V The Lost Vaults of Hammuzi

Elise

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As usual, or to be more specific, as per the recent trend, Elise found Strazio Rockwell haunting the hallways of the medical wing, half-bandaged, haggard and perpetually grumpy. She could feel him from around the corner, of course, along with the eldritch ghost slithering around in his essence. She could also feel Gamzee and Nico nearby, but...well ultimately this was what she had come here for. Flashes of Takil and her boys rand through her mind, and her step faltered slightly. Move on.

It had all worked out just fine in the end.

"Hey Rockwell, nice work on Azula in the tomb there. I saw the playback." Elise said with a forced smile. She sauntered up to him, and he turned slowly to look at her. There was an energy in his stare...something not entirely friendly. After seeing what he was truly capable of when the ghost was activated, even the vampire swallowed reflexively.

"...you okay dude?" she ventured. Strazio blew a sigh out through his nose.

"Guess so. You gonna take me home and poke around in my brain now?" he grumbled. Elise fiddled with the hem of her new black and silver cardigan; Greenstripes had purchase her a new outfit while waiting for her return. Yeah, that had kinda been the plan. But again, now that she had seen what this strange, paternal spirit was capable of, she wasn't sure she wanted to mess with it until they both knew more about it.

"Not...yet. We owe Luka a hand with her hidden temple thing and...anyway..." Elise said, glancing at an unimportant spot on the wall.

"...you're more than just a test subject, man. When you wanna figure this shit out, you let me know. Until then, I'm gonna just stay close. Deal?" she said quickly. Strazio picked up on the ground she was giving, and the amount of humility she was trying to express. Hotheaded and violent, yes, but Strazio was no less socially adept than any other psychopath stuck in the Crossroads. He decided to relent, just slightly, for now.

"...good enough. Let's get going." he breathed. Elise nodded and beckoned to Greenstripes, who launched himself off of a nearby chair and stuck to Elise's shoulders like a giant wad of gum. He slowly wormed his way into her travel bag like a cozy, gelatinous teddy bear as they walked towards the transport room. As they waited their turn at the transporter pads, Elise peeked her head over the Syntech operator to see who was ahead of them.

"Two for Markov. Energize." the red-headed worker chirped. Elise just barely managed to catch Izaneus' eye as he and Mustang evaporated into a swirl of quantum filaments. Interesting choice, baby wizard. The rival mage smirked and shook her head - straight out of the Academy, into the Abyss and over to the nearest war zone. Maybe the pale faced scrub had some moxy in him after all.

The transporter tech beckoned Strazio and Elise forward, and they took their places on the glassy pads. Elise glanced over at the albino magus, and noted that he was shifting uncomfortably. Muscles bulged in his neck as he rolled his head around, like a nervous horse. He caught her staring and shrugged.

"Just...never know when you're gonna get accidentally zapped to the wrong place." he chuckled. Elise nodded.

"Speaking from experience?" she pried. Strazio blinked.

"Uh...yeah? I think so. I don't...whatever." he trailed off. The tech cleared his throat.

"Where you headed?" he called, leaning over the console.

"Uruk." Elise said flatly. The worker gave her a similarly blank look for a moment. He'd watched a decent amount of the competition this year.

"Bold choice. Alright, two for Uruk." he said with a shrug. Elise interjected loudly.

"Three!" she snapped. Greenstripes poked a few arms out of her knapsack and waved.

"Three for Uruk. Til next year!"

Everything went hazy and white for a few moments. Rainbow scintillation bounced in and out of forests of intangible light. Colors played and swirled in ways not meant to witnessed by souls dissected and flung across the yawning gulfs. She'd seen it all before.

In the next instant, the three souls materialized in the instantly hot, instantly bustling central plaza of Uruk. Elise dimly noted that it was day-time, and summarily burst into a pillar of flames.

"Fucking lord!" Strazio yelped, jumping back from the conflagration. Greenstripes immediately leapt into action and launched himself at a large banner that had been hung to welcome the return of King Gilgamesh from his successful campaign aboard Dante's Comet. Apparently they had gotten back before the golden ass had returned - which was both a blessing and a curse. The octopoid familiar tore down the banner with a swift, wrenching yank, causing the whole assembly to come crashing down on the small crowd that had gathered to see the commotion.

Humanoid shapes, shouts, and smoke all swirled around beneath the fallen tapestry as calls began to cry out through the plaza.

"It's the vampire!"

"Elise is here!"

"Traitor! Traitor to the King!"

"Get the tarp off! Kill it!"

Meanwhile, beneath the fallen banner, Elise was returning to her senses from the excruciating pain as a blind, panicked melee broke out in the darkness. God fucking dammit all to fucking shit. She could barely move her blackened fingers to cast any sort of spell.

"Strazio!" she shouted. She could hear his enraged shouts nearby. People were brawling blindly, but she could already feel others trying to rip the tapestry away. She had to think of something fast.

Luckily for them, the only friendly face in Uruk had been waiting for them nearby. Elise heard the roar of an immense engine and a familiar horn. Screeching wheels and more panicked shouts sent people scattering. The next thing she knew, the vampire had been grabbed and hauled into the back of Wrencher's personal truck. Elise opened her eyes just in time to see Strazio jumping into the opened tailgate before the rear door was shut and he fell on top of her.

The engine roared, wheels squealed, and Elise did her best to remain still. She could still hear, at least.

"It's never graceful with you two, is it?" chided the familiar voice of Luka. A foul, breathless chittering seemed to respond to her taunting.

"What the fuck is that thing doing here?!" Strazio shouted. Elise scrunched up her face as Greenstripes covered her like a giant, gooey weighted blanket. Could she just like, chill for a goddamn minute?

"No easy to killy a gem!" Wrencher's voice rasped out. She could hear stomping and angry fumbling before Luka screamed at both of them to simmer down.

"Relax! Fuck! Wrencher is a corrupted gem. She can't be killed by normal means- " Luka started before Strazio interjected.

"I could give a shit! She and her boss tortured us for months- " he shouted.

"You worthless bones! No point to torture! Bah!" Wrencher screeched as she apparently dodged an angry punch from Strazio. More bumping, more ruckus. The silver lining was that Elise was still high off of her recent blood meal, and her undead body was already beginning to mend. The vampire finally opened her eyes and sat up to see Luka driving in the front of the cab as Strazio and Wrencher wrestled viciously just behind the collapsed gun turret.

"Wrencher was only in it for the garage and free salvage! She didn't care about anything else - she's loyal to her truck!" Luka shouted over their bickering. Strazio apparently managed to grab some heavy tool and club the black, ragged little creature over the back of the head, whereupon she instantly poofed into a cloud of harmless vapors. Her black, gleaming core gem clattered to the floor of the truck. Elise snatched it with vampiric agility before Strazio could smash that too. He gave her a wounded look.

"I've had...really...enough murder for a while. Please." she said, just loud enough to be heard over the monstrous engine. Strazio fumed for a few more moments before wheeling around and joining Luka in the front of the truck's cab.

"Where we going?" he asked.
 

Nico Cinder

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"Doin' time," Nico half sang to himself, " and the living's easy."

A finger to string to string to finger, a foot in front of the other. That's how these battles are won, Nico thought to himself. He had no idea how far he'd walked up to this point, only that the heat was not unlike that of Hell. A large straw sunhat shaded tired eyes and the boy pressed on. The sound of wind across the badland sands was a little overpowering, the only thing capable of drowning out his slick notes in this place devoid of water. There was an empty, crushed up can of some off-brand, off-world energy drink in his pocket and it was bugging the shit out of him. He killed it hours ago. No trashcan for miles, of course.

