Magic Bullshit

Dave ascends the short tower adjacent to the now defunct elevator tower, walking up a spiraling staircase that ends with a locked gate over-looking a massive damn crevasse. No matter how hard he cranes his neck up against the bars he can't make out the sky, and a cold wind howls in intermittently to bite at his exposed face. He thinks that he would surely have noticed the tower earlier. Surely. It had just been too fucking dark, is all. He didn't need glowing message bitch-two to point it out. He'd have found it eventually.

More teal lettering appears on the wall to his left.

"Welcome to the Valley of Drakes. I have no idea how that bitch managed to get the elevator to break down, but all that will do is slow your progress by a few days. There are other, more roundabout paths back to Firelink Shrine. Paths she can't do a damn thing about."

Dave hefts the glowing red stone in his hand and considers briefly the stupidity of all this before replying.

"The gate is locked."

"Damn it Dave, why is the gate locked!?"

"Beats me."

"Well, can you just force it open?"

Dave grips the bars and expects to do just that, gritting his teeth and putting all his unnatural strength towards ripping the gate off its hinges. To his surprise, it does not budge.

"Yeah no. Damn thing's built into the fucking stone or something."

Dave uses the glow of the soapstone like a candle to examine the hinges of the gate.

"Wait no, scratch that. The hinges have been melted shut. Am I stuck down here?"

"Um, no? I hope not. But I really wasn't expecting that…hm. Can you see a sword anywhere nearby, on the other side of the gate?"

Dave examines the grass on the other side of the gate, noting that there does seem to be a handle just visible on the far left side. Any potential blade was out of sight by the wall however.

"Yeah actually, give me a second and I'll try to finesse my arm through the gap and pull that sucker through."

"It shouldn't take any finesse at all. Dave, you're not still wearing your armor, are you?"

"I am, what the fuck is it to you?"

"It's fucking cumbersome and useless, is what it is to me! Take it off this instant."

"No."

"Dave, take it off!"

"No fuck you. And for the record yelling at somebody through the wall with magic bullshit writing is not how you get them to disrobe for you. Not a Strider anyway. That shit takes romancing you hear? Takes some goddamn effort on your part, to show me that there's something invested between us other than your mad lust for my naked vulnerable body."

"Dave, if I wanted your naked vulnerable body, I'd have taken it weeks ago. And given it a place of honor on my trophy wall."

"Well that took a turn. I'm just gonna, go get that blade now then."

"You do that tough guy."

Dave discovers that he can in fact not fit his arm through the gap without removing his gauntlet and vambrace. He reaches one thin pale arm out between the bars and grasps the handle of what by the weight he identifies as a sword, pulling it out into view and back through the bars. And it's a beautiful goddamn sword. It's a classic Astoran straight sword, with an intricate handle of black and gold adorned with a green jewel, ending with a long expanse of sharp, gleaming metal and an edge too sharp for it to have been abandoned here long.

"Okay got the sword. Now what?"

"What do you think? Use it! Cut your way to freedom Dave!"

Dave has no intention of ruining the edge by pointlessly hacking away at iron bars-

He does, however, give of the bars a light tap. Just to see.

The blade slices through the iron like hot butter.

"What the fuck lady, the fuck is this thing?"

"Your introduction to the wonderful world of reinforcement."

~)

Kanaya was willing to admit that despite her growing distaste for the cagey woman on the other end of the blue lettering, she was just a little bit excited. Learning magic had always been something of a fantasy of hers, and though her impromptu tutor was evidently morally bankrupt, Rose nonetheless appeared to be a very knowledgeable sorceress.

"Do you have any prior experience with magic?" Rose asked, her words appearing before Kanaya as she sat cross-legged with her back to the little bonfire.

"Yes actually. I learned a spell to affect plant growth when I was young."

"That hardly counts as experience. Children can make a bud bloom early or change the size of a growing peach. I'm talking about real magic."

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware what little illicit knowledge I was able to gleam in my youth from friends was so far beneath you."

"Illicit?"

"I am from Thorolund."

"Oh. Well, then in that case I suppose knowing any magic at all is indeed an accomplishment."

"Excuse me while I blush."

"Is that the fragrant hint of sarcasm I detect?"

"No doubt. You've likely been polluting your own air with it for several years by now."

"Touché. I apologize, from the clarity of your handwriting I assumed you were from somewhere civilized."

