e t h a n (duelbreaker) wrote in valesco,
@ 2012-11-01 00:33:00

Entry tags:

ethan jordan, larkin whitby, nicodemo penrose, samantha cadwallader

Egypt Cursebreakers!
He blinked wearily, waking up from a rather deep sleep. Ethan let out a long breath from his nose as his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit wands that were gathered in the center of the room---oh, oh no, excuse him, tomb. The wands were in the middle of the dimly lit tomb that he and the rest of the curse-breaker team were trapped in.

If he was going to narrate this disaster, he had to get the wording right.

It had all happened very quickly. One of the final hurrahs of the expedition was to get to the center of a recently unburied pyramid that had a lot of magic reverberating from it. Muggles couldn't get past the first set of rooms (which they had announced already, to the world, was the furthest the tomb would go), but within a few days the wizard team had managed to find ten more locations with various dedications to different deities, sarcophagi that's paint was still as bright as the day it was lathered onto the casket, and precious jewels that had literally knocked them off their feet with the amount of magic they each contained. It was a beautiful way to end the rather successful trip, and Ethan was more than proud of the work they'd accomplished.

At least, it had been a beautiful way. Upon entering this resting spot of theirs, the excitement of the find had left one minor detail overlooked; no one had been assigned to watch the entrance. The door had slid shut behind them and no matter the volley of spells that they hit it with, it would not budge. That had been yesterday, and after agreeing that a good night's sleep might help them think of a solution, the team camped out. Ethan had hoped an idea would have come to him in a dream, but all he could focus on was the heavy weight leaning on his bad arm.

"Penrose! I told you not to touch me!" Ethan let out, shaking his upper torso wildly to knock the sleeping curse-breaker off of him. He looked across the cramped room, his frustrated attitude not alleviating, "Larkin, he's touching me again!"

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hark
2012-11-04 04:32 am UTC (link)

"Watch it!" Larkin yelled, bracing herself as the ceiling around her began to fall. Now that there were cracks in the stone, indents in the walls, and jutting-out corners to grab ahold of instead of the smooth surface they had been dealing with for the last twenty-four hours, Larkin had easily been able to flip up to the ceiling, but the difficulty was getting to the place where the ceiling became the floor. The stones seemed to be constantly moving, whether it be from widening to let in an oversized and accessorized cobra, or the team's attempts at taking out said cobra, and it wasn't until much later than anticipated that she finally somersaulted through.

And it wasn't another chamber. Though dimly lit, what appeared before her seemed to be a long, wide passageway. Which she was brilliant, because that meant going somewhere that wasn't here.

"A tunnel!" she yelled down, but with the racket and shaking that was happening, Larkin doubted her voice was heard. She pointed her wand through the gap, thinking she had a rather good shot at the top of the snake's head, until she noticed that floor had begun to rebuild itself. Slowly, more stones were reappearing, and closing off the opening she had just gone through.

Well that wouldn't do.

Throwing open her bag, Larkin quickly began to draw enlarged stones (of her own, stored in her undetectable extension charmed satchel, which also somewhere within housed a certain niffler whom enjoyed hiding during dangerous situations), to fill in the spaces the tomb sought to. These stones weren't part of the tomb, and therefore completely unresistant to magic; an old trick she had discovered long ago in her travels, which had yet to fail her.

By the time it completely closed off, Larkin had managed to jam in about five pieces into the floor, more than enough to work with. Definitely big enough to fit two wizards and a witch through. She stood back, thinking the best method here would be to blow something up and hope for some seriously charitable aim.

"Reducto!"

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eagerbeaver
2012-11-04 04:54 am UTC (link)

The last place Samantha wanted to be was in a small room with two wizards and a snake. Honestly, this--she would take the yetis they ran into in Norway over this whole ordeal. At least they had been easy to tame. But no, while she was in the middle of complex hieroglyphs that weren't even her true area of expertise (there's only so much time you can devote to different ancient scripts, in all honesty), she had to think about the giant deadly cobra that was currently at her back. As long as she didn't make any loud sounds, it would be fine. She could keep translating...but that plan also counted on Ethan and Nico continuing to distract.

