Delving Deeper [CLOSED: Gao, Ekik, Sin, Claria]

[Emily]

"You FUCKING FOOL!!!" If Ekik was taken aback or reacted in any way negatively to this initial outburst, he didn't show it. Instead, that same hint of humour remained, even as the scholar softened and placed a hand on his shoulder. "...I could kiss you for it."

"I cannot imagine the logistics of such a manoeuvre."

He watched as Gao ran off, deftly keeping his eyes off Claria as she rejuvenated herself with the water from his canteen. While most Zora were plain in their dealings and, to his experience, open with their need of water, he had the emotional intelligence and insight required to have read the look of shame and determination in her face. It would not do to ruin the limited sense of camaraderie, so limited by their lack of interaction the day prior.

Instead, his eyes moved from Gao to the ruddy, sand-coloured Zora who had charged forward and broken the cloaking spell. He cut through the Yiga like he was carving through a tree, every blow a wild burst of energy, vicious and raw. That glint of humour couldn't escape him. In another life, the Zora would have been perfectly at home among the Yiga as one of their Blademasters, those highly trained berserkers from the Gerudo highlands. But here they were as enemies instead. From a purely strategic point of observation, Ekik couldn't see the benefit in choosing to absorb all incoming blows. The Zora oozed blood over the rock, and was clearly intimidating his opponents, but Ekik wondered if seeing the blood was motivating the Yiga to continue trying.

It was at this point that his canteen was returned. The luminescent Zora- a fascinating specimen; he wondered if there was some manner of symbiotic fungal relationship or if the glow was entirely biological. This was almost certainly not the time to ask such a question- seemed equally happy to see him. An unexpected development after such a limited overlap in time with the group. "You owe us an explanation... And we owe you our gratitude."

He looked once more at the Yiga and their base. "There was an explosion, one of the raiding planes. I was delayed. I was not able to locate you afterward, and hypothesised you would come this direction."

As she moved to intercept some Yiga of her own, Ekik turned to the incoming archers on the other side. They were approaching in hopes of flanking the battle group, but he stepped in the way. Producing several shiny metal balls from one of the pouches along his belt, Ekik tossed them to spread among the foes. They stopped, the lead looking down as one bumped against his foot. And then a yellow marble cracked in the centre of the network. Electric arcs bounced periodically between the balls. The Yiga, some howling with pain, hopped back. Just beyond the electric barrier, a smoke wall took shape, being produced from the chalkdust he threw among the marbles.

The pillar cracked and shuddered. Yiga fell all around them, buildings began to crumble. They were nearing the end. Ekik sighed as he watched electrified marbles sliding through the smoke wall and off the side of the pillar. That was an expensive setup for a wide area of control spell. Chalk dust and ash and feathers cost so little, even at a high-end magic component shop, but solid metal was in higher demand. Still, the Yiga didn't seem to trust their good fortune and didn't charge through the smoke wall.

"There's got to be something you can do!" Ekik's black eyes met hers, then swivelled to see flames beginning to consume the building Gao had run into. He looked back to Claria, one more time, then opened a special pouch on his belt, from which he pulled a small paring knife. With a single, quick slash, he cut his own arm just below the shoulder. Blood splattered outward, flinging in an arc around him before freezing in midair. No. Its fall merely slowed. Everything slowed. Ekik placed the knife back into his pouch before drawing and tossing a dark blue marble toward the building, and a green one at the ground near his feet.

Time sped back up, the spell only turning the span of a second into perhaps five. But it seemed to be enough. The blue marble shattered against the ground near Gao's feet, a small geyser of water soaking the interior of the shack, the Sheikah, and his rescue targets, but also dousing the quickly-growing flames. The green marble shattered against the ground, producing a great wave of wind outward, with Ekik at the epicentre. Yiga were flung from the crumbling pillar. Claria and Sin would likely be able to resist if they chose, but otherwise would similarly fly.

From midair, the sorcerer pulled three more feathers from his component pouch. Working as quickly as he could, breath now coming more harsh and ragged, he lined up three feathers with very specific forms (if he could even see Gao, anyway), mumbled, and let go, locking in the slow fall spell. The Yiga who still lived, for their part, would no doubt dissipate and teleport away before gravity took its course. But he could keep these three alive at least.

If they let him.

