Lancer coughed, shaking his head, trying to steady his breathing. When he regained his voice, it was strained with confusion and worry.
"On.. on the floor," he managed, pointing at the trail of wax. "Something's on the floor and it smells like blood. I-I don't know if it's human blood or elf blood or what have you, but I.."
He folded his many arms across his chest in an attempt to comfort himself, staring at the wax. "Blood and wax, and it reeks, like it's fresh. I don't know what something like that would be doing in a classroom. It leads to the bookshelf, too."
(no problem!! im doin schoolwork atm so my responses are varying too lol)
Juno wrinkled his nose. "Ok, gross. What the fuck is a history professor doing with blood in his room?" He followed the trail to the bookshelf and started poking around.
"Are bleeding books a thing? Maybe it's a weird fad amongst old people. I've heard of, like, screaming books. Maybe it's like that." He started poking around the bookshelf, pulling out books and reading spines. "Seems like a pretty normal collection to me." The blood clearly wasn't coming out of any of the books.
The smell of blood was starting to bother him, and Juno coughed a bit. "This is seriously disgusting, should we call someone in here?"
Lancer was about to say yes, but hesitated, glancing back at the door. They'd probably be busted for breaking into a locked classroom, and Lancer didn't know if they'd be taken seriously if they explained the situation.
And, he just didn't feel like talking to any more people than he had to.
"It's probably fine," he suggested with a dismissive wave of a hand. "Maybe… uhm, well, there's no explanation for this off the top of my head, but maybe the professor has a perfectly valid reason for blood wax to be in his classroom."
Ignoring the fact that there's pretty much no perfectly valid reason to have blood-infused wax in a classroom, of course.
Lancer grimaced, then pulled out his phone, scrolling through his camera roll until he found the day's lecture. He rolled through the recording until, with a breath of relief, he realized he'd caught the professor adjusting a book on the shelf. He attempted to zoom in, but he couldn't pin point exactly which book Dr. Belmont had adjusted.
"Okay, I'm going to sound bat-shit crazy, but here me out," Lancer began, rewinding the video just a tad before handing his phone to Juno. "I record the lectures sometimes, and this happened earlier today. Do you think, with the blood wax, that what he does here means anything..?"
"Valid reason for blood wax?" It was one of the most ridiculous things Juno had ever heard, but he brushed it off. It was a strange situation; it was bound to bring on strange phrases.
Spiderman handed him a phone, showing him a video clip. The professor adjusted a book hastily, looking worried. Juno looked back up at the spider kid. "You're right, you do sound bat-shit crazy. You think there's, what, a legit secret door in here? That's-" he shook his head but handed back the phone and walked along the bookshelves. "Right, you look at your phone and tell me when I'm standing where Belmont is in the video. Any mysterious shit is worth a glance, I guess."
Lancer nodded and took a few steps back, gauging Juno's position with Dr. Belmont's in the video and throwing out directional phrases until Juno was situated properly.
"Yeah! Yeah, that's it," he announced when Juno had found himself standing a tad to the left. "Try searching the shelf right before the top shelf, it looks to be around that area."
He was really hoping something would come out of this; if nothing happened and he really was losing a few marbles, he didn't think he'd hear the end of it.
(Sorry for not responding quicker! I'm on a car ride and it always makes me spacey lol)
"Yeah, alright," Juno stopped, looking around the shelves. "This feels really fucking stupid," he muttered as he started testing books, pulling them out and pushing them back into place.
It seemed as though this whole idea was entirely pointless, he wasn't getting any results from this. "You're sure this is where he was standing?" He called to the spider boy, whose name he probably should have known by now.
A sudden click brought Juno out of his thoughts. The book he had been pulling on wasn't coming out all the way. He stopped and yanked harshly on the book, and with a whirring noise, the bookcase opened. Juno froze. Spidey was right. "Well, shit."
(no problem!! big mood lol)
Lancer ran a hand through his hair, rubbing the base of one of his horns as he stared at the opened doorway in awe.
"So… this entire time, he's just… had a secret doorway? In the school? In plain view of the students? For.. how long?"
He sat in the professor's chair, holding his head in two of his hands.
"This could be anything from a secret library of ancient knowledge to a hideaway for a secret criminal organization. We've probably just busted a major drug ring or something, and now we're gonna have to be in on it too or they'll kill us."
