High on the hilltops overlooking Waimea Bay sit the ruins of a temple, a broad rectangle foundation in the middle of a verdant field with the waves of the North Shore visible to the north. Only the bare earth and heaped volcanic rock outlines remain to mark the site. What's left of the walls are piles of lava rock and pumice no higher than three feet, with four outer walls and an inner half-moon dais. A large, circular patch of bare earth is undisturbed in the center of the dais, where even the weeds don't tread.
The atmospheric anomaly had begun about 3:00 a.m. The meteorologists were baffled. Oahu went to sleep to a cloudless sky and awoke to an island lashed with vicious storms and eerie green lightning striking the ocean near five of the most popular beaches. Emergency warnings had gone out, warning of flood risk and high winds, and most everyone was snugly tucked away inside.
Of the people who didn't heed the warnings, one was a lovely brunette woman in a white strappy nightgown which was now thoroughly sodden and muddy. Her hands and arms are covered in mud up to the elbows, and she pauses her frantic digging to stare up at the ominous sky.
Amid the wind and rain, a dark clad figure walks. The coat he wears is light, given the air is likely not too cold. But it protects most of him from soaking for the moment. A new hat pulled down low to guard his eyes, if not the rest of his face. He walks straight towards the ruins, head tilted forward, everything about his movements purposeful. As he draws closer, Kirk lifts his head slightly, sighting the lone figure ahead. HIs brow furrows.
Why is James out here in this weather? Well, who knows, really? After the night before, it probably wasn't advisable for him to be out anywhere. But for whatever reason, he finds himself at this ruin, dashing water from his eyes as he looks around, though for what is anybody's guess.
What he finds may not be what even he was expecting, though. His eyes fall on the woman in the nightgown, and he squints through the rain...before his eyes widen. "Ma'am!" he calls, and he starts quickly toward the woman. "Lydia!" He waves a hand as he moves toward her, "Are you all right?"
Keha charges up the hill like a woman chased by a bear. Her bright turquoise running shoes are caked with mud that squelches and tries to suction her to the ground, but the petite woman in the brown and blonde messy bun won't be held down for anything. "This way, we can get a better view from up here!" she calls behind her, adjusting her long-sleeved white pullover that is damn near as long as her red shorts beneath it. "This is crazy...do you know how much rain Oahu is supposed to get in October? Two inches! TWO. And it almost all falls at night. This is weather pattern is unprecedented! Get up here before you miss it, you guys!" She stops and squints into the rain. "There's some chick out here..." she calls back to her companions.
Mila was moving along, not far behind Keha, but she had her hand locked with Volya's and seemed to be grinning about something, so maybe she was just taking a little time. Or maybe she wasn't quite in such a rush today. Maybe. "We're coming, kamehameha! Don't get your okole stretched out for it!" Mila snickered and looked over at Volya, waggling her brows. "This should be cool, and we'll get a good idea where we might need to go reef cleaning tonight, depending on where the debris are sticking out there. Plus, it's a gorgeous view when it's storming, so different than usual." Dressed simply and much like one that didn't care about the fact that she was soaking wet, Mila had gone for a pair of yoga-style, knit, black shorts that were rather brief, leaving her muscular, darkly tanned legs bare down to her slippahs, which were also black, and made their trademark 'flap' sound as she walked. For a top, the barely chested Hawaiian had just gone for a dark blue tank top that was soaked completely through, just like the mass of her brown and blonde hair that hung in wet strands down her back freely.
Volya stretched her hands to the sky as the rain fell as she performed her slow and swaying dance as she sang, "i'm over it... You see i'm falling in the vast abyss..." The woman was dressed in a patchwork gypsy skirt of bright pattern she could find, and a pink spaghetti strap tank top. She paused to reach between her legs to grab the back hemp of her skirt and pull it up to latch it between her teeth, exposing her bare legs and red cowgirl boots. She continued humming the song with a mouthful of material as she continued up the mountain in a rotating bow-legged stride. Vee had obviously given up on the twins' mad sprint up the hill. The humming stopped long enough to yell some gapped syllables in response to Mila.
The unrelenting rain threatens to turn the hilltop into a ski slope as soil turns to mud and pathways become slip n' slides. The woman in white, who James called Lydia, turns sharply at the sound of her name, and begins waving her arms frantically. "Get away! Everyone get back! They've completed the ritual. I never thought it would...I didn't think it was possible. I don't know what's coming, but it's coming through here...I can't..." The brunette drops to her knees and begins frantically clawing at the dirt inside the ruins again. "I can't find the door. But this has to be the place...I think it's the right place...I don't know what I'm doing anymore." She claps her dirty hands to her face and sobs.
Kirk takes notice of the others headed in the same direction. He wasn't the only one thinking to get a better look at things. He slows as he nears the ruins and the girl. That one of the people here knows her. He closes his eyes a moment, then they snap open, widened. He moves closer to this Lydia. "Who did it? What did they do?" There is a sense of urgency in his voice. A concern that slips past his normally cool demeanor. "There is a great deal of wild magic in the air. Too much. Please explain. Quickly."
James does not listen. He just continues until he gets to where she is, and when he does, he squats down, close but not attempting to touch her. "Lydia, stop," he says, his voice a little louder than usual because of the rain, but it doesn't sound angry. Urgent as well, maybe. "Please listen. You can't deal with this alone, okay? I know you're scared, but I can help you. Let me help you. Please." He looks up as Kirk comes closer, too, but just briefly, before he turns back to the woman.
Keha jogs closer to see Kirk and James comforting Lydia. "Are you okay, wahine? This is a hell of a storm to be wandering around in your nighty." She squints at the surrounds and ponders the woman in white's final words before her meltdown. "I don't know if it's where you're supposed to be, but this is Pu'u o Mahuka Heiau - a temple, for you haole. It's the only luakini temple on the island." She waves her twin and Volya over. "Hey, there's somebody who needs help over here!"
Mila laughed, letting go of Volya's hand so she could sort out her skirt. "Don't worry, pupule wahine, I'll get you dried off as soon as I can. And maybe I'll even figure out some other way to celebrate our anniversary, since this isn't so much fun for you." Mila winked to the blonde woman, smiling widely, before she turned her head and looked at Keha, brows raising. "Neh? I don't know what I can do to help her, but... I mean she shouldn't be digging into the temple. This isn't a place for haoles to go walking into, really." Mila eyed Lydia, then looked up at James and Kirk, nodding to the two fellows, before she looked back to the ground Lydia was attempting to dig up. "Seriously, Ku liked his bloody sacrifices here. Especially our enemies, you know? This isn't the place that someone should just try to tunnel into. It's sacred, not meant for people just to go traipsing around in."
Volya spit out the wad of material in her mouth, allowing the soaked dress to fall back towards her ankles. "Oh goody, I love to hear there's wild magic afoot, because that sounds like a thing... Not bad, not good, just a thing." A giggle slipped out of her as she grinned at Mila, "Plants don't generally have a fear of rain... Lightning maybe, but not rain." She blinked as she listened to Mila, "Uhhh... So not one of those Chieftain birthing places with the bamboo knives? I think one of those places would be neat."
Lydia looks up with bewildered eyes as suddenly she's surrounded by other people crazy enough to be out in this storm. She looks to Kirk and shakes her head vigorously, soaked hair lashing across her face. "I know, I know, that's the problem...don't you see...five deaths in the water...five points of the pentacle...we're inside a giant ritual circle, and somehow this...this is the epicenter."
James' attempts to calm her only make Lydia recoil further. "Please, listen to me! There's literally nothing I can do, I know that, but they've opened...something. Listen. The bargain was for five accidents to open the well of unlimited power. I assumed they were talking about knowledge, knowledge is power, but it's...it's something else entirely."
