Syn batted with annoyance at the screen that had popped up in front of her . . .trying with little success to make it go away.

To her side, Lace wrapped an arm gently over her companion's shoulder, taking her hand and guiding it to the correct buttons. "We've got to get your settings fixed, girl." She murmured. "Treat it like a visor HUD. Yes, like that." She coached simply.

With her comrade's words of advice and guiding touch, Syn's confusion with the system slowly lapsed as she paged through the items. "Crossbow . . .this is going to be interesting." She muttered, a frown on her face.

Narhari nodded, watching as Lace guided Syn, before pulling up his own catalog. There wasn't anything there that he hadn't already looked at several times before. There were a few texts, though; "The Beginner's Almanac", "Your First Profession", and "Lands of Ymaggion". He'd looked through all of them already, hoping for some sort of clue to the whereabouts of the relics. Really, he'd checked every book he'd gotten his hands on. As far as he could tell, there was nothing.

He sighed. "The reason I brought you here, instead of another shop, was so that you could save whatever money you still have. If you're set on getting a gun-like weapon, you'll want to find a ship to the continent of Kouchi. I haven't yet been there myself, but of all the continents, it is the most technologically advanced, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding what you want."

Narhari scrolled through his User Interface menus, until he found what he wanted. A few taps, and Lace and Syn would be seeing flashing notifications. "I sent you each a friend request, which should allow us to communicate anywhere in Ymaggion, and see the general location of each other."

"Communicate anywhere on the planet?" Syn questioned with something like suspicion.

Her companion finally pulled away, both women having swiftly selected modest amounts of gear. Lace smirked to Ajax, accepting his friend request. "She hates that its a game, sometimes. In case you hadn't noticed her grouchy face."

"I don't have a grouchy face." Syn responded automatically. Noting her companion had done so, she swatted at the accept button for her own friend request, if only to get it out of the way.

"The repositories are located underneath the main library," Terrel recited from memory. "The first seven all of their own floors, but eight through twelve are... on the eighth level. You know, right underneath the seventh." She frowned at that, realizing it wasn't terribly elegant. It'd have to do all the same.

"Anyway, the eighth floor is different. The central lobby is for the eighth repository, and the four branches going out of it go to the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth repositories. Those are a lot harder to get to. Number eight mostly just has books, they put other stuff in the other repositories, kind of like a museum.

"I bet those books are down there. Good news for us, the eighth repository is a lot safer than the other ones. So what do you say?"

The swordsman ran a hand through his hair, looking conflicted. They could get in a lot of trouble for this, because if what Terrel said was true, then this was no game quest. But what choice did they have at this point? They had nothing else to go on; he still hadn't even acquired any regional listings to figure out potential locations for the Relics.

He gave up. "Alright, Terrel," he acquiesced. "We might as well check it out. Do we have to go in through the library itself?"

Narhari chuckled at the two's antics. After the relatively grim mood of Oracle's gathering, their friendly banter was welcome. Voice still trembling, he smiled at the two, then spoke his reply. "Almost anywhere. There's a few places where you can't, like Player Vs. Player designated areas, and some dungeons."

Syn nodded as their gear was delivered to them. "Player. . . versus player."

Lace gathered up her gear, pulling a simple sword belt, equipped with short-sword and dagger, over her clothing and latching it. Slipping on some light leather armor over the rest of her form. "People trying to kill each other. Could be a good way to skill up for you and I. Think . . .like that time in Tripoli. The conference."

Syn picked up a crossbow that had appeared on a table, taking a small quiver and dagger as well as some leather and cloth armor. A feint smile crossed her features, "That was a fun week." She glanced over to Ajax and nodded simply. "Kouchi for guns, eh? If I'm to be any good in this bloody game, I'd definitely like a gun. And could be more useful to you if I had one. Thanks for the tip."

Edited by Ajax on January 8, 2014 at 4:34:15

Narhari shrugged. "Not a problem. I'm sure you two would have found that out soon enough; it's fairly common knowledge. Getting there may be a bit more difficult, though. Even if you could find a powerful enough mage to cast teleportation magic, they'd likely charge more than any of us have. You'll have to find a ship there, and it might take some time to arrive. Of course, nowhere near the amount of time it would take in the real world, but still something."

He shuffled through the catalog, marking off a map, which appeared on the table from which Syn had just taken her crossbow. "This is a detailed map of the city, and the docks are here." he pointed to where they were on the map. "I doubt it will be difficult to find a ship to take you, but sometimes unexpected things occur while travelling. Potentially dangerous things."

