Signs pointing to the nearest exits will not be provided.

[poll_the_stars]

There is a room that's dark and cold. It's made of stone, with a doorway cut into each of the four walls. At the room's center is some type of circle, carved into a raised platform. The only light comes from a slightly sad looking light fixture set into the ceiling.

Then the circle glows, brightening until it could rival the sun, humming and shaking the room around it. There is a buildup of energy of some kind...

And then it stops, returning to as it was before.

Except, now it contains two women.

One of them has pointed ears and red hair. She looks around in quite a lot of alarm.

Comments

[poll_the_stars]

"Ah. Well." Pause. "Could your Bifrost be used to get us out of here?"

[purposeful_glory]

"It would need to be activated from the other end. If it has not been so already, it may be that I have not been missed yet or that there is some difficulty with doing so here."

[poll_the_stars]

"Okay. So. That's better than nothing at all. Uh, hello, by the way."

[purposeful_glory]

"Hello. I am called Loki, Odinsdottir, of Asgard. Your name?"

[poll_the_stars]

"Inavet," she says, after a second of hesitation. "Of Erdenir. Sunrise Empire, to be specific."

[purposeful_glory]

"I would say well met, but the circumstances leave something to be desired."

[poll_the_stars]

"Yeah, I left off 'nice to meet you' for similar reasons," agrees Inavet dryly. "No offense to you."

[purposeful_glory]

"None taken." Loki peers at the pattern of the shape on the ground, produces a small scrap of paper from her pocket and a stub of pencil, and copies it out.

[poll_the_stars]

Copying the circle does nothing in particular.

"Good idea."

She doesn't have paper to do the same, but she can lean on arcany a bit to memorize the pattern. She considers testing to see if the ground around the platform is safe, and how she would even go about testing that in a safe manner. Drop something on it, maybe? There aren't any obvious traps that she can sense, but she just got transported someplace strange, there's no guarantee whatever could hurt her can even be sensed by arcany.

There is a rumbling sound, off in the distance. Like a door of some kind is being opened.

"... That's concerning."

[purposeful_glory]

"Everything about this situation is concerning, but, yes, that sound is too."

[poll_the_stars]

Snort.

After some more consideration, she carefully edges her way off of the platform. Absolutely nothing happens.

[purposeful_glory]

Loki follows, alert, still with her glaive in hand. One hand.

[poll_the_stars]

From the doorway to their left:

Stomp stomp stomp stomp growl.

[purposeful_glory]

"Are you any good at fighting monsters?" wonders Loki in an undertone, shifting her grip on her weapon.

[poll_the_stars]

"... Depends very highly on the monster. I would say no. I am consistently good at getting away from monsters and staying out of other people's way, though."

She can sense the... whatever it is. Sort of. Not very well, but enough to tell its general shape and where it is. It's big and moving quickly. She frowns a little, searches carefully for its route to them, and then disguises a doorway between it and them as a wall. It's sort of hard to do something like this with something she can't actually see, but she thinks it's better to just trick it into not coming after them. And Loki presumably can't see what she's doing at all.

[purposeful_glory]

Loki cannot see what she's doing without a line of sight. She stands ready.

"I am any good at fighting monsters," she says, "so stay out of the way, if we run into more than a growl of one."

[poll_the_stars]

"Happily."

The monster is fooled by the door that looks like a wall. It moves on to another door that looks like a door, and goes in a direction that is not towards the two of them.

Good, that's good. Stay far away from them, weird monster thing.

(And there's the sound of another door opening...)

"Is the plan to stay here and defend this place as long as possible, or go exploring for a way out of this," maze, no, wait, she shouldn't know that yet, "place?"

[purposeful_glory]

"We need to at least explore long enough to find water, and ideally something edible too, in case it's very large and we're stuck here for a very long time." Loki listens. "It's getting farther away; we can move on. But ambush is less pleasant still than assault and I'd rather not be hiking while attacked."

[poll_the_stars]

Nod.

"It sounds... loud and obvious," she muses. "I don't think we have to worry about an ambush from it. But there might be other less loud and obvious things here. Those are what I'm worried about."

(Also she can keep it busy. That's reasonably easy. For example: other doorway leading in their direction: be hidden.)

"I have some water on me, by the way. So we have a bit of added breathing room to find water."

[purposeful_glory]

"That's something, then."

The hilt end of the glaive sprouts a little spike, and Loki marks the floor, takes a few steps, marks it again, etcetera.

[poll_the_stars]

Oh, that's smart. Inavet says so.

(And there are the things the other door let out, smaller and faster and moving in a way that reminds her of spiders. They get to have their routes to Loki and Inavet look like walls, too. Take that, spider things.)

[purposeful_glory]

(Loki is of course ignorant of Inavet's behind-the-scenes interventions.)

"Thank you."

[poll_the_stars]

(Yes, that is the point of them being behind-the-scenes.)

She smiles a little.

Walking!

(The spider-things are not actually hampered by the doors that look like walls. They just... Pass through them, not even noticing the illusion at all.

... Sound based, maybe? Worth a shot. She makes the sound of footsteps, over on the other side of the spider-things, and masks the sound of their footsteps to anything outside of, oh, five feet.

Oh, good, that works fine. Spider-things go in a direction that is away from the duo. Success!)

[purposeful_glory]

"...What is on your mind? I recommend keeping your eyes open even if you aren't going to fight anything that finds us."

[poll_the_stars]

(Giant stompy monster gets more doors that look like walls. Spider-things get their footsteps in an away direction.)

... What does she say, exactly? 'I am busy distracting the things that are likely going to try to kill us?'

"Listening," she says, instead. "I think there are more things than just the big stompy thing in here. Sounds sort of like they skitter."