Into The Tunnels;; Althea

Althea wasn’t the type to investigate ruins, she found them quite boring. The thought of unearthing something unseen for thousands of years didn’t appeal to her as it did to others and the way archeologists sometimes overanalyze things agitated her. How about if the builder just felt like making the amount of pillars in the hallway uneven? Or maybe they were just really bad at counting and by the time someone noticed something was off they were too far into the structure to redo it? And sometimes the way people thought of those in the past was to “polished”, like they were more like a distant and alien race rather than actual people. Anyways, Althea had her problems with them, so that was far from her motivation for being at the ruins.

No, she was simply running low on money so she took the first job she saw, saving details for later. That’s how the slayer went about doing most of her business and she saw no real reason to change it. But anyways as she was leisurely making her way to the site of the job a shadow glided over the ground, the blonde tilting her head upwards to see a raven-black creature soaring seamlessly through the sky. “Dragon?!” She exclaimed in a half-astonished half-excited tone. Hoping to maybe fight it a bit, she tried her best to pursue it, finally stopping when it landed next to a girl wearing a miniskirt and boots. “Hey,” She panted, “Do you know that dragon?”

Althea nodded as the girl spoke, although she kept her gaze on the dragon.  It was pretty darn cool that a dragon practically showed up out of nowhere, although she had an extreme urge to beat it into the ground.  It wasn't like she disliked them, she just loved them enough to want to fight them.  In fact, she was thinking about abandoning her job with this Lexa person to fight it, but as they disappeared into the ruins with the scaled black creature in their wake Althea reckoned she would do the task at hand first.  She took the trouble to show up, so might as well follow through.

Anyways, she found that the ruin looked just how she expected, a dingy yet large room with unfamiliar decorative pieces.  In fact, it was apparently small enough that the dragon could get in, although Althea had seen larger wyverns just the other day.  "Hey, so on a scale of one to ten how many things am I going to fight?"  She asked while surveying the room, hands held leisurely behind her head.

Althea let out a small sound indicating awe as Lexa began to glow, her eyes on the girl's arms rather than the area she was illuminating.  After all, she was fairly sure things were far more interesting there rather than around the group.  "I didn't know you could glow like that!  And don't worry about the light, I'll manage."  She remarked, although she only surveyed the circuits for a moment more before casting her attention elsewhere.  Glowing people were interesting, but eventually you would see everything you could of it.  Her arms glowed and that was practically it, and Althea didn't have the attention span to go into the specific of it.

But now that the group had made their way deeper into the tomb to the point natural sunlight couldn't reach, the slayer realized that she could barely see a thing.  Lexa really wasn't being humble when she said they couldn't see much, but then again she could manage.  It wasn't like she needed to have really good vision of the room, there were other senses she could rely on during combat.  Althea had noticed that the tomb was the kind that tended to make just about everything echo, so if something started moving they would hear, that it unless that something could fly.  But she'd deal with that as it came, the blonde could see faint outlines of things if she squinted anyways.  And when the young mage's client mentioned the sheer numbers of her enemies Althea couldn't help but let her excitement overcast her forethought.  Lexa gave the impression that she was pretty darn strong, so the fact she needed another mage with her to get through the tomb was really something.

Althea worried about light minimally, not because she didn’t think it could cause problems but rather because she already decided she would deal with it as the problem presented itself.  She was having way too much fun to dwell on something, so she just pushed on through the darkness.  Anything could be in the tomb, but that was half the appeal of it!  Typically Althea would be briefed before she entered such a dangerous premises, but this time there was barely any information to off of in the first place.  Nothing was guaranteed and she would have to rely on her own abilities along with those of her partners for the job heavily.

And speaking of which, the dragonq suddenly moved in front of the two, making dd gestures and saying… something.  “I think she’s telling us, erm, that there’s enemies?  That we should go that way maybe… no, that way!  Or maybe she’s saying ahead is a no go...”  Althea said, rapidly guessing as if she were playing a game of charades.  Sure she was taught magic by a dragon, but that dragon just happened to be able to speak a language the mage understood, and she could gather through body language despite the darkness that the dragon was nodding towards a different hallway.  And honestly, the whole thing about being with others on a job was that you should probably be willing to entrust your life in their hands.  So, confident in the answer she had come to, the slayer turned and walked down the designated direction.

Althea had a bit of trouble guessing what exactly the dragon was attempting to communicate to her, but it seemed like she had gotten to understand it.  If she was even in the slightest offended by either how much guessing the mage had done or one of the guesses, she wouldn’t have bothered to notice.   It wasn’t that she didn’t care, just that she didn’t know to look for such signs.  Althea is often left completely unaware to thing’s true natures because of this fact, and although she’s half-aware of it she can’t bother herself to try harder.  Hopefully if it really bothered them they would go ahead and say it, although she guessed that was different with the language border she had with the dragon.  In fact, by raven black creature reacted to her with a nod, it was clear to the slayer that the dragon could perfectly understand her, although that was disappointingly not true the other way around.

But since she couldn’t help that fact, the water mage decided to just move on, turning down the hallway the dragon had directed them into.  In fact, she even guided them further, displaying that she apparently knew where they were going.  That or they had some way of finding out what was down a hallway without going there which could probably be done with extremely heightened eyesight, precognition, or really various other abilities.  This went on for a while, and by a while I mean a while.  Althea felt as if they had been in there for literal years, but whenever she cast a strained glance at Lexa the circuit-covered girl was focused on their surroundings. The dragon also seemed preoccupied on guiding the two also, that is until suddenly a wing was wrapped around the two, a thud then heard echoing through the room.

“FINALLY.  I thought I was going to die from boredom!”  Althea exclaimed, practically rocketting into the battlefield the moment the dragoness released the two.  And just as Lexa had said, there were an absolutely humongous wave of enemies, many of them even with circuits that mirrored that of Lexa.  Running right in, three odd looking and rather humongous fell from the ceiling onto the floor, scurrying towards the blonde.  One leapt straight for her face, being met with a punch from the young girl to their body.  And although it did indeed get knocked back, the creature seemed to be absolutely unfazed by the blow.  Frowning and slightly confused, Althea reasoned that may have something to do with their circuits.  So when the next spider leapt at her she grabbed it right out of the air in all of its huge spider-iness and gave one of its legs two large tugs before it came off.  Then, it managed to wiggle out of her hand, regrouping with the other spiders.  “Hey you guys!  Pretty sure the spiders’ weakness is their legs or something like that!”