| Title: Treasure hunt gone
bad. Time: Sunday, March 21, 2004 The Thespians: Toby Darling, Lien Nguyen, Moirae (NPC) and Pascal Curio Location: Forest - Muddy Woods Notes: This is in three parts, because well... yes. It deserves to be such. This was amazing. Absolutely amazing. Things happened that I never expected to happen and it was just totally awesome. XD |
| +---[ Forest - Muddy Woods ]-------------------------------------------------+ | | | The mud around here never seems to dry up, and furthermore appears to be | | able to suck someone violently down into its depths. The branches of the | | tall black trees wind and twist and seem to grab out whenever they get a | | chance. One might swear that eyes blink and stare from beneath the waves | | of the needled leaves. Spiders crawl all over the black mossy ground and | | the wind whispers death threats across the path. It is nearly completely | | black except for the sunlight or moonlight shining through the leaves of | | the dense, frightening trees; the darkness seems to envelope the wood, | | embracing it into a void of pitch black. | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |
| Toby Darling leads his troupe of treasure-hunting adventurers through the dim moonlight into the dark forest, illuminated wand in one hand and treasure map in the other. "It sure is dark out here." His feet slop as he drudges through the mud, occasionally crunching on a twig or larger-than-average spider. Toby checks his map and points off to the left a little bit, "I think we need to head that way." |
| "Yes. Thank you, Mr. Darling, for stating the obvious," Pascal's usual sarcastic voice is heard behind Toby's as she walks behind him, arms crossed in front of her. Having received his owl almost as a challenge for her to see that the 'orb' works, she won't back down, and so she is trudging through the forest right behind the treasure hungry child. "What's this treasure you're looking for anyway?" |
| Practically breathing down the back of Toby's neck, wand lit and clutched in one sweaty hand, Lien Nguyen tugs to free her cloak from a tree branch and her boots squelch in the mud. "There isn't any treasure. You think if there was nobody would have taken it, all this time?" She would give anything for none of them to be here at all. "Toby still won't say where he got that map." |
| "The treasure is still here. Who else would go collect it?" Toby steps on a particularly large spider that makes an odd pop/squish kind of noise. "Where I got the map isn't important, Lien. I have it and it's from a trustworthy source." He guides the group between a two large trees that have grown around each other leaving a several foot wide archway. "And stop worrying, we've got the Orb, remember?" |
| Yes, yes, the Orb. Pascal can't help but smirk (though she does try to hide it) at Toby's dependence on the Orb. She continues to walk quite a ways behind the pair, her eyes cast to the ground as she steps on who knows what. As they all reaches the trees, she walks up to one of them and leans on it, jamming her hands into her robes. "Well, I hope your source isn't going to get us killed then," she chides, directing that more to Lien than anyone. |
| Lien shoots a sharp glance sidewise glance at Pascal. Maybe she caught some of that smirk; she's usually fairly observant, and even more on edge than usual--the sound of some small animal scurrying through the trees in the distance cause her to jump and point her wand all around, eyes peering wide through her glasses. "Have I made it clear that I don't like this?" she asks. One boot slips too far into the mud and she grabs a nearby tree to pull herself out. |
| Things do lurk in the woods . . . there is, after all, a reason that Scattergood students are told not to go in, and definite reasons why they should not leave the path. Creatures roam the woods, some good, some evil, some just chaotic haunt the spaces between the trees, just looking for some succulent morsel to gobble down. High above in the branches, one such creature opens a lazy eye, taking note of the note and the noise below. It is a dark being; a shadow blending easily in with its surroundings, and certainly not making any movement or noise to attract attention as those below are doing. (Silly, careless humans.) Easing upright slowly on the branch, golden eyes peer downward at the assemblage below, claws gently tightening around wood. Interesting. Very. Internally it giggles. |
| Toby continues leading the willing and unwilling through the dark of the forest weaving in and out of branches and between hanging vines. Then, suddenly and without warning he stops dead in his tracks. He peers carefully at the map uttering sounds the imply deep thought. "Uhhh... I think we're lost." He rotates the map 180 degrees in one grand motion so that is now upside down. "Oh. I had the map upside down..." |
| The combination of cold, dark and things that go bump-growl-hiss in the night as suddenly overcome Pascal's entire system. It erupts from her body in a rather violent shudder as she stands, leaning against the tree. The girl quickly regains her composure after that moment of weakness and casts a quick look around the area, thankfully the darkness shielding most of the nervousness that has now crept into her eyes. She faults! When Toby reveals that he's been looking at the map wrong the entire time, however, her entire body stiffens and her eyes narrow into slits. "You... stupid..." she starts, hissing at him, but she manages to stop herself in time, clenching her fists until they're white. |
| "You've...." Lien's eyes squeeze into pained slits and an elaborate wince forms on her face. "You've had the map upside down this ENTIRE TIME? How can you keep a map upside down this long! We've been in here AGES! You didn't notice that the WRITING IS UPSIDE DOWN?" The younger girl, too, loses herself, and considering the way she insists that the map is a fraud, she seems... a touch miffed. And it would probably be a good thing if she would keep her voice down, do you suppose? |
| Noisy, noisy. Again the creature giggles internally. Perhaps today wouldn't be quite so boring after all. They were lost, were they? Ooh . . . let's make it even more fun. Claws tap against the wood of the tree lightly, gently . . . the ends of roots emerge from the ground while they are occupied arguing, enough to catch the feet and possibly cause them, unaware, to stemble or fall. They could use it, particularly the one whose hands are turning white. Needs to release some air. Screaming would be nice, but this creature would settle for a yelp. |