Lydia looks over at the twins and Volya and clasps her hands together gratefully. "Yes, yes! That's it...the blood-soaked earth. This must be the place where the doorway is. Look...look what I found." She scrabbles through the mud on the dais and uncovers a round stone with five depressions in it, in the shape of a pentacle. The markings on it are decidedly not Hawaiian. "I found this. This has to be the lock. But where, or what, is the key? Whatever's going on inside, it won't stay cooped up forever. We can't let it through."
Kirk watches as James attempts to figure out what's going on from Lydia, but after a moment looks to the others. "At this concentration, it likely wouldn't matter what kind of magic it is. There's a lot of it and unless we know what it's gathered for, we can't predict what it will do. Or how to stop it from doing it." As Lydia speaks, he looks over, then steps up to eyeball the key. His mind working. "BLood sacrifice is a shortcut to gathering a lot of power at once. Dark magic. THe veil is thin here. Someone is trying to open a hole to the NeverNever. And no matter what is on the other side, the means suggest the ends are not what we want." He looks towards Lydia. "Who is doing this? Where did this come from?" He indicates the stone. "How do you know this?" He glances at James. "How do you know this woman?" He has so many questions.
James grimaces, but he doesn't try that avenue again. Instead, he looks down at the thing that she's uncovered on the ground, squinting as he peers down at the words written on it. "She's a family friend," he replies, but it sounds more like a throwaway line than a real response to Kirk's question. He's obviously distracted by whatever is on it. "'Abandon hope all ye who enter here,'" he intones, before he looks up and among those who have gathered. "The gates of Dis, in Hell. This portal needs not to open." He looks back to Lydia then, and there's still urgency there, but also a sadness. "I think the key may be you."
Keha blinks several times between Lydia, Kirk, and James as the three speak. "Well, hell on earth sounds like it would suck," she declares. She looks to Volya and Mila. "And Ku isn't going to be happy some old school renaissance devils are screwing up his sacred place. None of us want to have to try and appease Ku, because I'd take a wild guess at how we'd have to go about it..." she starts walking along the edge of the ruins, muttering to herself. "Something out of place, out of place...hey, I found a...Rolex encased in glass? That's weird as shit. Maybe it goes with the weird as shit key thing?" She heads over and drops the glass orb into one of the depressions in the keystone. The ground shudders and there's a wailing on the breeze.
Mila frowned slightly, looking at Lydia, not seeming to be too overly impressed that this happened to be 'zee place', really. "So, you actually want to get in here, and stop something? Some sort of evil, ritual summoning thing of pure badness, yeah brah?" She peered around at the ground then, searching for something that might fit into the 'lock' to be used as a key. When she found a glass ball that contained a set of earbuds, she laughed without much in the way of mirth. "So, these dudes are totally desecrating our sacred temple with their modern, haole, bullshit." She set the orb into one of the places on the 'lock' to see if it sank in like Keha's glass ball did.
Volya stared into a blank space, turning over one hand, "If there's a key..." She turned her other palm up, "Then there has to be a lock." Blinking, she gave a rapid shake of her head, her hands dropping to her sides, "As senior nymph present, I find that opening locks is a surefire way for someone to get fucked, so many I'll..." She gestured towards the clouds, rain and lightning with a wide sweep of her hand, "Try something that runs counter to the angry sky which, as I understand it, is basically all the trees' fault." She grimaced as she looks around from Kirk to James to Lydia, "That sounds depressing, so I'm going to hula in a circle around everyone. Please don't mind me." And Vee did exactly that, and started to hula around the group, gyrating her hips as she danced, her arms moving in waves, pausing to bow and wave to the four cardinal directions.
Haleakala dropped Haleaspects.
Lydia scrambles back from the keystone as Keha and Mila's orbs sink in, causing the ground to shudder. "Yes! These are the keys, they're..." She chokes. "Oh God. They're from the men...the men who died. That's my brother's watch..." A tear trickles down her face, disappearing among the lashing rain. "I don't know who they are, they're...powerful. They know magic. They don't come out in person. But - " She trails off and looks at James, her head bowing. "Do you think that's the bargain those three...things...want me to fulfill?" She follows after the twins, searching for another orb that might be a key. "Anything you can do to appease the god here, please...it can't hurt," she tells Volya.
Pausing her frantic search, Lydia stops to catch her breath. "I don't know how much time we have to stop this portal from opening. But I know it's not open yet. If we can just get down there, and get to it...I don't know what comes next. But I have to try. I can't ask any of you to take this risk with me. But I have to get in there, where ever 'there' is."
Kirk frowns at James. "Now is not the time for secrets if the information could help keep this door closed. There must be a reason if you think this woman may be the key. And if she is, she needs to not be here. Assuming proximity is needed for this thing to work." But Lydia takes it upon herself to clear things up. He eyes her for a few moments, considering what she has to say carefully. Seriously. FInally he heaves a sigh and glances around, his eyes narrowed slightly. He catches sight of one, jogging over to snap it up. And as he's turning, he catches a glint. Moving over to find another. He returns with two glass orbs, one containing a bluetooth earpiece. The other a man's ring finger.
He pauses at the lock and says to no one in particular, "I hate dark magic." Eyeing the finger in the glass before he crouches down to slip both into a spot. They both crack, just like the other two, Kirk rising up to take a step or few back.
That's about the size of it," James says when Mila sums it up like that, and he nods once at Lydia's question, too. "Probably," he says. "But that doesn't mean it has to come to pass." It's worth a try to say it, even if it didn't work the first time. He glances up at Kirk then, and adds, "Don't we all." Then, he starts to look around. He spies something, picking up an orb that seems to contain...well, a piece of someone's scalp. So that's fun. He grimaces, but puts it down into the last depression, stepping back once he does and glancing at Volya with an appraising look, as though he's filing something away for later. But he does nod, before looking back at the pentagram seal.
When the final orb is placed into the pentacle, the entire keystone rotates inwards and spirals into inky blackness, like a manhole cover. The heady scent of blood and earth billows up from the hot entryway, spitting plumes of sulfur and sea spray in equal measure.
Keha stares at the hole in the earth and grimaces at the scents coming out of it. "Going in there is the only way to stop something horrible from coming out, right? This isn't just like, a "nice to have," this is a "oh akua everything we love is destroyed if we don't go down the fetid hole?" She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Whatever, this is going to be fascinating. Last one in's a rotten egg!" Keha climbs into the hole, that ironically enough smells like rotten eggs, and vanishes into the blackness, her voice quickly trailing into echo.
Mila cocked her head to the side and watched her twin sister go down into the dark spiral into nasty smelling blackness. "Hey, baby?" She glanced over at Volya and gave her a rakish grin. "I just found a new winner for that whole nastiest gaping hole I've ever smelled thing we talked about." Mila snickered then started down the spiral, more watchful than her sister. "Stick to the sides, or you're gonna fall into the water! There are platforms along the side. And if any of you guys can't see in the dark, might want to work on that!" Mila called this so it echoed up the stairwell, herself not even bothering to light a match, as she just walked into the darkness with a comfort that came from being able to see in it just fine.
Vee finished up her hula, sniffing the air for a moment. Blinking, she stepped closer, and shook her head. "It's really not th--" Her expression turned to something more horrified as her eyes water, "There was the whiff of sulfur that I could have done without..." Coughing at the smell, she guarded her nose with the crook of her elbow, "This is exactly how I imagined my anniversary going... Stupid doors that are unlocked, then lock themselves right after, I swear..." The half-nymph proceded down the spiral staircase carefully as not to slip.
Torches flare to life at the bottom of the hole, which opens into a massive chamber. The lights float on buoys that surround the oddly-irregular central platform, surrounded by water - Sea water, by the smell of it. Floating in the air near the stone platform are carved idols of fierce gods, their mouths agape and lined with razor-sharp obsidian teeth. The ceiling, if it is one, is an eerily accurate representation of the night sky, complete with twinkling Polaris to mark north. Small wooden rafts bob in the water, waiting to carry passengers to the central platform.
