Warrior turned, looking over the group as best he could. The stragglers, it seemed, had been mostly rounded back up--and the key-...

He peered.

"That metal is glowing blue? And so's-..." He turned, his equine wide-range vision giving him a peripheral of the Crucible and its twinning glow. "So is that. The Crucible's that way. STAY CLOSE, PLEASE!" he called out, pleading, and then looked to Oleander.

"Don't get lost," he told her, softly. He didn't want her to vanish from his life, not again.

They'd been moving, for a bit--at least, he hoped the rest were sticking close; he couldn't keep track of them all all that well in this storm, and in the dark, and he couldn't constantly use his magic--when something... rumbled, again, underfoot.

Warrior pranced back, snorting, his eyes rolling wide. "It's coming!" he called, lashing out with his magicka, focusing--reaching for a place a little off to one side. The ground there began to shake, trembling, the snow jumping.

"I'll try and distract it-... Run! RUN!"

Ivory lowered her head as she pushed fully upright, giving Virgil a frightened, but grateful, look.

"Thanks," she wheezed, and lurched into a trot--stumbling before she caught herself. She stayed just behind and to one side of the bison, apparently in agreement that they should stick together.

She remained silent, for the most part, just huffing and sucking in great deep breaths, wincing as the icy cold lanced her lungs, and yet she still couldn't quite get enough air. Damn.

When the horse before them--dimly-visible in the white, leading them, it seemed, toward some safety with which he was familiar--stopped, and cried a warning, she paused. He was forming some kind of magic--and telling them to run. To a background stream of thoughts screaming Why did I come here?! and How did Shango survive this? she wondered, frantic, where the hell she was meant to run to.

"This way?!" she hazarded aloud, loudly, to Virgil. And then she lurched into motion again, nostrils flared and jaw hanging open with weariness. Fear drove her as she pounded along the ground, trembling as she went.

The gang was back together - for the moment - and Virgil couldn't be more pleased. She huffed at Ivory's gratitude, steaming ahead through sheer willpower. "If we keep at it, we'll be outta the woods soon enough!" the bison hollered towards Wynter, shaking herself free of what little snow she could. They just needed to get to shelter, and the horse said they were all close enough to it.

Virgil powered ahead, trying to spur up every last ounce of her energy and thrust ahead. Who knew how her passenger was faring right now? They needed shelter, desperately. Ivory lowed from behind, and she bellowed in response, "this way! Come on!" But, perhaps foolishly, she didn't turn back.

As it turned out, the lump in his mouth was a scrap of something dead.

Vinea spat it out, shaking his head once or twice and rubbing at each individual mandible with near-frozen fingers. His ears pinned flat against his head, bioluminescence flaring bright like a worried beacon. That light of his shone even brighter as snow and ice churned underfoot, a telltale sign of - "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA -" as the ice worm burst out of the ground and nearly sheared his tail clean off.

Leaping catlike to the top of the putrid slush, the hybrid was certain he didn't like the idea of being off on his own so much (and where was that key, now? He just wanted to hold it!) Hightailing it with gliders out and freezing painfully extended, Vinea was damn desperate to get back to the rest of the group, making a bee-line for the blue (key-)glow he was so sure was real.

vinea is attempting to rejoin the main group! uh oh

Hargrave felt as if eyes were boring into the back of her head, a presence just waiting to snatch up the wreath upon it with spindly, nightmarish fingers - and wholly crush it. It waited only for her to screw her eyes shut one last time, to heave her last breath.

Another entity stole in, dancing up with glowing-white eyes and a voice that sang rescue. Hargrave looked blearily up towards the creature, tail wagging once like a limp flag in the blistering wind, and croaked, "... savior." That was certainly what this being was, right? A guide through all this - something holy and good come to save her at her last moment. Shida was, in essence, a sudden religious awakening for the gray hare, and she regaled in it.

How else was her feeble, frostbitten brain going to find hope?

She forged on, even with her paws and extremities being reduced to nothing, peeling away with each step and leaving patches of blood in her wake. It sounded like shelter was near from the murmurings, but she could only dearly hope to make it that far without collapse.

hargrave's staying in place and trying her best
+2 for having a spiritual awakening though, babey!

