Night 60: Underground Lake

[razing_phoenix]

[From here.]Just like the last time, Guy's feet hit the uneven sand as he took in that unmistakable smell of dampness. This area was almost dead quiet when compared to the hallway that they'd just come from, but he still could make out the lapping of water and the creaking of the dock. All of those sensations just reminded him of the fact that they

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[its_the_mileage]

Indy gave up on sorting out who Freddy Kreuger was. Dent's reply suggested that he wasn't an immediate threat, which put him at the bottom of the list of things that mattered right now. He kept quiet the rest of the way down and focused on keeping an eye out and staying in step with the others. It was easier tonight, although pain still washed through his chest whenever he moved. Still, the now-familiar trip down went pretty quickly--and what was better, uneventfully. Until they went through the black doors on the other side of the ballroom.

It brought them out into a large cave, in which the main feature was a large body of water that spanned the whole space ahead of them. Sand shifted under his feet (not good; it meant every step took a little more effort). This was the first time in the basement that Indy'd really felt they were underground.

He was still looking around when Taylor, ahead of him, knelt and turned on his flashlight to look at something on the ground. He came back up with a human skull. Indy looked down again and saw it wasn't the only one--the beach was covered with bones as white as the sand, and you wouldn't have to be an archaeologist to tell at a glance that they were all human. He crouched down himself and brushed sand from the half of a broken ribcage nearest him. It looked and felt real, but he'd need better light to tell too much about who it had belonged to.

Peter's question was one he could answer easily, though. "No," Indy confirmed, getting to his feet. "Taylor's right; they've been dead for a while. By the looks of it, the bones were moved here well after that. You don't get that bleached appearance underground." Unless you bleached them yourself, which he wouldn't put past Landel. Taylor did have a point about the man's love for atmosphere.

The lights seemed to mark where they were supposed to go (another generous Landel touch, Indy thought grimly), so he followed Peter that way. Presumably they had to get across the water, and presumably doing that would involve some kind of elaborate trial(s). That seemed to be par for the course these days.

[unheroed]

Harvey had been a little annoyed by Depth Charge's insistence on getting the door open when he had been handling it just fine, but in the end he'd allowed it because it meant he got to conserve his own energy and didn't have to bend his metal pipe even more out of shape.

After that, he was forced to the back of the group again, but in the end they didn't have very far to travel. All of them seemed interested in getting in and out of the ballroom as quickly as possible, though Harvey was surprised by how easily the ominous black doors had opened for them. He supposed that was their prize for what they'd endured in the arena: getting through here with no trouble.

They really must all be gluttons for punishment.

But now it was apparently time for something completely different. Walking from a luxurious ballroom setting into a dark, sandy area with the sound of lapping water was strange, to say the least. Harvey could feel the moisture in the air. The fun didn't stop there, though, if the skull that Sangamon unearthed was anything to go by.

The others determined pretty quickly that the bones that were scattered around couldn't belong to anyone they knew. Harvey hadn't been worrying about that too much in the first place, and so he simply followed after the others toward the two torch lights, keeping his flashlight pointed at the sand to make sure he didn't trip over any bones.

"So, how do we get across?" That was clearly what they had to do here, right? "Think there's a boat down there?" And would it fit six people?

[scalyfishman]

They passed through the doors, only to be consumed by an even larger cavern than the basement's ballroom might once have been. Now this place could almost have been his home away from home (away from home, even: Earth was no Cybertron, even if he hadn't been back there in stellar cycles), with soft silty sand shifting under foot and the dark glimmer of deeper waters up ahead, the damp, porous smell unmistakable- though they certainly weren't anything Depth Charge would have risked taking a dive into out of choice. He wasn't that homesick.

Shame about the skeletons. Though the smooth, bleach-white shapes peeking out of the sand didn't exactly disturb him- with their flesh withered away they seemed too distantly placed from the humans walking and talking in front of him almost biomechanical in their smooth, efficient curves- they weren't the best sign they could have hoped for. But hey. Why expect anything less from good old drama-mongering Martin Landel? He was just surprised they hadn't run into any heads on poles or their own graves, carefully yet wittily inscribed with personal epitaphs.

"Better be," he answered Dent. "Unless they want to give me my old beast mode back, swimming in that'd probably be suicide."

Now that they were closer, though, it was becoming obvious that they had another choice: a dock extending out across the water, and, bobbing at the end of it, their transport. "There. One boat, ready and waiting."

[vsyourface]

Scott would have said something about this not exactly being a day at the beach, but even he could reach his limit on lameness.

He almost expected the bones in the sand to assemble themselves and do some kind of Halloween skeleton dance in front of them; they were that cartoony-looking. For that reason, Scott was able to deal with the scene that had been set out for them. The bones were as good as set decoration, background pixels. He could write them off as not real enough to care about. His subconscious thanked him for that. Any realism on the level they had seen the other night would be very hard to take right now, to say the least.

