epidemiology | EVENT ★ LABYRINTH II

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EVENT ★ LABYRINTH II

DEEPER

Following the marked path near the lake leads Audentes (and George) further into the maze, closer to the goal found at the center. Some other inmates (including Zymandis agent Mavahari) and correctional officers follow along, having picked up on the organized manner of Audentes and figuring it’s their best bet on getting out of here alive.

Unlike the dry stone and sand in the outer ring of the maze, this next section is overflowing with flora. Jungle vines cling to the walls to the point where seeing the stone underneath is a difficult task; trees sprout from between cracked tiles, bearing alien-looking fruit; branches and brambles cross certain parts of the maze, and will need to be hacked through unless you want to find another way around.

Water is more plentiful now as well, since obviously the plants need it to flourish. For the first time since setting foot in the labyrinth, a rain begins to fall, drizzling and gentle. This can be a respite or an annoyance, depending on how you look at it: while it’s soothing and can make collection of fresh, clean water easier, walking around in wet clothes is probably not that pleasant.

Your fellow ALASTAIR recruit George has inexplicably struck up a friendship with the Zymandis agent Mavahari, and they can often be found exploring the maze together, with Mavahari helping him due to his broken arm. They seem to be getting along well enough, but maybe checking in with George is in order.

Otherwise, survival is the name of the game; though the center of the labyrinth is closer, it’s impossible to tell how close, and how long to expect to be here. Collecting water is simple enough, but food is growing scarce. The tree fruits may be a good solution, but it seems as though some have unfortunate reactions to them, ranging from stomach cramps to rashes to fever and temporary blindness.

But an allergic reaction may just be the least of your worries.

LOVE ME LIKE A REPTILE

The monsters seen so infrequently in the outer ring of the maze are now a common nuisance. Giant insects and rats scurry about, hungry for whatever flesh they can find, but they’re easily defeated, particularly if encountered as a group. But with new terrain comes new, adaptive animals, and the labyrinth is no different.

Lizards are now the main threat: enormous and camouflaged, they stalk their prey and take their time, looking for the perfect opportunity to ambush. The lizards are three-headed, with each head containing fangs dripping with venom, capable of rendering its victims paralyzed within five seconds flat. Their blood is also poisonous, capable of burning through metal, not to mention flesh.

If a head is severed, the lizard will retreat back into the jungle, presumably to nurse its wounds but possibly to grow another head -- no lizard will ever be encountered with less than three heads, so it’s possible they have regenerative abilities. The best way to defeat one is to remove all three heads at once, or simply kill it in whatever way possible. The lizards are quick and mean, but not invincible.

Now more than ever, it’s important to take care in exploring the maze. Stray too far from the group or try to make it alone, and you might not survive.

OOC NOTES

Once again, we have a plotting post here and search requests for the next ring of the maze.

Please note: during the labyrinth event, all drops are ICly delayed. What this means is that characters who drop will be handwaved to still be around on auto-pilot until connection with Oska is resumed, at which point they will be transferred to a different team as usual.

If you have any questions about the labyrinth that aren't answered here, please direct them to the Leramzen dossier. If you have questions for any NPCs, please direct them there as well!

Questions about the game in general should be directed to the FAQ and you may submit mission ideas or player plots at any time.

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And what is he, the god of rain?

[Loki. The name rings a bell, but only from that fool's "post" back in Leramzan, when he'd tried to distract her from his slight against her honor by trying to tell her about how shocked he'd been that Odinson and Loki were brothers.

Beyond that, she hasn't had the care to pay enough attention to the network or other's personal affairs, so she can only shrug. Her point remained- long distance would be the way to go with these lizards.

As for the ogres... she gestures vaguely at his skin color.]

They are red.

[One of these days she's going to catch up with the fact that she actually has to clarify... most things she says.]

That would be me. [He's getting carried away scrubbing some entrails out of his hair. It's very satisfying, despite the pain it's causing his collarbone.] Loki is God of Mischief.

[Thank Frig, he may finally have all the entrails out.

As he pauses he inspects the colour of his skin, noticing it for the first time.] Hm.

