***
I just realized I never truly gave physical descriptions of Jass, Bonehead, Esmerelda, and Sam. So here they are:
Jass has brown hair that reaches her shoulder blades, brown eyes, olive-colored skin, and wears light leather armor. She always has her glaive either in her hands or on her back.
Bonehead is a skeleton, an alchemist skeleton, no eyes, that wears an alchemist's robes and a large satchel on his hip, and occasionally will wear caps instead of his robe's hood, but never a traditional wizard's cap, as he believes only quacks wear them.
Esmerelda has Alice-styled hair that is black, green eyes, wears a mage's robes, and has fairly pale skin. She has an outwardly ditzy-like appearance.
Sam has short blonde hair, blue eyes, wears a mage's robes, has slightly tanned pale skin, and either has a tome and/or a wand on hand(s).
***
Deacon knelt in the relative relief as the only sounds around him were the sounds of his own ragged breathing and the occasional hacking cough as he spat out solidified, congealed neurotoxin that clung stubbornly to his saliva and not the hissing of more gas being pumped into a room.
Slowly, he pushed himself up from one knee and back onto both his feet.
He stared back at the wall of slime that felt like molasses sealing the doorway he'd just entered from and was holding back the noxious black neurotoxin gas, and preventing it from getting into where he was right now.
His right hand reached out and gently touched the barrier. It was hot, jiggly, and just a tad sticky – like touching some sort of crossbreed between a hot water bottle and a slime.
He dragged his fingers across its surface, watching as small ripples bloomed from the contact before fading. "What the hell is this?" he murmured.
This stuff… it stopped the neurotoxin gas entirely. Yet it let him pass through. There wasn't a hint of poison in the air now, and his lungs were already beginning to feel lighter on account of the Neurotoxin Poison Resistance Potion raising the upper limits of his resistance against neurotoxins and using the added antibodies to attack said neurotoxin.
Someway somehow, this barrier filtered him out, but kept the gas at bay.
He took a step back, arms crossed.
"If Bonehead could break this thing down, analyze it…" he muttered to himself, lips curling in thought. "We could use this and put this around where he'd set up his lab so he can experiment with more toxic poisons and potions."
The thought of dragging a full sample back to base was tempting. Bonehead would definitely lose his mind over it and do his best to replicate it with his alchemy.
And if Bonehead couldn't figure out how to replicate it, then one of the alchemists he knows can or might even recognize it.
But...
He glanced over his shoulder again.
"I don't know if carving a bit of it would be a good idea," he murmured. "I could… definitely would be weakening the barrier that's blocking the neurotoxin gas from coming through."
His hand hovered near one of his daggers, debating.
If he triggered something and the gas flooded in anyway, he could always outrun it, and eventually, a door would fall from the ceiling and block both his path and the gas from reaching him.
"If I do plan on taking it, I probably should learn where I'll need to go…" Deacon muttered as he turned back around and stared at the dead end that was now in front of him. "Of course…"
Deacon exhaled slowly and tilted his head back to get a better look at the top.
Then a shadow moved above.
"Wait a second…"
A familiar head leaned over the edge, upside-down.
"I thought I heard your voice!" Sam shouted down, grinning from ear to ear.
Deacon blinked up at him. "You got any rope?"
Sam's eyes flickered to the side for a moment, letting a pregnant pause go between them. "… No…"
"Pass the rope, Sam," Deacon sighed. "I know there is a rope by you."
"There is no rope, Deke," Sam said as his right shoulder lowered for a few seconds, and a light scraping noise could be heard. "I think you just have to go horizontal and shimmy your way up here."
"Fuck you, Sam, pass the rope!" Deacon shouted.
"Fuck me?" Sam repeated before immediately shouting back. "Fuck you!"
"Fuck me? Me? Fuck you!" Deacon shouted. "Drop the rope!"
"Big talk for a little guy! What are you gonna do about it?" Sam shouted. "Climb up here?"
"We're the same fucking height!" Deacon shouted back, only for his eyes to start twitching when Sam raised his right arm and shook the end of a braided vine.
"Why you!" Deacon shouted as he rifled through his Spatial Sling Bag and pulled out an empty soda can that he had finished many days ago, and quickly squished it into an aluminum ball before tossing it into the air.
Said aluminum ball shot through the air, crossing the 20-meter distance between Deacon and Sam within less than a second and smacked the gloating Sam in his forehead, causing him to drop the end of the rope and letting gravity take hold of it.
Deacon's smirk only lasted a brief moment before the large coil of rope, which was much heavier than the small aluminum ball, almost landed atop of him if he hadn't taken two steps back and nearly fallen back into the gelatinous object blocking the gas from exiting the massive chamber behind him.
"Ah… You asshole," Sam groaned as he rubbed his head and saw that the vine rope was still tied to the metal ground hook beside him. "… You pigheaded brute, of course, you use violence when you lose an argument."
"We didn't even argue!" Deacon shouted back, and he unsheathed his dagger and brought it to cut out a decent, brick-sized chunk of gelatinous jelly that was holding back the gas before placing it in his Spatial Sling Bag and sheathing his dagger, and moving to grab hold of the rope. "You were being a prat."
"…I'll show you who's a prat," Sam muttered as he quickly cast Water Ball and dropped it atop Deacon's head as he was quickly scaling the wall.
The Water Ball splashed harmlessly atop Deacon's head but soaked his head entirely and drenched his cloak and back.
Deacon froze halfway up the wall, water dripping from his now-damp hair and into his leather armor.
