Night 50: Mine (level one)

[givemeoblivion]

[from here]It wasn't too long a while of walking through nothing but forest with no obvious landmarks that they came upon a clearing. Callisto had seen the break in the trees a ways back, setting their course for an area different from the one the group before them had taken. (She hadn't seen much of them besides their tracks, but they clearly

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[should_be_dead]

"It is no surprise that you do not know. This is your first night, is it not?" Tenzen said, his response more of a statement than a question. It was something that had been concluded earlier, when the stranger had commented about the short nights. Such ignorance could only be displayed by new arrivals - or people that persisted even a few days after arriving, but for now he'd give this man the benefit of the doubt.

Whether Tenzen had intended to clarify his earlier words or not, however, was something that would never be known as the situation changed. They had exchanged the forest for a dirt road, and when the woman followed where it led, so did he.

The ninja observed his surroundings, taking note of the carts that lay scattered around the area, the bend signs that were attached to trees and the still-present tracks. It looked as abandoned as the ruins looked at first (would he find yet another collection of corpses to proof the initial impression wrong?). Again, the woman spoke gibberish and Tenzen couldn't do much but make assumptions of what those words in that silly tongue could possibly mean. But in the end, it mattered little.

"Hnn. It would seem we have stumbled upon some sort of mine," he commented. Despite the many differences these lands had compared to his own, it was not a difficult connection to make. Whether this area would actually contain something useful was up for debate, but it did little harm to know what lay north of the institute. Or whatever it was that lay further down the mine, for that matter.

[unfleeing]

This was a strange turn of events. Still the woman spoke words neither of them could understand - this was made obvious by the way the other male continued to ignore her. Looking around, Naraku was stunned momentarily by their surroundings. A mine... he pondered, stepping away from the other two a little, to investigate just a bit. No one else was in the vicinity, he knew, and he wondered at their reason for coming here. It seemed such a useless place, and it in no way informed the youkai of his location. There were several mines across the mainland, of course, but this was one he did not recognize. He had yet to recognize any of the forest around them, the gravity of which was beginning to settle as a bad feeling in the pit of his gut.

Nothing about this night had been good, and it did not seem as though it would be getting any better. Naraku turned to the male, nodding slightly in answer to his question. "I have just arrived here," he replied shortly, though he paid his tone no mind. Humans were below his notice, and they did not deserve any more information than he felt required to give them in order to move forward.

[givemeoblivion]

By now, it was obvious that the other two didn't have any intention of speaking to her like they had before. Callisto wasn't someone who could stand being ignored, and suddenly she was annoyed by the idea of them continuing to follow her. Surely she'd come across some way, once they were further in the tunnels, to collapse a mine shaft and bury them.

She made her way deeper into the mine, noting that the main tunnel branched off into several others. From the looks of things, some of the former workers hadn't even had the opportunity to abandon it. Whatever had happened here, it hadn't simply been a matter of the mine becoming unusable. Something had forced the occupants to drop what they were doing, if they'd even had the chance. A mystery was it? One to go along with all the others in this place.

With one foot, she prodded the bleached hand of a skeleton. This side road was as good as any, and she turned down the second branch on her right. Still she found more of the same, though her light glinted off something briefly, catching her attention. The former warlord bent down to pry something out from the wall. A tool of some sort - a metal crescent with a handle in the center. It would do for a makeshift weapon.

[should_be_dead]

Tenzen made his way deeper into the mine as well, the beam of his torch revealing signs of human life. He concluded the same thing as their female companion did; all signs pointed to the fact that something had forced these people to drop their work. Hmm...it could possibly be tied to his findings in the ruins to the East. It wasn't difficult to imagine those people were related to this mine at all; if anything, this area seemed to have shared a similar fate.

The only question remained; what had happened? The skeleton the woman prodded with her foot before taking one of the narrow shafts offered little answers. There were six of these shafts, and without a word to one of his companions he took a shaft to the left for a small investigation. There was little to see, even when he soon reached the cavern at the end; signs of human life, but nothing more. Before long, he returned to the main shaft empty-handed.

Perhaps more could be found if they'd head further below, but that thought was likely too optimistic.

[unfleeing]

Naraku stood back, not too far away, and watched the others disappear into their respective shafts of the mine. The area was littered with skeletons, seemingly human, and it was a very curious sight; what had come through and slaughtered all of them? There was a high likelihood that more death was to be found below, which did not interest him. He was only interested in a way out.

When the male reappeared, his gaze zoned in on him immediately. "What is the purpose in our being here?" he asked, a little gruffly. The mine had a deep sense of uselessness about it, one that made Naraku sneer.

He had to remember, though. This was the time for observation, not action. He needed to lie in wait, to watch, to form alliances; there was that strange feeling that he was nowhere near his home, so there was a good chance that he would need to stay here longer. He needed to find out what was happening now.

Action would come later.

[givemeoblivion]

"You know, this is getting tiresome, you two ignoring me." Callisto stepped out from the darkness, having placed her own flashlight in the hem of her pants for the time being. (Her pockets were too small.) The former warlord had removed her shirt and was using it to dust off her newfound weapon to the best of her ability. It wouldn't sparkle, but at least she'd be able to tell how much of an edge it had.

The other two seemed disinterested overall, which begged the question of why they'd even bothered to follow her in the first place. Anything beyond the usual was a source of interest for Callisto at the moment, and not even from a scientific perspective. (She couldn't claim to have one of those.)

"Worthless," she grumbled, and began walking further down the main path. It had to go deeper than this.