Of Earth and Sea IC 1

[Zelphas]

"Thad's nod whad I--ugh!" Timothy pulls down his scarf, letting his nose fan out freely. "Tamara, don't run; swim towards her, you're faster in the water. Just stop before you get to her and come back to shore. Theresa, fly to her, and do the same thing." He quickly uses his nose to strip off his gloves, flexing his furry, claw-tipped fingers. "I'll meet you both there."

Digging into the soft, moveable sand is almost effortless for the young mole boy; he shoots through the ground at almost unbelievable speed, his nose tendrils fanning out and directing his movement through the sandy earth. Timothy passes Tereza a few seconds after she began running; the most she would feel was a slight tremor in the ground.

He senses the hole in the sand and slows, stopping fully about ten meters away from the hole with his tendrils twitching wildly. Then he backtracks, making sure he is well behind the running girl before burrowing out of the ground in a small shower of sand. He brushes himself off as well he could and replaces his gloves and scarf before walking towards Tereza, announcing his presence with a muffled "Hey. Whad is thad, do you think?"

Spoiler: OOC

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Timothy has Burrowing 12; he can move 1/2 a mile per round.

Perception (feeling and smell) on the hole in the sand: (1d20+18)[28]

[EclecticGuru]

Tereza saw the sinkhole and she came to a careful stop at a safe distance. She didn't want to risk falling in.

She was distracted by all the clicking and squeaking and didn't notice Timothy's subterranean trickery, nor the chosen motive methods of his circus-style girlfriends.

"That doesn't seem right." She said, mostly to herself, about the big sink hole. What was down there?

She started to approach it, slowly and carefully, in the hopes of not disturbing the earth around it, because she didn't want to cause a cave in or anything. But she also wanted to get a look. It was reckless, for sure, but since the accident, Tereza had a bit of a survivor deathwish thing going.

[Business Scrub]

@Timothy: The inside of the hole smells... old. Not necessarily bad, like water and life that has been standing there for quite some time. The scent of salt from the ocean is of course undeniable as well: you imagine it might be like what the bottom of the ocean smells like.
Your nose tendrils judge the texture below... It's quite cold down there and rocky. However the bottom of the hole extends beyond your smell and tactile senses.

@Tereza: Staying a prudent distance from the edge, you peer down inside it. The light coming in is enough to illuminate a small area at the bottom. Many feet down, too many to judge accurately, you see dark water lapping up against the rocky sides. It seems to be some kind of underground reservoir, probably water leaking in from the ocean.

[EclecticGuru]

"Looks like a long drop." Tereza noted from her perch, as she craned her neck to get a better look. "This is really dangerous. But ... there's more to it than that."

Tereza looked out to the ocean, where all the marine life was stirring about, upset about something. It was all connected obviously. Maybe literally. Underground. Water. Underground water.

"Is this what you wanted me to see?" Tereza obviously decided the whole thing was crazy enough that she might as well embrace the crazy, and talk back to the disembodied voice that had spoken to her. "This sinkhole? Are you down there or something? And why is the ocean all upset by this? It doesn't seem like a good thing to me."

[Business Scrub]

@Tereza: Deciding to embrace the crazy, you shout into the hole for answers. Much to your surprise, you get a response. This time it's not in your mind, but rather out loud.

@Timothy: You hear the booming voice as well, And can't help but be unsettled by it. It shakes the ground at your feet and you can feel it just as well as you can hear it.

"The ocean is upset because I should not be here, Tereza. It is not the way of things."

The voice, saying that phrase, rings such an alarming bell for Tereza: This is not the way of things. She had heard that before. But where?

"But nothing is the way of things right now. I am but a small, necessary wrinkle in an entirely unnecessary crease. You two are the iron."

[Zelphas]

"Uh..." Timothy responds, dumbfounded. Believing that other people could hear voices in their head is one thing. Hearing what seems to be the same voice coming out of a hole in the ground is something else entirely.

"Uh..." he repeats, shaking his head to clear it. Could you be more specific, maybe? Who are you? Whad are you saying thad we're supposed do do?"

[EclecticGuru]

"It is not the way of things ..." Tereza muttered quietly to herself. What did that mean, and why was it so familiar to her.

"A crease. And we're the iron." That didn't sound good. Not for the crease anyway. Of course, if something needed to be set right, it needed to be set right. It was the way of ...

