RP:Those Damned Cottingham Brothers

Summary: After being given some faulty information, Magik and Rinn are set up by a rival family, the Cottinghams. Trapped in a crypt for days, things look bleak until Quintessa and Odranos discover them during a tour of the Black Library. How does Rinn thank them? With a bottle to the face. She promises to make up for that with a favor, which Quintessa already plans on using soon. Much foreshadowing.

This is a Mage's Guild RP.

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

Mausoleum

This room is circular with an arched doorways leading out north and south The doorways are grime arches with skulls indented into the stonework doomed to an eternity of starring into the gloom are their empty eyes. Many ancient stone coffins are sealed within the walls, each of which has a name and a date of death etched into the damp cold, grey stone. The room is almost pitching black and it is impossible to make out what the names are in the gloom. The only sounds that can be heard are your own footsteps upon the granite floor and the occasional drip of water from the decayed ceiling into fetid pools upon the floor. Multitudes of thick ancient spider webs hang from the ceiling as this area is not disturbed very often, save for the occasional visit from a necromancer, not the tidies of guests, many of them have left coffins open and the floor is littered in places with grimy bones.

Rinn scanned over the mausoleum. Her eyes hadn't adjusted from the sunlight to this darkness and she blinked hard, 'any minute now' she thought. Finally she was in working order, "We need to find which one isn't covered in dust." She instructed, "All I know is there's a fresh one down here." Her informant didn't give her much more then that. So she would start at one end and work her way around the perimeter running her fingers along all the surfaces along the way.

Magik was stripped from all of his armor, wearing simple black shadowed wraps to maintain a level of quiet as they lurked about. His quiver and bow were attached securely to his back as he moved about the mausoleum quietly, searching the opposite direction of Rinn. He held a glowing fist just above the various tombs as he searched for the freshest one, "Nothing yet, love. This is the rignt tomb, yeah?" He trusted her, but was just making for conversation.

Rinn grumbled under her breath as she reflected upon her interaction with the shady looking fella she paid for this information, "Better be. Otherwise I'll be getting my money back." Rinn cracked her knuckles which echoed through the home of the dead. Rinn continued to weave through the tomb and continued to come up short, "Any luck on your end?" She asked with frustration.

Magik, normally a patient elf, is starting to become a little aggravated, "Nope." He finished searching the last few tombs on his end before returning to the center of the room. Not caring about drawing any potential attention to themselves his form bursts into flames to reveal something they may have missed, "One more quick gander, love. I don't want it to get too hot in here."

Rinn finally found a freshish tomb the door easy to shove through, "Oh in here maybe?" Rinn full entered the small room that housed a sarcophagus, "Alright lets see what's behind door number two." If and when Magik would follow Rinn in, the light behind them would be snuffed out by the door being sealed behind them. Rinn pivoted on her heels and moved to start kicking at the stone slate.

Magik was quick to follow his wife into the tomb. The mausoleum darkens as he heads into the tomb behind her to search for any goodies. "Here we are.." As the sound of the door is quickly sealed behind them, stone on stone scraping against one another, he deeply sighs and closes his eyes, "Did..?" Rinn's kicks confirmed his suspicions. He snaps around and tries pushing all of his weight into the slab to try and atleast budge the stone.

Rinn had a foul mouth and now wasn't the time to be shy, her lips parted and filth flowed, "That mother trucking, son of a bitch. When I get out of here I'm going to gut that bastard like the swine he is." Rinn would continue to kick for a good solid five minutes, her mouth also working over time. "I bet you it's those Cottingham brothers. I had a scuffle with them some months back..." She muttered now moving to body slam against the cold stone, "When I find that dirty rat I'm going to torture the shyte out him." And she would, just for her own kicks. Finally her temper calmed ever so slightly. "How about some light love." Her tone was still aggravated though it was at the situation not her husband.

Magik strained as he got lower, putting his shoulder into the slab, feet losing grip as he puts everything he has into trying to push the blockade down. Eventually he would take a break, turning around to lean against the stone then slowly sliding down to his rump. He has a look of defeat as he looks to his wife. He holds his hand out to her, forming a small fireball in the palm of his hand just bright enough to light the room, "Someone's absolutely going to die for this."

Rinn rolled herself a cigarette and lit it from the ball of fire. Sure she needed a smoke but she was also checking for cracks to start chipping away at, even though it would be a mission, "This isn't the first time this has happened." She admitted as she climb behind the upright coffin still sweeping the place meticulously. When the air stayed still she'd quickly snuff it out. "Bollocks."

Magik huffed, "Is there atleast anything in here worth keeping when we get out?" The Lyastri pulls a knee to his chest, keeping the other stretched out infront of him as he glances about the room. He was also trying to think of a way out involving his own abilities while also keeping Rinn from harm.

