at his hand to inspect the damage.
Koutetsu shortly discovered that his katana wasn't at his side. It laid a short distance away, glowing faintly in the scant moonlight. The creature was blocking his path, though.
His hand was more or less destroyed, with some of the skin peeled off and the muscle and bone exposed. A healing tank could repair any bodily damage, but that didn't stop it from hurting.
"Hurry up, Leo, I think I heard a scream from that direction. Sounded like an Almirian though, who knows?" Armori said.
"I bet it was that thing. At least this way I get to see what we're dealing with," Armori said.
((If you didn't know him well you'd think he was excited. But Armori doesn't do excitement.))
Armori had the same sense of foreboding he had when he was in the forest, so for, safety he drew his sword and headed in the direction of the scream, his sword's blade cutting the ground behind him.
"If you do take a year to get here and don't see me, look for the trail my sword made," Armori said, projecting his voice back to Leo.
His hand felt like someone threw a truck at it. It was mangled through and through. Over time the vitapod he was given earlier would heal it, but it still hurt a ton. When Koutetsu grabbed his katana, all he felt was air. It was gone. Again. He saw a glimmer that he assumed was his sword. He would've made a run for it, but his path was blocked by the hand biting creature. With his right hand functioning, he quickly knelt down and swiped up the biggest stick near him, and took a defensive stance towards the creature.
Leo nodded, and looked around on his path to ascend. Above him lay a couple slow turning gears, then smaller gears dotted the side of the floor until the top, random metal girders stuck out of the side of the floor to use as handholds.
He reached upwards and pulled himself up onto a gear, feeling himself move with the rotation of the gear. He pulled himself too it and looked up, grabbing ahold of a girder and hauled himself up it. He could see the floor from his new perch. Leo jumped upwards, grabbing another girder and using his feet to gain purchase by stepping on the smaller gears. A couple more steps,
It was up again and up again for a bit before he reached the top of the floor, he pulled himself up onto it and looked at Armori,
"I could use some cake, do you think we shoulda brought sleeping dice boy?"
Leo smirked and unsheathed his short sword.
"Maybe we should've brought his dice, but there is the possibility they only work for him. Plus he knows nothing about Cradle, so he'd be virtually useless," Armori said.
He heard rustling, and immediately set off in that direction.
"I think I see people, Leo, look," Armori said, pointing over the bushes.
After waiting a few seconds for the creature to do something, Koutetsu took the initiative. He tried to charge it, trying to perform an overhead swing, hoping to stun it so he could make a run for his katana.
The stick broke in his hand upon impact. Worse, he didn't even strike the creature's head; what he struck looked like an arm or a hand. Something tugged at his foot, and he tumbled hard on the dirt. He felt teeth bite into his toe, and instinct pulled it away.
If he was to survive, he'd have to leave. Now.
Leo craned his head, and couldn't see anything.
"What? Where?"
He moved to Amori's side, and looked around, trying to see anything.
Koutetsu, his attack failing, was pulled by his leg to the ground. He felt a sharp pain biting his toe, which got another shout of pain from him. He pulled his toe away, and started to back up. He slowly crawled away from the creature, stumbling and failing to get up. Retrieval of his sword would have to wait. He picked up a nearby stone and threw it, hoping to stun it this time.
Armori saw them this time, he was sure of it. Leaping through the bushes like a madman, he swung his sword around his head, and let out a loud, low, guttural yell. This tactic always worked on some of the more ancient monsters of the Clockworks, at least for a few seconds. Then they rushed at you.
He stopped and looked around, hoping to see a favourable effect on the monster, or just see the monster at all, really.
((Koutetsu is in a different place from Amori and Leo. He's deep inside a dark cave at an unknown depth. I'll arrange it so you guys can find him when he escapes.))
The stone vanished into the darkness and struck something with a low thud.
Silence.
Then he heard a hideous, growling howl of possibly laughter, and the stone came flying back at him. It missed his head by a hair and struck the dirt wall behind him. Another hair-raising laugh came.
The rock almost hit Koutetsu's head, and it was followed by insane laughter. Run. That was the only thought that came to Koutetsu's mind at the time. He quickly put himself on his feet successfully, and tried his best to run away.
Leo jumped after Armori, nor comprehending what he saw. After a bit, Armori stopped, looking around.
"What? You see anything?"
