Huckleberry's struggles stopped for a moment at Pride's voice. He reached out with one of his claws towards the white stag, his eyes popping out of his head. "Pride!" he cried, voice cracking and quivering. "Help me, I'm trapped! Please, oh please I can't...I hate this I'm scared..." He started struggling again, his wings bashing against the top and his hooves pounding against the ground but nothing was happening. "I'm here, I'm here!" he called to the bird, wherever they were. He didn't care if they were blind. If they could help him they needed to do something!

A familiar sound suddenly struck their ear and they froze and turned towards the sound of panting. A black shape exploded into the light and Huckleberry gasped. "Jayberry!" As the wolf tried to open the cage, however futile it was, Huckleberry felt tears collecting at their eyes again. So she did care about them...she still saw them as family.

For a second there was a glimmer of hope but then the lights turned off. Dreadful snarlings and horrid air pressed down around Huckleberry. They were frozen with fear, no longer trying to bust their way out of the impossible cage. As the yellow eyes of the monster came rushing forward, Huckleberry let out an earsplitting screech and a jolt of lightning shot from their gem in the general direction where the horrible creature had been.

@Galactic

The only thing worse than being blindis having sight but no vision

Galactic trembled violently, baffled by the chaos that went on around him. He was so confused, and so scared! There were so many voices, and he couldn't tell who was who, or who was where! The voices bounced off of the walls, so he couldn't even use that to help himself.

All he could do was to dig his talons into the ground, which didn't help much when he found himself flung aside, struck by something moving at great speeds. He allowed himself to lay where he landed, not daring to move as the air suddenly felt of lightning and ozone.

@Pride

Pride stumbled to the cage, sniffing it over with alarm, listening with rapidly-flicking ears to Huckleberry's pleas. He was looking around for a rock to try and translocate with some of the cage bars when the black wolf came hurtling in out of nowhere. He startled briefly--A trap, after all?--did they find out he was planning to leave them, and use him as bait--

Before he could get too far in his thoughts, however, the lights rapidly dimmed and went out. As he turned he caught the briefest glimpse of an unnaturally tall, thin black thing, distorted and... wrong, somehow. Its movements its proportions--as the lights faded completely, only its yellow eyes remained visible.

Pride jerked back, his heart racing and mouth dry with fear, as the yellow flashed this way and that in the darkness. The creature moved with impossible speeds.

He flinched as Huckleberry's electricity hurtled past, and recognized the hybrid's magic type at once--he'd seen it in action already. Unaware that the cage would be immune to his magics, he quickly did his best to try and churn one side of the cage's bars, and the stone beneath it, into molten flame.

The stag squeezed silver eyes shut, breathing heavily and quickly as he focused, pressing his flank to the back of the same side of the cage. The rock beneath burst into white-hot plasma, loud, bright and violent, but undoubtedly the cage would remain secure.

@Thothaga

center>

As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
An ominous presence washed over Thothaga like an icy breeze. The spider stiffened and spun around. Glowing, yellow peered at her from the darkness, and she stared back. Thothaga froze, as her mind raced. For a split second, she thought it was another curious gembound, but the air around them felt... wrong, like a predator. Before she could act, the lights suddenly flickered out, plunging her into an uncomfortable darkness. All she could see were its piercing, yellow eyes as it bolted straight towards her.

Thothaga's heart lurched with fear as she stumbled back and reared, flashing her fangs. In a brief, horrible moment of terror, she though it snatched her, but all that rushed over her was hot, foul-smelling air. She had lost sight of it, but it was still there.

Fangs' still dripping with venom, she continued to back up closer to her fellow gembounds. "I'm not the only one hearing this, right?" She quietly asked them, her voice slightly trembling. Thothaga had no idea if the others, besides the one they called Huckleberry, had seen it, but Thothaga couldn't be the only one hearing its phantom snarls. She tried to listen to the vibrations the sensitive hairs on her feet picked up. It had to still be there, even traces of magick could be left behind if it used a spell. Thothaga wished she was surrounded by web, her senses would be amplified.

"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Jayberry // OOC:

For all the wolf noticed, Mother herself could have been beside her. Mother could have been tearing at her flesh, screeching at her ears, and she wouldn't have noticed.

She was blind to the new darkness, deaf to the world around her. All she could focus on was Huckleberry, and the unnatural rock that trapped them. And so she planted her paws, and pulled, yanked her head until her jaw hurt, her muscles strained, her eyes watered. One of her teeth came free, bloodied, clattering noisely to the bottom of the cage. But still she attempted she pry the cage open.

She hadn't yet come across something she couldn't defeat with brute strength, after all.

"Speech looks like this."
Thoughts look like this.

OF WISPS AND WHISPERS

ENGAGED: TERROR OF THE CAVES

KRA'RAUM, TERROR OF THE CAVES

100 / 100 HP    100%

The echoing snarls continued through the darkness, a brief flash of lightning illuminating the tunnel as it swept by nothing in particular; another bright flash as plasma melted rock around the cage, and while it did not affect the foreign metal of the bars, splattered through to collect at the bottom of the cage as white-hot goop. Stray pieces sprayed off of the bars and onto Huckleberry and Jayberry. The bars of the cage radiated in an afterglow of red heat while the comprised corner sizzled and popped as the plasma slowly dripped free.

post-roll
But other than the sinking feeling the darkness had in general, the pitch black tunnel was void and empty. Flickers of yellow eyes blinked here and there, and seemingly nowhere; for now, it seemed as if the creature was merely playing tricks on its huddled, captured game.