She let out an annoyed huff as she read over the same sentence twice. She was exhausted, mentally and physically, and was at the point of cursing herself for not sleeping when she'd had the chance. She scanned the text when suddenly, things began clicking together. It wasn't that she had been going at the translations wrong, but--yes, there was a pattern! She simply had to change her reading pattern to get some more sense out of the text.

And according to the section she was reading, the snake was a safeguard placed by ancient wizards to provide protection to their long dead pharaoh in the afterlife. Obvious enough...but there, towards the end of the passage. "Southwest corner! Third tile from the southern wall, sitting directly against the western." Samantha called out, still looking at the hieroglyphs. "Oh, shit, no no! That's not--" she had become excited as she read and called out before finishing up the thought. There wasn't anything but a booby trap and another headache of a mess waiting for whoever decided to step on that third brick from the south wall near the southwest corner.

"Five to the East of that and we should be able to open an exit," she said, turning around just in time to see one of her colleagues about to step on the wrong bloody tile...

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otets
2012-11-05 01:02 am UTC (link)

The two wizards were certainly giving it their all as they bought their fellow curse-breakers some much needed time. They'd manage to corner it for all intents and purposes, and Nicodemo appreciated Ethan's quickness with a wand, but the fact was that the serpent's scales were nigh impenetrable and the effects of their best spellwork were not much more than an exasperating burn or stab. The best tactic now was to enrage it so greatly that it lost the cool, calculating approach to its attacks. As they separated to divert and strike, Nico narrowly avoided a vicious slap by its tail, ducking and scrambling away as it smacked into a wall and released a shower of debris.

A blast from above courtesy of Larkin caught his attention in time to see a veritable avalanche cascading towards them. Wrenching himself away from the target area, he saw a fair-sized boulder crashing onto the serpent's head before he nearly lost his balance. Throwing himself to the right, he regained his footing just as he heard Sam shouting. Startled, Nicodemo looked up and saw a look of horror on her face as she stared straight at his feet.

Alarmed that he'd found one of the smaller snakes (or, rather, that it had found him), he jerked his gaze back to his feet, but saw no snake, nor any discernible source of worry. Brushing it off as nerves from being trapped in a confined space with an enormous cobra that spit a concoction so venomous it caused rocks to begin steaming from its mouth, he shifted his attention back to said beast, waiting for a movement more dangerous than just a dying twitch from its tail. When it didn't come, Nico sighed in relief. Or at least, he would have, had he not caught sight of Ethan, staring at him in an expression identical to Samantha's.

"Why are you looking at …" Nicodemo began in bewilderment, dropping his gaze to his booted feet once more. Large, a little ragged as always, but—he blinked once, twice, and again, squinting at the tiles beneath his feet. It was faint, but one could hardly mistake the impression of… eddies? Small, swirling eddies in the grain of the floor, because…

Because of course. How else would the evidence of any trespassers—or, sorry, adventurers—before them have been so entirely wiped out? They presumed they must be the first, but that might not be it, not at all. And how else would the evidence of tens of snakes, slippery serpents that moulted their skin with regularity, not to mention their positive beast of a leader, disappear so easily in an antechamber that had no discernible way out after the way in was sealed? They had the answer of course, they were standing in the answer, because they were standing in—

"QUICKSAND!" he yelled, fighting every impulse of his to jump out and away. "DON'T MOVE!" The transfiguration was slow, but he could see the grains creeping up along the stitching of his boot, and unless he had a safe spot to land, he didn't dare risk fighting the tug of the sand lest he end up trapped. They had a very small window of time in which to move safely, and the only direction they could do so was up.

His eyes darted from point to point in the chamber, from the body of the cobra up to the escape hole Larkin had forced open in the ceiling. He didn't trust Ethan's hand scaling up those walls sans tethering, nor was he sure of Sam's climbing abilities. While he himself might have been able to, Nico really didn't want to trust his weight to those walls, because falling meant not coming back up. But there was enough height from the boulder to vault up with a medium-sized length of rope if Larkin could anchor them from the top.

