Once home to the Crystal Cities of the Hunter clans, Craiss Caverns is now a hollow empty shell of its former glory due to a strange misfortune in the past. Man-made tunnels now lead to this place, but tales tell of some never returning. (+3 Defense, +2 Offense)

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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 2:45 AM

He kept up a good pace as he walked, pressed on by the vivid image of his skeleton lying amid the rocky ruins of the cavern, which came into his mind unbidden and refused to leave. The granola bar was, however slowly, making its presence felt. His hunger abated slightly, he was able to concentrate on walking, and on trying to find his way. He took a left, and then a right, and then another left... or was it a right? To be fair to him, he had been trying to keep track of where he was going, and looked for runes or other landmarks that might guide him. But mostly he tried not to make too many turns in the same direction.

At length, after passing an especially large rock which looked vaguely familiar, he had some hope that he was nearing the entrance. Heartened, he ran down the stretch of tunnel. Faber waved at him as he passed, and Akala waved absent-mindedly back.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 3:10 AM

... Wait. What? Akala backed up a few steps, and blinked. Then he rubbed his eyes and blinked again. No, Faber was still there, sitting on the cavern floor and tuning his guitar. The boy grinned up at him, and Akala slapped his palm to his forehead, groaning. This really wasn't his day.

"I didn't know you were going jogging," Faber said. Then, he added, "You didn't notice the first two times I waved." Akala stared at him for a long time.

Then, defeated, he slumped against the opposite wall. Nothing to do now but bemoan his situation. "I'm going to die here," he muttered. "I'm going to wander in circles and go crazy and starve to death in this thrice-damned cave."

"Why would you do that?" Faber asked, looking up. He looked positively feral when he did that, peering up through his ragged hair. Akala made a face.

"Well, I don't see a way out of here. I'm open to suggestions," he said, a bit more harshly than he probably should have.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 3:17 AM

Faber looked surprised, then slowly broke out in a huge grin. "You should've just said so! 'Course I know a way out. Might be a little bit weird though." Akala would have liked to ask what Faber thought he'd been doing this whole time, but he was sure he didn't want the answer to that question. Instead, he waved a hand impatiently at the boy.

"I don't care what it is, it's probably better than anything I could come up with," he said. If he paused to think about it, it might have occurred to him how foolhardy it was to just go with whatever this scruffy-looking boy wanted to do, especially considering they'd barely just met. He really was stumped for ideas though, and this particular adventure had proved beyond a doubt to him that he had no sense of direction. Faber's grin faltered a little, but he nodded.

"Alright. Just... don't freak out, okay? Oh, hmm... It might not actually work the first couple of times, but we should be out soon. Just don't freak out," Faber said again. Then he grabbed Akala's arm and everything went cold.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 3:30 AM

Cold was perhaps not totally accurate. There was a quality to the sensation that mimicked a lurch, or at least his gut seemed to feel it that way. He immediately regretted having eaten the granola bar, for it now threatened to come back up in a much more unpleasant manner. The extremities of his limbs felt twisted and bent about, and at one point he almost felt as if he were dissolving somehow. The whole of it lasted maybe two seconds, but those two seconds were such a jumble of sensation that he had no idea what to do with himself when he came out of it. If it weren't for Faber's steadying hand, he might really have fallen over, and likely lost his lunch.

"Stop. Okay, stop. I don't care where we are, I-- urgh." He reached out blindly with his free arm and felt something solid. It felt like rock wall, which was disheartening, but presently he had other things to prioritize. Like leaning against something solid until reality stopped wobbling around so much. When his breathing finally slowed and his head stopped hurting, he looked up to find Faber staring at the walls, ghosting over them with his fingers here and there.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 3:51 AM

When he was done doing whatever it was he was doing, Faber returned to where Akala leaned against the wall and waited expectantly. After a few moments, Akala realized that Faber must have been getting ready to go again. "Okay, just give me a warning before you---"

No such luck, unfortunately. Before Akala could finish his statement, the world twisted. This time he had his eyes open, and that made it even less comfortable. None of the discomforts of the first time had abated with the second, but the visual by itself would have been enough to unsettle him. It wasn't him that was melting, but everything around him, as if it was a chalk drawing washing away in the rain, if the rain changed direction nearly every second. Then everything faded into a void, and reconstituted in much the same whirl of angry color, only in reverse.

