World Tree MUSH

    <BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r68AXsR4-yk >

Exploring the ruins of the nameless world is a task for the brave - or at least, those with no fear of the dark, or those who took the offer of cash from the University of Cambridge to root around beneath an empty sky. Without a sun or even stars, visibility comes from whatever lanterns can be carried along. In this case Neviah Younger's got a bright one, holding it up as she stands before the lopsided doors of a large pyramid with a rectangular bulge at its midsection - like an office block embedded in the angular structure.

She's tense - very. Rifle clutched in her off hand, she brings the lantern down to brace the gun barrel with the back of that wrist. She carefully eases forward, trying to wedge past the doors. They hang slightly ajar - just enough space between the huge, scarred stone slabs that a human could wiggle through. It takes her a minute to succeed in both entering and not making a ton of noise in the process.

Through the crack in the door, her light flickers as she lifts it again. She gasps.

Beyond the doorway, a long, cramped hallway spans, a few columns still supporting the angled ceiling. Nooks in the walls hold a selection of urns, some in decent shape, others reduced to chunks of ceramic and dust. Faded glyphs are still visible - but more notably, they're paired with text.

"I recognize this script," Neviah murmurs, moving over to one of the columns and pushing her glasses up her nose as she squints at the array of tree-like lines and tiny circles lined up in neat rows. "My mother had an old book written like this...."

    Lancelot, wearing his armor and chained blade as usual, had opted to bring up the rear, lest the party get blindsided. It also afforded him the opportunity to phase through obstructions instead of attempting to manage with his armor. The Knight of the Round Table was by no means silent, though he tried to keep the clanks to a minimum. -We Heroic Spirits do have some perks- he thought to himself as he appraised the rest of the party.

    Dante he knew, at least semi-professionally, but everyone else was new to him. Branching out into different worlds was helping the Knight learn about both the connected Worlds as well as those who inhabited them. This would help him later, but also, who knew what knowledge could be found on such an expedition as this?

If Juniper is afraid of the dark, it doesn't show.

Juni came along, either because of the money or because of curiosity or, more likely, both. Either way, she's here now, and she's not nearly as on edge as Neviah; she's certainly looking around a whole lot, but her body posture is looser.

She takes her time squeezing through the doors, because if Neviah doesn't want to actually *open* them she's not going to be the first to just kick them open. She has to back off a couple times and come at it with a different approach, and she has to press her back against one of the doors pretty hard. 

Juniper takes a moment to straighten her oversized flannel shirt left open over her crop top afterwards, tugging it straight. "Well, that makes one of us," she says, keeping her voice low. "It just looks like a bunch of lines and dots to me."

    In orbit of the origin world the Vine links to...

    "Minerva, load up the Type MVIX Tactical Frame... I want more output if those snake monsters show up again." says Justina as she rigs herself into the Astral Projector. The AI chimes affirmative, and a bulky, white and black robotic frame appears at the basecamp. "Link Up." intones the half-elf, before she shifts into the robotic frame on the surface.

    Surface.

    The robotic frame comes to life, and strides through the Vine to join the others, cycling through systems in turn. Its arms cycle between blades, blunt weapons, tools of various types and buckler-style shields. Two boxframes on the shoulders unfold to reveal repeating crossbows with steel-tipped bolts before they refold again. All Systems Nominal. announces a synthetic voice before Justina's filters out of the onboard speakers. "Do you know what it says?" she asks Neviah, as she approaches the professor.

    Dante strides along through the ruins. He grips Rebellion in his hand tightly as he rests the blade's flat across his shoulder, the greatsword kept close in case. He's no stranger to spooky places like this, but man something about this realm feels -off- to Dante. It certainly feels like a place that died a long time ago.

    If Hell has a face, this might be a close resemblance. He peers over Neviah's shoulder, narrowing his eyes. "Think you can translate it?" He wonders aloud.

The big knight is new to Neviah - but not an unwelcome sight, all told. Neviah herself is dressed modestly, doing her best to look the part of a Victorian professor in a man's world, but it's hardly combat gear if things get tough. Looking away from the carvings, she flashes Lancelot a faint smile. "Thank you for coming, sir knight... I know this world is an empty place, but once it had a history. Much of it is lost to the Tree now. What we do here is part of restoring that history."