[Rex Draco]

Sin took hit after hit from the Yiga's blades. The weapons were sharp so they easily cut through his thick hide, but in the same note the blades made superficial wounds that were more meant to disorient than immediately kill. It seemed the Yiga acted upon attrition and whittled one down before going in for the kill. Sin was different. He sheathed his blade and stomped forward, drawing his blade with a deep growl rumbling from his chest. When the blade left its sheath the Zora let out an audible shout.

"Iai!" His foot stomped down in the same moment the blade sang from its sheath. The blade ripped across the air with a loud whistle and cut through his opponents with such force that any strike that did not immediately amputate a limb left a deep, wounding gash that was narrow and deep.

Ekik's rush of water tossed the loose and limp bodies of his defeated enemies all over. Sin had braced himself. When the water cleared he looked up, nictating membranes slicking the liquid from his eyes, clearing his vision.

Finally the Zora was down to one Yiga. This fellow was much larger than his speedy compatriots and had met Sin's blow with his own: their blades clashing in a dance of sparks and wail of metal grinding onto metal. The Zora was wounded: his forearms covered in blood and his chest and shoulders riddled with thin hatchmarks of blade cuts. Sin glanced at the wound on his wrist. The massive Yiga saw his opportunity and charged. Sin pulled his lips back in a grin and sheathed his blade as the huge ninja charged forward. He drew his blade, but this time allowing his tendrils to dance across the flat of his borrowed Yiga blade. In doing so the venom transferred to the metal. The weapon fully drew from its scabbard and swiped across the figure's chest as he passed, their own blade landing a blow across the Zora's shoulder. A streak of blood erupted from Sin's arm, but the brutish Yiga ended up collapsing to the floor when a shock of paralyzing venom entered his bloodstream, sending him to the ground.

Sin stilled and looked around. His enemies were defeated. He turned his head, opening his mouth to call out to the others: but he ended up throwing up some blood. He swallowed and tried again. "I'm going to free the light eaters!"

Sin, with no Yiga barring his path, rushed towards the cages where the baby Frox were being held. With the grace of a three-legged cow he grabbed the cages' bars and shook them until he would pry the metal apart, wide enough for the Froxlings to escape.

[El]

So this was his end. A manic grin tore open Gao's face. Not a bad way to go.

He'd imagined his death far more often than any sane man should've. He'd tasted it too. Countless times. The pain. The rage. The sorrow of regret. How every sense coalesced into a smothering plunge of deepest, coldest black: its weight so great that any struggle felt aimless - futile.

And yet here he was, still standing. Because I'm not done yet.

The fires of fate's fury unleashed themselves across the rafters, consuming above as they did below. Within mere seconds the tangling flames had woven and tightened an impenetrable net of blistering heat: Gao deep within its clutches. Perhaps a beat too late the Sheikah caught his breath, sealing out the choking smoke which had already clung to his dampened mask. A brief, morbid fascination had bewitched him, but now he flung his fear upon the fire as fuel and allowed the heat to set him ablaze from the inside also. Terror wasn't the end. It just meant he was doing the right thing - that he was still alive.

Taunting laughter rumbling in the pits of his tightened chest, Gao pounced out of the way of a crackling beam and wove through splintering planks, leaping over pooling pits of hellfire while the Yiga corpse behind him began to incinerate. Immediately his gruff hands seized one set of bars of many, with ease pulling them asunder with deafening snaps of sharp wood. Some were metal, but he hastily beat broken their padlocks with the hilt of a dagger. The iron was burning - turning molten - but the wooden ones had been his priority, as easily consumed by the fires as they were: eager kindling for its hunger. It was a small but valuable blessing, that the Depths were so still: barren of tempestuous winds and thick with fungal moisture.

Nonetheless it quickly became hard to see, the stinging tears blotting his eyes while the billowing smoke bloomed into a thick, dark smog illuminated by blinding flickers of flame. But no matter: he could hear them. The Frox. Their screams. Their desperate, wailing attempts to break free. Several cages perched higher above tumbled and shattered upon the floor. Others shuddered out of order below, displacing the already fragile balance of all its reliants. Gao was already several cages deep - Frox on his arms, gnawing at his legs, clawing at his back, an errant few scrambling past his feet - when an abrupt wash of cold plunged him into relief.

Water.

....Water?

He'd forgotten he wasn't alone.

The feral grin grew another inch, a swell of his heart bursting something sweet through his veins. Relief? Potentially. But whatever glad emotion it was, Gao flung that upon the fires as fuel too, a just as abrupt rush of panic possessing him to move with even swifter fervour. He felt like there was little time left - like time had sped up. Instinct was prickling at the back of his neck. The slaughter outside was reaching its final crescendo. The very rock below his feet quaked with crumbling solidarity.