This time, the dark gave way to the light of day. They had arrived at the entrance. There was nothing to hold onto so Akala fell to the ground on all fours, and kept himself from retching by sheer force of will. When he looked up, Faber was grinning at the sky with arms stretched wide, totally unfazed.

From one of his outstretched hands dangled a cord, with a glowing gold shard at the end.

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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 6:56 PM

There had been others. That was what Akala had been told. It made sense enough. When he was first given the chance to inspect the shard in detail, as a boy, he'd pored over it obsessively and concluded that it must have been a piece of something before. It had only one point, and the other end was rounded, with the smooth section breaking off abruptly into the jagged part worn smooth by time and idle hands; but when he had asked his father, his grandfather, neither had known what the original would have looked like. It was the first of many dead ends for him.

To actually have found the holder of another piece, however---

"What are you holding?" he asked, though he was certain that he knew what Faber held. The boy looked down at him, for Akala was still seated on the ground, and knit his brows in puzzlement.

"Oh, this? It's my lucky charm. Helps me go places," Faber said. He was smiling again, but some of the dreaminess to his expression had abated, and there was something almost sharp to the way his eyes looked.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 7:02 PM

Akala narrowed his own eyes. Holding out his hand, he said, "Give it here." Faber hesitated, his grip tightening around the shard. He wouldn't meet Akala's gaze, and the man frowned. "Look, I just want to see it for a moment, alright? I'll give it back." When still Faber wouldn't respond, he made a sigh of frustration and held out his own shard. Its glow was quite extinguished by the light of the sun, and in comparison to Faber's, it seemed pathetically dim, but the boy recognized it nevertheless. His expression changed from guardedness to wonder, and he crept closer to peer at it. Akala smiled tiredly. He was sure he looked a wreck, what with everything that had happened, but it seemed to reassure Faber a little. A moment later, the boy relinquished his trinket, though he sat by fidgeting uneasily, anxious for its return.

Akala's first priority was to try and link the two together. He tried several combinations in an attempt to find a part that would lock, but even allowing for the fact that the jagged edges must have eroded some, there was no alignment that would fit. That was discouraging, but he gave Faber's shard another look over, just to be sure of... well, he didn't know what, but he had the feeling he wasn't going to be allowed to look at it again.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 7:07 PM

It must have been a piece near the center as opposed to the edge of the whole, he concluded, for there was no smooth surface on it, and the patterns over it were too uneven to be the result of anything but the original fissure. He handled it carefully, as some of the sharper parts were still keen enough to cut. He didn't realize until he handed it back that this might have been worthy of note. They were a part of the same artefact, he was sure, but his was worn to dullness, while Faber's was not. Had the boy's family handled it more carefully?

Faber was looking over his charm for any sign of interference, even though he had watched Akala raptly the entire time. Akala fought the urge to roll his eyes in exasperation. "Where did you get that from, anyway?" he asked.

"Dunno," came the mumbled reply. Clearly, he had no intentions of being helpful. But just as Akala was trying to figure out another way to phrase his question, Faber came up with one of his own: "If you had that, why didn't you just get out yourself?"
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 9:30 PM

Akala could do nothing but blink and look blankly at Faber for nearly two minutes. Even the boy's oblivious nature couldn't hold up against such a reaction for so long, and he made another attempt. "You could... No? You can't?" His speech offered no explanation to Akala, though he seemed to arrive at some kind of conclusion himself. His expression went from ponderous to doubtful, and then to something that resembled pity. Akala couldn't follow any of it, and shook his head.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. You're going to have to explain it more clearly," he said, trying for patience. Maybe Faber was addled in the head somehow. If he was accustomed to travelling the way he'd just done, Akala wouldn't rule that out.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 9:35 PM

There was a pause, which Akala was slowly growing resigned to, before his words registered with Faber and the boy broke into his slow sheepish smile again. "Oh. Sorry. Ummm." Another pause as he collected his words, and then Faber launched into his explanation. "I don't remember where I got this, but I've been able to do those jumps ever since. If I've got a good idea where I'm going and it's not too far, I can usually make it. Sometimes I end up in weird places if I don't concentrate right, though." A shadow passed briefly over his face, but he tossed his head to clear the hair from his eyes, and when he was still again, it had gone. "I guess I must've gotten lost, like you, only I jumped in so I don't know where exactly I am. But I shouldn't be too far from last time!" He seemed quite earnest about the last statement, as close to alert as Akala had seen him.

