eswareinmal | The Princess and the Tower

Entry tags:

The Princess and the Tower

WHO Anyone who wants to rescue Sansa! Also Loki and Sansa.
WHAT Rescuing Sansa from the Ice Tower
WHERE Upstream on the river.
WHEN This IC day/the next IC day
NOTES I'll be setting up subthreads for the ice maze, the guardians outside the tower, and the stairs inside the tower. The group will start out all together in the ice maze and then be separated into two, I believe. The groups are (correct me if I'm wrong) Cho, Sif and Faolan, and Giles, Helios, Kay and Bakura. It's not too late to participate! If you would like to, hit up the plurk linked in the below paragraph.

The general sequence of events can pretty much be assumed to be: they get through the ice maze, they get through the guardians, they get up the stairs. If anyone would in particular like your group to be the winner, that's cool with me, go ahead and jump in here, otherwise it'll just be whoever manages to RP to that part first.

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"Better than that. Make sure you hang on tight." He crouched down on all fours, low enough to make getting on his back easy.

Bakura blinked once before nodding, very carefully climbing up, trying to keep his White Mage robes from getting in the way. Finding a good hand hold would be a touch more difficult... but he managed it. He just hoped he wasn't pulling or pinching too badly...

"Ready!"

Kay dug his claws into the ice, then dashed forward into the maze. When he approached the dead-end, he leapt into the air. He scraped one of his paws on the jagged ice edges that lined the top, but otherwise cleared the edge. He skidded a good twenty feet when he landed on the other side, but came to a halt before colliding with anything else.

This new area of the maze looked much like the old. The walls didn't move, there were many possibilities of paths, twists and labyrinthine turns.

It will be hard to find a good spot for a running start, from in here.

Also, is it just their imaginations, or is the wall that they already leapt over growing taller?

Bakura held on for dear life. It wasn't too unlike a motorcycle ride in it's intensity, even if not as fast.

He looked around where they had landed, still keeping his grip in case the wild ride hadn't finished yet, only to pause.

"Uwaaa...! It didn't seem that tall when you were going over it! How fast was that?!"

"Ice shouldn't just grow like that," Kay growled. "Fucking magic." He shut his eyes and sniffed the air a couple of times. He could scent people on the air -- in that direction. Kay took off again at a trot, careful to use his claws to keep from slipping on the ice. He'd do his best to travel in the general direction of the scent for as long as he could, taking different paths if he seemed to be going in the wrong direction for too long.

He didn't really care if Bakura stayed on his back or not.

Watch out for invisible walls. Because some of the ice is thus disguised.

Oh, wait, that's right. It's invisible. You can't watch out for them.

Thump! Kay hit one of the invisible walls face-first, letting out a short, sharp "Fuck!" that sounded almost like a whine. If Bakura wasn't careful, the impact might send him sliding off of Kay's back. "What the hell was that?" Invisible ice walls? Seriously? That was just embarrassing.

The werewolf backs up a step or two, taking some investigatory sniffs at the ice. Was its scent disguised, or its temperature? Could he pick out walls like this in the future, and avoid them?

He scratched at it with his paw, irritated.

And indeed, it did, Bakura landing on the cold ground with an "ooof" before getting to his feet, rubbing his rear. "Illusion, maybe?"

...wait. Ice and illusion were...

But why on Earth would he...?

Scent isn't disguised, and nor is temperature.

And he may find that the opposite is true of other walls: they appear as ice, but are not cold, and have no substance.

Kay growled. He didn't like this maze. A regular maze would have been irritating enough, but one with growing walls and invisible walls and walls that weren't really there?

"Fucking hell."

He would definitely be relying more on his nose and less on his eyes from now on. Kay took off again -- more slowly -- barking "Follow me!" over his shoulder. There was ice there, and there, and there....but not there? Kay stopped in front of a sheet of what looked like ice, then turned a little to the side and pressed up against it with a shoulder.

And fell right through.

Bakura nodded, following carefully after at the bark, stopping and staring as the werewolf fell. "Another illusion...?"

