"Guys, I have an idea," Mossie announces, pricking her ears as she stares down the pit. "I've got this new magic that lets me walk on air--I could go down and see, maybe?"

She bunches her muscles and leaps as high as she can, trying to see if the magic takes before going down into the pit.

Mossie then crashes unceremoniously onto the hard stone floor.

"New plan," she wheezes. "Can anyone here fly?"

@Oliver

Oliver turned and stared at Mossie for a moment, puzzled. He wasn't sure what she'd tried to do--just... jumped, and fell. And now she was asking if anyone could fly. He'd flown here; he had wings and the question... confused him. He didn't know if maybe the cat had bumped her head, and he shuffled over, gently prodding for her with one wing. "Are you... okay?" he said, for the second time in thirty seconds.

Eventually, his confusion turned to attentiveness as he turned his eyes to the carving. "That looks like us," he said softly. "I think it wants us to jump. I can go first," he added, with an almost martyr sort of solemnity.

He didn't know what'd await him down there, in the dark. He pushed the light-orb down below, but all it showed was meter after meter of plunging, well-like tunnel straight down into the dark. "I'll call up if it's safe," he added--and then folded his wings and dove.

Any Gembounds jumping down the hole would find themselves in at first freefall, and then the scrabbling, steep twists and turns. It wouldn't cause injury, but it would be unpleasant: dark, increasingly hot and humid, and smelling of old death.

At last they would find themselves tumbling out onto a bed of bones. Darkness stretched in all directions, yet to be explored--no wall in sight with carvings to guide them. And even the bones would not be visible with no light source; the place was pitch black.

How to get up again... that was a question with no answer, as yet. Hopefully they'd find some way... hopefully there was a way, and Oliver had not just jumped into a trap.

---

If Jinyi and Oka are not posted this round, it will be assumed that they turned back.

@Jinyi @Oka @Mossie

A shaking but otherwise unharmed Oka pulls themselves from their shell. Oka stares for a second at Mossie's unceremonious fall, before catching themselves, politely looking away and towards the wall as Oliver had. The carvings showed them going into the pit. Oka didn't like the fact that those carvings showed them, specifically. But Oka was more worried about the path they knew nothing about. Oka cleared their throat.

"Uh, I think Oliver's right. We're supposed to go down there. I can't fly like the um..." Oka trailed off, unsure of what to refer to Oliver as. "I can't fly like he does. I've kind of got a knack for sticking to surfaces, though!" Oka's eyestalks shrank involuntarily, remembering their tumble earlier.

"Well, usually. As long as I'm careful it should be alright. If anyone wants to climb on me, I don't mind any passengers." Oka slithered to the nearest cliff of the pit, staring down. "Man, Oliver sure went down there..." As Oka stared, they exerted their magicka, trying to will a vine upon their shell to uproot and grow into the rock of the tunnel.

The magic came easy. A vine easily untangled itself from Oka's overgrown shell, small fireworks of pain popping inside their shell as roots pulled from their skin and shell, leaving exposed snesh(snail flesh). Once the roots had fully been peeled, Oka set about having the roots latch onto the cracks in the ground. Then, finally Oka let the length of vine simply tumble down the pit.

Oka pulled the front of their foot over the edge, eyestalks staring ineffectually into the dark. Oliver said it was safe so Oka would just have to assume. And trust. Oka would wait for anyone to try climbing aboard before setting off down the pit.

"Oh..." he breathed, looking around with half-blind eyes in the dark. His glowing orb danced over a field of bones, providing less illumination than horrible, stark reality. The ground around him was motionless: a grim expanse of death, the skulls and ribs of everything from dinosaur-like Lessers to Greaters he'd never seen.

At length he ruffled his feathers, frowning, and set out to look for something he could use. Anything he could use. He moved carefully, worried about this whole 'disrespecting of the dead,' but there was nowhere to walk that wasn't covered by the bones of the fallen.

"It's not safe," he called up. "Not unless you can fly. I'll see what I can do from here!" Then, more quietly--more solemnly--"There's a lot of bones down here."

He hoped that his voice carried.

Going to spam a few posts to help get Callum out so he's not locked in this hell IC forever-

Green.

