Mímir Temple Exploration [Quest]

So they were building a model of the solar system? That sounded lame. Damian nodded towards Olive, since she clearly knew what she was doing. He began scanning the ground for any discs that looked similar to the first one. After a while of scrounging, Damian managed to uncover something that gave off somewhat of a shine. He grabbed it and pulled it out of the dust and dirt, revealing a ring that was differently sized. "I found one." he said, handing the second disc to one of the girls.

"Astronomy? Really?" This was stupidly easy, never mind boring. Lilian took the disc that Damian had found before passing it off to Olive, who was in the right area to put it where it belonged. "I feel like the game creator got things mixed up. The story of Odin and Mímir has nothing to do with the solar system. They should've been looking at the Greek or Roman gods if they wanted that," she said, letting out an exasperated sigh as she handed over another disc that had been just a little bit away from where the second one was. "I'm still expecting a musical puzzle..." But dear God, she could only hope that that wouldn't be the case.

Olive grinned as she put the pieces together. It was simlpe, really, the larger one was supposed to go as the Sun and the smaller one as the Moon. Soon she had the job done and the wall started to give out a mechanical clunk and the wall began to split apart. The sounds it made as the stone was pulled apart was a screech so high-pitched Olive thought she was going to fall off her feet. The doors must have been closed for ages. The mage hopped to retrieve Lilian's torch from the wall and soon they were good to go again. She returned by the ranger's side, smiling. The halls had fallen into silence once again.

Beyond them the tunnel gapped like a mouth, waiting to swallow them in its dark depths. Even their torches eemed useless as they walked through. The place seemed dead, dust billowing in hard clouds as they walked through. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and Olive almost screamed when one touched her face. She clasped her hand over her mouth and walked further, heart skipping beats uneasily.

Even Damian felt anxious of the darkness that spread ahead of them. He took a deep breath before continuing on with his torch in one hand and the Self-Writing Map in the other. No matter where he held the torch he couldn't see any walls. The room or hallway in front of them was absolutely massive. Damian continued to lead the two others along the middle of the pathway. "Do either of you see anything yet? I'm not getting anything of worth," he said to the girls.

Once that puzzle was finished, Lilian was glad to start moving but still couldn't hold back the biting urge that there was most definitely something musical that would be going on here. There was no way that they were referencing Mímir and completely ignoring the nine magical melodies of Odin. She rolled her eyes, an amused glint in them when Olive smiled at her, and she continued on the way through the tunnel. This was some horror or thriller movie... It seemed like it. Or maybe a creepypasta. Maybe she read too many of them before jumping into this game.

She kept expecting some twisted bodies or random creatures to jump out at her and creep her out or a spider-like monster to unknowingly be crawling on her back and face before injecting its venom and-- Nononono. Lilian smacked her hands onto her cheeks to snap herself out of it. Deep breaths, Lily. Deep breaths.

The moment she managed to calm herself down, she could hear an echoing in the distance, the ominous sound of cracked bells chiming through the halls. Leaping almost a foot or two, she almost let out a startled cry before holding it back, shoving it down her throat and hoping to maintain her composure. Where were those bells coming from?

Olive walked by Lilian's side, holding the torch for the ranger, while using her flame to light the tiles she was stepping on. Unlike the tunnels they had been previously walking through, here she couldn't see the walls no matter how much she stretched towards the side with her flame and leaving Lilian in half-darkness from time to time. Every step seemed to echo in her brain louder than ever, and she looked around at her teammates now and then, freaked out every time a step sounded off rythm. Even Damian seemed uneasy. Maybe the mage had been imagining that he would be the frightless boy, but it seemed like the idea was farfetched. Not that she was surprised.

She heard the odd ringing of bells, too, sounding broken, like cries for help. Olive wanted to groan in fear and turn back while they still had a chance to tell the path back outside, but she stuck with the other players, silently cursing under her breath. She could tell the ranger had picked up the sound as well, for she was tense and weary like herself. The younger girl prepared to ask the question that made her throat dry with unease, but she realized that she wouldn't get an answer.

"Who thinks that was a Wicken put your hand up." she said instead, something in her tone struggling to sound cheerful. It fell short of that and her tone felt broken. She glanced up at Lilian, remembering their horrific escape from the ruins. Olive hoped that her guess had been incorrect, that it was not a Wicken, just some... bells. The ring repeated and made her shiver.

