World Tree MUSH

It has taken time for a small group of archaeology students and hired Bedouins to remove the stone blocks sealing in the ancient Vine. Neviah ensured they were careful about it, preserving the stones for future study. The tunnel beyond is so dark that there's no hope of sight once one steps into it far enough, only a dry, steady air drafting slowly from the opening. Tense, Neviah directs the students and Bedouins to stay behind. Then she steps in first, her Snider-Enfield rifle in hand.

It takes the darkness a moment to give way. When it does, there is no longer a cave there.

    <BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmedlfRszXU>

Neviah blinks once as the light ahead resolves into discrete shapes - walls, floors, a doorway ahead, the shapes of columns, some standing, some not. The Vine emerges through a broad gateway framed in immense stone blocks woven through by the ghostly and indistinct remains of artistic carvings, by now so badly worn away that reading them is nigh impossible. The long chamber ahead was one supported by dozens of distinctly Egyptian-looking columns, but some have long since fallen away, bringing much of the left side of the room down in a heap of rubble. A few desperate weeds peek up through gaps in the cracked flooring stones.

Neviah opens her mouth slightly, then closes it again, heart racing. The sound of it in her own ears feels deafening, and it's not just because of her own excitement, fear and tension.

It's quiet here. Only the sibilant suss of the draft through the chamber can be heard, and felt.

Quickly, the young professor draws a sheet of treated paper and holds it up, her candle behind it. As the sheet darkens, lines begin to cobweb rapidly across it, growing more dense as the candle flame activates the chemicals. "The etheric concentration here is great," she whispers, trying to keep even that sound from carrying too far. "And the signature matches. This is our world, Morrigan...."

She bites her lip and looks across the ruined room. "...What remains of it...."

    This time. This time Morrigan came prepared.
    Wearing her leather armor under her robes means she's a lot more hot and miserable. But it also means she's much more protected against possible threats, and has come armed with a shortsword and several daggers, along with her faithful shinki Familiar companion perched on her shoulder.
    She is... Leery of this vine. After all no one would go to the trouble of sealing it up for no reason. The question she has asked before and will continue to ask over and over in her head is simple...
    Was it sealed to keep the Egyptians out... Or to hold something in?
    "Mmmmm."
    To Morrigan, the darkness is as bright as day, and he eldritch-green eyes dart over the worn works of paint and art, too far worn away to make any intelligible sense, and the fallen columns and rubble.
    "So it is..." She murmurs back, her own excitement muted in comparison to Neviah's.
    She'd rather not experience another Veldora incident... But who's to say what this discovery will bring them for sure.

    Dante's broken out one of his red trenchcoats. Probably a bad idea to use it in the desert, but it means something dammit. He's come prepared, Ebony and Ivory tucked in holsters at the small of his back, Rebellion on his back, Coyote stuffed in a holster on his belt, and so on.

    He's also got some nasty sunburns, but those'll heal. He'd rather come out of this a little burnt than outright skewered, anyways.

    "So, what's the last thing you remember about your world anyways?" He asks Neviah and Morrigan.

    Justina Appleblossom Leaves of Thyme, Captain of the CEFS Sanctuary, field operations agent, scientist.

    The elf-soul driven robotic frame follows Neviah into the tunnel, it's dark green optics and running lines glowing eerily in the darkness.

    The Doll's movements are much more quiet than one might expect from a mechanical thing, but even the soft whirr of servo motors, and the light metallic clinking of its footpads on the stones is almost deafening in the abject silence around the ancient Vine.

    She moves aside and sets a box down just inside the entryway, fiddling with the controls for a moment before the box unfolds and extends an antenna array, two small dishes flowering from a central stem. One pointing almost directly up, the other tracking the Doll's movements. "Signal booster active. I can act as a communication hub as well, using this." she announces in a soft tone, almost a whisper that seems afraid to break the quiet here.

Neviah picked up someone else as muscle along the way.

The person doesn't *look* much like muscle, though.

Juniper still looks more like a teenaged (well, young adult; 18 or 19) refugee from the 1990s than any kind of fighter. She has baggy jeans, well-worn runners, a flannel shirt worn open over a crop top; the flannel shirt is black and red, the crop top *was* white but has aggressively neon, electric blue tie dye.