There was, though, a new sound, that made Nico's musically inclined ears twitch. Big engines in big trucks made noises all too familiar to the boy, having grown up in hillbilly hell. This was not to be confused with literal Hell, as the two have very different ways of achieving the same effect. More to the point, there's a truck over there, kicking up a big ol' mean cloud of dust and sand. Even more to the point, it looked like it was heading in his direction. Nico stopped playing, and looked down at the ground he was standing on. Huh.

"This doesn't look like a road," He muttered to himself. And with that, he smashed his guitar in two before burying the pieces of the Red Chord into the sand like a dead rockstar's tombstone. The truck approached. Nico Cinder walked.
 

Strazio Rockwell

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“So I was doing some research while you two were busy clobbering each other,” Luka said, her voice prim and proper as always.

Strazio eyed her sharply, taking note of how dull the network of silver lines across her body appeared to be. It was hard to see their entirety beneath her shawl, but her bare tree-frog hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. He looked away, out towards the expanding desert, if she was sick or something it wasn’t really his business.

“And what’d you research?” Strazio asked and then added, “Also, for the record we weren’t clobbering each other.”

“Right, right,” Luka said, waving limp-wristed towards him, “Anyways, I was looking into those ruins that Ramley was having you mundanes excavate, and you’ll never guess what they are.”

“You’re right, I won’t,” He answered.

“The Lost Vaults of Hammuzi,” She declared proudly.

Strazio nodded as if that had any significance to him. He had long since abandoned any hope of recognizing any relevant Crossroad history.

“Did you say Hammuzi?” Elise asked, leaning into the truck’s cab, “as in Archivist Hammuzi?

“Indeed I did,” Luka said, turning to offer Elise a toothy smile, “I’m surprised you’re familiar.”

“What self-respecting arcanist wouldn’t be?” She asked in a way that wasn’t really a question.

Strazio huffed and rolled his eyes as they continued to delve into more and more obscure factoids about the archivist. What self-respecting arcanist, indeed. He had no idea who this Hammuzi guy was. Though, he wasn’t really an arcanist or a magus anymore, was he?. He closed his eyes and propped his head up against the door, using his arm as a brace. Maybe he’d get lucky and they’d stumble into something that’d pry his mental parasite loose.

Is that what he really wanted though? Vague memories, covered with a thin veneer of dissociation, surfaced. He remembered shredding apart the Princess’s arm as easily as wet paper. There was power to be had in the thing. Gamzee’s pained face flashed in his mind. But, he had little control over that power. At least with magick he knew what he had. There wasn’t any uncertainty in throwing a bolt of destructive energy, the outcome was predictable. With the parasite though, it was like someone else was piloting his body. He was a captive member of the audience, forced to sit through a puppet show without being able to make so much as a peep.

*MEATY WHACK*

Suddenly Wrencher’s truck shuddered as whatever Luka hit rebounded off its fender. Strazio’s domepiece nearly bounced off the dash as Luka slammed the brakes.

“What the fuck was that?” Elise asked.

“Uhm,” Luka cringed and looked over her shoulder at the crumpled form laying in the desert, “I’m not sure, I… uh, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“That was fucking obvious,” Strazio muttered, “Seriously, you’ve got the entire desert and you manage to hit the one living thing for miles.”

“Oh, should I just keep going?” Luka asked, nibbling on her thumb.

Strazio and Elise shared a look. For a moment that did seem like the proper decision, but eventually Strazio sighed and shook his head. He opened the door and stepped out. By the time he reached the body it had begun to stir. Nearby a red guitar sat silent and dirty with sandy dirt. Strazio nudged the man with his foot.

“Hey, uh, you okay?” Strazio knew that was a stupid question, but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say, it wasn’t like he was a doctor after all.

“Come on, I just got this fucking body back,” Nico groaned, rolling onto his back, “Oh, hey, it’s you.”

“What the fuck? Nico?” Strazio crouched down, helping him sit up, “What are you doing in the middle of a desert?”

“Oh, hehe, y’know, getting fuckin’ smoked by reckless drivers,” He cracked his neck with a disquietingly loud pop. He stood up and dusted himself off, “You’re Gamzee’s friend, yeah, uhhh, Strawso, right?”

Strazio decided that it was a shame he had survived the impact.

“Nico!” Elise shouted from her nest in the truckbed, “Wanna go fuck with a dead guy’s stuff?”

Nico smiled and scooped up his guitar, “Does getting hit with a truck hurt like hell? Fuck yeah I do!”

“Sorry about that,” Luka offered, “The sun got in my eyes.”

Strazio treaded after the new addition, taking his rightful position in the shotgun seat. A cloud of dust ripped out from underneath them as Luka hit the gas. It was late in the afternoon by the time their destination appeared on the horizon. What remained of Ramley’s excavation site sat scattered across the mountainside, like the skeleton of some ancient metal giant.
 

Elise

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The swift Mesa Rojan sunset had thrown the hillside into deep, gloomy shadow by the time the four treasure hunters arrived back at the dusty crag. Luka and Strazio were noticeably silent as Wrencher's truck turned off with a final, soft rumble. The sky was a violent, orange-red, with the purple gloom of true night creeping steadily from the West.

Buzzards, desert crows and coyotes prowled the abandoned dig site, picking at the scraps left over from the struggle almost two months ago. The truck was parked at the crashed gate, and a faint yet persistent stench of dry, salty rot wafted through the air. As Elise slid off of the back tailgate, kicking up a small puff of grey dust, she breathed in the death and exhaled with a satisfied sigh. Strazio gave her a look, and she flashed him a fanged grin.

"I knew you were a ghoul, Elise, but you actually like this?" Strazio growled, waving a hand around the gorge. From the looks of it, the various corrugated sheds and supply barns had already been raided a few times over for anything valuable. The mild evening breeze moaned through the eaves of the burned out garage and collapsed quonset huts on the hill.

"You familiar with the concept of potential energy? Magic sort of works the same way. All of the latent emotions, psychic impressions, death and context of this place attracts spirits and dark mana like a sinkhole." Elise blathered. She glanced up at the circling vultures for a moment, freezing in her tracks. Nico caught up a minute later, and squinted into the sky along with the vampire for a moment.

"Whatcha...doin?" the hellion asked with a glance.

Elise pointed up at the birds and traced a hand down to three old, dead trees along the top of the ridge.

"Reading the omens. Let's see..." she hummed, picking up a nearby piece of scrap metal and beginning to scratch arcane sigils in the dirt. The wizard glanced back up at the birds and trees every few moments as she continued her tracing. By this time, Luka and Strazio had joined Nico in watching the vampire work. At long last, she stood back from the pattern and contentedly placed her hands on her hips.

Luka took a step forward and licked her eyeball pensively.

"I'm...familiar with basic arcane theory. This is some sort of fortune telling technique? With...vultures?" she croaked. Elise nodded, and gestured to the top right of the sigils.

"Augury. Twelve buzzard, two dead poplar trees, and a dead mesquite-" She started before Nico piped up excitedly.

"Aw dude I love mesquite barbecue!" he blurted out. Everyone stared.