"Most likely," Kirk answers Keha. "Just think, whatever this is like, only everywhere. That's usually how this sort of thing works." He takes a few breaths of the clean air before moving closer. His nose wrinkling in distaste before he follows the others down. His mind working even as the practice of walking down a regular set of stairs is done without a great deal of focus on his part. Just a bit of care and a slow step. WOrking over what he's heard, what he recalls that might connect to this kind of magic. Focusing mentally. It's hard, the smell distracts him. The sense of unease, the stakes. But the focus does help calm him, just a bit, as he descends with the rest into this new place. Taking a slow look around as he arrives.
James brings up the rear, making a face as he starts down the stairs, too, careful to stay where Mila has told them to stay. He looks around, taking in the sights, such as they are, before he turns to look at the platform with the floating idols. Then he turns to survey the little rafts. "Anyone on the rowing team in school?" he remarks, hesitating for a moment as though a little reluctant to step onto them quite yet.
Keha was not as careful as her twin in her descent, so she ends up tumbling head first into brackish water. Sputtering, she treads water. "Is everybody okay?" she calls up, "Mind that last step, it's a doozy..." The petite yogi swims across the "ocean" and drags herself up onto the stone platform. "Hey...it's Oahu. I'm standing on Oahu." She stamps her foot a couple of times on the solid ground. "But there's these weird little rivulets in it..." She squats down to examine the surface of the platform.
Mila seemed to be peering at the little things, the idols. Cocking her head to the side, she chewed on her lower lip for a second, and nodded her head. "I've been on a dragonboat team for years, but if you want, I can just throw you like a lawndart?" Mila glanced behind her at James and gave him a grin that was only half teasing, have something else entirely, especially made odd with that weird reflectiveness in her eyes. "Come on, pupule wahine, we need to get to the center, pretty sure I know what we need to do. Keha, don't trip on that island place, neh? We need to do a little sacrificing." Mila stepped down into one of the wooden boats and waited for Volya to get in with her, and whomever else was riding along. "Just.. don't touch ANYTHING for a second."
Volya made her way down the stairs, still holding the crook of her elbow against her nose. She glanced about the area with her watery eyes. "So don't touch anything... That sounds completely reasonable had we not come down here in the first place." Her chest shook with a cough, and she carefully climbed into the boat with Mila.
Eventually, Lydia follows the rest down into the hole, and the keystone slams shut behind her. She lets out a little squeak of alarm, but gathers what she can of her composure soon enough. She joins the others on the platform, waiting to cross over the water on the little raft. The chamber shudders and jolts, the ocean water stirred up into a frenzy of waves. Garish, unnatural light begins to peek through seams that appear in the night sky, as the chamber warps and bends. The seams in the sky are stretching ominously, and another world starts peeking in from above, thrusting itself in and destabilizing the foundations.
Kirk considers the room, the idols, the boats and then listens to Mila. He seems amenable to listening to her understanding of local lore, nodding his head once as he steps into the boat. Though he pauses once he's settled himself securely. "Sacrificing? I will assist as I can, but I will not participate in dark magic. Which, almost invariably, blood magic is." By his tone, he takes this quite seriously. Though he does seem ready to listen to her plan. Then the shaking comes and he squares his posture instinctively, managing to give himself a stable base to keep in place. "Damn.." His head turns towards the others.
"You might have to," James replies as he returns Mila's smile, and he makes to step onto one of the rafts. He moves very gingerly, with none of his usual assurance. It turns out that this reluctance was not without foundation -- or maybe if he'd been less wary, he would have kept his footing better. Whatever the case, the shaking causes him to stumble, and he gets knocked right off the raft into the water with a yelp. He bobs up once, moving his arms quite ineffectively as he cries, "Help!" and manages to suck in a breath or two. He's not panicking -- barely. But it is apparent that he cannot swim.
"Shit!" is Dr. 'Aukai's professional opinion on the sudden shifting of the earth, and Keha grounds her stance to catch her balance. But not everyone was so lucky, and as James topples into the water, Keha dives in after him, catching the man under the arms and hauling him to the surface, and the side of the raft. "You know they don't mean swim /suit/ literally, right? I think swim suits stop at two-piece, you didn't need to go three piece," she laughs, giving him a firm arm for support.
Mila let out a surprised sound as the raft under her feet pitched to the side and sent her sprawling forward. Lifting her head, she checked to see that she still had the oar, and still had passengers. "Shit, ke kaikuahine nui, get him to the island, yeah? Or hey man, just hold on to the side." Mila shook her head and started rowing the raft, moving it with powerful presses of her arms, like she was in heavy competition. And maybe she was, with the waves. She kept moving them forward until everyone still in the raft could climb up onto the central platform while she held tightly to the edge, essentially mooring the thing with herself.
Volya took her dive into the water due to tectonic instabilities. When she surfaced, she looked less than pleased. "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY I'M DOWN HERE!" The woman growled as her words devolved to Russian muttering that was likely a slew of curse words. Swimming back to the platform, she kick and groaned as she dragged herself back onto the ground.
Lydia stumbled in the raft, and looked thoroughly pleased to be standing on the solid central platform. "This place...it's not a real place, look at it. It's like a tent in a windstorm. We can't stay here long, where we are isn't supposed to be here." She scowls down at the map of Oahu beneath her feet, with its elevated central hills, carved into a shallow basin at the top, and the little rivulets leading down from it. "What do these channels go to? What are these little symbols at the end of each trough?"
Kirk carefully moves onto stable land once the boat is in place, breathing out a low sigh as he does so. He turns when Lydia questions the markings, the man scanning them with a furrowed brow. "I'm still studying local occult knowledge, but.." He points at one, then another, then a third spot. "These all look like landmarks. I've seen them on a map in roughly those positions." He frowns. "It feels like there should be some significance, but I can't quite.." Which frustrates him.
James manages to keep his head well enough not to make Keha's job harder, so that's nice. He grabs onto the raft, holding on for dear life, not bothering to haul himself up onto it since Mila is already booking it toward the Oahu platform. "I'll keep that in mind," he remarks a little dryly -- the only dry thing about him now, courtesy of the dunking. "Thank you," he says a little more seriously, grabbing onto the platform and hauling himself up onto it quickly.
Keha hauls herself up to dry land after James is safely back on his feet, and offers him a grin. "Don't mention it. This place has bad manners, it's how you know we're not in Oahu anymore." She leans in to peek at the odd raised section of the platform. "How in the hell does this thing work?" She starts to prod at something, but remembers her sister's admonition and stops herself. "It looks like the thing you race matchbox cars on. Except, you know, creepy. And a map."
Mila hefted herself up onto the 'land' that had been set up in the middle and took a second to orient herself. "Ok, the rivults lead to the different temples for our four primary gods, neh? That one right there? It says 'As Above, so Below' on the line there." Mila points to the one that corresponds to the Ku temple, like where they'd just come down from outside. "That's for Ku. The thing in the center needs to be directed there, so that blood can flow down to the Ku temple. After I give a little blood to the hungry bastard." Mila looked up at the idols, and walked over to the one that was of Ku. Shaking her hands out, she lifted her left (non primary!) hand, and slid it into his mouth. "You better not take a finger or I'm gonna tell my kupunawahine on you, and you're gonna find spines in your bed." She looked at the idol, then back at the little map, to see if it had to be done manually, or if it would turn on its own when she gave the blood to the mouth of the idol, with all those sharp, evil teeth waiting to bite her.
