LtCmdr Jovenan – The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness...
Jovenan
((Inside the Cliffs, Callis I))
The carving on the wall. The map, the instruction. The drawing or text someone found important enough to write into the solid rock surface of the deep cavern. It stood alone when they found it, but it might also be a piece of a puzzle that they hadn’t yet discovered. If they found more similar inscriptions, they might be able to understand the whole and each individual piece, but until they did that, they only had the one. If it was a map, why was it in the middle of the long tunnel and not at the either end? Where did it lead? Who made it, where were they and what did they want to say?
Jovenan’s mind was occupied by the puzzle. It was just what she needed. She didn’t mind the darkness any more, or at least, her mind didn’t seem to notice it any more. The shadows were merely the absence of light, the sickly hues in the walls just due to the chemical composition of their chemlights. The mystery was what she took to herself to figure out, and like so many other scientists, she found herself fully engrossed in it. How to read something written by a culture that may have nothing in common with our own or any we know of? If they are a local species, they might not have many shared points of reference. Did they see, or did they go by touch? How advanced were they?
The team came to a crossroads. The tunnel they had been following met with another, but instead of a clean, level crossing, they were faced with another long tunnel intersecting with theirs at an angle. Slanted, the other tunnel sloped so that by following it to the right, they would have walked closer to the surface above – but, looking towards there, Jovenan couldn’t see any light in it except for what the dim chemlight shone into it. If it reached surface, it was after a bend or two – maybe it didn’t get so far at all. They weren’t trying to find their way out anyway, so the thought process wasn’t all that important. She turned to look at the opposite direction, where the tunnel seemed to either branch into two direction or meet another tunnel, roughly parallel to the one they were on.
And, as she looked, a figure walked past the opening.
Jovenan: Toia majulan!
The shriek was anything but professional. Her pitch was almost comically high as the words in her native dialect slipped from her unconsciousness, pleading for the god’s help. The ability of the Edo God in their orbit around Rubicun III to help her was, however, not actually in her mind as she backed away without a sensible thought in her mind, stumbling and colliding to her fellow survivors and waving her arms around dangerously close to them.
K’Wara: ::undignified yelp::
Bergmen: Ma’am?
Bancroft: Easy, Commander. You alright?
She felt someone to hold her by her arm. The Doctor’s calming words came through to her through her racing heartbeat and the fear that burnt her from within and fogged her mind. Steadying herself with the support of her colleagues, her eyes darted in the tunnel. The figure she had seen was gone. The puzzle had faded from her mind, and the memory of the imagined voices and shapes in the dark was vivid. It was far more likely that she had imagined it as well. Her mind was proving her greatest ally and her biggest enemy. There were no drones walking in these corridors. As she became to accept the fact that she hadn’t actually seen a thing, finding footing became easier. She gave her colleagues as apologetic a look as she could in her state.
Jovenan: Sorry. I- I thought I saw something in there. ::looks back:: It’s nothing. My mind’s… Let’s mark the way out. Any ideas which way to follow?
Lt Bergmen offered the best demonstration of what Jovenan assumed the others were thinking of her: he looked at her and shrugged. Maybe it was meant for her question rather than her, but regardless, she was sure that she had really failed her task as the leader of the team. There was no easy way to convince her fellow survivors to keep calm and carry on when she herself was violently afraid of shadows.
Bergmen: They looked the same, so we can try any of them, whether it leads deeper or goes back toward the mouth of the cave, depending on what we want.
K’Wara: We still need a place to rest. We’re going to be here for a while, and we won’t be able to just march on by taking breathers and drinking water. We need a safe place to make camp, and that certainly won’t be outside while this storm goes on. ::looks around:: Hopefully we can find more maps to show where their artist slept.
Bancroft: Ideally some place with a fresh water supply.
Jovenan nodded while also doing her best not to shake visibly. It was mostly due to the adrenaline, but she also felt less secure than before. Seeing something walk – imagining seeing something walk – had been much worse than the obscure whispers and pareidolic visions. Her imagination hadn’t brought up anything so lifelike and clear before… but that information came from her mind, and her mind had already been shown to be an unreliable narrator.
Bergmen: Wait, look at this. Does it look natural to you? ::points at the rectangular curved sign in the wall of the tunnel from which they came::
Fear and shock fighting the re-emerging curiosity, Jovenan managed to turn feebly towards the direction the Lieutenant had pointed. The sign was smaller and a lot less clear than the one they had encountered before. She had to squint her eyes and get closer before she would admit that it might have been anything but a coincidental creation of natural forces.
