ic Long Way Down(IC)

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

"A veritable treasure!" noted Lord Steam, who had plenty of money but was not immune to its allure. The Gold! The Silver! The Platinum!

 

"Oh dear! Too much strain, old chap!" he sighed, seeing Dol Druth unconscious. 

 

Still, through the doorway was, by his estimation, better than staying in the crumbling cavern. He dragged the Speaker through the door and took a breather once inside. He dared not touch the barrier, whatever it was. Surely, however, its purpose was to prevent theft and he had little doubt that it would be effective in this endeavour. At best, it would be impenetrable. At worst, he would lose the arm he touched it with. 

 

No, at worst, he would be disintegrated. 

 

So, whilst he paused to admire and contemplate the vast wealth here, he did not touch. 

 

He bent to down to see how Dol Druth was. If there was any chance of reviving him, then he would do so - for dragging the speaker a mile down the avenue would be a considerable exertion...

[Ari]

GM

 

Dol-Druth was unresponsive, his channeling the psionic power of billions of beings having taken its final toll on the lumpen alien. He breathed, but shallowly, and the wound on his head had opened from the strain and his second collapse as it struck the floor.

 

The incalculable riches piled about the pair glimmered in the not-light, magnificent and useless. The door to freedom winkled in the distance, mocking in its perfectly inaccessible presence.

 

"Well, hop to it." A brawny man in splendid armor was standing beside him. He looked like an ocean-themed knight, his armor decorated with etchings of waves and his helmet crested with a winged hippocampus. But it looked more like the retro high-tech of the Atlantean guards Lucien had seen than anything a knight would wear, and the air tingled with energy.

 

"Door's right there, don't dally, if you can't lift the slug, use this. We don't let visitors through here." He tossed the lord of detectives a slender wand with a button at thumb-level on the handle, then marched out of sight.

 

When Lucien turned to follow him, he found himself staring at a mural on the floor, showing a knight identical to the one he had just seen battling hordes of serpentine monsters, great titans with eyes of fire grappling with watery beasts in the background.

 

The wand was still in his hand.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Ari

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

"What? Where did that strange fellow go?" gasped Lord Steam to the air. He had disappeared, just like...

 

Magic...

 

And left a wand in his hand. 

 

Lord Steam could only conclude that it was a key of some sort. Quite what sort, was anybodies guess. But the strange Knight seemed to indicate as such. 

 

He had no idea how to use it, but he could at least try. 

 

"KAZAM! OPEN SESAME! LOCKO-UNBOLTO!" he yelled to the air as he swished the wand this way and that to see what would happen. 

[Ari]

GM

 

Waving the thing in the air produced nothing but a low, groaning note of music that looped back on itself to create a singularly-discouraging drone. During another geometric exercise, Lucien's thumb happened to depress the button on the handle. Most luckily, this happened while he happened to be pointing the device directly at the Speaker of Dotrae. A ray of clear teal light shot from the wand's squared tip, encasing the alien emissary in a sheathe of singing power. The light strengthened and before the detective's eyes Dol-Druth began to levitate into the air, until at last he lay, as if on a table, on level with Lord Steam's wand-bearing arm. 

 

A moment's experimentation revealed how to keep him at that elevation without sacrificing any of his limbs to staying on the air while walking the gargantuan hall. 

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

"Excellent! Not what I had in mind, but excellent all the same! Why, I am rather fond of this little thing!" proclaimed Lord Steam, whistling a merry tune. 

 

It would make transporting his unconscious friend much more easy. 

 

But still, no door opened - at least not yet. 

 

There was but one thing to do - and he did it. 

 

"By Vishnu, I hope this works!" he whispered to the Gods, and pressed the button on the wand...

[Ari]

GM

 

With a sickening sensation the treasury rushed past them, depositing the two of them on the doorstep at the head of the stairs. The doorway was oddly-hard to make out, even in the unlight it didn't seem quite distinct enough, and swirling, inchoate shapes flowed about it like some bizarre soup. 

 

From behind it, Lord Steam could hear voices.

 

"Are you sure it's wise, Princess?" Envoy Lina's voice murmured, seeping like ocean waves "They seem peaceful enough, why not let them dream here?"

 

Thetis' voice was sharp as a whip, all her earlier giddiness and cheer nowhere in evidence "I can't very well pretend the two most distinctive envoys have just vanished. We need them. Give me that light."

 

A glare like the sun blazed through the cracks around the door, blinding in the unlight and leaving great colored smears of after-images on Lucien's eyes.

 

"A twitch!" Thetis said joyfully "Now, get Lockwood's eyes open!" 

 

The light began to build even further, painfully, agonizingly. The door began to rattle and shake off its hinges and the floor itself began to tremble. But even so, Lucien found himself drawn, step by step to the handle...

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

This was a bamboozling turn of events, and Lord Lockwood was suitably bamboozled. 

 

He did not trust the Atlanteans, and frankly, he smelt Machiavellian twists and plots. But smelling such rotten plans was quite different from proving it. Or even knowing it. 

 

He clenched his fist, determined not to touch the handle. Not yet. 

 

Patience. Control. Wait....Wait...Wait!

 

He froze, concentrating purely on listening in on the conversation. Mayhap they would spin more rope on which to hand themselves....

[Ari]

GM

 

After several seconds of uninterrupted glare, the voices broke in again.

 

"Nothing? They should have woken up."

 

"Shall we increase the intensity?"

 

"No, human eye structure is too weak to take even this for long. We'd blind him. What really surprises me is the alien, they're from a subterranean species, ought to have been shocked out of this by now."

 

The light began to fade.

