Welcome to Gaia! ::

Suddenly everything was bright. Zanazziite cried out lifting an arm to cover her eyes which had already closed out of instinct. It was like someone had flipped on a giant flood light. She was so shocked she didn't even realize there were a chorus of curses ringing out around her. It took a couple moments but Zan finally blinked the dark spots from her eyes and her vision cleared. Lowering her arm she stopped midway, it was red. Why was her arm red? Slowly she looked down at herself and swallowed a scream. Her dress was covered in blood, as were her clovers, and her hair was stained and sticking to the back of her neck. It seemed her tuck and roll had taken her through the majority of the blood. But where did the blood come from? Finally giving up on her gloves, they were covered in dirt, blood, and who knew what else, she pulled them off, revealing perfectly manicured hands again and she tossed them on the ground. Once that was done she turned searching for the source of all that blood.

It didn't take her long to find it. There was a dead knight, or at least he looked to be dead, lying on the ground surrounded by a puddle of blood. She shuddered and took a step back, she didn't not want to go any closer to him. She was already covered in his blood. Turning she looked around the rest of the room to distracted herself. The first thing she noticed was the giant statue she was standing in front of, and then the other statues lining the walls. Her jaw dropped and without thinking she reached down the front of her dress pulling Rufus out and cradling him to her chest. The rat didn't protest, curling up in her hand. She petted him as she stared around the tomb, the feeling of fur, no mater how dirty, under her fingers comforting.

She finally got around to looking at the floor, it seemed the floors of this place always held something. And unsurprisingly there was a paragraph written on the floor here. She stepped forwards wanting to inspect the statue and the inscription one hand pausing in petting Rufus to adjust her glasses.

She was distracted from her inspecting by Mr. Darrow's voice. Oh! She almost forgot. Whipping her head around she spotted him and hurried over to his side. "I'm alright, just...covered in blood, like Carrie at the prom." She frowned and then turned towards the statue again. "This is a big statue." Her hand lifted and went back to petting Rufus absently.

Ian moved towards the sound of Sailor Sirona's voice, but found after a few more steps that he could hear everyone else well enough, too. Things still echoed, but he seemed to be close enough to be able to pick out where they sounded like they should be without too much trouble.

... Of course, the need for sound hints became moot as a sudden blinding light filled the room. The boy held up one arm and squinted, as well, and stopped a moment as various imagined colors seemed to battle for control of his field of vision. He had been able to see the others just up ahead, though, and as his eyes started to adjust to the new level of light, he continuned to rejoin them.

The brazier also illuminated the fallen form of the knight, and Ian's natural empathy made him take one step closer to him -- but he realized that the man was already dead, and there was nothing really he could help with. Freshly dead, too, as he could see his still-wet blood staining the clothign of a few of his companions. So, for the moment, he left the dead man to Dude, who had already moved to examine him, and chewed his lip a little, feeling somewhat sad for the umpteenth dead man he had seen today. At least he was not in some state of reeking decay yet.

"I'm alright," he replied to Dude, then left the white-clad man to the black-clad knight for the moment, and moved instead over to the statues and inscription.

Still holding the torch, Ian slowly tilted his head back as his eyes followed the form of the colossal statue upwards until he could not see anymore. Then he looked up and down at the others in the row of them - with the symbols he had noted over the sarcophagi earlier, he tried to discern if the statues seemed to match chess pieces in their attire, as well. A king in the middle, obviously, but was he with a queen, both flanked by bishops? ... Though he was admittedly unsure of how a rook might dress.

As light bloomed into existence, Saiph heaved a huge sigh of relief. Though, now that she could see, she wasn't entirely certain she liked it any better. The huge statues were creepy and imposing and made her feel like a bug. Saiph did not enjoy feeling like a bug. Even less did she enjoy the prickly feeling that ran down her spine at the thought of this place being Camelot or that big center statue being Arthur's tomb. That s**t was all just a story, wasn't it?

But it wasn't the statue that drew her. The fallen knight, at least to Saiph, seemed like the bigger puzzle. Moving until she was beside "Dude", she knelt down. Old blood, like that in the torture chamber, didn't stain and pool and stay wet. And it sure as hell didn't make such a mess of pure white clothing. Setting her jaw and gripping her weapons tightly, Saiph tersely and with little recourse to dramatics explained what they'd seen in the torture chamber.

"Only bodies and blood we saw were old. ********, most've 'em crumbled into dust when we went to move them. All the blood was dried up and dust too. Or just stains on wood and stone," she paused, caught herself stared at "Dude's" face, still trying to place him in her memory. After a moment, she shook herself and stared back down at the knight's body.

"Blood hasn't had time to congeal yet," she muttered. "Wonder who killed him or if he did it himself."

To those who inspected the statue and inscription:

The statue loomed huge and motionless before them. It seemed bigger than the other statues in the room: perhaps that was a function of standing at its feet, but perhaps not. It was carved from the same featureless granite as the other statues, smooth and cool to the touch, a work of painstaking masonry. The statue was clothed in the stone raiments of a noble, or a king -- an orb in one hand, a great longsword in the other, the tip of which was rested on the floor next to him like another column. It was darker near the ceiling, but they could make out a few things about the statue's face: he had an ornate crown on his head, a long beard, and eyes that had, instead of being made of the same granite, been carved out of strange pale green marble. The effect was eerie, with his face lit from the bottom by the brazier at his feet.