Rinn rummaged through the tiny tomb only to find it had already been picked through, "Son of a bitch." She said again as dread washed over. They would only have so much time before all their oxygen would be used up. With a pout she slumped beside her husband to rest her head upon his shoulder. "We're screwed."

Magik closed his hand, darkening the room completely as Rinn sat against him, "The good news is that I don't need to breathe for now." He draped an arm over her, pulling his wife closer, "Same grave, baby. I just didn't think it would be someone else's." The Lyastri's eyes provided just enough light for the couple to just barely make each other out in the darkness. With that, he leaned just a tad to peck her forehead.

Rinn sat in verbal silence though her mind was going a thousand miles a minute. Someone was in for a world of hurt. At least she had Magik. Rinn dipped into her pocket and fished out a flask of rum that she practically inhaled. "Same grave." She was bitter, rarely was she caught with her pants down and it did a number on her ego. After one last pull she'd hand over the vessel to her husband.

Magik took a quick sip from the flask before handing it back, "Thank ya." The longer he stewed on this situation the more angry he became but didn't let that reflect on the outside. He opened his mouth to speak but quickly thought otherwise. By now, he had come up with at least one solid idea on how to get them out but he needed to think on it some more.

2 days later

Magik is seated against the giant slab blocking the married couple from the outside world. To any outsider, the stone blocking an entrance to a special tomb inside the mausoleum would look highly out of place. A sloppy effort, but it got the job done. The Lyastri is slowly tapping a rock against the blockade behind him out of boredom and a slight hope that someone in passing would hear the noise. Holding his other hand out, a small flame flickers from his fingertips to light the small room just a tad, "Are you awake, love?" Silence. The flames fade as he stands in the darkness, grabbing his bow on the way up. Facing the slab, he presses a hand to it before swinging his bow at the stone a few times out of frustration. He finally yields to the blockade, tossing his bow to the side, plopping back to the ground.

Quintessa looks around the expanse of the mausoleum, not far from where Magik had stopped tapping his bow moments before. Something was off, but the changeling couldn't quite put her finger on it. She'd ventured back this far plenty of times to practice reanimation, sometimes leaving entire groups of undead behind for some unknown future use. The place felt a little bit more... disturbed. Quintessa looks back at Odhranos, her lips pulled into a straight line. "You can't see in here, can you?" Without needing an answer the hex blade turns back to the darkness and lifts her hand before saying the words to her spell. "Bydded goleuni." And all around the room large braziers set aflame, illuminating the area for the human. "I think somebody unauthorized has been back here... I hope they realize that the Necromancer's Guild occasionally places traps for intruders." Quintessa smirks back at Odhranos. "No worries though, I have access to the enchantments back here. We shouldn't be in any danger."

Odhranos pauses when the slight vibrations of Magik's tapping buzz through the stone beneath his feet, but by that point, they are so faint that as far as Odhranos can make out, they could have been made by any creature. "I can't see conventionally, no. But I can improvise. If you'll excuse me taking my shoes off." Odhranos crouches to undo his laces, pulling one pointed leather shoe off before the other, revealing a rather garish pair of red socks, which are swiftly removed and stuffed down into the shoes. Odhranos ties the laces to his waistband and stands again, tapping his now bare feet against the cold stone floor. "Much clearer." Odhranos murmurs, closing his eyes and abandoning the world of light and colour in favour of the silver and black world of blindsight. Odhranos raises his foot and slams his heel into the flagstone once, twice, three times.To his eyes, each kick send out a pulse of light, which swept through the ground ahead of him, slowing down through softer materials like earth and soil, speeding up through harder rock. The mausoleum lit up with the pulses of silver, as they swept through the space. Odhranos cast about, curiously, before turning his head suddenly to face the out of place stone that blocked one of the tomb entrances. He turned to face Quintessa, not opening his eyes, but he motioned in the direction of the tomb. "Two bodies, still animated enough to appear lively. Whether they are alive or undead, I can't tell." Odhranos whispered to Quintessa, unsure of how his voice might travel if he spoke normally.

Magik coincidentally started banging the back of his head against the slab in time with Odhranos' stomps. "Come on, Magikrios. Think." He would have caught onto the vibrations were he not distracted with trying to find a way out. "Rinn.." he calmly called out again. Probably sleeping. She was a hard one to kill, being locked in here wouldn't do her in. As he finally sat still while he began brainstorming, he picked up on a hushed voice. His fiery eyes shoot open, providing the room with just a faint light. Reaching to his side, he very carefully and quietly grabs his bow to place in his lap. His eyes remain forward, searching for any movement from his wife.