Kanaya tangles briefly with conflicting urges to defend her home city from someone she feels hostile towards and to agree with the sentiment. Before she can come to any firm conclusion however Rose starts typing again.

"Well, my point is that the spell we are about to employ, while complex, should be of no trouble for you. Most of the real complicated formulae are weaved directly into the white soapstone itself."

"The soapstone?"

"Yes. Communication is actually a secondary ability of that little device. Its primary function is as a medium for summoning. With it, you can allow me to summon you in spirit form to my time, wherein I can impart to you all the necessary tools for your education."

"That sounds…unsettling. I'm not quite sure how comfortable I am with you working sorcery directly on my person."

"Your body will remain totally unaffected. Hmm, how to explain this…"

Several seconds passed before Rose continued.

"Okay, think of it like this. We'll be creating a tunnel whereby your mind can travel through time and space to my location. It'll be like looking through a telescope, seeing another location without actually moving, only you can move in that location if you wish."

"What is a telescope?"

"…Nevermind. Just, trust me that it's a perfectly safe process. I've done it myself countless times. Your physical body will remain exactly where it is, while your mind appears in the guise of a misty white phantom in front of me."

"And how do we go about preforming this spell?"

"Any writing with the white soapstone will work. For future reference I'd recommend signing your name. But for now just put whatever you'd like next to this sentence and focus on it, and I'll do the rest."

"Okay. Just, give me a moment."

Kanaya holds the stone above the designated area and hesitates. She should be wary about this, scared even, allowing an unknown and potentially malicious witch to work magic on her person in this manner. But then, hadn't she just implied she could've used any of the writing Kanaya has produced with the white soapstone for this purpose? Would backing out now really affect her safety? And if the witch meant her harm, why was she respecting her consent to such a degree?

Fear alone would have Kanaya abjure this offer. But her fear is not alone. She feels a little bit excited, too.

"Kanaya Maryam" appears in the most elegant hand she can manage next to Rose's last sentence. Kanaya waits for a moment, heart pounding in her chest as her eyes get lost within the white glow of her own name. And then, without warning, they fall shut, and she falls asleep.

~)

Kanaya falls on her ass and wakes up in the same room she was just in, only it's noticeably brighter and warmer. The bonfire burns almost as tall as a person, completely subsuming the spiraled poker at its center. However to Kanaya, for once the bonfire is not the most impressive thing in the room.

The dust and grime are gone, the stone floor swept clean, clear of any debris from a staircase apparently not yet destroyed. The dusty piles of bent wooden planks in the corners have been replaced with all manner of materials; books and tables and glassware instruments, all of varying and vibrant color. Several candles add their glow to that of the bonfire, giving the chamber a cozy look about it, especially in comparison to the darkness of night outside. Where it not for the stairs and the proportions, Kanaya would hardly believe she was in the same room.

The centerpiece, however, is the girl.

She stands in the center of the room, and even though they are several feet apart Kanaya feels as though she is being towered over. Rose is, to put it simply, entirely too tall. Her ghoulishly white skin and hair are even more unsettling, creating a jarring contrast with the radiant amethyst of her too large eyes. She's just standing there, smiling hesitantly, and Kanaya wasn't sure exactly what she was expecting but whatever it was it wasn't seven feet tall.

"Hi." Rose says through something between a smile and a tightening grimace.

Kanaya tries to reply, but finds herself unable to choke out even much of a breath, and when she catches sight of her legs splayed out ahead of her she notices for the first time that her body seems to be mostly incorporeal, constructed entirely out of a shifting white mist of varying density. She tries to contain her shocked reaction, and realizes glumly that, if her jerky attempt to right herself and examine the rest of her body is any indication, she's failing miserably.

"Don't bother." Rose says, her voice ringing out in the small space much too light and airy for her body. "Your ability to interact with me here is fairly limited. But please, feel free to make yourself at home. What's mine may as well be yours."

She gestures primarily towards a collection of cushions arranged up against the edge of the staircase, above which Rose has apparently hung a sheet of purple cloth for no apparent reason. Kanaya crosses the room on shaky legs she forces to be still and decides at the last minute to refuse the witches offer of seating. She elects instead to stand with her arms crossed as she watches Rose flit about the room looking for something.

