The Weeds of Preparation [Raz/R.D./Rib/Closed]

As soon as the woman was tossed over his shoulder, Rua shifted her until he could move easily with her astride him, then looked over at his employer. "We're leaving, Mepple. I'm sure you came out here for some rare plant or ingredient or something, but it's too dangerous to stick around now," he said through his cloak. "Gather your things. There should be a way out of this place that isn't swarmed over yet, but it won't matter much if that poisonous shit covers the whole region before we leave."

Orup glanced apologetically at the woman, feeling a little odd at having one of his traveling companions pick up another one. Really, though, she would probably be grateful for it; if Rua hadn't showed up, there was no telling if they'd make it out alive. Even now there was still no telling if they'd make it. A tricky situation indeed, but he agreed with both of them: it was time to go. Unlike some of their previous ventures, it would likely be his task to take lead with some caution, given that Rua wouldn't be particularly effective at fighting with his hands full like that. Orup nodded at him and went to open the door.

The area outside was a mess again, likely erupting in the trail of Rua's arrival, and Orup quickly covered his mouth with a handkerchief again. It was almost blinding, really, and even squinting his eyes didn't keep all of it out. The poisonous spores brushing against his face made him feel nauseated, but he tried to keep his act together. The poison was certainly worse, though he hadn't thought that possible, and the moment he stepped outside he knew they would have to find an alternative. Unfortunately that underground passage was completely out of the question, now, but as he looked around he noticed something different.

The pond that had been near the shack was, for all intents and purposes, gone, completely drained. Likely when they had hit that trap it must have emptied it. Could it, perhaps, be the next step? It didn't matter, anymore; they didn't have time for wondering. It really was the only way out, at this point. Orup beckoned Rua to follow quickly, and the man plodded his way to the edge, trotting down the slope that had made the lake. Most of it was just mud, now, and thankfully quite devoid of the remains of life that might have made things even trickier. As he navigated that swampy ground, though, the bottom of the basin became clearer, and Orup saw stone surrounding the drain. Hoping it wouldn't simply lead to well of more poisonous water, he completed the trek down to the bottom and peered down.

It wasn't a far drop down to a stone surface that seemed only slightly slanted. Orup had a sneaking suspicion that this would go back to the Western Caves, but that might just be the roots talking to him again. The air down there looked much cleaner than anything up here, though, so it was worth a try at least until things cooled down. Talking to Rua wouldn't be a good idea, right now, given the air pollution, so Orup simply beckoned to him again, and the alchemist jumped down the hole a moment later.

With a thud and a slight splash of the remaining water, Orup landed, the hole about six or seven feet above him now as he stood in a sloped passage, and he figured the water would run quite easily down to his left. The area was dark, and he didn't have much of a desire to poke his way down there only to lose his footing an slide into a vat of chemical soup. To his right was a door, though, which seemed a much better alternative. Whoever had discovered this area and put it to this heinous task had certainly been very intentional about what they were doing. Orup hoped he could find some of those secrets for himself that might be left over here, however. Moving to the side of the hole, Orup waited for Rua to come down as well. The air was much cleaner down here, so they could finally speak again.

Entering the passageway with Talia thrown over his shoulder wasn't the most comfortable act of agility Rua had done today. Her weight was thrown down as he landed, nearly forcing him to his knees and causing him to let out a whuff of exertion, and his breath spread out uncomfortably over his cheeks thanks to his cloak. He pushed himself back up to a standing position and surveyed their surroundings. "Cozy," he muttered derisively. "Does everything in Hyrule have some bloody secret passage hidden away somewhere?"

