Tahi-shei, in his search, finds mostly quiet, peaceful ruins. Here and there is shade, piles of bricks fallen away from the rest of the tiny temple; and farther off, the clustered remains of quite a few Magnetite shards. These are ancient, completely without magic at this point; but nestled in among them--almost as if placed there--is a piece of sandstone-like rock with pigment still shining across it. There is no trap or the like, and this piece can easily be retrieved.



__________

Aran will sense a magic in this place--in fact, upon the mural itself! As his cast was not all that strong, it will not be immediately clear what this magic is, but it feels... latent, as though something may happen if the right criteria are met. How strange.

There are other, fainter magics about, but it's difficult to pick them from the Gembounds' stones without further investigation, or a stronger cast of his own.

__________
Comet, in her explorations, bursts through a small cluster of bushes to find a small, clear pool set atop the little peak. It's peaceful: half-shaded by the shrub-like trees, with the rush of ocean below providing both scent and sound for an almost meditative state. Near the pool lies a broken anvil, toppled on its side and scratched and pitted with age; and beside this, a worn brick alcove with an ancient workshop of some kind. This workshop is small, simple, with nothing really left behind except for a brick 'well' of some kind and a couple of counter-tops. It's in the pool itself that she will find her luck: a piece of stone, old pigment still on it, somehow not washed away. It glints at the bottom, its sandy color catching the bright light, as if to summon her to it, and can be easily retrieved.



__________

Oka's search would take her (gradually...) to a nearby tomb amongst the ruins. It's overgrown with bright-leaved vines, with tough wildflowers springing up all around, as though the remains of some planted an age ago. The tomb itself is a large, stone sarcophagus, some twelve feet long and five broad; lying atop it, on its back, is a monstrous humanoid figure with four arms and spines lying flush down its back (barely visible down its sides). This is carved straight into the stone, and a great two-handed broadsword is held in this sculpture's hands, laid down across its body, point faced toward its feet: like the grave of an ancient knight.

The mural piece--bright sandstone, its colors still shining bright--has been placed at the foot of this tomb, leaning up against it.



__________

Kaimana and Leviathan, searching just around the mural itself, will find nothing; but this in and of itself may occur to Leviathan as a powerful hint. It's unlikely that Lessers took these pieces: it will become clear to him--almost a message, or a fact--that these particular pieces were carefully removed by a deliberate hand.

__________

Haven , though she fails to find anything--the pieces small stone amongst much other rocky rubble--will get a good idea of the layout of the ruins from above. In addition to what the Gembound have found so far, there's also a pile of crystals and rubble half-cascaded down a slope past the pool that Comet is at; and a statue, at the rear of the ruins themselves, of some sort of large humanoid figure, upright. She may choose to inform the others, or investigate herself.

@Tahi-shei @Aran @Comet @Oka @Himmel @James @Kaimana @Leviathan @Haven

Levi sniffed at the various breaks in the wall, and said loudly, "Someone broke it on purpose." Now, though, he was interested -- if someone was going to break something on purpose, he wanted know why (and maybe fix it, just to spite them). He dropped onto four legs and started to poke around the ruins, totally ignoring everyone else. He wanted to find the little round piece -- the one that looked like it would be the black thing's face.

His beak barely scraping the ground, he began his search.

Tahi-shei's eyes lit up as he discovered a large piece of rock. Carefully, he took it into his mouth -- cringing at the way rock scraped against his teeth -- and began to bring it towards the mural when James appeared behind him. He jumped and did his best not to drop it, his ears flicking up. "Oh! Hi 'Ahmes!" He bonked the pegasus gently with his shoulder and trotted over to try and orient his piece in the mural underneath the spot to the far right, underneath the masked creature. Whether it fit or not, he'd find a way to have his mouth free and turn back to his friend.

"I've been traveling around to all the new caves! I stopped by a room with a palace inside first. Don't bother with it; it has a guardian, Isra, and she isn't very friendly -- although I suppose she did warn me that she didn't like questions much." He grinned. "I've been well! And you?"


@james
- tahi is trying to put his piece in the LAST slot, underneath the blacksmith -

Aran's spellcast worked, and he could tell that there was.... Some kind of magic something somewhere. There was so many gembounds that he couldn't exactly make out where however, which made things a bit more difficult. Plus the fact that he couldn't see shit. Aran had no way of making out where everything was, except for the fact that there was something square in front of his face.

Perhaps the others would have a better time finding things, and it kind of made Aran mad. He had to lose his sight from doing the one thing that would keep him alive. To keep himself alive he lost his vision. Did he deserve it? Aran didn't think so. The deer thought he would have gotten at least a small bit of good karma from saving James when he was still a child. Did fighting with the alligator take his good karma away? The alligator attacked first, so that couldn't be it.