"Yeah," Terrel responded simply. "We just took the elevators to get into the eighth repository when we went." That had been the easy part, really. It was the automatons and the security gates once they were down there that'd been an issue.

"Well, I have a way to get inside," Rua said, holding up the tome that Relayia had absconded with upon Terrel's... less than brilliant plan of action. "What about you? I don't think you're quite welcome in there right now."

"Oh right," she muttered, frowning and looking at the library again. She really didn't like the place--what kind of cruel monster would instigate them having to stay there? "Well, I'll just go through the back door, I guess. I pissed them off but it's not like I'm public enemy number one." Not yet, anyway.

A thought occurred to her, though, and she sent Rua a request to join her party. "Meet me at the side elevator on the second floor, yeah? I'll mark the location on your map."

Rua nodded matter-of-factly as the party request message appeared before him. He pressed a button of hard light, accepting the request. Immediately, in the corner of his vision, he could see a second status bar appear beneath his own, listing the name "Terrel" and her HP count. "Try not to get caught."

He immediately turned and headed back to the library, moving at such a pace that his dragonet needed to cling to the fabric of his coat. "Let's hope you two didn't get me into too much trouble," he said to the creature, getting a chirp in return.

Terrel followed him for a ways before breaking off to go another route, headed for one of the many side entrances of the library. There was one that was little more than a service door that they'd found was always unlocked in the evening. Probably part of a larger quest or something, but it served her purposes of sneaking on in.

Within a few minutes, the woman had made her way to the second floor and, after waiting quietly for a couple of guards to pass, she managed to make her way to the side elevator that she'd marked.

It wasn't too much longer before the woman found her new partner approaching the designated spot--the look in his eyes showed that he was irritated as all hell, likely from having dealt with the stolen library book. He closed the menu upon reaching the spot.

Rua glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't seen or being followed, then slipped through beside Terrel and hit the elevator door button. "Alright, so far so good," he said, though he honestly didn't think things would go smoothly for much longer. "Let's hope we can find those two books down there."

"Piece of cake," Terrel replied confidently, stepping into the elevator after him. Besides, what could be so hard about just going to the eighth floor? Ooh, they weren't supposed to be down there! Whatever would she do? The elevator doors closed, and she looked at the panel.

Terrel frowned.

It was a touch screen. Had it always been a touch screen? And there were a number of options, but none of them had a nice big "8" next to it. She counted seven options with long words next to them. Those must have been the normal repositories... Where was the one she wanted? A memory returned.

"So uh," Terrel began lamely, hastily pressing the button with the "7" next to the long word, "I think last time we had a tech guy who reprogrammed the elevator. We might have to find another way... But, well, this will get us close!" Too bad Rua didn't seem like the patient type. Would he just step out and leave her after this? Well, too late now.

---

Alone in her chair she sat. It was a nippy afternoon in the Stamarian prison, a quaint twenty-nine below zero with wind chills strong enough to snap your tweezers in half. The concrete walls of the prison seemed like they would've stopped the winds, but instead they just seemed to convert the cold into a deadly chill. She had no idea what the temperature was inside, but it was still very cold. Thankfully for her, the cold that chilled the concrete also cooled her bare feet. It was a small respite.

Despite the cold, her entire body was covered in sweat, her skin inflamed. For many hours they had kept her here in this room, in this chair, connected to these tubes and monitors. Sometimes they came in and asked questions, but she had not helped them yet. The IV kept her hydrated, but her glands still poured the water back out all the same. Her world was still, unfortunately, on fire.

She had kept herself distracted by watching her own hear-rate fluctuate on the screen, but now the salty sweat had blinded her, and her dark hair covered her face anyway, so she just kept her eyes shut for the time being. Sooner or later they'd come back in and drench her in freezing cold water again, and she would lapse back into shock. It was a peculiar thing, but she suspected she could very well die at the hands of these men.

What did that mean? She was not so sure, yet.

Rua glanced suspiciously at Terrel, taking note of her hesitation and her nervousness. Something was off. He didn't feel like he was being set up--he's had something like that happen to him before, and this didn't seem the same--but the woman was on edge.