"It's dark, so at least nobody's waiting for you on the other side," Juniper says, rubbing under her nose to try to stop from sneezing from the dust. "Your world, huh? It looks..."

Juniper steps forward, trying to stick her head in. "Abandoned," she eventually decides. "At least, this part does. Maybe this used to be a pyramid before it fell in for them."

With no natural attunement to the darkness, Neviah is forced to slide her candle into the carrying lantern she brought with her. The light doesn't seem to carry that far. Maybe it's her imagination. Her eyes keep darting to the long shadows being cast around her, but ultimately migrate back to Morrigan. "It looks like nobody has been here in centuries," she whispers. "Maybe even longer."

For all that she's talking to the others, the ambient silence of the place puts Neviah on edge. The low rush of the wind sounds entirely too much like breathing, despite the chill to it. With a shiver, she begins to creep forward, trying to keep herself to the shadows as much as she can. She slinks past looming columns, biting her lip as she makes note of weathered carvings and spiderwebbing cracks, the signs of age and decay and neglect.

The complex seems vast and empty. Beyond the threshold of the vine room, crumbling corridors and tunnels meander, some blocked off by caved-in ceilings and other heaps of rubble. As she prowls around a few chunks of masonry, Neviah looks back towards Dante and Juniper, then ahead down a dark hallway. "...I don't remember anything about it," she admits in that same barely-a-whisper tone. "I remember growing up in a crossroads town... but our world is so lost in the Tree now that places like that are just in the middle of other worlds now. Intact parts are so rare...." As she's moving along, she veers left, away from a collapsed hall and into a side chamber.

"The architecture seems so Egyptian," Neviah begins to say, before there's a soft crack as her foot comes down on something. She gasps, her lantern-light swaying wildly as she stumbles forward.

She doesn't hit ground - something's in the way. With a loud 'oof!' she tumbles into a waist-height object in the middle of the room, landing with a thud mixed with a few brittle cracks. It takes her a few seconds of fumbling to find her lantern.

"Ohh!!" she immediately gasps in shock before recoiling and covering her mouth.

Neviah has landed ass-over-teakettle in an open sarcophagus. A rather disconsolate-looking and mostly-decayed mummy still lies in it with her, its left leg now broken off under her knee and partially disintegrated. Enough of the face has worn away that the skull is partially visible.

A small snake briefly peeks out of the eye socket before dipping back in.

    "This is a tomb... or burial chamber." announces Justina dryly, "I'll image these hieroglyphs for the archives, but this is spectacular..."
    And then Neviah tumbles into a sarcophagus. She strides up and helps the archeologist back to her feet. without saying another word, then seems to concentrate. "Scanning local area, low-grade, full spectrum." Green optics cycle through all the colours and a few non-colours, but it's not nearly as comprehensive or intense as the last time she did a scan.

    Dante lets the brainier of the bunch handle the analysis of this place. He meanwhile leans against a sarcophagus boredly, until he notices a snake slithering out over his shoulder. With all the annoyance of hitting a fly, Dante flicks the snake on the snoot. "Hey. No biting." He says in a rare growl.

    When he sees Neviah stumble into the open sarcophagus, he rushes over to help her to her feet. "Whoa, you okay there Neviah?"

    "So hi, who are you?" Morrigan asides to Juniper point blank, the half-elf turning her head to face the young woman with an appraising glance.
    A pause.
    "Neviah who is this?" She asks the Cambridge professor, motioning at the 90's kid in the room.
    Even Mary Contrary helps, holding up a hologram screen with a big question mark emblazoned on it.
    But once she gets an introduction, that will seem to please the Warlock enough. So someone better get to introducing.
    At least before Neviah steps into a sarcophagus.
    "Watch your--". Oof. "Step..."
    "Nothing." She admits to Dante. "Our world was so far absorbed into the Tree by the time I was born that I've never really seen any of it. Why do you think I dress like a renfaire witch but have a car and a smartphone, Dante?" She points out, reaching a hand into the crypt to help Neviah out.
    "This does sure look like a burial chamber." She agrees with Justina. "Can you maybe read the hieroglyphs if you had some light? They're a bit more intact here than before."