In front of the brazier, several long strides away from the bloody stones, was the inscription, readable in ornate illuminated lettering:



A cold wind swept their feet again, like the breeze through the treetops on a winter night even so far underground.

To those who investigated the dead knight:

The man sprawled on the stones looked like he'd fallen there. He was dressed in the shining black armor of a knight, through the cracks in which blood leaked onto the floor. He didn't look to be bleeding any more, but he couldn't have stopped very long ago. What was strange, though, was that he carried no weapon.

Perhaps it had been taken from him. That seemed increasingly possible -- why would a knight carry no weapon? -- and the evidence that pointed to this mounted when they considered what else had become visible in the new light: a trail of bloody footprints, leading away from the corpse and through the great archway and into the dark hall beyond.

The man's head and face were obscured by a black helmet, marked with a weighty cross.

This was the scene presented to the group of wanderers.

Did they remove the knight's helmet, follow the trail of footsteps or use something in their current inventory?

[These options are for the entire group. Only one player may, obviously, take the helmet -- others are free to use any items in their inventory in any way they like and confer with their comrades before following the footsteps if they prefer. Please bold what item you are using and what you are attempting to do with it.]

"I... I'm sorry."

Tony took a breath. It was as he had thought, or maybe what he had hoped? This was the tomb of Uther Pendragon, in the hall of these dead Kings. This was a complicated man, in life and at least by what the books Tony so often poured over told him. He looked at the statue for a long while, distantly hearing the others speaking.

He heard Nemesis tease Uther's name, and he eyed her. Frowning at her, he didn't take it too hard because it was a strange name, by modern standards, and he imagined at her age she treated anything 'boring', like historical figures and Kings of legend, as any other young person did. With little interest and no respect.

"Uther Pendragon was the tyrannical King that reigned before his son, Arthur, took the throne," Tony said to no one in particular.

He looked back at the others, and then frowned at the knight on the ground. Frowning, he followed after Nemesis slowly, waiting for Ian and Abigail. He didn't want them to look at the body, much like he hadn't back with Benedictus, but he knew he wouldn't be able to protect them from such sights if things kept going this way. Still, he went in front of her.

Smiling softly when Nemesis told them to cover the body. He respected her for that. Looking down at the knight, Tony saw the helmet and the cross, wondering who this man was and why he was killed. Did he protect this tomb? Or was he an enemy? He shook his head slowly.

Kneeling slowly, he decided he wanted to see if they could tell who this man was, by removing his helmet, in the hopes of finding a clue to who he was. It would do no one any good to go after those footprints without knowing who was the 'good' guy and who was the 'bad' guy. He looked up at Nemesis. "I just want to see his face: we'll cover him before we leave."

Zanazziite's mouth hung open when she realized the true scale of the statue she was standing by. The thing was giant, she could barely see its face. Though she was able to make out a beard and a crown. This had to be a king. When her violet eyes read the inscription her suspicions were confirmed. King Uther, she'd never heard of him. Now Arthur she'd heard of a King Arthur before.

Hearing Mr. Darrow's voice she turned towards him. Something he said was peculiar. She looked back to the inscription then cleared her throat. "Uhm, Mr. Darrow, if Arthur took the throne after Uther then why does the inscription say 'Last of the Pendragon Kings'? Weren't they both Pendragons?" She took a couple steps towards the knight, but didn't get too close to the blood. She watched as the two adults examined the fallen knight.

She listened as Charonite explained about blood and congealing, a process the sixteen year old didn't quite understand. Her eyes followed him as he stood, she finally noticed the bloody footprints, too distracted by everything else to have seen them earlier. For a second she just watched her General-King head away from the group, but then she acted. She set Rufus on her shoulder and then hurried after the tall man, following the bloody footprints as well. She didn't say a word, only the click-click-click of her heels giving her away.

When she caught up with Charonite she glanced back gauging how far away they were and taking her chances she looked up at him and began to whisper. "What's going on, sir? I can't get to my weapon, we're in Camelot? Is this some sort of test?" She doubted it was a test, if it was why would Charonite include himself?

Ian scanned over the engraved words and then looked at Mister Darrow, hoping that he had gotten more out of them. He nodded when the librarian confirmed that Uther had been Arthur's father (he trusted Sam Niell's account of the legend for the most part, but it had been a while since he had seen it). But...

"Wasn't-" he started to ask, echoing Abigail, his voice coming out as sort of a hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat and started again: "Wasn't Arthur a Pendragon, too, though?" Ian glanced over at the librarian, directing the question primarily to him, but figured someone else might have an answer, too.

... When Mister Darrow moved over to the body, though, Ian kept his distance, holding onto the torch. He nodded slowly at Dude's words regarding how long the body had been there, taking it on faith that his estimates were true. He watched Abigail then follow Dude off after the trail of footprints, and moved to follow, but instead waited with the others when he saw the girl say something softly to the other adult - it would be rude to eavesdrop, for sure. And so he stood beside Sailor Alcyone, watching Mister Darrow examine the body, but ... truthfully on edge lest he have to turn away from anything gruesome.

"All the knights died out in Camelot?" he repeated, taking a bit of conversation with the dark-haired Sailor girl as an opportunity to look at something else beside the fallen, bleeding corpse. "Did you see that written somewhere in the dungeon, or hear it?" the red-haired boy asked her. "We didn't really see anything about just how many died in the rebellion."