Maybe she's worried about what we'll find in there? he wondered. Possible. If she was a thief-type character then there was little doubt that she was worried about encountering guards. He shook his head briefly. "If you're worried about being attacked, then don't," he spoke up as the elevator began its descent. "I'm pretty sure I can handle anything we find down there."

Syn took up the map after securing the quiver to her hip, looking it over. "Ships." She said with a distinct aura of distaste. That had been another thing Lace hadn't mentioned to her.

To her side, Lace was fitting on leather half-gloves. "It isn't a Felin, exactly. But at least its gear." She muttered to herself before looking up to Ajax and Syn. "Map, eh? Good good." She said with a smirk. "We're the sorts of girls that go towards the sounds of artillery, Ajax. Not away from it."

______

Her screams echoed out forlornly, through the cold halls. They came in cycles. No torturer worth his or her salt ran a prisoner the entire time. They'd just up and die if you did that. Better to give them a respite, let their body relax a bit, the mind stewing in what was to come next. Unfortunately for the girl, it seemed her torturer knew what they were about.

To be perfectly honest, he could normally go either way on the whole "screaming woman" thing. He'd known men who'd jump up at an instant to save the girl. Or men who'd rather cause the screaming. The same of women, to be tell the truth. Met all kinds, during his life.

But her own dogged determination to not give up whatever information she had. Well, it struck a cord. He tested his own bonds, chained to the wall of his cell, the cold seeping into his bones.

Let the cold come. It wasn't enough to stop him.

Another round of muffled questions. More screams, and then they left again. He still couldn't quite tell from where, these frozen walls seemed to both drink in and echo the sounds in odd ways. She could be right next to his own frozen cell, or below two floors.

In either event, it wouldn't matter, in the next few minutes his own torturer would come. And then he'd get his chance.

"No, that's not it," Terrel said slowly, and the doors opened into the seventh repository. It was just another library of sorts, though it held some objects besides books, and most of them were dusty and abandoned. There wasn't even anyone to greet them when they stepped out of the elevator--in fact, this was the only elevator that took you to all seven of the repositories. It even went down to the eighth floor, but that wasn't going to work anymore.

"So the eighth repository is about a hundred feet below us and... Pretty sure the stairs are locked. When I did this last time, we had another guy," she admitted finally. "But, I mean, I'm sure we can think of something."


---

She shivered, finally, the burning on her skin fading little by little. Eyes still closed, she imagined she was somewhere else. Above the clouds? With her companions? On a beach? Those all sounded lovely. She'd spent some time in the isles between Allondell and Zailleon before; gorgeous places. If you played tag with the turtles long enough, you could follow them to their holes deep under the ocean's surface. She smiled at that.

That seemed to irritate her guards the most: the smiling. Oh, it was hard to smile when you were under a tremendous amount of pain, but the between time? Nothing to stop her then, she figured. At first they'd kept her chained to the chair, like all the other prisoners, but now they didn't bother. She couldn't get up anyway, and the needle that went into her spine made her useless. They'd unchained her thinking that being 'almost free' would drive her crazier than anything else.

Their mistake.

Now she was queen of her chair, trapped in this northern prison. It wasn't much of a prison, really, more of an outpost. Stamaria had been growing out of hand to be sure, but they were not yet the world leaders. Just another faction among many. If someone saw this prison and what they did here, they'd have thought Stamaria was the cruelest and darkest of the lot of them. But comparatively, they weren't too far away from their competition. She could forgive them.

For now she ruled her chair and this small little room in the prison. They'd come back, sure as the sun came back, and slap her around and disrespect the queen of the chair, but a good ruler was not phased by every whim of those around her. If they killed her then, indeed, she would die. But until they took her crown, she would wear it nobly.

Screams filled the prison, and her mind departed for the beach.

He closed his eyes as the sound of key's jangling heralded his own torturer's arrival. Would he scream like the girl somewhere else in the prison? Very possibly. But then, he had something she maybe did not.

There was a clank as the door opened. "Alright trespasser. As cliche as this might sound . . . Time for the fun to begin." A man's voice drawled, silky and smooth, entirely too set on causing pain to anyone and everyone in his petty reach.

The prisoner stayed silent, waiting. The room was dark anyways, might as well use his other senses. He tuned out the sound of the jailor's boots scraped along the cold concrete floor, edging closer. Tuned out the rustle of metal that was most assuredly something meant to cause him quite a lot of pain.

He focused on the screams for a few seconds. How long had she been screaming? Bravery or madness, either way she was tougher than most people in this hilariously realistic world.

