Scion – Petro Campaign – Session 19
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Feb 24th 2008.
Yay! We’re in the Underworld! I have been waiting for this for a long time, and it’s just what I expected: dark, vaguely creepy, and delightfully dreary! I’ve been able to enjoy the atmosphere here at the little riverside spot where we’ve stopped to rest. Some of the others are getting a little sleep to recover from some of the psychological fatigue of our journey, but I’m way too excited to sleep. I feel like I’ve come home after being away for so long…
To be honest, we weren’t in Kaymakli as long as I thought we might be. It only took us a few of days to find the Eye of Chaos, and I was expecting to wander around down there for a couple of weeks. I guess we have the map we found to thank for that. Without that map and Adam’s detailed memory of it, we’d probably still be hopelessly lost down there, and who knows how long it would have taken us to find the Eye or how many of us would have been lost to the sadistic traps that filled the place.
Anyway, I guess I should catch my readers up on what happened between my last entry and the Underworld.
Let’s see, after we got moving again following our fight with the satyrs, the next traps we ran into were two long halls—each a different way to proceed. One was filled with fire, and the other had blades in the ceiling that would draw intruders up into them by attracting their blood…like blood magnets, I guess. While I admire the creativity of that one, it was definitely not the way we wanted to go, so we decided to brave the hall of fire. Getting through that hall was a simple matter of surviving the fire. I don’t think any of us really had trouble with that. Ray’s immune to fire, and almost everyone else could sprint through so quickly that the fire didn’t get much of a chance to burn them. Pierre and I couldn’t, but our grave-touched vigor makes us pretty tough, so even though the fire was pretty damned uncomfortable, it didn’t actually hurt us.
It did scorch my clothes, though. Oh well, like I said before, that particular skirt and top were old and destined to be ruined in this dungeon-crawl anyway, so I came prepared with another outfit. I hope it doesn’t get ruined. I mean, sure, it’s a bit old too, but it’s damned cute and I’d hate to lose it. There wasn’t much room to change, so I had to change with everyone around. Pierre offered to shield me so that I had some privacy, but that lech was facing me the whole time. >_< Ah well, I didn’t really mind. If he wants to admire me, he can go right ahead. ^_^ It’s only to be expected. I’ve done my share of admiring him, after all.
Hmmm…I think the little Ray voice in my head just said something about vanity. Well, yeah, I am trying to watch that. I think I have a right to be proud of my looks, just like Ray and Anna have a right to be confident in their combat prowess. But I don’t want to piss people off with it. Which brings me to Echo. I found a quiet moment while we were hiking through the underground to mention to her that she’d been acting really arrogant lately. I tried to phrase it as nicely as possible, but I’m afraid I let a little of my own frustration and jealousy creep in. She looked like she wanted to argue with me, and she’s probably a bit miffed right now… I hope it doesn’t last. Still, I think she’s trying to take the advice to heart. All the more reason for me to set a good example for her. So I’m glad that Ray’s been reminding me to remain a bit modest about how unbearably hawt I am ~_^. I suppose I should do the same for him when he gets a big head about how badass he is. ^_^
Speaking of Echo, I also thanked the others for their continuing efforts to protect her, and asked that they keep it up since she relies on us and I feel woefully inadequate to the task of keeping her safe. Sigh. They seemed happy to help. Except for Anna, who got all defensive about it like I was implying that she hadn’t been doing her job. I swear, that girl needs to stop trying to pick fights with me.
Okay okay, back to Kaymakli. A little bit after emerging from the fire tunnel, we were ambushed by more of the centaurian shadow beasts. Like before, we finished them off without too much trouble, but this time, they focused on Ray. It was like they had some sort of hive mind going on, and the ones we fought down here knew exactly who to fear. Scary. Anyway, they did their best to sap Ray’s will, and they were nearly successful despite his indomitable spirit! I shouted encouragement at him when things started looking bad, and that seemed to give him his second wind, so no problem.
You know, those shadow beasts are bad news. They didn’t seem to have any trouble hitting Ray, which is not right.
Not long after we dealt with the shadow beasts, we came to a room with a gigantic statue in it. It was blocking our way, and according to Adam, we could either fight it (a doomed proposition) or try to please it with an artistic performance that included at least five of us. Well, T-Bone, Echo, and I are already pretty artistically gifted, and so is Elisa (when it comes to photography, at least). Pierre proudly announced that he was quite the dancer (who knew?!), and Ray offered to perform with Pierre since he’s pretty good at working in tandem with others.
