[Kodai]

Kreuz didn't know how much Straiph had been told about how he had come to be a part of the cathedral, under the priest's sway. He wasn't sure if Straiph knew that he had been killed once and then brought back by some strange means that even he didn't know about, or if Straiph knew about the ritual that had put these designs on his body. Well, if he didn't, Kreuz could explain the relevant parts in order to answer the Calamikuhna's questions. "Yeah... Any time I tried to do something I wasn't allowed to do, these markings would... They'd make my body burn with pain. It was draining, to say the least, especially in the beginning. I passed out a few times from it... And, you know, it wasn't always ...his doing. He could make it flare up if he wanted to punish me, but... there were times when he'd just watch and laugh, because it wasn't him. He said it was the gods, trying to destroy me because I shouldn't exist..." The Lucain grew quiet, thinking about Straiph's musings and questions. Could he leave, now that the priest was no longer here? Did that matter? Was he bound to the place, and not the person? Did he have anything to lose in trying to leave? He certainly had a lot to gain...
"I don't know if I'm no longer bound here. But... I think I'll try, Straiph. I don't know what will happen to me, but there's too much in the outside world for me to not make the attempt." He thought a little more, and then an idea came to him. "Hey... I wonder... I don't know if this would work for sure, but... maybe you can give me permission to leave, Straiph? You used to work under that priest, so maybe if you pretended you were acting in his stead, it would work?"

[BaalsBaby]

Straiph listened again as the Lucain explained more, and after awhile, he spoke. "The gods...?" He mulled that thought over in his mind, thinking about why that would be so. Would the gods be so terrible as to punish a creature that, to his knowledge, hadn't done anything wrong. Of course, the pessimistic side of him, the side that was him, told him that the gods were cruel and ignorant, that they didn't care what happened down here on Evelon. So why did he preach after Xai're? Because at least things /had/ to die. Which meant that at least on of the three were paying some attention to this pitiful rock.

When the Lucain actually agreed to try and leave, Straiph nodded and picked up the girl in his arms again. "Alright. Well, we'll try. It would be nice to have someone to track her family down. I really should have been paying more attention," the Kuhna admitted, running a free han through his tinted white hair. "Me... give you permission. Ah, that's.... I don't know." He was caught off guard. What a strange request. And how did one even go about doing that, anyway? "Uhhhm. Okaaay. Uh. Fine... I, Straiph, give you, Kreuz, Hound of the Haunted Cathedral, permission to leave Lya Pointa." The man stuck his hand out and wiggled it randomly in the air in the Lucain's direction for good measure. It was worth a try, right? Pfft.

[41]

[Kodai]

Kreuz realized that Straiph probably only really wanted his company for his canine tracking ability, but this didn't bother him as much as it once would have. Straiph may have had some sense of righteousness, but he displayed it in a different way than Kreuz did, and the Lucain had come to recognize and accept this over the years. Besides, it wasn't as if Straiph was trying to use Kreuz for some ulterior motive -- he just wanted him to track down the girl's family, and Kreuz was more than willing to do that.
He didn't feel any different physically after Straiph decided to humor him and verbally try to release him from his service to the cathedral, but it did make him more comfortable mentally. Even if Straiph hadn't actually broken the bond between the Lucain and Lya Pointa... Well, it felt as if it didn't really matter anymore. Kreuz was willing to try to leave now, and that was more than could have been said for him even just yesterday. "Okay, so you'd like me to track down her family... I'll do my best." Standing, he approached the girl in Straiph's arms and gave her a thorough sniffing, trying to pick up the unique scents on her and ignoring the scent of Straiph and the monster that they had rescued her from. Once he felt confident that he could remember these important scents, he turned his head away and began snuffling at the air. Stepping forward a few steps, Kreuz found that he actually could faintly sense these scents, though they seemed muffled or dampened somehow. "I'm picking something up," he alerted Straiph as he began to move forward, "but it's strange. They're not really in the air..."

[BaalsBaby]

Straiph held the girl for Kreuz to get a good scent (not that she was moving much anyway), and watched as the canine sniffed the scents in the air. It was after a few moments that the Lucain had already found the scent in the air but. ... "Not really in the air? What do you mean? Like.............. on the ground?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. This was the strangest thing the dog had said yet. Though, he had been sure he was chasing the Chaos on foot. It had been ahead of him, darting in and out of sight, a black ink blotch shifting amongst the trees that had whisked by. So... how could the scent be there but not in the air?

"Er... Right," he sighed, feeling a migraine coming on. This day, this situation, and the gloominess of the surroundings really weren't helping. "Can you at least follow it?" The girl in his arms was still barely moving, though he noticed that she was staring at Kreuz now with faint interest. It would be a wonder to actually hear her say something for a change. Or... maybe not.

