Keala stepped through the corridor with Diane at her side and glanced about. Her flashlight struggled against the oppressive darkness before her. She squinted, and a soft purr of intrigue rose up from her right. "Been too long, eh, Di?" she asked, a broad smile on her face. "Feels great to be back in the-" A loud click rang out in the tunnel, and the tile beneath her foot depressed itself into the ground. The archeologist seized the sneasel and dove forward, rolling across the ground to the sound of several more clicks as her body depressed more tiles. Behind her, spikes exploded from the ceiling in sets of six.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" She struggled to get herself to her feet while still moving forwards, her feet struggling to find even ground as tile after tile depressed into the ground. She desperately scooped Diane up into her chest, and with great difficulty and a groan of exertion, pulled her legs into agreement with the rest of her body and bounded down the tunnel. The walls around her came into relief for a split second before they were swallowed by the lightless ruins once more as she ran.
A stomach-high wall came into view suddenly, and with a startled yelp, she dove sideways past it, landing roughly on her shoulder and skidding along the ground several feet. She laid herself out on her back and listened to the sounds of the last of the spikes that had shot out of the tunnel's ceiling as they retracted slowly. They filled the air with a loud, metallic grinding sound.
"Gods almighty, that really hurt…" She clutched her shoulder and massaged it, then raised her head off the cold, stone ground and looked up at the concerned eyes and furrowed brow of her sneasel. "You okay?"
Diane knelt down, and licked her trainer's cheek once. She padded over to her trainer's injured shoulder and did her best to mimic the massaging motion without poking her long claws into her. A concerned mewling rose in the air as she looked Keala in the eyes and frowned.
"No, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. Didn't even pull anything. Ugh, I think. Just gimme a sec to…" She got to her feet, the arm attached to the shoulder that bore the abuse shaking a tad too much for her liking as she put weight on it, and tried to ignore the soft stinging pain in it. "Can't be anything worse than a very light sprain, if anything. I'll forget about it no time." She let out a low whistle. "Haven't dealt with traps in forever… Should have been more careful."
She unhooked her flashlight from its holder and peered around the cavernous chamber she and the sneasel now stood in, and her eyes were drawn to the structure in the middle of the room. Light flickered across a tall pillar of stone, light reflecting now and again off the glass panels set into it. "Whoa…" Keala stepped towards the pillar, scanning the ground for tiles that looked out of the ordinary before stepping into the depression the pillar rose out of and inspecting the glass more closely.
The glass was black, polished to a mirror shine, and seemed to have an ever changing pattern of fractals just beneath the surface. She rubbed a finger against it - it was cold to the touch, and curiously free of dust. The stone the mirrors were set into had multiple scratched glass orbs peppered throughout, and tarnished strips of metal made a pattern along the length of the pillar that reminded her of circuitry. She walked several times around the pillar before looking around the room and shining her flashlight into the darkness. Several times, at regular intervals, the light would play across a shining surface as she turned about on the spot. "More mirrors…?"
She beckoned Diane to follow her as she approached one of the mirrors that sat in a recess in the stone work that comprised the walls of the room. Etched around the glass was an intricate design that curved with the glass towards the apex of the curve the material cut into the stone, where the circuit like design met as a blank square. "What? Blank? That's...that's odd. Shouldn't there be-" She looked about and made her way to another mirror, and another blank square. She turned around and crossed the room, past the pillar to yet another mirror, and found the square at the apex of the mirror to feature seven protruding stone dots.
"Hrm. A hexagon and one in the center, huh?" She looked at the glass and pressed her hand against it. It was as cool and pristine as the others, but the fractal patterns shifting beneath it did not respond to her touch. Her mind snapped back to how they got into the ruins and she snapped her fingers. "Duh. There's probably a divot or crevice or something around here." Her hands worked their way around the stone pattern until she made it back to where she started. With a frown she turned to her sneasel and shrugged. "You wanna take a crack at it, Di?"
With a purr and a nod, the sneasel clambered up her trainer's back and onto her unhurt shoulder, and then pointed at the square. With an insistent meowing, she urged Keala to walk closer to the wall. Keala obliged the cat, and pressed against the glass. She felt Diane's weight shifting on her shoulders and then heard a soft click. A bright light filled the room for a moment and the glass began to slide aside, nearly knocking Keala over as it did.
"Whoa, whoa!" she said in alarm, stumbling to the side. Diana dropped from her shoulders with grace and landed beside her trainer with a look of smug satisfaction on her face. A low, pleased purr held in the air, and Keala rolled her eyes as she turned to face her sneasel. "Yeah, yeah. You're the smartest, Di." She gave the pokemon a swift smile, and then pointed at the freshly created passage. "Now what do you say we take that big brain of yours and put it to the test with whatever is waiting for us up ahead, huh?" The sneasel nodded, and hopped up onto her trainer's makeshift pack-seat and hugged her midsection.
"Lazy-ass cat," mumbled Keala. A soft purr came as Diane's only reply.
Janus leaned against the wall of the chamber, surveying the enormous pit before him as the men scrambled about setting up floodlights. Victor strode over, wiping his brow and panting. "Brother Janus… what do you suppose this pit is for?"