Damian gave a dry chuckle, but drew his sword, just in case. The ring made the boy even uneasier than he already had been. "Let's just.. get done as fast as possible. This place is giving me some seriously bad vibes," he told the two of them, stepping up his pace. Hopefully, even without having the map in-hand, it would fill itself out. As they continued down the dark path, they hit the end of the tunnel, another wall. But, as Damian noticed, he felt a cool breeze coming from either end of the darkness. He sighed. "Alright, from what I can tell, each end of this wall has a passage way. We can either split up, having me go it alone and leaving you two together, or we all go down the same path. Which do you guys prefer?"

As they continued to traverse onward, all Lilian could do was stick very, very close to the light and the other two players, keeping a more than firm grip on her bow. There was absolutely no way that she was going to stray very far from it - absolutely not -, and if she tried anything else, she'd hate herself. In her mind, she tried to pick up the pitches of the melody the bells played, but the more she attempted to figure out what notes they were, the more her mind felt scrambled. Biting the bottom of her lip, Lilian really did wish she knew how music worked. Her brother had mentioned in the past how RPGs liked having musical puzzles and that memorizing melodies was part of that; too bad he wasn't here to help.

Though, on second thought, having her brother around wouldn't be really good, would it? Lilian let out an exasperated sigh. Hopefully there is a piano around if we need to do some guesswork. She perked up a little when Damian mentioned the split passageway. While it would probably cover more ground if they went on the two separate paths, the very idea of not having people together didn't really make her feel comfortable. "Err... Let's stick together. We haven't run into anything yet, but it could get dangerous, right?" Man, she sounded stupid. So much for being used to working independently. "It'd be bad if you died or something on the other side, especially since you have the map." That was totally reasonable, wasn't it? It definitely had to be.

Olive herself was trying hard to guess the notes that were playing. She wished she had been back in France - there she knew a girl who could tell every note apart as if music spoke to her directly and told her what to say. She had been a classmate, but she was also cold and distant, and people could hardly get her to open up. Their homeroom teacher had expressed something about a 'family tragedy' and 'inherited timidity'. Anyway, the little girl would've come in handy now.

The melody sounded odd, as if someone was chucking stones at an empty metal ball. Each individual sound had its own echo and they mingled, creating a mellody following quickly afterwards, same as the first one. The mage stopped as they came to a turn. "If we split up, we could cover more ground. This game has to have some quick messaging system... right?" she proposed, remembering how Wolfgang had used such a way to call all the players at the midnight gathering. Even tho the thought of splitting up made her feel slightly uneasy, but it was for the best to move faster and thus exit the ruins faster. She looked up back at Damian...

From the hallway on the left lunged a boneless hand. It barely missed Olive's cheek with its cracked, overgrown, claw-like nails. The mage eeked in surprise and dodged backwards. She raised the fireball atop her head then quickly threw it in the face of the ghoul-like creature. What was left of its gray skin burned and its bones sizzled and darkened while the creature yowled in pain and dropped a few inches short of the shadow, dead. Or at least dead again. "Shit." she muttered, heaving from the shock of the jump-scare.

Damian had been about to finalize their plan to split up when a creature attacked Olive. Thankfully the mage could handle herself and took care of the bony creature. "Now that I think about it, maybe splitting up isn't such a good idea," he said. What if he was caught alone? Maybe we should avoid the direction that creature came from? But what if, like most video games, the area with the enemies is the way to completing the task?" he thought out loud, trying to figure out what to do.

To say that she simply freaked out a little bit when the monster made its appearance, sneaking away from the shadows that had given it cover, would be a blatant understatement. Lilian never did well with horror for movies or television shows, and actually having to experience a legitimate jump scare was enough for her to almost shoot her arrow in panic, only stopping herself when Olive had handled the creature with ease. Her hands felt sweaty - was that even supposed to be possible in a game? -, doing poorly with the sheen glistening on her forehead. She hated that she was as white as a blanket over something so trivial.