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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 9:38 PM

Of course, little of it made much sense. Akala should have expected as much. It was a lead, yes, sure. The shard looked so much like his own that he was almost certain that they were related somehow. Now that he could take proper stock of himself, he realized that the restless tugging which had drawn him into the caverns had abated for the most part. In all likelihood, it had been leading him to the boy. Akala only hoped that the object was for them to discover each other, rather than stay together. He wasn't sure how well they'd get along in the long run.

He thought of all his ancestors, their pictures in his house, staring down at him as he downed his whiskey. For their sake, he tried to make some sense of what Faber had said. "So let me get this straight..." he began, but he found he had to pause himself, for it took longer to straighten it out than he had anticipated.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/15/2014 9:42 PM

"You... jump. And you end up in different places. Like, what, teleporting? Is that right?" he asked. Faber nodded. Okay, so far, so good. "When you're out of it, you don't always know where you'll end up. And that happened today." Faber began to nod, then hesitated.

"I don't know if it happened today, exactly. I arrived today." He looked troubled. Akala felt a little troubled himself. They'd been doing so well too, for all of maybe three statements. Now Akala was confused again, and Faber was probably going to work himself into some kind of state trying to get his scatterbrained points across.

Akala knew that he was going to regret asking this, but a nagging curiosity spurred him on. "What do you mean you 'arrived' today?"
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/16/2014 1:25 AM

Faber looked away, suddenly uncertain, or perhaps regretting having admitted this fact. He fussed with the shard and its cord, but Akala merely sat back and waited. That had been the best tactic to getting information out of the boy thus far, even if so much of it had turned out to be incomprehensible. Just as Akala had been ready to give up the topic for lost, Faber slowly began again. "I... Some jumps, I move, that's all. Some jumps I get tossed a day or two ahead." There was a guilty quality to the way he held himself that suggested that that wasn't the full story, but Akala was already too preoccupied in trying to decipher his statement to pursue it. A leap through time, was that what he was suggesting? He peered at the boy again. Sure, Faber seemed the type to dream stuff up, but as far as teleportation was concerned, he'd been telling the truth.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/16/2014 1:28 AM

So, what, did Akala have no choice but to believe him? No, that wasn't the case. He needed more proof of that. He looked up toward the sky, but the sun gave him no answers. It had been sunny when he had gone in, and anyway he had no clue of how long he'd been down in the caverns, besides a rough estimate. He would have to return to the city, pick up a paper, and examine the date for himself.

His thoughts were interrupted when Faber repeated his question. Having seen that Akala was disinterested in interrogating him further, he grew a little bolder. "You can't jump? Does yours do something different?" he asked, indicating his own shard when Akala stared at him as blankly as before.
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Re: Serendipity [Self]

Postby crow » 04/16/2014 1:32 AM

"Oh," Akala said, and looked down. His own shard was still clutched in his hand, and its edges had dug an imprint into his palm in the meantime. "Er... No. Well, I don't know. I have no idea. I hadn't known that they did anything until today." In his confusion, he had forgotten entirely about the fact that Faber had attributed his abilities to his shard. Akala examined his own with renewed interest, and for a moment he wished for something to happen. But whatever it was that activated the shard's ability (if indeed it had one), that wasn't it. He stayed exactly where he was, and for all he knew, when he was too.

But he could always ask about that later. Now that they had formed an acquaintance, they could go their separate ways and be reasonably certain of finding themselves again. "I'm heading back to town," he said abruptly. "I don't know how long I've been gone, but there are folks who'll be missing me. Here, my card. Don't suppose you've got an address I can write to...?"

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