Having no particularly crazy dream to wake her, Makoto found herself playing with that flute of hers, the one connection she had once lived.

Y'know, back when The King of silly goose didn't know who she was.

She just played, letting her feelings guide the notes, happy melodies falling to somber whispers and back again, whirling along with her state of mind.

Mathias tried to pull a straight face. "I know it's the dreams, but I don't understand why it's happening...I mean..."

Mathias gave Saiza a ... I can't sleep with you every night, can I?...face, awkwardly so.

Ulow had remained absolutely silent since before they had even entered the crypt yesterday, meeting all questions with a blank, showingly blunted smile. Waking up to the sound of screaming provoked a similar non-reaction, only causing her to hunch upright and observe Saiza unflinchingly from a distance, like a animal would regard a potential threat.

The dawn sun reflected a perticularly sinister dark red from her unblinking eyes, which combined with her current attitude, brought all sorts of savage predator stereotypes to the minds of those that bothered to look over to her.

"...Still outside the shell of the world..." Words escaped, so shallow that the girl was almost just mouthing them. "...On the husk... The skin of the stone... Why did i-?..."

Saiza sighed heavily, and buried his face in his hands. "Just...forget it, Mathias. I'll be fine." Probably not true, but there was nothing Mathias, or anyone else, could do to keep the dreams away.

"Then we should move out" Mathias said bluntly, though in that tone of voice, his hands had already reached into his robes and produced a pouch of water for Saiza. "The quicker we end this, the better"

"Yeah I suppose," Veldan moaned getting up. She had wiped away her tears, and tried to make it look like she wasn't just laying there crying while everything else had been going on.

"The sooner we go the sooner we can get distracted from all this. Hopefully Emi will be able to catch something today!"

"Yeah..." Saiza gratefully took the water, and had a mouthful. If he closed his eyes, would It come for him again? He handed it back. "Let's get this over with."

You ran into a few Skeletons, Zombies, and horrible bats and spiders and things, in the forest and in the caves, but they weren't much problem and you killed them all pretty easily, this time around (read: you technically had random encounters, but this thread is fucking lagged behind enough as it is!).

Then you found yourselves in the ruins Peter had mentioned.
And they were strange, all carved and constructed out of some strange green stone.

They were in a large open cavern within the cave system, many still buried. Water flowed along many of them, perhaps some kind of aqueduct system, and the ground you were standing on, in fact, was about fifty feet above a massive underground lake that dominated the entirety of the cavern's floor. You could see the tops of strange buildings poking out of the water. It was hard to describe it, but the architecture here felt... wrong. The angles. It was the angles. They didn't... add up. Literally and figuratively.

You didn't like it. It reminded you a bit of the Monolith.

***

You could see that the cavern was quite tall, vertically, in both directions. A few hundred feet up you could see another opening. Probably this is the way you were meant to go. Thanks to natural rock outcroppings and the strange pillars, platforms, and other constructions of the ruins, you reasoned that with some effort and a bit of acrobatics (and a bit of luck) you could make it up through the ruins and into the next cave within 6-12 hours, depending on how everything went.

"Should I try to fly us up, or can we do this?"

He turned back to everyone, with a discouraged face. "I know I can't."

"You can!" Veldan happily replied to the wizard as she looked on at the awe-inspiring (if a little creepy) scenery. "But I want to try and climb this puppy! It's not everyday you get presented with such a fun challenge like this!"

The short Chitine took to the dark, murky place like a dwarf to booze. The blank look on her face didn't really change, but there was something disturbingly combfortable about how she navigated the cramped spaces, for once ahead of the group and showing no fear for what was around the corner...

This was, after all, a closer situation to Ulow's hometown than Rin's abode, Dore or Ashfeild had ever been.

Getting ahead of herself when they got to the rediculously steep incline, Ulow seemed to forget she wasn't with her own kin for a second, and carried on straight upwards with a sort of lazy half-grace.

Climb test;
1d20+21=32

"Um....Maybe the ones who can climb can fix a rope somewhere up there? I don't know...it looks..." Mathias mumbled "I don't want to waste a spell, but this is a bit too much for my arms and legs"

Mathias watched, rather amazed by Ulow's mastery of taming the steep rocks.

"Well, I've got rope." Saiza tossed off his pack and began rummaging around. This place was putting him on edge. It was taking a great deal of willpower not to run off in the other direction. "So how are we going to do this?"

Feeling a bit like a show off, Makoto smirked and chased Ulow upwards.
"Just toss me the rope one my way up, alright?"

In most of the team's skirmishes as well a the social aspect of keeping the team alive, Makoto felt that she hadn't been much help in particular, so any way to show that she was a worthwhile part of the team was something she felt inclined to jump on.
ROLL
1d20+10=22

"Hey, Ulow, wait up!"