K0mori
Servant Supreme
On the Archangel, well over an hour had passed before Kortova emerged from her quarters, having finally quelled her body's immediate needs, at least to the point that she could function. The idol's insidious effect remained in her, and if she had planned to rest afterwards, it was no use, as she found the whole effort sinfully invigorating instead of relaxing, despite the relief it brought. After a hot shower and a change of clothes, the crew would be wholly unaware of the lewd circumstances she had inflicted on herself, aside from maybe the few vanguards that had experienced the third chamber to a lesser extent themselves. Experimentally, Kortova allowed herself to look at the faces she passed in the ship's passages, and although she continued to find every one of them alluring to the point of desire, she thankfully no longer felt an unnatural surge of arousal as she had upon leaving the ruins. Still, she didn't dare allow them to touch her, and made sure to step wide around them as she walked.
Perhaps, with time, she would return to normal. She continued to curse the idol in her thoughts as she went to the bridge. It was already around 4PM, meaning that there was time left for further exploration, but the sun would soon be setting. Given the enormity of their discovery within the bowl's complex, Kortova considered allowing the teams to continue beyond nightfall, especially since they had not encountered any dangerous creatures on either island so far. Another entire day was available to them, but what if they ran out of time before the Commodore called for their departure? Perhaps there was some clue as to what lay beyond the locked doors or how to open them. And, if nothing else, perhaps there was still treasure here, yet to be discovered.
The other researchers did the same, and nearly reached the first chamber just before the exit corridor when the scampering rodents caught up to them once more. Several more bites caused them to stumble and cry out in pain, until finally, Kuromaki herself collapsed from the shooting lightning bolts of agony in her hips and lower back. The researchers stomped and kicked at the rats which pounced on her, but it was all too much. They were beginning to bite her face now and tear at her cheeks and ears. By the time the rats were finally repelled so that they could return to their feast of the fallen researcher further up the hall, Kuromaki was completely unconscious and bleeding out. The researchers set to work bandaging and stitching what they could, but in the end, they could do nothing but pray for the unfortunate woman as they carried her out of the tomb, back toward the Terror.
Miraculously, Kuromaki would survive the encounter.
Elsewhere, Flint and his team prepared to enact their plan to kill the monstrous eel and open the sarcophagus in the lower chamber. They crowded around the shaft, gave each other a nervous look, and then lit the fuse on the first stick of dynamite. The bomb fell into the darkened shaft below, hitting the water with a splash. Thankfully, the fuse was a weatherproof type which still burned even under the surface, and a moment later, there was a boom and loud splash. The fresh volunteer quickly climbed down the ladder with the trench gun slung over his shoulder until he reached the point at which the ladder narrowed to a single rope. There, he put his arm through the last hole formed by the rungs and caught the rope around his elbow, bracing himself as he lit a match and then the fuse of the second stick of dynamite. The glowing fins of the eel circled in the far corner of the room in a panic, and that was exactly where he tried to throw the next explosive.
Except, to his extreme misfortune, his grip on the ropes slipped badly and he wound up throwing the stick upwards, so that it hit the ceiling of the room and dropped straight down instead. In the panic that ensued, the volunteer fell off the ladder and toward the surface of the water, and Flint and the men above could hear his shrill cry just before the second boom. He was killed instantly, and his trench gun was destroyed in the process. Given that their plan had gone so seriously awry, Flint and his men took the moment to reconsider their next move.
"Indeed," Meinhard said. "Mr. Detlev, do you think this item has any potential to harm Commander Warren?"
The chief researcher shook his head with a smile. "Not at all. For once, I believe I know exactly what we're looking at here."
"Oh?"
Detlev turned to Warren. "Sir, you said that looking through the glass allowed you to see the 'skull-faced' people as living. In our preparations for this voyage we concentrated on a few different types of common artifacts, like aetherine glass, godly icons and the like... Crystal balls aren't uncommon here, and they serve a few documented purposes. I know I read somewhere that an item similar to this was once found on Greater Altanis, and that using it to look upon the dead gave the viewer a vague impression of how they appeared in life."
