Winter Walk

[hot_mes]

Who: Law, Sanji, and Caedra [closed I guess]
What: a very long journey just to learn some stuff and not die on the way
Where: the frozen tundra and also a bunker
When: Feb 15-March ???
Warnings: nothing expected

Law might not have been very proactive forming a group this time, but really, the fewer the better in terms of supplies. The more people, the more they have to carry, the longer they have to stop to make a camp and prepare food, so on and so forth. But expecting it to take a good week or so, he couldn't wait too much longer before pulling his two companions aside and insisting they should get moving. Between his Devil Fruit, Caedra's magic (and lack of need for food), and Sanji's skills and preparation, he figures they'll be fine.

[ooc note: more prompts later depending on other game plots]

Comments

On the Road

[hot_mes]

With snow on the ground, now, camping is far more of a challenge, but there's no need to stop and make an igloo every night. Never mind that there's more night than day, now. Law insists on hiking until they are too cold and hungry and exhausted to go on, and only then do they get fire and a truly hot meal to keep their stamina up. At night, there's no two ways about it - there will be cuddling to share body heat. While hiking there's not much to do besides talk, so...there's that too.

[abyssalarcana]

A shame, really, that humans do get cold and hungry. If Law wasn't so helpful, and if Sanji wasn't such a treat to have waiting on her at all moments, Caedra would have gone alone. Oh, she feels the cold too once they've been hiking in it for days and days. She's very tolerant of cool temperatures, more than the two men are, but the long trek is further proof that the false gods stripped much from her innate abilities to avoid being seriously harmed by something as simple as ice or fire. So even Caedra is grateful for the chance to sit down, light a fire with a quick "Oitat" and a snap of her fingers, and defrost a little once Law and Sanji seem like they're struggling to keep going.

"If all this walking doesn't amount to anything, I'm keeping your souls as pets once I get home," she grumbles as she lies back in the snow.

[hot_mes]

Law makes a face while he delicately feeds the fire with what little burnable fuel they've managed to scrounge from under the snow. Mostly dry lichen, mmm. "Can't my soul just rest for once?" he grumbles back. "It's been through a lot, it deserves a nap."

[abyssalarcana]

It's a fire that won't last long, and it rarely burns for long or hot enough to really satisfy, but it's fire at least. If they really need to burn something she can manage that too. On a very wide and destructive scale, but sometimes that's a lot of fun.

"Sleep all you like. We don't need to head back to the city ever," she replies, smiling despite her apparent distaste for the situation. "I could do without ever seeing that place again."

[hot_mes]

"If you want to go home, you do," Law notes. "The Door is there. Getting control of that means being there long enough to figure it out."

He hasn't, yet. His observations during the experiments were useful but so far he hasn't made much of it. But he also noticed Fear talking about moving the city without the Door, which is frustrating. All things he's not sharing openly, just generally grumping about in a manner that could be blamed on the climate.

[abyssalarcana]

"Ugh, I know," she sighs. How annoying. Her hopes quite some time back of escaping the reach of the gods by walking away until their power over her faded were dashed when even doing that didn't let her planeshift home. That Door is absolutely the real problem.

"What if we just kill it," she suggests. "Get one of the godkillers from the Null and eliminate it. Maybe then it will stop chaining me here."

As if it was that easy. Yeah, sure, just go get something from the Null. No problem.

[hot_mes]

"That won't help," Law insists. "That'll just strand all of us here."

He doesn't know that for sure but it's his best educated guess. There, that should be enough fire to cook. They might only have that much of it, though, and then it's in for another cold night of huddling together. At least that works?

[abyssalarcana]

"It would make me feel better."

For like a minute, but the cold has made her more bitter than usual and it comes out in morbid sarcasm that isn't entirely sarcastic. At least with these two she doesn't need to pretend she's something she isn't.

What she is is cold, and the cooking fire isn't doing it. That's fine, she can sit up and snuggle up to Law. That part of this journey she has no complaints about.

