Night 55, Main Hallway 2-Center

[swornandbroken]

[from here]He'd seen pins whose meaning he wasn't certain of, on other people's berets, a sword and shield the main one. Given Aguilar's fixation on results, and on the prisoners' proving their worth, Mello had to wonder if they'd be seeing a weeding-out of those who hadn't faced ordeals deemed worthy of pins. He was both disturbed and strangely

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[bodhiandspirit]

The offered hand went ignored at first, as Rita was still focused on the fire. The warning the figure gave them fed a sense of urgency in her, and as the wind rattled ominously, Rita decided it was time to act. "Fine. If we aren't going that way, then we'll go this way." Taking a step away from the flames, she began chanting a spell in a low voice. Her free hand faced the fire with its palm facing outward. Below her feet, a blue light in the shape of a magic circle appeared. Countless flecks of blue light began to rise from the circle as she continued chanting, containing the very essence of water within them.

Rita did her best to focus, to block out what was happening around her, to think only of extinguishing the flames and creating an escape route...

But it was no good.

The voices that assaulted her ears tore her focus away from the magic, and in an instant, the blue light was gone. Also gone were Rita's senses, at least for that fearful moment.

"Eeeyaaahhh!!"

With that shrill cry, Rita darted behind Morgan, clutching the fabric of his clothing at the shoulder. Her body was acting independent from her mind, doing the only thing it could to get itself away from that wind - or whatever it was that was grabbing at her - even if that was impossible. Hell, she didn't even know what was attacking her or how. How was any of this possible!? It wasn't, it just wasn't...

[swornandbroken]

The hot air stirred Mello's hair, and the pain of the burn, remembered and illusory or not, hadn't faded. He gritted his teeth, and fought the instinct that screamed at him to run.

The babble of the whispering voices, he couldn't fight so easily. It was indistinct, but Mello's imagination filled in the gaps all too readily: the invective he lived with, redoubled. Who knows what Matt's facing back there, and it's because of you. Your fault he's dead, your fault he's here for them to do this to him. Ten days, and you've failed already. You'll go home, assuming you get home at all, to a world where you're beaten. The twit's solved it by now, you know he has, the victory all his; or he's lost, and that makes you third, doesn't it? Makes you nothing, a piece that couldn't even stay on the board long enough for the endgame.

"No," he said, under his breath, and turned to face the girl; watched with some surprise as her chanting called up the blue light. He'd seen plenty of things that shouldn't have been possible here, but not like this. No time to think further about it. She seemed as affected, as ready to bolt as he was, and he made as if to take hold of her shoulders, if she'd let him. "Get a sodding grip, Mordio." That helped to calm him, in the strange way talking someone else down from fear could lessen one's own. He didn't realize that his British accent, usually all but indistinguishable, had come back. "If that thing could actually hurt us, it would've done already." The other creatures Mello had run into at night had certainly wasted no time attacking; he had to think if this one could, it would already be trying to incapacitate them physically. "All it can do is scare us, and only if we let it."

[I'm so sorry for my slowness! It took forever for my net to come back. ;;]