Sacred Grounds

Des turned back towards Rei and the others and ran his hand through his hair.

"Mermaid..."

Des stepped closer to Rei and placed his foot by her side. He grunted and kicked her into the water. He glared at Dwyrin and Zane.

"Don't move you two. Swim Rei. Time to learn."

Des crossed his arms and kept and eye on Dwy and Zane while trying to watch Rei.

Dwyrin stared at Des, nonplussed. As if you're going to see me get near that water, intentionally.. She did, however have to fight the rabid urge to shove Des in the water after Rei.

She wasn't particularly worried about Rei for some reason. She just sort of assumed she could swim - it went with the territory.

Rei squeaked slightly as she left the ground, then splashed into the water. She floated a moment, below the surface of the water, trying to gather her thought. She resurfaced a moment later and turned toward the shore. "You kicked me!" she shouted angrily. "You freaking kicked me! You're lucky I don't have any weapons, or you would be so beyond dead you wouldn't be able to recover!"

She glared at the shore a moment before turning and diving into the water. She dove down a fair distance before stopping and looking around. It was simple enough to get used to her new tail; it was not panicking about needing air that took some getting used to. It occurred to her that she had just splashed about in the water and shouted; the thing in the water probably knew exactly where she was and was prepared to strike.

From behind her came the all-too-familiar screeching sound she had hoped to avoid hearing. "He didn't even give me time to get a weapon," she thought bitterly, turning slowly to face the source. She could not see what it was from where she was, but she knew she needed something to fight with in the very least. She swam away as quickly as she could, trying to find something to use as a weapon. "This is bullcrap."

Zane blinked. "Woah," was all he could say as he saw Rei flying into the water and landing with a huge splash. "Man, you two are made for each other. Both so merciless."

He watched as Rei gave into an angry fit and Dwyrin looked like she's about to murder someone. What a crowd I got into.

Rei then swam, and he was unable to see her anyway. "I just hope she can handle whatever it is in the water. What if it turns her into a full-fledged fish?"

Des heard the screeching sound and eyed Rei carefully. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol.

"Sink or swim? Do or die? You decide Rei."

Des tossed the gun towards Rei hoping she would catch it and kill the monster in the water.

Dwyrin looked at the gun splash into the water with dismay. "There goes a good gun, huh??"

Slipping her ring from her finger, she began looking around - mostly with her toes, it turned out - for a good sized rock. This place was a wealth of mineral-rich rock. Perfect. Finding the right sized rock after what seemed like far too long, she formed the circle and melded the rock into the semblance of a dagger, then stretched the metal of her ring around it's edges, making it sharp. Good for poking out eyes, if nothing else.
She tossed it into the water close to where she thought the gun had recently sunk.

Rei swam as fast as she could, trying to put some distance between her and whatever was in the water with her. She had stripped off her coat to attempt to reduce the amount of drag, but she was still going too slowly for her liking. She still did not have any way to fight off whatever was behind her.

Ahead of her she heard the sound of something splashing into the water. She watched it a moment before realizing it was a gun. She rolled her eyes. A gun underwater would be useless at worst; at best she would get one shot off, but it would need to be in the next few moments and it would have to be nearly point blank. Another splash sounded shortly after the first, this time practically on top of her. "That's more like it," she thought, grabbing the knife as she swam past.

"Now let's hope this thing can be killed with a knife," she thought grimly, half-turning to find that it - whatever it was - was practically on her tail. "Bad pun."

Zane moved forward a bit, but not near enough to be in falling distance into the water. He watched, his eyes finally adjusting a bit to the darkness but it still was no use.

"Nobody really has any sort of light? Fire? I'd go with flints or anything if it means seeing what's going on, guys."

More splashing sounds but that didn't really indicate anything except movement. "I wanna see what she's fighting against." What if it's another mermaid or something? I could sure as hell get quite a profit from that.

Des turned to Zane and leaned close to his ear.

"The gun is waterproof..."

Dwyrin rolled her eyes. I wonder if he realizes it echoes in here..

"It would be most interesting to hear how it is that you have the technology to waterproof a gun." She looked over her shoulder at Des and Zane. And froze. It looked like the ground was shifting around behind them. Upon closer inspection she realized it wasn't the ground - but those pesky crabs from earlier. Except they were bigger.

Rei stopped swimming and allowed herself to slow in the water naturally. The thing behind her changed from a small, blurry shadow to a larger, more distinct shadow. A moment later Rei could see the giant lobster from before. She hoped her eyes might be playing tricks on her because it seemed to be twice as large as before. "Or it could be a second one," she thought miserably.

The lobster rushed her head-on, claws out and ready to grab her. At the last possible second, Rei swam up, just enough to stay out of its reach. She tried to dig the knife between two of the plates on its back, but she only succeeded in nearly losing her grip on the weapon. She watched as it turned around, ready to try to grab her again. "Looks like this one's going to require some close-range combat."

There was a sudden swarm of crabs and they were slightly bigger. What the hell is this place!?

For now, they were no immediate threat but if they keep on swarming more and more, they'd be a nuisance at the least.

He looked at the direction they were coming from and realized in a sort of dread that it was where they came from. Crabs... bingo. Lobster.

