=> PHERES: Abscond.

[refiningspacetime]

=> PHERES: Abscond.

=> FLEETBOUND POST. [refiningSpacetime - FIN]
=> MARDUK: Call your guide. [FIN]
=> RICCIN: Retrieve the damsel in distress. [FIN]
=> HINNOM: Lead him home. [FIN]
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [activatingAggro- FIN]
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail. [FIN]
=> PHERES: Wake up. [FIN]
 

SUMMARY: Taking drinks from strangers is generally a bad idea. Pheres needs to be picked up from a party, but life is hard when your moirail is out of town and all of your friends are terrible. Luckily, there's always Fleetbound!

WARNINGS: None! Except for Pheres being thoroughly depressing in Lead him home.

THIS HAS BEEN FINALLY EDITED. For like the third time. Due to POV-switching shenanigans, you may occasionally encounter weird shifts / incorrect verb pluralisation at points that I missed in switching from 3rd person to 2nd person POV. Sorry! :c

For the most part, though, typoes should be fixed and continuity is now more accurate!

ALSO:  Follow the story through the links above to ensure you're reading the correct, edited threads, please and thank youu

Comments

[forgottensebayt]

After your jaunt through the sewers yesterday, you spent the rest of the day and night researching them. You had to stay up until Pheres or Hinnom told you they had arrived, or their name appeared on the culling lists: it was only smart to do some research during it.

So after the discussion of castes and lusii dies down, you started telling Sipara all about your research. She seems interested enough, asking questions where needed and commenting when you pause, but she seems content to let you carry the conversation.

That's alright. You have plenty of things to talk about!

" - they used to be used by cults, frequently, but, ah, don't be concerned. I'm certain that there are none out here now." Your lusus chirps, questioning, and you laugh, a little awkward. "Probably! I mean, their remnants likely remain. Historically speaking, the accepted practice with insurgent churches was simply to cull them wherever and whenever they were found, and to leave the majority of remains behind to serve as a deterrance towards others following their example. Subsequently, you could argue that there are technically still cultists down here, given that some likely have been colonised by fungal parasites due to the wet environment and..."

"Where the fuck are we?" Sipara demands, interrupting you.

Oh. You look at the niches in the wall she's frowning at. This high up, they've been empty long enough for the mycellium to have taken over, and the red fuzz that simply permeates the cracks of the rest of the stonework has swollen into bumpy protusions here. "We're in the beginning of the ossuary. In thirty minutes, we should be in the catacombs proper."

[activatingaggro]

You are never going underground ever, ever again.

If you thought it was fucking creepy in the ossuary, then that's nothing compared to the catacombs. The walls are damp down there, the air heavy with humidity that smells less like sewage and more like heat and deep water, and in that heady environment, the fungus has gone mad. It's poured through the nooks and crannies of the stonework, infiltrated the niches, and overtaken the ceiling, until it's nothing but a dim green blur above you. It's even tried to spread onto the floor, and you have to walk carefully to avoid slipping on the damp, spreading patches of red and green on the floor.

Worse yet, it's spread to the bodies. Because of course there's fucking bodies down here. You'd brought and taken the anti-fungals mostly as a precaution: surely here, in the heart of the fishhead territory, there wouldn't be too many daywalkers roaming the underground. No way they'd tolerate it, literally in their own backyard, when they've got drones just dying for the chance to murder anything they can get their clawed mitts on.

Nope!

It's fucking infested.

The first daywalker, you spot long before it sees you, and Marduk's lusus leads you in a detour around it. The second one can't be avoided, but Bennue manages to distract it until the three of you headed past.

The third one, you literally walk into. Punching it straight through the guts doesn't do much apart from getting your hands soppy with blood and strands, and its teeth are damn near scraping at your throat before you manage to put some distance between the two of you.

You should've brought a different specibus. Marduk yanks out her sword, but the two of you are close-range fighters, with lusii too small to be of any help, and it takes nearly five minutes for the two of you to cull it.

And by then, the noises have attracted others.

You manage to lose the herd, without losing any members of your little make-shift party. (Marduk doesn't get the joke. Of course she doesn't get the joke.) But by the time you make it to the door of Hinnom's hive, you're exhausted, and Marduk doesn't look much better, her face-paint streaked and running with sweat and residue from the damp air.

"I can't open it," she says, pouting as she stares at the lock. It's pretty high-tech shit, for all that it's got to be a century out of date: some sort of hand-print sensor with a needle in the sensor, linked to some long-dead sucker's hemocode. "It's for yellowbloods only."

"So.. we can't get in."

"Of course we can get in." The look she gives you says she's fed up with your shit, and you sneer back. It was a valid question! (Statement. Comment.) "I just have to knock," she says primly, and then proceeds to pound on the door, as hard as she can.

Welp.

You back up a little, and peer down both ends of the hall. You're in an alcove right now, but if the noise draws daywalkers, you'll be the first to know.

[activatingaggro]

The door opens, and Marduk hops inside first, ducking her head under the plank of wood that's been nailed across the front. (Weird.) You follow, and -

Pheres stares at you, bright-eyed, from behind some nubby maroon kid.