For a long while, Janus was silent, mulling over the question. He flipped it around in his head over and over, until, like a stone in the surf, it began to smooth, and at last, he spoke in a loud, harsh tone: "Tread lightly. We walk in the presence of a Gear. Do not disrespect the most sacred of places set aside for those that served the Alpha."
Victor inclined his head. "Yes, of course. But, Brother, how do you know this?" He looked his superior in the eyes with a burning desire to know to more etched across his face.
Janus strode over to the basin before the massive pit and ran his hands across the smooth basin. "Do you know, Victor, of the bonds that link us all? The bonds that hold fast the ones that came before us and shaped this world, that we could thrive?" The cultist pulled his hood from his head and fished a flask from beneath the folds of his robe, then uncapped it and poured the contents into the basin. "There is no way into these hallowed chambers without a piece of that bond. These rare fragments of the fragile threads that held up the world, made manifest, such that mortal man could clench it in his fist." He turned and began to walk around the pit, gesturing for Victor to follow. "We must take what she used to gain access to this place from her. But first we must-"
"Brother! Brother, we've found markings, but the tunnel beyond bears signs of traps!" shouted a man as he raced up to the two. The panting cultist led them to the markings next to a tunnel that led into the northeast. "Some kind of scratch marks. What sort of pokemon does she have with her? Should we be worried?"
"It's just a sneasel," replied Victor at once. "Nothing we can't handle. Especially in confined spaces where its speed can't save it. This woman should be all too easy to apprehend, Brother Janus. But- please, forgive me for my curiosity: what will we do with this...sacred fragment? Will it… will it summon Him?"
The leader scoffed and pulled his head over his head once again. "Don't be ridiculous, Victor. The Alpha isn't beckoned to our lowly plane with mere trinkets. But his pillars can be."
The man standing before the two yelped and bowed his head in prayer, then fell to his knees and turned to the hole, prostrating himself in supplication. His fast mumbles and insistent pleas irked Janus, and he nudged the man with his foot. "Get up," he spat, "are you a man or a mongrel? The Titans require force of will, not pleading prayers. Clear the tunnel of traps. Now."
With a nonstop stream of apologies, the man got to his feet and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel.
"Titan, Janus? Is it really a Titan?"
He did not grace the question with a reply. Janus strode forth without a backward glance.
Keala had taken the newly revealed hallway at a much slower clip. Better she take twice as long sweeping the ruins than fall prey to another spike trap or worse, she reasoned. Her caution was unwarranted, however, as the entire hallway proved entirely clear of traps.
The room the tunnel let out in was unusually well lit. Or rather, it had become so. As Keala approached the structure in the center of the room it began to glow a bright, pale blue, and illuminated most of the chamber. This strange pillar was roughly hewn, and seemingly made of the same material as the pendant that Diane wore. All around the pillar sat a series of glass orbs with metal strips set into differently sized blocks of stone. The same metal that snaked across the stone formed elaborate patterns that ran away from the orbs and up to the center.
The archeologist pulled a journal from her pack and sat down to sketch everything out when an insistent meowing diverted her attention. Diana stood next to her, pointing at the phone at Keala's hip. With a chuckle, she unclipped it and set it to photo mode for the sneasel to take pictures with. "Just don't crack the glass with your claws like last time, ok?"
Diana replied with a somewhat guilty and evasive mewling and took to filling the chamber with intermittent flashes of bright light. Partway through Keala's sketching, Diane returned the phone to her and sat down, purring softly.
The rest of the sketch took a considerable amount of time, as Keala decided it would be best to make sketches of the strange patterns the metal created as well as the orbs and stone. She glanced around the room and then looked up at the ceiling, where she gasped at the arrange of spheres that stuck out at her, glowing. It was like a plus sign but with an extra dot on the left and right arms, just like the symbol at the mouth of the tunnel. She frowned. "We're in the desert, it wouldn't make sense for this place to be dedicated to Regice, don't you think, Diane?"
The sneasel merely shrugged and picked at the pillar with her pendant. Each little tap created tiny flashes of blue light. The cat seemed to be enjoying herself immensely, so much so that Keala couldn't help but grin as she watched. After another minute, she said, "Come on, let's get going. See if we can't find out if there's a room dedicated to another Re-"
As she turned about she came face to face with several hooded, robed figures. The one in the center stepped forward and pulled the hood back, revealing a knowing sneer on his face and cold malice in his eyes. "Yes, dear girl, we would most certainly also like to know if there are further chambers dedicated to the Titans." He gestured to the tunnel behind him with a small smile that made Keala shiver. "Please, if you would be so kind as to lead the way with your sneasel?"
Diane got down on all fours and hissed, tucking the pendant away beneath her shawl as she did.
"I'm with Diane. Who the hell are you and what do you want?" shot back Keala.
The man rolled his eyes, and the smile melted away into a cold frown that matched his icy tone. "Don't go off making foolish decisions, girl, it won't end well for you." He snapped his fingers and the robed men behind him brandished long, cruel looking daggers. The man drew a sword from beneath his robes that glinted a multicolored set of hues in the blue light of the room, as well as three pokeballs held between his fingers. "You have an excellent opportunity to escape here with your life after you've helped us, and I should have you know…" He drove the tip of the sword effortlessly into the ground. "I am rarely so generous."