He hesitated a moment. Could Purify maybe...

Pressing his lips together a moment he nodded to himself before closing his eyes in concentration, white aura building around him as calling up his magic. With a small gesture he pushed it outward towards the walls, silently calling the spell.

The wall Kay had fell through faded slightly, illusion still present, though weakened, looking almost a touch translucent and shimmery.

Bakura exhaled softly, looking at it. "Pretty strong if Purify only did that little..."

"I'm really starting to hate this maze," Kay grumbled. "How do we know it's not fucking changing around us? We could be going in circles and wouldn't have a clue."

He shook his coat out. "Anyway, don't worry about using magic on the walls. I can smell where they are and where they're not."

Bakura nodded, expression thoughtful. "Do you think there's a way to mark the ground that would work?" he mused, looking at the walls again. "Since we can't trust the walls..."

"You mean like this?" Kay reached out with one half-human, half-wolf hand and scratched an X made of four parallel lines in front of him.

Bakura nodded. "As long as the floor doesn't change, that should help show where we've been, at least, right?"

"Calling it now. The floor's going to change. It'll disappear, or it'll show up somewhere we haven't been. Something's fucking around with us in here -- whatever made the wall grow after I jumped it." Kay took off again at a slower pace, slumping from his shoulders, marking the ground every ten meters or so.

He was paying close attention to the direction that the scent of people (and another dog? Maybe?) was coming from. Whenever possible, he would head that way.

He could follow the scent, though not exactly, and not without running into a few solid walls along the way. But slowly, bit by bit, they work their way closer to the tower in the center of the maze.

Up to them, now, to figure out that there actually is no maze exit at this end.

"Mmm.. it does seem pretty likely..." Bakura reasoned, peering up at the sky to try and catch sight of the tower. "This would be a lot easier if someone knew how to fly..." he mused before pausing, mid step. "I wonder if that would..."

He looked over at the wall, head tilting just slightly before putting his hand on it and closing his eyes in concentration. If this maze was magical... if he reached out through that magic like he would when healing, maybe he could find out something more about it... It was pretty unlikely that he'd get a map or even a clear image like he did with his healing magic, even if it was magic, a maze was a maze, and unless it was alive, he wouldn't be able to see anything. But magic was different... magic gave things life and was born of someone's life energy, so even if he just could get a map of where the magic was within the walls... he should be at least able to tell if they were getting anywhere!

He can quite clearly see the layout of the maze (as it currently stands).

He can also, more notably, see that there's no actual way through the ice and to the tower.

That... couldn't be right...

He pulled back, eyes blinking open to stare at the wall as he slowly returned to himself. While practice had allowed him to return swiftly when just healing, his consciousness spidering though a maze was quiet a different story, leaving him highly disoriented for a longer time.

"That's not a very good game..." It was almost a pout. Puzzles were supposed to be solvable...!

"The hell are you muttering about?" Kay asked, already walking in the direction he thought was best.

"There's no exit..." Bakura pointed out, drifting after, still a little out of it. "It's just dead ends and false exits... you can't get there from here."

Seriously? Kay thought, pulling a face. "How the hell did you find that out? Magic?"

But when he considered it a moment longer, it made sense. It was almost respectable, in a way -- Kay could appreciate someone who didn't play by the expected rules, exploiting dramatic convention.

It was fighting dirty, but fighting smart.

He bared his teeth in a facsimile of a grin. "No exit? We'll see about that. Get me as close as you can to the tower. Do it!" His tone brooked no delay -- it was more growl than words.

"Eh? Aaa--" Bakura faltered before trying to pull up that image-- no, that feeling of the layout. Where..

Frowning, he put his hand on the wall again hand glowing softly as he retraced the lines. There. That way should...

He nodded, pulling away and taking a deep breath, trying to refocus on the world. "Down that way, it goes like..." He traced the trail in the air, trying to burn the path in his mind so he wouldn't have to put his mind into the maze again.

if anyone else tags in after this, feel free to handwave hitching a ride/splitting the party

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