... things.

She squinted, and pursed her lips, directing her stern expression inward.

[Business Scrub]

At Timothy's comment, a great booming laugh comes from the hole in the beach: enough to shake the sand you two stand on to an unsettling degree.

"Oh ho, if ever I was worried I had found the wrong person, you have assuaged those fears Earthkin. As you wish: let us do away with the metaphor for a time. I have much and more to tell you, but not until all four of you return. That is the first task I grant to you: find your counterparts. They are looking for you as well, even if they do not know it yet. For you this task is harder Earthkin: you will keep tripping over your shackles until you break them.

"What I have to say must wait for all of you, but it cannot wait long."

@Timothy: In the distance, you can smell Theresa and Tamara getting closer, but they're still ways away and moving at a regular walking pace.

[Zelphas]

"Hmm..." Timothy replies, choosing to continue ignoring the fact that he is talking to a hole in the ground in favor of seeing where this goes. Even with his exceedingly limited interaction with the outside world, he knows that this is weird; nonetheless, at least it's interesting. "Shackgles? Whad--oh, for--" the scarf hiding his nose and mouth wobbles strangely, before falling still once more. "I'll, um, go ged Dheresa and Damara; maybe they're some of these, uh, counderpards;" he says, before promptly diving underground in a shower of sand. Things are weird enough already; this Tereza girl was bound to discover his little secret sooner or later. At least he makes sure none of the sand hits her as he digs.

A few moments later, Timothy resurfaces in front of Theresa and Tamara, his scarf down and his nose tendrils waving freely. "I think I found the source of your voice, Tamara," he says as soon as he shakes himself off. "It's, um... hard to explain, really. Well, not really, but it would sound really silly if I said it out loud... oh, I'll just show you. It's right up here, just a little farther."

[EclecticGuru]

Tereza furrowed her brow as she witnessed Timothy do his thing. These circus people weren't just freaks, they were super-powered mutants? Something about that disturbed her on some deep level. She didn't know any super-powered people, she thought they were all terrible mistakes of nature or ... accidents.

Accidents.

She put two fingers against her temple and messaged it in a slow comforting circular motion.

She wasn't going crazy, this was all really happening. Everything. All of it. As much as she wished it hadn't happened. It did. And was.

"I'm thinking maybe you should go back to where ever it was you came from." She said to the mysterious voice coming from the scary sinkhole. "If you don't belong here, then go."

[Business Scrub]

@Timothy: You burrow your way at rapid speeds towards the others.

Theresa keeps pace with the youngest. "It can't be sillier than anything we've seen before, right? Tamara, come on..."

Tamara seems to be taking her sweet time. "Uuum, yeah. Let's go..." She sounds quite hesitant all of the sudden.

Spoiler

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Insight check

@Tereza: Though he doesn't actually sigh, you can here restrained disappointment in the voice of the creature below.
"What is it that drives you to spurn me Tereza? Is it anger? Apprehension? Fear? No, if you were fearful you would never have climbed atop that tower, would you?"

[Business Scrub]

@Timothy: You've known Tamara long enough to read her like a book. Not to mention she's not exactly the hardest book to read.
She's purposely stalling, for some reason. She seems perfectly content to take forever making her way across the beach.

[EclecticGuru]

"What? Afraid? Oh no, you're right. I'm not afraid of you." Tereza clenched her fists slightly and took a slightly sideways stance, it was a defiant stance if ever there was one. "In fact, I'm trying to decide if I want to jump down in that evil sinkhole and punch you in the face a couple of times. You're a mysterious psychic force cloaked in darkness at the bottom of a dark pit. You admit you don't belong here, that you're a wrinkle, and I'm the iron. Even the ocean itself is upset about you being here."

She was poised on the very edge of the sinkhole now.

"I don't know what you know about the accident I was in, but you better start talking before I make up my mind about whether or not I'm going to come down there and knock you back to wherever it was you came from."

[Zelphas]

Timothy stops and gives Tamara a closer look. "Um, are you doing okay, Tam? What's wrong?"

[Business Scrub]

@Timothy: You can tell Tamara is shifting back and forth uncomfortably.

"This was just a stupid idea. What if it's dangerous? We should just go back to AppGen, they're going to call us back soon anyway."

She glances down at her anklet, as if expecting the light on it to turn red soon.