"Juniper. You can call me Juni if you want," Juniper says with a smile to Morrigan. "If you want to know why I'm here, she hired me." She means Neviah, though she doesn't bother to indicate her. Morrigan has already figured it out.

Juniper doesn't see very well in the dark either, but that isn't stopping her from trying! Still, she stays within range of the lantern. 

"Man, this place *does* look old." With the weeds inside, Juniper figures that's a sure sign that it's cracked more than she can see - you don't get that without water and light, which means there's enough water to drip inside and enough cracks to let a sliver of light in, if not enough for her to see by (or notice, with the lantern lit).

"Is the writing Egyptian?" she asks, because she can't read any of it to tell. "Or is it this place's?" She pushes a fallen stone around with the toe of her shoe, kicking it up with a flick and catching the rock, about half the size of her fist, out of the air.

And then she drops it again when Neviah trips. Juniper startles, starts to rush over - and then laughs when she realizes that Neviah has just fallen over a sarcophagus. "Watch your step!" she jokes, before taking a step to one side to see what Neviah tripped over. Probably just a crack, but if there's a serious gap or instability they should probably know about it sooner rather than later.

A horrified Neviah scrambles to liberate herself from the sarcophagus; Justina and Dante help, and the archaeologist shoots the pair a look of utter gratitude. Fortunately the mummy's not making any move to stop her. It's very, very dead, and it's clearly been there awhile. "I'm alright," Neviah assures, a little shaken but able to regain her footing. "Just startled...."

She dusts herself off and looks back at Morrigan and Juniper, then blinks as she retrieves her lantern, holding it up to illuminate the room. Sure enough, the walls are painted with elaborate glyphs and symbols, some faded and scarred away but still more intact. The young professor draws a breath, momentary horror giving way to amazement as she practically skitters forward. "These look Egyptian, yes," she explains as she pans her light over an intact row of symbols. "Some of them are the same... but I don't recognize some of the others. This symbol - this one that looks like a serpent. And look, there -- that one looks like a Pharaoh, but the figures around him are unrecognizable. This one looks like it's Ra, but dead, and the one killing him I don't even recognize. The one over /here,/ I can't tell if it's supposed to be Horus or Ra. And some of these don't correspond to anything...."

She looks back, eyes widening slightly. "...And that body in the sarcophagus appears human. I wonder if...." She trails off, frowning and resting a hand on her chin.

The draft through the ruins continues to whisper against the stones and pillars. At times it almost sounds like it's crawling. Almost.

    "Oh okay, hi, Juni. Getting hired by Neviah makes sense." Morrigan concedes while Neviah clambers from the coffin. Morrigan does lean over to glance in at the mummy. Looks human enough that she shrugs before the professor gets her lantern back and makes to examine the hieroglyphs and can only make sense of some of them.
    "Ra but dead? Isn't Ra the chief deity of the Egyptian pantheon though?" It's not her area of expertise but she knows a little.
    "What are you wondering? Use your words, professor." She teases mildly.
    Before something in the shadows catches her attention.
    Glowing eyes flit in that direction briefly, but to her credit Morrigan keeps her cool and returns her 'focus' to the hieroglyphics and the team.
    That's when the party will feel the quiet whispers of the Warlock's thoughts slipping into their minds.

    . o O ( Heads up. Act natural but be ready for anything. We might not be alone. )

    Dante spots whatever's lurking first. He goes for the sword on his back, eyes darting about as he whirls about to protect Neviah. "We got somethin' checkin' us out." He says, eyes on the shadows. "Somethin' was there just now." He's alert, and grips his sword tightly. Anything could be coming for them now.

    A moment after Dante spots something, Justina's sensors light up. "Contact." she announces, forearms morphing in an instant into a curved blade and a buckler-style shield. Green optics track the movement, then she moves to a dark corner of the room and lights her lamps, bathing the corner in light as she holds her blade towards it.

Juni pokes around a bit at the uneven ground, drifting over toward other sarcophagi. She doesn't open any that aren't (though she thinks about it) but she does check out any that are open.

"I thought mummies were supposed to be buried with riches beyond compare," Juniper complains. "There's nothing in here but bodies. The sarcophagus is plain stone. Either they're not actually buried with anything or someone beat you here." Pause. "Probably from this side."