So, Scott let S.T. and Indy worry about the bones and instead followed the gazes of Harvey and DC, shivering at the sight of the dark water ahead. Water that black and this far underground had to be freezing cold. How to get across indeed? They would need some kind of...thing to keep them out of the water. Light enough to float, maybe made of wood. Nice curved-in design to keep anyone from falling off. Vaguely boat-shaped, preferably.

"Oh hey, a boat. That works," Scott said after Depth Charge pointed one out further down the shore. And was it just him, or was there something kind of white-looking standing inside said boat? What was...

Maybe it was too early to be assuming no Halloween dances.

[trolltaker]

After dealing with the three stooges, Charon was ready to settle down for the rest of the night and take a nap in the boat. But the minute he heard another set of voices approach his humble little dock, he used his long, bony arms to push himself up to a stand.

More people, then. Goody! As entertaining as everyone else has been so far, he was starting to wonder if they were the only ones who could find their way out of a paper bag -- or maybe the only other ones here, period. After waiting all this time, he was glad to see he was wrong, if only so he'd have more poor schmucks to play with in the future.

"About time," he grumbled as he wrapped his fingers around his ebony staff, peering at them with hollow eyes. He was still using Blondie Two's voice from earlier, but the beauty in that arrangement was that these guys probably had no idea he normally didn't sound like that. Now he really wished he had Cutie's voice.

"What's this?" He leaned forward, counting each person he saw. "One, two, three, four--oh, six of you now? This should be rich."

[toxicspiderman]

At the word boat, S.T. dropped the bits of the archeology playtime set he'd been toying with, and squinted into the gloom. Definitely a boat, with what looked like an entire skeleton hanging out near the stern. It'd be a tight squeeze, but they wouldn't need to leave anyone behind.

Then the bones talked.

S.T. could have been more surprised. The thing could have pulled out a guitar and posed for an album cover. Attempted to kill them. Both at once. Instead, it bitched like an old dockhand, though with a voice way too young to ever call grizzled.

"This your boat? Where can you take us?" He made it sound like he talked to skeletal water taxi drivers every day. Wasn't really that weird, compared with Sphinxes and zombie robot dinosaurs. This was just an old guy and a little boat. Only question was whether or not the fee was going to be anything they were willing to part with. Like their lives.

[its_the_mileage]

Charon, was Indy's first thought, and "Oh, for crying out loud" was his second. He couldn't fault Landel's interest in Greek mythological figures, but the execution always seemed to owe more to the funnies than to any classical depiction. At least he got the attitude problem right.

What this place really needed, Indy decided, was a mythology research department. Not a bad retirement plan, if you were an archaeologist with megalomania and a high tolerance for bad company. Belloq would've loved it.

He turned his attention back to the situation at hand. That there was a boat was good, but it didn't ease his suspicions that some test had to be passed--or some price to be paid--before they could get across. Obviously Peter's thought were running along similar lines. "I agree, kid," Indy muttered to him before he stepped forward, feet creaking on the dock. "And what do we have to do to cross?" he added to Taylor's questions.

[unheroed]

Beast mode, he said. Harvey figured that he couldn't expect much more from someone who called himself Depth Charge, and he decided that he really didn't want to ask any clarifying questions about that.

It was really the least of his concerns right now, since they had stumbled upon a boat, along with its owner. Who happened to be a walking, taking skeleton. All of them managed to take it in stride, which just went to show how long they'd been dealing with this crap. It was like Landel never got sick of putting them through improbable situations and laughing about it.

The skeleton's voice was surprisingly young, but Harvey realized that it was ridiculous for him to have any preconception for what a talking science exhibit should sound like. He brushed it off, taking in the questions that were asked and figuring that Sangamon and Jones had managed to cover all the bases. No surprise there.

The question was how all six of them plus a skeleton was going to fit in one boat without weighing it down, but Harvey realized they'd just have to make it work. He doubted that the skeleton was going to want to make two trips.

[scalyfishman]

A talking skeleton now. Okay. Depth Charge squinted at the figure in the boat, the whiteness of its bones almost glowing in the dark. He wanted to be more surprised, but he was all out of shocked expressions for the week (and, frankly, he'd heard stranger voices coming from stranger creatures); if it was a reaction the thing wanted, he wasn't going to get it. They'd have to pry that reaction out of his cold, offlined, fleshy fingers.

But even if he refused to be shocked it didn't mean he had to trust what he was seeing- or hearing for that matter. This was 'rich' to him, huh? Sounded like a wise-guy to Depth Charge, and he didn't like wise-guys. S.T. and Jones had it covered with the practical questions, so the Maximal stuck to eyeballing the skeleton warily, as if to draw attention to the skeleton's lack thereof, and add to the little undertone of mutters. "Six now? That mean other people have been here?"

Fast workers, if that was the case, given how recently the place had opened up. Then again, he didn't even want to think about how many other people might have been forced to endure the coliseum before them. The real question was, where were they now?