You hail from Japan then. [It's not a hard leap to make, given the other clues. While Odinson hasn't had much to do with the land of the rising sun, it's rude to call yourself a defender of Earth without knowing about and visiting all it's countries.]

Edited (html derp) 2017-07-25 12:40 (UTC)

[Well. She supposes "rain" went with "thunder", if one was going to be technical about things. But she can't help the thin press of her lips. God of Mischief.

She's saved from having to explore that mentally by the mention of Japan. It pulls her gaze up, betraying herself with a slight widening of the eyes, a split second of vulnerability.]

You know of it- ?

[He meets the gaze, confused that his comment has drawn such a reaction.]

I know it less well than some other of Earth's countries, but I am it's protector also. I have fought alongside your gods at times, and against those who sought to do evil.

[His gaze drifts away, recollecting his encounters with them.] Amatsu-Mikaboshi in particular has been a troublesome force.

[Every claim he speaks plainly as if to him it is the absolute truth, and yet to her they are the wildest of things. That a man who looks like him, like the sort of human man she has never seen, light of hair and fair of skin, would know of Japan. The sort of coloring she was used to seeing on a jinba but not a man.

She had felt a sprig of something like hope to hear him say the name of her land, when even many people she spoke to didn't seem to know it- (perhaps due in part to the fact she didn't speak to that many people), but it withers slightly with his words of explanation even if she can't understand them.

But she has to say something, discussing a helpless instinct by pressing hand cooled by water to her forehead. Gods, more of gods-]

Is he not a minor deity...

[As if that was the part that mattered.]

Edited 2017-07-26 09:31 (UTC)

He may be, in other worlds. [This isn't at all a big deal for Odinson.] The one I am familiar with has revealed himself as the Chaos King, deity of chaos and destruction... far more powerful than any who fought him anticipated.

[Don't look over at him, Hayame. He's cleaned the blood off everything above the waist, but he's not yet done.]

[Every time she thinks he's said the most outlandish thing he can, he outdoes himself. King of Chaos? She takes her river chilled hand from her forehead once it has warmed back to overheated body temperature, opens her eyes to dip her hand again...

And catches him scrubbing... what really could be anything, but from her angle upstream looks far more sensitive a place than perhaps reality dictates. (If she focused only on his shoulders, broad and muscular, they look almost like Matsukaze's-)

Stiffening up, she doesn't actually say anything as a red of embarrassment and not exertion crawls up her throat, abruptly turning her entire body to put her back to him, splashing more water onto her flanks a bit too hurriedly to cover her slip.]

I will never understand how easily you people speak of other worlds.

[Well, she has to say something.]

[He hears her movement in the water, turns to see that she's turned away. he thinks nothing of it.

Even having removed the blood, he still aches over all his skin. His collarbone is broken, he can tell, and something is wrong with his leg that he'll need a healer to inspect- but the aches will begin to heal soon. In hours the lighter bruises will be gone, in a day or so the darker ones too. Now that his body isn't fighting the corrosive blood he can relax.]

Most of my kin would not, they have little to do with matters beyond Asgard and the nine realms. [He just happened to be the one to get exiled to Earth, and then fell in love with the place and couldn't leave.

A sigh.]

I'm as clean of blood as I'm going to get. If you will support me, we should begin our return.

[Oh, how she longs for the crisp chill of a mountain lake. For familiar scenery, for a forest and not this humid jungle. As he cleans himself so does she see to her own hygiene- though he sloughs poisonous blood and she lathered sweat. Pauses a moment to run her calloused fingers over the splatter-shaped burn on her right flank, proof of her discovery of the lizard's blood properties- and he had simply washed it off.

He was strong. Perhaps not now.

... Like she hasn't been, in those shameful days she had spent in prison, and yet still he had supported her. She owed him that debt, even if the idea of being in such close proximity to a man such as he, touching so intimately, makes her face even redder.

But she should not, cannot, acknowledge such a womanly weakness, and she despairs that since he did not seem to know of Japan that well that he would not even begin to understand the scandalous nature. So she hauls herself out of the stream, human half bending and hands bracing on equine forelegs before she gives a full body shake, dispelling drops of water in a quick dry before she stands up properly.]