She straightens up, tilting her head one way then the other to loosen up. "Yeah, but the Egyptian deities die all the time and then get brought back to life, I remember that from history class. I think. Don't they? Maybe that was one of the other ones and not Ra." Now that she's thinking about it Juni isn't actually sure anymore.

A voice sounds in her head. "Gah don't DO that!" Juniper blurts out, heedless of the fact that she just made it obvious. But then again Dante said it out loud too, so she's not the first person to.

Juni shifts her stance slightly, taking a step closer to Neviah. She's lighter on her feet now, half-risen up, though it doesn't make her all that much taller. With the warnings, now she can look around, too.

"Yes, sort of," Neviah murmurs as she leans in to squint at the panorama of hieroglyphs. "I wonder... just like Blossoms now can conduct trade and commerce with each other, perhaps this Earth and our own world were connected by the Tree so long ago. Perhaps it's even the case that humans from this Earth came to whatever this world was called and established their own society...."

The words of caution cut her off, including Morrigan's in her mind. Dante's first to speak, and Neviah blinks, turning away from the wall to peer out into the corridor. Morrigan and Justina are next to caution them. Justina's light blazes into the corner.

As her light obliterates all shadow cast in that corner, it reveals... nothing. Rubble; more hieroglyphs. Images of armed men pursuing and slaying peculiarly pale figures, some with wings, some with snakelike features.

"Sometimes the tombs get robbed," Neviah whispers to Juniper, tense as she listens and looks for sounds of danger. She lifts her own lantern, shadows playing out behind her as she pans to try and illuminate whatever she can before her. With her other hand she tries to shift her rifle into a ready position.

"I don't see anything," she whispers. With so much light focused in one place, the shadows are being cast behind the little group.

From within them, a pair of red sparks open, rising up slowly. The darkness peels silently away into a gaping mouth ringed by two rows of fangs. Without so much as a sound, a gigantic snake seems to congeal out of the shadows, poised over Neviah and ready to bite down on her head.

The professor has absolutely no idea it's coming.

    Justina's got sensors all over, and as something threatens the archeologist, something unfolds from a module on one of the Doll's shoulders. It pivots, and unleashes a rapid trio of shots with a solid THWOKTHWOKTHWOK of repeating crossbow.

    The bolts are mundane, steel tipped, fibermesh hafts.

    Half a moment afterwards, the Doll turns and starts running toward Neviah.

    "Mmmmmmm..." Morrigan purses her lips. "Did they resurrect? I'm not entirely caught up on Egyptian mythology." She admits, eyeing the absurdly empty tomb. Could it have been ransacked entirely from the other side of the vine? Possibly. Maybe.
    With all light focused on the corner, for a moment Morrigan crosses her arms over her chest pettishly, nose scrunching. But then.
    hen her Familiar tugs on her hair.
    "Yes, Mary?
    "Snake." The tiny robot helper replies.
    "Well yes, there's a snake in the casket, I know that."
    Tug tug. "No. I mean big snake." The Maryceles retorts.
    "How big are we talking?" The Warlock asks turning her head to see it as Justina unloads her crossbow.
    "Oh."
    That certainly is a big snake.
    Hand snapping up almost on reflex, the witch says a word. It is a harsh, unpleasant, word upon the ears as a lancing ray of inky black light jolts from her fingertips intending to strike the snake in the center of its snakey mass.
    The spell is a vicious one; it sucks away the strength and speed of the target, as she intends to sap the snake of the will to bite, before it can. You know... Take Neviah's head off.

>> SUMMARY[Morrigan] >> Ray of Enfeeblement

    Dante sees the snake before she does. And he suddenly goes for one of his guns, firing rapidly at the serpent as he draws his sword. "Get back!" Ivory goes ratatatatat with machine gun speed, firing thrice the ammo that the pistol should in its magazine while he rushes the snake boss.

Juniper has to admit that she didn't pay *that* much attention in class. "I think so? The land of the dead's kind of a revolving door in a lot of these old religions, isn't it? At least for gods."

"Oh, sure, but you'd think they'd leave SOMETHING. Even if it was just because it was hard to carry, or stuck in the wall, or a marble floor, or *something*." Juni was kind of hoping there'd be something when she saw it was a great tomb. 