It was good to hear that Damian was against splitting up. After that encounter, she wasn't sure whether she would want to. These stupid environments were all too creepy, crawling with dumb monsters that she didn't feel like dealing with. It wasn't like she was scared or anything like that. Definitely not. Stop being a scaredy-cat, she chided to herself. She still wasn't really sure how video games worked. They all had stupid logic. "Wouldn't it be safer to avoid the direction it came from?" Plus, if they did, they'd be able to save their own skin and not die, if it came down to it. If.

Olive tried to ignore the fact that her skin had turned ghostly white and her heart was racing like a bloodhound after a scent, and decided on pulling a serious face and continue contributing in the mission, even with the fact that she was ready to faint and barely held back a few tears of fright and sadness. She wiped the sleeve of her coat on her face and took a deep breath. She could read uncertainty on the faces of her friends. Damian was keen on making the quest harder with the possible promise of a greater reward, maybe, while Lilian was thinking about their skin and how they should stay alive above all. Even if the had three lives, they had to ration them, in some way.

"I think I'll have to agree with Damian, even so. If we go through the chamber together, what could happen? If we work together, we'll be fine, I think..." she suggested, looking through the dark. She was no longer holding her flame, just looking around and gripping the torch for dear life, as if it were the only thing keeping her safe. "Do we really have to map out the whole extent of this place? It looks huge." she asked the fighter, since she considered him the head of the team. While this had not been decided, she still saw him as the strongest, having a sword to fight enemies off, while she and the ranger had to either load their attacks or fire arrows.

Damian shook his head. "The map was a cover. The dude wanted some treasure. So if we come back and a path isn't mapped out I don't think it'd be the worst thing in the world," he said. "So, Danger Path it is. Let's go." He kept his sword out as he led them down the path, careful to watch for any creatures that could leap out. So far so quiet however. Damian kept a close watch on the path ahead of him after hearing a groaning noise, like a tree was falling. A Wicken was near. He held up his sword to signal to remain still and waited for the tree creature to attack. A moment later, it did. It lept at Damian first and he swung his sword at it, cutting out a hunk of wood from it's body. But then, an idea struck him. The next time the Wicken lept at him, he stuck his torch on its body, causing the creature to light up. It screamed a hideous scream and Damian tried to clutch his ears but could not. Finally, after a minute of screaming, the creature finally died.

"That probably alerted the entire Temple; we need to run." And so they did.

Lilian pouted, half out of fear and half because she was a tiny bit upset that the other players didn't think they should play it more safe than sorry. Just a tiny bit upset. Not anything more than a few millimeters. With a sigh, she conceded without question. They probably knew more about games than she did, and she didn't want to get into a more heated debate than it could already be. Did you really have to call it 'danger path'? Not only was it cliche and rather silly-sounding, the ranger felt all the more uncomfortable at the prospect that it was actually going to be risky doing this.

As they headed down the pathway, her knuckles grew tense, starch white with the grip around her bow. It was quiet for awhile. Eerily quiet with a foreboding sense of danger; everyone knew it was going to happen. The event in movies where, in the middle of nowhere, in the absolute bottom of the barrel, and the group is wandering together, and then something pops up to make them either separate or warn others of the protagonists' appearance. One of those dumb Wickens had appeared, and to say that she wasn't terrified out of her wits... Would be an utter lie.

Damian had taken care of it real fast, but that ear-splitting screech was horrendous. Her hands instinctively flew up to her ears to block the noise, her bow dropping to the ground with a clang! and with Damian's order to run, she wasted no time doing so.

Only to realize too late that she didn't have her weapon with her.

"Are you kidding me?!" Lilian groaned.

Olive nodded and followed after Damian, scanning the dark uneasily. The feeling of dread kept on creeping after her, and the mage could already guess what was going to happen before it did. The Wicken leapt out of the shadows, lunging at Damian and nearly injuring him. Luckily, the fighter was fast and he burned the creature to ashes, which was both a relief and a terrifying moment of holding her hands against her ears to block the blood-curling screams of the dying creature.

At Damian's words, the mage was swifftly running behind him, but something felt different. She looked over her shoulder to find Lilian in half-darkness, without her torch. The sighed and pulled down besides her, still sprinting. Olive grinned and reached out for the ranger's hand. "You can hold my hand if you are scared..." she whispered, but as her hand closed around the other girl's, she flicked her wrist and opened Lilian's UI for her. "Check your inventory. It should be there." she said, letting go of the blonde's wrist and giving her a small smirk.