Oliver turned, blinking. Owl-shape hunched, then began the careful walk over the bones in another direction: toward a distant sense of plants. It was odd; there was no natural light down here, nothing but his glimmering orb. There was no way a plant should be able to-... Oh.
Distant, he could hear running water, and... something else. Something hot and steaming, even boiling. Oliver had never heard lava bubbling before, but it was ever-present under the Fornax vents, and here it opened to naked air. Bad air. Luckily that was farther down--but it indicated a long, tangled series of tunnel networks. And-... Oh, he thought, again, stumbling on a rock wall up ahead... and another exit, narrow-mouthed.

Light, distant, was barely visible here even to his owl's eyes. He crouched and began to hesitantly move forward, following his magic. There would be something green ahead. If he could plant it in the bones... grow it upward--or maybe find another way out..?

Down this tunnel, following his senses, Oliver would find a sad scene.

Oka, too--or Mossie--should they find a way to safely follow, would be privy to it too.

The tunnel was a long one, as narrow as the first. A final scratched carving showed two sets of figures: one the Oka-Mossie-Oliver trio heading deeper into the tunnel and then, a few feet farther and facing the other way, several skeletons with shining stones, colored with old pigments. Purple, gold, green.

The tunnel curved down, in. It never reached the magma--wherever that was, it kept the place hot and steaming but was safely (if one could call it that) behind another wall. It was clear now that this whole place was a deliberate set of pitfalls and traps. A hiding place. A sanctuary. The bones littering the floor were those of hapless adventurers, at times... but moreso, those who had tried to hunt and pursue those who hid here. The spike traps, the deep black falls--those were protection against the Masters' puppets, perhaps, or something else entirely. Either way, the story ended here; the creatures had foreseen their own demise, and not only that but the coming of the Gembounds here. They had pointed them to safety, tried to aid their visitors in slipping past the traps. They must have had a Seer among them, then.

And now they offered all they could; sputtering gemstones, dim with magic, lying in a nest of curled-up skeletons where they had at last perished. Trapped, by their enemies, in their own tunnels-? Or had something else taken them? It didn't matter, in the end.

The tunnel ended in a small cave, with alcoves off to every side. The central was brightly-lit, shafts of light streaming down from very high above, reflected and refracted by plates of gleaming gemstone. Vines tangled down through the hole, moisture beaded on them, and more grew upward in the pool of light. Around it lay the skeletons, and in the alcoves, little living areas. Carved stone to create shelves and cups, a depressed pool of water for bathing, a little garden long defunct and overgrown and no doubt intended for waste removal, too.

The skeletons themselves were three.

A large, deer-like beast, like an Irish Elk in appearance and size, was curled around the other two as if to protect them--there was no telling how it had come here with its broad, spiked antlers, through the narrow paths. Pointed teeth, a long and sturdy tail and an extra pair of legs proved it to be alien in nature, and the purple Tanzanite gemstone nestled in the heart of an old, yellowed ribcage was shaped precisely like that organ.

The second creature was longer but much smaller, somewhere like a cross between a dog and a serpent, coiled and large-eyed. It might have once looked like a white-scaled, long-tailed mongoose the size of a wolf, gleaming in its iridescence, and even now some of its scales caught the reflected light in a rainbow shimmer. Small, strong jaws seemed to hold a permanent smile. Its vertebrae held thin spines, pointing backward, and one of these was green and gleaming, an Emerald that still held magic.

The third creature was the smallest, only the size of a coyote or the like, and its skeleton almost looked like that of a very large mouse: slender-limbed, with clawed little fingers, and enormous eyes on a broad but narrow-snouted skull. If Oliver inspected closely, he would find a mixture of omnivorous teeth--but the creature's true features in life were hidden by the bones. This creature had sported white fur tipped with gold at its extremities, like a gilded Siamese cat; its ears and golden eyes had been oversized, and two tiny golden antlers had sprouted from its head. It had sat on longer hind legs, rodent-like, able to scurry on all fours or sit up on two, and its long tail had been furred and prehensile. It had likely been intelligent and agile, and its gemstone--a natural Citrine--had formed a sort of crown between and around the antlers. It remained there still, fixed to the skull, like the lost crown of a king without a kingdom.