Orup lowered the handkerchief from his face, taking a testing breath of air. It seemed clean enough, down here, though perhaps a bit stuff despite being relatively cool. Rua had a point about passages showing up seemingly everywhere; it was bizarre, but the older man was beginning to stop questioning it since it seemed so pervasive. This passage, though, was nothing short of disturbing. The formation of the rocks was very consistent with many of the passageways in the Western Caves. While it wasn't uncommon to find part of that cave system all the way out here, it did bother Orup that this horrible stroke of poisonous plants had wound its way down here. That coupled with the door... he didn't hope to believe this whole thing was a naturally occurring menace anymore.

No, someone had certainly planned or at least fostered this. Again. "I think this passage will end up back at the Western Caves, judging by the looks of things. That means that whatever was growing up there was being grown to... send it down here." The older alchemist shuddered at the thought. "Let's see what we can do on our way back then." Was that an ounce of heroism in himself? No, he was still quite certainly shaken and afraid by this. Given the opportunity, he would likely have sacrificed many people in the caves for his own comfort, though he might not have admitted it. If he could save himself and some of the people though? Why not, he supposed.

Battling down his own trepidation, Orup opened the door slowly revealing a narrow, torch-lit passage behind it. Unlike the last seemingly hidden passage they had gone into, this one appeared much cleaner, like it had been made for use of a person who didn't want to die. He thanked the goddesses for some vestiges of safety, but he kept his eyes and senses clear, picking up one of the torches off the wall and carrying it with him.

For several minutes Orup led the way through many twists and turns of the cave, quickly losing his own sense of direction after the first few. The floor dipped down slightly, descending away from the surface and further into the unknown. After likely twenty or so minutes of walking, though, Orup came to a sudden stop, pressing his back against the cavern walls and listening closely. It hadn't been his ears that had alerted him, though, but rather his Hylian Sense that spoke of danger before he could even see it. He turned his head to Rua, nodding at him to check it out, preferably without a woman still on his shoulder.

After this was over, Rua knew he'd have to sit Mepple down and get him to tell him how this mess began. There was no way this whole incident was a naturally-occurring event--someone had to have made a mess of things. It wasn't long before his sense of his surroundings, like Mepple's, began to creep up on him, making his hair stand on end and his ears twitch. Wordlessly he followed Mepple's unsaid command, his gratitude at the man starting to trust him in dangerous matters feeling distant as he readied himself for a possible attack, and carefully placed Talia on the ground, her back against the wall. "Stay here," he urged in a whisper, standing up and edging past his employer with one hand on the hilt of his sword.

That feeling of unease only increased as he continued forward, and Rua felt that, unlike with the thugs he'd faced in the caverns or the goriyas he had faced only a couple days before, something especially dangerous was lurking just ahead. He peeked around a corner and immediately froze.

Lurking just down the hall, a hulking, red-skinned brute of a creature stood, clad in shabby leathers, a war axe in hand. The moblin was busying itself as it bit its canine-like face into a leg of bloody lamb, spittle dripping from its muzzle as it ate. It made crude grumbling noises as it fed, unaware of the hylian that had snuck up on it.

A haze began to settle in Rua's mind, and his eyes narrowed, face twisting into a snarl. He forgot about stealth, of an opportunity for a quick, easy kill. He stood and ripped his blade from its scabbard, his boots echoing down the hall as he charged the beast. The moblin's ears twitched at the sound and it was quick to turn towards his assailant. Rua took a perverse pleasure in the beast's momentary look of surprise and he lunged, his blade slicing into leather and flesh as it stumbled back and roared with pain. The wound was shallow, and the beast, for all its unsightly girth, was agile like the rest of its kind and quickly regained his footing, and snarled as it swung its axe to parrying Rua's second strike.

Sparks flew as the blades scraped against one another and Rua leaped back, deftly avoiding a follow up strike from the beast. Blazing green eyes met stony, inhuman brown as the two sized each other up, and with a simultaneous roar of challenge from both, the two threw themselves at one another, blades clashing and echoing in the rocky hall.

((OOC: At this point I'm just going to go ahead and finish this thread up in the next post or two with R.D.