K’Wara: Nothing about this place looks natural anymore. ::felinoid irises vibrating:: I’m staring holes into the walls at this point.
Bancroft: That’s usually the point where my instincts stop trusting anything I see and start expecting the headache I’m about to get.
That was… fair. And hopefully not a sign that the Doctor was going crazy as well.
Jovenan: There’s not a lot to go from that symbol alone, if it even is one. Maybe we’re missing something.
Lt Bergmen was the one to step away from the square carving that he had discovered. He was inspecting the other parts of the tunnel, apparently expecting to find something at the equivalent locations to the potential symbol. Indeed, he stopped to look at something for long enough a time that it couldn’t be nothing this time.
Bergmen: ::points to the star on the parallel entrance:: That one I saw before, and I didn’t feel it right even before. Not that way…
K’Wara: Are stars ominous symbols to Gideon?
A star? Jovenan walked closer. A part of the symbol had faded into obscurity, likely due to the erosion – which could mean that it had been here for a long time or the erosive force was somehow stronger than Jovenan would have thought – but she could see the circled symbol associated with the stars.
Bancroft: Sometimes stars mean hope. Sometimes they mean home. And sometimes they mean ‘hey, I really like drawing stars.’
Jovenan: Or achievement, sovereignty, honour, divinity, exploration, imagination, distance. It could be more literal, like a place where you can see the stars. Or it might not even be a star to begin with. Not all cultures mark their stars like that. It could be a stylised shape of a body, or a room that has corners like that.
Bergmen: Response
K’Wara: Well, if you don’t want us to go that way, then let’s go another. What we have to do doesn’t change. Find more maps, learn more symbols and hopefully, find an abandoned campsite of some sort. ::to Jovenan:: If we get that lucky.
Jovenan nodded. If they had the option to just sit down and wait, they would have taken that. The storm might pass in hours, but it could be above them for days, months, years – there was no way knowing without any records or scanning the planet. Either way, they needed water, food, shelter… And following the tunnels was their best shot.
Bancroft: ::dryly:: Luck’s overrated. I’ll settle for ‘less immediately lethal’ right now.
Jovenan: ::attempt of a smile:: “Beggars can’t be choosers”. An awful saying, but it’s true. Any little would help us maintain our resources.
Bergmen: Response
They were probably ready to move on. The square and the circled star or whatever else they had been had added to the mystery but didn’t help to solve it. It was expected really, since it was unlikely they would have been able to decipher an unknown writing system and translate a language they had never heard. What would have helped was a key, either something that gave them context in a language they understood – a Rosetta’s stone – or a glimpse into the logic behind the culture of the people who wrote these, like a written equivalent to the meeting at El-Adrel between a Starfleet and a Tamarian Captains. As unlikely as that was, it was their only hope. Except… Lt K’Wara looked off.
K’Wara: Wait... Do you hear-
Only when it was too late did Jovenan understood what was happening.
The wind slammed into their bodies like an invisible wall. Surprised, Jovenan was barely able to withstand it without falling. The air current glued her uniform to her skin on one side and almost ripped it into pieces on the other, all while her hair was rendered into a nearly straight horizontal line behind her. Keeping her eyes open was impossible.
And yet, the worst was the sound. The shriek was inhuman, like a scream of terror. Jovenan had to make a choice between keeping her arm before her and shielding her face, or to cover her ears. If there was a silver lining in the blast of air, it was that it drowned any and all voices that she heard in her mind.
Bancroft: ::shouting over the wind:: This way!
It was not the time for discussing where they were going or who’s task it was to give orders. The Doctor’s voice had confidence in it, and it would have been stupid for Jovenan to question someone who knew what they were doing – especially when anything she would have been able to do would have been just worse. At first, she just followed the direction she saw the Doctor going, but then she turned back, ignoring the amount of blond hair she got to her face.
Jovenan: ::extending hand to the others:: Keep on!
Bergmen/K’Wara: Response
It was difficult for Jovenan to stay on her two feet. The boots of her uniform were of course designed with away missions and emergency situations in mind as well, but they were still just the same pair of shoes she wore in her everyday duties on the ship – not hiking boots, not caving shoes. They just didn’t seem to hold on. The roar of the wind seemed to only grow louder as they walked on, where exactly was not something Jovenan could foresee. And then… then the wind ceased.
But the roar didn’t.
