Night 64: Hall of Faith

[vstheworld]

[From here]

...would have been next to impossible even if the door hadn't locked them in.

For you see, when Scott put a foot down just inside the hall, he expected it to hit ground. He was slowly getting used to trusting that ground would be there in the absence of being able to feel it. In this case, gravity told him otherwise. Scott began to tumble — painlessly, painlessly down a darkened, rocky incline, with no way of knowing which side of him was on the ground at any point.

"Whua! Augh! Doh! Fuuu— Sonuv— Rolling! Help! Bah! Uaaaaaaa!"

It was Scott's dumb luck that while the incline was steep, it wasn't smooth all the way down. Eventually, his heel rammed into an outcropping of rock, and Scott's sense of momentum kept him from keeling over forward when it hit. "Uuhhhhhgh..." Scott groaned out of dizziness. He could barely see in this light, but from what he could make out, his coat and pants were in bad shape — dusty, ripped in some places, and completely sliced open from the cuff to the elbow on the left sleeve, where his sword had caught the fabric on the way down. Said sword that was now gone, by the way. He was pretty sure he had heard the tink-tank-tumbling of metal careening down the hill without him.

"Crap..." Scott said as he rolled back the ripped sleeve. He squinted. "Craaaaaap." That was blood. He wouldn't have known it if he hadn't seen it, but there was blood coming from the palm of his left hand. He'd cut it kind of deep, too.

Comments

[toxicspiderman]

Everyone thought he was a wuss for throwing up? They'd been wasting more energy not freaking out than he'd used up letting his gut act natural. He rolled his eyes at Harvey in place of a comeback, and followed Scott through the door.

The ground slid out from underneath his feet. Just like had happened to Scott. Sangamon jammed his pipe into the ground, sending up a spray of gravel. He slid to a stop within a few yards. Scott was swearing, somewhere down below. He rummaged around for his flashlight, found it, and flicked the switch. Shit. Scott was staring down at his hand, covered in blood. And he'd been carrying a sword. It didn't take a brilliant biochemist to figure out that one.

"Find the sword, Harvey." Preferably not with his face. "Scott, don't move." He hadn't cut his entire hand off, so it would be O.K. S.T pushed himself back up onto his feet, and skidded down the slope in sections. Gravel was probably raining on Scott, but he wouldn't feel it.

[dualistic]

Despite the fact that the other two fell before him, Harvey wasn't given the time or the chance to react accordingly and stop himself from doing the same. Instead, his feet fell out from under him as he started to slide quickly down the gravel. It took a few seconds of unrestrained panic to pass before his logic kicked in and he turned onto his side, breaking his fall slightly and then using his own metal pipe to shove into the gravel and slow his fall further.

It was a damn good thing that he kept the safety on, since otherwise his gun probably would have gone off in his pants and that injury might have been more tragic than the explosion.

He heard Sangamon slightly above him and Scott down somewhere before, but the lack of light was making it hard to know how to proceed further. Slowly, Harvey hauled himself to his feet and turned on his flashlight, making a more controlled slide the rest of the way down.

Trying to find a sword among all this gravel was going to be nearly impossible, unless he could get the light to reflect off of the metal. He didn't really like that Sangamon was ordering him around, but now wasn't the time to get caught up on things like that.

[vstheworld]

"Not moving!" Scott waited as S.T. made his way down the hill, closing his eyes when he noticed dirt falling on them. He did not want his eyes to get irritated tomorrow in addition to his hand being gimped up. He stuffed his hand into the side of his coat, hoping to stop more blood from coming out oh god the blood screw you Red Skellington man.

Meanwhile, Harvey made his way further down the hill, looking for the sword. "Can you see anything down there? Anything waiting to eat us?" he called down while waiting for S.T.

[toxicspiderman]

Harvey didn't reply, so S.T. got one more dig in. "Preferably not with your face, but at least your odds of that are, what, half-off?" Then he was down to where Scott was. There was a fair bit of blood spattered around, but not instant-death levels. He'd be fine, if they could get it stopped.

"Naah. Nothing at all. As in I can't see a fucking thing. Maybe we're in its mouth. Seems like a hell of a setup just to feed Landel's pet Venus Flytrap." It was a lot more like a pitcher plant, or that thing from Star Wars than a Venus flytrap, but that was the carnivorous plant everyone recognized.

"Hold off from dying another few seconds, O.K.?" It was a lot harder to tear cotton T-shirts than it looked. It was just the first tear that was tough. After that, he yanked, and a two-inch strip peeled right off the bottom of his shirt. "Hand." He'd wrap it tight enough to stop the blood loss, and then they could figure out what the game was with this room.

[dualistic]

It was a good thing that the incline ended up flattening out eventually, because what was at the end of all this gravel was a sheer drop off a cliff face. The realization that he could have gone toppling over was a chilling one, and Harvey spent a few seconds staring down over the edge before the voices from further up came echoing down.

It was Sangamon's comment that stood out to him for obvious reasons. While the man was crass as a rule, Harvey had been under the impression that he wouldn't make a low blow like that. "If I do find the damn thing, remind me to run you through with it," he called back up. His tone was nowhere near joking, as right now that almost seemed tempting.

He had to get a hold of himself, though, and so he did his best to ignore the fact that he was about two feet away from a fall that would surely kill him as he wandered around at the bottom of the hill, searching for Scott's sword. Eventually, he noticed something out of place, an area where the gravel had been disrupted, and started toward it.

[vstheworld]

"Or that thing from Star Wars?" Scott asked after S.T. suggested they were in something's mouth. For all that he could feel, he wouldn't have been surprised if the ground underneath him was more fleshy than rocky. Groooosssss. Also whyyyyyy.