If Raz wants to, he's welcome to come back at any time and finish as well, when time permits him))

Orup plastered himself to the wall, trying not to breath too heavily as the sound of blades clashing echoed all the way through the cave. He partially wanted to go ahead and see how his companion was doing, but getting in the way could be even more dangerous for the both of them. It wasn't terribly long before the sounds came to a stop, though, and Orup could feel the danger abating even as he stood there in the cave, trying to keep his breathing under control. He made a slow count to ten before scurrying down the passageway to look for Rua.

The man still stood, thank the goddesses, though it looked as if the fight hadn't been particularly kind to him. Orup didn't have the time or the expertise to do a full diagnosis, so using something from his personal stores would have to suffice. As he approached Rua, Orup made sure to step over the decapitated Moblin corpse that now lay on the floor, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the creature. Reaching to his belt, the alchemist removed a red potion he had brewed some time ago and kept for emergencies. In his head, he had argued against the use of giving it to the Gerudo woman earlier simply because it wasn't specifically aimed at curing toxins, mostly just wounds, but a large part of that restraint had come from wondering if she was worth the price. The potions were not cheap after all.

Rua, however, offered him the best chance at making it home alive right now. He owed the man a bit as well, for that matter. "Drink this, boy, it should work within a few moments," he said, offering the potion to his friend. Glancing around the room, Orup grimaced slightly at the amount of blood a present, quite sure that not all of it had come from that decapitation by Rua's sword. Where they stood was still certainly a tunnel, but the walls had widened out a bit as it went further, leading to a single, wooden door at the end.

Orup glanced at Rua to make sure he was drinking the concoction before slipping down the rest of the tunnel and making his way to the door. Pausing for a moment, he made sure he sensed no danger on the other side before slowly easing the door open and eyeing what was behind it.

His stomach did a somersault as he opened the door all the way, revealing a torch lit outcrop of rock that ran on for at least three hundred paces much like a bridge, going through the center of a huge cavern. Orup had never heard of this place before, surprised that something this large wouldn't be common knowledge even this far from the central portion of the Western Caves. The cavern's ceiling was no less than eighty yards in height from the floor, he estimated; this bridge of rock that Orup stood on, though, was a good fifty yards above the floor of the cave, giving him tremendous vision over the whole thing from his vantage point. Whoever had been here before had chosen this place so that he could work high above whatever his project was.

The hallway had been a grisly sight, with Rua slumped against the wall, his bloodied sword thrust point-first into the dirt and a corpse strewn in the middle of the passageway, its severed head not too far off. The mercenary's tunic was split open, and soaking with blood from the shallow gash that lay across his chest. His trousers were splattered with blood not his own, having been splashed by a single gush of blood as Rua had taken the moblin's axe and coldly executed it while it was down. His expression was as stony as ever, but anyone who could catch a glimpse in the failing light of the hall would see the stormy darkness in his eyes, fading as the adrenaline bled out from him.

He accepted Mepple's potion wordlessly, uncorking it with a flex of his thumb and bringing the concoction up to his lips. He drank it quickly, pushing himself past its sour taste and thick composition, stomaching it to let it do its work. It wasn't long before his bleeding halted, and his skin began to uncomfortably knit itself back together and scab over to heal. He pushed up and retrieved his sword, wiping the blood from it on the moblin's clothing before trotting back to retrieve Talia and then back to catch up to his employer. He arrived just as the man opened up the door into the next room, and with the Gerudo woman in his arms, they stepped out into a massive domed chamber. Rua set Talia back down on the ground, looking about warily in this new chamber--even though his senses weren't telling him there were any immediate threats, something else still seemed... off.

"Might as well see what we're dealing with," he said, his voice disconcertingly loud in the mostly empty chamber. Along the walls of the cavern, there were dozens of torches set in braziers, and he grabbed the nearest one before stepping up to the edge of the outcropping. Looking down into the blackness, Rua nodded to himself and then tossed the torch down into the pit before anyone could voice any objections.

