T - Bee, Dark, Nako, Vyn

[Bee]

She was half-surprised that Suha didn't take off on her own and avoid whatever trouble they might be heading into, but it likely came down to the logic of there being safety in a group no matter where it was heading. She was reconsidering her guilty desire to have been dragged off instead of Delaney, just a fraction; why couldn't this woman have been taken instead? Perhaps she would be feeling a good deal less self-censuring.

"Have no fear of being assigned blame," Phaedra said, voice a little hoarse and a little sour. "I certainly don't intend to accredit you anything."

But there was little enough time for bickering, wasn't there? They needed to get going before the trail got cold. She had hardly registered the direction the vines had come from; she had no idea which way Del had disappeared. She glanced at Javaid. "Which way was she taken?"

[Vyn]

Javaid watched the women in silence, muzzled pressed shut in a tight line of displeasure. Outsiders. The avian woman only accompanied them for safety's sake. She had no concern for her fellow cards, for a child who may be still alive and terrified. Javaid had absolutely no taste for this culture that forsook their own so easily.

When they were done and the Esterberry turned back to him, Javaid nodded and motioned in the direction he'd last seen Delany. Having never expected to go anywhere else, he was still half-facing that awful wall of mist. "This way." His gaze flicked between the two of them and he felt the need to say something caustic. Instead he tapped his thin fingers against his staff. "Since I am armed, I will lead. I sincerely doubt we've seen the last of... whatever that was... so it's most likely advisable that we form some sort of... tether."

The mist was thick, thick enough to hide children and monsters alike, and the last thing Javaid wanted was to see someone else dragged off while under his watch.

[Nathalia]

The mist felt heavy and damp, more like a thick blanket than a natural phenomena.
As they walk the streets around them will begin to lose focus and fade away, might want to stick closer together, any further than a few feet away...and you might just lose one another as well.
The mist fogs out all sound, even their own footsteps, all they can hear are their own voices, should they speak.
The further in they go, the longer it seems that they should have hit a turn in the street...and have not.
Something huge and shadowy rises out in front of them after about 5 minutes of walking...looks like a building...
Should they enter? Or press on?

[Dark]

The mist had started to bead up on her feathers, and she had given up trying to shake it off. Suha followed the other two, silent and miserable, deeper into the mist. Oppressive and damp, the mist closed in on all sides, too thick to see any great amount of distance. It was not a natural mist, certainly. (And it would be all to easy for them to be picked off in that indeterminable grey world; Suha made sure to stick close to the others).

"We should investigate the building," Suha suggested quietly, unable to raise her voice above a whisper. The mist was unnaturally still, and she was loathe to break the silence any more than necessary.

Suha knew this area of town relatively well--she imagined Phaedra did as well--and the street had never been this long; they should have stumbled across the cross-street ages ago. But while she did not recognize the building anymore than the street, she would do anything to get out of the mist.

[Bee]

Keeping behind and close to the armed Queen seemed nothing short of the most logical course of action, and Phaedra had little difficulty going along with the plan. She had as much desire to get choked again as she did to pull a book from her library and discover it to be a vampire romance. Suha kept close as well; they moved as one relatively tight unit along the street, a couple of little electrons orbiting the nucleus. A street that did not seem at any point to fork.

At first Phaedra was tempted to blame it on her eyesight--she did only technically use the glasses for reading, but they were constantly on and she was beginning to get a little tension headache without them. But that was terribly silly; the only thing affecting her vision was this dreadful mist. It was getting thicker, heavier, like a wet blanket. The point at which her sight tapered off into white, strangely silent nothingness was distressingly short. They saw little at all until the building, seemingly the only landmark on the horizon, huge and black.

Well, isn't this foreboding.

She hardly heard Suha when she spoke, and she hated to agree with her, but she said, "It seems doubtful under the circumstances that something so forbidding should be without significance." Perhaps she was just indulging in a bit of wishful thinking; would it not be awfully convenient if this was where Delaney were taken?

