OoC: By the way, I was talking to Drammie, and he said the spell was just leaves and petals floating and fluttering about. No branchs or full plants growing anywhere. You could say Leonna was tripping on rocks because she couldn’t see the ground well through all of it. Up to you.

BiC:
The passage they walked into was suddenly clear. Khaz smiled charmingly at Leonna, keeping his true thoughts and feelings off his face as usual. His heart sank with a thud at her words of praise. It wasn’t him who remembered all this. It was Takai who was the smart, clever, and immensely skilled one. He just lacked social skills.

“Thank you,” he replied, allowing himself to look down bashfully.

Lying was his only skill now.

“Great that all this stuff has gone now.”

“How strange … I sense an odd ward … I can’t locate it though, and do you hear those sounds? Someone is fighting in here,” Takai muttered in his head.

Well, there is someone else in here besides us … That doesn’t sound good. If he’s fighting so obviously, he’ll be dead shortly, right?

“So you do have some brains in this head of yours after all …”

Rontu turned his head to look at Khaz over his shoulder. One glare reminded Khaz what he was supposed to be doing—giving Rontu directions. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

Ren glared suspiciously at Khaz’s back. “How did you remember all this? I have never met anyone as airheaded or clumsy as you are.”

Khaz scowled but didn’t turn to show this to Ren.

“Well, maybe you assumed wrongly. Maybe my true potential comes out when in dire situations.” Well, it was sort of true in a weird way.

Ren snorted with disbelief but kept silent after that. He couldn’t afford to get into a full argument right now. Like Rontu said, he had to stay focused or their cover could be blown when they least expected it.

Rontu barely lifted his eyes up and saw the spiders. They hadn’t attacked him. It seemed they couldn’t tell he was a heretic. He was very relieved by this. He didn’t want to be caught with Leonna burning them down from every ceiling. A drow loyal to Lolth would never disrespect her in such a way. Speaking of …

“Don’t panic,” he turned his head to look over his shoulder at Leonna. “Do not burn them. They will not attack you when you are with me. Understand you must not under any circumstance panic. Even if one of us gets killed. Do—not—panic. That goes for the rest of you as well.”

“Okay everyone,” said Khaz. “Get into character; we’re coming up on some more guards.”

After a few more twists and turns and straight intersections they came upon the next door and check point. They paused just before the door. Rontu’s gold eyes now reflected the black panther’s. Cold and ruthless they bore at these guards by the door. One stepped forward to Khaz who held the bag.

“It is mandatory that we check your—” began the drow guard, reaching for the bag.

“Do you know who I am?” snarled the drow. His attitude somewhat different from how he usually behaved around the others. He always seemed rather cold, of course, but now he portrayed a vicious anger not usually displayed by him. Along with an air of superiority and disdain.

The guard froze at this question, his eyes taking in Rontu’s noble clothing. Yes, he was now very afraid that he had insulted the wrong person. “… Sir?”

“I’m Kelagh of Hlaund, are you insinuating that my slaves carry anything inappropriate while they travel with me?”

Without any signal, Ren stepped out from behind all of them. He used his thumb to push the hilt of his weapon up, showing part of the gleaming blade to the guard. Ren with his white hair did rather look like some half drow, born of rape and kept and raised as a guard and slave. Ren narrowed his eyes directly into the guard’s gaze. The drow’s eyes darted to this action and then quickly back at Rontu. If he dared to insult him by demanding to check Rontu’s bag, he knew he would be very much dead. And no one would have seen anything.

“No, my lord,” said the drow, but not too quickly to suggest a lie. “I did not realize it was you. You may pass …”

Rontu narrowed his eyes venomously at the drow, as would Kelagh have done hearing that someone did not recognize him. He did this only long enough to make the guard sweat a little, as if he were deciding whether or not to kill him for the mistake. And then he moved ahead, no longer caring to look at the guard. As Ren passed him he slowly placed his hilt back down, giving the guard a cool sneer.

To Leonna’s displeasure, they were once again in a room with leaves and petals floating about everywhere. Once the door closed behind them all, Khaz moved ahead of Rontu and then turned to stare seriously but still with that wide gaze that gave him his innocent demeanor.

“Okay, now these next few rooms are full of traps. Follow me and do exactly as I do exactly where I do it … or you’ll die and could possibly take some of us with you,” said Khaz, but with more warmth than Rontu had before. His eyes stared tensely at them all. Obviously not acting as if one of them dying was no big deal. “There’s no guards for a while. So it’s okay. And Kuldr, could you please take down your wards. They might trigger something in here.”

Ren narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Khaz yet again, but he didn’t say anything. Keeping his thoughts to himself, wondering how on earth Khaz knew the layout of the place so intimately or that Kuldr had placed wards around them. He also appeared unworried about all the obscuring leaves and petals that were there again.

