The Cave

"If other realities do exist, then it's definitely not beyond the realm of possibility," James said with a small nod before falling into silence for a short moment, considering the question he was about to ask.

"So... if this isn't how you really look like, then what do you look like?"

"Uh..." He raised his head again, turning to look at James as he tried to come up with a decent description of what he looked like. It was hard when he didn't exactly have a mirror he could look at himself in.

"Well," he said, stretching his arms out, "I'm big. Not too big, but definitely bigger than this. And then I have tentacles, too." He awkwardly mimed them. "Sometimes I think they kind of have a mind of their own. I have more than two eyes, scales and I think maybe even something that looks like wings?"

Jaron walked over to the building, taking slow and unsteady footsteps so he could feel for the wires in the ground. Sure enough, the wires went straight to the building.

It wasn't long before he stood in front of the metal door. Overhead, a large blue sign announced something in symbols he couldn't read - "RECORDING STUDIO" - while other symbols were embedded into the wall next to the door. Four, in fact; new symbols appeared when Jaron grabbed one and pushed it down or up.

He could feel the hound wrap his arms around Jaron's chest. "If this is another one of those code things," Kendrik said, "I'm not gettin' separated from ya again."

Smiling, the fox kept moving the symbols around.

"Brilliant, ours is th-" she stops abruptly, eyes flashing. "Ours is not so friendly," she says with a shake of her head. Kratzer puts his arm over her shoulders.

Adeline finally slipped through, but the momentum caused her to loose her balance and land flat on her stomach on the tunnel floor. She didn't need to hear the shatter to know that she had broken herself again.

"Ow." She whispered softly into the darkness.

How embarrassing. The first non-hostile person she had met in a while and she was falling and breaking all over the place.

Thankfully, the source of the sparkling was right in front of her face. With difficulty, she took off one of her shoes and hammered at the large, clear rock in the wall.

Reyes just stood back and watched the whole thing, unsure of how he could be of any help and confused by the recording system being there in the first place. Actually, everything about this cave confused him: the beach, this beach, the recording studio - none of it should have been under the cave in the first place.

But yet here he was, standing next to two bipedal animals that were in the middle of trying to solve a puzzle in a recording studio underneath a cave.


Lucifer gave a small nod, not quite sure how to respond to something like that. It shouldn't have been so surprising. The myths, after all, had to come from somewhere.


"Do you...do you need any help?" Kartiel questioned, hearing another shatter.

"So...do you have any idea where we are?" she asks him.

Lucifer shook his head. "I just woke up in the woods outside of this cave...I'm not sure how I got here, or where here even is. I'm guessing it's not exactly a normal place? There's a lot of people here who aren't anything like what I'm used to."

Adeline sighed and carefully scooted herself back out of the tunnel, her rock and shoe in hand.

"Um... if you would maybe help me not run into anything- that would be great."

She hesitated at the lip of the entrance she had had trouble with before, not wanting to break anything else. The rock she had found- probably some type of impure quartz- was a lucky find, but wasn't large enough to fix any more damage than she already had inflicted.

"Apophis has nothing?" Kratzer asks her.

"Zilch, or at least, that she'll tell me, but you know how she is."

A smile slowly grew on James’s face. “Well, that certainly is quite different from this, then.”

Nope, nothing worked. The door didn't spring open, rocks didn't fall over their head, the building didn't explode. So, one on hand, this didn't have a trap attached. On the other hand, it wasn't going to let them in. Jaron was tempted to throw a bomb at it, but he decided that'd probably be a bad idea. He wanted to inspect the wires and any other technology inside, and he couldn't do that if the building was a pile of rubble. It was times like these that he really wished he carried weaker explosives.

He did a catch a poster stuck on the wall nearby, though. Jaron took a step towards it. The hound did the same, but didn't let go of Jaron. If it weren't for his focus on the poster, Jaron would've smiled.

It was a simple design - a blue body with white edges. The impression of a wheel rested at the center. Above was that familiar phrase - "HE'S COMING" - and below was something else. Four letters. "SAHR."

Kendrik had spotted the same thing. "Hey, Reyes?" he called. "Tell me what that says and I'll say sorry fer steppin' on your foot."

Kartiel wasn't sure how good at a job like that he would be, but he made sure to go over to where Adeline was and keep an eye out for anything potentially harmful.


Lucifer didn't want to bother the two, but he was always curious about new magic - and it seemed like they were communicating with their Apophis in a way that he had yet to learn of. "Um, excuse me?" he hesitantly asked, looking over at the woman. "How are you talking to Apophis right now? I don't see her here, which means you're telepathically communicating, right?"


Reyes didn't really want an apology for something as simple as getting his foot stepped on - he had dealt with far worse during his time dealing with ghosts, namely multiple pieces of furniture falling on him or being chucked at him - but he did want to help figure out what was going on. He walked over to the poster and studied it for a moment before replying to Kendrik's request.

"It says, 'He's coming' and 'S-A-H-R." Reyes frowned. "I'm not sure what that last part means, but I don't like the sound of the first part."

Auryon chuckles ruefully. "Come on, Apophis, why don't you say hi? Oh, you're seriously going t- you're already- sto- you're a b****. Yeah, well, torture him and not me. You can't say you aren't curious. Whatever. Please? No thanks to you. Give me a break, it's your fault we're here in the first place! If you'd bee-" she cut herself off, inhaling sharply. "Yes, ma'm."

She slipped out of Kratzer's arm and her eyes began to glow, pupils lengthening until they were vertical like a serpent's. Her teeth got distinctively longer and predatory. Her body didn't change but her demeanor did - from casual and guarded to confident and authoritative. Her gaze fell on Kratzer first.

"Wonderful to see you again, der Silberfuchs."

"To quote my dear Auryon, you're a b****," he said dryly.

She smiled sweetly. "Aw, darling, you can't blame me for what my sister did."

He doesn't bother answering this, just looks away and disengages. She laughs and turns to Lucifer.

"She's my vessel," Apophis explains to him. "She sold me her soul in the 1860s."

Finally, Adeline was able to gently squirm her way out completely. She sighed in relief and stood, clutching her rock protectively. Her shattered knee was now exposed, but her tunic was hiding the blunt of the damage on her torso.

Not wasting any time, she turned and slid her oversized garment down around her shoulders so that her chest was exposed. Besides turning a bit for Kartiel's discretion, she quickly forgot that he was there.

She closed her eyes and held the quartz to the spot just over her heart. Her skin softened and bubbled around it, eventually enveloping it. As her heart started beating again, the cracks and missing chunks in her skin slowly started fusing together.

When it was over, Adeline looked down and smiled gently. It now had taken on the hue of the quartz- sort of a foggy white.