[vsyourface]

Scott just stared while everyone else talked, eyes round and wide. He was completely silent up until the last of the questions. His eyes never moved away from the handsome-voiced thing in front of them. And all he could think was that everyone else was missing one very crucial thing here, something that he finally voiced in a quiet tone that would have been scribbled in sketchy letters in the background had they been inside a comic panel:

"Oh my god it's a skeleton."

Giant fire-breathing monsters, shadow versions of himself, dinosaur laser fights, and the entire concept of the fourth wall, and it was the talking skeleton that got him.

[trolltaker]

Oh, good. Now he had to deal with an onslaught of stupid questions and commentary from the peanut gallery on top of that. It had been a long time since Charon had seen a group of this size, but his initial excitement was already beginning to wane.

"Thanks for that helpful little observation, Captain Obvious," the skeleton said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. If he'd had any eyes, he would have rolled them. Looking at the other mouthy kid, he gave a small chuckle. "And nope, no candy here, I'm afraid, though I could arrange it, heheh."

Whatever, though, they needed answers, and he wasn't going to hold back. He had a feeling the questions would just keep piling up if he didn't get to them, and then he'd feel like dumping them all in the lake before too long. "Anyway, no, you're not the first group down here, so if you were expecting some kind of special first-customer prize? Tough luck, kiddos. But this is my boat, and I can grant you your 'heart's desires' and 'wildest dreams' -- if they involve getting across this lake, anyhow."

But, ah, not all of them were as stupid as they looked. Charon turned his hollow gaze onto the man who asked what they needed to do to get across. "Pay the toll," he said as he gestured at the group with his staff. "Money is useless to a dead guy like me, though, and the only stuff you have that's cool enough to trade are the kinds of things a dead guy like me would love to have. I'm talking about your sense of sight, your smell, your hearing, your touch, or even your voice."

Upon uttering that last bit, he dropped the Blondie act for a moment, letting his own natural voice take over. It was a gravelly, unnatural sound, like rocks tumbling and scraping down a mountainside.

When he spoke again, however, he sounded the same as he had when the group first arrived. "This one's part of my collection now, you see. Anyway! Since we're good pals, and I'm such a generous guy, I'll give you a helpful hint: your sense of smell? That's the easiest thing to fork over, but your group can only use it once since it's basically a freebie. Got it?"

[toxicspiderman]

Of course they weren't the first down here. These doors had been thrown open by the Bastard-in-Exile days ago, and a bunch of people had already been through the resurrection machine.

"You got it, man." S.T. held out a hand. He'd touched weirder things than bones, if the Grim Reaper took him up on it. "One sense of smell. Hope it's okay if it's a little beat up."

The entire lake smelled like a mildew factory had moved in to his sinuses and started a fraternity. If he puked his guts up in the middle of the lake no one would ever respect him again when he mentioned the Zodiac. So the solution fit the problem.

"Take someone's sense of taste and next time I'll bring you a beer. Deal?"

[trolltaker]

"I like a man who knows how to bargain," Charon laughed. "But, unless you're willing to let me have someone's stomach, too, I can't exactly take you up on that offer, now can I? Nowhere for the beer to go. It'd just get everywhere, stink up my boat, and then the whole damn neighborhood would think I was throwing a party without 'em. The spiders here have nasty tempers, you know. Hold terrible grudges over the dumbest things, too."

What he'd give for a good drink, though. This place didn't pay him near enough, but that was his lot in life -- or, in his case, death. Alas.

"But, as long as your nose isn't completely busted, I'll take it," he decisively said. His bleached-white bones grasped the man's hand in a loose handshake as he brought his staff down against the wood. The sound eerily echoing against the cavern walls. "Done."

Clearly pleased with himself, he took a deep breath.

And let out a long, contented sigh.

"Hmm, the lake smells especially foul today! Nothing more invigorating than a rank odor clinging to the air, I always say." Turning away for a moment, the ferryman switched out his staff for a paddle. "All right, then, Stinky! You and your friends can hop aboard our little love cruise now."

[its_the_mileage]

Nothing like watching a skeleton breathing to cap off another night at Landel's.

Absurdity aside, though, that had been more painless than Indy had expected, so much so that he was tempted to ask what the catch was. No fights to the death? No giant boulders? Not even the puzzle about the fox and the goose and the grain? He wasn't complaining, but anytime they entered another room down here and the source of impending death wasn't obvious, Indy was starting to be convinced that just meant you needed to look harder.

Maybe the ferryman would just capsize the boat halfway across and let them all try to race the sea monsters to the nearest bank. Ultimately it only mattered in giving Indy a chance to prepare himself--even knowing something terrible was going to happen wouldn't've kept him standing on the dock. They'd made it this far.

"Thanks," he said to Taylor in a low voice as he climbed carefully onto the boat. He tried to position himself so he'd be jostled as little as possible, but being paddled might still be easier on the chest than walking either way. Indy was curious how well the Grim Rower would be able to maneuver the whole heavily-laden boat with one oar, but he guessed they were about to find out.