How would you be supported.

[She'll at least ask. He knows his injuries better than she, she is no healer.]

My left leg won't bear much weight, but with aid I will be able to walk. That will make our progress considerably faster.

[The conversation they had ball in the ballroom (it seems a lifetime ago, but it can't have been more than a few weeks) comes back to him. She did not like to see men and women so intimate, and he imagines she'll want to touch him as little as possible here too.]

What do you think will work best?

[It was a lifetime ago- nearly a literal lifetime for Hayame, if she had been able to succeed in finally ending the life she had ruined with shame and failures. If her lord had not entreated with her not to abandon him, to put down the shiv she had finally found, a mere day after she'd met Odinson when flung out of the dealer's cell.]

I would prefer to carry you.

[Weirdly enough, (perhaps, weirdly), she finds the idea of carrying him like bales of rice less scandalous than supporting his walk, but unfortunately,]

But considering you seem to have swallowed several blocks of marble...

[She swallows uncomfortably, before aligning herself on his left side.]

You may lean upon my withers.

[Waist is off limits.]

Very well.

[Grunting and swearing under his breath he gets to his feet, balancing on his good leg and holding a hand out to steady himself against her.

He checks with her to make sure she hasn't withered away at his touch before putting weight on her and taking a step. With her help he can put a little weight on the injured leg. It's a relief.]

It's well that my friend Volstagg isn't here in my place. He's overly fond of food, and he's easily twice my size. [Pause, step.] Of course, he'd simply have eaten the lizards and been done with it.

[Flinching away from his touch is tempting- as it is from almost any touch to a woman who has known only harshness in her upbringing, from a culture that did not allow such intimate skinship in view of others. But she steels herself, muscles tense beneath dun coat and his hand, and despite her stiffness her body is capable of carrying that much of his weight without her spine bowing, so she aligns her gait to his, keeps it slow.

Returns her bow to her hand, where it belongs, now that she doesn't have to haul him along in makeshift harness.]

I do not wish to imagine a man twice your size.

[She assumes more fat than muscle in this case, but.]

You are already unnatural enough for a man.

He's around your height, and his width is twice mine. [He's trying not to chuckle, because chuckling is likely to hurt right now.]

I will take that as a compliment. [Being a normal man isn't something he's ever been accused of, so this is fitting.]

[Well, that's far taller than any human man she's ever encountered. Odinson was freak enough for her, hailing as she did not only from Japan, but... from its medieval period.

Six feet tall was shocking enough.]

I never saw your like in my own world.

[Business is the name of her game, but that doesn't mean she isn't... curious. Just that she knows how to prioritize. But considering there's no lizards, (thankfully)... she can't help but ask, her free hand gesturing to her own face, and her different skin.]

Do you not redden under the sun?

[He apparently reddens for poisonous snake blood, but.]

Edited 2017-07-29 09:06 (UTC)

There are few gods who care to interact with mortals. [Or it may be that Asgard and Earth have made no contact in her world, he muses. Any number of things could explain why he is such an affront to her understanding of the world.

But he cannot realign her worldview for her, that's something she must do herself.

At her question he holds his arm out to look at. It's still angry and red, but already his hands are a lighter shade, thanks to the water she'd delivered first to him. Before he answers, he has a question for her. It might help her understand.]

How old would you guess me to be?

[Gods. Of course.

But there is something about gods that Hayame cannot reconcile with the injured man she's half supporting in this god forsaken place. Even if she's seen how physically strong he is, and how the poison that had burned her coat and skin had only irritated his pale body.

But a god was not something that could be touched. And here she was.

Touching him.]

Two decades past boyhood, perhaps.

[She keeps her face forward to stifle the annoying resurgence of discomfort pink on her cheeks and neck. Though jinba aged differently, their lifespans somewhere in between those of their equine and human brethren, she'd been raised by humans. She knew their ages by sight.]

[He huffs in amusement as he steps poorly on his injured leg, and takes a few more steps before he replies.]