She eases over to make room for Juniper. "It's a very obscure script," she explains. "I don't know exactly where it came from, but it was in a book about clerical magic. The language here's different, though." Neviah glances back to Justina and pushes back a curl. "I think so. It looks like it's a spelling system for Egyptian glyphs."

She bites down to her lower lip. "This one's a glyph for books. Over here... these symbols seem like they're spelling out the sounds for the combat glyph, and these ones the signs for men and gods. This other set I don't recognize. Old something, then an M-S-K-R." She grimaces.

"This is hard without vowels." Turning with a push of her coat, she purses her lips. "I think it's saying that this place was created after the people living here vanquished who ever these Old M-S-K-Rs are."

Frowning, the dark-haired professor begins to move further down the hall. Around them, the ruin molders, only the sound of wind rushing through the cracks in the rocks and against the sheathing of the pyramid heard.

    Lancelot takes up position in the back of the assembled group, but he smiles and addresses Neviah. "I appreciate the opportunity to learn more of these branching Worlds. Plus, my lady, I would be a sorry knight indeed if I did not help this endeavor." He takes the time to give the large robot a proper once-over, though the Counter Force knows nothing about this particular individual, and so neither does he. He resolves to address Justina at another... thyme...
    Juniper's ease in the area is noted, as Lancelot has never met her, and takes the loose body posture as a sign of confidence. This gives him something to grin about. As Neviah begins to move, so does Lancelot, ensuring that no one gets left behind, nor left alone out of his considerable reach.

Juniper gave Lancelot, who's the only one she hasn't met at least briefly before, a long thoughtful look. Her gaze focuses on his armor and sword for a few long moments, and she frowns, but says nothing.

"What do the Egyptians have against vowels? Actually, Hebrew doesn't have vowels, either, right? Is it all those old languages?" Juniper is... not exactly a linguist. "Don't tell me they didn't invent vowels until Shakespeare or something, I couldn't take it."

M-S-K-R... "I'm gonna call them Maskers," Juniper decides, because it's the first thing that pops into her head.

    Justina's impassive robotic faceplate doesn't move much, but it does dip in a very organic seeming nod. "Makes sense, these pyramids remind me of the Golden Triangle in Grelpryt back home. Three great pyramids festooned with heiroglyphs and filled with ancient magicks." she relates, before giving Lancelot a withering gaze in return to his own look. She says nothing, however and follows Neviah.

    The robotic frame is surprisingly quiet for its size... and it's providing plenty of light in a bubble around it... those Shadow Snakes should have a difficult time sneaking up on anyone. "A useful colloquialism, M-S-K-R is a mouthful to repeat often. Masker is good to use until we can figure out if it's meant to be an acronym, or a name." agrees Justina with Juniper.

    Dante looks puzzled, until Juniper provides a much more convenient thing to call these things. "Maskers it is." He says, offering no argument to the contrary. He does give Lancelot a little grin, "I can vouch for this guy being the real deal. He carves up takoyaki like nobody's business." He says to Neviah, winking to Lancelot.

    He has to admit, this place is getting spooky as hell. There's nothing to come greet them, not even monsters. Just...silence.

    He'd much rather there be something trying to eat his face off, at least then he could actually fight back. One can't really do much against desolate silence, try as one might.

Neviah tilts her head and smiles mutedly, Lancelot's polite demeanor pushing her neatly into the Victorian mannerisms she's grown accustomed to. "Your devotion is noted and appreciated."

To Juniper, she nods, holding her lantern up to play across the pillar and jar-lined hall. "Many of the older languages were like that. Translations of pictoglyphs. In this case...." She pauses to squint at another column, leaning in to read the writing still visible. "...It /is/ an Egyptian dialect, but with a script in this kind of curvilinear alphabet. Here it is again. It's saying...." Her eyebrows come up sharply.

"It's saying that the people who built this were /brought/ here," she breathes. "Look. 'The Maskers, who brought us from beyond.' And here - it's saying that they overthrew the Maskers." Neviah holds a finger out inches from the pillar, dropping to one knee as she follows the script and images further down. "And here - the text and the art. It's saying /Horus/ killed the leader of the Maskers. And you can see it in the art - this figure riding the dragon-"

Neviah is entirely oblivious to the fact that two of the largest urns are sliding open, one to either side of the hall. With a shimmer, a pair of towering figures begin to coalesce. They're tall but svelte, humanoid and smooth but seemingly composed of crystal, flowing into a design across the chest shaped like an eye.

