SCENARIO! Cave In

As you were walking about, minding your own business, a freak rainstorm caused you to seek temporary shelter in a small cave. Unfortunately, just as you ran inside, a massive thunderclap shook the ground in, and around the cave, causing the entrance to collapse.

You tried to dig your way out, but it seems futile. You are either going to have to wait for daylight, and hopefully a rescue party, or explore further into the cave, and attempt to find an exit.

Any and all are welcome! Make up your path as you go along.

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The Rules
- One character per person
- There is no limit to the amount of people that may join
- You may contact me to mediate disputes, but I doubt that such will be necesary
- This can be either strict social interaction, or an adventure through a network of caves

"Argh. Not this spot either."
A young badger- wearing a green cloak covered with dirt- retreated from one of many digging spots along the cave wall. She was an excellent digger, but the rocks became too hard for even her to dig through. With the help of her metallomancy, she guessed she could work through it in a day or so. But even that seemed sketchy to her. It already took large amounts of her energy in normal conditions to use metallomancy. With no food or water, it was possible she could lose all her energy trying to dig through.

"If I knew some better sharpening spells, maybe..." Sylver mumbled. "Hmm, or if I had a large ball of metal, to shape a drill..." She sighed and grabbed her backpack near the entrance of one of her failed escape holes, flinging it on her back. She decided to trudge deeper into the cave's tunnels. Perhaps another exit was waiting just ahead, or, at least some walls that she could more easily dig through.

Marrow was a bit deeper inside the cave, and heard a noise of someone mumbling. She slowly peeked around a corner and saw someone coming and quickly ducked back down. Crap... I thought I was the only one here... she thought as she glanced around in an attempt to find a place she would be unnoticed. She heard the footsteps getting closer and curled up as small as she could in a dark spot in the cave, out of options.

"Oh! Oh! I'm not alone!" Argo stumbled over some loose rocks as he scrambled toward the badger, a trail of mist tracing the raccoon's path as he moved. His seashell necklace jangled noisily as he regained his balance, and before long he was standing next to Sylver.

"Er... um. Hi." He sheepishly greeted her. "Nice... day we're... um." He trailed off.

"Whah!" Sylver stopped in her tracks. She was already a bit on edge from sensing a presence earlier. Her eyes widened when she heard him crash over to her from one side of the tunnel. Not to mention, the mist aura he carried gave him a ghostly effect. For a moment she wondered if she was living out one of her Mom's old ghost stories. But after noticing his face and his stumbling voice, she relaxed. "Oh," she sighed, ignoring his greeting altogether. "Are there any exits around this cave? That massive storm stuck me in here."

Marrow sat as still as possible, listening in on the conversation and annoyed that there was more than one trapped in there with her. She was too nervous to move at all.

"Exits...?" Argo sighed. "I thought... you might know. The cave goes quite a ways deeper as far as I can tell, but, I dunno about any exits." Argo shivered. He was still wet from the storm outside, and would be for a long time to come- normally he would have dried himself magically, but he wasn't sure when he'd find water again. Not that he was sure what he could do with so little.

"I'm stuck in here too... it's, a little embarrassing for a hydromancer to hide from a storm, but..." He stopped. "Have you been digging?"

Sylver frowned as the strange raccoon explained his situation, and upon his inquiry, looked down at her muddy forelegs. "Yes, I've made attempts to dig out of this cave in, but, I can't very well dig through it without losing my energy first." She patted the hard cave ground once for emphasis.

The Uplift's glowing green eyes looked past Argo, to the gaping darkness ahead of her. "If there's nothing else, I will come back and keep trying. But I'm going to search for easier ground first." She walked past him, whiskers feeling the ground.

She heard someone coming and nervously gasped. When she realised what she did, she mentally kicked herself for it and tried to remain as quiet as possible hoping she drew no attention to herself.

Just after walking past the hydromancer, Sylveria heard a quick breath from the darkness.
What?
The young badger wished she were a bit more accurate with her senses, like a feral, or a someone with magic specialising in heightened sense. She breathed in the scents of the musty cave, and realised that, among many other smells, it was accompanied by the distinct stench of death. An actual ghost?
"Err, hmm," she grumbled warily, "anyone else in here?"