"Plus, haven't you heard of the mummy's curse? Apparently, if you steal from a pyramid, the mummy's cursed all the treasure, and you end up dying a horrible death..." Juniper pauses. "So the best thing to do is be the person who takes it away from the thieves, I figure."

Juni may not be the first to react, but she *is* close to Neviah and that almost makes up for it. A giant shadowy snake rising from the shadows rises up, reaching forward - 

And Juni leaps, driving a fist that is rather abruptly on fire directly at the underside of its chin. "HA!" She touches down a moment later and steps deeper into the shadows, trying to land a rapid series of punches further down the body - and with fire, to light up the darkness, at least a little. If nothing else it changes the angle of the shadows wildly as she moves, her hands still burning.

Leave it to Justina Thyme to have eyes in the back of her... doll's... shoulder. The immense snake looms out of the shadow, ready to take a bite out of an unsuspecting Neviah - until Justina turns and fires suddenly. Neviah herself starts and turns, but the loud hiss behind her tells her all too clearly that she wasn't alone. She lets out a yelp and whirls just in time to see the serpent recoiling away in a flash; the bolts ping off the wall behind the snake even as the Doll's lights come to bear on it.

Without the obscuring shadow, it's more clear that it's a massive ophidian in the general shape of a cobra, but easily fifteen feet long and covered in black scale that almost seems to absorb light. Neviah recoils towards the sarcophagus and manages to squeeze off an awkward shot, but misses by a mile as the serpent winds itself back and away. It rears towards Morrigan, just in time for the warlock to unleash a spell. Morrigan's enchantment strikes home, and the snake recoils with a hiss - a little slower now, enough that Dante can land a couple of bullets. They strike startlingly hard scale, penetrating shallowly.

Before the snake can fully coil away, Juniper dives into the shadows and clocks it with fire. The huge serpent is struck and reels back, slamming to the ground. As the woman's fire-fists break up the shadows, the snake hisses and rears, then slams its body into a heap of debris. Chunks of broken stone fly off to one side, ricocheting around to strike at Justina, Dante and Morrigan. The snake itself reserves its personal fury for Juniper, opening its mouth and lunging with spring-loaded speed to try and dig fangs dripping with shadow into her arm.

Neviah, hunkering down near the sarcophagus, hastily loads another bullet into her rifle. "I'm fine," she assures the owner of the hand on her arm before raising her rifle to try and aim past Dante, Morrigan, Justina and Juniper.

Then it occurs to her.

Neviah slowly turns around. She locks 'eyes' with the mummy, which is currently sitting up, one hand on her arm, the other drawing a long sword back.

"GAH," Neviah shouts as she swings her rifle butt in alarm. She manages to smack the mummy in the head. The entire sarcophagus slides off its dais with a crash.

The mummy pushes the stone slabs off and shoulders to its feet with a rasp. The leg Neviah broke off earlier is supporting its weight, the missing chunk replaced by what looks like solidified shadow.

    Dante continues to blast away before he stows the pistol, gripping Rebellion in both hands as he leaps into the air, a glyph providing him a platform to double-jump with. He swings his sword into the snake's scales, trying to cut through the hard scaly layer. If bullets won't do, cutting and smashing will hopefully be what Dante needs! He runs across the snake's length, repeatedly slashing at the snake to cut throguh solid scale.

    "C'mon ugly, gotta be a gap somewhere in all these scales!"

    Justina brings up her shield to take some of those flying stone fragments, though it doesn't cover the whole body and many strike home against the main hull of the Doll, earning a hiss from the elf as she takes feedback.

    Spotting Neviah is under threat again, she pivots to engage the mummy, crossing blades with it with a resonant CLANG.

    That... That certainly is a large snake indeed. As Dante and Juniper take to melee, Morrigan takes a few paces back. Her space is in the back row of the RPG party.
    The problem here is that the back row has a visitor.
    "Why is the mummy sitting up?!"
    For now she leaves Dante and Juniper to handle the snake. It is as Justina moves to engage the mummy that Morrigan plucks Mary Contrary off her shoulder.
    "Mary, we're doing the thing." She says.
    "Got it, doing the thing." The shinki replies.
    Before Morrigan hucks her tiny robot familiar at the Mummy.
    Mary proceeds to be as ANNOYING AS IMAGINABLY POSSIBLE, tugging and yanking on bandages, untying them and tying them back improperly, and shoving her arms in the skullface's eye-sockets irritatingly.