The pair of shapes rise to float over the group menacingly. Both draw back their arms, each grasping a crystalline dart and preparing to drive them into the unsuspecting Neviah.

    Justina's following the translation, imaging the glyphs for later crossreferencing aboard her ship, and comparrison with those from her own world. It's always facinating seeing what's similar and what's different.

    And then her proximity threat alert starts going off. The automated systems unfold the crossbows and aim them at the advancing figures, firing a volley of three apiece before Justina's even registered the threat herself. Once she's onboard however she summons a pair of buckler-style shields, and interposes herself between the figures and Neviah, using her metallic bulk to shield the professor. "Stay behind me." she commands.

    More of the spookzone. Dante's hair is on end and he's getting anxious as he looks around. Normally the banter would be nonstop, but the mood is too tense. He could swear he saw something reach for Neviah-

    "Get back!" He calls out as he whips out Ebony and Ivory, and he notices Lancelot. "Lancealittle, catch!" He reaches into his inventory before chucking two scimitars, one blazing red with flames, the other glowing blue with wind magic. The blades thrum with mana as they come to life. "Master! Do you require our assistance?" "He is giving us away, brother!" "Impossible, Master is too fond of us!"

    Dante groans in annoyance before blasting away with his pistols at the strange shapes.

Juniper lets Neviah translate. She listens, but not everything makes a whole lot of sense to her, having had a lot less in the way of advanced education. And she was never a history buff, anyway.

"Dragon?" she asks. "That must have come from this side, right? There's no dragons in Egypt. I don't even think they have mythological dragons there." Though, not that she can be sure. "Maybe that's the one Horus killed? - Watch out!"

Juniper is pretty quick to react, too. Any slowness is made up for by going on the offense immediately - she doesn't try to body-block for Neviah because she doesn't want to get stabbed either, but instead takes a couple darting steps and then spins her entire body into something that starts out as a cartwheel and ends up as a two-footed kick directly at one of the crystalline being's chests to both shove it back and maybe get some damage in. There's an obvious glowing point, surely it's vulnerable.

She finishes the tumble, landing on her feet again, her relaxed stance drawn up into a brawler's posture. "Hey!" she calls out to the others. "Ever seen one of these before? Because I haven't! Who makes things out of crystal that come out of jars?? Do you think it's the Maskers'?"

    Lancelot gives a half bow as he walks to Neviah, happy to indulge her Victorian mannerisms. He looks over some of the items and listens to the banter, but something just doesn't seem right. In fact, he could almost swear he felt the tiniest pulse of mana from somewhere, coalescing, pointing him at a threat. He gave in to those senses, and moved almost without thinking. Dante's reactions are faster, however, and the Knight snatches the two scimitars out of the air. Fae energy, purple and blue, lights up the area, intermixing with the weapons' natural auras. Lancelot thinks while moving. -Hello. I am Lancelot, Knight of the Round Table, and today we fight against an ambush!-

    Lancelot ducks and weaves between Justina's arrows and Dante's shots, the knowledge of the Heroic Spirit process giving him information on guns and the like, and places himself directly between the two foes and Neviah. "By the light of Camelot, you shall not strike the unaware!" Fae light flashes from his form, as if magic itself is reinforcing Lancelot, and he seems to become more solid somehow. Firmer. More vivid. Stronger. Each attacking dart is parried deftly, but not riposted, as Lancelot focuses on the defense.

"Um?" Neviah asks with a blink.

A second later, a crystal dart slams into Justina's bucklers and shatters. Neviah gasps, turning, catching sight of both the immense figures, one of which has a single Justina-fired dart stuck in its chest. It looms nevertheless - and so does the other one, only for Lancelot to assert himself between it and the professor. "What on Earth!" she exclaims, recoiling and fumbling for her rifle.

By the time she grabs them, the others are mounting their offensives. Dante's bullets catch the second of the two beings, but the colossus shoulders through them and trundles forward. With Lancelot blocking its darts, the massive creature settles for a simpler option: It tries to punch him in the face, several times.

When Juniper jumps in, her kick proves solid enough - the blow staggers and rocks the golem Justina had fired on earlier, sending it staggering a few feet. But that's about as much as it gives. Rearing up, it opens one hand and attempts to smash it down on the smaller Juniper, trying to simply plow her through a column. With the other hand, it hurls a bolt of crystal Justina's way, trying to catch her centre-of-mass.