Marrow sat so still she could be mistaken for being dead, if her appearance alone wasn't enough to make someone think she was. She noticed suddenly that her tail was sticking out a little, laying on the ground. She was about to yank it into the darkness with her, but thought against it at risk of bringing attention to herself again and continued staying still in hopes it was not noticed.

Slowly, she walked towards the edge of tunnel that the noise seemed to have come from. There it was, the source of the stench. A limp limb stuck out of an area darkened by rubble.

Did it die in here from thirst? Or from something else?
Sylver examined the area around her carefully before approaching the corpse any more, perhaps whatever was gasping before was still around.

Sylver eventually approached the body, shakily reaching out to nudge it with one of her claws.

Marrow quickly blinked as the arm approached her and jumped back. "AAH!" She stood quickly and backed away slightly. "Don't touch me," She said, her voice rough sounding as if she was really sick. She glanced down and grabbed her bone off the ground and held it out, ready to attack if needed.

"WUHH!" Sylver jumped back a step, green eyes widened. In her fright, she did a double take at the squirrel, before backing up more.

"I won't," she gulped, "I won't."
Noticing that the corpse-like being could possibly attack, Sylver used a hasty spell to strengthen the silver metals on her back. She crouched close to the ground.

"Are you a ghost?" she choked out, still breathing heavily.

Marrow's arms shook from nerves, holding the bone out still. "....No. I'm not." She stared at the badger and didn't break eye contact for several seconds. She then sighed--even the sigh sounded rough--and slowly lowered the bone keeping the eye contact as she backed away one step.

Virgina couldn't believe her eyes. She managed to sever and consume three of her own limbs. Fearing for subsistence, she proceeded to gnaw her final paw.

The rock pile was hardly a setback, Virgina thought. Being around more than two centuries, the mink has had countless situations more complicated, certainly more dangerous then this. Why, compared to the Hemlock Civil War and the Cataclysm (as well as many sticky situations post-apocalypse), this slide is merely humble, a misunderstood natural occurrence unknowing of the grief it's causing. Poor thing, Virginia pouted. She's already forgiven it.

Musing like this was usually followed by critical thinking. For such a new home this place surly became a deathtrap. She realized this shrouding darkness not only took her sight but would snuff her as well if she doesn't clear rubble for fresh air. After a hearty frenzy, she managed a good-enough nook. She breaths and thinks again. The ground is too sturdy. The rocks are too stubborn to loosen anymore. In fact another breathing hole seems impossible. She is no digger. And none of her usual powers seem practical. And a rescue party is impossible since no animal knows she is here (just how she wanted it to be). Waiting is out. She thinks for more options. No. No, it looks like there is little she can do here. Her only chance now is to venture further into the cavern and hope for another exit. At least a possibility. Finally, Virgina swayed from the cobbled seal, and into the depths below.

The badger's white ears twitched at Marrow's raspy voice. Not a monster from a scary tale, then, she supposed, but what is it? Sylver's fear was being shooed away by curiosity. She eased herself from her defensive position, and took a slow breath. The possible opponent, with weapon low, looked slightly less dangerous.
"Ah..." she glanced sideways back into Marrow's eyes, and asked, "what are you, then? Is this your place?"

Marrow tilted her head slightly, trying to figure out how to answer that. "I'm.... A squirrel?" She broke eye contact finally and glanced around. "No. It's not my place."
She gripped the bone tightly in one hand and clenched her other fist, wishing that the badger would stop talking to her. She looked at the ground for a while then turned to a wall. She picked up a piece of sharp bone she found in the cave and struck it against the wall several times, trying to make a dent. After every other swing her eyes averted back to the badger, watching her cautiously. After a few of these slightly distracted hits, the bone slipped out of her hand and she smashed her hand against the wall, at which point she yelled several far less than appropriate words. She shook her hand and stared at it still muttering profanities.

Sylver spent a good minute or so gawking at the stranger, who she by now assumed was a fellow captive of the cavern. As the colourful language repeated in her head, she pondered over the ones she hadn't heard before. Some of them even gave her a sensation of familiarity. Her heart raced with a new urgency to get home.

The badger shook her head, regaining focus. "Wow, uh," she started awkwardly, "well, the ground has been too hard around here, uh, to dig out. So, I'm going to see if there's another exit." She resumed waddling forward through the passageway of the large earthy confinement, but despite herself, paused again to look back at Marrow.

