IC Date: 03/05/2026

Something seated firmly between a hiss and a gasp escaped Sailor Bacchus as he registered just where they had landed. The planet was <********> with him. Or the Chaos. If there was even a way to think of them as separate entities at this point. He tried to breathe through the crushing sensation in his chest. ******** this place. He willed another silent helper into his mouth. Swallowed it dry and suppressed the cough that threatened to give him away.


The deep space senshi’s voice was flat, his tone a clumsily affected coldness that Tempesti immediately recognized as yet another rusted plate in his roughly assembled armor. As the alien’s roommate she had the mixed distinction of regular exposure to Bacchus’ eternally shifting defenses, a distinction that granted her the occasional glimpse of what lay beyond. Between his posturing and the building’s decrepit grandeur, she had what she suspected was a solid sense of why. Restraining a sigh, she let the matter drop.

“We’re not staying here.” Sailor Bacchus refused to allow his eyes to drift. No reason to see if the mosaics of bone and shells pressed into the mortar. If any whisper of his work remained on the walls. No point. Nothing that still haunted these halls was worth either of their time and there was no reason to kick up the dust for a pile of disintegrating nothing. “They would have stripped this midden heap the second they could pry the doors open.” He scowled, “Not anything interesting left in here. Trust me.”

Tempesti attempted to ignore her companion’s stormy visage as she paused to examine the spiraling roots of an inscription at the base of a shattered statue, snapping a quick photo before Bacchus could pull her away from whatever ghosts lingered in this place. The young senshi’s eyes roamed the walls as they hurried through the debris strewn darkness and a twinge of anxiety shuddered through her. Faces deformed by the passage of time leered from decaying mosaics of unfamiliar materials, the broken abstract patterns that surrounded them lending a still more surreal air to the experience. Their previous visits had been uneventful, with no sign of the Chaotic spores that had rendered the planet uninhabitable. Still, this place had a tomb-like feel that made it difficult to push away the cold dread that snaked up her spine. Even so, as they passed the heavy rectangular arch of a carved stone entryway, she stole a glance into the room beyond. Crumbling stone chairs atop a dais stood behind the debris of a long table in the back of the room, splinters of wood strewn about the shattered floor, and all of it shot through with twisted streaks of black. A firm hand tightening on her bicep urged her forward, Bacchus’ failure to steady his ragged breathing more than enough of a reminder of why she probably shouldn’t linger too long. Even if the Chaos was no longer creating horrible fungal mutants, (at least that’s what she thought happened here, Bacchus had never been what she would call chatty on the subject), she knew that the memories this place held were more than he wanted to face right now. Someday, hopefully, but definitely not today.

For some merciless reason the centuries had done nothing to dull his muscle memory, no matter how quickly he attempted to stride through the abandoned corridors. ******** this place. His scowl darkened further as the great hall grazed the corner of his eye. It was still too godsdamned loud in there.

She managed to steal a quick glance through the pile of debris obstructing the next door before her friend pulled her forward with a grumble. “Stay away from that door. Touch those rocks and it’ll collapse.” Not exactly the truth, but who the ******** cares? It might be true, he wasn’t going to test it. Nothing to be bothered with in there. He hadn’t even care much about it when it wasn’t probably filled with dusty skeletons.

Bacchus knew that there were almost certainly tablets in there. Tablets his young friend would definitely love to pore over. After all, their stubborn stone wouldn’t be of any godsforsaken worth to a treasure hunter so he couldn’t imagine any world in which they weren’t sitting in their stupid little rows in their stupid little shelves with their stupid little judgments carved into their stupid little faces. Whatever lies she’d been reading in the temples’ texts, boring as they had to be, they were better than the palace archives. She could learn just as much from them as she could trying to crawl over that mess.

As they stepped into the grey daylight that hung over the Bacchanalian gloom Tempesti turned to face the place from which they emerged. A mass of stone erupting from the ground towered over them. The place that Bacchus had undoubtedly called home in distant centuries. In what had to be a massive feat of engineering, it appeared as though the overwhelming structure had grown from the mountain on which the city rested, the rock chipped away until this palace and the buildings surrounding it stood distinct from their mother.

“Don’t touch that.” He knew his tone was harsh. So ******** what? Better than letting her get gods know what all over her hands to satisfy her reckless curiosity. Hurt feelings were easier to fix than whatever the ******** might linger on the walls. The fact that spore death didn’t seem to be on the table anymore didn’t change the fact that there were plenty of other novel and exciting ways for someone to die here.

“Alright, I won’t touch it.” Tempesti tried to mask the fact that she was a bit stung by the edge in her friend’s words.

“Good.”

A sigh hissed forth as Bacchus attempted to rearrange his own glare into something...less like that.

“C’mon, there’s a temple near here that should still have a pretty good treasury. That means more boring words for you to learn. Let’s get going.” Managing the ghost of a smile for the benefit of his young companion he gestured her onward.