"...y-yeah. Anyway, that's a square assignment of four raptors to each tree. Two trees of the same species growing at thirty eight degrees, and-" Elise continued before being cut off again.

"Can you skip to the end?" Strazio sighed, pinching his nose. Elise pouted and rolled her head around.

"That way." she grumbled, pointing to the peak of the north eastern ridge. Luka nodded, and hefted the worn, metal toobox onto her shoulder. The four marched up the hill, through the camp, trying not to stare too hard at any of the picked and emaciated human corpses strewn around the dig site.

"Yo, this place was already being excavated for shit right? Why don't we just grab their maps from the office?" Nico asked, pointing at the bullet-ridden housing module where Strazio had killed Ramley. Luka scoffed aloud and re-shouldered her cargo.

"Because they're useless! I was sabotaging these idiots for months." she said with a smug grin. Strazio stopped in his tracks, mouth just slightly agape.

"...WHAT?!" he shouted. A small pack of jackals went scampering down the path as his anger echoed around the gorge. Luka looked shaken for a moment, but regained her composure.

"Oh come on Strazio, we've been over this! You think I chose to just...conveniently be captured by these morons on top of one of the most historically rich digsites on Mesa? Be real man. I was keeping the operation stalled from inside until I could pin down the actual location." she grinned defiantly. The albino magus fumed silently for half a minute, trying to formulate a credible response to this revelation. On one hand, it felt like a betrayal. While Strazio and the other slaves had been toiling and dying around her, she had secretly been playing double agent. On the other hand, if Ramley had found what he was looking for, they probably would have just been killed off or moved to some different dig site until they exhausted themselves to death.

Had Luka specifically done anything to hurt him? No. But if she was capable of sabotaging the bandits' whole operation from the inside, she sure as hell could have helped them somehow.

Luka picked up on the man's hesitation and tried to step forward to comfort the shaking magus. Nico caught her outstretched hand and shook his head.

"Dunno what went down with you two, but you don't poke Straz when he's shaking like that. Let that fire cool itself off..." Nico said in what could be described as a somewhat serious tone. "...Also that's a bomb lyric." he added, pulling out his phone and tapping the phrase into his notepad.

The archeologist frowned at the fuming magus once more, then sighed and trudged up the hill after Elise, who hadn't even bothered to slow down.

"...I'll fuckin'...catch up." Strazio growled. Nico nodded, and gave the furious man a thumbs up. He jogged up the jagged, grey stones and met up with the two bookish types a minute later at the summit of the crag. Elise was staring again, this time at the heavily shadowed desert basin. The reddish sands had a pinkish tint from the dying sunlight, and the lights of Uruk were just barely visible over the western hills from here.

"...this another...omen? Ritual thing?" he asked the glowering vampire. Elise shook her head.

"Nah...this is just good ol' geology. The omens said to look in...this general direction." Elise said, forming a 'V' with her outstretched hands. Luka chimed in, eager to prove that she also knew a thing or two.

"Right, and the desert basin is very prone to sinkholes and erosion. So any large notch or indentation in the terrain in this general direction should indicate the presence of a buried structure." the vexvour smiled. The two women went back to comparing their notes and opinions as Strazio finally crested the summit along with them. He sat down on a flat boulder with a glum look on his face and remained silent.

About another hour passed, and the two researchers were still at it. Luka had pulled a sextant, rangefinder, and thermal scope out of her tool bag. Elise was chatting with Greenstripes and tracing more magical works into her grimoire. By this time, the stars were out in fully force, and a few thin clouds intermittently shrouded the distant, purple light of Ioun and her orbiting moon of Inverxe. The treasure hunters had opted against starting a campfire, being as they were on top of a hill in bandit country, and the desert chill was beginning to set in with a vengeance.

A soulful, sorrowful voice cut the darkness.

"Don't wanna watch you scream and cry, but I gotta step off and watch that fire die~" Nico sang, strumming a few experimental chords on his hellish instrument. He chewed the sound of the verse around in his mind for a moment shook his head in disappointment.

"Can't quite nail it down, dude. Gotta be something there." he breathed. Strazio decided that the hellion was probably talking to him, and cast a glance in the youth's direction.

"Not really, no." Strazio scoffed. Nico swiveled his head in confusion.

"Whuh?"

"Doesn't have to be anything out there. Maybe there's a big treasure dungeon, maybe not. I dunno why I'm even here man." Strazio murmured, taking a pull from his water canteen. Nico shrugged and followed suit, taking a pull from his Monster Energy canteen.

"Word, dude. I probably got somewhere better to be too, but..." Nico started. He didn't have to finish his thought for Strazio to chuckle darkly and shake his head in resignation.

"Just go with the flow, right?" he magus sighed.

"Atta boy, Straz." Nico said, offering a mirthless smile.

As if on cue (and if you asked Nico, these things usually were on cue) Luka shouted back at the two men excitedly.

"I think we've got a winner!"
 

Nico Cinder

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Nico had more experience with holes in the ground than most folks, he reckoned, perhaps excluding present company. Crawl yourself out of enough hasty graves, enough manmade hells, you start to naturally come to a very literal and very metaphorical understanding of what it means to be below dirt. Stuck in a hole in a ground. The ground. Doesn't matter what far off continent or dimension or planet, the ground was always the ground, always had the same basic purpose - a place for feet, roots, and dead things.

That's why this particular hole in the ground gave the young man such pause. Descending the dig site with Strazio, Nico could taste the difference in temperature as the two neared the mouth of the cave. It was warm, the air almost sweet. It was not as brittle across his face as the winds between the dunes. The beginning signs of excavation were present near the entrance, but it was evident that this hole in the ground was largely untouched from the sparse supplies scattered about it, skipped over for some reason by the initial research teams. Or maybe they died before they could make it down the line.

"Magic dig site caves supposed to give off heat like that?" Nico asked, scratching the back of his head.

"Duh," Elise said back. Nico wasn't sure what he expected.

"Well Straz, here's yer fuckin' treasure dungeon. Conveniently, it seems to double as the entrance to hell. And I know a thing or two about entrances to hell." They were usually holes in the ground.

"Are they usually holes in the ground?" Elise asked.

"They are," he said.

Luka busied themselves with their pack, producing several items that Nico didn't have any context for. Elise was at home on a nearby workbench, her and her cute little ball of tentacles furiously at work over what sounded like a bunch of rustling papers. Strazio had already perched himself against the wall of the cave entrance.

"Welp," Nico said, approaching with a lazy swing in his step. "Guess there are worse jobs than the hired muscle. And I didn't even have to do any paperwork for this gig."

"Gotta have muscle first," the magician said. Nico made a face at him, repeating the jest in a baby voice. Strazio snorted. "What were you doing in the middle of that desert, anyways? Not treasure hunting after that Abyss paycheck."

"Treasure exchanging, actually. Abysmal paycheck, more like," the musician digs around in his baggy jeans, sending collected sand showering to the cave floor. He held up a shiny gilgacoin, glimmering with a dull mottled luster in the moonlight. Gilgamesh's winking, laughing face adorns one side, and a furious sneer of battle on the other. "Check it out. they must've gotten my prize money swapped with third place or somethin' huh?"

The dour man bites back a smirk. "Must be one of the luckier motherfuckers I know. Not that there's much competition. What was your plan? Just walk up to the guy in his hometown and ask-"

There was a whirr and a chnk sound, the unmistakable hum of arcanist energy coursing through some cobbled together device. A string of lights fluttered into action, providing moderate blue-violet lighting down the observable length of the tunnel. Nico wasn't sure who's bright idea the color scheme was but they should be hung and/or shot. It seemed to make the shadows and crevices even darker, meltier.