Yet just as he thought there really was no way he could free them all in time, in burst a sodden Sin, bloodsoaked and looking every part a walking corpse but without any of its surrender: on the contrary, he was victorious. Sentient and determined - much life in him yet. As Gao's eyes flashed towards him to recognise with audible relief his shared intention, the rest of their then united task became conquerable.

Until the gales erupted.

While the shack had not been at its epicentre, its sorry state was no contender against its will: a withered and still wilting skeleton of what it once was. Feeble. What was left of its ailing structure ruptured and split askew, leaving little cover for its latest inhabitants. Gao seized the last of the Frox he could and squeezed them against his chest, arms bulging with overflowing, precious cargo. With slick sandals and no hands to spare he too was no capable adversary against the winds' flow.

Ripped off his feet, the countless Frox which had swarmed his form bit in deeper and harder for support. The man himself encouraged it, hugging them tighter as he grit his teeth. The agony was all-consuming - blinding - but come what may he'd protect at least SOME of them. He had to.

And yet, contrary to his imagination his bones were not smashed against the abyssal crags. Nor was he swallowed by pits of bubbling Gloom. Instead a spell had swept him - them - up into its saving embrace, capturing his heart before it could escape his throat, and soothing the harsh currents of a once lethal gravity.

Gao's back and its shell of bumbling Frox bumped against the floor.

Sweet, sweet, solid floor.

He was bleeding and aching and bruising and gaping for breath, but he spread his limbs wide and knocked back his head to let slip a wheezing laugh. Directly beside them the tower of the Yiga's arrogance finally crashed. It took out a twin in its descent, shattering stone and groaning something gut-curdling as reverberations shook Gao's very marrow. A song of rapid, simultaneous blasts accompanied it - exploding weaponry, teleporting Yiga, splintering vehicles. Colours of ash and smoke and smog and debris mixed with glowing spores and hot embers choked the air with a myriad of foul stenches. Through that same thick haze, a few more times the mother Frox roared: calling to her side the children who still lived. They scampered off Gao's flopped form, abandoning their bloodied saviour and the tattered remnants of a 'shield' still clutched tight in his hand, to scuttle back into the dark - back to their home. Her job was done. So too was his - as well as he could've.

As he heard - but could not watch - her rumbling, gradual departure (a soothing sound for his bleeding-heart), Gao wondered if it'd be a terribly awful idea to have just a little nap. Right here. Right now.

How wonderfully cold and quiet it was.

An errant tear raced through the blood, sweat and dirt. The scurrying footsteps of many tiny webbed feet faded.

Relief.

[LuckyBlackCat]

Shudders of panic rippled through Claria's whole body at brief flashes in the corner of her vision, crackles only just audible over the sounds of battle. Although her focus remained on her adversaries, the electric spell had thrown it off. The trembling pillar didn't help matters, nor did the thigh wound that proved deeper than she'd thought. Another soldier got a hit in, a blade notching the edge of a hip fin spread out for balance. More blood oozed down her right leg.

Taking advantage of the opening the ninja left, she swiftly ran them through. Twisting her waist and head-tail to compensate for the loss of agility, her motions as fluid as the waters of her homeland, she sliced and skewered her enemies with as much precision as she could muster through the adrenaline. Sin, meanwhile, hacked apart limbs, necks and torsos with zero finesse, his scales slick with his own blood as well as that of the Yiga, but however risky his approach, however often she had to defend the glaring gaps in his stance, Claria couldn't deny its effectiveness in paring down their numbers.

A sudden swell of water slicked away the gore, revitalising both her and Sin as it splashed against their scales. The flames died down, acrid smoke filling the air where heat had once roiled from the shack. Silently praying for Gao's safety, Claria breathed a sharp sigh of relief.

Once Sin's venom-laced sword finished off the last hulking blademaster, beating him at his own game, Claria stared in shock at the crimson spew gushing from the other Zora's mouth before he announced his plan to help Gao with the baby Frox. "You might want to take more care than you did just now," she reprimanded, sheathing her sword and dispelling her hardlight blades as she limped after him. She dulled her lights to flickers, glad they'd run halfway down naturally from the fight. Her hand went to a belt pouch containing Brightbloom seeds, should she need to distract the Froxlings.