"Seeing skulls is usually a sign of evil, though," Meinhardt mused. "Shouldn't we be concerned, given the contents of his dreams?"
Detlev gave the Commodore a strange look. "I've been thinking, sir, over what we've been researching, and something doesn't quite sit right with me. If you look a living person through aetherine, they appear ghostly and skeletal. Aetherine, as we know, is an adapted - well, now I suppose we can call it enchanted - form of aetherite, which in all references we've discovered throughout Altanis is the literal source of all life, or so they thought..."
"Mr. Detlev, please get to the point," Meinhardt coaxed.
The researcher chuckled. "Right, sorry. If we're looking through glass that's been charged with the energy of life, then why do we see the image of death? Maybe, it's because these 'skull faces' signify more than just death and necromancy, sir, and we've just lacked the imagination to consider it until now."
"Then what else could we be seeing?"
Detlev glanced away for a moment, as if reluctant to say what was truly on his mind, as it was highly unscientific. He then sighed and gave a smile. "...The soul?"
Meinhardt's eyes went wide. "That's... quite the theory, Mr. Detlev. But I'm afraid we've stumbled onto a topic we'll need to discuss at length later. Besides, the Commander also told us that he saw black aetherine glass in the same dream. That, I believe, is unambiguous. For now though, I'm satisfied that this crystal ball is safe for the Commander to carry and use at his discretion. Shall we move on to the aetherite?"
Soon, the group came upon the stele that Warren had discovered the night before, and both the Commodore and his chief researcher gawked at the large size of the stone. "Well, that's a beautiful mineral, alright," Meinhardt remarked as they approached it. "Those inscriptions are going to need to be transferred onto parchment. You have charcoal, don't you Mr. Detlev?"
"Always, sir."
"Good, let's get it done. Commander Warren, you mentioned seeing 'fire' about this stone before. Do you see it now?"
Warren gazed at the azure colored rock at the tip of the stele and nodded. There were bluish flames engulfing it that the Commodore, like everyone else, couldn't see. "Yes sir, they rise about six inches above the stone."
Meinhardt nodded hesitantly. He reached out with a gloved hand and held it directly in the invisible flames. To Warren, it appeared as if the flames were harmlessly redirected around an inert object. After a moment, the Commodore pulled his hand back and asked the Commander to do the same. When Warren placed his hand near the flames, he felt a soothing warmness, the same sensation he received when he encountered Merphrau the previous night. Additionally, the flames curved and began to circle his hand slowly in a ring-like fashion, and as he turned his hand over, he watched the ring rotate, almost as if he were controlling it. "What do you see?" Meinhardt asked.
"It's warm," Warren replied, "and the fire is reacting to my hand. It didn't do anything when you reached into it."
"I didn't feel anything, either," Meinhardt replied. He was quiet and thoughtful for a moment. "Commander, I don't doubt that you're having these sensations, or that you had an encounter of the supernatural variety last night. This sea has proven itself as wildly detached from the reality we know as its reputation hinted at, and while I'm sure we would enjoy studying such a large and pristine aetherite stone on the Nixe, that creature, Merphrau, may truly have been a god and wished for you to hold these powers. I think you should take the stone with you and experiment. Detlev and I will undoubtedly find more samples on our own time."
Detlev cleared his throat as he stood up from the ground, having finished copying the engravings onto his parchment. "While I don't object to Commander Warren taking the stone, sir, I am concerned about the fact that this was not a natural find. Given the curses we've already seen inflicted on some members of the expedition, it might not be prudent to go prying this rock out of the stele."
"That's a good point. Commander, it's up to you what you want to do from here." Then, suddenly, he looked a bit amused. "Maybe you should just take the whole monument with you."
