Taking the Initiative [Dark]

[Bee]

Oh, thank the goddess they were only Toves. Mnem had been half convinced that by walking into the cave, they had stirred some kind of ancient, unstoppable evil that would kill them both before moving on and dominating the rest of the world. A few weeks ago the notion never would have dawned on her, but now it seemed like something that could happen to them. Something that was likely to happen to them, even.

But Toves were relatively harmless unless provoked, and hopefully they could just sneak on past them without--

Monty leapt from Minh's arms, hir blue eyes alight with excitement as s/he threw herself at a small nest of eggs a few feet away. Mnem pitched herself forward in an attempt to abort Monty's jump for food, but she was not nearly quick enough. Monty landed with a triumphant cry in the nest, squishing two eggs right off the bat, and s/he began to furiously savage the rest.

This was...not a good turn of events.

[Dark]

Too late, too late, too late. Fragile shell chipped and scattered, leaving precious fluids to eek out. Still, pale lumps of undeveloped flesh, barely distinguishable.

"Dammit, Monty."

At first there was silence--an utter and complete lack of sound, eerie after the previous restlessness of the colony--the sort of stillness that was worse than a scream. Then the noise started.

Chirps and whistles, soft at first, gaining in momentum. Angry voices in an alien language. Until the cave was thrumming with their anger, reverberating off the walls and bombarding the ears.

Monty paused in her bloody rampage, dripping egg-goo, and tried to bury her ears under her paws.

That's when they attacked. Little bodies, shooting from the darkness to bite and scratch and hiss. Minh reeled under the onslaught of half-a-dozen different abilities, and barely remember to grab Monty as she began to run.

[Bee]

Bugger. Bugger bitch bum. In a rush she was very sorry that they had come after the little bandersnatch, and she felt stupid for the worry she had wasted on the little beast. Clearly Monty was a demon. Clearly Monty would lead them to ruin at every opportunity. Clearly. And yet she had fretted. She was obviously losing her mind.

No time to think about that now, though. Now was time to run--except the Toves were pushing them the wrong way, deeper into the cave, and turning around meant pushing through the mass of them, which was just not feasible. Mnem cursed under her breath. The sheer number of them, screeching and crawling along the walls and using their strange abilities--it was causing an odd shaking in the cave, and Mnem had a sinking feeling that things were about go even more terribly wrong than she previously thought possible.

Rocks shook. Toves shrieked.

Right behind them, all around them, walls collapsed.

[Dark]

When the cavern walls started coming down around them, Minh dove for the closest cover she could find--an undercut ledge that looked just just maybe deep enough to maybe shelter her from the bulk of the cave in. A rock bounced off her back, jarring her shoulder as it rolled away, and she hit the ground hard. She dropped Monty.

Crawl, shimmy, roll. She made it under the ledge, curled in on herself and trying to make herself as small as possible. Rock shifted and groaned around her. A sound like rain from smaller debris; one final ear-deafening crash.

The dust was starting to settle before Minh dared move, coughing as the air clogged her lungs and stuck in her throat. Her body felt like one giant bruise, and it hurt to move. It would only hurt worse later.

"Mnem? Mnem, are you alright? Fuck. Please answer me."

[Bee]

Mnem had not been able to locate a place of shelter as Minh had, and had been forced to merely outrun the damn thing and hope she could get far enough that when the rocks came down, they didn't come down on her.

This bid was entirely unsuccessful. When she became aware that she wasn't going to outrun anything, she threw herself to the ground and covered her head as best she could. With luck, with any luck at all, she wouldn't be instantly crushed to death. But she wasn't holding out much hope. She wasn't even going to get any final dying words that would deeply impress all the loved ones surrounding her with their poignancy. She was just going to get clobbered to death by rocks, and her last thought was going to be, Maybe I should make raspberry tart tomorrow.

Rubble rained down, a rush of pain everywhere, and something impacted her hard enough that it didn't matter how hard she was trying to cover her head--the rumble of the cave and the shrieking of the Toves disappeared entirely.