He stood up, his expressions and gestures becoming more frantic the more he lost himself in his hypotheticals. "O-Or what if he's plotting to overthrow the government, or start another war?" He turned to Juno. "We have a criminal mastermind or a cult leader or an evil overlord for a professor and he's been hiding underneath the school this whole time! We're going to die — if Dr. Belmont doesn't kill us, the Headmaster will!"
(Xjdbxnj aa sorry again school's wild today)
Juno grinned ever wider as the lad listed possible catastrophes. "So we're gonna overthrow a criminal. Oh, this is so cool. This is the best day of my life. The danger, it calls to me," he stated dramatically, staring through the doorway.
He looked back at Spiderman. "Let's see what's in here," he suggested, already stepping through the doorway.
(awdoa you're good!! i just got out of school myself awoad)
"What? Are you the bat-shit crazy person?!" Lancer exclaimed, catching up to Juno but refusing to go any further past the doorway. He peered through it and into the dark, ominously lit hallway, trembling so badly he thought for a minute his knees would buckle beneath him.
"J-Juno – that's your name, right? – listen, I don't like you, at all, but I really don't think you should go in there, I —"
He'd taken a step past the doorway without realizing it, a hand extended towards Juno, but paused. The second his foot had made contact with the ground, he could feel it, and it manifested as a shiver that shook his whole body. He didn't know what it was, but he hated it.
He grit his teeth.
"Don't go alone, at least," he whispered. "Whatever is in here… it doesn't like you, doesn't like us being here."
Juno rolled his eyes. "It's just a hallway. Hallways don't have feelings." He didn't understand why this guy was freaking out so much. Obviously, Juno himself was excited; it wasn't every day that one found a secret door leading to an ominous looking hallway. But it wasn't scary. As far as Juno was concerned, this was the coolest day of his life. Except for the spider kid, who was really putting a damper on things.
"Look, if you wanna come with me then I'm not gonna stop you. You look like you're about to wet yourself though so if you'd rather stay behind it might be better for your sanity," he joked, shifting his weight between feet. "Just like, make your decision, cause I'm gonna head in."
Lancer, after a minute of indecisiveness, decided that he didn't want to stand outside and worry about Juno the whole time. He put his other foot in and winced, expecting something to happen, expecting to feel something different – something worse.
"I-I guess… it's fine..?" he suggested cautiously after nothing occurred.
The bookshelf then, suddenly, slammed shut behind the two, causing him to start with a yelp, stumbling back as he turned to face the now barred entrance. He then moved towards it quickly, feeling around the edges in a desperate attempt to pry the bookshelf away, but to no avail.
He turned back to face Juno, covering his face with two of his hands while the other two fidgeted with each other.
"We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're going to die…"
"Yeah, obviously it's fine, what were you expecting from a-" Juno's snapping was cut off by the door slamming shut behind them. The arachnid immediately started panicking, and it took a serious amount of effort not to laugh at the poor guy.
"We'll just have to find another way out, then," Juno attempted to reassure the kid. "Or we can follow the professor back out or something." The spider wasn't calming down.
"Look, Spiderman, er- spider kid, Arachne, insect man, Four-Eyes," Juno's brain stubbornly refused to give him the actual name of his six-limbed companion. He wasn't actually sure he'd ever gotten a name for the guy. "Pretend I know your name. Look, you, there may be a lot of creepy shit going on but we're gonna be alright. I know what I'm doing. Kinda."
The series of odd nicknames Juno listed to get Lancer's attention was enough to pull him from his panicked state, and it seemed to occur to him that he'd never actually given Juno his name. Though his thoughts were still racing and his hands still shook, he managed to pull himself together enough to stop raving. He wrapped two of his arms around himself in a self-comforting hug, the other two continuing to fidget.
"Lancer," he replied. "My name is Lancer."
He turned around and felt the back of the bookcase in some odd last hope it would move, but when it again refused to do anything, he gave a defeated sigh and turned back around.
"Okay, okay. Okay. Everything's fine," he whispered, throwing his hands up in surrender to whatever weird vibe took hold of the area. "I guess the only direction we can move now is forward. I-I don't feel any booby traps or hidden compartments, so I… I guess it's safe. For now, at least. I'll follow you."