[Vyn]

Javaid sighed a little to himself as the last vestiges of sanity drained from his surroundings. He knew the roads had seemed wrong and here was the proof that they were. No city wound like the one he was in, no city vanished like this. At least in a time like this his poor knowledge of Outsider Culture could be combated by a slightly increased knowledge of the supernatural.

For the first time since leaving Hisstor, Javaid felt useful and that was more disheartening than everything else he'd encountered on his journey thus far.

Now, for the first time since they'd entered this vast expanse of nothingness, they came upon Something and, of course, it came in the form of something large and foreboding that both women thought necessary, though potentially unwise, to enter. Javaid was loathe to agree. "You're most likely correct." He warily approached the dark shape, quiet aside for the sharp clack of his claw-like accessories, until he located what appeared to be a door.

He hesitated for a moment before shaking his head and stepping forth with a sigh. As he held the door open for his smaller companions, he prayed that this building would hold answers or, even better, the lost child and not their untimely doom.

Rather than dwell on that likelihood, Javaid turned his attention to his companions. "Do either of you know what this place might be?"

[Dark]

Suha entered the building slowly, glancing around with no small bit of trepidation as she shook the moisture from her feathers. The entry way opened immediately into a grand foyer with several plush divans, ornately carved side tables, and a coat stand with a single umbrella. It could have been the entry room to a city manor, if not for the counter. There was a small silver bell resting on the polished wood, a ledger, and an ink well.

It was rather grand, but Suha was not familiar with the décor and shook her head at Javaid's inquiry, "No, I'm afraid not. Though is looks like it’s been converted to an office building or some such thing.” She considered the lavish decorations again, “Most likely for an exclusive clientele.”

But what service or function the building might have served, she had no definite clue. Suha walked over to investigate the ledger, hoping that it perhaps would lend an answer.

[Bee]

The inside of the building did not look so ominous as the outside, which was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand they might have stood slightly less chance of being sneaked up upon and devoured; on the other, something so ordinary-looking might also stand less of a chance of hiding the girl. It didn't much look like a place that plant beasts would frequent.

She eyed their surroundings. It was certainly a lavishly updated place; it must have cost a fortune in remodeling. She kept a keen eye out for anything strange, but all she saw were paintings and ornaments and a large, tall staircase. The hallways were dark. She was tempted to look over the ledger with Suha but reading was only going to make her burgeoning headache worse, and give Suha a minute and she would probably be contributing to the problem.

"Anything revealing?"

[Nathalia]

The ledger, sadly, looks as though it was never touched, every page as blank and "new" as the last.
Though beautiful...the place smells...off; as though it were not housing fine Ace pelt carpets, or old mahogany clocks. Neither the fine wood, nor the expensive ink, or even the air of stale perfume could be caught.
Though Javaid does catch the scent of something.
Del!
Her faint scent seems to waft from upstairs, and upon closer inspection, a few leaves and a small dark trail of what is unmistakably blood slowly winds its way up the staircase.
It looks fresh.
The entire area is dark...though there are wall sconces, there are no torches in them, and no electric lights.
Thank goodness for the tall windows, letting in the shallow grey gloom from outside.
Still, careful, it's dark in there...

[Vyn]

Javaid moved hesitantly, blue eyes cautiously surveying every shadow of the room as he stepped further inside. For all that the place seemed lavish, there was nothing to suggest it was used... Now or ever. The smell, that he had briefly accounted to the mist still clinging to his fur, persisted even as he made his way deeper in.

He cleared his nares briefly before something new finally hit him.

The child?

"I think the child is here... Upstairs perhaps?" Here he found the stairwell, leading upward with hints of leaves and, unfortunately, blood. "Something has certainly been this way." He knelt briefly at the base of the stairs and collected one of the fallen leaves.

What could the plants -- or whatever was potentially controlling them -- ever want with the child?

When both women were ready, Javaid would take the lead up the stairs with his nose as their cautious guide. As they walked, however, Javaid asked over his shoulder: "Do you know much of the child? She seems to be of some interest to someone if she's been kidnapped twice now."