Finally he heard what he was waiting for. The thing he knew that no one else knew. The tell-tale thrum of something big approaching their prison. That distinct calm before the storm. He loved that absence of sound. Quiet so loud it practically deafened, if you knew what to listen for.


He idly tuned out even the feint "Shlick" of sound and the pain that accompanied the torturer's blade sliding across his bare chest. Pain was pain, reminded you that you were alive. Something very, very useful.

There was a muffled shriek and whine from above, and the concrete shivered with the impact of something large and lethal and most definitely missile-shaped in the upper floors. His torturer spun at that. They were always so surprised when violence came for them, these dealers of pain.

Finally hours of patient wiggling paid off. Nothing to do in a frozen prison but try to escape, with nothing but the girl's screams to remind him of the danger. He'd been quite intent on wiggling one hand out of the cuff. His wrist was bloody and mangled, but the dim light hid that fact from the torturer until too late. With a swift move, he took hold of the knife digging into his skin, yanked it and and jammed it into the torturer's neck. "Fun Indeed." He hissed darkly.

Edited by Ajax on January 8, 2014 at 20:08:31

Who was screaming? It had managed to make its way to her beach, and it was most disconcerting. The waves lapped at her toes, the sun shined warmly on her back, and she was filled with blissful peace as the turtles came to join her. Except, she could hear screaming so very far away. It seemed far, but in reality she shouldn't have been able to hear it at all. Who was screaming at the beach? She chose to depart, temporarily, to see if she could figure it out.

Fire filled her veins. Ahhh, the lungs screaming were none other than her own. It seemed to distant, so removed. It was a long accepted discomfort, a dealt-with nuisance; it was like the cry of pain rippling up from the dungeons beneath her throne. There were men in the room, and now that she listened for it she could hear the slosh of the ice-water in the bucket. For a dangerous moment, she quivered, unseated from her queenly position. The ice-water would bring her back to reality so harshly she would not even smile.

While her skin was still erupting in flame, though, she almost wished for it, even though she knew that it was the likeliest thing to kill her eventually. She loved the warmth, but this was not the warmth of the sun or an embrace, this was the fires of hell. Patiently, she waited. It would come. But then... something happened.

The prison shuddered as something enormously powerful struck it, a shockwave rippling through the entire place. She could hear the guards fall over, and she smiled despite the pain. In her mind, she imagined them kneeling to the queen of the chair. Shouts started filling the air, and she tried her hardest to hide the smile. Lifting her unbound hands gingerly, the girl slid her dirtied fingers across her face, wiping the stinging sweat from her eyes and pulling the dark curtain of her hair back from her face.

The men had left, the ice-water bucket left overturned on the ground, its contents seeping across the floor toward her feet. Had someone else risen to their own throne?

"If you're sure," Rua said, sounding skeptical. Now he was certain that something was off here. However, all he could do was follow Terrel's lead--his skill set hadn't lent him to needing to practice thievery to get funds.

"The computer upstairs didn't list any names or anything for the two hits it made," he told Terrel as they felt the elevator slow, coming to a stop. "I hope there's some terminal in here that can still find what we're looking for, because I don't have any other clues to go on."

Like an old glove the violence slipped naturally back into him. His hand scrabbled at the dead man's belt, taking the keys before he shoved the corpse away and headed for the door, bare feet padding along the freezing floors. He almost stumbled not once, but twice. How long had he actually be locked up in here? He couldn't remember. But his body seemed intent on reminding him that it wasn't quite up to snuff.

Clad only in torn, now-bloody trousers, the cold seeping into his bones made itself known with every step. And more so when the building shook with a second shockwave as the second missile slammed into it. Sending him sprawling face-first against the cold steel door. "Heh, boys really going to town." He muttered to himself, almost to make sure he still could speak.

The prisoner made his way out into the dark, now dust-filled corridor, lined with cells just like his. The basic plan was to get to the top, the two holes his boys had blown in the building would make a lovely way to get out. Without another word, he started padding resolutely towards the nearest end of the hallway, bloody knife held firmly in his gnarled hands.

Above him, somewhere in the upper floors, gunfire started to roar.

Edited by Ajax on January 9, 2014 at 5:23:33

Terrel scrounged her memory for a minute before responding, "I remember seeing something like that down there. Worst case, maybe Relish can find them." If they could get down there at all, that was. Rua didn't yet seem to realize the extent to which she had no idea what to do, and it was probably only a matter of time before they bumped into the single security guard who slowly patrolled down here.