[hot_mes]

"Yeah, yeah."

Likewise, Law isn't entertaining any grousing but also isn't telling anyone to knock it off, because he'll be the one griping in the cold next, he just knows it. It's easier and better for all of their collective sanity to just accept and brush off and move on to the next thing. Aha, yes, the next thing is sharing body heat, and for once he doesn't say a word, just drapes an arm aroun Caedra and pulls her against him. This is survival, not cuteness, and boy is it welcome. He shoots Sanji a look, hoping he doesn't throw a fit over it because Law's patience is not at all infinite.

[deviledlegs]

A fit? Oh no, Sanji is busy cooking up the protein that's going to keep them going for another damn day. He can't afford to throw a fit with precious food in his hands. Instead, he's sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire and glaring red-hot daggers at Law's lame knuckle tattoos. Death, indeed, Law. Death, indeed. His own temperature is hotter than the cooking fire's at this point.

He doesn't say a word, silent and seething over his steaming skillet.

[abyssalarcana]

"Boys," Caedra sighs as she snakes an arm around Law's waist. At least Sanji has settled down since his ridiculous outburst-panic attack-tantrum on the ship. The memory of it makes her chuckle even now.

"So! How much farther do you think we need to go? The mountains always look like they're right there, so close. But then they keep staying out of reach. Maybe they move?"

At home, that wouldn't actually be an outlandish proposition and she doesn't entirely mean it as a joke. What if they do move? Or more plausibly, what if it is they, the travelers, who are prevented from getting any closer? It wouldn't be the first time she had seen such an eternal horizon.

[hot_mes]

Yeah, he can feel that roiling heat from here. Sorry not sorry, and basically countering the dagger-look with a deadpan, unimpressed one of his own.

"No, they're just that far away," he sighs. Part of the reason none of his jaunts of a few days here and there have ever gotten anywhere near any bunkers. "It's very much like being at sea. You spot the island a long time before you reach it." But, he feels like he's due a little complaining. "I have no idea but it's going to take days more, I'll bet."

[abyssalarcana]

"Mm. Should have captured one of those wyverns and roped it to a sled. Imagine how much faster we could have gone!"

And how much more trouble they would have had going in a straight direction, in keeping it from trying to eat them, and so on. But how exciting it would have been, riding in style in a craft pulled by a lesser dragon! They're bright, they're trainable. Follow orders or have scales plucked and food withheld. It's simple, really.

In the Cavern

[hot_mes]

"This is what it was like before we started moving from world to world," Law notes for the other two after they get inside. The dark crawl through the metal tunnel wasn't a thrill but one quick Room later and they've dropped into a cave with its own miniature Hadriel, looking even more alien than the city they live in. There's so much to explore - the dwellings that certainly aren't made for humanoids, the temples with their tiny pools, and the giant structure in the middle. More on that later, though.

They just have to be wary of collapsing buildings and unstable ground. Law doesn't like the look of the water, that's a guaranteed bad day for him right there.

[abyssalarcana]

Once inside, Caedra impatiently paces forward several steps. Law had confirmed before their entry that it would be empty inside here, but it's disappointing to see that for herself. Oh, sure, it has strange little homes and other structures, but not a one of those nautilus-shaped beasts that might once have peopled this cavern. After what the last one she met did to her, she would gladly have eliminated a whole city of them out of spite.

"Empty. Probably for a long time, it doesn't even smell like living things. Did the gods ever say when all of this began? How long ago the Null started wiping out their fodder?" she asks. Not even the temples, if that's what those are, look damaged. But perhaps that makes good sense. The Null are efficient creatures. Why waste energy destroying terrain if they could simply kill what was alive?

The Map

[hot_mes]

The technology to create this map room is nothing like the rest of the city, and is naturally the most intriguing thing they've found so far. Touching the stars will be an adventure, but Law himself is also going to be busy taking photos to bring back to the nerds in the lab later.