The alchemist watched the fire fall, striking the ground a few moments later and illuminating what exactly he was standing above. The floor was a mess of vines and roots entangling hundreds of flowers and mushrooms much like the ones he had seen above the surface. "So this is where they began," Orup murmured to himself, not particularly surprised but still certainly ill at ease. It took a moment a to realize, though, that the tossed torch had done more than just illuminate. The torch had rolled from where it had landed, touching one of the vines that spidered across the floor, and a moment later it burst into brilliant flame, spreading literally like wildfire all across the floor. Orup's stomach seized inside of him as he realized what a fire of that size might do in a confined area like this.

Deep below them, mushrooms a hundred times the size of the ones they had seen on the surface could be seen swaying violently from the rising heat in the room. Spores had begun erupting from them as the fire spread quickly, and Orup dropped to his knees for a moment, crawling over to the edge a moment later to try and get a better look. One of the mushrooms had caught fire, the spores it had ejected from itself also lighting up like ash in a volcano, and a moment later the mushroom itself exploded, sending a deafening boom through the enclosed area and shooting poisonous fire everywhere. Any thoughts of trying to learn from this place vanished with the explosion; staying meant certain death in this hole.

Rua recoiled at the blast, taken completely unaware by the fungus's volatile reaction. Was it some sort of gas or chemical that reacted? He could readily admit that he knew hardly anything about the biological processes of plants and the secrets of the concoctions that his employer could make, even with all of the tangents the man could go on when his passion took hold of him. But he could tell his careless action had just made the situation potentially worse.

He put a steadying hand on Mepple, who was closer to the edge, to catch his attention and make sure he didn't fall over the edge of the outcropping. "If we're lucky, that's going to burn out the poison in this area if it's connected," he told the alchemist. "But we need to get moving so it doesn't take us with it."

Without even giving the man time to respond, Rua spun about and made his way back to Talia and scooped her up. "Let's get the hell out of here."

On a bridge of peril, Orup chased the possibility of escape like a rabid dog, the cavern practically exploding around them as the fire spread even further. Damn whatever could be learned from this place, the older alchemist was absolutely fed up with this whole excursion. It had just been meant to gather some supplies for the real trip! Ever since Rua had entered his life it had become hopelessly dangerous, but he knew he couldn't blame the man for that; he probably wouldn't still be alive if not for him. Trying not to lose his stomach at the large drops on both his left and right, the fat man scurried across the bridge to the other side, every breath harder than the last.

Oxygen in the room was depleting quickly, and it was of immense relief for him to see a large metal door on the opposite end of the expanse, a large wooden beam barring it from the other side. Taking one final look at the explosive carnage he would be happy to leave forever, Orup dropped to his knees so he could put his shoulder underneath the wooden beam. A moment later he had the thing on the ground--a task he would have given to Rua if not for the Gerudo woman--and the round man flung the door open.

Fresh, cool, cave air met his face, feeling almost like home. As soon as Rua and Talia were through the door it was promptly slammed shut, hopefully for forever, and the man breathed for what felt like the first time in months. That had been, without a doubt, the most bizarre encounter Orup had ever gone through in his entire life. He had learned a good deal about poisons from it, but most of what he had learned involved never wanting to deal with the stuff again. Looking around, the older man found his hunch that these caves connected to the Western Caves to be only partially true, as a fairly large tunnel appeared to have caved in a long time ago.

But another option beckoned them invitingly, and Orup led the way down it, silently hoping it wouldn't take them into some horde of monsters. To his relief, the tunnel emptied itself out onto the plains of Southern Hyrule within a few minutes, their exit largely obscured by stones and brushes he was sure were not there accidentally. Part of Orup wanted to feel proud for burying a poisonous menace in Southern Hyrule--another beast slain! But he was no adventurer, no hero of the tales. Right now all he really wanted to do was finish his long delayed walk home.