Huckleberry 90/100	Shiny 50/50	Galactic 100/100
Pride 100/100	Thothaga 100/100	Jayberry 95/100

Huckleberry takes 10 splash damage from Supernova.
Jayberry takes 5 splash damage from Supernova.

((hmm,, i guess i can't really use cast spell with no real spells :'( oh well, boo... next time i won't do that))

Huckleberry screamed with terror and pain when the rock beneath the cage exploded into a bright plasma. They tried to scramble away into a corner of the cage but he couldn't move. The hot goo was not covering parts of the bottom of the cage and Huckleberry felt it burning into his talons. "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO" He clawed at the bars, trying to balance on his hind legs so that he didn't have to let himself touch the plasma. Huckle-friend, are you okay? Shiny's quivering voice sounded through the connection and Huckleberry's mind grasped onto it like a lifeline. Shiny are you okay?! I'm okay Huckle-friend. I hide. Be safe.

The terror and pressure surrounding the group was really getting to the young hybrid. He wanted it to stop. He wanted the lights back. He wanted the thing to go. He wanted out of this cage! He couldn't see anything! "Someone, please! Turn on the lights!!" He tried to get his magic to light up the area but the pain and the fear distracted him too much and he ended up just crying out for the lights and for help over and over again, his voice the only thing holding him onto reality.

@Galactic

Pride snorted, nostrils flaring and eyes wide. He did not know how to help Huckleberry--he had no good ideas. He had a few mediocre, risky ones, to be sure--like picking up the entire cage with his mind and trying to just... run away with it. But so far the cage had proven quite resistant to magic, and he feared risking too much time in trying other spellwork on it.

That, he decided, can be plan 'b.'

"Break the bars where they're hot," he barked at the wolf, without looking to her--and to Huckleberry. He had no idea if they were weakened, but it was the best shot... and might give Huckleberry something to focus on.

He tried to ignore the hot splatters of rock striking Huckleberry, instead striding out into the darkness, trying his best to approach the yellow eyes as he gathered his magicka again. He stepped away from the rest, and toward the monster. Pride tried to ignore the fear racing through him, near-numbing--tried to ignore the adrenaline and the rushing of his own heartbeat in his ears. Instead he did his best to focus on his magic.

Everything depended on it.

He squeezed his eyes shut and released the gathered magicka, barely able to concentrate over the terror that threatened his mind, releasing it in a shockwave--not the most powerful he'd created, but still a shockwave nonetheless--that rippled out around him.

He was hoping to throw the creature away--if even it was there.

If even it wasn't some cruel trick of magic, or some incorporeal monster.

@Thothaga

As a maiden she tiptoes shy with her light
She is modest and pure as she graces the night
It was nowhere, yet, everywhere. How could this be? The spider thought.

A flash of white hot plasma lit up her view from behind. The white stag had casted a spell on the cage, attempted to melt it, but it remained intact. She heard the hybrid's cries of pain, he must have gotten burned.It is no good to have two able-bodies trapped. The more gembounds freed, the more allies she had here. "Is there a bottom?." She asked the others without turning around. "Can it be flipped?" She did not get a good look at the cage, but from watching the others failing to break it, she concluded it must be impenetrable. If I survive I would love to have it. She thought. Could be useful.

All eight of Thothaga's eyes were peeled for the creature's yellow eyes. It acted as if its body were incorporeal, as if it flowed with the magicka itself. So far, it had not attacked, but it acted like it was toying with them. If it is toying with us, then I will toy with it. She had a plan, it probably wasn't a good one, but at least she had a plan.

She had to climb the nearest tunnel wall, there, she would hang from the ceiling and spin a web to snare the beast with. Thothaga felt like she could trust her silk. Nothing had ever escaped the strong, sticky strands of her web, so far. But can it catch a creature of air? There was only one way to find out.

As quietly as she could, Thothaga peeled away from the group. She hoped the beast was blind as she was in the dark, or at least distracted by the white hot cage and the other gembounds attempting to break it. Thothaga took each step with care, praying that she would not knock over rocks or stump her feet on stalagmites. Eventually, she felt a vertical surface, the wall. A wave of relief washed over her. Thothaga hooked her claws into the stone and started to climb upwards. Almost there...


"Listen to me."
Thoughts...

TAG: @Galactic @Jayberry // OOC:

Suddenly, something wet and hot and burning was splashing on her. The wolf cried out in pain, but refused to let go of her grip on the bars, even as she smelled her own flesh burning and felt it, too.

However, she couldn't ignore the stag's orders. So she let go of her current bars, and moved over to the ones that burned bright and hot, glowing in the darkness. Taking a deep breath, she bit them, crying out in pain.

She pulled, bracing her paws even as they, too, burned. The flesh of her mouth and tongue burned and blistered, and her eyes watered, but she refused to let go, every muscle straining as she tried to free her sibling.

"She speaks."
'She thinks.' She does.