Kanaya is startled at how fast Rose moves, bare feet gliding across the stone floor, the hem of her thick, layered blue robe flying around her ankles. As Rose kneels by one of the long tables and pulls it back slightly Kanaya realizes that it's actually a bookshelf flipped on its side, the holes facing the wall. Rose roots around behind it for a moment before producing a comparatively thin book and tossing it haphazardly to the ground towards Kanaya before going over to search through a collection of sacks piling up in the corner.

Kanaya stares down shocked and judgmental towards the book so carelessly treated, lying as it is upon the ground. She's never seen so many books in her life, never mind the fact that the ones lying open appear to be in a language she cannot understand, and she realizes her initial amazement had blinded her to how abysmally their owner treats them. She notices with no small amount of horror that a couple of the candles are sitting right on top of stacks of tomes as high as Kanaya's waist, leaking wax all over covers and pages.

Rose produces next a wooden staff about the length of Kanaya's arm, approaching her with it and holding it towards her. Kanaya forces herself not to stare at those unblinking eyes bearing down on her as she reaches out to take the offered item. Rose's face looks nothing like what Kanaya would have expected, she decides. Her features are just a size too small, kittenish is the word that comes to mind, her countenance showing none of the duplicity or malice which Kanaya knows she possesses.

Kanaya points to one of the wax covered books, deciding that she will make her objection known despite her discomfort. Unfortunately Rose seems to misunderstand her intent.

"Oh no, those are a bit too advanced I believe." She says. She leans down to pick up the book she tossed over earlier, and as she watches the motion Kanaya allows herself to admit that she finds the towering svelte figure, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, attractive.

Again, she feels the need to reiterate, to herself if no one else: A purely aesthetic standpoint.

"This will serve for our purposes, for now at least. But who knows. Perhaps you will discover a previously unknown talent."

Rose finishes that last statement with a wink, and Kanaya finds herself forced to reevaluate a great deal of her mental image regarding the voice behind the blue lettering. She's having a difficult time believing this is the same person. She is also, incidentally, very glad that her current phantasmic form both gives her an excuse to avoid embarrassing herself by tripping over a response and, she hopes, obscures her facial expression.

Any hint of teasing vanishes from Rose's face however, her eyelids sliding down to hood over her eyes and her face relaxing into an aggressively neutral, if not outright condescending, expression. This, Kanaya thinks for a brief moment, looks more like what she expected. She takes the book in her free hand as Rose speaks.

"Alright, well, as much as I would enjoy some company I don't feel there's much point to you dallying here any longer. Unless of course you wanted the tour of my lovely abode; all thirty feet of it."

Kanaya is halfway to forming a coherent response before she remembers that she can't speak and that the question was probably rhetorical anyway. Rose stalks over to the makeshift table she'd dislodged earlier and pushes it back up against the wall with her foot, reaching down to grab something and Kanaya will vehemently deny any accusations that her stare was anything other than modest.

Rose turns back around clutching a large black stone wrapped in white cloth. She gives Kanaya a short wave before tapping one nail across the stone, which lets out a vibration much louder than anything Kanaya would have expected. Her eyes are forced shut this time and she feels herself falling backwards…

She opens her eyes and gasps, stumbling forward to counteract a fall that apparently wasn't even happening. Her feet kicked up dust off the floor. Sunlight pierced the masses of clouds drifting by outside. She's back. She jumps at the sound of the staff and book hitting the ground when they slip from her hands.

She looks around at the rubble and debris where seconds ago she'd seen tables and books, at the tiny flame that had seconds ago been a massive fire. Kanaya realizes, as her eyes come to rest at that spot by the stairs where Rose had built her impromptu seat, that she's not going to be able to look at this room the same ever again. This had, at some point, been a lived-in abode. Rose's looping scrawl appears at her feet. Kanaya has to search around for the soapstone for a second, her body having dropped it while her mind was being shunted through time and space.

"How did it feel?" Rose asks.

"Odd. Like, waking up from a dream. I am actually having a hard time recalling specifics, now that I am thinking about it."

"A relatively mild reaction, it sounds like. I trust your supplies came through alright."

Kanaya looks back at the staff and book lying on the ground between her and the exit. They are illuminated by what sunlight finds its way into the room, allowing Kanaya to make out strange symbols carved into the leather of the book, symbols she think look similar to the unreadable text she'd spied in Roses opened books. The staff is straight and smooth for most of its length, growing thick and knobby only near the end. A series of leather straps are wrapped around its midsection. Judging by their ends the straps were at one point dyed red, but a great deal of use has worried away the much of the coloring.