The mouth of Ku closes around Mila's wrist, sharks of obsidian biting into her flesh and taking a measure of blood. After about half a minute, the idol releases Mila, and its maw widens to offer out a bowl full of fresh, warm blood for the offering.
Volya sat on the island at the bottom of the stairs, and thumbed up them. "Alright, I'm going to..." Vee shrugged, and just sat there to pull off one boot then the other to pour the water out of them.
Lydia crosses to Mila with a rueful smile. "I'm so sorry. I would have gladly given him my blood. I'm sorry you had to..." It doesn't get any less awkward as she keeps talking. So Lydia takes the bowl from Ku's tongue and empties it into the trough at the top of the platform. As Mila's blood flows down from the hilltops of Central Oahu down the channel to the tiny landmark of Pu'u o Mahuka, the seams in the sky rip apart and a jagged edge of some non-euclidian environment slashes its way into the chamber. However, the tiny effigy of the temple makes a resounding click, and the map itself parts into a small set of stairs that descend into a cave. The heat coming off of the opening is astounding, and where this chamber had occasional plumes of sulfur, the brimstome seemed to emanate and intensify from the cave entrance, with no respite.
A pleasant woman's voice rings through the cave entrance. "Lydia, darling. We've been waiting for you. It's time to fulfill your bargain."
Kirk looks over as Mila starts to speak, moving closer to observe. The light comes on as she clarifies those points. Nodding as he follows along. Though as she goes to put her arm into the shark statue's mouth, his lips tighten slightly. He steps forward when it bites, but as the woman doesn't panic, he doesn't do anything. Watching carefully as blood is taken, then dispensed with, seemingly, minimal fuss.
When the ceiling goes wonky, Kirk has a moment of vertigo looking up into it. But he squares himself and forces past that sensation. A moment later he murmurs, "DownBelow." He's read of this. Never thought he'd see it. His attention snaps to Lydia. "You've been making deals with demons?" Again, this does not seem good by his tone. Even if he doesn't exactly raise his voice very high. "What did you promise them?"
This time, James is ready for the strangeness of the place, and he keeps his footing as the ceiling -- or whatever it is -- shifts. The woman's voice puts his back up, though, and he tenses, looking toward the stairs that open up. "We aren't quite there," he says in response to Kirk, "but close enough. They'll be stronger here than on the surface, and they were strong enough up there." His hands clench and unclench at his sides, "When I met them before there were three of them. If anyone has anything holy on them, that would be helpful." He looks toward Lydia then, only briefly, and his voice lowers, though not enough so that she can't hear him. "They won't get what they want," he says steadily. "You can still come back from this. I know you didn't know what it would mean."
Keha grits her teeth, her knuckles turning white as they clench into fists. "So you brought us down here, THROUGH Ku's sacred ground, because you made a deal and now you can't welch on it? Are you kidding me, bitch?" She turns to Lydia and looks like she's about to take a swing. "What happens if we just give them what they want? I mean, it's her fault after all. Maybe they keep everything down here if we ask nicely."
Mila pulled her hand back from the mouth filled with jagged teeth of obsidian, holding it closely to her and wincing at the pain of the lacerations as she attempted to apply enough pressure to staunch the bloodflow. "Don't kill her, if her death is what they need, we could finish this for them. Find out what she promised, make her tell us, before we go in there. And I guess, from there, is there any way to stop this shit without all of us just possibly dying in the devil's asshole down those stairs?" Mila nodded to the darkened and rather fragrant passageway of stairs.
Pulling her boot back on, Volya hopped into the awaiting raft as she grabbed the oar to start paddling across the water to the island of sharp objects and opening mapways to place sultry. The woman burst into song, "Love, exciting and new... Come aboard, we're expecting youuuuu... Love... Lifes sweetest reward... Let it flow, it floats back to you... LOVE BOAT!" The woman continued paddling happily until the raft smacked the island and Vee poured herself onto shore.
The inside of the cave stretching and warping, the shoddy seams between this demesne and the next keeping the walls, floors and ceilings in constant flux. Blazing stars begin to fall from the sky-ceiling and jagged matter from another place entirely begins piercing the floor like angry stalagmites. The ocean begins draining away as the foundation ruptures and everything in it, from the stone pedestal to the idols, begin falling away into a chaotic cataclysm of crashing earths colliding.
The only solid ground that remains seems to be the cave. Lydia, reeling from a nasty stalagmite blow that rips open the flesh of her thigh, darts for the entrance. "Listen, this should be the end of it. I don't expect any of you to risk your lives any more than you already have. I can open a Way out of here, but I can only do it once. Take it, please. I'll do what I can alone."
Inside the cave, even the brimstone infused walls are warping and buckling under the pressure of being knitted together with another. Two pleasant blonde women with empty smiles in professional suits stand smiling on either side of a stone altar, one of whom has a rather elaborate dagger in her hand. A third stands inside a circle painted of a suspicious reddish-brown substance, surrounded by candles and five heads relieved of their bodies. "Welcome! We're so thrilled you're here to witness the most exciting merger since the First Day," pipes up one of the blondes, her voice uncannily like the phone operator as it echoes through the corridor. "The doorway is almost open, if you'd like to take a seat and watch. It should be quite spectacular."
Haleakala dropped Lydia.
Kirk tenses as the place starts to fall to pieces, hopping back as a hunk of stone falls, a hand lifted as the stone shatters against what remains of the surface, guarding his face from any shards. "This place is unraveling, we need to leave." He looks towards Lydia as she offers a way out, then glances at the two blondes in cave, his eyes narrowing. "We're all leaving." He looks back to her. "I don't know what you're into exactly, but no one deserves to be left behind in this place."
James shakes his head, barely managing to dodge one of the falling shards of rock, before giving one last glance to the three women who'e appeared. He nods to what Kirk says. "He's right," he says. "You're not staying here. You won't be able to stop them by yourself, and whatever you've promised them, it will be worse for everyone if they get it." And he follows after her then, to help if necessary, or just get out if not.
Keha groans and grinds her teeth. "Wahine," she hisses at Lydia, "we are having words when we're done with this. But let's end it first." She cracks her knuckles and heads into the cavern with the blondes, hollering, "Okay, show's over, bitches!"
Mila sighed and watched Keha walking, ready for a rumble. "Pupule wahine, if you want to come, I'd love to have you. Either way, nau ko'u aloha no kau a kau." She looked over at Volya and grinned, giving her a wink before she checked her hand to make sure it had stopped bleeding. "If anyone's got a bible on them, or holy water, or is wearing one of those Christian bauble cross things? Now's the time." And then Mila carried on, moving after her sister.
Vee came hopping down the stairs, sidestepping a particularly large rock that wanted to attack the step she was on. Vee blinked as she heard Mila, "That is, like, the sweetest thing ever." She was quickly overtaken with a goofy smile before she noticed Keha walking into battle, "Wait, what?" She blinked again, her gaze falling onto the blondes in their business suit. "Hey..." Volya leveled her index finger at the two women, "Did you two get a face lift, because I'll tell you right now, that someone that looks a lot like you owes The Powers That Be, big time! That's right! Buffy/Angel reference! Someone is going to cough it up, because there is no way on this and any other plane of existence that I'm explaining to management!"
One of the blondes looks at Volya curiously, then at her twin. "Don't let them interrupt her." And she opens her big, gaping maw, and launches a stream of noxious gas at another familiar face: James.
It's rare for Kirk to act on instinct. But something he was considering before clicks in his mind and, given the danger of the moment, he acts on it instantly. The hatted man suddenly darting forward. Which seems to just catch the blocking tackles between him and Mandi. Candi's attempt to get in his way is just dodged, a lean to the side brushing him past the two. But his target isn't her, it's the circle she's in, which he sweeps his foot through firmly. And will continue to smudge and scrape at, keeping an eye on the dangerous blondes as he does so.
Haleakala dropped Mandi.
