The Cave

"Wait, don' go," said Kendrik, trying to pull himself up, but it was too late. Reyes quickly, but quietly, moved out of the room, shut the door, and headed down the stairs. The hound stood up, stumbling forward. He knew that he had good odds of falling down the stairs, but he had to keep Reyes and Thytes away from each other. Nevertheless, he looked back at Jaron, who spun around in the chair and stared at the floor. "Ya alright?" Kendrik said, taking some more steps towards the door.

Jaron nodded and stopped the chair, standing up. "He didn't know," Jaron whispered, also stumbling around in the room. Kendrik reached out and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him over. "I wish he didn't run away, though; we need him."

"Yep," said Kendrik, biting his lip. He and Jaron rested against each other, each placing a hand on the other's shoulder. Together, they opened the door and went down the stairs. By some miracle, they reached the floor below without incident, though Kendrik quickly propped himself against the counter for support when they reached the bottom.

He heard a strange noise at his feet. Kendrik crouched down to find Thytes hiding under the counter.

"Really?" Kendrik said, raising an eyebrow as he reached up a hand to the counter to hold himself up. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jaron wandering around the store, picking up and peering at bottles. "'I'd be his pet?'" Ya have that bad a crush or somethin'?"

Thytes, who'd kept his eyes shut, opened one to glare at Kendrik. "He picked the lock, talked to the dead, and saved our lives. Can you blame me if I am a little interested?"

"He ain't," Kendrik said. "And it looks like he ran off 'cause he thought we were all mad at him. 'Specially you."

"Don't be absurd," Thytes said, pushing himself away from the counter and rising up, then turning to view the store. "I would have heard him if he had -"

Kendrik looked out over the store. Reyes was, of course, nowhere to be seen. The fox was presently drinking out of a bottle full of something colored bright red. He seemed to be pretty happy with whatever it was, considering he was chugging it. Kendrik decided he had more important things to deal with.

"I was standing right there," Thytes mumbled, pointing to the middle of the store. "And then you came down, and I hid under the counter, but I cannot think of a way that he could have slipped past me."

Kendrik rolled his eyes. "If he's so good at everythin', he'd be good at that. And now we need to go find 'im. Jaron, ya okay?"

Setting down the bottle, Jaron started to shake. It seemed like every muscle in his body twitched, and he grinned far more than he usually did. It was unnerving, to say the least. "I-I-I-I-I-I'm fi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ine," he said, giving a thumbs up.

The hound would've responded, but he heard a crashing noise outside. Jaron screamed and ran as far away from the front door as possible - hiding behind a couple barrels in the process - while Kendrik and Thytes both stared out the shattered windows. The noise came from deeper in the town, and they couldn't see the cause from where they stood.

"Guess that's 'im," Kendrik said. He tried to leap over the counter, but ended up sliding across it and falling face-first onto the floor. He quickly pulled himself up and tried to pretend nothing had happened, walking unsteadily towards the door. "Let's go get him."

Jaron nodded excitedly and shot ahead, opening the door. With one last nervous glance back, Kendrik exited, followed shortly by Thytes and Jaron.

Adeline blinked and sat up, her head spinning slightly. She glanced down at herself, a bit disoriented- nothing broken. Carefully getting to her feet, she surveyed the landscape. Kartiel must have teleported them here- she should probably have paid more attention.

"I really hate teleporting.." she murmured under her breath.

She looked over at the man that Kartiel had landed on- he looked slightly upset.

"Hello." She called over lightly, trying to loosen the atmosphere, "I'm Adeline- pleasure to meet you."

He was falling.

James could feel his sleep deprived consciousness being torn from the sleep realm with one violent shove as he felt his body reel in shock at landing on top of another person. That person happened to be Maahes, who was... holding... him?

Once being fully asleep, and now being fully awake, he ripped himself out of Maahes's arms, body involuntarily trembling as he did so. He was in persistent denial of it, but he knew he was getting sick, and his physical well-being was quickly deteriorating. The stress probably wasn't helping either, but hell if that was going to ever leave the equation. And now he was somewhere entirely different from the cave. He wasn't even on the beach, which would've been something he knew. He was in some... town?

James turned away from the others, and leaned with his forearms on the wall of the building. He tried to get his body to stop shivering, but he felt cold, and the rush of nearly depleted adrenaline that came with the anxiety of waking up in a completely foreign place was not helping to calm any part of him. He turned his head to look bitterly at Maahes; a cold, dejected look of betrayal.