"Yes, though I am afraid I cannot make out much in this book of yours. I do not recognize these letters."

"You won't need to. Flip to the back; some of my old notes ought to be there. They're as a good a place to start as any, I suppose."

~)

Karkat would be fine just walking in silence. Just absolutely fucking fine with that. Only after a few minutes of threading through the upper levels of the burg, hugging the shadow of the wall rising up on their left, she speaks up.

"So what does she have on you?" She asks, grinning.

"The fuck is it to you?"

She unsettles him, he's not ashamed to admit that. She's short and bony and blind, and unarmed as far as he can see, but those are still the robes of a Pardoner; he's got a lifetime of phobia being set off by that alone. Add to that her unceasing grin that tears across her face when she speaks, and the fact that she's just walking around unaided with a patch on one eye and a hesitantly healing wound on the other, a wound impossible for an Undead to have-

He will not say he's scared. She would have scared him at one point in his life, back when injury and death had consequences. He's just…unsettled.

"You heard, or read I guess, everything she has on the others. But nobody knows what she has on you."

"Maybe she doesn't have anything 'on' me. Maybe I'm just not enough of a shit stuffing moron to mess with a fucking time witch."

"You shouldn't use such foul language in a lady's presence, you know."

Karkat realizes that if he keeps his mouth shut here he might get a few more seconds to wallow in self-pity before she starts up again. Not that that knowledge means a damn thing of course, since he can already feel a retort clawing its way up his throat. He swallows it back down however when they come across a set of stairs and the woman trips.

"Shit!" He exclaims, because by every single fucking Lord in the sky, he thinks for a split second, she's still fucking blind!

He braces to catch her, but she stops herself with a hand up against the wall before her back meets his hands. She then proceeds to cackle like a madwoman.

"I didn't startle you, did I?"

Something about the sound of her laugh sets his teeth on edge, and before he knows it he's screaming at the back of her head.

"Okay, what the actual FUCK is wrong with you!? Are you blind or not, because I swear to the fucking Lords I will drag your crippled ass back to the bonfire before I go wandering through a fucking vertical-nightmare cityscape with a blind woman!"

She turns and stares into his very souls with her horrific piercing no-eyes. That's what Karkat thinks it feels like, anyway. The staircase makes it so that their faces are level, and Karkat struggles to avoid staring at her disgusting wound, refusing to let the awkwardness of the sudden silence get to him. She still smiles when she speaks, but it's smaller and crooked, and makes Karkat feel like he should be getting ready to dodge a beating. His eyes flit down momentarily to her robe.

"So you want me to share first, huh? Alright. I am in all honesty not at all sure how I see. But as far as I can tell, I detect living things and things nearby."

"How?" Karkat asks, genuinely curious.

"I don't know."

"That doesn't make any sense! What do you mean 'detect'? Is it magic? Or…"

"Or…? Like I said, I don't know."

"Can you describe what you 'see' at least?"

Karkat watches her face twist before she turns and continues up the stairs, humming in consideration. He follows after her, and as they crest the stairs and walk across the ruin of a plaza she speaks up.

"It's like seeing a fire in the dark. Literally."

She turns on her heel and begins walking backwards ahead of him, her head turned to the side as she stares past his shoulder. Karkat opens up his mouth to say something about the curve their coming up between a short watchtower and a domicile, but she deftly turns with the street on her own. His mouth snaps back shut.

"I look at you and I see fire in the dark. Like a bonfire. And that fire illuminates the things around it, so I can see those too."

Karkat feels like he should be teetering well over the edge of disbelief. But he's not, and he isn't sure if it's the cumulative effect of seeing a dragon corpse and the witch's time-space shenanigans or is he's just a big fucking sucker. Instead, all he can think about is the practical applications of what she's describing. If true, it would make her next to impossible to ambush.

"What kind of range do you have?" he asks.

"It varies. Right now it's something like a few hundred feet I guess? But when you got angry a second ago I could see all the way back to the witch's lair in the bridge."

She turns and takes the stairs two at a time, turning back when she reaches the bottom to wait on Karkat, who's determined he's going to go down the stairs like a human fucking being rather than a damned child.