Detlev gave a lighthearted chuckle. "That might actually be a good idea," he said.
Far away on the accursed Island III, Alvarado's team had just encountered a massive, gooey creature with thick tentacle-like appendages which was apparently a denizen of the ancient mine shaft they had discovered. After swiping the captain and two of his men off their feet, a battle took shape. The Platense sailors opened fire with their guns, and although the volley at first didn't seem to affect the nearly-liquid beast, it suddenly flopped from the roof of the cave onto the floor and twitched erratically. Encouraged, the other sailors poured into the cave chamber and contributed to the barrage, and although the creature began to lunge toward them, it stopped, writhed a bit, and then rolled onto what they could only theorize was its back, as spurts of foamy white and blue liquid shot out of the numerous holes the explorers had put into its body. Its tentacles went slack around it as it died silently. No one was seriously hurt in the encounter.
Now able to inspect the faint blue glow they had seen before, they crawled up a slope in the ground to a point where the cave changed directions and went downwards once more, and there, they were met with an incredible sight: the shimmering, crystalline rock known as aetherite in its raw form- in what was probably thousands of pounds of abundance. Some patches glowed much brighter than others, but nonetheless, it was breathtaking as a whole.
The sun now hung low over the sea and turned the islands golden. For some, fortunes had been great and illustrious, while others were dying in infamy, blown apart by their own bombs or eaten alive by carnivorous rats. To Dobbs, there seemed to be so much more to discover than time would permit. There was enough for one more probing of the island before dark, and then he would have only a day to finish his business in the Ossuary Islands.
Perhaps, with time, she would return to normal. She continued to curse the idol in her thoughts as she went to the bridge. It was already around 4PM, meaning that there was time left for further exploration, but the sun would soon be setting. Given the enormity of their discovery within the bowl's complex, Kortova considered allowing the teams to continue beyond nightfall, especially since they had not encountered any dangerous creatures on either island so far. Another entire day was available to them, but what if they ran out of time before the Commodore called for their departure? Perhaps there was some clue as to what lay beyond the locked doors or how to open them. And, if nothing else, perhaps there was still treasure here, yet to be discovered.
---
The Alamannian researchers were falling all over themselves trying to escape the embalming room, with Kuromaki especially dismayed as she was especially harried by the dozens of rats which had appeared from seemingly nowhere. Although she managed to kick one or two off of her boots as they scrambled back into the hall, several had already sunk their giant teeth into her leg right through her stockings, leaving bloody wounds that spurted blood onto the ancient stone. One of the researchers had taken a serious gash to the neck and collapsed, and although they tried to drag him further up the hall, the rats swarmed his body in an utter frenzy as soon as the blood began to pool around him. The Shinjuku woman grabbed the bandages of her own neck and remembered the horror of yesterday, and unable to face the mutilation of her comrade, broke and ran.
The other researchers did the same, and nearly reached the first chamber just before the exit corridor when the scampering rodents caught up to them once more. Several more bites caused them to stumble and cry out in pain, until finally, Kuromaki herself collapsed from the shooting lightning bolts of agony in her hips and lower back. The researchers stomped and kicked at the rats which pounced on her, but it was all too much. They were beginning to bite her face now and tear at her cheeks and ears. By the time the rats were finally repelled so that they could return to their feast of the fallen researcher further up the hall, Kuromaki was completely unconscious and bleeding out. The researchers set to work bandaging and stitching what they could, but in the end, they could do nothing but pray for the unfortunate woman as they carried her out of the tomb, back toward the Terror.
Miraculously, Kuromaki would survive the encounter.