The snake leaps at Juniper, but Juni is *fast*, and she dives out of the way of the teeth. Unfortunately, she only had one option without leading the snake into someone else; she dived forward.

This means the weight of the body still hits her as she slams into it, staggering but significantly closer to unharmed than she would be if the fangs caught her. The flame on her hands gutters out as she takes a deep, deep breath, inhaling to an almost painful extent. It feels like her lungs might burst...

And then she exhales a massive lightning bolt directly at the snake, a blinding-bright flash followed by the loud *BOOM* of thunder in an enclosed space. Better than fire, because it won't foul the air, but worse because Juni is now partially deafened, having been at ground zero of the thunderclap and catching the echoes.

"'Ey!" she calls. "Watch it!" She means Dante, though another side effect of using lightning is that he's not actually in the blast radius. "...wait, mummies too?" She's too busy to go help Neviah with that one!

It is a big snake, and for the moment, Juniper's done a fine job of keeping it from retreating. Dante makes the most of his opportunity, slashing out at the giant ophidian. It's not quite big enough to stand on, but a few of his strikes bear fruit, piercing scaly armour and drawing what ought to be blood but comes out as more of a viscous black goop. The serpent hisses in pain, but at least clobbering Juniper helps its case. The woman's fire dims; the shadows around the snake deepen.

Until Juniper blows off a massive lightning bolt.

Shadows vapourize before the electric blast. The serpent attempts to recoil, but the room's not huge and there aren't shadows to hide in with this much blinding light. The boom of the blast not only strikes the shadow snake, it blows it into the back wall of the crypt and then /through/ the wall, blasting a yawning hole in the masonry. A gust of air blows in from outside, the snake vanishing from view.

It leaves the mummy, in the process of swinging its sword at Neviah with a hollow rasp from what's left of its throat. Before it can get there, Justina's in the way. Blade and blade hit with a resonant clang. The crumbling mummy cranes its neck to give the metallic suit an eyeless look.

Which is about when Mary Contrary shows up to HELP.

The mummy tries its best to take a couple of whacks at Justine, but Mary's scampering all over it and generally being annoying. Before long, the bonewalker is swinging at Mary instead, staggering back to try and gain room. Neviah is left with breathing room for the first time in several perilous seconds.

"I like mummies better when they /sleep!/" she exclaims before thrusting her free hand out. A bolt of light blooms from her fingers, shining out to strike the mummy.

The impact does no damage at all. But the mummy is now glowing like a beacon - easy to spot in the gloom, and even easier to hit.

    Justina uses her shield and bunkers down until Mary can take the aggro. She sets her feet pivots and brings her blade arm around in a wide round-house sweep aimed low to lop the legs off the mummy. Then she reverses direction before it can fall, and aims for the neck to lop the head off.

    "I think we've figured out why this place was sealed off." she says dourly.

    Juniper breathes lightning. The resounding thunderclap makes Morrigan's ears ring, but to her credit the Warlock maintains her concentration on the spell sapping the great snake's strength. Right up until it escapes? Vanishes?
    No time to think about it.
    Mary is barely dodging sword swipes, flitting left, right, up, down- the blade missing her by centimeters- which are a LOT to a tiny thing like the shinki-- only for her to flit away as Justina lunges in.
    As the Doll sweeps the legs, Morrigan doesn't even turn around; she aims one hand over her shoulder. A crackling green ray lunges from her fingers- hits Mary- who then holds her arms out- and redirects the beam entirely at the mummy's glowing center of mass before Justina goes for the head.
    A slow breath and Morrigan folds her arms across her chest.
    "I don't think we've figured out much." She replies. "I feel like we've barely scraped the tip of the iceberg here... And I don't like it."

    Dante lunges upwards at the snake, near the neck, before plunging Rebellion deep into the snake's body. That oozing black blood is downright nasty, but it's not the worst Dante's had to deal with. It stains his clothes, mixing with his red coat and slacks messily, and Dante is flung right through the snake as it disappears.