Just behind the corner, the team found water. A waterfall run over an underground cliff, echoing a sound that rivalled in intensity with thunder and the very storm outside. Rainwater from the storm, an underground river, bottom of a lake, Jovenan didn’t care to analyse it just now; they had found what they were looking for, they had found water, they had found salvation for the days to come.
Bancroft: ::claps once, projecting over the roar:: This might be good news, but nobody drink yet. Give me a minute to be sure it’s actually water and not something that dissolves kidneys on contact.
Without any instruments? Uh. Academy training was impressive, and finding drinkable water was a matter of life and death in a survival scenario, so maybe the Doctor had received a lesson in identifying it. Jovenan would have liked to question the accuracy of any such finding, but it was the best they got and she didn’t doubt that the Doctor did his best, so there was no point in voicing those thoughts.
Jovenan: Carry on then, Doctor. Our lives depend on your assessment.
Bergmen/K’Wara: Response
While the Doctor was testing the water, Jovenan had a look around. The water had carved something of a room around the water fall. It wasn’t too spacious, but after walking through tunnels for what, hours?, the area felt like stepping into a cathedral of days of the humanity’s past. Their poor chemlights weren’t enough to light the entire space without the light dimming before reaching the furthest edges. Jovenan walked slowly around the spot where the Doctor was dipping things into the water, and looked up.
There were several carvings on the walls. Long lines, delicate turns, small symbols. Those nearer to the water had faded, but higher up had some that were still legible. Without turning away, she gestured for the two Lieutenants to step closer. As she lowered her gaze, she noticed objects on the ground. She couldn’t tell at first sight what they were, could have been tools, remains of a fireplace, personal effects long abandoned.
Seemed like the people there had spent quite a time in this part of the cave.
Bancroft: ::half shrug:: Unless the three of you are a particularly vivid hallucination, by the powers vested in me by Starfleet Medical, I hereby pronounce this fluid both ‘water’ and ‘safe to drink.’
oO I’d very much prefer to be a hallucination right now. Oo
Jovenan turned to the Doctor, then glanced their discoveries. They’d have time. Their first priority was to their own survival, the research needed to come second – if they had all been her blueshirts, maybe the order had been different, but she couldn’t excuse risking three officers to the other department heads.
Jovenan: That’s good enough for me. We’ll stay here for a while. Doctor, Mister Bergmen, find a dry and shielded spot in here for us to rest. Check your injuries, keep yourselves hydrated, start putting up a camp if you find it suitable, check the inventories. Me and Lieutenant K’Wara will check the entrances of these other tunnels for dangers and will return to you. ::beat:: We won’t go deep into them, promise.
Bergmen/K’Wara/Bancroft: Response
((OOC: I will only tag K’Wara for this part, so feel free to have longer conversation between the two of you.))
Leaving the Doctor and the junior Operations Officers to prepare for their continued survival, Jovenan took Lt K’Wara with her around the water. There were a few other entrances to the cave with the water, and although Jovenan didn’t expect to see anything but similar tunnels as before, it would have been awkward if they just happened to have, say, a functioning shuttle just behind the corner and they had never bothered to check it. As for Lt K’Wara accompanying her there, she just didn’t feel too secure to go alone.
The first tunnel was just the same as before. Long, narrow, slightly tilted upwards. Nothing that could put them in danger but also nothing that would provide them a rescue. They followed the edge of the wall to the next entrance. At first, it appeared just as uninteresting as the previous one, but just as she was turning away, Jovenan noticed something poking from the ground.
Jovenan: Wait. What’s that?
K’Wara: Response
She stepped a few steps away from the tunnel and waved at the two other Lieutenants. Not wanting to shout over the roar of the waterfall, she first pointed at herself and Lt K’Wara, then the tunnel, lifted one finger up and then opened her palm at them. Hopefully that was enough to signal them that the pair of senior officers were not going far. Message delivered, she walked in.
The objects at the middle of the tunnel were a shapeless pile of something at first. Jovenan tried to shed light on them with the chemlight, but they were too distant so she continued walking. Slowly, they gained definition, first turning to something sharp, and then, the repeating arches became apparent. She stopped.
Jovenan: Let’s… back away.
K’Wara: Response
She no longer heard the imaginary voices that had bothered her almost the entire time, as now, instead, she couldn’t help thinking of the question:
oO What could do that to bones? Oo
((OOC: Thank you for you patience and your kind words of condolences, everyone!))
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11