Elsewhere, Flint and his team prepared to enact their plan to kill the monstrous eel and open the sarcophagus in the lower chamber. They crowded around the shaft, gave each other a nervous look, and then lit the fuse on the first stick of dynamite. The bomb fell into the darkened shaft below, hitting the water with a splash. Thankfully, the fuse was a weatherproof type which still burned even under the surface, and a moment later, there was a boom and loud splash. The fresh volunteer quickly climbed down the ladder with the trench gun slung over his shoulder until he reached the point at which the ladder narrowed to a single rope. There, he put his arm through the last hole formed by the rungs and caught the rope around his elbow, bracing himself as he lit a match and then the fuse of the second stick of dynamite. The glowing fins of the eel circled in the far corner of the room in a panic, and that was exactly where he tried to throw the next explosive.
Except, to his extreme misfortune, his grip on the ropes slipped badly and he wound up throwing the stick upwards, so that it hit the ceiling of the room and dropped straight down instead. In the panic that ensued, the volunteer fell off the ladder and toward the surface of the water, and Flint and the men above could hear his shrill cry just before the second boom. He was killed instantly, and his trench gun was destroyed in the process. Given that their plan had gone so seriously awry, Flint and his men took the moment to reconsider their next move.
---
As Meinhardt and Warren trotted along the shore of Island II, the Commander suddenly stopped to show the Commodore his souvenir from the ominous dream he had mentioned. Detlev, who had followed along as well, leaned in with curiosity and was the first to speak. "Fascinating, again with these dream trinkets..."
"Indeed," Meinhard said. "Mr. Detlev, do you think this item has any potential to harm Commander Warren?"
The chief researcher shook his head with a smile. "Not at all. For once, I believe I know exactly what we're looking at here."
"Oh?"
Detlev turned to Warren. "Sir, you said that looking through the glass allowed you to see the 'skull-faced' people as living. In our preparations for this voyage we concentrated on a few different types of common artifacts, like aetherine glass, godly icons and the like... Crystal balls aren't uncommon here, and they serve a few documented purposes. I know I read somewhere that an item similar to this was once found on Greater Altanis, and that using it to look upon the dead gave the viewer a vague impression of how they appeared in life."
"Seeing skulls is usually a sign of evil, though," Meinhardt mused. "Shouldn't we be concerned, given the contents of his dreams?"
Detlev gave the Commodore a strange look. "I've been thinking, sir, over what we've been researching, and something doesn't quite sit right with me. If you look a living person through aetherine, they appear ghostly and skeletal. Aetherine, as we know, is an adapted - well, now I suppose we can call it enchanted - form of aetherite, which in all references we've discovered throughout Altanis is the literal source of all life, or so they thought..."
"Mr. Detlev, please get to the point," Meinhardt coaxed.
The researcher chuckled. "Right, sorry. If we're looking through glass that's been charged with the energy of life, then why do we see the image of death? Maybe, it's because these 'skull faces' signify more than just death and necromancy, sir, and we've just lacked the imagination to consider it until now."
"Then what else could we be seeing?"
Detlev glanced away for a moment, as if reluctant to say what was truly on his mind, as it was highly unscientific. He then sighed and gave a smile. "...The soul?"
Meinhardt's eyes went wide. "That's... quite the theory, Mr. Detlev. But I'm afraid we've stumbled onto a topic we'll need to discuss at length later. Besides, the Commander also told us that he saw black aetherine glass in the same dream. That, I believe, is unambiguous. For now though, I'm satisfied that this crystal ball is safe for the Commander to carry and use at his discretion. Shall we move on to the aetherite?"
Soon, the group came upon the stele that Warren had discovered the night before, and both the Commodore and his chief researcher gawked at the large size of the stone. "Well, that's a beautiful mineral, alright," Meinhardt remarked as they approached it. "Those inscriptions are going to need to be transferred onto parchment. You have charcoal, don't you Mr. Detlev?"
"Always, sir."
"Good, let's get it done. Commander Warren, you mentioned seeing 'fire' about this stone before. Do you see it now?"
Warren gazed at the azure colored rock at the tip of the stele and nodded. There were bluish flames engulfing it that the Commodore, like everyone else, couldn't see. "Yes sir, they rise about six inches above the stone."