But he didn't say anything. He was deliberately holding his tongue, because he knew that if someone pushed him even just a little more, something in him would break.

"Hi," he replied. "I'm Reyes Eberhardt."

He was in the middle of trying to get all the dirt and dust out of his hair and off of his clothes when he spoke, but it was far from an easy task. It seemed to cling to every place it could.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lucifer scooting away from the man that was currently receiving an absolutely betrayed look from the man who had gotten so upset earlier. His attempts to get away were foiled when Kartiel suddenly appeared at his side and put his hand on his shoulder as he started to point things out that he had noticed in the town.


The look that Vala had given him when she figured out that the bookworm of a traveler she had met and the Goa'uld visiting her planet were both him had been a heartbreaking look that none could ever fully replicate, but James came pretty close. It made him feel absolutely horrible for even thinking of moving him in the first place, but he wasn't going to leave him alone in the cave when he was as bad off as he was.

He didn't say anything. He just stared down at the ground and briefly back up at James, knowing that if he said his reasons the wrong way - or even just said something in general - his friend would likely get even more angry than he already was.

Kratzer dusted himself off, looking around at the abandoned town. Auryon glanced about with a raised eyebrow - this place looked either really fun or really boring. Generally she preferred people, or at least something that bled, but hey, it was certainly creepy. It reminded her a bit of the circus after Apophis had her fun: a place that should be bustling left in that eerie silence, an oppressive miasma cast over it.

Kratzer himself had similar memories, mostly of the ghettos when the people had been cleared out, or even the camps. He was careful to keep his face masked and difficult to read: they didn't need to know a thing about what was going through his head or his heart.

Despite being the least familiar with any of them, Thytes was the first to meet the newcomers. "Hello!" he said, waving. "Are you okay?" He stood in front of Reyes, spotting all the dirt Reyes was trying to brush off. "Do you need any help?"

Kendrik rolled his eyes, but chose not to say anything. He and Jaron approached slowly and warily, mostly because he had to cling onto Jaron for support and Jaron's constant shaking was a little inconvenient. They approached the guy - Thomas? - who rested against the wall. He looked at one of the others with a hurt expression on his face, but Kendrik was more concerned by how unsteady and pale the guy appeared.

"Yer Thomas, right?" Kendrik said to the man. He tried to lean against the wall as well, but started to slide towards the floor. "Ya look like a mess."

Jaron nodded in agreement. And couldn't stop nodding. Kendrik pulled himself back up by placing a hand on Jaron's head, then gave a nervous smile. This wasn't going so well.

"No sh*t," James muttered, looking down at the floor and away from everyone else.

"If it helps ya any," Kendrik said, slapping a hand on Thomas's back. "I'm so drunk I can't walk straight, and Jaron here drank somethin' or 'nother and he's -" Kendrik turned around to look at the fox, who raised his hand and waved. A minute later, when it was clear Jaron wouldn't stop waving, Kendrik moved the hand back down.

"But yeah," Kendrik said. "'s fine. 's all fine."

James nearly fell when Kendrik hit his back, meagerly recovering as his legs stiffened beneath him for support. He looked at Kendrik in weary annoyance and clenched his jaw shut, holding back every biting reply he had in response to 'it's fine.

Bullsh*t, was what he wanted to say. Nothing was fine and it only got less fine as things went on. None of them were fine. They were in a pocket of existence beneath a cave! For all they knew they were trapped, and they didn't know what was down here!

He let out a long exhale through his nose and he closed his eyes. His patience was wearing thin.

Adeline dug through her satchel, looking through the objects she had stuffed into it in her last raid. She had been waiting for an opportune moment to get a good look at them. Something caught her eye- a silver flask decorated with colored runes. She unscrewed the top, wishing she could smell the liquid. She grinned, imagining that inside was a potion with fantastic effects. If it was poison, she reasoned, it wouldn't hurt her.

Without another thought, she raised it to her lips and tilted her head back, swallowing a large amount. The next minute, she was coughing, bent over with her hands on her knees. The contents inside the flask seemed to be a very strong alcohol. She spit out what she hadn't swallowed into the dirt.

"Vile. Completely vile." She murmered to herself, pouring out the contents of the flask.