The Hylian turned and began to lead them forward through the maze of danger and safety. He moved very slowly for all of them, everyone in a single-file line. Each person passed the mimic of Khaz’s movements down the line. When he ducked, they ducked. He guided them through a strange swerving and twisting path. He walked around a large stone and then grasped an archway that led into the next part of the maze. He flung himself forward onto the other side.

He was looking down at his feet when he landed. His feet stopped just short of landing on a hand of black faded skin. His eyes followed the hand farther, and through the leaves and petals to the rest of the body of the drow that laid directly at his feet. The man’s insides hung from a hook in the wall. The smell forced itself into Khaz’s nostrils. His eyes slowly went to the drow’s face, which was smiling dreamily at him.

Expression full of bliss.

Khaz felt as if his insides had vaporized. Felt as if his feet plummeted through the floor and that he was falling. He wanted to look away so bad but he felt as if his eyes were glued to the man’s face, which was missing part of his cheek and an eye. He felt Takai force his eyes away from the face but at the rest of the body, studying each part in detail.

No

No

No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no, was all he could think. He didn’t even realize he was saying that out loud, nor did he notice his companions dropping next to him.

“No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no …”

But Takai forced him to kneel down, lowering himself to look more closely at it all. He had to see it all. If he were to understand the person who did this he must look, which meant Khaz had to look with him. At the moment they shared the same eyes. He could not take Khaz over completely or the magic users with them would feel the change in aura that was much too drastic to ignore.

It must have been done by the same intruder. He must have made it to the crystal chamber from here, for they were headed the same way. But why …? This work it didn’t feel as if it were done for pleasure …

While Takai mulled this over, Khaz’s senses were screaming. His whole body tingled with shock was if he had been electrocuted. His mind went back to places, memories he didn’t want to go to. He went back to Hyrule Castle, down into their dungeons where the drow who had taken control of the land had fashioned a torture chamber. The room absolutely reeked of rot; for not far away, in the corner was a square hole in the ground where they dropped the corpses of those they were finished with.

He remembered how he vomited when they first pulled him into the room with Blaze, the newly crowned Gerudo king, next to him. He couldn’t move anything below his neck. Just his head and eyes. They had injected something into him that made the rest of his body disturbingly numb.

They chained his hands above him to the wall, even though he was drugged and couldn’t move them. They hung Blaze up by his hands to the ceiling, were he dangled for hours. They had not drugged him though. It was in there together, facing death that the two finally faced each other honestly for the first time in four years.

He remembered looking up at Blaze’s hanging form as he told him how Sori had tortured and threatened him with the death of his family if didn’t keep the truth about Leita. He had known what his uncle had been doing to her for three months before Khaz walked into his office and found them. And that he had not avoided Khaz after Sori’s death because he believed he was insane, but because he couldn’t look him in the face anymore after what he had not done. He couldn’t bear to tell him the truth for fear that he would hate him for being such a coward and allowing Leita to suffer all that time. He said it was easier for Khaz to hate him for something that was not true.

But their reunion was quickly ruined. Hyde Kushin and Dito Caminar came into the room. And then all he dared to remember was Blaze’s scream. All the while trying to hold onto the promise he had made Blaze before they came. That no matter what they did to him, no matter how much he screamed and wailed. No matter what, he was not to tell them anything about the Rebellion’s plans. To allow Blaze to make up for not being brave all those years ago.

He remembered Blaze naked and strapped to a table. His head forced to the side as they slowly tipped a beaker of unknown liquid onto his already heavily beaten face. His face had been so mashed up, swollen, and bleeding it was no longer recognizable. When the fluid touched his face, his skin sizzled and bubbles of blood started to form, melting him away.

He remembered the abnormally short dark elf, Kushin, and his bone-white mask that covered one side of his face. The eye on that side was completely ink black, no whites at all and no colored irises. He remembered when Blaze’s hand escaped his strap. It flung up in his agony and knocked the mask off the drow’s face. The whole right side of the drow’s body looked as if someone had poured the same liquid all down it. His flesh was twisted and oddly smooth. No hair grew on that side of his skull.

He remembered Blaze screaming.

Screaming.

Screaming.

Screaming.

And before he knew it he was screaming too.

“Ahhhhhhh-ahhhhhhhh!” The noise erupted from his throat and mouth. Somewhat cracked in between, full of as much pain as there was horror. His hands clutched his head, fingers digging into his scalp. Tears streaked down his face.

It echoed all around them and then everything seemed so quiet. He stared at the drow’s body before him, and then finally jerked himself from Takai’s control. He whipped to the side, still on his knees. His palms hit against the floor as he leaned forward and puked. His stomach clenching, his body tightening abruptly as it forced the jerky, bread, and water from earlier out his mouth.

OoC: Phew … okay. Cue character reactions!