The Midnight Matinee

Diane and Niko have separated from the others, after Niko decided it was a good idea to look around for holes or other outlets to the underground. He takes the whole - no foot prints, landshark thing seriously, and wondered. Niko has told the others to howl if they encountered anything out of the ordinary - and to meet back where Sinfi had almost lost his arm if they haven't discovered anything in about an hour. Phaedra has wandered into and out of the umbra, and Denton, which is what prompted Niko to split up the pack and go looking. He is irritated at Phaedra. Again.

The woods by night are shadowy and still. They are still too far from Denton to be inundated by its noise pollution. They are on guard, wary of any movement or imagined movement. Diane's small lupus wolf is scurrying to keep up with Niko's much larger hispo one. He pauses to let her catch up, and Diane whispers to him, "Are we really sure we want to find this thing?"

Niko smiles, almost to himself. "Of course not." In his dire-wolf form, the smile resembles a snarl, although Diane is used to the various forms and interprets it as Niko intended, more or less.

Diane looks around. What was that? She thinks she sees something, her eye caught by peripheral vision, over by some trees. With a glance at Niko for tentative reassurance, she walks over slowly, cautious. Niko watches her curiously, sniffing - something in the breeze? His nose wrinkles. City stench. God, he hates the cities.

Nothing seems to be there. Diane pokes at the brush with her paw... a shard of light startles her and she barely manages not to jump away. She looks at it closely. It's a glitter of refuse... some camper's discarded can of Pepsi. She gives Niko a glance, fraught with apology or distaste, or both.

Niko smiles again, in a more withdrawn fashion. Hunters? Campers? Sometimes... he stopped his train of thought abruptly. Time enough for monkey bashing later. "Think they're still around?"

Diane sniffs the air, trying to catch a whiff of the human scent; she leans down and sniffs the can to see how fresh it smells. A breath of warm air blows silently through the woods - noticeably warmer than the rest of the air around it - and distracts her from that investigation. She yelps very softly in surprise as the overly warm air current ruffles her fur. "Niko? Did you feel that?"

"What?" He perks his ears, sniffing warily.

"The air was warmer." She turns in what she thinks the direction that the warm air came from. "From that way."

Narrowing his eyes, Niko turns in the direction Diane indicated. He stretches his senses to see if he can catch any unnatural emanations. "Warmer?"

"Not a lot warmer, but more than it ought to be."

Niko grunts softly, taking a few steps in the direction of warmer air. Then he hesitates and furrows his brows. "Let's check it out. Be careful. At the first sign of danger - run. Don't stop. Howl for the others."

Diane nods her head, agreeing, and follows him, staying close by but not in his way. A scent of metal joins the warm breeze, raising the hackles on Niko's back. A slight vibration in the air, and then it's gone again: warm air, scent and all. Nothing but stillness.

Niko turns to Diane. "Did you smell something?"

"I think so. Metallic... ozone smell."

A thought crosses Niko's mind. Electricity... something with current? A vague recollection - the smell of the air after a lightning strike, maybe. He growls softly, his unease growing, turning in a circle as he slows to a stop. Diane stops a moment after Niko does, looking around, her eyes darting from one shadow to another.

Niko takes another step, two... his paws are tingling. A trap snaps suddenly closed to the right of the pair -- Niko jumps out of the way, bristled to the bone, growling menacingly. Diane jumps a foot or two in startlement as the trap's snapping sound echoes around her. Quietly annoyed, she says, "Those things are a menace." Niko continues staring at the snapped trap, ears lowered, body braced and coiled for the lunge - he hears but doesn't hear Diane's words, though he, too is annoyed. As Niko stares at the trap, Diane says, "It's ok Niko... it's harmless now that it's sprung."

He snarls, heading off again at a slower pace. Diane walks along with him, now even more cautious of where traps might be. The tingling in Niko's paws is quite acute now. "I think we'd better..." ...get the others, Niko was going to say, but the ground where he was once standing is no more... a gaping maw of darkness from the deepening darkness... and the two go tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Diane gets the breath knocked out of her when she lands, sliding along a rounded metallic surface and bumping into Niko's furry side... tangled for a moment before she gets her paws under her and stands shakily, then looks around in the darkness. "What... just happened?"

Unable to move... unable, for one heart stopping moment, to breathe, Niko struggles to shift, fails, feeling himself compressed furhter - he shifts into lupus, joining Diane in a form which allows a bit more freedom of movement, and finally can answer her. "We fell." The smell of the place assaults him like a physical being. metal - damp metallic scent. He cringes somewhat from it, pushing himself closer to Diane for relative stability. "Can you see anything? I can't."

"No, nothing... is it some kind of pit trap?" Her mind going quickly to flights of escape, fanciful if not real, she adds, "I'm glad there weren't spikes."

Niko mutters curses, one of the few things he retains from his homid days. "Trap... maybe. Don't... " He stumbles as something lurches, scrambling to regain his balance.

"It's moving!" Diane gasps with surprise. Niko doesn't bother responding... it takes too much concentration not to slip around. Diane tries to keep from slipping by bracing her head and shoulders against the top of the chamber... her ears were being pushed down by its closeness even before she tried to do this.

And then both of them hear... from around... amorphous, ghostlike voices, surrounding them. They cannot make out words, but by the tones, they can tell it is the other pack members, who appear to be rather excited at the moment. When she hears the others, Diane tries to howl to them... the echo of her howl is deafening. Hideous metallic noise reflects back to her ears and Niko's.

When the noise of her howl dies down, Diane says, "I wonder if they heard." She doesn't think they did.

"Doubtful." Neither does Niko.

And then, the sides of the chamber begin to move in and out, for all the world as if they are inside a creature that is breathing....