"Yeah, snow worm! You should've seen the coward, it must've been shaking as it went under." She took Imp's horror at her wrassle with the worm as a good thing. Imp was shocked at her battle prowess. As all rivals should be. She held her head up, feeling proud of her success over the worm. Imp had the gall to then, shush Kalama. She opened her mouth to protest Imp, she feared no worm. But she froze with her beak midword. She could feel it too.

The rumbling beneath the pair made her shudder. She wasn't scared but...she could go a minute without fighting one. She would go along with Imp's idea, for now. And then there was a rumbling even further away. She couldn't hear Warriors command from her position, nor know that he was the cause, but she felt the rumble from further ahead. It rung through the earth, and she could only assume it was another worm. They were everywhere. With nowhere to run, Kalama resigned herself to hunker down and wait it out. Kalama's self control managed to hold out, and she neither screamed another challenge at the worms beneath, nor tried to flee, floundering.

think "speak"

repost bc switching to another character accidentally and attempting to post then switching back ate roll

bad mouth mustelid

Fisher was haphazardly guiding Null back to the rest of the group when Warrior's words made his fur stand on end. This key was, well, the key! The key to all of this! Probably! But now they had bigger problems, and as the ground began to shake, the mustelid grinned. "Oh, we'll distract it alright," he snickered.

He had been waiting for an opportunity like this. And more over, now that they knew exactly what was coming, he figured they could at least deter the attack, right? With the ground shaken up, he tried to aim his electricity through the snow and toward the oncoming threat... And, hopefully, away from the group. It would be just terrible if he managed to electrocute everyone.

Thankfully, the jolt of electricity only surged through his paws, leaving him feeling a bit dazed. Unfortunately, it didn't hit anything else-- including the massive worm coming for them.

As it turned out, trying to zap into the snow bellow was actually quite hard with everything getting rattled about, and... well... now he was a snack, waiting to be snatched up by a massive, horrible worm. He proooobably should've just ran while he had the chance, huh?

With Virgil and Ivory, at least Wynter knew that they were going to be alright. They just had to stick together. The only worrying thing was the sound of ice and earth churning, a distant rumble that crawled up his legs like the heebie jeebies. "I'm with you," he told his companions, surging forward through the snow toward the Cruicible's blue glow, just up ahead.

They would get there. They had to. One moment he was with Virgil and Ivory, the next his hooves slipped out from underneath him as the ground gave way. With a bleat of panic, the hybrid tripped over himself, stumbling into the snow.

Laying splayed out in the snow, there was a split second where his body just wanted to give in entirely. It was almost comfortable, even with the sense of impending doom.

WYNTER HASIRA
Like walking in the rain and the snow
When there's nowhere to go
And you're feelin' like a part of you is dying

“

ouch owie metal hurty

···

She was- lost. Sorely lost. And she knew when to admit defeat, if defeat was crying freezing tears and crying even more at the pain. Don't blame her; she's not the... Wisest creature. But faced with her own mortality, she had a choice. Accept it, or go out screaming. The latter seemed to be the safer bet.

When Vinea drew close enough, she made to strike out at him, ready to strike out before scooped up and tossed forward.

Oh. Oh- he was that weird thing. A friend. But spurred on by the adrenaline the spook gave her, she darted forward with an incessant tugging at the weird thing in her mouth. It lead her to the group, finally, back to Hargrave, to life. And shelter was up ahead, the others were speaking. But at the panic rising again, her head whipped around to stare down everything happening.

Another tug, and she gave no mind to everything, darting straight for shelter with wide, golden eyes perceiving everything she could. It- wasn't much. She couldn't scream anymore. She couldn't go down fighting- She could just... Go down.

Her movements slowed to a halt as she felt the freeze of water on her eyes seeming to pierce through the rest of her body in spurts of biting warmth.

Shida panted and nodded, a little dismissively. "Yeah, sure, just come on. You can make it." She plodded on after Hargrave, her beath coming short and quick. She was really starting to get cold, her limbs freezing, skin doing little to protect her. She tried to pull feathers around her to keep herself warm but...no, her movements were starting to slow. It only took a moment for her to realize she couldn't see Hargrave anymore.

"Shit," she snapped to herself. "Should take my own advice!" She kept trying to plow on, move forward, but the blizzard was merciless. The storm raged cruelly around her, too blinding to see and too white to find her sister.

Shida is staying with the group towards the crucible failing