Haleakala dropped Candi.
Haleakala dropped Brandi.
James manages to dodge the horrible breath blown at him by one of the sisters, but he's focused on Mandi, too. He takes a moment to assess as Kirk runs forward to break the circle, and as soon as that circle is smudged beyond recognition, his hands come up and he shouts, "Ex Parte!" As soon as he does, a ray of light bursts from them, traveling straight toward her. It pierces her as though she's made of butter, and leaves behind just a hint of the sharp smell of ozone as it does.
Keha doesn't seem to feel the need to stand on ceremony. She lunges for the casting demoness as Kirk takes down her circle and James blasts her halfway to kingdom come, the little yogi's skin suddenly a pincushion of nasty spines. "You need to learn some respect for the sacred!" She shrieks like a harpy, grabbing Mandi around the middle and digging those spines in as deeply as she can before pushing the blonde away.
Mila's never really one to avoid dogpiling on someone. Clearly, everyone including the magic users in the room was going after the one woman that seemed to be within the magic circle. And that makes total sense, to someone that seems to love listening to the stories far more than she could ever love listening to the science of anything. After Mandi was zotted, then punctured by her own twin, Mila ran forward, and made good use of her short stature by leaping onto Mandi, and tackling her with her knee directly into the woman's throat. The satisfying CRUNCH sound that was made as vertebrae ground against each other and shattered under the pressure of a crushed wind pipe had Mila grinning down at the magic user, watching her eyes fade. "Not on our island, bitch. You want hell here? You talk to the right God, and so far, you've fucking FAILED, Haole." She stared at the woman til she was sure she was dead, then bounced twice on her knee for good measure, with the bones making audible grinding sounds and Mandi's head flopping at a very unnatural angle as she did so. "Not bad, Denzel. And you either, prickly pear." Mial grinned over at Keha as she stood up away from the dead Mandi.
Candi continues lunging after Kirk as he blows past her, and she stretches out razor-sharp claws to slash at him before he can do more harm to the circle. As he nimbly evades her, she howls in savage frustration.
Volya grimaced as she didn't get an answer about the face lift situation. Taking a deep breath, individual sparks rode down filaments of her hair, searing them with pink and purple. A warm wind spun around her, "Someone is so getting laid tonight." Kissing the palm of her hand, she blew across it as a flaming butterfly sprouted and fluttered away towards Candi as she attacked Kirk. In the way of butterflies, they weren't the straighten path and Candi turned right into it as the butterfly landed, searing into Candi's flesh. "I'm still waiting for my answer here."
As the circle is broken and the casting demoness broken by an onslaught of force even the denizen of Hell likely hadn't seen before, the portal she was creating shatters to pieces and the spell implodes with a brutally sudden impact. The room shudders, and threatens collapse, but the two remaining blonde demons seem to prefer revenge to escape. Lydia, on the other hand, has already opened the path to a stable, well-established way. "Come on! Over here! The other two don't matter, we've disrupted the summoning! Let's leave them to rot!"
Even as she's speaking, a man's voice fills the chamber, "We will make good on our bargain, Lydia. See you soon."
Kirk doesn't have to be asked twice to get out of here. Barely avoiding getting a chunk pulled out of him, he turns and races back the way he came, aiming for the developing portal. He just got this coat, after all. No sense getting it torn up.
Mila's words make James look over that way, and his eyebrows raise, before he lets out a little incredulous laugh. "I'll take it," he says after a second, before he turns back to the two. Lydia may say that there's no need to deal with the others...but he can't resist adding a Parthian shot. He throws a hand out as he starts to follow Lydia and Kirk, and as he does, the rocks under Candi's feet shift and quickly pull to razor-sharp points, skewering her feet and legs.
Keha is all fired up, but no reason to pass up a perfectly good doorway when it leads out of hell. She barrels for the Way, sucker punching Brandi in the back of the head as she goes. "Your manners aren't any better, bitch!"
Mila growled under her breath slightly as both James and Volya took after the Candi version of the Bobsey Twins. She glanced at the exit that Lydia had made, and while rushing toward it, reached out an arm. Her skin grew bumpy and motled to white and orange, looking like coral, and as long, vicious looking spikes grew from her now hardened flesh, starting at virulent red and fading up to the most ebony of black, her arm made contact around the neck of Candi. Driving forward like she was the freight train in this equation, Mila drove Candi into the wall and then jerked her arm to the side, slashing at the woman's neck with not only her spikes, and her entire weight behind it, but also grinding through the flesh with her roughened skin. By the time Mila made it to the pathway out, following behind others, Candi's head rolled forward and bounced off of Mila's ass as it fell to the floor, separate from Candi's body. Mila looked behind her to make sure that Volya was coming along.
Volya frowned as she still didn't get an answer and well, Candi was no longer with us. "Let's try again, shall we?" Bringing both her hands to her mouth, Vee made an audible kissing sound as she kissed. But this time when she blew across them, it was like a bubble storm floating from them. Except it wasn't harshless bubbles, but a flight of dozens upon dozens of flaming butterflies that fluttered and danced through the air towards Brandi. And they clouded on her, each burning butterfly shapes into her skin. Vee tilted her head, "Still waiting for an answer..."
Brandi screams in anger and pain as flaming butterflies blaze through her body construct. "We don't choose the meat suits, mortal." Lydia patiently waits with the Way open. Once everyone is through, Lydia closes up the Way behind her, and steps out onto the warm, damp sands of Waimea Bay. The sky is sunny as the clouds drift apart on a gentle breeze, and the excess water from the unseasonable weather runs off into the sea. "It's over," Lydia sighs, her voice heavy with exhaustion. As she sinks to the ground to rest, a Way opens up behind her, and she's ripped away by unseen hands. As the opening closes, a man's voice can be heard, "We always make good on our debts."
Rick looks away from the ocean when he hears someone speaking in a voice he recognizes, and it doesn't take him too long to see Felix. "Hey, brah," he says, lifting a hand to wave at the younger man. "Been good. Can't complain. How 'bout you?" He stops then, just in time to see and hear Mila, and his gaze is drawn in that direction then. "What up, girl," he says with a grin. "Went out in the morning. Real nice today." His eyes move past her to Keha, who gets another wave. "Earlier," he calls. "Guess I should've brought the board right now too, though."
The tide is high and rising.
Mila laughed and moved over to the nearly identical version of herself, then promptly swooped the other woman up into a carried position. "Don't worry none, pupule kaikaina, I'll make sure your flow's all good when we go out later and do the whole goodnight moon thing. Yeah?" She used one of Keha's legs, and foot of course, to wave to the gentlemen they were speaking to. "Always bring the board if you're coming to our backyard, Rick. You never know when this thing will scream at you and you have to go beat at her for a while. Or let her beat at you." Mila winked to Rick, then looked down at her sister, waggling her brows. "Do you feel centered yet?" Yeah, she couldn't even help herself and started laughing, before she waved Keha's leg at Felix as well.
Felix looked around to the surfers out on the ocean, spotting Mila as she came up on shore. He offered a broad wave. "Aloha! That was pretty awesome." Grinning, he looked to Keha as she came in and nodded. "I was thinking about it yeah. Aloha. Felix." Smiling at Rick, he shrugged. "Pretty well myself. Actually I was gonna ask if you had a minute but..." He looked up to the weather. "Man... maybe not?" He chuckled. "Also lack of board yeah." He looked to Mila. "Shaved ice for nirvana's s'not a bad deal." He waved back to Keha's leg. "Are you guys still going to surf? I don't mind a little rain in the water. Not like I'm alread not wet." He did slip off his head phones and reach into a pocket to shut off whatever he was listening to.