"If, very lightly and very fast, we get onto that snake, we can buy ourselves some time and height to get up there," he said, scrutinising the distance each of them had to traverse. "WHITBY! Got any rope for us?" He didn't dare conjure any, and his pack was long inaccessible by now.

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duelbreaker
2012-11-06 12:37 am UTC (link)

Ethan recognized that Nico had not heard what Samantha had shouted because of Larkin’s blast. He had been on the other side of the snake and managed to miss some of the debris, so he darted toward the right tiles in an attempt to open the exit for a quick escape for all while the snake was down for the count. But, in the middle of his run, the ground gave out underneath him and he stumbled into the quicksand. He was up to his shins in the sand and stared at Nico in complete shock at how shitty this situation had gotten in less than five minutes.

He froze, remembering the lessons on quicksand and heeding Nico’s words. It was hard to maintain his balance with the awkward stride he was stuck in, but Ethan used all his strength to keep upright. As big of a mess as this tomb was, his heart wasn’t beating any faster, his mind wasn’t jumbled with fear, and his eyes continued to dart around to take in everything and anything that would help them. He watched the debris continue to fall and as it dropped into the quicksand it rolled---not much, but pushed by the force of the fall and its weight, toward the corner that Samantha had said the exit would be. He watched one more tilt over toward the corner and his heart leapt.

“We’re on a slant,” he said to himself, his excitement causing his legs to shift and therefore dig a little deeper into the quicksand. It was past his knees now, even without the marginal movements. If he could get the door open, some of the sand was surely to slide out and it could free them enough to get to the snake and up Larkin’s rope. The quicksand seemed to be focused on those alive and breathing in the room and the tile work surrounded the booby trapped one was slowly disappearing from sight. Slowly, but---the one that should open the door.

Ethan jabbed out his wand, summoning a piece of debris towards him. Swiftly, he dropped his wand and caught the stone with his good hand and with precision that he would have to give credit to his hours upon hours of shooting crumpled up ball of parchment into rubbish bins, shot the stone in a delicate arc across the room. It landed with a loud thud on the target and just like Samantha had said, a door opened.

The sound he let out at the sight of an exit was nearly embarrassing, but there was no time. His motion had caused him to sink further into the sand, and his wand had completely disappeared underneath. Ethan prayed that the magical string that was attached to the end of his wand and retracted into a case tucked neatly in his clock pocket would be strong enough to hold on through the pull of the quicksand.

“ROPE?” he called out, watching as, yes, the quicksand was seeping out of the exit, but not fast enough to unbury them. “ROPE WOULD BE NICE!”

Any sort of calm he had a few seconds before was gone now, as it was literally they got out of this tomb now or never.

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hark
2012-11-06 01:56 am UTC (link)

See the problem with blowing up the floor was that you were blowing up the floor. If there had been more time, or perhaps a less sensitive situation going on below that included a venomous reptile, Larkin would have cut into the rock, or maybe pushed a single one down, but there hadn't been time for that. So it took her a couple of moments to bounce back from the blowback, as well as find a sturdy enough patch to cement herself too.

Rubbing her tailbone (that would hurt in the morning), Larkin jumped up only to drop back down to the ground on her front. Standing couldn't give her a good enough angle, and with the extended range, she popped her head through the now large opening to get an update on the current situation.

Now it was quicksand? When did that happen? This was all escalating quite quickly.

Larkin furrowed her brow, and pushed herself back up. Conjuring rope would be easy, it was the anchor that needed to withstand the weight of three bodies that this tunnel was lacking. She glanced around briefly, spotting nothing but flat surfaces and small torches attached to the walls. Speaking of--- the fact that farther down the tunnel, too far for her to estimate, some torches were systematically going out was hard to ignore. File that under secondary problems to deal with.

Quickly, Larkin produced another large boulder from her bag, and set it a bit behind her to ensure a steady sit. Creating three long ropes with her wand, she magically tied them and threw them over into the gap. But that wouldn't--- she laid down again, sticking out her wand to help direct these lifelines to their rightful persons as they had scattered within the tomb.