[42]

[Kodai]

"No, not on the ground," Kreuz replied thoughtfully, thinking as he continued to follow the scent away from the cathedral but further into the dark forest. "Well, I mean... There is a scent here, in the air, and on the ground, where that Chaos thing must've been running from you. But... the scent's also... not here. I... I don't really know how to describe it. It's like I'm sensing it through a thick wall of some sort. I can follow it though, yeah." He turned back to try to show Straiph that he felt confident, and as he did, he noticed that the girl was actually looking at him instead of into nothing. Smiling, Kreuz perked up and set back to following the scent trail, believing that the girl was beginning to get better. Maybe because she was a child she was more resilient to whatever poison the Chaos's saliva had? Or maybe she was getting better because Straiph was holding her, and since he was a hunter of these Chaos, he had some sort of aura that affected victims of the monsters? Well, whatever the case, she seemed to be recovering a little, and that lifted the canine's spirits.
However, this boost to his mood began to fade as the trio made their way deeper into the woods. Kreuz began to feel uneasy, his skin prickling a little. The trees, too, didn't look right. Their branches were gnarled and claw-like, while their trunks were warped oddly. Normally the canine would have dismissed these effects to the influence of the cathedral, but there was one other thing that stood out to him. As they kept progressing, the scent trail he was following was beginning to grow clearer, as if whatever veiled it was being slowly pulled away. Just... what was going on here?

[BaalsBaby]

"Well... as long as you can follow it, I guess," the priest said simply, following the Lucain wherever he led them, preferably in the right direction. Like his companion, he too was feeling the strange sensations flowing around them, making him simultaneously shiver and yet feel warmer. He noticed the trees as if they were changing with every blink of the eye, unable to tell /when/ they changed, but still able to see their more hideous forms nonetheless. The girl in his arms didn't seem to notice all that much, simply smiling at the Lucain and even waving a tiny bit at him. It was a soft wave, bringing her hand up and curling her little fingers up and down.

"Whoa.... whoa. Maybe... we should go back? I am I hallucinating or.. is this place getting weirder. And I mean, weirder than usual." He didn't feel too good about this, but at the same time... he felt different, as if something were pulling at the very core of him. It was a distracting feeling so he shook his head, clenching his eyelids until the strange feeling passed.

[43]

[Kodai]

So Straiph noticed it, too. "Y-Yeah, it is getting weird around here, and I've got a bad feeling about it... But the weirdest thing is that the scent's getting clearer. It's easier to track the farther we go. If we're going to find this girl's family, then we've got to keep going..." Kreuz turned to look at Straiph, in order to determine just how Straiph was feeling at the moment, and as he did, he noticed that the girl was actually smiling and giving him a tiny wave. The elation that the Lucain felt quickly gave way to concern and confusion. She was getting better, it seemed... but was she really getting better if it was because they were traveling deeper and deeper into this twisted forest? Maybe that Chaos's poison had affected her in ways they couldn't even imagine...
"Hey, Straiph... She... She looks like she's getting better," Kreuz began, stepping forward towards the girl to both get a better look at her and to see how she would react. "That's... That's very strange, don't you think? I mean... We're both getting creeped out, but she seems fine here. Do you think maybe... that Chaos creature's bite somehow made her more, uh... receptive to whatever negative energy's floating around us?" Kreuz frowned. "It worries me that she's becoming more perky as we're growing more nervous... I don't like this."

[BaalsBaby]

Straiph repositioned the girl in his arms a little since his left one was getting tired, and replied to his canine counterpart, "Heh, well I guess she is. I think she's taken a liking to you too." He too could see that the girl was slowly becoming more aware of her surroundings. He surmised that the venom was beginning to wear off.

Ducking past a low hanging branch, a gnarled twig caught his hair for just a second. "Tch. Ow... This place is more dense than I thought." Again, he surveyed his surrounding, noting the creeping fog and the blackened trees as if a fire had blasted through this whole place. Okay. It surely didn't seem any more creepy than it already was. Tugging his hair loose, he could've sworn that tree must've grabbed at him. He was good at judging distances, he had to be. So how could he not miss a branch... The canine's interjection broke him from such a strange thought while he looked back over the girl's shoulder. "Hmm... that's true. It could be. Unless we find some help, we won't know for sure though if there's anything wrong with her from the venom."

[44]

[Kodai]

Kreuz only continued to lead the way silently after Straiph's first remark, mulling it over. The girl did indeed seem to have taken a liking to him, smiling and waving at him like she was. However, instead of figuring that this must be a good sign, the Lucain was confused and even slightly unnerved by it. It wasn't as if he was a pretty, fluffy-furred Lucain with beautiful markings and colors. He was completely furless, covered in a sickly green skin with patterns (intriguing as they might be) literally carved into his hide. A paragon of beauty, or even cuteness, he was not. All the reactions of all the humans he'd ever interacted with in the past had ranged on the scale of 'politely acting like you don't exist' to 'dear Zu'hai what is that thing' – an acceptance of his appearance by someone not related to the cathedral was entirely alien to him. Sure, maybe the girl wasn't so superficial and was simply responding to the Lucain's genuine desire to help her, but with everything else that was going on, Kreuz didn't have much hope that this was the case. Maybe that monster's bite had skewed her sense of what was 'good' or 'acceptable' in the natural world and what wasn't…

Seeing as he was so preoccupied with these rather depressing thoughts, it came as no surprise that he suddenly found himself stumbling over a tree root. "Urf!" he grunted as he did a rather spectacular face-plant into the ground, nearly tumbling over himself. Managing to get back to his feet, it was only a few more cautious steps later that Kreuz repeated the scenario. "Ow!" he cried more loudly this time, having expected this trip-up even less than the first. "I was even watching where I was going that time…" Not that it was particularly easy to see a blackened tree root against the fire-blasted ground, but he had been pretty sure that there hadn't been any upraised roots when he'd put his paw down…

[BaalsBaby]

It was then that Straiph realized that they were in a heap of trouble. He wasn't exactly sure as to how it was happening and he was sure as hell not going to find out why, but the forest came alive. When another claw-like branch swung at him, Straiph did his best to duck while trying not to upset the girl. To his knowledge, she was still fragile. She held on tight but didn't say much.