"Now it's your turn." She says. "I know your name is Karkat, and I'm guessing you've got a six-letter last name too. And judging by the way you shiver whenever you look at my robes," she's smiling that toothy wolf's grin again," it's Carim, not Thorolund, right?"

Karkat just nods, wondering a half second later whether or not she can tell. She grins wider though, so he feels safe in assuming she can.

"So the obvious questions are: what are you doing in Lordran? And why are you doing that witch's bidding?"

Karkat opens his mouth, feels something on his face twitch, sighs, and closes his mouth. He would feel like an asshole for stonewalling her anymore and, really, what the hell does any of it matter anyway?

"I'm here because fuck everything. And Rose claims to be keeping tabs on someone I want very much to stay the hell away from."

Terezi hooks around a turn and heads down another staircase, calling out behind her.

"And who exactly is this someone?"

"You ever heard of a knight named Jack?"

"No. That's an unusual name."

"He's an unusual fucking guy, and he went and turned Undead a good year before me."

"What makes you think he came to Lordran?"

When Karkat turns the corner she's already halfway down the stairs, which descend to a short street a couple of stories below where they'd been.

"It's where we all end up, isn't it?"

"Hm."

She hits the bottom and starts walking further into the shadows, the high walls and buildings on either side blocking out the sunlight. Karkat doesn't recognize this area, having apparently missed this staircase the last time he came through. The burg is relatively small, boxed in by the wall on one side and a deep ravine on the other, and he can only chalk it up to immense stupidity that he missed this route before.

"Is this those 'depths' she was talking about?" He calls out.

"No." Terezi called back. The black of her robe and hair made her hard to see from behind as she advanced further down the passageway.

"Then where the fuck are we going?"

"My name's Terezi, by the way. Terezi Pyrope."

Karkat is about to repeat himself, but she vanishes totally down the path ahead, and for the first time in a long time Karkat doesn't much feel like shouting. He looks up as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, sees that only a sliver of the cloud covered sky is still visible, the weak daylight illuminating the space Karkat is occupying and only a few feet ahead.

"I remember." He says, more to himself than anyone else. He assumes it's because he saw her name written down in big shining blue scrawl by Rose.

~)

Terezi decides she likes Karkat. He is pliable, like most angry males tend to be, but even then she's a little shocked at how easy it is to get him to divulge potentially serious personal information. Though to be fair, it probably wasn't caution making him so cagey. He was probably just being an ass.

She knows now that the furtive looks he shoots her way and the way his fire, which burns delightfully bright by the way, rises slightly is due to her wardrobe; he's well aware that it's the regalia of a servant of the Goddess of Sin, the raiment of those who under the knowing gaze of the blind prophets seek either absolution or restitution from the sinful.

She also knows just from watching the way he moves that he's probably harmless. The most dangerous part of dealing with hot tempered individuals is their tendency to get physical, but he's got a bubble of personal space so wide and inviolable that she could swear his fire literally prickles when she draws too close. That he's reasonably well-armed and armored is negligible. His scavenged iron plates cover his chest cavity and little else, and his sword is sitting too tight in its sheath at his hip. She's willing to bet he doesn't have too much formal training, and judging by his small stature he probably relies heavily on his speed and dexterity in a fight. Which is good, because Terezi would bet her life that she's much, much faster.

She envious him his sword though.

Numerous treks down into every hidden crevice Terezi knew and several she didn't where all for naught, serving only to piss off or frighten Karkat (he seems unusually wary about going into the dark)and waste their not-so-precious time. Roses caches were all clearly marked with streaks of that sour smelling blue that Terezi could see well beyond wood and stone, but each one had been plundered, remnants of boxes and chests emptied, crushed, and strewn about. Terezi was a competent hand-to-hand combatant, but noting could replace the reassuring weight of a sword at her hip.

Except, of course, the sword at Karkats hip.

"Give me your sword Karkat." She exclaims, breaking a silence that had prevailed for several minutes ever since they crested the top of the great wall, Karkat being too caught up in staring at the lightly glowing wyvern corpse on the bridge to do much more complaining.

They were standing now within the wall itself, looking down sheer rock walls forming the sides of a pit descending down into the dark of the structures interior. Her voice echoes softly through the cavernous space, though the reverberations are soon swallowed by Karkat's enthusiastic response.