---

Oliver may find several plants here to suit his needs, though he will need to find a light source if he wishes to keep them alive in the larger cave. The three Gembound who have come this far may each choose one stone as a guaranteed revive--or may choose, in-character, to pass these to others if they prefer.

The Catacombs have been discovered. While exceedingly dangerous, these old tunnels--heavily trapped to serve as a refuge for rebels and refugees--still bear the bones, gemstones and even ancient belongings of many hunters and hunted. Characters may GM tag to search these tunnels in personalized dungeon crawls, and will be provided short adventures, encountering randomly rolled dangers and rewards!

His eyes widened as he gazed around the room. There was something like a tomb to it: a wake, a tableau of memories that he felt he shouldn't really disturb. Yet the carvings on the wall had been a clear request: to take the stones, and to revive them.

The only problem was... Oliver had no way to carry them. Not like this. He could transform, maybe, but--Oh, he thought, for about the tenth time that day. His eyes had found one of those side-rooms--one intended for living, with carved basic furniture and shelves.

The owl hopped quickly over, looking over old and pitted, almost-decayed stoneware, until he found something that would serve: a bowl, of sorts, lopsided and thin. "Okay," he breathed.

Then came the hallowed, breath-held moment of flapping silently back to the bones, and gently picking through them to pry away the stones. The crown did not want to come, not without work, and he winced as he had to pull at it--but the skull beneath was nearer to dust than bone at this point. He hated disturbing the vertebrae, the ribcage of the giant beast, but he left them as close to how he'd found them as he could. A few moments later all three gems were in the bowl, and he backed off, bowing to the light-shrouded, dust-mote-cloaked skeletons.

"I'm sorry. That you died," he clarified softly, feeling that he should say something. And maybe this was a terrible eulogy, but it was heartfelt, at least. "I think you wanted us to give life to your stones-? I'll try. I'll see if the others will. Thank you," he added, then hesitated in confusion as he realized he didn't know why he was thanking the dead. "I mean--I'm sorry. Um. ...Rest well," he tried, instead.

Then it was a matter of examining the vines leading down from above--finding a spathe here and there, seeds encased in fruit, and prying a few free with beak and talons. He winced at the sting of white sap. Poison? he wondered, but it didn't matter; he had no plans to eat it. The sound of talons on bones and rock seemed unholy, somehow, in this otherwise silent tomb, and he hurried out the moment he was done.

The owl--clutching the bowl clumsily between one taloned foot and his beak, the whole thing oversized for him--hobbled out into the room from which he'd come. First things first, then: a way up. And down. He used the last shimmer of his orb to find the hole in the ceiling, and carefully planted a seed, noting to himself that he'd have to somehow bring light here if this plant were to remain. At least the bones will be good for it? he reasoned, but he wasn't sure. They were very, very old, after all.

The vine's few seeds were carefully nudged into the ground beneath the hole, and Oliver's magic was plunged into them.

The bowl was set aside, and softly fluttering wings took to the stale air to guide the growing plants upward. They twined with one another, and Oliver pressed more magic in, intent on bridging the towering gap not only to the hole above, but up through the tunnel to where the other Gembounds waited--up alongside Oka's own cautious vines.

It would provide a sturdy rope, of sorts--one littered with broad, fenestrated leaves in a display of jungle glory--for these Gembound and any who would come this way in the future. Oliver poked his head up to where the other two were. "Be right back. There were stones down there. I think we're meant to revive them? -Three, one for each of us. From the carvings," he explained, panting, past his owl's beak.

Then he was gone again, fluttering away. "JUST A MINUTE!" he called up.

Okay, the next and most important thing on Oliver's list: finding the missing Gembound. Now that travel was secured, and he'd had a look at his surroundings, it was time to find the fellow they'd come all this way to find.

The owl took a breath, plunged back down into the dark--his orb now wholly gone--and began to look around. His eyes could tell him nothing, and so once again he threaded his senses through the green life that flourished farther around this cave: in the tunnels nearby that were exposed to light, and the few mosses that lived off heat, instead.

Eventually he found what he thought he was looking for--and hobbled that way, feeling each step with cautious claws.