"Shit oh shit. Kreuz watch out!" he called as the blackened forest began to writhe, hungry and grasping. The roots began to swell and slither like angry serpents, each twig and branch becoming gnarled and wanting. The trunks of trees began to part themselves with glistening fervor, revealing alien, almost reptile mouths inset with far too many teeth like needles. Straiph drew his gun with one hand and began to whack ineffectively at the clawed fingers reaching for his and the girl's hair.

"Go go! We have to keep moving!" At least Kreuz was lower to the ground. He'd have to deal with the roots but it took more effort for the tree beasts to bend over and snatch at the Lucain. The demon hunter began to dash, leaping over a thick, wriggling root just as the tree-claws filled the previous space. They had to find a clearing...

[45]

[Kodai]

Before Kreuz had time to ask what he was supposed to be watching out for, the forest answered the question for him. The trees turned into a massive army of ravenous maws, each trying to snatch up the trespassers for themselves. Giving a yelp of surprise, the Lucain found himself on increasingly unsteady ground, rising up and rolling along with the roots underneath him. He did his best to follow Straiph's shouted advice, but in the end, Kreuz was more or less falling his way out of the grasp of the trees. Even so, he appeared to be having an easier time of it than the human-form Kuhna, who was not only taller but needed to carry the girl. This would all be much easier for him if he could use all four of his legs…

"S-Straiph! Straiph!" he called as he tumbled over himself again, trying desperately to find a bit of ground that wasn't moving. "If I can steady myself, maybe I can carry the girl, and you can use your normal form to try to find us a way out of here!" Sure, he wasn't the largest or strongest Lucain around, but he felt confident that he could carry her as long as she could keep a grip on him. "We can't keep running forever, and your normal form would be able to get through the trees much faster…"

[BaalsBaby]

He was right of course. Human legs were ungainly and awkward, and no matter how he practiced with it, it didn't provide enough stability to go on like this for long. Another swipe of a tree as dodged, Straiph ducking out the way. He took this chance to lean forward and scramble closer to the Lucain, trying his best not to lose his footing and ultimately drop the girl. That would be bad.

"Alright, take her," Straiph called, gripping the girl under her arms. He felt the bite of a thorn bush wrapping around his leg, but the pain of it was so akin to the barbed wire that he paid it no heed as he plopped the girl  on the Lucain's back. She instinctively curled her arms around the canine's neck like an embrace, still smiling softly with her eyes closed. At least she was holding on, that was a good sign. "You got her?"

There was a quick shift as Straiph wasted no time becoming the large Calamikuhna he was. It felt good to be on his paws again, able to twist easier with the shifting of the ground beneath them. "Let's get out of here," he said, already trying to work through where they should go. His gut told him to go one way, the way that they'd been heading (or so he'd thought). It was a lot harder to discern when the whole forest was working against them, but there was no time to ponder. "This way!" The lithe form began to take off, his paws catching on the roots of the trees and bounding off before they could usurp his balance. Now to stay within sight of the Lucain...

[46]

[Kodai]

It was difficult to remain still long enough for Straiph to get the girl on his back and not become entangled by the twisting roots, but somehow Kreuz managed it. Pulling his paws up to move forward just before the loops caught his legs, the Lucain immediately began to second-guess his idea. "I-I got her," he tried to assure Straiph, but her weight was something that he hadn't considered. Not that the girl weighed much; he was simply unused to carrying people on his back and had certainly never needed to carry anyone under a considerable amount of pressure to move quickly. However, Straiph had already reverted to his natural form and Kreuz's plan was now in action, so he would see to it that he followed through to the best of his ability.

Luckily, the girl had a decent grip on him, or else the Lucain would have had an even worse time of it trying to keep her on top of him while he fumbled his way forward. At least he was beginning to grasp the timing of the roots' movements and was gaining a bit of stability to his motion, enabling him to move faster. Would it be enough to let him keep up with the swiftly fleeing Calamikuhna, though? The mostly black feline was already beginning to blend in with the darkness of the trees… But wait, he was a Lucain! Sight didn't matter so much to Kreuz; he could just pick up Straiph's scent trail if the visual trail was lost. In all honesty, though, he didn't want to be separated from his companion in this terrifying place, and so Kreuz scrambled to increase his pace without tripping over either the roots or himself. Hopefully they'd find a safe spot soon… Whatever a 'safe spot' might be in this den of horrors.