Lancer! Spiderman had a name. Thank god. Juno had been running out of nicknames. "That's the spirit. Panicking won't help anyone." Lancer kept talking; in his rambling he mentioned not 'feeling' booby traps, which only served to increase Juno's confusion immensely.
"Can you feel traps? Like a 6th sense? That is… so cool. That's legitimately amazing. That's- ok," Juno stopped himself from getting too far off track, and conjured a small ball of light in his hand to help brighten up the hallway. "I'll go ahead, you use your dope spider senses to tell me if I'm about to get beheaded."
"I-It's not that cool, honestly," Lancer admitted quickly, dragging a hand along the wall to get a feel for the area as he followed Juno down the hallway. "It's more like vibrations that let me feel both the surface and the interior of whatever I'm touching. Sounds great until you realize you can't really turn it off."
Noting the little ball of light Juno had created, however, Lancer was prompted to ask:
"So… you do magic? Is it a genetic thing, or did you learn it?"
Juno tilted his head, thinking. "Sort of both, I guess? My whole family is full of witches so I've always like, been around magic. Which helped. But I had to learn specific spells and such so. So yeah, both." He looked around the hallway. It seemed to be getting creepier every second. Made sense for a secret passageway, he supposed.
"What about your whole sixth sense deal? I mean that seems like a spider thing, but have you like, just always been able to sense things, or?"
A family of witches, huh? Not that odd; magic had existed since the Old Age and has only evolved along with society. But witches were always strongly attuned to magic, he'd learned, and exercised caution around them. He'd have to be careful with Juno.
Juno's question, however, surprised him, and his voice cracked a bit as he responded.
"Yeah, it's– it's a thing, being derived from spiders and all. If I touch too many different things at once, though, I get super bad sensory overload, so I try to just… not touch stuff, or people. Especially people."
He shuddered. Something felt off about the floor ahead. He closed his eyes, focusing entirely on the information his feet were providing him.
"Staircase, up ahead. Stairs aren't in good condition, though, so be careful where you step."
Juno nodded as Lancer explained. He was prone to sensory overload as well, and he could imagine it'd be worse with an extra sense going off all the time. Now that he thought about it, the ability probably wasn't as fun as he had originally thought. Still, it was useful for him.
Especially in this scenario. There were, in fact, rickety stairs up ahead of them. "Why wouldn't they just fix their stairs? Like this is definitely a safety violation of some sort. I get it as like a trap or whatever, but-" Juno caught his foot in a section of broken wood, and had to yank it back out, nearly toppling off of the staircase. "Shit. See, like don't they have to use the stairs too? Who booby traps themself?"
Lancer snickered. "I guess calling anybody to come and repair the stairs would give away the secret."
He paused at the top of the stairs, peering downwards. The rotting wooden stairs spiraled, leading into an empty black void too far down for him to see what lied at the bottom.
The odd air he'd felt ever so slightly at the beginning had grown stronger.
He knelt, laying two hands on the stairs for a more precise feeling. One thing he did consider a perk was that the more hands he had on one object, the better he could read through it.
"Wood, rotting, but dry. Most of the weak stairs are near the top and the bottom of the staircase, but it does seem like a few in the middle could probably snap. Other than that, I don't—"
He sighed. "No, nevermind, there's a tripwire at the bottom, but I don't know what it's tied to. Maybe the design of the stairs is intentional."
He stood, brushing the dust off of his jeans. "Hey, weird question, since you can do magic, can you, like… detect other people's magic? Do you know what magic feels like?"
Juno squinted down the staircase and started testing every step gingerly before he placed his foot on it. Clearly, someone didn't want them in here. Fortunately, that had never stopped Juno before, and it wouldn't stop him now. He still tripped several times on his way down; the stairs were fucking ridiculous and he had never been dexterous.
It took a bit of thought to figure out how to answer Lancer's question. "I guess… kinda? I mean, it feels different when I'm around magic or whatever. Like a hum. Or something. It's not like a sense, though, I couldn't track someone using their magic. I can just like, tell when some magical shit's near me," he explained. It wasn't a good explanation, but it was a weird concept and he wasn't feeling particularly eloquent.
There was in fact a trip wire at the bottom of the staircase. The last step was so rickety that he almost face planted on it. "Be careful at the bottom," he relayed to Lancer. "It gets increasingly unstable."