Deacon slowly looked up, eyes narrowed, "you bastard," he growled just before he activated his innate skill, Undying Flame, causing the water that drenched him to dry up in a matter of a few seconds due to the sheer heat radiating off of him.
Sam, still lounging lazily near the lip of the drop, raised both hands in mock innocence, giving Deacon plain view of his smirk. "What? You looked hot. I was helping you cool down before you do something."
"You want to see what help is?" Deacon hissed, and with a burst of mana into his limbs, he quickly scaled himself up the rope with incredible speed, and Sam barely had time to scramble back before Deacon vaulted over the edge, landing in a low crouch. "I'll show you how helpful my fists are to your face."
Sam grinned, backing up as Deacon advanced, every step leaving a wet footprint behind. "Hey now, let's be reasonable people."
Deacon lunged at Sam.
Sam let out a yelp as Deacon tackled him to the ground, the two rolling across the cold stone floor in a tangle of flying fists and curses.
"Ow, dammit, stop kneeing me in the ribs, you bastard!" Sam hissed as he tried to wriggle free.
"Stop casting Water Ball on my head when I'm climbing like a jackass, and maybe I wouldn't need to!" Deacon growled, shoving a forearm against Sam's chest and pinning him down.
Sam grunted, trying to shove him off. "I was cooling you down!"
"I'll show you cool!" Deacon snapped as he quickly cast his own Water Ball and let it fall onto Sam's face.
"Gl- Aghk, you prat!" Sam flailed, finally managing to twist his body and break free, both of them stumbling to their feet and glaring at one another like angry cats.
They both stood there, catching their breath, before Sam adjusted his robes, evaporating the water on them with a quick cleansing spell and muttered, "System, did you just shove everything into your Strength stat?" while rubbing his forehead.
"I can say the same about your Int stat," Deacon replied back, rubbing the top of his head. "My head still feels a bit sore from that Water Ball."
Both Sam and Deacon looked at each other in silence for a second before breaking into smirks and fist-bumping each other.
Deacon's eyes swept across the area around them before turning around slowly in a full circle, trying to see where he'd just climbed out from, but only found four closed stone brick walls.
"…Sam," Deacon said carefully. "Where's the way back?"
Sam blinked. "Ah, fuck, right. For some reason, the walls we come from just close behind us when we enter a new area."
"I was stuck in this room for like four hours until one of these walls opened and I could hear you," Sam said, gesturing wildly to the walls around them. "Hopefully, since you're here, another wall opens; else we wait for someone else to finish whatever trial they had."
"Oh, you also had to do a trial?" Deacon asked. "I had to do a poison, puzzle, obstacle thing. What about you?"
"Damn, that sounds cool," Sam said while popping his spine. "I just had to kill a bunch of snakes that fell in the room I was in."
"Oh, how did you deal with that?" Deacon asked, taking back out his unfinished soda that was still chilled from his Spatial Sling Bag.
"Used a wind barrier spell to get them off of me, then I just created a stone pillar to raise me up and just barraged them with manabolts until they all died. It was fairly simple," Sam shrugged. "Yours sounds a lot more interesting than just shooting a bunch of level 6 snakes with manabolts on–"
Sam stopped mid-way through his sentence as a low rumbling sounded behind them, causing the both of them to turn and face said wall, and see it split down the middle and begin to push apart.
As the two halves of the walls were splitting apart, a strong scent of rust and dried blood smacked them in the face just as the wall parted, sliding smoothly into the sides like an opening vault, and beyond it was another chamber, dimly lit by flickering green torches.
And within that room was–
"Is that… a prison?" Sam asked, stepping forward slowly.
"What the actual fuck…" he muttered under his breath, lowering the half-finished soda can and stuffing it back into his Spatial Sling Bag. Even the chilled soda couldn't calm the sour bile rising in his throat; in fact, it made it worse.
The chamber in front of them stretched out before them, the flickering green torchlight casting sickly shadows against the blackened stone walls – revealing itself to be some sort of prison-torture chamber.
Sam moved forward cautiously, his hand already glowing faintly with mana, a quick casting spell was at the ready, just in case a fight was about to start.
"What the hell is this place…" he muttered as he took in the thousands of cells that lined the moldy-stone brick walls.
The first cell to their right contained a pile of bones loosely clothed in scraps of tattered fabric, half-slumped against the corner as though they'd been trying to claw their way out before collapsing. Dried blood caked the inside of the cell door in ragged smears and handprints.
The second cell was worse.
A man, or what remained of one, was still alive.
The thing's body was flayed from his shoulders down to his feet, muscle and sinew exposed like some grotesque life-sized, rotting human anatomy doll. Its lips were stitched shut with black twine, and while it writhed on the cold floor, it was letting out a nasal, agonized moan.
"Shit… how the hell is he still alive?" Sam whispered to Deacon, disgust marring his face. "Why do they look more fucked up than zombies?"
Deacon moved closer, eyes narrowing. "That's... He shouldn't even be conscious with that much tissue damage…. Why isn't he bleeding?"
One cell had a woman who had long since bled out, her body slumped in a puddle of black, half-dried gore, her nails all torn off as though she'd been scratching at something for days. Another had two corpses, their flesh peeled in mirror images, each with limbs missing in a mirrored pattern.
Sam turned pale. "What the actual hell is this place?"
Deacon didn't answer immediately. His gaze was locked on a nearby cell where a moaning figure sat upright. Chains were bolted into the figure's spine, metal rods hammered through their back and shoulders, pinning them into place. Their eyes, wide and bloodshot, tracked the two of them with eerie clarity.