"I don't /know!/ Those look like canopic urns! I've never heard of a /canopic/ golem before!" Neviah exclaims, tumbling back and trying to gain distance. Her back thumps against a column before she levels her rifle and squeezes off a shot at the golem Juniper just kicked.

Her bullet hits the golem in the head and pings off harmlessly.

Neviah just opens her mouth slightly.

    The scimitars are tossed straight into the air as Lancelot prepares to receive the golem's attacks. There is a sly smile on the man's face as the first fist comes in, and Lancelot palms the large fist, swiping it aside. The second comes in and is likewise parried, but the third... the third punch gets grabbed around the 'wrist'. Lancelot executes a move that martial artists might refer to as an aikido move, swinging into the golem's personal space, curling the arm around his chest, and -hurling- it in the direction of the second golem.

    The falling scimitars are caught, and he takes his position back up in a defensive position before Neviah, kneeling so that she can aim over his armor. "Feel free to use my shoulder as a stabilizer, my lady!" The scimitars are held up in a defensive guard. The sword on his hip rattles, as if it is sentient, knows what is happening, and is begging to be wielded... but Lancelot does not pay it mind. Yet.

>> SUMMARY[Lancelot] >> Knight of the Lake + Eternal Arms Mastery = Dwayne 'The Lancelot' Johnson.

    Dante notices the bullets aren't too terribly effective at dispatching the golems. But that's okay, 'cause Dante can at least build his combo meter. He keeps firing if only to catch their attention, vaulting into the air as he unleashes another hailstorm of bullets. "Over here, uglies!" He taunts, before he pirouettes into a downward kick to one of the golems' heads.

    "Well met Master Lancelot!" "Yes, greetings! Use us well, we will be of great benefit to you!" The scimitars chatter on and on, cheering on Lancelot as he puts the swords to good use. Lancelot's mastery of blades means he's good as Dante using these swords, to say the least.

    The buckler holds... though it gets a rather impressive dent in it from the sheer force of the impact. The robotic frame itself doesn't even flinch, its bulk designed for exactly this situation. The second dart coming at her is intercepted by the other buckler, though the unbraced position means that strike causes some feedback pain and the half-elf grunts as the arm is jolted in its mounting. <Alert. Critical damage. Detected. Upper Arm Actuator: Damaged.> The arm jerks and spasms, before moving back into place. <Auto Repair. Successful. Upper Arm Actuator at. Seventy Five. Percent.> The space captain adjusts her footing, waiting for an opening in Lancelot's assault before she opens fire again, angling both of her crossbows in to the first target she hit. "They seem to be weak to mundane physical damage." she supplies, moving so Neviah still has lines of fire, but the bulk of the robotic frame is giving her cover from those crystal darts.

"It's a jaropic golem! There aren't any cans!"

Juniper *really* needs to learn some Egyptian history.

The golem lashes out toward her. Juniper's primary defense is speed rather than durability, and 'golem' implies 'slow' to her; it's certainly using its brute strength to smash rather than rushing around. She ducks low, taking a clipping blow rather than one dead-on; it staggers her but doesn't slam her through a column, only sliding her back a few feet instead.

It still hurts. Juniper tries to ignore the pain in her shoulder. "Mundane physical damage, huh?" she asks, having heard it, before letting out a loud, decidedly Bruce Lee-inspired kiai as she launches into a rapid series of punches, practically drawing a line up from the stomach of the golem to as close to the head as she can reach as she repeatedly strikes. 

I need to get a gun, she thinks to herself, watching Dante fire. Though, does she even know how to use a gun??

"Don't you need to move?!" Neviah gasps as Lancelot makes that offer. She keeps back, hesitant to impede him, especially with the colossal canopic golem bearing down. Hurling it proves difficult considering that it's significantly larger than the knight, though his efforts are not for nothing; the construct staggers under the sudden jolt of momentum and /topples/ more than flies, staggering and smashing its head and shoulders through the pillar Neviah was just reading. The column shatters, the golem surging back to an upright position with some effort as dust and limestone shower down its head and back. Dante's bullets bite into the creature, leaving cracks behind where the more powerful guns he's packing find purchase. His kick again knocks the golem back, this time hard enough to crack the wall, before it lurches forward and tries to punch him violently in the face.

Lancelot's next. "Look out!" Neviah gasps as the golem swings at him, trying to clothesline him through another column.