Keha was nodding at Rick like a rational human being, until some crazy woman hauls her off her board and uses her limbs like a fan in church, waving her leg and foot around. "AIIIEEEEE! Put me down, Tita lolo!" She puts a threatening finger in Mila's face and if her waving toes could, they would be giving the middle finger...toe. "I'm feeling like my foot is about to be center so far up your okole I can help you floss!" She points her index and middle fingers at her own eyes, then points them at Mila's, ensuring her younger sister KNOWS she is being watched. "Please don't mind the crazy wahine, Felix, she's always like this. She's like a Hawaiian Viking or Mongol or Hun. She-Hulk. I think I'm done being out on the water for now, though I really should finish my flow, I get testy if I don't get savasana." The irony of 'getting' testy is lost on her, or perhaps she dares anyone to point it out. "Sorry we missed you and your board earlier, Rick brah. You and I still have a race to settle." She's seemingly gotten rather content in her lofty perch.
As the sun sinks into the ocean, the rain starts coming down harder, and the droplets take on an eerie greenish tint in the last vestiges of sunlight. The errant droplets organize into heavy sheets of rain that seem to bring an icy chill with them from the clouds, chasing away the tropical warm winter in a matter of moments.
The last of the diehard beachgoers abandon the cause, as the last few surfers haul their boards away and one girl lets a bright turquoise hula hoop fall to the ground, abandoned not far from the two gentlemen and the twins.
"Truth," Rick replies to Mila with a little laugh, sticking a hand into one of his pockets as he shifts his weight to the opposite leg. "Next time I won't forget." He gives Keha a shaka sign at her words, too, though another laugh escapes him at her current sisterly inspired predicament. "You do owe me one," he agrees, before he turns back to Felix, his expression a little more curious. "Oh yeah?" he asks. "Sure. I got time." However, his eyes are caught by something -- perhaps that strange light. "Huh," he says, distracted, and he squints, looking around, though his eyes seem to be focusing on the drops, rather than anything else.
Mila snickered darkly and bit at Keha's finger, her teeth snapping loudly shut when they missed the digit. "Almost got you, shorty. Next time, I take the whole thing, it'll be delicious with ketchup." She waggled her eyebrows at her sister before she gave her an affectionate konk of heads, forehead to forehead, and set the other woman down into the now calf-deep water. "I wouldn't suggest this beach for anyone that's not at master's level this time of year, man." Mila said that directly to Felix. "Rick, me, we can do it. Keha I won't even let out past the reef right now, cause the girl's too busy being smart to get good at riding the waves like a pro." Said with affection, the statement didn't seem at all hurtful, just like Mila had accepted that was life, and moved on. What she didn't accept, however, was the weird shit happening around them right this minute. "Damn, we can get shaved ice, don't have to bring down the snow." Her eyes narrowed at the weird light on the water, and then Mila cocked her head to the side. "That doesn't make any sense, why would they gleam green?"
Felix laughed at the two sisters, shaking his head. He put a hand to his face and ran it down his cheek, unmindful of the wet. "Oh my god. Just... shit you two. Friggin' Mecha Shiva in front of me here and I don't have a camera." He waved a hand. "S'all good. This is Oahu. I totally buy Hawaiian Viking Mongol Hun." He waggled his eyebrows, pausing to wipe the rain off his face again. Then he stared at his hand. Gave it a good long stare. Eyes narrowing, he started looking around, eyes going this way and that. His head tilted slightly, brow furrowing. He looked back down at the water in his hands and squinted. "Uh... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick. I think there's glowing LSD in the rain again..." He looked to the ladder of twin, letting out a huge sigh at Mila's words. "OH THANK GOD! Seriously, I thought there was hallucinagenic boogers in the rain again. Phew." He eyes the water droplets. "Right. Green and whispering." He paused. "You guys DO hear that right?"
Keha reclaims her board once she's set on her feet again, slipping her hand through the loop to make sure her board doesn't make a break for it and then hauling it to shore. "You're on, Rick, you like to run in the rain? Amps up the difficulty and makes it more fun," Keha challenges, though she gets distracted looking at the rain much like the others. She's still squinting up at the sky as she nudges an elbow into her sister's ribs. "I'm just busy saving the world, Kaikaina, you don't *let* me do anything. Pfft. Yeah, this weather makes me want a lime-coconut shave ice, this weather is trying to hard." She nods aside to Felix. "Yeah, I hear...something. Not sure what, but I hear it."
The sun sets in its last burst of reds and purples, and the behind the clouds, the stars come out. Further up the beach, there's a small explosion of wet sand spewing up into the air, and the sand starts displacing in long, sharp lines, across a span of beach that covers nearly 20 feet by 30 feet. More and more bursts of sand fly up as an unseen hand carves more sharp lines into the beach, and familiar shapes begin to form...YES...NO...an alphabet curving between them. A row of numbers. Beneath it all, in meter-tall letters...GOODBYE.
Rick nods absently, but alas, at this point his attention is more on what is happening than the possible race with Keha. Which is saying something, for him. "What the hell?" he murmurs as those lines begin to appear in the sand, though as they continue, his eyes widen. "Holy shit," he says with a little laugh -- unamused, but still. "Is that a Ouija board? I haven't seen one of those things in a minute." He looks around, as though for confirmation that he's not crazy. Or that he is crazy!
Mila cocked her head to the side at Felix and raised her brows "Be careful, Felix, buying what my sister is selling. She's the smaller sister, and the one less likely to bench you onto the roof." Mila winked at Felix, and despite the fact that she was quite a bit shorter, she didn't seem even slightly as though the height desparity would effect the outcome of the situation. Turning her head to look between Keha and Rick, Mila grinned. "Races are good any time, anywhere. But... In green shit falling from the sky, I might say we should go to the rec center or something. Give the kids something to watch that's less dangerous than possibly drinking anti-freeze from the sky. Or freezing their little dongles off." Mila rubbed her arms a little, moving closer to her planted surf board as if it were some source of heat. When she noticed the Ouija board, she frowned. "I don't remember wanting to contact anyone that's passed. Did someone else ask for a board delivery or something?" Giving up the slight warmth offered by the surf board (read: none), Mila finally started moving forward, looking at the sand scratchings curiously. "I mean... where's the thing? The Planchette?"
Nodding to Keha in agreement (and again, a bit of relief), Felix could only stare in confusion at the words carving themselves into the sand. He scratched at his head. "Is that a... yeah I think it is Rick. Wow, Milton Bradley's gonna be pissed and sue the whole island..." He started looking around, frowning. "Well... uh... anyone want to play? We need the planchette yeah. The wooden federation lookin' logo dealie." He eyed Keha's body board and pointed to it. "Can we use that. And to get it started we need to all be touching it." He shrugged and looked to the others. "I mean... sure most ouija boards are made by a major toy company and this one was /carved into the earth/..."
Keha hmms thoughtfully, jaw working as she thinks. "I've seen the boards, back in college, but never quite like this," she responds to Rick. The littler twin follows after Mila, squinting skeptically at the Ouija board in the sand. "I mean, I'm pretty sure these things are bullshit. It's a psychosomatic response to subconscious wish fulfillment. I mean, I would assume. But then, I've never seen one spontaneously appear before...maybe we should see what..."it" wants. Whatever "it" is." She looks back at her board, and narrows her eyes at Felix. "If this curses my board and fucks with my chakras you owe me a new board." And she holds out her paddleboard and steps towards the letters carved into the sand, taking the flat rear edge in both hands. "Won't...won't we fuck up the letters if we walk on it?" And she gently touches a toe to the edge of the letter Z.
As Keha rubs her toe through the sand in the letter Z, the rain fills the furrow and washes away, leaving a pristine letter Z beneath it, with no sign of damage or disturbed sand. As the roar of the rain gets louder, the sound of whispers can be heard behind it, low and steady and continuous. The sheets of rain seem to fence in the board and the beach immediately around it, but over the board itself, the rainfall abates to a gentle drizzle.