| "Sorry! I'll just flip it over and we'll figure out where we are. No big deal." Toby flips the map over. "No, wait, that's the /wrong/ way. There we go." First-class navigator these kids brought with them. He keeps his feet firmly planted in one spot as he looks around and compares objects to the map. "Okay, over there there should be a tree and that way should be a big rock." Anyone looking around this part of the forest would know that there are lots of trees and lots of big rocks. "Um.. okay, no. THAT way should be the tree and THAT way should be the rock. Wait, there are two rocks there. Hmmm." He turns around to ask for directions from his adventure mates. Just as he steps toward Lien asking "Lien, is that a rock or a bush?" he catches his foot on a tree root and takes a tumble right into the small Vietnamese girl. |
| Toby is going to have to thank the magical evil spirits of the forest for distracting Pascal. That root that was suddenly brushing up against her leg /definitely/ wasn't there before. She takes a large step away from the tree, wand brandished. Her large step is actually a violent 'oh my god what the hell was that' leap. Except she doesn't exactly land gracefully, and takes yet another tumble on another root that wasn't there before. "BLOODY MURDER!" She yells, her eyes flashing, and then the string of profanities start streaming from her mouth. She'd make an axe murderer proud with that kind of vocabulary. So much for keeping quiet, and keeping her cool. |
| For once in her life, Lien is the last person left on her feet, and as she has no particular desire to roll around in this mud, she steps or stumbles back against a tree trunk, using the extra balance to try to steady the larger sixth grader. Her attention is focused past him, dark eyes blinkly slowly and mouth falling slightly open as she looks at Pascal. She hasn't... all she did was trip, Lien does that all the time... people TALK like that? |
| Ooh! Yay! A little air released. Bloody murder? The creature can't help but to release a full-fledged cackle at that, rather like the shrieking mockery of a raven, save louder, deeper. Bloody murder. That was good. Ravens that actually are ravens stir in the trees, answering with cackles of their own, the trees coming alive with a cacophony of sound. The roots slip over the ground, not even bothering to be subtle now, aiming to twine around Pascal and Toby's ankles. |
| "Did you hear that?" Toby queries as he gets to his feet using Lien's tree as a kind of crutch. His wand still illuminated he looks toward the sky searching for the source of the noise and the to ground just in time to spot tree roots heading toward his ankles. He tries to step out of their path but he is not quick enough and one of the roots is beginning to wrap itself around his right ankle. "Ah! It's got me! Get it off! Get it off!" Toby shakes his foot violently trying to free himself from the slowly tightening grip. |
| That noise, cackle, shriek, was not nice. Were Pascal not already hot blooded and freaking out, her blood would have been chilled. Her voice has somewhat lowered itself, and her eyes are still cast to the ground, darting quickly back and forth between the area right in front of her, to the area around Toby and Lien. She spots the roots alright, and her hand shakes as she sticks her wand out. Roots equal wood, and wood equals burning which in Pascal's haste really only means fire. So between her rainbow profanities, the older girl is quickly and rather sloppily, one should add, casting 'Incendio' at anything that's moving towards her. |
| "Don't!" Lien shrieks. At the sound of the ravens in the trees she had gone very pale and cast a frightened and confused look upward, but Pascal's spellcasting brings her eyes back down. "You could set the whole forest on fire, you idiot!" The girl has her wand in hand, but she really doesn't know what to do with it. "Just stun them or something!" Geez, didn't this girl every see Smokey Bear? Again Lien glances up into the tree branches, another look mingling with her panic, one of trying very hard to understand something just out of reach. |
| Fire in the forest. A grand idea, isn't it? Especially when so many things are flammable, really -- as Lien so kindly points out. Fortunately whoever is in control of these roots is a fast thinker and the tendrils yank sharply back into the ground, snuffing out the fire on the way. Fire does not survive well in earth. Sigh. The wood returns to silence, but an eerie one, almost angry, listening. Well, you don't set someone's bed on fire and not expect some form of animosity. |
| The squeezing on Toby's ankle suddenly releases and he watches as the roots retract themselves back into the ground. "Phew." He looks over at Pascal whose fire-flinging saved the day. "Thanks, Pascal. Real life saver. You okay, Lien?" He notices that she's not dead, so he assumes that means she's fine. "Okay, time to get back to the school now. What do you guys think?" |
| Apparently all that spell casting has gotten Pascal quite riled up, and she laughs at the boy sarcastically. "Are you kidding me? Go back to the school? You're giving up?" She crosses her arms in front of her chest, and though she doesn't outwardly show it, Lien's comment is carefully taken into consideration as Pascal's eyes cloud over considerably. Her next phrase is worded rather carefully while the girl slowly makes her way over to the pair. "You've gotten us lost, Toby. There's something alive around here, and I'm pretty sure that I've just really, /really/ pissed it off." She sighs, and that's about as much apology as they'll get from her right now. "We're probably not going anywhere until it's done with us." Nevermind that she was the one casting the fire. They're still standing as a group. |
| This really are extreme circumstances. Lien called Pascal an idiot and she's still standing entirely unhexed. But watch her push her luck--she narrows her eyes at Pascal and stands up away from the tree she was against. "Talking like that--I thought you hated it when people gave up without a fight." Her voice carries a tone of challenge and an uncharacteristic note of authority when she looks sharply at Toby. "Which way is it back to the school?" (Still, for all the show, the hand that she hasn't shoved into her pocket is trembling so that she has to clutch her wand very tightly.) |
| Treasure hunt gone bad. Part 2. |
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