Lancer nodded, slinking his way carefully down the staircase. Spiders — and by extension, Arachne — were almost defined by their agility and maneuverability. Unfortunately for Lancer, he was only one-fourth spider, three-fourths human, and carried the appropriate ratios of eloquence, his careful slinking not more than desperate wall-clinging and under-his-breath complaints that this was the dumbest architectural decision ever made and whoever came up with this better make sure they had liability insurance.
"Hey, that's good enough," he replied to Juno as he awkwardly fumbled around the tripwire, so hyperfocused on it that he neglected to address that the stairs ended past the tripwire. "I—!"
He quickly extended his arms for more wall to hold, only to grasp air as he miscalculated a step and lost balance, stumbling some distance across the floor before falling over with a thud and a grunt.
The room they had entered was much wider than the cramped staircase. It was made of stone brick and was dimly lit by sparsely-placed torches, their flames eerily and quietly flickering. A banner hung on the north wall, a matte red with black and white stitching detailing a human skull with eye sockets leaking the void. Beneath it were words in Old Chaotic, only comprehensible to anyone knowledgeable in the language, but given their placement it wouldn't be incorrect to assume they were a motto of some kind. To the east and west were wooden doors, and in front of the banner was a small offering table, currently covered with freshly burned scraps of paper.
Lancer sat up, rubbing the ache from his head and examining the room they now stood in.
"Uh… does this room give you magic vibes…?"
Juno winced as Lancer fell to the ground, and reached out a hand to pull him up. He quickly retracted his hand when he remembered the whole avoiding-touch thing his spider companion had going on, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll just uh, let you get up on your own. Less overwhelming." This whole situation was seeming increasingly fucked. The room they were in looked like the ultimate cult headquarters.
"This room feels like a goddamn magic orgy," Juno said. The magic feeling was buzzing across his skin, like he was about to be electrocuted. The hairs on his arms were standing up under his sweater. "Pretty sure someone summoned an old god in here," he half-joked.
He couldn't stop staring around the room. This entire scenario was getting more batshit wild by the second. He went up to the offering table and peered at the scraps of paper, carefully not touching anything. There were words that he couldn't read, and drops of bodily fluids on them. He assumed it was blood, for the aesthetic, but assuming things never worked out well with cult magic, as he knew from experience. He stepped away from the table and looked between the two doors.
"Which way should we go?" He asked, glancing back and forth. "Maybe I can feel some magic coming from one of them, or something." He walked to one door, and then the other, and felt nothing. Maybe there were some kind of wards blocking him from sensing anything? "Uh, nevermind, I've got nothing. Are your spider senses giving you any hints?"
Lancer stood, the dust in the air tearing a sneeze from him. "No," he admitted, "except that this place feels fuckin' huge. It's like a second school in size."
His gaze flickered between the two doors, "I suppose splitting up wouldn't be the brightest idea then, huh?"
After getting a sense of where he was, he pulled out a small notepad he'd brought to try and cheat the test with, flipping through hastily scribbled notes until he found a blank sheet to work with. He scribbled a small map with his pencil, marking the staircase the two had come from and a basic rendering of the room they were in.
Once he was finished, he flashed Juno the map. "Just to keep track of where we've been. It might help us get out later."
He stuffed the notebook back into his pocket.
"Okay, which room? Should we just pick a room, or should each of us peek through a door, or..?"
(Sorry again fjfnfj I took a depression nap that ended up being 12 hours long)
Juno snorted. "Yeah, no, we're not splitting up. Not that I particularly enjoy your company, I've just watched a horror movie or two."
He nodded at the map Lancer provided. "Good thinking. If it ends up being a labyrinth at least we'll have some idea of how we got in." A labyrinth was seeming increasingly likely at this point; why wouldn't a secret cult live in a labyrinth?
"Yeah, I guess, we'll just take a look and see which one looks more cult-y yeah?" He looked between the two doors. They looked about the same. Just wooden doors. He picked the one to his left and walked over to it. "Should we do this one at a time, or both at once? Like if we find a crazed old man behind one would it be more convenient to have another door open? There could be a crazed old man behind both, though, and we wouldn't wanna get like, jumped by multiple old men." He shook his head. Overthinking was the bane of his existence. In this case, it might count as just thinking ahead, being strategic, or something, which made him feel better; he liked being smart. He was generally smart. This whole situation was killing his smart vibe.