Rick reaches up to rub at his face, trying to dispel the odd water drops from it, though it doesn't do that much good. "You want to contact the dead, there's easier ways," he says with a little huff of a laugh, though again, it doesn't seem that amused. More perplexed. He glances toward Felix, and while he doesn't immediately say yes, he also doesn't say no. Instead, he watches Keha try to scuff the Z, and immediately after, watches the Z come back to existence. "Huh."
Mila sighed slightly and glanced over at Rick, smirking. "I don't doubt it. But considering that this is pretty much controlling the faucet overhead, we can at least see what the hell it wants, neh? Just no one ask for anything, cause you have no idea what you're actually asking it of. You don't want to end up in some freaky fae deal that you don't know anything about." Mila gave the warning before she went to her knees on the ground and tugged at Keha's board. "Come on, nui nui, let's see what the other side's trying to say." Then she glanced up at Felix. "Don't worry about her board, I have plenty to replace it, and can always get her a shiny new one she can break in on her morning yoga in the water routines. She'll be A OK."
Felix thought about that and nodded, taking the board and heading over with the others. "A new board I can probably manage. I'm not sure about your chakras though." He grinned at Keha. "And it totally is. But I bet this one can totally tell us who's gonna take me to the spring formal." He watched as the Z was left unharmed by messsing about. "Or the dead yeah..." He raised an eyebrow at Rick. "There are? I've never met a ghost. Or an undead." He nodded to Mila, giving her a thumbs up and holding the board out over the letters so the others could get an easy hand on it. "Alright... I am totally down. And I'll keep that in mind. What do we ask it though?" He shook his head. "This is easily in my top five damndest things...
Keha nods to Mila and Felix as they join her, and she gives Rick a lopsided grin. "I don't blame you, brah, this is weird shit. But the point of the board is waiting if you want in on this." She leaned aside until her shoulder bumps against Mila's, and she tips her sister a wink. "Let's see what this da kine weirdness is all about, before some ghost washes all our white sand into the water and fucks up our Bay." She grins at Felix and laughs, "Don't worry, my chakras are tough, I'm just giving you shit. So how do we do this? Just hang onto the board and ask a question?" She squints at the board and demands, "What do you want?"
The soft light dims at dusk.
As each hand touches the paddleboard planchette, the sound of whispering on the rain gets louder, an excited but hushed sussurus. In response to Keha's question, the paddleboard trembles and floats up into the air, two feet, three feet, before tearing off like a jet, jabbing at sandy letters and dragging the planchette holders through the sand as it spells out H...E...L...P...and the board falls back to the ground over the letter P.
Rick glances to Mila when she speaks, though it's difficult to tell what his expression is in the rain. He continues to stand off on the sidelines while the others touch the board, the reluctance obvious. However, he takes a step toward the board...just as it starts to move with the others. "Shit!" he says again, taking a step back away from it, the movement involuntary. "You guys okay?"
"Oh that's a good question Keha. Good jooooooooooooOOOOH SHIT!" As the planchette lifted off into the air, Felix clung on, his legs kicking uselessly. As soon as it took off and started dragging them around, he couldn't help but start yelling. "Woooohooo!" Of course... that merriment died down pretty damn fast as HELP was spelled out, and then they all hit the floor. He grunted in the puff of sand, coughing and waving his hand in front of his face. "Well hell... couldn't have been 'pizza party... how the hell do we do that?" He got to his feet, brushing himself off. "Everyone alright?
Mila was glad for her ultra low center of gravity at the moment, because it allowed her to skitter like a damn sand crab as the board started moving. The speed and sheer force of it almost had her flying off of the planchette-like paddle board, but her grip was true and she held on fiercely. Sure, a couple of times it looked like she might go ass over tea kettle, but she managed. When the board stopped on P for HELP, Mila took a series of quick breaths in, surprise having widened her eyes. "Ok, shit. HELP. Got it. But where are you? How can we help?" Mila called this out loudly, to the board, but enough to make sure she could be heard over the torrents of rain that fell down everywhere but over the actual Ouija area. "And I'm OK... Ke kaikuahine nui? You alright?" She looked over toward Felix and Keha to make sure everyone was in one piece after being cheese grated over the beach.
"Oh that's a good question Keha. Good jooooooooooooOOOOH SHIT!" As the planchette lifted off into the air, Felix clung on, his legs kicking uselessly. As soon as it took off and started dragging them around, he couldn't help but start yelling. "Woooohooo!" Of course... that merriment died down pretty damn fast as HELP was spelled out, and then they all hit the floor. He grunted in the puff of sand, coughing and waving his hand in front of his face. "Well hell... couldn't have been 'pizza party... how the hell do we do that?" He got to his feet, brushing himself off. "Everyone alright?" He gave a thumbs up to Rick's question, and Mila's questioning look.
The tide is high and slack.
Keha glares suspiciously at the fingers touching her paddleboard, but as she's about to draw her hand away, the planchette rises and she's tossed across the sand by her own board. "Fuuuuuuuuu- my chakraaaaaas!" she hollers in irritation, catching her feet on the ground and sprinting along the board from letter to letter, getting in at least a third as many steps as she's dragged like a wet sack. "And could you slow this shit down?" She asks of the unseen entity with an irritated scoff. "We can't help if you grind us into dust!" She looks over Mila concernedly, giving her a thorough inspection. "I'm okay, Kaikaina, are you? Did you feel it shock your hand when you touched it?" She looks aside to Felix, as well, "Did you get shocked? This is fucking weird." She raises her voice to Rick, even though he's only about 15 feet away, "Yeah...still in one piece. Starting to think this is a bad idea. But for science's sake, Rick, you should try asking a question. Let's see if it will respond to you, too, or if you have to be leashed to the Tilt-o-Whirl over here." She pauses and thinks for a minute. "We just asked it...three, no, four questions. Does it work that way?"
A featureless blanket of grey cloud covers the evening sky.
The row of numbers below the arching alphabet begins to tremble, and the number 1 crumbles and dissipates, the water in the trench washing away any sign that the numeral had ever been there. And then...the planchette rises again, with the same electric urgency, but with some care apparently taken to keep from ripping the board out of the hands of the "players."
One by one, the board careens to letters...N, V, R, N, V, R. The number 2 drains of water and disappears into smooth, wet sand.
F, R, E, E, M, E...the board rests once again, and the number 3 disappears.
The next levitation carries the planchette over the ???, where it hovers for an extended period, before spelling D,O,O,R. The number 4 is washed away.
Finally, the planchette zips to YES, and then, Y,R,W,L,C,M,E.
And the number 5 vanishes. Only 6 through 9 remain.
Rick doesn't try to go further forward, since he apparently doesn't feel like playing Crack the Whip with a giant Ouija board thing that may or may not be being controlled by a ghost. "All right," he says, before he looks toward the board again as it starts to move. His eyes are wide as he follows along, his lips moving silently as the planchette spells out the answers. "Ehnver," he murmurs. Okay, so not totally silently. "Ehnver...never? Nevernever?" They continue to dart from side to side as the thing moves, "Freemeh...oh, no." He shakes his head, making a face, before adding, "Door. A door?" He hesitates, before he asks, "Where's the door?"
Mila rolled her shoulders and grunted darkly. "Board's not gonna get me under the sand, but damn if it's not like riding Vee on an acid trip." Mila rocked her head first to one side, then the other, cracking her neck soundly. As the thing started to move again, only this time a little less rough with them, she moved quickly as she could and followed it. "Ok so, it's something in the NeverNever that wants to be freed. There's a door." She waited, since Rick had already asked the next question. Her eyes took in the fact that only 6-9 was available. "Don't ask any more questions, guys, not til we hear this answer. I'm curious if one of the other numbers left over will disappear once the answer's given."
