Sacred Grounds

"I'm fine. Automail's shot, though," she said, frowning at her arm. "Alchemy would be difficult to perform accurately right now."

She looked down at Des. He was laying on his stomach now, yelling angrily into the ground. She frowned and looked back at Dwyrin. "How do you plan on getting him up here?"

"I will kill you all. Get me up! AHHHHHHHHH!"

The screams of Des caused dirt clouds to branch out from his body. His body started shaking and he used his only good leg to kick back onto his back. His face was covered in dirt and his eyes were a bright gold.

"I'm just here to watch what he does, and if he dies, that's what I'll be reporting back," he crossed his arms. "I'm not going to do anything more than what I'm supposed to. Unless..."

Zane looked at the distance between them and Des. It was a long one, but the tillage was quite fine, though it would be awkward. He could use alchemy for easy access.

"Unless he pays me, or either of you two, for helping him."

Dwyrin let out a harsh laugh. "Maybe you should go check his pockets, if you can. I certainly don't have anthing for you."

"I wasn't going to actually move him, I was just going to try to fix anything badly broken. It was partially my fault he ended up down there," she added, almost as an afterthought.

Rei stood as close to the edge of the incline as she could, looking down at Des. Something gnawed at her, telling her something, but what it was telling her she could not figure out. She frowned and turned back to the conversation going on behind her. She caught only Dwyrin's comment about fixing Des up.

"How do you plan on doing that? Not only are you both separated, but you don't know what's wrong with him." She rubbed her left arm nervously. "And something's bothering me about this."

Des shook on the ground writihing in pain. He seemed to complain a lot for someone who claimed to have power. His eyes were shiny gold. All Des could do was move the only part of his body not broken which was his left leg.

"I'm going to need a new body."

Zane smiled. "That's a pity," he said, not really interested in helping - what benefit was he to get? He doesn't do charity. Besides, he doubted Des needed help.

He watched as Rei moved closer to the ledge. "He's not going to die," he said, loud enough for her to hear, remembering about the things he read about him. "He's not normal."

She had been about to tell Rei that in order to do any fixing, she would have had to go down to where Des was. Which - when she really thought about it - wasn't a very good idea. Then Zane had said those magic words, 'He's not normal.'

"What do you mean he's not normal??" Dwyrin remembered the incident in the car and couldn't help but think it had something to do with that.

"'He's not normal'," Rei muttered sarcastically, turning to Zane. "Hardly a surprise at this point, but do tell what we missed in the instruction pamphlet he came with." She crossed her arms and frowned. Any kind of instructions for that man would be great help, she decided.

Des drove his heel into the dirt several times waiting for some kind of help. Getting help seemed rather moot at this point and time now. No one up there was coming to get him.

Zane smiled. "You're quite a charmer, aren't you?" he said to Rei. She's always so sarcastic.
Usually, he wouldn't tell things like this without any money paid to him. But he figured entertainment is enough for now.

He glanced at Dwyrin. He remembered when he read Des' profile, he had to make sure of things. "He's been experimented with," he said. "That's why he's like that, what with his power and abnormal regeneration traits."

"That's kind of freaky. Is there any other side effects we should know about?? So we know what to avoid??"

"Murderous tendencies would be one," Rei muttered. "An experiment just professed its love to me?"

Des began to laugh maniacally and his eyes opened wide. He lifted his arm and it began to shake before he firmly planted his palm on the ground. His skin was moving and crawling around and cracks and tweeks pierced his ears.

"Hahaha, I must be some sort of mutant."

Des tried to stand using his newly healed arm and leg but quickly fell back onto his back.

"AHHHHHHHHH!"

Zane smirked. "That's what I'm here to know."

Moving forward towards the ledge, he looked at Des and saw that he was getting better, or at least, that's how it looked like from his view.

"At any rate, he's healing himself," he glanced back to the girls. "And we can all wait for him to finish up, if you want."

"Last time we waited for this little spasm to pass, he tried to strangle us, perhaps we should try to stop it from happening," she suggested uneasily, looking at the two. There seemed to be this odd sort of thrumming in the air, a pulse. Like thunder with no sound.

I wonder if it's just me...

Rei felt uneasy. The will to stop Des before he did anything came surprisingly easy; something was in the air that she disliked. She grabbed her left wrist and tried to reposition her arm, but it only jerked awkwardly. She clamped her elbow tight to her body with her right arm.

"We could try using the earth around him to bind him," she suggested. "Though it's a long way down."

Des felt more bone sin his body shift and snap. Each snap rang in his ears. His eyes were affixed to the sky, bright golden. Staring at nothing. He body shook and moved all over the place.

"Yes, I'll show you all power!"

Zane looked back at Des. "What the hell is he doing?"

He had a very bad feeling about it. He smirked. "Looks like something interesting is gonna happen."

Looking at Rei holding her arm, Dwyrin wished she knew more about automail. She might know enough be able to make a slight adjustment, but certainly not enough to repair it - and out here with no tools, besides.

At Zane's words she looked down to Des, again. That was when she felt the ground crumble away beneath the three of them.

"Not again!"

Rei stumbled, trying to find enough purchase to make it to still-solid ground, but the shifting earth quickly swallowed her foot and dragged her down. A good portion of her left arm became buried as she slid. They were quickly moving toward Des.

"Anybody got any good ideas?"

Des continued to laugh and scream. His actions were unknown even to him but something was going on for sure.

"Come to me!"

His eyes started flashing all sorts of colors and his skin began to fade to a dull gray.

As the ground beneath him crumbled, he quickly grabbed Rei by the waist, as she was the nearest to him then, and jumped up towards a still-solid piece of the ground. He continued to do so, hastily, trying to somehow lessen both of their weight with little momentum. When they neared Dwyrin, he whispered to Rei, "Sorry for this," and threw her upwards, towards the ground, hearing her thud, safe. Unfortunately, the action made him fall down slightly.

Dwyrin was a bit farther down from him, so he jumped down and took her by the waist like he did with Rei. They could get mad at him another time.

However, he didn't have enough ground to go up to where Rei was. "Hold on," he said. Zane jumped to the side, seeing a tree by the ledge. As they slid down, he gave one last effort to jump towards the tree and reached towards a branch.

He was able to but with only one hand, his other hand holding on to Dwyrin. "Darn... was too slow. You okay?" They were left there hanging.

It had happened so fast she couldn't be sure right away. The branch Zane was hanging onto looked at least strong enough to hold their weight - hopefully. All she could do, at the moment, was hang on and watch the ledge finish sliding to a halt down below.

"Well," she said, looking down, "I could be better." Then she looked over at Des. "But I could be worse."

This is probably my fault. Maybe I shouldn't have started that little tumble earlier. Oh well, no need to remind anyone..

Rei sat up stiffly and groaned. She saw Dwyrin and Zane some distance down, hanging from a tree. "How cute," she thought, rolling her eyes. Des was still spazzing even farther down. She shook her head. She sat Indian-style on the ground examining the situation. She had long run out of ideas and seemed to be merely going along for the ride, though she seemed to becoming the master of sarcasm.

"So, Mr. and Ms. Partridge," she called to the other two. "What do we do now?"