    He slams into the wall, and Dante groans in annoyance as he dusts himself off, drawing Ebony and blasting the mummy multiple times to vent his frustration.

Juni wipes a trail of sparks off her lips with the back of one hand, shaking the hand and causing them to shower down in a display more dramatic than dangerous. It takes her a moment to catch her breath after that particular show, because she's only done it for 'real' a couple times!

But she doesn't let herself be a sitting duck. She crouches, picking up a rock the size of a baseball, and just *pitches* it at the mummy; it's not as effective a weapon as her bare hands are and it's certainly not energized with anything, but it's enough to get its attention and, if it hits solidly, force it to stagger for a moment and let someone else strike a mortal blow. (Or maybe not. She isn't sure how tough mummies are. It might bounce.)

"Yeah, I don't like them being awake, either! Way grosser than the movies make them look."

"I think we may have too," Neviah manages to huff over the ringing in her ears as she pulls back a little further, close to the newly-opened hole in the wall. Her back strikes stone, and she drops her lantern and two-hands her rifle before squeezing a shot off at the glowing mummy. The old rifle's report rings through the crypt, followed by a dry thud as the bullet pegs the bonewalker in the shoulder. It staggers but keeps coming, managing to fight past Mary in time to wait for Justina to strike. Her blade sweeps low, ripping decaying fabric from one leg, the upper slash missing the mummy's head but hacking its left arm off at the shoulder.

It keeps coming. The snake, at least, has been hurled out through the hole and seems in no hurry to come back; it leaves Dante plenty of time to fire off at the mummy. Shots connect, staggering the mummy and knocking it back. Juniper's rock pings it in the head. It lurches awkwardly, light dancing off the walls, before stumbling forward.

Into Morrigan and Mary's beam. There's an innocuous 'puhhh' sound as the mummy practically melts under the impact, blown into a plume of dust and ash that rains against the far wall. The sword and a handful of coins clatter to the ground.

For just a moment, the place is quiet again. Neviah draws a few breaths. "Everyone alright...?" she asks before looking out through the hole in the wall.

Her rifle drops from her hand with a clatter as she gasps sharply.

The hole opens up to an outdoor view. The wall of this building angles sharply upwards, clearly the slope of some sort of triangular building - not unlike the three more crumbling pyramids visible around a courtyard outside. Each of them sports an odd rectangular bulge at its midsection, like another building grafted onto the pyramid, but they're all in states of disrepair. Still more ruined structures are scattered throughout the sands between the pyramids, the remnants of some long-forgotten complex.

The sky above them is dark - and there are no stars. There's no /moon./ Even the horizon is lost in a distant dark haze. It's as if the world doesn't exist past a certain point anymore.

    Dante seems satisfied as the mummy is completely toasted. It's a shame, the owner of that body is probably watching this from the afterlife with so much disappointment. "I think we'll live. Just got my pride dusted, that's all." He says with a smile. As they look through the hole, Dante stares.

    There's nothing left of that world. Nothing at all...it's just a wasteland.

    "What the hell..."

    Justina sets her defense stance as her strikes don't take down the mummy. That's fine, she just has to hold it off until...

    Well, that works. As the mummy is turned into a pile of dust and a bit of low-tier loot, the Doll turns to look out the hole the snake made on its way out.

    She says nothing, instead the light in her optics grows more intense for a few moments, scanning what she can see on her sensor suite.

    With the mummy handled and no more threats to life of Brendan Fraser abound, Morrigan looks to the hole with the others.
    A sky with no moon.
    A sky with no stars.
    It makes a cold sweat run down the Warlock's brow.
    A sky with no stars can mean no good things. She would know; constantly touching the endless blackness in the space between stars.
    Things tend to lurk in those dark places.
    And yet it feels as though, here, those things are long gone.
    "That." Morrigan says holding up a finger and pointing out at the expanse beyond.
    "That's no bueno."
    "No bueno." Mary echoes, crossing her arms in front of her chest into an X shape and shaking her head.

Though she wasn't instrumental in killing (re-killing? Double killing?) the mummy, Juniper ensures it is not going to come back. She does this by sweeping her foot through the dust and ash a few times to disperse it and make sure it doesn't pile up in one place.