Rinn was fully awake by now, and definitely more sober. "This blows." Magik was the only saving grace of being stuck in the tomb and she was thankful he had come along; she wouldn't think on the alternative reality. With a loud yawn she'd push to her feet, it sounded as if all the bones in her body cracked on the way upright. Stilling holding her sleeping/fighting/life's motivation juice in her hand she swish it around to gauge what was left. Less than satisfied she downed the remains and joined her husband at tapping away on the stone, hers came with a sharp glass made rhythm that she idly danced to out of boredom, hopefully the drumming would give sign of something more than just a restless corpse awaiting behind door number three. The sound of life on the other side caught her attention and she gave Magik one of those murderous expressions, "Reckon they're seeing if we're dead yet?" She whispered implying the slippery bastard brothers that put the duo in this predicament. As soon as the door would open, cause eventfully it would, Rinn would hurl her glass bottle and start swinging her shovel blindly while cursing their whore of a mother. The grave-robber was extra foul under the circumstances.

Quintessa watches with curiosity as the terramancer removes his shoes to feel the vibrations in the stone of the vast network of tombs. "Ah, good use of tremorsense," says the changeling, at least understanding on a theoretical level how the magic he was using worked. Quintessa was too flighty and too impudent to cast terramancy correctly herself. At the human's report that there were two moving bodies trapped behind the wall, the changeling frowns warily. She did not come dressed for combat- she didn't even bring her sword! "Only two?" Quintessa reaches down to draw a stiletto dagger from the thigh sheath under her skirt, "I really hope they're not hostile..." The changeling ducks her head into the doorway the Odhranos had identified held two captives. "Yep, they triggered one of the slabs. Normally we let intruders stave to death to use for more undead, but I guess today is their lucky day." Quintessa steps back, searching for a lever of some kind that would reset the trap.After a moment the young necromancer finds a series of chains and pulls them one by one until the mechanisms in the walls and floor rumble and slowly slide the slab back in place, ready to trap another group of would-be grave robbers. To Quintessa's surprise, when she looks up to see who they've caught she gets a face full of bottle. "Sonovabitch!" she yells, holding her bleeding nose with her free hand as she stumbles backwards. Hopefully Rinn wouldn't follow up with that shovel she was wielding.

Odhranos tilts his head to the side and frowns quizzically. "I don't know if you've buried any bards here recently, because whatever is in there seems to be trying to communicate with primitive music." Odhranos shuffles his feet to get a better stance, before raising his heel high, then dropping it with a fierce kick against the stone. A brightly glowing wave blasted out from the impact and swept through the stone wall, even going so far as to illuminate two sets of legs beyond the wall before the vibrations were diffused. "Huh, well, whatever it is, they certainly seem in pretty good control of their limbs. I'd rule out minor undead, unless someone with a particular talent for life-like animation has been around recently." Odhranos watches Quintessa's silver bootprints tracking backwards, before a sudden cacophony of rumbling and grinding half-blinds the mage. As he opens his eyes, his terrasense briefly blinking out, Odhranos witnesses Quintessa stumbling backwards, clutching her face, while a bottle bounces away to the side. In an instinctive reaction, Odhranos' hand forms a claw,which he pushes forward. A thick gout of sand erupts from the golden cage at his hip, which he channels into the now open entrance, greeting whatever was inside with a torrent of sand. Once he had mostly filled the cavity beyond, Odhranos clenched his fist, and the sand would solidify, trapping and immobilising whatever was inside in a thick mass of sandstone.

Magik had hopped to his feet as Rinn neared, turning to face the barricade once more, "At this point, I don't care who it is." As Quintessa cries out at Rinn's perfectly thrown bottle, Magik's plan of attack quickly changes. He recognized that voice. The shadows created by the now lit mausoleum indicate something headed towards the couple. The Lyastri takes a step forward, throwing his hand into the air while reaching for the back of Rinn's collar with the other. A fiery black pillar forms infront of Rinn before she can fully exit the tomb. The intense heat throws most of the sand into the air and melts the rest to glass immediately. "It's Magik and Rinn!" the elf exclaims, his voice booming throughout the area. As the sand solidifies away from the formerly trapped couple, Magik lowers his hand and releases his wife.

Rinn had never met this sandman and for all she knew he was in cahoots with competition, "Oh back to finish the job are you?!" She howled like a mad woman. She was mad in-fact, furious, also had been sitting in a tiny tomb that doubled as her toilet; she was far from the right state of mind. Not that much changed if you caught Rinn on a good day. Poor Quintessa took one to the face, would Rinn feel bad about? Not in this moment. Rinn lifted her shovel high with the shovel ready for dramatic wack-a-mole motions. "You're gonna die!" She shouted as her husband grabbed her clothing, "Cut the shyte!" She managed over her shoulder still in blind delirious rage. Eventually She'd calm just enough to lower her spade, "Nice catch there, kiddo." Rinn's greeting to the changeling came with a crooked grin and extra long wink.