"Fucking excuse me? Why would I do that?"

Terezi has to hold back laughter at the way his fire leaps and jumps with his words, the flickering of fear in response to either the dark or the height being repurposed for something she guesses is supposed to look threatening. But she's schools the amusement out of her face. She really is serious here; she wants that sword. She's spent very little time in labyrinthine underbelly of the upper city, and like hell is she going anywhere near its entrance unarmed.

"Because we might run into hollows down there, and I can most definitely use it better than you."

"I know how to use a fucking sword."

"As well as a Pardoner?"

"…"

"Thought not."

"We've passed like a dozen fucking sword just lying around in the last hour, why can't you just use one of them."

"Because they're all rusted pieces of shit. You can use one if it makes you feel better, but you are going to give me the good sword."

"Fuck you." Karkat says, turning his gaze back towards the rusted ladder bolted to the wall leading down into the dark with obvious trepidation, apparently thinking the matter settled.

Terezi gets serious.

"Karkat."

When he turns to face her his fire begins to shrivel even as he yells louder.

"Okay look, I don't give a fuck if you're the Goddess herself, this sword is mine." He hisses that last word through clenched teeth, and even has the guts to step forward as he continues.

"I get that you're clearly the leader in this scenario, okay? You know where you're going, you seem to be able to parse at least some of the shit Rose spews, you're a lords be fucking damned Pardoner…I get it. I respect your authority here. But just because some witch in the past or the future or whatever can sic my worst fucking nightmare on me whenever she wants is not enough to have some stranger fucking disarm me because she was too much of a clumsy shit-stained child to hold on to her own fucking weapon in the middle of a fight!"

He's starting to huff a little bit, and his flame's perked up some, but he deflates at her tone as soon as she responds.

"You're going to give me the sword, Karkat. If not because I can make better use of it, then because you and I are both well aware that I can just take it."

When the pair finally get around to descending the ladder, Terezi has the reassuring weight of a sword at her hip.

Karkat is fuming just a little, but Terezi is confident he'll get over it. She's also confident that it won't really matter if he doesn't. Still, she plans to be extra pleasant so as not to burn too many bridges before they descend into potential danger, though she's willingly to bet that the first chance she gets to demonstrate her skills will convince Karkat that her reasoning was right.

The ladder itself is not great, but far from the worst she's ever experienced. The rust digs at her skin and she pulls layers of it off with every move, but it doesn't shake or groan under their weight. She imagines it might be a little worse for Karkat though, since he doesn't have the light of a fire burning behind someone else's very being to see by. Sunlight is shining through an open doorway at the bottom however, and Karkat relaxes a little when they step out a level below the witch's hiding place under the bridge and have the open sky above them again.

They place is as desolate as ever as far as Terezi can tell, though Karkat seems to find something appealing in the view of the rooftops against the sky, judging by the way he flickers for a moment anyway. She doesn't get so much as a hint of anything alive other than the plants slowly creeping up from below. Down here more so than above it becomes apparent how long the city has been abandoned. Vines drape across the doorways lining the street and shrubs work their way out from underneath the road, interrupted only by errant patches of ash speckled with the burnt remains of bone, human and otherwise.

Terezi is fascinated by the thin glow emitted by the plants, and her staring apparently is enough to rile Karkat up out of his moody silence.

"Care to explain why, exactly, your rubbing your face against a wall of ivy?"

"Because it is warm."

"…Okay. Yeah, sure, it's warm, whatever the fuck you say."

Terezi cackles at the way Karkats voice cracks near the end, caught somewhere between rage and despair. But he's already marching off in a huff, so Terezi hurries to catch up with to make sure he doesn't wander off and get lost. Karkat speaks up as they descend the winding street, which quickly narrows as it threads through buildings and becomes even more enveloped in green.

"Since we're both in such a sharing mood, do you want to explain exactly where the fuck it is we're going?"

"It's a collection of rooms and passages beneath the city. An undercity, of sorts. There are only a few innocuous entrances, and my best guess is that it's where the people of this place used to stick their undesirables. It's also, funny enough, integrated with the sewer system."

"How fucking poetic."

"The closest entrance I know of is down here." Terezi says as they descend another set of stairs. She points to a tower looming up against the wall rising up on their left.