(adwoawd no you're good!! just got back from the store)
"Oh, jeez, that's not a very pleasant visual," Lancer replied, his tongue sticking out in disgust as his face scrunched up. "I guess we can just do it one at a time? The less old men, the better."
Seeing Juno choose the left door, he moved over to the right and cracked it open, peering through the slit cautiously. No old men, thankfully, but what was there was, frankly, almost weirder.
The room was devoid of people, but it was neatly organized, several glass display cases sitting on tables against the walls. He couldn't get a glimpse of exactly what was being displayed, but what caught his attention were banners strung across the room in the same color scheme as the banner in the first room like it was some kid's birthday party, but instead of joy and happiness it only brought pain and death and suffering. Kind of reminded him of how his own birthday parties always went. The scattered torches only enhanced the vibe.
"This room's all good, I think," he called back to Juno, "but it doesn't look like it leads to anywhere else. What's it like over there?"
(I am extremely sorry I abruptly lost wifi)
Juno let out a sigh of relief as Lancer relayed that his room did not contain an old man waiting to kill him. However, this did increase his chances of finding an old man in his room. Which was a worrisome thought.
Taking a deep breath, he yanked open the door. Quickly glancing around, he confirmed that there were no elderly folks of any gender in this room. But it was a weird goddamn room. It seemed to be full of massage tables, a table every 2 feet, filling the room. He supposed there were a lot of cult members with sore backs. Or a lot of murder victims being lured to their demise with the promise of a massage. The walls were covered in shelves, which were covered in small bottles. The room produced an overwhelming scent of oranges. There was a door in the back of the room.
"This one's uh, clear, I guess," he informed Lancer. "There's a door in the back, either it's a supply closet or a continuation of the labyrinth. I guess we'll have to find out which."
(no problem!! i hope everything's okay :0)
"Every room without an old man is only increasing the chances of an old man being in the next room," Lancer muttered to himself, shutting the door and walking over to Juno and his door. He hic'd and coughed, waving a hand as if to disperse a smell.
"Gods, a spa cult. Maybe not too out of character for him, now that I think about it."
He took a gander at the bottles that ran across the walls, his brow furrowing as confusion contorted his features. "What's in these?" he inquired as he stood on his tip-toes to snatch a bottle from the shelf. When he pried open the cap, however, he began coughing again, capping the bottle just as quickly as he'd opened it. Whatever was in the bottles was very, very potent. He handed it to Juno, taking a moment to catch his breath.
(Internet's been very bad but I think its stable now! I should be as active as I normally am now!)
Juno wandered the room in mild disbelief. Whatever he had expected to find within the room, this wasn't it. Lancer handed him a bottle and started hacking up a lung, and Juno, being completely unprepared, almost immediately dropped the bottle onto the floor. "Shit," he picked it back up, and luckily it seemed to only have a hairline crack near the cap. "You can't just- I'm not dexterous," he said as he placed the bottle back on the shelf.
"What was in there, anyway?" He asked, as Lancer had provided what seemed to be a very strong reaction to it.
(rad!!)
"I got no fuckin' clue, but it's probably whatever's making this room smell like oranges," Lancer choked out in a ragged voice, the amount of coughing he'd been doing taking a toll on his throat. He cleared it, taking a deep breath and another gander at the bottle.
It was empty.
He grimaced. "Nothing was in there. But it smells like… fruity, but bootleg fruity. Like, it wanted to be peaches, but it was a sad corporate attempt at peaches and it's just disappointment instead of peaches."
And then, an "aha!" perked him up, and he turned back to Juno. "You! Magic detector dude! Is this room magic? Does magic normally smell like fruit?"
"Does magic- what?" Juno shook his head as if to clear it. "There's, I mean, there's definitely magic in here. there's a whole, like, hum going on. Magic doesn't… smell, though, it's more like a feeling. Not the emotional kind, like the physical sense- anyway, no, I don't think I've envountered magic that smelled like off-brand peaches."
He looked back at the shelves, and noticed that a lot of bottles appeared to be empty. "Maybe they're like, storing scents. Like magic cult aromatherapy." He poked around at a few bottles, examining them. He definitely got a strong magic vibe from the bottles; whatever was contained in them was fairly powerful.