After a little discussion we…ummm…decided to perform “Thriller.” You know, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” *bemused laugh* I set up the beats and music on my laptop, and T-Bone improvised an accompaniment on his trumpet (he made the trumpet seem like a natural part of the song!!) Echo sang, and my god she has a gorgeous voice. I knew that already, but it has grown even more beautiful lately. I have got to record her vocals for some of my tracks…I’m just afraid that all the sound engineering in the world won’t be able to capture the beauty of her song. Hmmm…maybe if I get the kami of my microphones and studio computer to help, they can preserve the essence of her voice.
Anyway, we performed “Thriller,” and Pierre and Ray did the zombie dance. LOL. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ray look so…undignified. It was pricelessly endearing. Elisa got some great pics too. ^_^ We were incredible, and the statue must have liked it, because it let us pass with no problem.
Next up was a pair of doors, each guarded by a statue. At this point, I really started to feel like I had been dumped into the movie Labyrinth (one of my absolute favorites, by the way!)…a feeling that only intensified later on (but I’ll get to that later). Remember the scene with the truth and lie doors in Labyrinth? One statue always tells the truth, and the other always lies? That’s what was going on here. Fortunately, anyone who has seen the movie knows the trick, so we were able to figure out which door was which pretty easily. Of course, the sadism of Kaymakli knows no bounds, so the “right” door according to the statues was actually the “wrong” door…but Adam knew that was supposed to be the case, so we went the right way (which was actually the “wrong” way, but you get the idea).
Oh, and if you don’t know the trick to these doors, I’m not going to tell you. Instead, you should go watch Labyrinth. It’s a classic. And it stars David Bowie, who is not only hawt, but an incredible artist too. I was actually appalled to learn that Adam finds the movie boring! Apparently, he always falls asleep during it. Oh well. I guess he’s not perfect. I mean, he did date Anna.
A few miles of tunnel later, we came to another room with the statues of five chaos gods in it. According to Adam, we had to kiss one of the statues to show our reverence toward at least one of the chaos gods in order to pass. The statues included Dionysus, Loki, Set, a spider statue that Adam said was supposed to be Anansi, and the statue of a long-haired woman with claws (it was the same as the statue in the room Ray and I had to work together to pass; see my last entry). I kissed the spider, because spiders are so enchantingly creepy. ^_^ I think Adam kissed Loki, just to spite him. Echo kissed Dionysus (not the first time she’s done that, of course), and I can’t remember exactly who the others kissed…except for Ray. He made a point of kissing the statue of the clawed woman, and he summoned the statue’s kami to ask who it represented (I didn’t know he knew the art of tsukumo-gami!) The kami said it represented an ancient god known a Heshon. None of us had ever heard of her, but Ray seemed troubled…like he felt something strange when he kissed the statue. Hmmm…maybe I’ll ask my mother or Amaterasu or Persephone about Heshon next time I see one of them.
Anyway, shortly after that, we came to a immense room. I mean, this thing was like a mile across or more. As we entered and began crossing it, Adam’s keen eyes spotted a figure on a throne in the center of the room, and when we got there, it looked like the figure was waiting for us. It was David Bowie! No, seriously. It was David Bowie with the crazy hair from Labyrinth! Actually, he introduced himself as the King of the Vampires. It’s totally plausible that David Bowie is the King of Vampire. Of course, I’m not absolutely certain this really was David Bowie, but he looked just like him, and neither confirmed nor denied his identity. And why shouldn’t David Bowie be the King of the Vampires? I mean, I’m a celebrity, and I’m the daughter of a death goddess.
Ahem. I stepped forward to speak for the group, and the King of the Vampires gave us a vague warning about what we were about to get into (meaning the sealed part of Kaymakli) and told us that he was the guardian of the sealed portions of the city and of the Eye. However, he also told us that since we had come to claim it for the gods, his duty was done, and he was no longer under any obligation to protect the place. I was so relieved. I did not want to fight David Bowie. That would just be a travesty!
Once his message was delivered, he flew up toward the ceiling of the chamber and disappeared. You know, David Bowie is totally into experimental music. I wonder if he’d be willing to collaborate with an independent techno-goth-industrial musician like me? If not now, it’s only a matter of time before I become famous enough to warrant his attention. And then we’ll see if he really is the Vamp King or not. ~_^
While we were talking to David Bowie, we felt a huge tremor rock the entire underground structure, and figured out that it came from a huge explosion above us. Looks like Chaos Theory decided to go ahead and blow the place up. I don’t know whether they thought they were doing us a favor or were reneging on our deal, but it was not a pleasant experience, and I’m pretty pissed off at them for blowing the place up with us inside it! The entire structure began to collapse, and I’m pretty sure that those beautiful ruins probably caved in shortly after we escaped safely to the Underworld.