Justina's fire pelts the other golem, her crossbows leaving cracks and marks. Firing damage does seem to work, albeit requiring a stronger gun than Neviah's got. The golem is unemotive in its response, launching another shimmering dart at her to try and penetrate her buckler defense, but it has the problem of Juniper right up in its face.

Fists definitely seem to work. The canopic golem is huge, crystal and easy to hit. Juniper's blows leave a line of cobwebbing cracks dancing up the golem's front, staggering it and knocking it back into the wall, where several jars behind it smash under its mass.

Neviah takes the opening. "Juniper," she breathes, reaching out with a shimmer of subtle light trailing from her fingers. She brushes Juniper with that touch, a pulse of healing magic flowing through her to ease the pain in her shoulder.

The golem looks at her, unfeeling, and promptly punches her through a pillar. Neviah yelps in pain as the column crumples under her, but by then the golem is attempting to clobber Juniper with its backfist. It's wounded, but both have a bit more fight to give, it seems.

    As the Golem throws a right hook at Dante, the Demon Slayer grins as he simply raises up a middle-finger. "Royal Guard." Suddenly, just as the blow connects, Dante's hand glows red with glyphs, energy surging through his body as defensive spheres surround him for a brief second. The golem will find that the blow doesn't actually connect, hitting an invisible barrier just long enough for Dante to react by mantling onto the golem's fist, and he runs across the arm until he summons Rebellion. He brings the sword down onto the golem's head, burying it into stone solidly.

    Silently, Lancelot thanks the two blades. -You two are absolutely gorgeous weapons, but... it looks like this has to be a lot more physical. Can you keep up?- Guessing at their answers, Lancelot rises and goes to work. Rather than calling upon the magic inherent in both weapons, he instead lets his abilities work through the blades themselves. Gripping the blades in reverse, he meets the swinging clothesline with a double-fisted punch, the blades kept outward from the strike, as the strength of the Lake flows through the Heroic Spirit. His heels drag on the stone, creating divots, and he is pushed out of the way.

    This infuriates the Knight, who moves on Neviah, and Lancelot throws himself at the golem's legs, striking with the blades and swinging his arms and legs, making sure it pays for every inch, and daring it to fall upon him. Arondight begins to emit a soft glow, but Lancelot keeps on with Dante's weapons, his roar a combination of a combatant's kiai and a cry of absolute fun-having joy.

This is the first time in her life Juniper has ever been healed by magic. She can feel her shoulder stop aching immediately, as well as a couple other odds and ends from being thrown around. "Hey, thanks!" she says. She guesses working with a scholar has its perks.

But then it slams Neviah through a column and goes for Juniper as a follow-up. This time Juni is ready for it, and when the backhand comes at her, she half-leaps, half-grabs at it.

The fist connects, but picks up Juniper with it, and she locks her legs around the arm, hanging on for dear life. As she's swung this way and that, she smashes higher up on the arm with her fists, trying to crack the limb - and once she has, she twists her entire body, using the torque from her midsection and her gripping legs to literally try to splinter the crystal arm right off the crystal body of the canopic golem. "Watch it!" she calls to Lancelot, mostly because she does not want to drop the crystal arm on his head or something.

    Justina is about to turn to help Neviah, when that dart comes in. She shifts, intercepts the dart... "HYAAAAH!" and the dart punches through, slamming into the constructs chest and embedding there. <Alert. Structural Integrity. Compromised. Core Systems: Nominal.> Luckily, it missed anything vital on the inside of that thick armoured hull, but that impact HURTS the half-elf.

    The pain is dulled from not being as closely 'in tune' with the frame as she could be but damn does it still not feel good.

    The construct stands once more, the bucklers dissolving and being replaced by a pair of hexagonal clubs that start at the elbow joints and extend another three feet beyond where the hands were. The robot charges in then, aiming for a knee join and scissor-swinging the clubs to try and destroy the joint and bring the thing down.

The golem's fist feels for a moment like it's about to go right through Dante's barrier. The defensive spheres actually begin to melt away on contact - but not fast enough. Seemingly unsure how to respond to Dante running along it, the golem slowly reaches up after him - but he and Lancelot are well on target. Blades slam into the crystal creature, smashing it repeatedly and tearing chunks of crystalline mass away. Cracks dance down the massive construct before Dante drives his weapon squarely into the golem's forehead.

The impact cracks the golem unevenly down the middle, down to about the chest-eye. Lancelot's hacking and slashing do the rest. The golem crumbles to the floor in pieces, unmoving.