"If we can find an underground lake, I could possibly... no... no..." Argo was pacing back and forth as Sylver and Marrow spoke, now muttering to himself. "I couldn't create a current strong enough to do that... ugh, if only I had his kind of power, I'd just make the rain dig us out for us!"

He jolted to attention as Marrow yelped a string of profanities, almost letting out a little scream himself; though he stifled it just in time. The odd looking squirrel already put him on edge- he was reminded of children stories of unliving beasts that ate you alive if you disrespected your parents- and was admittedly avoiding her. So he was more than happy to let Sylver do the talking.

Upon hearing her plan to go deeper, Argo realized something. "Fire! We need fire. To see! Also to keep warm. I have... no idea how we're going to get fire. I do water..." He sighed. "Do... either of you do fire?"

"Light a flame in here, then prepare your graves. Fire needs oxygen. We're fine in the dark, for the moment." Virgina said this as she strut her stuff to her audience. She'd overheard them long enough to know they are as much distressed as her. They're all trapped, well natured, and, for the lot of them, mentally sound.

Virgina calmly made her way to their entrance. After she was very positive that there was no hope to escape this way, she resolved to make another breathy hole here too. Her effort was even smaller than the previous one. She stopped before she overexerted herself. A few more moments and she explained herself to them. After leaving "home base", she wondered into several branching tunnels, but found only dead ends. So far most of the geography was natural, bearing no signs of settlement. She also hasn't been searching very long until meeting with them. All of her searched corridors are marked with a hard X near their entrances, and she encouraged them to do the same.

Frustrated from several fruitless attempts at freeing the vein of rare metal ore from it's surrounding rock, Isaac stared irked at the tiny glint of exposed metal. The rare ore that he had ventured so deep underground to find, sensing it's extremely high specific gravity from afar. He took in a deep breath of the stagnant air and exhaled slowly in attempt to re-center himself, then took an almost stoic meditation stance mid air, concentrating his power. he then thrust forward, hitting the wall with a seemingly intangible force that resonated throughout the entire cave system.

Entirely unaware that there had been a cave in, or that he had just caused yet another cave in, he sifted through the rubble, finding several shiny pieces of what he'd worked so hard for. he did a dorky little happy dance then headed back for his exit, back out to the surface.

Just as the stocky mustelid shook her head 'no' at Argo, she felt a mink brush past her, to the exit. And she could only gaze as she climbed the rocks, above her failed digging spots, and created a tiny breathing hole.
After listening to her explain herself, Sylver nodded. Although, it was hard to judge at this point, whether she was a dreg or a familiar, she decided to trust Virgina's advice.
"Good. This will make things a lot easie--"

Suddenly there was a booming sound, and many tiny crashes from smaller rubble in response. She bolted to the most open space in the tunnel, and when the rumbling stopped, looked back at the cave in to see if it had budged. Nope. Sylver frowned. Then she shifted her eyes to see if the other three were safe. It was hard to tell, with dust and darkness surrounding her. She brought her nose to the ground out of habit, to feel the ground with her whiskers, and avoiding the floating dust. "Did anyone just die?" she asked bluntly.

Marrow was laying down, just behind Sylver. She was hit in the head by a large rock which sent her off-balance and stumbling deep into the open space in the cave, where she had collapsed. UnFortunately, she managed to get a quick bone armor helmet by growing out her teeth and some extensions from her neck vertebrae to protect her head and neck. The speed at which she had to generate that helmet caused it to be bloodier and more painful than usual a process. She was too exhausted to get up or remove her armor, but fine nonetheless. She was bleeding still, but not from the rock; there was a puddle of blood under her head. She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

The disturbance was so sudden, our of nowhere. Tumbling best describes Virgina's fall from the pile hiked. Her various attempts for a footing were meet with jagged rocks and uneven landings. The crown was partly blinded by dust, her jerked reaction to swipe away proved an ample opportunity for various stone to tender her mid-section. Her final successful landing almost stretched her quarters to their wits. She breathed slowly, until she was certain conditions felt "normal". Once the dust settled, she checked herself for any forms of bleeding or trauma. There was some problems with her lower-left leg, but as long as she paced herself...