So, after our brief encounter with David Bowie, King of the Vampires, we finished crossing the room with aftershocks of the explosion vibrating through the ruins every now and then, and found the hall that served as a gate to the sealed portions of Kaymakli. At this point, T-Bone brandished the gate’s key and we all placed a hand on him so that we could benefit from its protection (otherwise, the gate would have killed us—the living can’t enter, and the dead can’t leave, remember?). In a tightly knit cluster, we slowly walked through the long hallway and finally emerged in the room beyond…
…where we were immediately jumped by a host of desiccated, blood-starved vrykolakas vampires. Fortunately, they were weakened by their long imprisonment. Unfortunately, they were ravenously hungry. As usual, my companions didn’t have much trouble dispatching them, and I turned on my sunlight to help burn the things to death. But there were an awful lot of them, and a couple of them leapt onto Echo. I was frantic to save her, and the others were otherwise occupied fighting their own vampires at the time. My powers over health didn’t do much to the satyrs, but I didn’t know what else I could do, so with Echo’s pendant relic wrapped around my hand, I raised my camera and took a photo, channeling my power over health through the flash. It worked! Combined with the sunlight radiating from my body, the light seared one of the vampires, and he collapsed into cinders that quickly burned away to ash.
I actually killed something on my own! Wow. It’s the first time I’ve done that. And I was able to help protect Echo. That’s what’s really important. Adam came along and finished off the other vrykolakas on Echo before I could turn my camera on it…so she’s safe. Hurt, but safe. I tenderly healed her once the fight was over.
I should also note how completely cool T-Bone was during the fight. I don’t know what he did, but somehow the enemies seemed drawn to him and couldn’t dodge his blows…or anyone else’s, for that matter. It was like he was exerting some sort of tidal pull on them that inhibited their motions, and it made them a lot easier for the others to fight. Way to go T-Bone!
After dealing the vrykolakas, we traveled onward. There were a lot of desiccated vampire bodies scattered around—hundreds of them. They weren’t dead…just in torpor (that’s how Amy and Tabby would describe it, anyway). It was so macabre…there was something almost romantic about it, like some sort of grotesque and horrific sleeping beauty story.
After a few hours of wandering through not-dead vampire bodies, we came to a deep pit. Actually, it wasn’t just a pit, it was a miles-wide hole in the structure of the city, about 120 yards deep and with nothing but a narrow footpath along its circumference. Daunting, to say the least. Going straight down would save us a day’s travel since we wouldn’t have to navigate miles of twisting passages, so we decided to make it a shortcut. ^_^ The only problem was that any sudden impacts on the floor below would activate another trap, so we couldn’t just jump down. Anna scurried down the wall like a squirrel (she’d hate me for describing it that way). Ray flew down carrying T-Bone, and the rest of us shadow-stepped to the floor below.
Continuing through one of the passages at the bottom of the pit, we came to a long, narrow bridge over a magma-filled chasm. Swirling darkness lurked above the bridge, and we got a sense that something was waiting in that darkness for us. Except for that detail, the swirling darkness was actually quite charming. I took a nice picture of it…but I’ll probably have to enhance the exposure in Photoshop to reproduce the actual effect. Still, it might make a nice background texture for a promo poster or CD cover. ^_^
We didn’t want to end up on a fight on the bridge, so we considered ways to cross without putting ourselves in harm’s way. I suggested that those of us who could shadow-step should use the shadows to teleport across, and that’s what we did. The others were all fast enough that they could sprint across in a split second, so they didn’t even give the beasties lingering overhead a chance to attack. Elisa stayed behind to cover us with her rifle in case we were attacked, but when we were across and it was all-clear, she shadow-stepped across to continue with the rest us. She’s so tactical. You can really tell that she’s been on the front lines in war zones. She definitely knows what she’s doing.
And then we found it. We came to a large room with a single entrance, and there, on a raised platform in the center, was a huge red orb: the Eye of Chaos. After checking with Adam to make sure the pedestal on which the Eye rested wasn’t supposed to be trapped, T-Bone rushed up to it and grabbed it like a giddy kid at Christmas. I can’t blame him…this is really his quest, and he is a child of chaos. The way he describes it, the Eye gives him almost complete and limitless control over his chaos powers. Wow. That must be intoxicating!
