Nightshift 29: Basement, East Hall

[wiz-kid-redfive.livejournal.com]

[From here.]

It took a moment for Dairine to take in the hallway in its entirety. The basement seemed to be a completely different animal from the rest of the Institute. The style down here reminded her of pictures she'd seen of Versailles, as opposed to the clinical conditions upstairs. The rift in interior design was strange, but she'd seen weirder things, and this would no doubt be topped by something even stranger by the end of the night.

The tapestries on the walls caught her eye, and she moved closer to one, waiting for her companions to follow her through. She looked, but didn't touch; she knew enough to at least take proper precautions before dealing with something that was potentially deadly.

Comments

[norainu]

[from here]

Renji entered the hall cautiously; quick enough to catch which direction the other group had gone. He wasn't that interested in following them, so hopefully there'd be another door somewhere on the way. If not, well, there were more doors back the way they'd come.

He spared the tapestries a glance, not terribly impressed by the choice of decorations. "I'm getting a theme, here," he said.

The hall was long, but straight. His eyes were already well-adjusted to such dim light, even if the flickering of the candles was kind of annoying. He headed toward the end, leading the way.

[littlestrawdoll.livejournal.com]

The doll only stayed at the back of the group until they reached the threshold or thereabouts. Then he began to let the distance widen, allowing River to race ahead with the other man if she wished. Ren, on the other hand, felt no sense of impatience--on the contrary, he more or less felt a strong urge to linger. Just to explore everything carefully and indulge his curiosity.

Ojou would surely be interested to hear about it all.

Even though some people claimed the opposite, after centuries of assignments, the doll had developed a fairly meticulous memory for detail. The color of the chandelier, the scenes on the tapestries, the number and designs of the doors... Sometimes it could be difficult without knowing exactly where he was projecting the eye, but his guess were usually close, and the eye blinked open in the west hall, into the sphinx's chamber (oh boy), and then there was the hall of armor...

The doll paused briefly, brow furrowed. His one visible eye slid closed.

And everything else rejected him. He knew whatever lay underground was much bigger, but...

[theycutitout.livejournal.com]

River followed Renji. As she followed, pacing down the long hallway through the dim lights, she watched. Not in the same way that Ren watched, but she saw. A hand glanced over one of the detailed tapestries, over the painted blood and gore. Pictures were more real than reality sometimes.

"Picture's got a meaning, but it isn't saying out loud," she answered Renji, somewhat troubled as she looked back at it. "It's talking in all kinds of ways, but you can't hear. Can guess, though. Hypothesize. Or you can just walk and listen on the way. If you don't get robbed by the bandits. Ren!" The little sister turned to her brother, the brother with the golden eye. "You're late."

[norainu]

Renji spared a glance at Ren, but kept going. Unless he heard the guy yelling, he wasn't going to worry about it too much. Other than the thing with the triangle on its head, he'd yet to come across much of anything here that he and River couldn't beat together.

"I'll walk and listen, I guess," Renji said. "I don't think I'm smart enough to hypotho-thingy." He shot a grin over his shoulder at her.

There was a door, on the left side of the hall. Cautiously, he opened it and stepped through.

[to here]