Night 60: Underground Lake

[nobleman]

[From here.]

Just like the last time, Guy's feet hit the uneven sand as he took in that unmistakable smell of dampness. This area was almost dead quiet when compared to the hallway that they'd just come from, but he still could make out the lapping of water and the creaking of the dock. All of those sensations just reminded him of the fact that they were going to have to offer up another toll, though. If they were doing this all fairly, then it was Anise's turn, but what would she have to give up?

Guy figured that they should double-check the rules for that, since he didn't want the ferryman to jerk them around too much. He had already tricked them once, so they were going to have to watch their phrasing.

"Guess we'd better go find that guy," he said with a sigh, making it clear that he wasn't a fan of the skeleton. He doubted Anise and Claude felt any better about it themselves. "Let's be careful with asking him how it all works before we offer up anything, okay?" He doubted that he needed to remind either of them of what had happened last time. With that out in the air, Guy took off across the sand.

Comments

[tightsofmight]

The door and what lay after it was not what Peter expected.

By now, yeah, he was feeling more than a little anxious. Heading down to the basement again and setting foot in the ballroom had his teeth on edge. He'd made the mistake of glancing at the Coliseum doors first and letting that chill down his spine (to which he'd carefully put Sangamon between himself and the view of it, in what was hopefully a totally natural manner). Then there was this.

Peter's toes were curling in his shoes as Sangamon yanked a perfectly bleached skull from the ground and played Hamlet. Yeah, he was used to gore and things, and truth be told skeletons as a whole rarely bothered him. They were far enough from looking human that it all seemed like an elaborate prop dump than anything. Looking at freshly dead people was far, far worse, and that was all that Peter seemed to get.

But seeing the skulls and bones here was not doing him wonders. Peter flinched and snapped his foot away from the barren femur underneath. It had creaked at him. "You don't think this is where they put..."

He wrinkled his nose. No. Too clean. These were old bones, far too old to be coming from the morgue. "Nevermind."

There were lights up ahead by the lake. Aside from the flashlights, they were the only illumination this dank hole had to offer. "I really hope this isn't the sewage dump," Peter muttered irritably. The place didn't exactly smell like toilet offerings, but it didn't smell good either. Making a face, he began the trudge over. The torches had to be planted over there for a reason.

[its-the-mileage.livejournal.com]

Indy gave up on sorting out who Freddy Kreuger was. Dent's reply suggested that he wasn't an immediate threat, which put him at the bottom of the list of things that mattered right now. He kept quiet the rest of the way down and focused on keeping an eye out and staying in step with the others. It was easier tonight, although pain still washed through his chest whenever he moved. Still, the now-familiar trip down went pretty quickly--and what was better, uneventfully. Until they went through the black doors on the other side of the ballroom.

It brought them out into a large cave, in which the main feature was a large body of water that spanned the whole space ahead of them. Sand shifted under his feet (not good; it meant every step took a little more effort). This was the first time in the basement that Indy'd really felt they were underground.

He was still looking around when Taylor, ahead of him, knelt and turned on his flashlight to look at something on the ground. He came back up with a human skull. Indy looked down again and saw it wasn't the only one--the beach was covered with bones as white as the sand, and you wouldn't have to be an archaeologist to tell at a glance that they were all human. He crouched down himself and brushed sand from the half of a broken ribcage nearest him. It looked and felt real, but he'd need better light to tell too much about who it had belonged to.

Peter's question was one he could answer easily, though. "No," Indy confirmed, getting to his feet. "Taylor's right; they've been dead for a while. By the looks of it, the bones were moved here well after that. You don't get that bleached appearance underground." Unless you bleached them yourself, which he wouldn't put past Landel. Taylor did have a point about the man's love for atmosphere.

The lights seemed to mark where they were supposed to go (another generous Landel touch, Indy thought grimly), so he followed Peter that way. Presumably they had to get across the water, and presumably doing that would involve some kind of elaborate trial(s). That seemed to be par for the course these days.