[Dark]

She found Monty first, cowering in a tiny hollow barely big enough for a Slithey Tove, let alone a bander. S/he was scratched and dirty and looked absolutely miserable, and s/he came the first time Minh called. She picked up the pathetic little creature and cooed mindless reassurances as s/he quivered and shook in her arms, trying to quell her own rising panic. She couldn't find Mnem.

It it wasn't for a scrap of bright fur peeking out in a sea of bubbling gray, Minh would have missed the spot completely. It was a solid pile of rock, and nothing could have survived having that fall on their head. She dug at the pile with frantic, shaking hands while Monty chattered increasingly loudly, trying to raise some sort of response. Anything to give them even a glimmer of hope that Mnem was still alive.

[Bee]

Mnem made a slow crawl back to consciousness, and the first noises that filled her head were Monty's worried chittering and Minh's scrambling hands. She blinked blearily. Everything hurt. As the rocks were being pulled away, she realized that some of them had managed to wedge, creating a small pocket in the rubble that had shielded her from--death.

There was heavy bruising and her head was bleeding, but nothing seemed bro--except for that. She became aware of it has she tried to move, and help get herself out of the rubble. Her right wrist had been twisted and pinned by rock. Broken, definitely. She would have to wait for everything to be moved.

To Minh, she said, woozily, "Every day for the rest of your life, I am going to make you such wonderful desserts that the gods will weep with envy, and then you can squish pie in their faces. Monty will have fresh bloody meat. The sky...."

[Dark]

Minh almost managed a smile, "That's nice, honey, but you're delirious. Dessert would be nice, though."

Now that they'd found her, seen the she was alive, spoken to her, Minh moved a little less frantically, a little more cautiously. If would really suck for Mnem to have somehow survived having the ceiling crash down on her head, only to have her clumsy-fingered friend trigger a mini-landslide to finish her off.

She brushed Monty aside--s/he was trying to help, shifting smaller rocks and tugging at Mnem's fur, maybe trying to pull her free, but she was being more of a hindrance than anything. Minh winced as she unearthed Mnem's wrist, trying to ignore the twisted, contorted flesh and bone in favor of digging the canine the rest of the way out.

When she was sure she'd cleared enough of the rubble away, she gently hooked her arms under Mnem's and slowly started to drag her out.

"Where does it hurt? Do you feel like you have any internal bleeding? Do you have a concussion? Let me see your head." Monty reiterated the demands in shrills squeaks, bouncing erratically around.

[Bee]

Where does it hurt. Other than her wrist, which hurt worse than anything, her body was pretty much one long stretch of pain, and everything felt the same. She absently held out her good hand for Monty, and the little bander actually stopped bouncing and came over, nudging and rubbing against her, making a noise that sounded almost like a high-pitched, shrieky version of purring. Curious.

"I don't think--anything is badly damaged. Just my wrist. Maybe my head. Do we have anything to...?" Cleaning and setting the damn broken bone would hurt like bleeding hell, but worse than that would be to let it sit and get infected and heal funny--if the infection didn't make the limb simply rot and fall off, like she was some kind of Lowlander. She needed to wrap her head, too.

With...something. Something in the dark, empty, caved-in cave. Damn blasted Toves.

[Dark]

"Right, right. Good. Monty--find the pack." Monty squeaked in affirmation, giving what Minh thought looked something like the equivalent of a bander-salute before bounding off. S/he was back a moment later, dragging behind hir their battered, but intact, supply pack. Minh immediately started to dig.

They'd been equipped with a rather nice medical kit when setting off from the village, though Minh had never really bothered to look at it closely. Not until now. There was a large roll of clean, white bandages and a bottle of straight alcohol to disinfect the wound; a small sewing kit, in case anything needed to be stitched back together; and a bottle of whiskey. Minh blinked--these mountain-folk were amazingly practical, it would seem.

She poured a heavy finger of the stuff, eyes watering as the fumes hit her nostrils, and propped up Mnem as gently as she could.

"Drink this. It'll help with the pain."