The second golem ends up with Juniper hanging off its arm like a tree sloth. Tree sloths, however, cannot do what comes next. There is a resounding cracking sound as the golem's entire arm snaps off, leaving Juniper to drop safely to the floor. The limp shatters as soon as it hits the ground.

Justina, hurt though she is, finishes the job. her blows shatter the golem's lower half; the upper half topples, hitting the ground unevenly and shattering like glass. Its remnants scatter in all directions.

There's silence, before Neviah pushes a chunk of rock off herself with a groan.

It takes her a few seconds to stagger over to Justina. She holds out a glowing hand, wincing as she tries to heal the construct with the half-elf inside it. She has no idea if magic will even /work/ on whatever Justina is.

    At the sign of the end of combat, Lancelot moves over to Dante, offering the blades. "Good call, sir." He turns to look over the wreckage and lets out a low whistle. "It was fun, but... well... hopefully we didn't break too much." Looking around, he shakes his head. "I did fail to protect the healer, though. I will need to compensate for that in the future." He cracks his neck, not much of a healer, and so content to let Neviah handle Justina.

    Dante sticks Rebellion to his back, and he grins at Lancelot as he retrieves Agni and Rudra. "Not bad at all. Guess I jinxed it. Here I was, wonderin' "where the hell is everybody" and lo and behold, golems!" He chuckles as the scimitars are stowed too. Where do they go? Nobody knows, one moment they're there, the next they disappear.

    "Ehh, I think we're good to go, I think Justina operates those...remotely? Kinda sucks she still feels it all."

    "Save your magicks. Unless you can mend a soul's hurt they will have no effect on me." states Justina as Neviah comes over. The clubs evaporate into blue-white motes that then melt back into the construct's chest. A 'patch' forms over the hole... after she yanks the crystal dart out of her chest with a grunt of pain.

    "Mostly correct, I inhabit the Doll frame via an Astral Projection... my soul is living inside of this frame and thus I feel some of what happens to it."

Juniper lands on her back with the ruins of the arm crashing down around and partially under her.

"Ugh, I have rock dust down my shirt," she says, sitting up and flapping the flannel overshirt. A couple shards do indeed tumble out of it. To Lancelot, she says, "I think they broke it, so it's their fault. I'm not going to take any responsibility for what a pair of jaropic golems break while they're trying to kill us!"

Juni finishes dusting herself off. "You guys okay?" She glances at Dante, but spends more time looking at Neviah and Justina, who took the worst of it.

The corridor's not in the greatest shape. With a couple of pillars shattered, a few chunks of the ceiling hang loose, exposing darkness in the upper reaches beyond. Neviah looks up with a wince, then over to the columns, lower lip caught between her teeth. "...They must have been put here as sentries," she mutters, tense as she tries to shove aside her own pain.

There's a part of her that /wants/ to heal herself first. She shoves it aside. She needs Justina, and Juniper, and the others.

    /Because I'm too bloody weak./ Another embarrassing reminder.

As Justina puts her off, Neviah nods, withdrawing with a pained breath. "I'm... I'm alright," she answers Juniper, forcing herself to straighten up. She brushes dust out of her hair and steps forward, wincing as pain shoots down her back. "Ow... damnation. Let's keep going...."

With a faint smile at Juniper's quip, the professor feeds another bullet into her rifle and advances forward. Ahead, a couple of side corridors stand choked with debris, but another leads to a dark, wide stair. Ascending cautiously, Neviah peeks ahead, through a large and linteled entryway.

She gasps. "Come on," she urges, passing through. Beyond, the room opens up into what looks like it used to be an expansive archive, ringed with shelves that look to have once housed an enormous quantity of scrolls. A few overturned stone chairs and tables can still be seen among the remnants of draperies and rotting papyrus.

"This must have been an archive... I wonder if anything survived...?"

    Dante gives Neviah a pat on the shoulder. "Take a breath." He says softly. A break is had. Then they carry on.

    Dante follows Neviah with his pistols in hands. Stowing the guns, Dante begins to rifle through scrolls and other things until he notices something on one end of the room.

    "Huh." He begins to study the piece of paper, it seems mostly intact to his eyes. Fuck knows if he can read it, though.