Meinhardt nodded hesitantly. He reached out with a gloved hand and held it directly in the invisible flames. To Warren, it appeared as if the flames were harmlessly redirected around an inert object. After a moment, the Commodore pulled his hand back and asked the Commander to do the same. When Warren placed his hand near the flames, he felt a soothing warmness, the same sensation he received when he encountered Merphrau the previous night. Additionally, the flames curved and began to circle his hand slowly in a ring-like fashion, and as he turned his hand over, he watched the ring rotate, almost as if he were controlling it. "What do you see?" Meinhardt asked.
"It's warm," Warren replied, "and the fire is reacting to my hand. It didn't do anything when you reached into it."
"I didn't feel anything, either," Meinhardt replied. He was quiet and thoughtful for a moment. "Commander, I don't doubt that you're having these sensations, or that you had an encounter of the supernatural variety last night. This sea has proven itself as wildly detached from the reality we know as its reputation hinted at, and while I'm sure we would enjoy studying such a large and pristine aetherite stone on the Nixe, that creature, Merphrau, may truly have been a god and wished for you to hold these powers. I think you should take the stone with you and experiment. Detlev and I will undoubtedly find more samples on our own time."
Detlev cleared his throat as he stood up from the ground, having finished copying the engravings onto his parchment. "While I don't object to Commander Warren taking the stone, sir, I am concerned about the fact that this was not a natural find. Given the curses we've already seen inflicted on some members of the expedition, it might not be prudent to go prying this rock out of the stele."
"That's a good point. Commander, it's up to you what you want to do from here." Then, suddenly, he looked a bit amused. "Maybe you should just take the whole monument with you."
Detlev gave a lighthearted chuckle. "That might actually be a good idea," he said.
---
For a time, Dr. Dos Santos sat and waited for a response to her impromptu prayer. Nothing happened. Sighing, she returned to her work, although she was unlikely to produce any breakthrough discovery in the waning hours of the day.
Far away on the accursed Island III, Alvarado's team had just encountered a massive, gooey creature with thick tentacle-like appendages which was apparently a denizen of the ancient mine shaft they had discovered. After swiping the captain and two of his men off their feet, a battle took shape. The Platense sailors opened fire with their guns, and although the volley at first didn't seem to affect the nearly-liquid beast, it suddenly flopped from the roof of the cave onto the floor and twitched erratically. Encouraged, the other sailors poured into the cave chamber and contributed to the barrage, and although the creature began to lunge toward them, it stopped, writhed a bit, and then rolled onto what they could only theorize was its back, as spurts of foamy white and blue liquid shot out of the numerous holes the explorers had put into its body. Its tentacles went slack around it as it died silently. No one was seriously hurt in the encounter.
Now able to inspect the faint blue glow they had seen before, they crawled up a slope in the ground to a point where the cave changed directions and went downwards once more, and there, they were met with an incredible sight: the shimmering, crystalline rock known as aetherite in its raw form- in what was probably thousands of pounds of abundance. Some patches glowed much brighter than others, but nonetheless, it was breathtaking as a whole.
---
Due to the extreme care that was taken in moving the books, they did not arrive at the Prophet until roughly 5PM in the evening. Not a single tome was lost, and they were placed in a safe and clean laboratory setting for further examination later. Captain Dobbs paid another visit to the statue of Astrius and gave thanks for the research material, but felt foolish when he didn't receive a reply. However, upon leaving the plinth, he had an odd, strong suspicion pass through him. It was a feeling of seemliness, perhaps an assurance that he had done no wrong by taking the books.
The sun now hung low over the sea and turned the islands golden. For some, fortunes had been great and illustrious, while others were dying in infamy, blown apart by their own bombs or eaten alive by carnivorous rats. To Dobbs, there seemed to be so much more to discover than time would permit. There was enough for one more probing of the island before dark, and then he would have only a day to finish his business in the Ossuary Islands.