"Something's going on up here!" she warned, meanwhile taking the time to help Samantha wrap hers around her waist. Just as she was about to flick Nico his rope, Larkin looked up, and her concentration broke as she noticed torches had diminished.

"Quickly!" she added, but her urgent tone was lost as she let out an inappropriate snort. Her distraction had led to her quite mercilessly smacking Nico in the face with his rope. "Sorry Penrose!"

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eagerbeaver
2012-11-06 11:43 pm UTC (link)

Oh, right. Let's pull up the other female on the team first when there's something going on. That seems like the brilliant plan! Never mind that she was sinking the least in the quicksand compared to the two gentlemen. This was going to be a mess.

Samantha sighed and tugged on her rope to ensure that it was secure. "All clear on this end!" she called out, mentally prepping herself for the lift as well as what could be going on above them. She just wanted out of this god damn pyramid.

The rope around her waist was as uncomfortable as she had imagined, though it was a relief to not feel the slow sinking sensation anymore. When she hit the tiles, she used her upper body strength to pull herself over the edge just in time for the lights to dim even lower. Cursing to herself, she cast lumos before taking a quick look around. "The last thing we need is for the lights to go out. D'you have anything in your bag that we could use for a torch?" she asked Larkin carefully as she worked with her wand-free hand to untie the rope from her middle.

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otets
2012-11-07 11:12 pm UTC (link)

Despite his stinging face, Nicodemo considered himself genuinely thrilled to be climbing into a potential nest of snakes if it meant getting out of that antechamber as fast as was wizardly possible. The definition of his job was poking around in ancient detritus, salvaging the value of years, more often centuries, past. He'd encountered tombs, caves, ships, you name it, stacked high with bodies, valuables, and curses, and it had never once bothered him. The story of what happened was always laid out for anyone willing to read it. To have it all just… disappear, like the tomb's neat little way of cleaning up after itself, spooked him beyond belief.

Being that Larkin hadn't appeared in danger, he didn't fear meeting any snakes when the three of them clambered up there, but he was interested to know if it was where they had originated. When he gave it a quick look around, however, there was no evidence that this had been their nest. No one had touched one of the smaller specimens, so perhaps they had been a spectre, but the monstrous one was absolutely corporeal. Nicodemo had a sneaking suspicion that the network of tunnels and chambers was much more complex than previously believed, and the antechamber had been a dead-end with no way out. There must be a hidden passageway in one of the outer rooms to get to the heart of the pyramid, and at least several chambers on a magical rotation, such as wherever the oversized cobra had come from. This tunnel either led them to the heart of the pyramid or out of it. Or to a trap, but he was really hoping not. Given his low supplies, the way out would have been the best option, really.

As one half of the tunnel was entirely black, the foursome opted to head in the direction that was lit, albeit dimly. Larkin produced a flint-lit torch, but they lit their wands anyway as they moved. Nico thought his eyesight was failing, but further down the tunnel, the lights began to wink out at certain intervals. Uneas,y with good reason, they still pressed forward until they caught up to the last of the lit sconces. Nico still held his breath as it extinguished itself, but that had been expected. They still had their torch and four wands, anyway.

Or they did, until he'd taken a step forward and all the lights flared into blinding brilliance before plunging the group into utter darkness. Not one wand remained lit, but spots still swam in front of his eyes, playing tricks on him, making him think he'd seen all kinds of shapes, shadows, and spectres in the black.

"Grab on to somebody," he barked, reaching out to his side for Larkin to form a chain. "We've gone through way too bloody much to get separated now."

When linked, they edged forward cautiously for what truly seemed to Nicodemo like an eternity, but may have been anywhere from a few minutes to an hour when there was a sudden booming echoing up and down the tunnel.

All at once, the lights blazed even stronger, causing him to throw his arm up to shield his eyes. When he dropped it, his eyes widened, and not only because it looked as if they'd reached a dead end, but because of what was waiting in front of it, a mere ten feet away.

A sphinx was definitely not something he'd ever encountered before, no sir.

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