    Lancelot seriously considers inspecting Justina's frame, but decides against it. Instead, he nods at Juniper. "Their fault, but we collected payment." With this, he turns to follow along with Neviah. He speaks low, though he notices something at about the time Dante breaks off from the group. "There is nothing gained in self suffering, my lady. Acknowledging one's limits is the first step in surpassing them." Apparently, the Knight wasn't just good at picking fights. He kept near Neviah, opting to let others perform the searching, deciding that one fight was already too many.

Juniper takes advantage of the break to stretch out a bit.

"Huh," she says. "Lots of scrolls." Or, well, there WERE a lot of scrolls. Most of them seem like they're falling apart now. She pokes at once of the pieces of papyrus, but stops as soon as she touches the edge of the scroll and it crumbles under her finger like a dry leaf. She doesn't touch another.

She picks up one of the chairs around and tilts it back to the vertical. By that point, Dante has noticed a paper, and Juniper wanders over to see what it is, curious. "Hey, this one isn't even fallen apart yet. Can you read it?" She asks Dante, but she means anybody.

    Justina hovers near to Neviah, just in case something else decides to rise from the dead to come gunning for the professor. She does suggest, though. "You are no good to us dead. Professor. Heal your wounds, we can wait." she says bluntly before turning to look around. "Once you're done... there seems to be some containers over here." she adds, stepping over to inspect the shelf with some intact looking containers on it off in a corner.

"What have you found?" Neviah asks Dante with a blink, the pat drawing a blush to her cheeks. She migrates in his direction and leans over the table a little.

Her eyes widen. "This is a /map,/" she exclaims. "Part of one." Laying a hand on the tabletop, she gestures over the paper, indicating faded shapes on its surface. "That looks like a lake or an inland sea. And the map looks like... we are on the east side of it. It centres here, on the northeast side...." Leaning in, she squints and tries to decipher the spidery text written there. "The ink's mostly gone, but...."

Neviah wets her lips. "...S-L-T-M. And a few other places... R-T-H-L inland... a road... something faded... and then this big one. S-K-something...."

She frowns, then. "...This one down here. S-M-P-R-N-Z. It looks like someone's circled it...."

She looks up at Justina with a blink, stretching a little and wincing as a lance of pain shoots down her back. "...Maybe bring one over here," she murmurs as she touches a hand somewhere under her shoulder blade, letting the magic flow.

    Dante glances at Juniper with a bemused look. "If I did I wouldn't exactly let Neviah come here, that's for sure." He points out, stepping aside so the professor can do her job. He scratches his stubbly jaw curiously as Neviah reads and sounds things out. This is so far above his head, none of the languages he knows are like this for sure.

    "Whatcha think, that our next destination?" He asks, pointing to the circled spot.

Juniper makes a face at Dante. "Like you could stop her. She's the one running this, isn't she? She's certainly the one paying me, nobody else has made me any kind of offer at all. Though if you want to stop her I guess I could be paid to keep her safe at home or something."

"We saw the outside, though, and there's not all that much OUTSIDE to it," Juni objects. "I guess we probably can't get to, uh..." 

No name comes to mind as easily as Maskers did. "Those places. Maybe if you get lucky it's still possible to get to the circled place? Or figure out what it is." Mostly Juniper is trying to figure out where they are. None of these places are familiar to her, though, so this is a fool's task and she eventually gives it up.

"Is there a scale on that map anywhere?" It's pretty different if it's a ten minute walk versus ten hours.

    Lancelot leaves the thinking to the thinkers, and opts to keep an eye out for any more jarate from canopic sources. Or any sources, really. A hand idly on the hilt of Arondight may betray his suspicions that they are not alone, but his face only reads as a semi-blank, semi-bored mien. The more seasoned fighters might recognize the posture and focus of a skilled warrior resting his energy by focusing on little else but movement and analysis, or perhaps he's just weird.

    Justina moves to pick up one of the containers, hoisting it with an uncanny delicacy belying the bulk of the robotic frame. She moves it over to the others, and sets it down delicately before moving to crack it open.

Neviah frowns as she peers at the map. "I don't know if that place even exists anymore," she admits as Dante asks. "So much of this world has been lost. But there are bits and pieces poking out of other parts of the World Tree. Pieces like this... ones that aren't really connected to much else... they're uncommon." She glances at Juniper, frowning before giving the map a once-over. "...It looks like this is the scale of a country. Even if these places still exist, I do not think they connect to here anymore. This... S-L-T-M. SL-TM, I suppose."