With the Eye in hand, it was time to make our exit. Anna and I got out the ritual scrolls and prepared to perform the magic that would open a gate to the Underworld…but that’s when things began to get bad. Really bad. Tens, if not hundreds, of those shadow beasts began pouring out of Kaymakli into the Eye chamber. Some of them were bigger than any we’d seen before. Anna and I had to concentrate on the ritual, so we couldn’t help the others keep the creatures at bay. Ray called up a barrier, but within a few seconds, the beasts broke through it. Even so, it bought us valuable time. Once the shield went down, the creatures swarmed us. Their will-draining attacks devastated Ray and they nearly brought Anna to her knees despite the way T-Bone and Adam danced through the creatures, striking them left and right. Pierre was a rock of stability in the midst of the chaos, and Elisa wasted the beasts one after another with sunfire bolts from her rifle. But it wasn’t going to be enough. I feared that they would overwhelm us.
But then Ray drew from his reserves of inner strength and created another barrier, pushing the beasts back for the final few seconds Anna and I needed to complete the ritual and open the gate. Quickly, we all fled through it, leaving the shadow beasts behind.
And that’s how we got to the Underworld. And guess who was waiting for us? Karen, Angela, and Annie, the three ghost girls I helped introduce to the afterlife at Suchette’s club in New Orleans. They’ve been helping to guide the dead to the underworld, and came to meet us as…well, as sort of oracular messengers, really. Each of them had a message for one of us. Karen told me to “Be careful lest you be trapped in the halls of Persephone.” I wonder what she meant? Was she referring to the Underworld as Persephone’s halls? Did she mean that Persephone is trying to use and entrap me? Or was she simply warning me against falling too much in love with Persephone? Karen was just the medium for the message, so she couldn’t really explain it. I’ll just have to be cautious around Persephone in the future. I hope she doesn’t mean me any ill-will. I’ve come to think of her as a friend, and I’d hate to be betrayed like that.
Angela (not to be confused with my friend the scion of Persphone who is also named Angela) told Ray that he would have to face a god soon. Wow. I hope that doesn’t go badly for him. Ray’s truly skilled…but against a god? If that god knows anything about combat, Ray will definitely have met his match. I got the impression that the encounter would be more of a test than anything else, though. That’s a relief…sort of. I hope Ray’s up to it. And Annie talked to Anna and told her that she’d encounter her dad (Ares) soon, and that she’d better be wary of him.
I talked to Karen and her friends for a bit before they had to go. They seem like they’re doing rather well in the afterlife, which is great. Karen updated me on Suchette (since she’s been keeping an eye on the vampire for me). Suchette is apparently really interested in me and has been trying to find out as much as she can about me. Heh, I guess I’m just popular. ^_^ Seriously, though, I am curious about exactly why she’s so interested in me, aside from the fact that we made a bit of an agreement in New Orleans. Maybe I’ll pay her another visit soon. Not unannounced, of course. She hates that. ~_^
Speaking of popularity, the paparazzi have struck again. Apparently photos of me and Echo kissing have appeared in Out magazine. I was a little shocked to hear about that when Karen told me since I’ve never thought of myself as a lesbian (bisexual, sure, but not homosexual). I commented that I needed to hook up with a boyfriend to make my sexual orientation clear to my public, but the others (especially T-Bone and Ray) told me I shouldn’t worry about it. And he’s right. The public will think what they want, and there’s nothing I can do about that.
Still, I would like to find a nice boyfriend to hook up with. I adore Echo, but I’d also like a guy to love, and Adam’s not really available. Ray and T-Bone both suggested that I should definitely keep things “in-group,” meaning that I should look to our little cadre for a paramour. They want me. ^_^. (Oops, there goes the Ray voice in my head again). Unfortunately, Adam’s dominated by psychobitch, so he’s not really an option, and I’m not coming between Dahlia and T-Bone (though I do confess a sincere fondness for T-Bone). I’m not coming between Elisa and Pierre either, though Pierre does turn me on. So that leaves…Ray? I asked Ray if he was trying to say that he was interested, but he just replied, “I’m just saying is all.”
Surprise, surprise. Ray was actually flirting with me! ^_^ I didn’t think he was serious, but I really appreciated it, so I gave him a little kiss on the cheek to reinvigorate his willpower. Thinking about it later, though, I started to wonder if he wasn’t serious after all. They do say that opposites attract, after all. This definitely bears investigation…
Well, I’d better shut down to preserve my laptop’s batteries. Next stop is Duat, which won’t be nearly as pleasant as the part of the Underworld we’re in now. I’m not sure how long it will take us to get to where we’re going but hopefully we won’t have to spend too much time in the Pesedjet Underworld. I’d much rather be relaxing in Yomi.