She also glances left and right to make sure other people are distracted before dipping down for a moment. The coins are no longer on the floor afterwards.

Juniper joins the rest of the group at the hole afterwards, looking out. "...damn," she says, after a long pause. "There really isn't much out there, huh?" It's unsettling to look at. There should be something in the sky, not a field of black. Juni has never been agoraphobic but it's kind of dizzying to look into the nothing at all. She squeezes her eyes closed and then opens them again in case it helps.

(It doesn't.)

Neviah's mouth hangs open slightly as she looks out over the moldering ruins. She's not sure if she can separate the wonder from the horror. "This is... all there is, isn't there...?" she murmurs, her fingers hooking into her collar. "Just disconnected bits dangling off the World Tree like forgotten fruit...."

She gives herself a shake as the others gather to look on. Justina's optics can pick up ambient magic still floating around the area, but it's hard to tell specifics - nothing's moving in the courtyard, at least. Neviah picks up her lantern again and raises it, trying to get a better look down the pyramid, then up - sure enough, one of those rectangular waist-bulges looms above them, too. The professor bites her bottom lip firmly and looks back to Juniper.

She saw where the coins went. She doesn't make an issue of it. She knows she should, but she's too shaken up to push it.

"There are more pyramids in the complex. I know it seems pointless, but... I want to explore them. If the fate of our world /is/ to slowly vanish into the tangled branches of the Tree, I want to at least... save what of it I can. If only so someone can remember that there was some uniqueness to this place."

She pauses. "...I will understand if anyone does not wish to come back here. But I must."

    "Motion: Negative. Primus pressure readings: Residual to Moderate. Ambient temperature: 68.2 degrees. Atmospheric composition: Standard, deviation less than 0.0001% of baseline." Justina rattles off her readings, holding up the blade arm as the weapon dissolves and the hand returns, showing a holographic screen with her findings on it for the others to see if they wish.

    When Neviah says about returning, the Doll points to the relay, thankfully undamaged. "I have set up my relay system, my role in this will continue until it reaches its terminus."

    A slow breath filters through Morrigan's teeth as she stares out into the bleak expanse. She rubs at the back of her head.
    Mary rubs at the back of her head too.
    "Ahhhhhh, geeze. This actually creeps me out." Morrigan admits. "But I don't exactly have anything else pressing to look into right now, so I'm still in."
    Mary nods. "I, too, am creeped out, but if Master says we're doing the thing... We do the thing." Pause. "Justina's doing the thing with us, too."
    Helpful shinki translator is helpful.

    "Oh, you ain't gettin' rid of us that easy." Dante says. "We're stuck here with you to the end." He says, resolute in his words. There's no way Dante is letting this go unsolved, hell no.

"Hey," Juniper says, to Neviah.

She flips one of the smallest-denomination (she thinks) coins at Neviah with her thumb. "Would this help tell you where this is?" She's not even going to bring up the others, but: "The mummy dropped this, I think."

Talking about coins is easier than talking about the world. It's so *empty*. And yet, something about it... "I'll come," she says, surprising even herself with the acceptance. "It's probably just filled with ghosts, at this rate, but why not? There might be something interesting there."

She glances at the others. She expected Dante to come as long as he got paid (to be fair, she's hoping for that too) but the others surprises her. The robot (or whatever) and the elf (and her familiar).

Neviah doesn't fully understand half of what Justina's reading off, but she leans in to check out the screen anyway. "I appreciate that," she answers with a look up. "It's certain to be dangerous... but there was something here, once. I want to know what there is to know."

As the others jump to offer help, Neviah smiles faintly, lifting her head and brushing her hair back. "I appreciate that. Let's... let's return for now. We can rest and come at this fresh. Besides... I want to try and decipher what's left of those hieroglyphs. One thing at a time."

She blinks when Juniper flips one of the coins at her, catching it and looking down at it with a small frown. "It might. There are some symbols on here I don't recognize, but... it might be decipherable. I'll look at it more closely when we get back to camp. Come on."

She'll guide the way back towards the Vine. Nothing will jump out to stop them.

From a shadow out of sight, unnoticed by sensor or sight, a pair of reptilian red eyes focus on Neviah and the group as they step away....