Armori stared at his adversary, a snipe, and another snipe, supposedly mating. Now he felt stupid, but also the sense of foreboding returned. But why?
Then he remembered. It was one of his very first documentations.
Do not disturb snipes while mating, they become very aggresive and territorial, and attack in flocks of numbers you weren't aware were there. They bulk up before they attack, growing to twice their usual size. This takes a few seconds, so use this to your advantage and RUN.
Armori sprinted out and away of the bushes, dragging Leo behind him. There was a shrill cry from the bushes. A flock of around 30 snipes had taken to the sky, and were flying right after Armori and Leo.
"Gotta find somewhere to hide!" Armori yelled.
((Got beat to it but this works))
((EDIT: Continuation))
Seeing a cave a short distance to the right, Armori suddenly changed course, as snipes HATED the dark. He signaled for Leo to follow, and then dove in himself.
Once they were safely in, Armori said loudly, (as a precaution, as he picked up a few tips from his spelunking days)
"Anyone here?"
((Guess it's my turn to make em now.. sigh))
Armori only received silence. Far into the cave, he could barely make out a lump that looked like a body.
Armori, thankfully, was replied to with silence. Of course the method he used could have detected creatures who mercilessly hunted anything that entered their cave, but usually the initial speech he had made would force them into an involuntary movement, dislodging something that could be heard considering the acoustics of a cave, usually a rock.
So, all things considered, he concluded there was nothing in the cave. Except that lump of clothing over there. It seemed a little out of place, as far as discarded lumps of clothing went, so Armori, the documenter, went to take a peek at it, sword at the ready. After a few steps, he leaned forward to see what it was....
((You called Leo Colray))
Leo followed closely, trying to decipher what the lump was.
"What is it?"
The pair found an unconscious body. Through the darkness of the cave, they couldn't make out who it was. What they did see, was that the target was fairly tattered, and his left hand was mangled.
"I don't know, let's get it into some light," Armori said. Grabbing an arm, it dripped blood onto him.
"Urgh, it's bleeding," Armori said, and shuffled towards the moonlight.
Though no one else could see it, Koutetsu could see the monster's beady yellow eyes through the darkness, watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake.
Koutetsu slowly came back to consciousness. He saw the monsters eyes, but was to weak. To do anything. All he could do and did do was let out a small moan of pain
"You know, Dicemaker was light, he was a kid. This is deadweight adult right here. Mind lending a hand?" Armori complained to Leo.
As he did this, he failed to notice a particularly large stone, and tripped, letting the body, it had to be a body at this point, fall. As he feel to the ground, the hand he used to hold the body drew two bayonets, ready to throw.
Sure, Koutetsu could lend him a hand - a very bloody, half-eaten hand. One had to wonder what kind of monster would chew on living flesh without first killing it.
Koutetsu fell to the ground, with a loud moan of pain. He tried to crawl away from the two eyes he saw. He tried to speak the word run, but muttered and stuttered it into an unintelligent slur of letters. All he could do is watch.
Leo moved to help, but then the limp body struggled free and flopped onto the ground, mumbling something. Leo turned back to the cave, holding his sword out,
"This guy looks pretty beaten up, You don't think it's..."
Leo glanced at the bloodied, almost short a hand, lump of a body. Then he turned back to the cave, holding the sword out, ready to attack.
Armori nodded grimly. Enough light had caught the body that Armori could make out Koutetsu's leg, which still hadn't completely healed.
"And that means, the thing is in here too, whatever it is. He'll heal..but not if that thing is constantly bothering him. Take him out, move slowly, I'll catch up to you in a minute or two. If I take more than five, try and see if that elevator's working." He said.
He drew his sword in his left hand, and now had three bayonets in the right. He said one word,
"Go."
As Amori spoke, there was a slight gust of wind at his back. It was brief, but very cold.
((From another dimension, a bard, a vampire, and a jelly in the shape of a human look on, eating popcorn from their bowl, gazing in anticipation for a fight.))
Regardless of whether Leo was there to cover him or not (Armori had half-hoped he was), Armori was ready. He took two steps back into the darkness, and drew 5 more bayonets in his right hand ((Up to 8 now)). He threw them all, each starting their respective arcs ten degrees to the side of the next, and once they flew further, they spanned the entire horizontal space of the cave's tunnel.
His bayonets would hit anything in the range of 3-6 feet off the ground, provided of course, that it was in the path of the bayonet.