Kartiel watched what Adeline was doing with interest, which gave Lucifer the opportunity he needed to get as far away from both him and the man - if he even was that - with the terrifyingly strange soul. His gaze swept throughout the area in search of someone he could talk to, eventually landing on the man who appeared to be growing more and more annoyed.

In the background, he could hear Kartiel asking Adeline if he could try taking a sip of the drink before she finished dumping it all out.

Lucifer nervously made his way over to the man, taking the pencil he had put behind his ear out. He began to fiddle with it. He'd switch it from one had to the other, worriedly turning it this way and that. "I-I might be able to help you," he quietly said when he was only a foot away from the man. "I know some spells that help with exhaustion. There's already water on the shore, so I'd probably just use a filtration spell for that. But since the food here probably isn't good, I'd have to conjure up something to eat instead-"

He abruptly stopped, staring down at his feet and continuing the fiddle with the pencil. "I'm sorry for rambling. I just wanted you to know that I could probably help you feel better. I have a lot of experience with magic, so my spells barely go wrong these days and it's never something as spells like that."

James slowly looked up when he realized that the horned boy was talking to him. His head was starting to feel fuzzy, and in the brief lapse of silence he'd blocked everything out, so he didn't really catch the first part of what Lucifer said. But he did get I can help you feel better and magic. He didn't know what spells were, but for all he knew that was some terminology used in Lucifer's world for something else.

He felt another wave of exhaustion hit him, this time paired with it's dear friend nausea - causing him to swallow hard what felt like baby vomit trying to force its way up.

This was a miserable existence.

"If your magic can... h-heal me or whatever..." James said slowly, hoping he didn't regret his next words. "As long as it doesn't... do anything else..." he sighed. "Then... fine."

He paused, trying to will the nausea away.

"Please," he added softly.

He nodded, then got to work with the first of several spells. He had to relieve his exhaustion first - he could tell that the man had barely been paying attention to him. The feeling of his magic washing over him would have likely felt like an invasive, uncomfortable warmth, but there was little he could do about that.

Then he turned in the direction of the shore, creating a container to scoop the water into. A spell later, and the water was ready to drink. His final spell was to create a bowl of soup. He wasn't sure if the man liked food like that, but he knew that it always made humans feel better by the time they finished it.

All of this happened in a little over a minute - practice had made him quite quick at casting spells. He returned to the man with the cup of water in one hand and the soup bowl in the other, and handed them over to him.

Hopefully, he would feel better now.

"If that's enough or you need something else, I'll cast another spell," he said.

James had never experienced a magic like this before, but it was beyond what he could explain or imagine. He’d never heard of a magic based on wordy incantations called spells, and he found it very fascinating.

But he was still exhausted. If, less so physically, he was still entirely drained in every other way and only nodded when Lucifer returned with water and soup. He sat down, as if unsure of how long his renewed energy would last, taking the water and soup gingerly as he did so.

“Thank you,” was his quiet reply before he slowly sipped at the soup, savoring the taste and smell of food of which he’d been so deprived.

That magic terrified Kendrik. It wasn't like anything he had seen before, with all the strange incantations and summoning food and water. Between that and Thomas clearly not wanting anything to do with him or Jaron, Kendrik decided it'd be in his best interests to go somewhere else.

"Yeah," said Kendrik, taking a step back and grabbing Jaron's hand. "I'll see ya later. Sorry 'bout that."

He walked off, Jaron in tow. They quickly started to lean on each other as Kendrik approached Thytes. The alcohol was starting to wear off, fortunately enough; he could almost stand up straight, and he was reasonably sure most of his shaking was because of Jaron. Unfortunately, that meant a headache was already on its way.

Kendrik tapped Thytes on the shoulder. When the lion didn't respond, Kendrik yanked the shoulder. Thytes immediately turned around, scowling. "What is it?" he hissed. "I was talking to Reyes."

"Cute," said Kendrik. He pushed Jaron between them. "Can ya tell me what's up with him? He's been shakin' and twitchin' since he drank that bottle back there."

Thytes glared at Kendrik, but set his hands down on Jaron's shoulders - holding the fox in place - and peered into Jaron's eyes.

"He's had too much sugar," Thytes whispered. "It will wear off soon enough. Was that worth wasting my time?"

"Yer wastin' it already," Kendrik shot back, pulling Jaron away. They walked towards the rest of the group, in case there was anything worth seeing or anyone worth talking to before they headed to the town hall.