--- Kat ---
Kat and Lily made their way down the stairs carefully. Kat had to be especially careful using her wings to keep so of her weight off them while ensuring she didn’t fly too high and hit her head on the top of the tight spiral. The stairs were made of stone but it was clear they hadn’t been properly maintained in quite so ti. They were littered with cracks ford by the ivy that had grown into the rock. It wasn’t quite everywhere, and their were notable bits of missing stone that likely had vines recently and had been ripped out by the people passing through to clean the stairs up a bit. It all looked a bit eery lit by her purple flas.
The staircase took them quite far down. It was a good five minutes of careful ’walking’ when they finally hit the bottom. As the exited the staircase they saw the entrance to an old room, what might have once been a nice reception area. Almost like one in a castle, with fancy banners on the walls and a long entryway with a few spots to rest. It wasn’t like that now. The banners were completely rotten, the chairs were in pieces and there was rubble everywhere.
Looking up there were clear holes in the ceiling to show where the extra stone had co from. There was a sowhat clear path through the ss where sohow had shoved as much of the stone aside as they could. Notably though, it wasn’t a perfectly straight path. Particularly large rocks seed to remain where they’d fallen implying that the group here wasn’t too strong, or at least, that they didn’t have a reliable reserve of strength to call upon.
Gliding across the room, they found the exit. They might have once been nice stone doors but they were hanging in pieces, completely open to the next tunnel that looked to be in similar condition. It was smaller with a lower ceiling so that ant the debris, while also smaller, took up a larger percentage of things. Here the passage of people was even more clear.
As they walked, they could see a few sections where rocks might have once entirely blocked the way. Pickaxe marks littered the smaller debris around this section, but even with that the gaps weren’t exactly large. Kat found herself needing to crawl through them, her horns catching on odd bits of rock. It was hard to hold back the desire to just smash her way through them... but she could transform into water to alleviate the issue.
Kat wasn’t sure how long that would remain easy though. Sure they’d put the fountain back as they walked down the stairs, but they also might have ruined whatever barrier had kept the poison out so far. "Should I just stay water? Not sure I can keep the fla going for you in that case..."
[Probably best you keep the fire then. I don’t really have any way to see in the complete dark. My eyes are good but there still needs to be so light sowhere.]
Kat nodded as the pair continued. The tunnel started to split into more side paths as they walked along. Other wings of the area perhaps. Many were blocked off by rubble that hadn’t been cleared and Lily’s nose indicated that they’d continued forward for quite a while. So they simply followed that trail until Lily’s head snapped to the side.
It was one of the unblocked passages, and Lily sniffed at the air a few tis before frowning. [They split up here. Well, no it’s more like, they all went down this side path and then only one or two ca back to keep moving forward.]
*So... what? Do we want to head down that path and see if we can find half of the group?*
[I’m a touch worried that they used this as a chance to kill soone instead.]
*Is that likely?*
[I don’t know. This is all recent and they were far enough away that I don’t imdiately sll any decay...]
*Right but you jumped straight to murder. Wouldn’t it make sense if they found say, a library to loot, so the guys with the bags stuck around to pack up the important things while the people with the heavy equipnt went further down the main path?*
[You’re right. It’s probably just the darkness. Though... hmm... if there IS a library down there not sure I want to fight people inside of it in case we damage the books. Though I wouldn’t want to let them get away with stealing them either... hmmm... a tough choice.]
*We could split up?*
[You want to split up in what could be the most obvious ’dungeon’ analogue we’ve found so far?]
*Does the Trapmaster stuff not count?*
Lily huffed and grumbled at that question. Still, eventually she shook her head. [Whatever let’s go see the library.] Kat wanted to laugh at her adorable little girlfriend as she took off towards the library. Though that had just been Kat’s suggestion. One that quickly proved to be inaccurate. As they moved swiftly down the hall, even Kat could sll the change in the air. It went from mostly musty and dusty to a more damp and humid environnt after they crossed so line in the hallway made of broken tiles. Apparently the visual destruction didn’t prevent whatever magic kept the sll in.
They were probably heading for a greenhouse, a broken one at that. Lily’s ears were also starting to twitch around. Kat couldn’t really make out what she was hearing, but from checking Lily’s mories it was the sounds of people moving around. *Alright so what’s the plan? This obviously isn’t a library...*
[Yes and I can’t help but be disappointed by that. I know you were just using it as an example but to ... well I couldn’t really see much else you’d want to loot. If it was the treasure room everyone would still be there and if it was sothing else it might not even be worth it... but I guess plants, rare plants especially, are super important for a closed off community like this one.]
*Right so what do we do? We’re already here and I’m assuming the people aren’t too far away from us. Do we go in or back off? Do we start with a fight and try to ambush them or are we going to try talking? Do we want one conscious to ask questions or is it better to knock them all out and then keep them that way to hand over to Steel. Heck, should we take the smaller group back or keep going?*
[Ok, surely we keep going... in answer to both of those questions. I think we just ambush these guys. No reason to make things complicated and we don’t need one awake because we know there’s another group. Perhaps it would be nice to know what they’re looking for here but it’s possible only one person knows anyway and they’d be up with the main team.]
*Alright then, let’s go.*
The pair set off, quietly of course, with Kat even allowing Lily to take the lead because of her extra stealth factor. They approached the greenhouse... or rather they first approached the small lab that had been attached to it. Kat wasn’t sure how much studying went on here because the area had long since been overgrown. A tree was sticking out of the middle of it. Bushes were bursting out of the cupboards and the few flowers that managed to break through the cracks in the tiles provided by the tree looked nice.
There was sadly a trampled path through them, but that was ok. The person responsible for destroying those would be getting beaten up in a few monts. Moving further along they could see the remains of a few greenhouses. It was hard to make out all of them, but the overgrown area did have enough gaps in the foliage to see that the back wall was quite far away.
It helped that a number of plants had obviously been ripped out already. Lily’s guess of two proved to be sowhat incorrect. There was three people here working with a fourth standing guard. Apparently they were expecting sothing. Perhaps not sentient attackers but sothing so Kat made a note of that.
Kat and Lily readied themselves and soon they were in position for the fight to begin. It wasn’t really hard. The three working away were too far back to check on the person on guard, so when Kat dropped directly on top of them and started to choke them out they went down without anyone noticing.
Kat moved back into the air and repeated the manoeuvre, this ti with Lily’s help. Lily got the two, while Kat took the last person and they were just Rank 1. It wasn’t really a fight. ntal coordination ant they all went down at the sa ti and had no chance to set off the alarm.
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