"They didn't get far," Luka reaffirmed, joining the two. Elise followed closely behind, Greenstripes slipping into her pack for a free ride. "but that should light a portion of our descent. When we run out of their light we'll have to make our own. Shouldn't be hard between us. Strazio, you two should carry torches, in case something goes to hell. Elise and I can manage without."

"What do you two think is down there?" Strazio asked. The two arcanists shared a side-eyed glance.

"Could be anything. But the fact that it hasn't been completely ransacked is a good sign. Good start." Elise said with pursed lips.

"Your omens tell you that?" Nico grinned.

"Naw, just law of the land. Scavengers already ran through a buncha the other tunnels and buildings, but if there was something untouched, there's probably a reason for it. Too much effort maybe, maybe there's traps or a superstition around the place or- or something like that in there. But," she begins, walking past them into the tunnel. "traps and effort and superstition means theres something precious needs protecting. "

She turns back to face them, silhouetted in a glow that reminded Nico of bioluminescent fish that float around that listless way in the darkest depths of the ocean. Funny how you can find the same kinda feeling in a place so devoid of water.

"Ya'll coming?"
 

Strazio Rockwell

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Entrance to Hell was not a completely unmerited description. Sweat soaked into Strazio’s shirt and he had been forced to shed his cloak. He wondered if they were walking into an underground oven as opposed to a vault. Luka seemed unphased and in fact quite eager to move further down the spiral staircase. Eventually the staircase came to an end, long after any proper staircase should have ended. The place opened up into a massive stone atrium, it was like the ribcage of some buried giant. Archways stretched along overhead, studded with crystals that emanated a soft pale glow. At the floor’s center sat a massive disc with a complex runic script running along its perimeter. There were no doors, with the only entrance being the one they came through.

Luka sniffed the air, “Ohh, this is exciting, this place is absolutely brimming with thaumaturgical potential.”

Strazio could’ve sworn he saw the frog-girl’s skin sparkling with excitement. In fact, the silvery linework that covered her skin pulsed with a renewed vigor. She giggled and stepped into the room, arms wide and basking in the unseen energies.

“Slow down girl,” Elise said, “You’ll ruin your appetite.”

“Just getting a taste,” Luka said.

“Yeah, and if you suck this room dry we won’t be able to get at the vault,” Elise said, walking the disc’s outside edge.

Strazio, couldn’t feel shit. There was no latent magick in the air, just the smell of sweat and old rock. He glanced at the runic scripts and scoffed at their foreign shapes. Maybe it would’ve meant something to him at one point in time, but it didn’t really matter now, did it?

“So… how do we get in?” Nico asked.

“This thing is a gateway,” Elise explained, finishing her walk around the circle, “It’ll only activate once the correct arcane signature is entered, think of it as like a key.”

“Which we have, right?” Nico flashed some finger guns towards Elise and then Luka, “Right?”

“Not exactly… this is some seriously old-school magic,” Elise answered, “Which means it’s had time to settle in and mature.”

“So we’re fucked?” Strazio interjected.

“No, but we do have to be careful,” She said, running her fingertips across the runes, “Old-heads loved to stuff their work with curses, and not the weak-sauce stuff neither, you cross the wrong metaphysical wire and next thing you know *boom* you’re turned inside out.”

“Those kind of hexes are the best,” Luka enthused, “They taste like top-shelf wine, ohh, I’m already salivating.”

Strazio watched as she moved around the room like a sack full of ferrets, full of energy with nowhere to go. This had been the most excited he had seen her since, well, ever. It was a bit amusing to see her prim and proper act vanish, but he also wondered if he was just being used as bait to fill her appetite.

“Strazio,” Elise said, “Stand on the platform.”

“What? Why me?”

Elise looked up at him and then glanced away, losing her nerve.

“Well?” Strazio demanded.

She huffed, “Look, right now, out of all of us, you’re the least sensitive to magic, if this goes sideways a proper curse will have a harder time latching on to you.”

“So I’m supposed to be a fucking guinea pig?” Strazio threw his hands out, “And if I get turned inside out then what? Ohh, no big deal, he was just a mundane.

“No, dude, that’s not what I meant,” She paused for a moment. Her face twisted into a scowl and she said, “Aren’t we fucking over this? How many more times do I have to save your life before you trust me?”

“I… just-” Strazio clenched his teeth and looked away, “Fine, whatever, do your thing.”

He stepped up onto the disc. Arms crossed and with a scowl he watched Elise go about her work. Sigils were formed, signs were cast, magic was worked, and all of it meant nothing to him. There was a sharp taste of burnt wood in his mouth and then the floor fell out from under him. His screams stretched and reverberated back to him echoing endlessly in the void he found himself hurtling through. His skin tingled and his bones vibrated and as quickly as it began he came to a painful hault. His body was shunted out from metaphysical space into a field of lush grass and clover. All at once his momentum halted and his stomach churned. This was it, he was turning inside out. He vomited, his guts spewing out onto the fresh green field. Fortunately, all that he lost was his lunch, his skin remained on the outside where skin ought to be.

“Oh thank God,” He muttered and wiped the spittle from his lips.
 

Elise

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"Is he...all good?" Nico asked with a nervous swallow. A faint whiff of smoke and twirling vapors were seemingly all that remained of the albino magus. Elise had to admit that even she was a bit concerned for a few moments following the crackling flash of light preceding Strazio's disappearance.

But sure enough, his soul pattern flickered on the fringes of her sensory range. He hadn't gone terribly far, really. She had to assume then that the teleportation circle was a sort of lock - an arcane portcullis that required the magical key she had managed to work out. It certainly served to keep out a few centuries of desert riff raff.

"Yeah. He got bounced a few hundred feet in...that sort of direction." Elise said, gesturing towards the back wall of the moldering chamber. The spacial energies hummed and fidgeted expectantly within the the diameter of the dias.

"This should stay open for another minute, but I'm fairly certain it's a one-way jump. Otherwise I would think that Strazio would have come back through by now." Elise said, tapping her chin. Greenstripes made sure to note this in a running diagram he was tracing of the Vault's floorplan.

"So you're saying this is the last chance to wuss out, huh?" Nico said with a sly look. Elise shrugged and looked at Luka. The vexvour responded with an equally sly smile, which prompted the hellion teenager to strum a resounding chord on his red guitar.

"Rock on." Nico whooped, before springing into the whirling rupture. He too was swallowed by a blast of magical lightning, followed by Elise, Greenstripes and Luka moments later. The now empty room was illuminated by a soft, violet glow for just a bit longer, throwing the deep cracks and debris into sharp relief, before returning to the long, dark silence of eons.

Meanwhile, somewhere below the entry chamber, farther to the east, Elise was reflexively shielding herself against an artificial sun. It took a moment for her senses to put together an idea of what was happening.

"An artificial meadow? Dang, Hammuzi, way to flex." Luka whistled, taking in the succulent, mossy air. Elise blinked and lowered her hand away from her face. The room was expansive, even by legendary magician standards. Whispering trees lined idyllic stone pathways, skirted by flowering bushes and trickling streams. The foliage was overgrown, and the desert sandstone pavers were crumbled with lichen, giving the chamber a rich, earthy scent.