"I... guess it does." Felix nodded to Keha. "Yeah I did. Felt super weird. Not like electricity play or anything." He shrugged, reading each of the answers. As Rick puzzled that first part out, he frowned. "Uh oh... last time we went we got et, and I've been having duplo nightmares every since." He looked to the other man and shrugged. "I dunno. I think that's more your department than mine." Grinning, he nodded at Mila. "Right on. Might be able to use the rest to puzzle this out."
Keha wrinkles her nose. "So, something from the nevernever wants us to open a door for it. But it's trapped there. But maybe it's trapped there for a good reason." She snorts and nods at Mila, "yeah, we should choose our questions carefully. This is the opposite of Jeopardy. Phrase everything in the form of not a question until we're ready to ask the question." At the last few letters, Keha laughs a little bit and says, "Thank you. We appreciate it."
Rick's question causes the planchette to hover briefly, but it shivers and crashes back down to the ground like it's stalled out. The water in the number 6 shudders, but the digit stays intact.
Rick watches to see if his question is answered, but when it seems that it is not, he nods a little bit. Makes sense. He doesn't say anything more, waiting for the others who are in play -- so to speak -- to ask the questions, instead of him.
The night is moonless and starless.
Mila watched as the board didn't move. Listened to the others talking, and finally seemed to come to some sort of satisfying conclusion in her own head. Of course, that conclusion came with the fact that the board had at least tried to answer Rick, even if it couldn't. Mila chewed on her bottom lip for a moment as the board stayed still, then cocked her head to the side. "Were you trapped in the NeverNever on purpose?" Mila asked the question directly to the air in front of her, as if she'd chosen to believe the entity were simply standing there, talking to them, and she just couldn't see it. It made more sense than talking to Keha's paddle board, apparently.
The paddleboard shivers and rises, and resumes its careening course across the letters as the number 6 washes away: K,D,N,P,D
Felix frowned, watching as Rick's question wasn't answered. He shrugged. "Huh. Well at least we didn't get dinged. No worries... giant sand board thing." He looked to Keha at her comment and nodded, wincing. "Yeah that was sort of the thought on my mind. I've only been once and it was a weird place. Dunno what wants letting out." He bobbed his head at Mila's question, nodding in understanding, watching as the answer came. "Huh so... who exactly are we talking to?" He watched as the 6 faded away, looking to the 7th as he asked his own question.
The number 7 vanishes as the board drags Mila, Keha, and Felix across the sand. L...Y...D...and then the board abruptly crashes to the ground on its way to the next letter, and the whispering behind the rain is silence.
The tide is high and ebbing.
Keha had been getting used to being dragged around, so she wasn't expecting the sudden stop between letters and she stumbles and has to dig her heels in to regain her balance. "Kay Dee Ehn peedee...kuhduhenpee...kid...kidnapped. Fuuuuuuuuu - Uh...I hope we didn't break it. We aren't even out of numbers yet. Same question as Rick, then...Where is the door?"
The paddle board and ouija board are still for a long while, and from behind the soft rain, a very audible "shhhhhh" is heard before it disappears as well. Then after several minutes of stillness, "U,P,T,M,P,L..." And then everything suddenly happens all at once. A giant force sweeps across the ouija board, which hurls Rick back into the curtain of rain and flings the paddleboard and everyone connected to it onto the word GOODBYE. Then the sand churns upward like a volcano emerging from the sea and washes the letters away. The sheets of rain close in and wash away any remaining evidence, and like the rinse cycle in the car wash, as the sheet passes it leaves only gentle droplets behind it.
Rick is staring at the board as it moves, and he murmurs, "Lied...Lid?" before shaking his head and moving onto the next question's answer. "Uptemp..." He doesn't have time to try and parse that out any further before he's being flung away from the board through the rain. He hits the sand with a very dull thud, a *whoosh* of breath escaping him. "Shit!" he exclaims, not for the first time. His voice is a little breathless. "Any of you get that?"
Mila sucked in a slow breath and let it out as a growl. "Oh man... are you kidding me? This is the same shit that ruined my anniversary. UP TEMPLE. The temple." She gave a meaningful look over to Keha. Of course, that was the moment that the world decided to treat the beach like the biggest etch-a-sketch ever. Mila rolled to the side, moving to slide her arm over her sister, then ducked their heads down to avoid any damage from any direction, while holding her breath in case her face got full of sand and water. Once the wiping away of the evidence was finished, Mila lifted her head and sucked in a breath.
Felix let out a yell of surprise (and maybe a whoop of joy) as they all went suddenly swooping about at the last question. After they hit the ground and the letters all vanished away, the noises he made were temporarily reduced once again to groans and coughing. "Ow... just... ow." He sat up in the sand, making a face. "Everyone ok? I think maybe we pushed it on that one..." He shook his head, brushing wet sand out of his hair. "Up temple? Which temple?"
Keha shakes her head at Rick. "I feel like we got interrupted. It's been pretty good about making sure we could understand up until now. But the name..." she looks aside at Mila and frowns, nodding. "The temple. Lydia. She was taken from this beach, when got free of the temple up on top of the hill." She points upwards for Felix and Rick's benefit. "A woman named Lydia, some kind of witch, dragged us through Ku's temple up on those hills and straight to the gates of hell. We escaped to this beach, but she was taken from right here. That's the short version. And yeah, it was on Kaikaina's anniversary. Not the best date night."
The rain falling from the sky is as warm as the temperate breeze, and crystal clear as it splashes on the sand.
Rick rubs his face again, shaking his head. "Damn," he says, pushing himself to his feet. "So she's trapped in the Nevernever then, huh?" He looks around, as though he could see some other thing that would help them locate her, but there's nothing there, and of course, she's already given them the relevant information. "That's messed up." He shakes his head then, "Shoulda told her to try to get eaten by the sandworm." And whatever that means, he doesn't seem in the mood to explain, because he turns away, starting back the way he'd come, a little more quickly this time.
Mila sighed and stood up before rubbing her hands back through her hair to get it out of her face. "Ok, that sucks. It really does, but without more to go on, it's just poking at a haystack hoping a needle comes out and stab you in the eye. There are lots of temples. I mean, we can try old familiar or something. But not today, not in this crap, because it might get weird again. And not on some night i might be out on a damn date." Mila reached out and plucked up keha's board from the sand. "Come on ke kaikuahine nui, let's head home. I need to stop and grab my board. And I guess we need to let whoever else know that the haole they were talking to before is stuck up in the NeverNever like she didn't get flushed out all the way."
Felix's eyebrows damn near shot up into his hairline as the story unfolded. "Wow that is a rough date night." He blinked. "Wait. What? Hell? Like... eternal punishment and stuff?" He scrambled to his feet, eyes wide. "Are you going back to get her? You have got to take me with you! Seriously... I'll kick ass in hell. I'll be like... a hell ninja. I'll blend in and shit." He struck a "ninja" pose, then stood up as Rick started off. "Well, that was pretty hellish... but it might have been a different bit." He gave the man a wave. "Take care of yourself Rick." He gave a nod to Mila and Keha as they headed off. "Please... consider me for your next trip to hell. I don't know crap about the NeverNever but I'm in for this." He looked up at the rain and nodded. "Yeah... I'm gonna take the long way home and give this a think." He headed for the water, waving to the others as he started wading out.
Keha futilely brushes some sand from her limbs and gets up to follow her sister. "Is it awful if I kind of hoped this business was settled, and I really hope we don't have to go back to the Nevernever? I just assumed she got eaten by something. Oh, hey, does anybody want to go for barbeque? I could murder some macaroni salad." She looked between the departing Rick and Felix and pointed towards the direction of her favorite establishment for meats and macaroni, should either be looking.
|