Armori held his sword readily.
Leo dragged the newly identified Koutetsu to a safe area, no trees in a yards length. Then he returned to Arrmori's side.
"Hit anything?"
None of Armori's blades struck anything useful. He might recall a sharp turn in the cave beyond which the creature might have fled, which would have blocked his attacks.
It apparently didn't take any measures to hide its footprints, but it was a bit too dark to differentiate them from the footprints of the other knights.
"Nah, they all hit the wall, so it probably went deeper into the cave," Armori said.
"Me without my lighters. But either way, doesn't make sense to chase after it, does it Leo?" he paused, then continued.
"Seeing as we have poor old Monster Candy here suffering, he seems to attract them, or it. Should we just head back to the elevator? Your call, Leo."
Before Leo could respond, they both heard a moan as they saw Koutetsu stagger to get up, and when he finally did, he rested himself on the side of the cave with his right hand. He muttered something, but most of the words were inaudible. They did make out a few important words he said such as, "Elevator" and "Moor". He then pointed outside the cave.
After Koutetsu had finished speaking, or mumbling incoherently, to be more specific, Armori made his decision.
"He's right, we should get to Moorcroft," Armori said. Before setting off, he said,
"Leo, you're carrying him this time."
((Oi, Colray, post something will you?))
Koutetsu reached for his scabbard, which was still missing his katana. He put the bottom of it on the ground, and held the top with both hands, his bloody one over the healthy one. He slowly started to use his makeshift cane to walk out of the cave with the others, stumbling occasionally.
"Alright, come here you."
Leo moved to Koutetsu's side. He took Koutetsu's injured arm and draped it behind his back, supporting Koutetsu so he could walk easier.
"To Moorcroft! Once again..."
Koutetsu gladly wrapped his arm around Leo, glad to have something else to balance himself on. They continued walking.
After arriving at the elevator, Koutetsu reached out and pushed the elevator call button, hoping the elevator would come to them.
((@Archemiday: I was gonna mess that up, but seeing as there's no way they can climb down that elevator shaft with Koutetsu...))
Evidently, the slime was very thinly applied indeed, as it seemed to have dried up in that escapade. The elevator, complete with sleeping Lann and Wolver steaks, came right to them. With a new speed to boot.
Armori let Leo and Koutetsu get on first, then got on and pressed the button.
"On our way to Moorcroft, again," Armori said, and started whistling.
Koutetsu was glad that the elevator was finally working. He sat down and rested his head and back on the railing of the elevator. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
The elevator set back down the shaft with the same speed it came up the shaft with. It was safe to say it was at least unsettling. But, thankfully for those of lesser physical stability, or those with any memories of losing comrades to elevators like this, it was over as soon as it began. They had arrived at Moorcroft Manor. At least, that's what Armori assumed. Who knew? He could be delusional.
Koutetsu couldn't fall asleep due to his insomnia, so he stayed awake during most of the ride. He croaked to Armori, "Is... this Moorcroft? Am I being delusional from my wounds?"
Armori had paid the odd visit to Moorcroft every now and then, and certain smells and sights just weren't anywhere else. The purplish glow that resonated through the manor had always calmed him down, while simultaneously making him more violent. Go figure. Also was the slight undead haze that always smelled like stale air. Then Armori saw the clincher. The ridiculous Zombie bellhop.
Patting Koutetsu on the back, he stepped off the elevator.
"Yup, we actually made it," Armori said.
Koutetsu was glad. A place to finally rest. "Say, this is like a hotel, right? What do they take for payment for using a room?"
Armori snickered to himself at that question.
"What would Undeads do with money?" he asked in reply.
"Basically, when you come here, you hope they aren't out of rooms. They rarely are, because not many people have the balls to sleep a night or two here. I guarantee you you're gonna have nightmares about your monster friend thanks to that Dark Ritual Kat," he continued.
"Just ask the clerk for rooms," Armori finally concluded.
Leo watched Armori and looked for a separate path. He climbed onto the guardrail and jumped upwards, grabbing hold of a large gear tooth and hoisted himself onto it. He balanced himself and looked up some more, finding a plausible handhold, Leo moved to the center of the gewar and shimmied up the axle before latching onto a smaller gear. He pulled himself upwards and perched on the small gear. From his vantange point, Leo called out to Armori,
"Hey! Where we going?"