[dualistic]

Harvey had been a little annoyed by Depth Charge's insistence on getting the door open when he had been handling it just fine, but in the end he'd allowed it because it meant he got to conserve his own energy and didn't have to bend his metal pipe even more out of shape.

After that, he was forced to the back of the group again, but in the end they didn't have very far to travel. All of them seemed interested in getting in and out of the ballroom as quickly as possible, though Harvey was surprised by how easily the ominous black doors had opened for them. He supposed that was their prize for what they'd endured in the arena: getting through here with no trouble.

They really must all be gluttons for punishment.

But now it was apparently time for something completely different. Walking from a luxurious ballroom setting into a dark, sandy area with the sound of lapping water was strange, to say the least. Harvey could feel the moisture in the air. The fun didn't stop there, though, if the skull that Sangamon unearthed was anything to go by.

The others determined pretty quickly that the bones that were scattered around couldn't belong to anyone they knew. Harvey hadn't been worrying about that too much in the first place, and so he simply followed after the others toward the two torch lights, keeping his flashlight pointed at the sand to make sure he didn't trip over any bones.

"So, how do we get across?" That was clearly what they had to do here, right? "Think there's a boat down there?" And would it fit six people?

[scalyfishman.livejournal.com]

They passed through the doors, only to be consumed by an even larger cavern than the basement's ballroom might once have been. Now this place could almost have been his home away from home (away from home, even: Earth was no Cybertron, even if he hadn't been back there in stellar cycles), with soft silty sand shifting under foot and the dark glimmer of deeper waters up ahead, the damp, porous smell unmistakable- though they certainly weren't anything Depth Charge would have risked taking a dive into out of choice. He wasn't that homesick.

Shame about the skeletons. Though the smooth, bleach-white shapes peeking out of the sand didn't exactly disturb him- with their flesh withered away they seemed too distantly placed from the humans walking and talking in front of him almost biomechanical in their smooth, efficient curves- they weren't the best sign they could have hoped for. But hey. Why expect anything less from good old drama-mongering Martin Landel? He was just surprised they hadn't run into any heads on poles or their own graves, carefully yet wittily inscribed with personal epitaphs.

"Better be," he answered Dent. "Unless they want to give me my old beast mode back, swimming in that'd probably be suicide."

Now that they were closer, though, it was becoming obvious that they had another choice: a dock extending out across the water, and, bobbing at the end of it, their transport. "There. One boat, ready and waiting."

[vstheworld]

Scott would have said something about this not exactly being a day at the beach, but even he could reach his limit on lameness.

He almost expected the bones in the sand to assemble themselves and do some kind of Halloween skeleton dance in front of them; they were that cartoony-looking. For that reason, Scott was able to deal with the scene that had been set out for them. The bones were as good as set decoration, background pixels. He could write them off as not real enough to care about. His subconscious thanked him for that. Any realism on the level they had seen the other night would be very hard to take right now, to say the least.

So, Scott let S.T. and Indy worry about the bones and instead followed the gazes of Harvey and DC, shivering at the sight of the dark water ahead. Water that black and this far underground had to be freezing cold. How to get across indeed? They would need some kind of...thing to keep them out of the water. Light enough to float, maybe made of wood. Nice curved-in design to keep anyone from falling off. Vaguely boat-shaped, preferably.

"Oh hey, a boat. That works," Scott said after Depth Charge pointed one out further down the shore. And was it just him, or was there something kind of white-looking standing inside said boat? What was...

Maybe it was too early to be assuming no Halloween dances.

[trolltaker.livejournal.com]

After dealing with the three stooges, Charon was ready to settle down for the rest of the night and take a nap in the boat. But the minute he heard another set of voices approach his humble little dock, he used his long, bony arms to push himself up to a stand.

More people, then. Goody! As entertaining as everyone else has been so far, he was starting to wonder if they were the only ones who could find their way out of a paper bag -- or maybe the only other ones here, period. After waiting all this time, he was glad to see he was wrong, if only so he'd have more poor schmucks to play with in the future.

"About time," he grumbled as he wrapped his fingers around his ebony staff, peering at them with hollow eyes. He was still using Blondie Two's voice from earlier, but the beauty in that arrangement was that these guys probably had no idea he normally didn't sound like that. Now he really wished he had Cutie's voice.