"Damn, I think the lobster might have found us--," and that it did. And it didn't look happy, all the while, splashing sounds resonated in the vicinity.

Des stepped on a crab and grunted. He smiled at then turned towards Dwyrin.

"Military has whatever we need."

"Whatever we need?? Like maybe something to get rid of that thing?!" She said, pointing at the monstrosity that lumbered towards them.

Great. Useless again. Now that my ring's gone I can't even do alchemy without drawing some time consuming circle. If only we had light... With light they would have a better chance of, well - seeing. Which came with obvious advantages.

She had a couple knives that she had picked up in Merryvale, but the lobster-thing had a shell and she wasn't sure they'd be very effective... Unless she could get close to it.

Rei slammed into a wall of rock. She was unsure what had happened, but she thought the lobster might have whacked her with its tail as it swam under her. She gripped her knife tightly in her hand and looked around, trying to find the creature. She swam to the right along the stone.

Something grabbed Rei around the waist and a hand covered her mouth, pulling her into a small hallow in the rock. She was surprised to find a coherent thought floating through her mind: "Hands were grabbing at us earlier, not the lobster's claws."

Damn. I really need light.

He took out his dagger as he kicked hard on a crab towards the lobster.
"Can someone break the roof of this cave? We're in desperate need of light here."

I have nothing to draw a transmutation circle with, my gloves only work for ice alchemy.. I probably can use the water but I can't see a thing, and there are others here I might hit.

Des dropped to the ground moving crabs out of the way. He dug his fingers into the earth and began drawing a simple circle. Des completed the circle and slapped his hands down on it. It lit up for a second before fizzling out.

"Hmm, I can't do earth alchemy anymore..Lame."

Des stood up and pulled out another pistol. He aimed it up and began shooting the roof. Dust and rubble fell on top of them.

The sound of the gunshots was deafening, surrounded by all this rock. She flung her hands up to her ears and the next thing she knew, she felt a great weight on her. And it was very hard and uncomfortable. She lay there for a second, collecting her wits. Someone had been shooting.
Then something had fallen on her, presumably the ceiling.
And now... Now my arm hurts. A lot.

After figuring out which way was up, she began pushing rocks off of herself with the arm that wasn't flaring in pain. One of the rocks tumbled away and she saw light.

'Quiet,' a voice whispered in Rei's ear as she struggled against whatever held her. She stopped squirming, surprised to hear a human voice. The hands holding her let go and she spun around to face the owner of voice, dagger raised defensively. She was only slightly surprised to see a half-fish, half-man before her.

"Mermaid," she muttered, eyes narrowed. "If you know what's going on, you had better tell me now."

Finally. He was rather glad to be able to use his sense of sight even if there's only a spot that donned light. But it was better than full darkness.

Unfortunately, Dwyrin seemed to have been hurt at that expense. "You okay?" He asked her, but kept his eyes on the lobster, kicking an irritating crab by his feet.

The lobster did a dive towards him, and he jumped out of the way, away from the lake. It's not like I want to use alchemy if I can't help it anyway.

The lobster growled, and the crabs gathered towards it.

Des snickered at the rubble that fell atop Dwyrin. His face soon turned serious as he noticed the lobster leap at Zane. Des stepped back and watched as the crabs surrounded the lobster.

(sorry for my absence)

She tossed a rock off of herself, farther than was neccessary, and ignored the thumping noise it made, hitting something much softer than rock or lobster-thing shell.

The crabs that had begun to flock toward the lobster were now climbing up it's tail and legs and...
being absorbed into it?? It grew with every crab it assimilated.

'I'll make this quick,' the merman floating before Rei said, watching warily over her shoulder. 'The lobsters somehow turn humans into fish for food. You and I got only half-turned. I haven't figured out how to change back, yet, sadly.'

Rei stared at the half-man, half-fish in disbelief. "Though I wouldn't have believed it possible half an hour ago." She turned to face the opening where the large lobster was swimming around trying to find her. "So what do we do?"

How annoying. Zane couldn't believe it - the freaking lobster is absorbing all of the crabs. They were annoying to say the least, but they would downright troublesome now that they merged with the lobster. He could only imagine how much of a trouble that would be for them.

"I don't want to fight this," he said and almost resigned to let them fight it themselves but he supposed he would be more troubled if he doesn't help.

The lobster absorbed every little crab on the ground and has grown larger, shinier and spikier. It hit its pincer on the wall and the ground shook. It seemed to have grown unbelievable stronger as well.

Des smirked at the large lobster and drew a gun from his pants. It was odd how he had an endless supply of guns. His eyes flashed Gold and he leaped at the lobster over the water. Des cocked the gun in his mouth and planted the barrel right into the eye of the lobster.

"I have no time for games!"

Des pulled the trigger and a large bang sounded. A larger than normal bullet penetrated from the back of the lobster and it screeched throughout all the cavern. The lobster began to fall back into the water and Des followed it down. He continued to pull the trigger causing pieces of the lobster to fly everywhere.

"AHHHHHHHH! BANG BANG BANG! DIEEEEEE!"

The click of an empty clip brought Des back to reality as he found himself floating in the water. He swam back towards Zane and Dwy and stared at them.