He was pretty sure something out there was watching him laughing.

Whatever. it didn't matter anyway. Aran had more important things to worry about, he thought as he readied his magic to try and locate that source of magic.

Electrum

Electrum had followed Haven into Leo, the massive cave making his sales flare in excitement, and he takes to the sky after her, following her path across water and towards the cliffs, the smell of Sulphur and hot stone making his fins flare in alarm as he watches the distant hot glow from the volcano, wondering if it's fire or something else. It's something else, but he'll figure that out later.

For now, though, he follows Haven, and listens well to others nearby finding pieces of the mural before looking himself. After all, wouldn't do to spend time doing nothing productive.

Like some kind of scaled accordion, he folds himself into an odd position in order to land without getting close to anyone but Haven, and he feels her echolocation rattle over his sensitive feelers on his snoot, and he decides to look with her. She was blind, not incapable, and he would double check anything she found as well to see if there's paint on I like the murals... Oh, I don't like these drawings for some reason. Not one bit.

@Haven

James cooed, "A palace? That sounds wonderous- a shame the guardian isn't friendly," he said, and pressed up against his side with a smile, hugging him with a wing, as snuggly as ever, "I'm glad you've been well! I haven't seen you since Orion- that seems like ages ago already."

He finally yanked his eyes away to inspect the mural and hummed, "I've been okay- I'm moving with my family to the new field caves. I've heard that Pegasus was the name being thrown around for it, which is fitting, for I believe I may have been the first one to step into it."

"I wonder what these murals are of," he said, gesturing at the figured depicted, "I've never seen anything quite like them."

Except for in one of the tunnels which he very rarely frequented. He hadn't found the time between chasing Comet, babysitting his chrysalis, and sleeping. He was surprisingly busy. Finally turning away, he made his way around to inspect the area, looking for another piece.

@Tahi-shei

Haven crooned as Electrum joined her, toddling over to rub up against him like a cat before hopping back towards the rubble, "Hey! Look at this!"

She turned the corner and looked up, spotting something even more interesting than rocks that sounded nice when banged together. A statue! Of... someone! She didn't know, she couldn't really see.

"Hey everyone!! There's a statue! Someone with eyes come and see!", she yelled out, taking flight and darting around it in excitement before dashing back to Electrum and huddling into his side, two crystals in her hands.

She clacked them together and giggled, holding them up to Electrum, "I like these- can we keep them for our nest?"

@Electrum

Pushing aside the pushes, Comet finds herself on the top of a peak, with bushes surrounding a small pool. The area looks like it was once used for building something, although what she didn't know. But there was something in the pool, something colorful. She steps inside the water cautiously, and when nothing happened, she continued in and retrieved the piece. It seemed to be a missing chunk from the painting earlier!

The pup rushed back. "I found a piece!" Comet tried placing it into one of the empty slots, slot one, and returned to the pool. This time, she investigated the area to see if there was anything there that would be interesting.

Oka had carried the shard with them. Though it was far from the snail's favorite thing she'd found. They had given a small, excited gasp at the wildflowers. By far the most interesting thing, moreso than the shard of stone, or even the sarcophagus. Though they'd given the stone structure a good investigation. Oka had been captivated by the wildflowers. They'd taken a good sum of them, draping the plants over their shell, adjusting the flowers so that they hung off just so.

They didn't feel the sharp pain of plants taking root, and sighed. Oka had almost left right then. That is, until Oka remembered the stone piece clutched within a tentacle. They stared at it for a second, disappointed that they'd had to go back.

Oka observed the mural quietly. Touched a tentacle to her face in thought. Ah! She laced the shard in the second rightmost slot. They weren't very interested in it, but the other gembound were. It wouldn't kill them to play along. Maybe they'd even get some new information about the caves!

Levi's ken impressed Kaimana. An interesting observation indeed! "Oh? Why do you think anyone would do such a thing on purpose, Levi?" If the child wished to engage in this mental puzzle with her, perhaps they could figure it out together. Of course, Levi didn't have to, but it might add to the entertainment. Kaimana definitely believed the child. That was why she had asked her question in the first place. She wanted to know herself.

Kaimana would elect to ignore someone's call to 'come and see' something in favor of searching for more. She would keep close enough to Levi while searching elsewhere as to not get in the way. Divide and conquer and all that. She would continue searching for mural pieces, this time NOT around the mural itself. Now she was thinking in terms of 'breaking and hiding mural pieces on purpose'.

@Leviathan (for visibility 'cause she asked him a question :3)