Yet despite the verdure, the subterranean park possessed a strange sterility. No bugs hummed around the blossoms, and no birds sang in the boughs. Indeed, there didn't to be any sort of animal life at all in this perfectly preserved hydroponic centerpiece.

"Maybe...but keep an eye out. Enchanted meadows are rarely left unguarded." Elise cautioned. She gathered up her bag, and hoisted Greenstripes onto her shoulders before striking out across the artificially lit hilltop. Strazio was lounging on top of a large rock near the crest of the hillock, and slid down its moss-stippled face as the rest of his team approached.

"Think I see a door over that way...and that way...and over there." he magus said, pointing to three equally spaced points around the cavern. Elise made a face, and Luka picked up on it instantly.

"What's the matter. More omens?" the froggish lady hummed. Elise shook her head softly.

"Opposite. Why three doors? What's the significance? What's he trying to say..." Elise said, pacing back and forth.

"Don't have to mean anything specific. Could just be the way he liked it." Nico chimed in. The vampire frowned.

"This is a wizard's sanctum. Everything has meaning." Elise snapped. Nico remained unphased, and cracked open a fresh can of monster.

"Means he likes the number three. Doesn't have to be important. Sometimes a rock is just a rock, dude." the bard shrugged. Elise stared at him for a moment, but breathed softly and rolled her shoulder. Whatever. Despite clearly having some sort of significance, the only way to proceed was to pick one of the doors and get an idea of the Vault's layout.

The quartet of dungeon delvers picked their way across the silent, lush landscape to one of the first doors. Distance had done them a disservice; the door was more like an immense stone gate, solemnly kept shut by hefty spellwork and an array of apparently delicious curses. Luka's silvery leylines were positively gleaming with absorbed arcana...but it didn't do anything to help the door budge.

"Thaumaturgical locks and anti-magic metamaterials...damn. This is some serious stuff. I can't even identify some of this encoding..." Elise said, running a palm over the rough, damp stone. Minute runes and magic circles were carved into the stern, granite facade. The center plate was a solid plate of brass that held a striking image of battling dragons and serpents. Nico sipped on his monster can, and eyed some jagged writing across the top of the gate's archway.

"What's this language?" he asked, pointing with a lazy finger.

"That's Old-Kingdom Nonish, the classic language of Erde Nonan nobility. Nobody really speaks it anymore, but you see it a lot in old historical texts and-" Luka began to blabber excitedly before Elise cut her off.

"It says 'Hall of Remedies'. It doesn't quite translate perfectly...Remedy could be something medicinal, it could be a catch-all term, or a metaphor..." the vampire continued.

"Is it a riddle? Like for a password or something?" Strazio offered. Elise considered this for a moment, and flashed the magus a rare smile.

"Maybe. This door certainly requires some kind of secret, but I'm not sure my spellwork can decipher it..." Elise said. Luka scoffed, causing the teen wizard to wheel around on the archeologist with a look of grim resentment.

"Maybe spellwork can't open it, but there's not much that can stand in the way of hard work!" the vexvour grinned. She eagerly slammed her toolbox onto the ground and began withdrawing an assortment of battery operated power tools onto the loamy soil. Elise regarded the equipment dimly.

"This is...a mastercraft magical door built by Hammuzi's personal court. We're not boosting a car, Luka!" the vampire snapped. Luka hefted a large, electronic jackhammer and nodded politely.

"Hey snotty. Mind lending me some arms?" Luka said. She whistled to Greenstripes, who slithered down Elise's body and began to dig around in the dusty, worn tools.

"H-hey! You can't just order my familiar around-" Elise protested before she was cut off by the rapid, staccato racket of metal on stone. The jackhammer echoed loudly off of the distant cavern walls, and Strazio turned around to survey the nearby trees. Still motionless. Still dead, for all intents and purposes.

"Should we be worried about...something hearing us?" he asked slowly. Elise rubbed a cold palm across her pale forehead.

"Yes, very much so."

Half an hour later, no monsters, golems, or conjured phantoms had yet come to drive them out of Hammuzi's holdings. Luka had managed to drill almost three feet into the structure of the gate, leaving a dusty field of powder-white granite on the ground around her entry point. The vexvour was completely out of site, wedged into the mechanisms and guts of the solid stone portcullis.

"Shim!" she called out after a pattern of loud, hammering bangs. Greenstripes dutifully oozed out of the crumbling access point and grabbed a small, metal pry bar before wiggling his way back into the dark crevice.

Nico, who had been taking a small nap in the shade of a nearby boulder, woke up abruptly, stretched, and sauntered over to the work site. Elise was seated a few feet down the wall, poring over manuals and translation guides, desperately trying to figure out a more elegant, arcane solution before Luka simply dug her way into the vaults. Strazio remained loosely on guard, leaning against the gate and keeping his smoldering gaze fixed on the perimeter of the clearing.

"How's it going?" Nico yawned. There came a sound of scraping and crumbling, with Luka appearing a moment later. An LED headlamp gleamed brightly on her forehead, and she pulled a dust mask off of her face with a small, gasping sigh.

"Hah. Well. We broke through to the chain for the counterweight and managed to take up some slack. Just need to set up an angle grinder and cut it loose. Should bring the gate straight down." Luka said, making vague gestures at the solid rock wall.

"Hella." Nico nodded. He gazed around the Vault, the artificial sky, silent groves and ominous door in front of them and sucked in a pleasant breath.

"Yo Straz...pretty cool nothing has come to kill us yet, huh?" Nico chirped.

"Shush." all three replied.
 

Nico Cinder

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This was hour two. The seconds passed like the lack of clouds in the sky. Plucking about on the guitar got old in about twenty minutes and Nico didn't exactly pack an entertainment cadre for this venture. He had to hold himself back from being a nuisance to the others as they worked - well, except for Strazio. He nuisanced him as much as he pleased, much to the idle mage's chagrin.

"Hey Straz. You ever play rock paper...MeTaL!?" he said, yowling the last word. The look Nico got back from him was not one of endearment.

"Ah don't worry man, you'll catch on quick. It's the same as rock paper scissors, but instead of makings scissors, you throw up the devil horns," the young punk demonstrated the universally understood hand sign for "metal as fuck", growling a hearty "BLYAOW!" as he does so. Strazio winced. "And, y'know, rock still wins because it's the father of metal. Or something."

"How do you make that ungodly fucking noise?" he grunted.

"All in the tongue. You wanna play?" the mage only sighed in response, glancing at Elise buried under her books, and the hole in the rock that Luka was theoretically hiding and tinkering away in. The look on his face was of a man weighing his many, many options.

"Gods, what's the point? I'm just gonna start carrying a deck of cards around," he said.
"Hey, now that's an idea!" Nico nodded vigorously back.
"Whatever, get up here you little imp." Strazio begrudgingly decided.
"Sick!" Nico giggled in excitement, stumbling up the hill to meet his opponent. "Okay, do you play on shoot or on the third word?"

Six rounds of paper rock metal later and Strazio still couldn't quite get the hang of playing the fulminate move.

"No, Straz, like so," Nico said, flashing the horns. "YOW!"
The white-haired man made the metal sign on shoot and said, "Yow."
"YOW!" Nico growled, throwing the horns.
"Yowww." Straz said, without a heart.
"YOWWW!" Nico screamed low, giving his ally a hardy punch in the shoulder.
"Yow!" Strazio growled in annoyance, responding accordingly.