It has been at least a thousand years since I was reckoned a boy by my people. [He says at least because his memory of his own childhood is vague and hazy.] My father, Odin All-Father, was born in a time out of counting. My grandfather, Borr, is more a myth than an ancestor.

[Another pause, to give her time to digest. He realises the irony of saying such things while needing her aid to walk.]

[He says such things with the confidence that comes of truth, yet it can't be. More like shouldn't be. She steals another glance out of the corner of her eye, at the physique of a man who surely cannot be past... four human decades at most, surely.

She surely shouldn't be in a place like this. Surely shouldn't see magic. Shouldn't see tech. Shouldn't see the black from within it, and not from the ground looking up at the sky.]

One thousand years.

[But once again, she's at a loss for what to say to this sort of thing. How to react to things that would be sheer madness in her own world, that a small part of her thought might mean she truly had gone insane.

A thousand years. Had humans even a concept of such a time? Did jinba?]

[It's why his skin stays so pale. It's why he heals as quickly as he does. It is who he is.]

Would it surprise you to learn that in the Japan I know there are no Jinba? Your kind are a mere myth to the men there. They would find your existence as strange to understand as mine.

[A discomforted shiver travels down her spine, all the way from the back of her mostly human shaped skull, down between her muscular shoulders and back, down past the point she swathed in deer hide where human skin gave way to horse hair coat, between withers and past flanks to end in a slight twitch of her long, black tail.]

There was once a time when the humans thought we were gods.

[Something she'd never heard from the mouths of the humans that now enslaved her race. Something she had only truly understood once she had a chance to be among her own people, those who had never known the bind of a bridle or a master's lash. She knows she's reaching, part of her knows, but.]

Perhaps you know only a very isolated people. Some have never seen a jinba, I hear.

[She's been lucky (unlucky) enough not to meet a person she could easily acknowledge as Japanese as she knew it. Who would force her to confront that not only were there completely different worlds, but there were more than one variation of hers. Some hundreds of years past what she could begin to conceptualize.]

It is possible. [He admits it with some hesitation. It would be surprising to find there were a race of centaurs living on Earth that he'd never come across, but it's not outside the realms of possibility.]

Are there many Jinba, where you live?

[It is possible.

That's enough to keep her feet under her, keep her moving, hooves picking out a path through the tangled roots and undergrowth, aware of her duty not to slip or buckle beneath the weight of his she supported. Let alone her own safety, considering her legs were just as much her weak point as they were with any normal horse. That sorcerer had somehow worked his spell and made it as if it had never happened, but Hayame can still remember the sight and the feel of her own leg bone sticking through skin when she'd woken up in the wreckage.

Her left foreleg she is more careful with than the other limbs, even though her body told her it was no longer as injured as her mind insisted it was.]

There were more, once.

[Talking about herself was in no way her strong suit, nor even something she enjoyed doing... but she was afraid of what madness she might be forced to accept if she let him talk freely in her silence, so she speaks, human arm reaching out to push a low hanging branch out of the way of his face.]

But I do not think there are many left free any longer.

[Not according to what Matsukaze had said. What she'd seen for herself when she'd been sent by her human masters to pursue his escaped property.]

Free? [That's worrying.

He thinks back to the conversations they've held, the unbridled anger she'd expressed at their first meeting. His brows begin knit together.]

[It's something she's never had to think about or explain. It was just the way things were, and had been long before her dam's sire or even his sire had lived. She had never felt the amount of shame she had learned to feel for it. After all, she had been one of the few and special. She had been a good horse. She had kept her arms. She was a warrior, not a slave.

Not like the armless. She was different. Until she'd realized she really wasn't.

Her expression darkens, looking straight ahead, but after a lapse she resumes.]

I was born in a stable, I do not know as much as another might.

[How did you explain something that you lived and never truly analyzed? Why did it matter? When had it become a thing she began to feel embarassed for, when once she had worn her master's seal with pride, and looked forward to the day she would be sold to a great warrior?]

But there are few jinba left in the field and mountains. We are strong, but humans are as numerous as they are weak. And they desire us.

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EVENT ★ LABYRINTH II

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