Quintessa still has tears in her eyes when she hears Magik's and Rinn's voice but she can still make out the blurry pair behind the glass and sand. When Rinn comments on Quintessa's catch she laughs sarcastically as she raises up her dagger as if she's going to throw it at her. "I should see how well you catch this." The necromancer says before she wipes the blood from her nose onto her dress. "You two are lucky it's me who found you back here and not one of the elders." Her dagger is returned to her sheath as she pinches the bridge of her nose, wincing as she does so. "How'd you get trapped anyway? I thought you were supposed to be good at this kind of thing." Quintessa teases Rinn back with a crooked grin of her own.

Odhranos is winding up for a second volley when Magik shouts from inside the tomb. His hesitation with a follow up blast was almost glossed over by Rinn's incensed howl, but just as quickly, the shrieking tomb-raider did a full 180, now seemingly on friendly enough terms with Quintessa to be bantering, post-bottle. Odhranos drops his hands and the arc of sand rearing up behind him sinks and hisses back into the golden cage again. Odhranos turns to Quintessa, all the while keeping an eye on the tomb entrance for when the two mystery inmates emerged. "Are you alright? Let me take a look." Odhranos crouches beside the spellblade, whisking a handkerchief from his pocket and passing it across. Now close enough to whisper without being immediately heard, Odhranos flicks Quintessa a questioning glance. "Friends? Or are you stalling?" He asks, turning on the ball of his foot to look into the dark entrance of the tomb, where his sand was slowly retreating and collecting itself back up again.

Rinn was exhausted, her blood shot eyes told all. She just wanted a bottle of rum in the bath with her husband and to get some decent sleep. However she would put on a little longer and suffer through. She watched as the human male was so quick to show concern over Tessa, if Rinn wasn't so drain she would have laughed and even point a finger. He seemed to care but he also seemed clueless as to who he was running around with, the changling had taken far worse from the grave-robber; plus she was one tough little shyte. As for the whispers about stalling, Odhranos was lucky Rinn didn't hear. She'd give the pair a once over then look to Magik quizzically. He would shake his head at his wife and drape an arm around her shoulders as if he could read her thoughts. Magik shared his own whisper with his wife then Rinn would be quick to excuse them, "Uh, yeah. Look, thanks and all. I own you one." Rinn lifted a single finger, "Only one." There would be a second wink to down play how much she hated any obligations to anyone.The cracking of glass under the couples boots sounded their exit. Magik would obviously thank Tessa in a friendlier manner and mention something about seeing her at the HQ or something dumb Magik shyte.

Quintessa moves her hand to give Odhranos a better look at her nose, the slow dripping of blood still trickling from the tip. "I'm fine," she informs, and from the looks of things it wasn't broken. It wouldn't be the first time even if it was. Mismatched eyes flicker over to Rinn and Magik and she shrugs. "Yeah, they're friends I guess." She starts to snicker but it hurts her face too much, "Ugh... And besides, that's Magikrios Lyastri, he's an Auxilia Veneficus. So in a way he's both of our friends. The bottle-thrower is his wife." Quintessa wants to snicker again. "Magik is the pyromancer but Rinn in the one who is all fire, how's that work?" The crunching of glass under the couple's feet cause the girl to peer over, giving a knowing nod to Rinn. "Good, I might be calling in that favor soon than you think. Fair warning."With that she gives them a half-hearted salute and shifts her attention back to the Provost. "We should get going soon. I bet they took something and I don't want to get blamed for it."

Odhranos tips Quintessa's chin back gently to inspect the damage, fearing the worst, given that the crunch when that bottle landed had sounded ungodly, but her diagnosis was sound. "Hmm. You're right. Probably suffered worse in duels, I'd wager." Odhranos takes a step back, holding the hankerchief out for Quintessa to stem any excess blood. The last vestige of sand wavers before hoovering itself up off the ground and returning into the cage. Odhranos half turns to following the disappearing backs of Rinn and Magik as they leave, and the terramancer deflates slightly as the adrenaline leaves him. "I thought the name rang a bell. Not exactly the first impression I would have hoped for. But still, hopefully I'll encounter him around the Guild at some point and properly make his acquaintance. His wife…" Odhranos' voice trailed off, but the face he made conveyed a wordless amount of yikes. Once they have left, Odhranos straightens and brushes the grave mould off his robes. "Right. Shoes, then I'm good to go." As he pulls his footwear back on, Odhranos glances sidelong at the spellblade. "Remind me to return to Vailkrin, so you can show me what you were going to before. I'm quite curious about this "sigil". I feel like it might prove a useful step forward for my research."