A brief shudder came behind Terrel, and she almost jumped at it but managed to turn it into a smoother spin. The elevator had just gone back up, and Terrel had an idea.

"You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

---

Gunshots erupted outside her cell, and her smile faltered. There were a lot of things to be happy about, even here, but listening to people kill each other outside the cell wasn't one of them. There couldn't have been more than a hundred prisoners in this place, but that didn't make her feel any better. Who were the missiles from? What kingdom waged war near her territory? She waited quietly. Perhaps they would come for her next. Perhaps they would come for her next.

He made it up two floors without any sort of trouble. But then, they were all running upstairs to fight the attackers, so it really wasn't surprising. Except . . ."Would you look at that." He murmured to himself. One lone guard garbed in off-white cloth and leather still stood in front of a single cell.

And at the man's feet. A splash of ice that had been water. The guard's legs were soaked, causing the helmeted man to shiver slightly, gripping his rifle stiffly.

The prisoner suddenly had his curiosity peaked. Water, torture . . .and the girl's screams. Maybe something, maybe nothing. He growled, stalking forward, twirling the knife in his hands. "Oi, Bugger!" He shouted, causing the man to flinch and raise his rifle-

-Just in time to catch the knife hurled from the prisoner's now outstretched arm. Without skipping a beat, the prisoner closed the distance, dragging the knife out of the guard's lifeless corpse before turning. A few seconds later he was fiddling with the door, and then putting his weight behind it and slamming the metal barrier inwards.

His sharp grey eyes took in the information quickly, the over-turned bucket, the girl in the chair. He stood there, looking at her. Appearing to all the world a wiry, shirt-less bearded man with tawny brown hair, grey eyes and more than a touch of manic in his expression.

He wiped his blade across his trousers, adding more to the blood already spilt. "Girl, You want to live?" he asked, his accent thick, but understandable. Anyone with experience from the so-called "real" world would most likely peg it as some form of South-African.

In the background, definitely getting closer, gunfire thundered.

Edited by Ajax on January 10, 2014 at 6:38:24

The girl looked up. To his eyes, she wouldn't have looked like she'd have made it out of high-school yet, but she seemed as calm as ever despite that. Besides, in this world, who knew who people really were? Things could be deceiving. Catching the shirtless man in the door, she tilted her head at him, not entirely sure what to think.

"I'm already alive, friend," she responded as cheerfully as she could manage, given the circumstances, "did you have something else on your mind?" He was certainly no guard, but that didn't necessarily make him an ally. But it wouldn't be fair to judge him yet, so she would wait.

"This Prison is about to come crashing down." His tone seemed ever intent, speedy and to the point. As though each word carried with it a part of the manic intensity that seemed to coil around his body. He smiled brightly, teeth shining through his scruffy beard. "I have a way out. Figured I'd share. Prisoner to Prisoner."

She studied the scruffy man, his accent rolling off his tongue like a well crafted song. Well now, he wasn't exactly the savior type, but she wasn't about to be picky at a time like this. Besides, couldn't he see that she wasn't really a prisoner, but a lonesome queen of the chair?

Smiling, she raised her unbound hands, sitting seemingly free in the chair except for the tubes and wires that ran into her frame. "Could you turn off that machine over there?" she asked candidly, pointing wearily to a large machine out of her reach where most of the wires ran toward.

With a small chuckle he bowed, "Of course." He said with a ragged smile as he hopped over to the machine, gazing it over carefully for a few precious seconds before powering it down slowly.

"They saved the good stuff for you. All I got was the lousy knife and cold."

"Afraid of heights?" Rua asked, bewildered. "Why should I be worried about..."

He trailed off, looking back at the elevator, then back at Terrel. Green eyes narrowed in suspicion at what he thought she was suggesting.

"You can't be serious."

She shivered slightly as the machine powered down, feeling the currents stop. This moment had been a long time coming. Reaching toward the lower part of her spine, she grasped the needle they had inserted and carefully removed it, exhaling in tune with the sliding metal. The moment it left, though, she felt life itself fill her again, and her smile became more genuine than it had been in months. Without further ado, she removed the rest of the wires and needles, finally standing up for the first time in a long time.

"Do you have a name?" she asked casually, trying not to focus on the gunshots still going on outside the room.