"That's it! You're on it! YOW!" Nico knuckled him again, a little harder this time. In immediate return to sender fashion, Strazio clocked him across the face, letting loose a deep-fried "YYOOOWWWW!" as his fist connects with the musician's cheek. The mage's graduated scream echoed around the garden chamber, and in Nico's head as he crumpled to the ground. Elise and Greenstripes both turned around to stare at the two of them, a look of mild distress on the vampire's shadowed visage. Luka even poked her head out of the hole in the gate after a few moments of rummaging, so violent was the man's voice.

"Nice pipes," Nico said weakly from the ground. After a few more moments of unsure, heavy silence, another large noise slunk into the air around them. It sounded like a yawn. A very, very massive yawn. The vexvour yelped from her workplace in the stone, scrambling out onto the ground in a frazzled heap.

"Th-th-the stone! The walls all shook, that noise made everything v-vibrate!" she managed, grabbing what tools she could that were scattered about on the ground. There came a wild rustle of a noise, like wind dancing through a bramble thicket.

"Haaaaaaa..."
Huaktha tir dussha."


Strazio pulled Nico up from the ground as Elise and Luka grouped up with them. "That wasn't the same language as what was written on the gate," Elise began in a low voice. "I don't think I can even place it by ear. Whatever just said that is big as hell and probably older than-"

The ground did a little jiggle. The tell-tale sound of heavy, large amounts of wood bending and snapping and ripping accompanied every shift.

"Huh," Nico said, rubbing the stars from his eyes. "That's a big fuckin' tree."

It was indeed a very big tree that had apparently been sleeping peacefully just behind the ancient door. Its hand of branches and thorns latched onto the rim of the giant stone gate with a gentle reverence, using it as leverage to tear itself from the earth. When the lifeform was finally standing on its own two ancient tree stumps like a human, it was easily as tall as the structure itself, if not a little moreso. It would likely have to bend down to avoid breaking it's topmost twigs, were it to try and pass through the gate itself. What could possibly be construed as the "head" of the being poked around the corner of the doorframe, a crown of vibrant blue flowers glowing and adorning the branches and roots above two deep pockets of inky black that passed for its eyes. The creature had no nose or mouth, but its voice swept through the air around the adventurers.

"Toktaa. Kurik Trhushakna?
Werri dendwo fole?
Agnisi Paxero?
No-na?"


"I don't think it's noticed us yet," Strazio whispers, edging slowly towards the nearest boulder for cover. "I'm not one to run from anything, but this thing is massive, even for us. We should get out of the open, plan this takedown out a little better."

Elise was staring very hard at the treething as the group huddled in the shadow of a big ol' trusty rock. It was scanning its surroundings, seemingly speaking to the wind. Maybe the other trees. Her eyebrows raise in slow realization. "It's speaking different languages. Is... that thing trying to communicate?"

Nico and Strazio share a look with each other. Luka is still rummaging about in her bag, trying to take inventory of what she managed to save before absconding from the worksite. Must be a difficult task, when one's hands are so shaky. Greenstripes lays a tentacle loosely across Elise's shoulders, something of a nuzzle against the vampire's cold skin for comfort and calm.

"Look Fangs, I'm all about being a tree hugging hippie by day and a punk rock star by night, nature is great when it's not trying to kill us and all that, but I'm not sure a hug is the kind of communication that thing is looking for." The arcanist was barely listening, though, as her head was spinning. Was it a beast or spirit, of some sort? A magical construct? Was this even the guardian of the gate, or the unintended result of all the magicks flowing through the cavern? They needed to figure something out, fast. The gate was still closed. The wind was howling.
 

Strazio Rockwell

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“So what’s the plan?” Strazio asked, ducking back behind the boulder to join his companions.

“Elise is right,” Luka said quietly, “While it is indeed a guardian of some sort, perhaps it is sentient enough to be reasoned with?”

“Sure, let’s go have a chat with a giant fuckin’ tree-monster after we smashed open its home and woke it up,” Strazio snipped, “I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”

Nico’s guitar shuddered at this exchange, its strings absolutely vibrating with negativity. He smiled sharply and plucked a couple strings, filling the air with a throaty growl.

“I’m with Straz, ya don’t choose a guard dog because it makes friends with strangers,” Nico said.

In the distance they could hear the sound of creaking wood and the deep measured thumping of massive footstamps drawing closer. Foreign words slithered through the air, seeming to surround them. Luka’s silver stripes throbbed with energy and she giggled softly. A sedation seemed to come over her, her shaking hands steadied and fell limp. Carefully she laid down, a soft smile on her face.

“Oh, this is nice,” She said. Strazio moved to shake her and she groggily batted him away, “Relax, I’m just, man, this is some good stuff.”

Strazio looked towards Elise. She was crouched against the boulder, biting the tip of her thumb.

“Well?” Strazio asked.

“Well, what?” She responded.

“How do we take this thing down?” Strazio asked.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“Cause, you’re the only one here with any brains, well, besides Luka,” Strazio admitted, “But, she’s down for the count.”

“I, look, this is some ancient and powerful shit we’re dealing with here,” Elise explained, “I understand some of it, but not enough okay?”
She swore under her breath and started tracing runes into the dirt.

“I need a shortcut,” She said, “The ephemeris curse should give me enough info to work with, but you two are gonna have to buy me some time to set it up.”

Nico smiled, “Fangs, if you think I can’t keep an audience captive, than you must not know me very well.”

With that he tore into his guitar, fighting the arcane words with demonic wails. The song progressed into a rising crescendo of chunky riffs and melodic rhythms. Normally Strazio found the rockstar’s noise grating, but today something was different. His blood pulsed with the song’s tempo, his entire body thrumming with the power of ROCK. A devious grin crossed his lips and he swaggered out from behind the boulder. Behind him Nico jumped atop said boulder, hitting another nasty arpeggio as he did.

The sentinel turned towards them, unintelligible words still spewing forth from its body. It had no flesh and blood eyes, but instead a floating orb of light blue energy. Sigils carved into its wooden body sprang to life, sloughing off excess energy as they did. Just as Nico was leading into a sick-ass bridge the thing’s eye-orb pulsed with energy. A lance of piercing light screeched across the battlefield, cutting through esoteric words and demonic chords alike. Nico barely dove away in time, but like a true showman his fingers never missed a beat.

“Hey dipshit!” Strazio shouted and chucked a rock at the sentinel’s chest, “Pay attention! I’m the one that’s gonna fuck you up!”

It raised an arm at the charging magus and another series of runes on its palm flared to life.

”femare”

The incantation invisibly slammed into Strazio. All at once his muscles contracted and, carried by his momentum, he tumbled forward across the ground. A moment passed and his muscles began to relax, but not quick enough. The sentinel’s eye pulsed again and released another lance of destructive magic. Just as the blast was about to obliterate the paralyzed magus, Nico swopped in on his skateboard. In one hand he held the neck of The Red Chord and with the other he snatched the back of Strazio’s shirt pulling him free from the danger.

“Thanks,” Strazio muttered as they came to a halt.

In one practiced movement Nico hit an ollie and popped his board up into his hands while slinging his guitar behind him. He let out a wail and transformed his board into a God-damned machine gun. Hot shell-casings rained down upon Strazio as Nico unloaded.

“Fuck!” Strazio shouted and climbed to his feet, “Watch what you’re doing!”