"What's this?" He leaned forward, counting each person he saw. "One, two, three, four--oh, six of you now? This should be rich."

[toxicspiderman]

At the word boat, S.T. dropped the bits of the archeology playtime set he'd been toying with, and squinted into the gloom. Definitely a boat, with what looked like an entire skeleton hanging out near the stern. It'd be a tight squeeze, but they wouldn't need to leave anyone behind.

Then the bones talked.

S.T. could have been more surprised. The thing could have pulled out a guitar and posed for an album cover. Attempted to kill them. Both at once. Instead, it bitched like an old dockhand, though with a voice way too young to ever call grizzled.

"This your boat? Where can you take us?" He made it sound like he talked to skeletal water taxi drivers every day. Wasn't really that weird, compared with Sphinxes and zombie robot dinosaurs. This was just an old guy and a little boat. Only question was whether or not the fee was going to be anything they were willing to part with. Like their lives.

[tightsofmight]

He nodded to Indy's clarification. While he had worked out the first part on his own (halfway through his dumb question, though), it had never occurred to him that the bones would be planted. Now it seemed all too obvious, with how white they were. That only happened in the sun. Peter just never had to think about that kind of thing before.

And he would be extra grateful if he never had to again. Just saying.

He trailed along with the rest of the group, pondering the question of the lake and how to cross it, because hell if he was diving in. There were probably ten billion piranhas waiting for them. Or worse. The dock seemed to provide an answer as they drew closer, with a humble little boat attached to the side and a figure laying...down...

...What.

There was horrifying, and then there was hands down ridiculous. Talking skeleton definitely slotted into the latter, especially when it was talking like a hokey early math segment on Sesame Street. He cast a sideways glance to Scott, trusting his brows to properly convey 'Is this for real?' when words were failing him.

Really Landel? Really? This is what we are stooping to now? They could have at least gotten a real Olson twin to do the gig.

(Though he did have to say that was...not what he expected a talking skeleton to sound like. Less guy next door, more gravelly ghoul? Props for breaking expectations, he guessed.)

"If he says anything about 'our wildest dreams' or 'our heart's desires', I'm out," Peter chimed in flatly. He crossed his arms and cocked his head at the thing, looking particularly unimpressed. "I've seen this after school special. Nobody take his candy."

[its-the-mileage.livejournal.com]

Charon, was Indy's first thought, and "Oh, for crying out loud" was his second. He couldn't fault Landel's interest in Greek mythological figures, but the execution always seemed to owe more to the funnies than to any classical depiction. At least he got the attitude problem right.

What this place really needed, Indy decided, was a mythology research department. Not a bad retirement plan, if you were an archaeologist with megalomania and a high tolerance for bad company. Belloq would've loved it.

He turned his attention back to the situation at hand. That there was a boat was good, but it didn't ease his suspicions that some test had to be passed--or some price to be paid--before they could get across. Obviously Peter's thought were running along similar lines. "I agree, kid," Indy muttered to him before he stepped forward, feet creaking on the dock. "And what do we have to do to cross?" he added to Taylor's questions.

[dualistic]

Beast mode, he said. Harvey figured that he couldn't expect much more from someone who called himself Depth Charge, and he decided that he really didn't want to ask any clarifying questions about that.

It was really the least of his concerns right now, since they had stumbled upon a boat, along with its owner. Who happened to be a walking, taking skeleton. All of them managed to take it in stride, which just went to show how long they'd been dealing with this crap. It was like Landel never got sick of putting them through improbable situations and laughing about it.

The skeleton's voice was surprisingly young, but Harvey realized that it was ridiculous for him to have any preconception for what a talking science exhibit should sound like. He brushed it off, taking in the questions that were asked and figuring that Sangamon and Jones had managed to cover all the bases. No surprise there.

The question was how all six of them plus a skeleton was going to fit in one boat without weighing it down, but Harvey realized they'd just have to make it work. He doubted that the skeleton was going to want to make two trips.