[That's even more unexpected grit in him, even drawn out as he is to the trembling edge of hysterical collapse. There is a great deal people are capable of at that edge, she's found; it's a place she has taught herself to thrive in.
It's not one she has to occupy here. The ghosts come as they are called, or whatever these are that amount to ghosts. There is something unclean to these spirits, a trailing aftertaste of a coil that goes on and on forever, up and up and down again, air that echoes with the stilled scream of endless time. There is something unstuck to this place that haunts her periphery more dreadfully than any ravenous unanchored soul.
Undead fingers scrabble at the seams of her. She shrugs them off like spiderwebs. What burns in her burns too bright and too hot, even now, to be grasped at and pried by any feeble, unspun thing.
Her ears have popped by the time they reach the top. Blood trickles from both that almost matches the color of the blood on the walls, but this she renders inert, bubbling like crocodile scales before the spirits can suckle at its thalergy. Where Mike's eyes fix on the lighter, hers fix on the torch, and she plucks it up with as much regard for the hand holding it as she might have for a shelf she lifted it from.]
We're nearly finished. [She pads to him with more relief than she likes, holding out the torch with the expectation he will light it, which it more credit than she would have given him before the climb.] Let's see if this appeases them, shall we? Or I'll tear this horrid thing down to the stones, and see how you all like that.
[That last, peevish threat is not for Mike, but something she looks at past him, her nose wrinkled in distaste. There would be nothing to see if he turned to look.]
cw: blood, ear trauma
It's not one she has to occupy here. The ghosts come as they are called, or whatever these are that amount to ghosts. There is something unclean to these spirits, a trailing aftertaste of a coil that goes on and on forever, up and up and down again, air that echoes with the stilled scream of endless time. There is something unstuck to this place that haunts her periphery more dreadfully than any ravenous unanchored soul.
Undead fingers scrabble at the seams of her. She shrugs them off like spiderwebs. What burns in her burns too bright and too hot, even now, to be grasped at and pried by any feeble, unspun thing.
Her ears have popped by the time they reach the top. Blood trickles from both that almost matches the color of the blood on the walls, but this she renders inert, bubbling like crocodile scales before the spirits can suckle at its thalergy. Where Mike's eyes fix on the lighter, hers fix on the torch, and she plucks it up with as much regard for the hand holding it as she might have for a shelf she lifted it from.]
We're nearly finished. [She pads to him with more relief than she likes, holding out the torch with the expectation he will light it, which it more credit than she would have given him before the climb.] Let's see if this appeases them, shall we? Or I'll tear this horrid thing down to the stones, and see how you all like that.
[That last, peevish threat is not for Mike, but something she looks at past him, her nose wrinkled in distaste. There would be nothing to see if he turned to look.]