She'd just made it to the doorway when a gale whipped up. Her taloned toes curled over the crags as she attempted to brace against its buffeting force, but her wounded leg buckled. The pillar's surface, the splintering wreckage of the hideout, fell away as the gust swept her into the air. She only just spotted a second, Frox-covered form similarly flung from the cliff - Gao - before the ground rushed towards her.

She closed her eyes. Resignation washed away the initial sick jolt, leaving an odd sense of serenity. What had she expected, other than to meet her end here some day?

Yet instead of a final impact came a feeling of weightlessness, as if gentle waters buoyed her. Had death claimed her before she'd registered it? Had the others met the same fate, or somehow made it through the chaos?

If she opened her eyes, would the Goddess greet them? Or would the blood on their hands condemn them to wander here until reduced to naught but Poes?

Neither, as it turned out, would be the case. Her feet met solid ground, her leg searing anew as it gave out and toppled her onto her torn fin, the sensations proving she still in fact lived. A frantic look around revealed other moving forms - Frox shuddering and clambering all over Gao, who lay supine, spreading out his arms and legs with a breathless laugh.

An almighty rumble drowned out the sound. Claria scrambled aside as the tower gave way, taking a second one with it in a cacophony of crunches, explosions, roaring flames. Heat flared once again, a flurry of embers and a plume of smoke billowing from the debris. Through the nictitating membranes that spread over her stinging eyes, she watched Froxlings hop and disappear after a much larger, retreating shape in the fumes - the mother, her fury finally soothed.

The sight should have brought more relief than it did. Sin, Ekik, where were they? Had they similarly reached safety, or... No, she couldn't think about that. Not with Gao barely clinging to consciousness, ragged gouges scoring his skin, a thick dark pool forming around him.

"Gao..." The haze roughened her voice. She crawled towards him, pulling her pack from her shoulders and rummaging for medical supplies. She was no healer, but basic first aid was a necessity for any Depths delver to know. Ignoring her own wounds, she set about cleaning and dressing the bite marks all over Gao's arms and torso, securing the kelp-fibre bandages just enough to staunch the bleeding, while making sure to allow for circulation. "Gao, can you hear me? You did it, you took a reckless risk, but you saved them. You saved the Frox."

And none of the Yiga remained to get back at them for it... as far as she knew.

[Rex Draco]

He needn't worry much about the female Zora's warning. There weren't any active enemies left that he could see. Well that was because things started to get swallowed up in a stormy upheaval.

The wind had done nothing to buffet the desert stone. Sin was used to the high winds, as the sandstorms in the desert, though rare, were exceptionally powerful and did well to tear a man off his feet. Having clawed webbed feet helped his traction, as did the minor clutter the Yiga had piled onto their pillar. The water was a whole other matter. He was not used to the sudden swells from the salty abyss, the roaring white rapids ripping across his scales, so come the deluge: the dinky dogfish was swept off his feet and dragged along.

He was doing so well too.

Darkness.

He was never good at night. When the sun set in the desert an icy chill washed over the land that made his scales shrivel. When traveling him and his kin often kept covered in their deep, red cloaks and did not stray far from the stony outcroppings of their territory. Sometimes they needed to hunt and night was the best time for it. It was when the sun was its kindest, but it was when the moon was its cruelest. Though they were not at risk of freezing to death, it was still an arduous task. They brought torches, cages, and weapons in order to secure prey. Where most Zora subsisted on river fish, his cult would feast upon Sand Seals and Sand Piranhas.

Without the torches not only would they be consumed by the cold, their sight would be cast in a darkness that stretched as far as the sands. Though the moon lit up many paths across the desert, the stars dappling the sky with glimmering havens: the mountains cast shadows wherever they lorded over. Crossing the darkness was dangerous because it was said by the elders, that a deep evil waded through the inky rivers that ran through the valleys in the dead of night...

When Sin opened his eyes he wheezed deeply, lungs filling where his gills tried to take over, leaving him bereft of air when the water cleared. He flailed for several seconds before standing. At his feet were a number of bent and broken cages, the brute's body having become a battering ram when he was washed through. He pulled his fists up  while he tried to steady himself mentally. His cloak was on his body, his swords were on his hips and his scales were on his muscles. Why did his head and shoulders feel heavy?

It was maybe that baby Frox sitting on his skull, latched to it like a lamprey.

"Hn, is anyone dead?" He hoped so, he could loot their corpses.