Quest: Rachel

[npcsofmana]

Who: Those who signed up for the Rachel quest
What: Rachel has gone missing, and it's up to a few people to find her.
Where: Mekiv Caverns
Warnings: Boss Battle

As always, Mekiv Caverns is a quiet and gloomy place, light filtering in from the entrance into an enormous place with twists and turns down into the depths. Water drips softly from somewhere, echoing against the curved jade walls, but that seems to be the only sound for right now.

From the entrance, it's hard to tell if there's an immediate trail, but Mark and Jennifer seemed adamant that their daughter went this way.

So what do you do now?



[This is a free for all thread, starting in one big line. Mod input will go in occasionally, but feel free to simply interact with one another. The mod is receiving notifs for this thread, and will intervene if there's any questions.]

Comments

[shimmer_on]

"Nice place," remarked Sunset, checking the walls gently and making sure that the area was strong enough to go through.

"This is really something though. Jade everywhere."

[radeonthecity]

"It's just a bunch of rock," Domri says irritably, trying to hide his discomfort at being underground.

The scrawny teenager strokes the head of the tiny Rattler Boa that's wrapped around the jawbone on one of his spaulders. The rest of his equipment is similarly barbaric-looking, his armor and clothing being cobbled-together from scraps of cloth, hides, and metal, his shield being made from the skull of some large animal, and his spear having an animal skull at one end and a blade carved from a large bone at the other.

"Let's go find this brat."

He totally does not have mild claustrophobia and is only here because he knows what he feels like to be alone and stuck underground. Nope. That's totally not the reason.

Domri will be keeping an eye out for any trail that Rachel may have left. He's not hopeful that her passage will have been as obvious as that of a beast on bare ground since, well, it's a cave, but he knows better than to assume that there won't be anything to find.

[shimmer_on]

Sunset rolled her eyes for a moment before shouldering the short blade she carried. Her gear was simple, purchased months ago as she followed Domri behind him. She was keeping a look around the area. "A bunch of rock that probably took a long time to form," retorted Sunset.

"I have a appreciation for this sort of thing."

[radeonthecity]

Domri snorted as he hopped over a stalagmite that he could easily have gone around.

"Rocks just sit and don't do anything. Unless they become part of an elemental, then they're fun. Animals are way more interesting! Aren't you, girl?"

He directed the last sentence to the snake, whose head he reached up and stroked again. The snake flicked out its tongue, which Domri took as agreement.

"That's right."

[shimmer_on]

"Rocks can be used in different formulas and spells though," said Sunset, picking up a fallen piece of jade. "But we should hurry. The lost kid should be somewhere in here."

[radeonthecity]

"What do you need rocks for?" Domri asked, not breaking stride. "Just draw mana from the land like everyone else."

[shimmer_on]

"No one does that where I'm from," replied Sunset. "We've got a different way of using magic. And those who don't use magic the way I'm used to, create potions from the natural herbs and minerals found in wild areas."

[radeonthecity]

"That sounds really complicated. All I do is remember the places I've been and tap their mana. I don't need to mess around with bottles and artifacts to use magic."

Domri's description skipped over a few of the details. It also left out the fact that he couldn't access his mana bonds ever since he arrived here. He didn't know anything about magical theory that could explain how that could happen.

[shimmer_on]

"Well neither do I normally. But being in another world and you learn to adjust."

Making a mark on the cave to mark their progress, Sunset checked down the hall for anything that might be lurking in its cracks. "Got a light? It might get darker further in."

[itsjustanaccount]

Tsukishima has been pretty quite up to this point, only rolling his eyes occasionally as he trails behind the two with his own reptilian Poto sticking close to his feet. When she asks the question, however, he finally speaks up.

"I do. Hold on." Adjusting the sports bag around his shoulders, he pulls out a small tinderbox and a small lamp he'd gotten in Domina. It's a good thing he's been here before, and thus had known what to roughly bring. As he lights it, the glow flickers against the shiny rocks of Mekiv Cavern.... and reveals what look like a couple of small scorch marks here and there.

[radeonthecity]

It was good that someone in the group had planned ahead. Domri certainly hadn't, and his own magical light source wasn't working here. Tsukishima may have just saved them a lot of trouble.

Domri noticed the scorch marks when the light comes on and paused to examine one, seeing if he could glean anything useful from it. Without having experience with the creatures of this world he wasn't likely to learn much, but it was still worth a try.

[npcsofmana]

The only thing immediate obvious about the mark is that it's an impact mark instead of, say, hot oil spilling or something else. There's another one just faintly visible at the very edges of the light, as well, a rough path that can be followed through the caverns.

[radeonthecity]

Domri straightened up, stroking his Rattler Boa again.

"Bring the light over here," he ordered. "This looks like a trail."

He didn't know what the source of the marks could be, but it had to be something interesting. It also provided a convenient distraction from the knowledge that there was an ever-increasing amount of rock above them.

[itsjustanaccount]

“A trial of fire,” Tsukishima says dryly, but he obeys anyway, simply commenting for commenting’s sake. His poto keeps close, seeming a little twitchy but otherwise quiet. Glancing over the trail that goes off into the cave deeper, he sighs.

“Are we sure that we’ll be alright? There’s all sorts of weird things in this place…”