“Sorry Straz!” He shouted back, “Can’t hear you over the sound of--”

He never finished his sentence as another laser beam crashed into his chest and sent him flying across Hammuzi’s garden.

--

Elise finished her incantations and the ephemeris curse shuddered as it was primed. She exhaled and turned to shout for the others, but out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Luka stirring. The vexvour sat up, bleary-eyed and looking thoroughly pleased with herself. Before Elise could even react Luka reached for the circle, no doubt detecting a source of delicious magic within arm’s reach. A burst of silver and violet enveloped the girl and Elise’s mind was filled with information.

“Girl, fuck,” She sighed as Luka giggled and fell limp again.

“Elise!” Strazio shouted, followed by another explosion, “How much longer!?”

“It’s gonna be a minute,” She shouted over her shoulder, “We hit a snag!”

Elise held her breath as another explosion rocked the tomb and exhaled as Strazio shouted back, “A snag!? What the fuck do you mean a snag!?”

“Don’t worry, just keep distracting it, we’ll be fine,” She started to trace another curse into the ground, this one far enough away from any greedy vexvours. As she worked through the incantation, flashes of arcane insight danced through her head. At first it was the simple parameters of Luka, her abilities and other parameters, but then something more esoteric began to crystallize. She froze, of course, Luka had consumed the creature’s magic and so naturally that magic was still within her body slowly being digested. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to work with.

“Okay, okay, you got this,” She whispered to herself, drawing thaumaturgical equations into the dirt. Another explosion and the scream of a shattered guitar. As she worked through the ancient magic she realized that the information she was gleaning was becoming spottier and spottier. Luka was breaking down and destroying the sentinel's magic, leaving Elise with blank spots in her knowledge. Okay, no problem, all she needed was a bit of creativity to fill in the blanks.
 

Elise

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Okay so Ephemeris was a bust, but it wasn't exactly like she would have a hard time tracking the creature. Luckily, the nature and spread of the broken information she had obtained had at least provided the inherent nature of the creature. It wasn't technically a waking natural object, such as an elemental, or a plant creature like an ent. This creature, whatever it was called, was technically a golem; it had simply lain dormant for so long that the natural plants and magic of Hammuzi's garden had merged and fused with its core components.

The communications were an attempt at peaceful communication, yes, but considering they had massively defaced one of the doors within the artificial pasture, Elise doubted the conversation would have gotten far before the construct had decided that they were destructive intruders anyway. To that extent, however, it was evident that this golem was fairly sophisticated - obviously expected of someone as specialized as Archivist Hammuzi. Elise couldn't help but smile in spite of herself.

"Alright...time to out-spell a legendary wizard. C'mon Stripes!" Elise murmured. Greenstripes scuttled up onto the vampire's shoulders and settled into place as she pelted towards the lurching hillside. There was a flash of cyan light, and an entire stand of yew trees was sent tumbling across the cavern. Strazio and Nico were briefly visible above the debris for a moment before falling back into the dust cloud with distant yelps. It would have been comical under different circumstances.

To Elise's dismay, the construct immediately wheeled around to face her as she tried to flank the thundering monstrosity, and she sucked in a hissing breath.

"Tao ruhs!"

A spray of stone and lashing vines slammed into the shimmering, magical barrier. Elise skidded past the golem's giant, crushing hand and grabbed onto the carved cuff of its wrist.

"Tenda! Komis barent iss koat!" the guardian roared. It wrenched its hand high into the air as its other pawing fist readied to smack Elise off like a glorified mosquito. Elise grabbed Greenstripes off of her shoulder and spun in place, hammer tossing the terratopus right at the golem's crumbling, emotionless face. He splatted against its stony carapace and immediately suckered around to the back of the magical machine's head. The guardian began to fumble at the back of its head, and Elise took the opportunity to remind the brute of its priority targets.

"Kaprik Ohrn!" she incanted, gesturing a fist towards the ground under the golem's thundering left foot. The loamy, upturned grass gleamed bright white for a moment before blasting outwards in a spray of granular debris. The attack barely scratched the naturalized golem's carapace, but the position caused the monstrosity to pitch forwards with a tectonic stumble.

"Ah shi-" Elise shouted as she lost her footing and fell almost two stories to the ground. She hit and rolled along the grassy hillside hard, but was back on her undead feet in an instant. Nico and Strazio, having just made their way back to the clearing from the previous blast, didn't miss a beat in laying into the momentarily flat-footed guardian. Rifle shells took superficial chunks out of the golem's mammoth bulk and Strazio...charged straight towards the lurching hulk like usual.

"Just keep it busy for a minute, boys! I need to lend Greenstripes a hand!" Elise shouted over the gunfire and rumbling. Strazio looked back at her with a quizzical glance as he tried taking one of Luka's crowbars to the golem's joints.

"Bitch, we've been doing that!" he seethed. He glanced up as a shadow covered him, and scurried out of the way as a thin, cutting beam from the golem's eyes traced a blistering seam across the ground. Elise rolled her eyes and jogged back into the cover of a nearby glen. Finding a relatively secluded bush, she sat down and closed her eyes, reaching out to her familiar's mind. In the next moment, she was looking through Greenstripe's eyes, and could feel and taste the interior of the golem's arcane workings as he scuttled towards its magical core.

I think I'm getting close to the construct's core, madame, however there seem to be magically sealed compartments in the way.

Just leave it to me, wiggles. Here...like this...


Greenstripes, deep inside the thundering machine's chest somewhere, began to fiddle and trace distinct sigils along the seams preventing access to the creature's magical innards. Guided by Elise's mental commands and movements, his own ink was a perfectly good medium for tracing new spellwork into the arcane commands that the construct was forced to follow. Given enough time, he could probably even turn it into an ally...but a more expedient solution would just be to shut it down.

How long do you estimate for this process, madame? I'd hate to keep Master Rockwell and Master Cinder waiting.

Eh...they'll be okay. Few minutes?

We could all be dead in a few minutes, madame.

Well, not us at least.

Indeed, madame.
 

Nico Cinder

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"Ow! Fuck!"

The assault rifle clattered to the ground, sending a few stray rounds into the bushes and dirt, and hopefully not Strazio's back. Nico's finger had slipped, sliding flesh across the smoking barrel. It came with the usual repercussions hot surfaces hold. Licking and waving the burn out of his hand, he noticed Strazio wailing away on the creature's ankles with a crowbar.

"Seems effective," Nico muttered, picking up the weapon that bit him and pulling it apart. A black sword shined into his right hand, a small black shield in his left. The blade looked like it was ripped from the night sky herself, and a low-res .jpeg of a woodcutter's axe was slapped on the shield like a sticker. Guess the underpaid demon factory workers were feeling a little overworked, Nico thought to himself, studying the buckler.

A brisk jog is all it took to sink Nico's little toothpick into the guardian's bark. He leapt as the tree lifted its knee, sticking to the wood at around shin level. He wheezed, unsure of where all his breath went. In his search for it, he catches sight of his friend, still on the ground. Strazio growled, twirling the crowbar in his hands so that the curve of the metal was the business end. He sinks the hook into the first limb he saw, which happened to be an arm of branches and bramble coming straight for him. The creature's massive trunk of an arm lifted the mage high into the air, dangling him there by that crowbar. The guardian peers up at its catch with it's hollow blue eyes, the intruder flailing about indiscriminately in the wind.