"That tower connects to an aqueduct running into it, eventually. It's actually the same aqueduct you can see from the bonfire you and your friend have settled down at, if that helps you orient yourself any."

"Huh. So that's what's on the other side of that gate."

"Yep, and-"

Terezi stops midsentence when she realizes someone is behind her. She can feel their breath on her scalp.

She turns and pulls her blade in a single motion, startling Karkat and bisecting whatever the hell had snuck up on her. Or it should have. But as soon as she turns the dull heat marking a roughly human sized being centimeters from her back is gone. She stands there with her sword out ahead of her, every sense straining to detect anything moving around them. Her heart beats in her eats, and for the first time since the pain in her head has begun to fade she feels blind.

"What the fuck was that all about?" Karkat asks, checking the curving street they're on himself.

"Do you see anyone?"

"Other than the crazy blind woman waving a sword around in the air?"

"Someone is here."

Karkat's hands go for a makeshift knife he had stashed between his back and cuirass, his flame visibly receding as he turns in a tight circle and curses.

"Goddamnit, I swear to the fucking Lords if this is some kind of fucking joke…"

The flame reappears, a ruddy little red thing that can barely illuminate itself, much less what's casting it. She opens her mouth to ask Karkat what he sees, but before the breath can leave her the world explodes.

Karkats shriek is cut off by a deadening thrum that tears at Terezi's ears, and a force hits her in the chest that sends her flying back off her feet. She feels her nose crack and her chest feels like it's collapsed in on itself and she's certain she'll hit the ground dead, but in fact she doesn't hit the ground at all. The explosion sends dirt and stone flying, setting off a chain reaction that sees that whole chunk of street go caving in on itself. With her burgeoning senses occluded by white noise and pain she falls, and falls.

~)

Eridan wakes up to a horrible grinding noise all around his head. He can feel walls pressed in around his limbs, and it's so dark he isn't totally sure whether or not his eyes are even open. He does what anyone would do it that situation-

He screams.

Funny enough, something nearby screams too, and the noise stops. Eridan begins huffing and grunting as he flails around in the tight space, smashing his knees and elbows up against what feels like solid stone, hoping to feel some give. The noise starts up again, and Eridan starts cursing under his breath as he struggles harder. It's when he bumps his forehead up against the wall in front of him that he realizes the sound is the stone plate ahead of him moving.

"Hey!" He calls out, ignoring the way his voice wavers and cracks. "Who's there?"

His mouth is hanging open when the stone plate moves down enough for his face to peek through the other side, a bright light half-blinding him. Gasping out what was meant to be a scream Eridan wills his body through the opening, crawling out the small space like a worm and flinging himself to the floor. He expects to fall forward, but with a dizzying rush he realizes he was lying on his back, and as he slips over the side of whatever he was in he flails down across the floor.

"Not the patient sort I see."

He spins around onto his back, one hand going up to protect his face and the other reaching for the rapier at his hip.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what he saw.

A girl stood over him, illuminated by a strange oblong lantern she held by a collection of short ropes. She was thin and short, as small as Feferi, and the chainmail and grey hood she wore were big on her frame. On anyone else Eridan would feel the need to admonish them for such ill-chosen garment, but then the way her freaky purple eyes narrowed and the reflection of the light of her ghoulish pallor made him decide to keep his mouth shut. Instead he just stared, caught between trying to say something to break the silence that was starting to stretch and drawing his weapon.

He decides on both. He narrows his eyes and is about to demand an explanation even as his hand oh so slowly loosens the blade in its sheath. But she notices, raising one eyebrow and cutting him off.

"An ingrate as well? Lovely."

Eridan stops, unsure if he should continue now that he's been caught. To buy time to think, he talks.

"Who the fuck are you?" He asks, trying to sound commanding. All he gets is another raised eyebrow.

"The last sane soul here with a civilized vocabulary, apparently." She reaches out a hand.

Eridan flinches at first, but her hand is just hovering there, open. It takes his fear addled mind a second to realize that she's offering to help him up. It's her left hand- his right hand is still clutching the grip of his rapier.

"Also, the girl who just pulled you out of the fucking wall. If that's worth anything."

His eyes flit to the side long enough to realize that the thing he was just in, the thing that he's pressing his right shoulder against so hard like he thinks he can just dissolve back into it and escape, is a coffin.

He exhales, winces, and takes her hand.