 

"Keep a watch. They may say something. Anything that helps us find the Eye of Oblivion is a step closer to our goal. Now, they'll be wondering what happened to Thetis. I have to get back to the other guests. Await me."

 

The light faded entirely, and with it the door. In its place was a crude carving on a salt-stained cave wall of a hedron's outline, with words written above it: 

 

Give Us Oblivion

[Ari]

Dol-Druth stirred. His eyes cracked open slowly, great white orbs gradually overtaken by black as the membrane was peeled back from the alien's visual receptors.

 

Slowly, and with difficulty, the Speaker mumbled "Goauld mrnrnarngen, Luckvoof." He blinked, ponderously, eyes swiveling methodically in his skull as the manymind examined their surrounds "Were we out long? We appear to be a great distance from the door." 

 

Belatedly, his eyes lit on the wand. The Speaker frowned-and instantly smoothed their expression with a grumble of pain. The gash wasn't too wide, yet, but even a shift of the skin was agony.

 

"What is that?" He pointed one pudgy hand at the slim device.

"And that?" He pointed the other at the smeared image on the wall "The wording is reminiscent of Terminus cults found on this planet. 'Oblivion for Omega' is a common prayer."

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

"The Terminus!" muttered Lord Steam. "This is bad! Well, not all bad. At least you are breathing. And sort of back to your spiffy self" he added. 

 

He pondered the words he had heard. They didn't really make any sense - not that they were nonsensical, but rather he was looking at a jigsaw with only a few pieces here and there. It was impossible to make sense of it. 

 

But the Terminus - that was bad. 

 

"This? Oh its some kind of fancy wand. Does some fancy stuff, like telekenesis. Possibly a key, as well. Quite how I got it is something of a mystery, I am afraid. Some fellow gave it to me, then he vanished in a puff of light. Or something like that" he explained. Admittedly, not very well, but then it was not something that made particular sense right now. 

 

"Right now there is no pattern to these events, I am afraid. Its still just falling into place....But more importantly, how are you feeling? Can't solve a mystery with a head full of dust...."

[Ari]

"We feel terrible." Dol-Druth attempted to rise...and flopped heavily onto his back, panting furiously and blowing like a breaching whale.

 

"That is not an option," he declared at last after a weary minute of catching his breath "but it would be against our principles to demand you walk while you carry us. Can that mechanism encompass its wielder in its effect? It is worth an experiment."

 

"As for what to do next...this room holds nothing of further use. The door is gone, this area is a great enormous heap of gaudy trash and the only known exit is through the ceiling and back into the maze. Once there we will use our powers to blast through the walls until we find another exit and hopefully a thick pile of moss."

 

Dol-Druth closed his bloodshot eyes "If there is some business involving the Terminus afoot, we should keep our lips sealed until we reach the palace. We do no good spreading tales before we find the proper ears. Can we trust you on this, Sri Lockwood? We do admit we also rely entirely on your cooperation and goodwill, but that aside are we in accord?"

 

 

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

"Oh I quite like a bit of gaudy trash!" said Lord Steam, cheerfully, thinking of the rooms full of clutter in the Steam Mansion. 

 

"But the point is well made. Except for the moss. I prefer a polished oak myself. And comfortable leather chairs" he added. "And as for keeping secrets, well I am a diplomatic envoy. Keeping secrets is part of my job, although sometimes lamentably so. I confess I have some of the qualities of a spy, although it is not really to my palate" he moaned. 

 

"So let us keep our lips sealed. This is a game of politics it seems. A game of diplomacy. A game of...a game of...oh what's the right analogy..." he muttered. 

 

He snapped his  fingers. 

 

"A game of thrones!"

 

"Let us be on our way then!" he finished, bringing out the wand with a flourish. 

 

"And lets see what this devilish thing can do, mmm?"

Edited March 13, 2018 by Supercape

[Ari]

GM

 

It was a relief to not have to traverse the entire length of the treasury on foot, so much so it was almost unnoticeable that all the varied wealth had simply disappeared, replaced with giant mouldering heaps of corpses. With the forcefields still in place there was nothing to be done about that anyway, and so the pair made their way out, up and out again, back into the dizzying maze they had left all too short a time ago.

 

It was a bit of a letdown to discover they could just levitate above the walls of the maze, and that all along it had just been a loop with two doors at either side of a revolving plate. The trick all along had been to keep to the edge, not to find the center.

 

The letdowns, thankfully, stopped once they went through a door that vaguely resembled the Hell portal they had come in by.

 

On the other side were their own unconscious bodies and a circle of Atlanteans fussing over them with odd-shaped apparati, muttering to each other in a jargon the Speaker helpfully translated.

 

"It would appear we have been insensible for several hours, Sri Lockwood," Dol-Druth mumbled "er...they have been doing all they can, but our...essences? That is fading, somehow, and they are in a panic because if we cannot be revived here there is no place near enough to save us." He screwed up his great dome-like Moon of a face "Do...you people really believe this...nonsense?"

[Supercape]

Lord Steam

 

Sometimes, Lord Steam wished had a moustache so that he could stroke it. However, he decided that it would not suit his face. Maybe when he was older, then he could enjoy the luxurious and elegant art of moustache stroking. 

 

"I do not know what I believe, sir. It makes no sense, but that does not mean it is nonsense..." he concluded, looking at their own bodies. 

 

"It does have a certain ethereal flavour to it. Which means, it is all rather spooky and I understand only a thin sliver of the matter. Which in turn means we are at a considerable disadvantage. In other words, we are screwed" he concluded. 

 

"I don't know about you but I would really rather be in my body. Comfortable thing, for the most part. As to who to achieve this humble ambition, therein lies the question. And I have no answer...."