"Hroakokokokok...Boartha murdi te?"

Nico woulda thought that thing was laughing at Strazio
-Kthunk-
did he not know any better. But upon further thought given to the thought,
-skriitchshunk-
he supposed that he did not know much of anything at all.

"Worst tree I've ever climbed," he screeched. The air flourished about with the guardian's movements, making it hard for Nico to keep his eyes open or his limbs steady. And yet, stab stab stab, the boy went, ascending the barken wall at a moderate pace. If the creature felt Nico's needling, it made no sign of it. Without warning, the mass of overgrown wood began to shudder. Almost losing his grip on the sword he was using to climb, Nico groaned back at the creaking tree and looked up. Apparently Strazio had forgone the crowbar, leaving it stuck in the creature's forearm in favor of beating his knuckles bloody against its big wooden face. There he crouched and clung atop the guardian's visage, the crack of wood and the crack of bone eerily more similar than Nico had ever given any serious thought to.

He was pretty high up by this point, his sword buried in the chest of the tree. The curse of the hellblade had begun to make itself known, a nasty gash unstitching the palm of Nico's sword hand, slowly but surely. He gritted his teeth, willing against the trappings of his body. "Elise!" He shouted. No response. Press on, he supposed, but when he reached for his next handhold he found it lacking, almost making a grave error in this overextension. Before he could fall to his death, however, a squishy green tentacle burst from the thicket of torso, waving a branch about frantically. Nico caught it with a "Hyuck!", using it as leverage to pull himself higher, higher until he reached the beast's shoulder. Strazio was still holding on for dear life, barely making a dent into Trunkface's bark with his fists. Nico wasn't faring much better at riding the bull, managing only a wayward slash against the thing's neck with the spasms and shrugs of its massive shoulders. His swingin' hand sang with every blow, but Nico sang back, slapping the hide of the tree with his shield at every opportunity in between. Distantly, he caught Strazio's hoarse voice singing back. Limbs and branches and trunks and thorns swatted and swung at the two warriors clinging and ducking and dodging for dear life.

All it took was a mere blink, a misstep in focus and rhythm before stinging pinpricks coated every exposed piece of Nico's skin. He's sent flying from the guardian once again, and skidded across the dirt like a rock skipping across water. The boy finally rolled into a whining heap not too far from Elise's hiding spot. On shaky arms he pushed himself up, little spitlets of rubies leaking from his mouth.

"Fuckin' trees. Taking up all my sunlight," the punk growled, straining and failing for a moment before finally managing to bring himself to his feet. Just as he gets his dukes back up, however, the ephemeral light of the tree guardian flickered. The construct fell to its knees, all pretense of life or sentience fading rapidly from its eyes. Atop the creature's still upturned, curious head, Strazio continued wailing away with a vengeance. Someone should probably go get that guy.
 
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Elise

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Elise slowly lifted herself to her feet as her mind trickled back into her body from that of Greenstripes'. Her hearing was still slightly muffled, but it seemed as though Nico and Strazio were still alive and mostly well. It seemed as though they had overcome the construct just in the nick of time, as was usually the case with these encounters. The wizard padded back towards the clearing where the lifeless automaton now lay, and waved to the terratopus as he slithered out from one of Trunkface's neck joints.

"Bout time you showed up." Strazio sneered. Elise genuinely couldn't tell if the albino was trying to be glib, or actually thought she had contributed nothing to overcoming the warped treething. She decided to go with hostility, just to stick to her brand.

"Boy you think you get extra credit with that crowbar nonsense? This isn't gradeschool; the thing is dead and that's that." she scoffed. Greenstripes wiggled up her legs and onto her shoulders as she surveyed the derelict machine. Once her familiar had breached the programming core, it had been trivial to deactivate its movements. Her academic side was hungry to test how easy it might be to start this bad boy up again...get it breaking down doors for them...

...luckily, Nico caught her invested stare, and stepped between the vampire and her object of study.

"Super dead. Definitely useless and no point in spending hours messing with it, right?" Nico smiled. Elise may have been surprised at the teenager's sudden display of caution, but she suspected that the hellion's reluctance to experiment was more founded in a sense of boredom. Potentially fight the same giant monster twice in a row? Might as well be folding laundry. Elise rolled her crimson eyes and glanced down the hillside. The sound of the electric jackhammer was already ringing through the expansive terrarium again.

"Sounds like our favorite femme frog is already back at the grind." Nico hummed. He plucked his haggard guitar off the ground and began to swagger down the hill. Elise nodded at Strazio, and they followed along in distant silence before arriving in front of the massive stone gateway again. Luka's haggard cursing was quite audible, echoing out from the giant gouge she had cut into the stone doorframe.

"How's it going, Luka?" Elise called into the crack. She peered into the chalky, granite crevice and immediately stepped back as the vexvour emerged, covered in a coating of sandy dust.

"Ahh...the uh...counterweight chains are made from some kinda goo-goo metal. Lightweight, blue, apparently indestruct-" the froggish lady grumbled before Elise cut her off.

"Adamantine. Shit." the vampire cursed. She brought a hand up to her mouth and thumbed at her left fang thoughtfully.

"So what now?" Strazio asked. Elise hesitated for a bit longer before releasing a defeated sigh.

"I think...maybe it's time for homework." she breathed. Nico put his hands up in a mock surrender.

"Count me out, dawg." he chuckled, shaking his head. Luka set down her power tool and wiped a skein of sweat off of her snout.

"What, like, pack it in? Leave? Now?" she whined. Elise nodded and shrugged again.

"Hammuzi wasn't fucking around when he designed this place, neither should we. I say we take down as much information as we can and come back once I can decode some of the arcana protecting these vault doors. We know where this place is, we know how to get in...I think it's worth taking a step back."

A long silence crept through the clearing, which was made all the more poignant by the resonating silence within the false pasture.

"I am getting kinda hungry." Nico said at last. Strazio and Luka both chuckled, and Elise did her best to put on a patient smile. Hopefully the next time they came through here, she could have some expedition partners with a bit of brains and panache. Still, the musician's bantering horseshit seemed to be coaxing the other two into agreement.

"Alright...yeah it's getting late and-" Luka started.

"-and some of us still haven't had a chance for a bit of peace and quiet following some bullshit death game." Strazio added. Nico nodded sagely, and hoisted the Red Chord over his shoulder.

"Cool! Cool cool cool. So uh...how do we get the portal back out of here?" he chirped.

"Just leave that part to me..." Elise sighed as she began twisting her hands into various eldritch signs...




Less than thirty minutes later, the four adventurers (plus Greenstripes) were piling back into Wrencher's modified utility truck. Elise palmed the smooth, black stone in her cloak pocket, and made a mental note to research Gem biology once she got back to the lair in Nippur. The war wagon started up with a spiteful cough of black diesel fumes, and rumbled off towards the glittering, fresh night horizon. The city was only two hours away from here; there would be plenty of time left for Elise to eat some skeevy idiot before returning to her mausoleum to get started.

Her journal was packed full of fresh notes, tracings and illustrations of the Vault's layout. Between her talent as a researcher and the materials at her disposal, it wouldn't take long before the secrets of Hammuzi's doors revealed themselves.

For now though, she needed some breakfast and a bit of a breather. She suspected her newfound friends would also appreciate the fleeting opportunity for recuperation.

Putting this thread on pause! Will link followup threads for each character below if people want to follow them.
 
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