Justina finds the container still contains a scroll, tightly wound. With care, Neviah slides it out of the holder and begins to unroll it across the tabletop. More spidery text weaves across its surface, and she bites her lower lip firmly as she reads it.

"It's a historical document," she breathes. "It's talking about the Maskers. It says...." For a moment she says nothing, but her eyes dart back and forth.

She swallows a lump in her throat. "...The people who lived here were humans. From Earth." She sounds stunned. "It says they... were the slaves of the Maskers, brought here through the gates. That they overthrew their masters and claimed their empire. The symbols they use for it...."

Neviah squints a moment, then exhales. "...ML-HR-ND."

    Justina is quiet, pondering this discovery. To her, it's academic... to Neviah, and Morrigan too. This was their home. She's unsure what she's do if she ever lost Centria forever... but that's a looming possibility with the Tree even if it isn't for several thousand years yet.

    The robot does somehow manage to look pensive without facial features or expressions, though she's trying to hide that fact.

    "Got me there." Dante concedes. He shrugs it off. "Guess there's no helpin' it."

    He peers at the map some more, scratching his head. "What the hell...?" is all he mutters. This just keeps getting weirder.

    Earth. Lancelot perked up at that. He found himself listening a bit more intently. "So... is this world necessarily empty of non-living creatures? Is this what the forces do to branch worlds?" He looks around. "I know so little about this... and yet..." A shake of the head. He decides to move closer to the group, but he keeps his back to them, making sure that any threats must be perceived before they can ambush.

"So..." Juni puts it together, with what Neviah has told her. "Let me get this straight. The people here were Egyptians, I guess, who the Maskers stole to make their slaves, who built the pyramids and whatever."

"But then the Maskers got taken over *by* the, uh, the Mule Round, or the ML-HR-ND, or whatever it's called." Juni considers that for a few moments, then decides, "Serves them right, I think. You shouldn't do extradimensional slavery, that's weird. AND bad. And *those* are the people who closed off the gateway back to Egypt? Did they not want to go back? I guess not if they had a perfectly good empire here."

Neviah presses her lips together firmly before looking over at Dante. "...I need to tell Morrigan about this," she murmurs as she slides the scroll back into its holder. "I wonder... if some of these places are still around, in some other part of the tree somewhere. If I could find them...." She looks off to one side, off into open space.

"...Whatever happened between Earth and here, the old Egyptian gods seem to have been real here. The people here worshipped them. If they still exist here...." Eyes on Lancelot's back, Neviah clears her throat.

"This world is old. Very old. So old that the World Tree has simply... absorbed most of it. Parts of it still exist, but they're mostly just... lost. Scattered. But...." Looking back to Juniper, the young professor fusses with her collar a moment.

"I want to try and find that other place on the map. That SM-PR-NZ place. If it even still exists. Someone circled it for a /reason./" She furrows her brows. "There may be a way to... calculate likely planes it might appear in, based on branch patterns... but I can't analyze that here. I will have to return to Cambridge."

    "Then we're done here for now it seems." remarks Justina dourly. "We should return to camp and pack up for the return trip. You know how to contact me once you have the next place to search."

    "We'll do it together." He says to Neviah. Dante nods firmly and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Like I said, you're stuck with us. We're in it for the long run together."

    Lancelot nods, though he isn't facing the group. "I would appreciate accompanying you all again, for this knowledge is what I seek to protect my world. It is why I was brought back." He seems to be taking the area in a bit more intently now, as if recording for posterity, and he shakes his head. "To think that this was once a living, breathing world... I cannot imagine the pain of those who lived here."

"Hey, if you're paying." Juniper gives a slightly crooked grin. "Honestly, though, I'd feel a little weird bailing at this point. Now I kind of want to know what these people from Egypt got up to in a different world."

She glances at Lancelot again. "Not sure how it'll help you, but hey, your heart's in the right place, I guess."

Neviah tenses a little at Dante's pat, but offers a little smile nevertheless. "I appreciate it. I am... aware that I seem obsessed with this world. But it means much to me. That the Tree did this to it...." She trails off, looking to Lancelot as he voices thoughts she's sharing.

"Those left to drift through the Tree like a leaf on the wind," she murmurs before beginning to move away, towards the exit.

They do not leave the chamber empty. The last occupant has gone unseen, and remains so. There is simply nothing /to/ see.

Only an attentive, serpentine shadow. The shadow snake within flicks its tongue before coiling deep into the darkness and away.