It struck him after Harvey sniped back at S.T. just how offensive their bearded friend's dig really sounded in hindsight. Something like that probably would have had Scott laughing had he read it in a comic book or game at home, but hearing the viciousness in Harvey's reply made even Scott get uncomfortable with the remark. "Yeah dude, kinda harsh," he said to S.T. as he held out his hand. "Can we not piss off the guy who's getting my sword back?"

[toxicspiderman]

Done with Scott's makeshift bandage, S.T. put his hands up. It might have been hard to see both of them, but the one holding the flashlight was obvious. He spread them out as much as he could without dropping either the light or the piece of pipe. Which was less unarmed and more bringing a stick to a swordfight.

Not that he didn't do that sort of thing all the time, at least metaphorically speaking. Harvey might have moves to go with the two-week-old razor wit (kind of dull, but more likely to nick than a fresh blade). He'd slid down almost to the edge of the pit.

"Save the killing for the next time we get creepy orders, man." And then don't follow them, dude. Because seriously, villain team-ups went nowhere good for the villains.

Hands still up, he crouched down and picked up a handful of gravel. It went over the edge, fell out of sight. He counted to ten, softly. Twenty. No response. "Nice effect." Either there was something terrible down there, or there wasn't. "So, trash pit, monster guts, or shitty Lost Boys remake?"

If they woke up vampires, he was never taking anything harder than aspirin again. His suspension of disbelief was making like the Tacoma Narrows bridge and collapsing dramatically. Missing senses. Bottomless pits. Trash-talking Gotham's ugly side. Jumping off a cliff not seeming like the worst idea he'd ever had.

[dualistic]

That return comment from Sangamon was food for thought, of course. While veiled threats to kill an ally wasn't completely abnormal, especially in reply to a comment like that, he needed to watch himself. Harvey realized that he didn't exactly come across as well-adjusted these days, and if he slipped up too much he'd give his two partners the wrong idea. If he hadn't already. They clearly trusted him enough to go through this whole obstacle course with him.

Harvey carefully made his way across the edge over to where he'd seen Scott's sword, and pointed his flashlight around for a second to figure out where the hilt was. Grabbing it by the blade was not something he wanted to do.

Eventually he worked out exactly how it was lying and lifted it up, extending it in the air for Scott to see. At that point, Sangamon performed a test, tossing some rocks over the edge of the cliff, except a sound never returned to them.

"So what the hell are we supposed to do here?" Harvey grumbled.

[vstheworld]

With the bandage in place, Scott felt reasonably confident that he could make his way down the hill the rest of the way without digging more gravel into his wound. Having S.T.'s light shining near the edge of the pit helped, for which he was glad. He was not in the mood to go for another tumble just yet, especially not one down a seemingly bottomless pit, if the stones were anything to go by.

By the time he made it down, Harvey and S.T. were already discussing their next move. Good, so he hadn't missed anything. They were as stuck for ideas as he was. "Thanks, man," said Scott as he carefully took the sword from Harvey, making as sure as he could that all five of his fingers were closed securely around the hilt. Thank goodness it had been his left hand that had been cut, he thought, or he probably would have had more trouble getting his hand to cooperate.

"Camp out, roast marshmallows? I could go for some s'mores right now," said Scott, peering out veeerrry carefully over the edge of the pit. Not much of a view.

[toxicspiderman]

"Sorry, man. All out of snacks." With everyone at the edge, he turned the flashlight down the hole. No light. It only took a hundred feet or so for the sound of gravel landing on dirt to be impossible to hear. Something like that. He hadn't been on one of the tourist cave tours since he was a kid. These days, if he was going to rappel down a hole, it had a manhole cover on top.

"It's like a trust fall. Without the trust." That or it really was a garbage disposal. "The walls aren't closing in, are they?"

Nope. Too bad. "So do we give up or do we jump?"

[dualistic]

When Scott made his way down, Harvey was careful to hand the sword over, still not quite sure how the kid was getting by when he couldn't feel anything. He thought about a local anesthetic and then imagined it spanning his entire body and it seemed horrible.

Still, that wasn't the problem at hand. As far as they could all tell, they'd reached a dead end, but there was clearly more to this. Harvey moved his flashlight around the area, searching for any clues on the walls, any other paths out of here that they might have missed. But there was nothing.

"I'm not interested in giving up," he said when Sangamon posed the question. "They wouldn't have designed this to kill us. We've come too far for that, and they could have done it in much easier ways. So if we jump, chances are something else is going to happen."

He had no idea what, but pushing past the nerves that came with that was probably part of the challenge.

[vstheworld]

"Damn," said Scott to S.T.'s first comment. His stomach rumbled as if on cue. Huh. Guess I actually am hungry. Who knew?

In any case, there was more at stake here than a lack of marshmallows. The other two had hit the nail right on the head, and Scott wasn't sure if he liked where that nail was going. He might not have been able to feel pain right now, but he still had his senses of equilibrium and gravity, and neither of those were particularly happy with the idea of jumping into a bottomless pit to nowhere.

Still, Harvey had a point. Nothing so far had been designed to kill them, even the stuff that had been designed to kill them. And what else were they going to do? Sit here like babies, wait for nightshift to end, then come back to see Bag-'o'-Bones and do the whole song-and-dance again?

"...Well if we're jumping, I say we all jump together," said Scott carefully after unconsciously pushing his teeth down on the inside of his lip. He hoped it wasn't bleeding. "If the ship's going down, we all go down with it... Or something pithy like that."

Okay, mostly, Scott just had a case of the wussies and didn't want to jump by himself. But still. Pithy.