bewitched armor

[thaumobabble]

There are plenty of things to do. Bella orders a carpet to enchant so she can commute to and from Reformist Wizards efficiently and move house. She starts combing through the castle library to find background material on her Minor Technical Issue.

Sometimes she watches Sherlock cook.

Sometimes she watches Tony forge. (Nnnnf.)

Comments

[thaumobabble]

Bella unrolls it and sits. "You want to drive or should I?"

[calendarofcrime]

"It might be most efficient if you drove and I navigated."

[thaumobabble]

Bella nods and sits at the front bit of the carpet. When Sherlock joins her, she commands, "Up."

The carpet rises.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock points.

[thaumobabble]

Bella steers.

[calendarofcrime]

It is not such an incredibly long flight, and the cave is quite visible from the air.

[thaumobabble]

"That sure looks like a cave," says Bella, descending cautiously.

[calendarofcrime]

"It is one," says Sherlock. "Apart from that, its contents and nature are not extremely consistent."

[thaumobabble]

"Would we be better off invisible?"

[calendarofcrime]

"We may very well be."

[thaumobabble]

"Okay." Bella pauses the carpet, and carefully casts a spell of invisibility on the both of them. And then she descends the carpet the rest of the way, and rolls it up, and puts it behind a rock.

[calendarofcrime]

"Let's find Tony," says Sherlock, and starts into the cave.

[thaumobabble]

Bella swallows and goes in after her, each hand on the opposite wrist ready to pull something out of a sleeve.

[calendarofcrime]

It's called the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises for a reason. Sherlock goes in expecting to be unpleasantly surprised. She keeps a little ahead of Bella, but not too far, in case something unpleasant comes at them from a surprising direction.

[thaumobabble]

The cave is dark. Bella has a glowy thing, which she takes out and hangs around her neck; the cave doesn't seem inclined to unpleasantly surprise them by preventing the glowy thing from working.

The cave narrows to a tunnel just barely wide enough for them to proceed single file.

Bella follows Sherlock in for twelve steps, and then is swallowed up by the floor with a yelp. The floor closes after her. It doesn't dampen the sound of her in her armor clattering to uncharitably distant ground, or her whimpering the words of her healing spells.

[calendarofcrime]

Sherlock is unpleasantly surprised!

The first thing she tries is stepping just where Bella was. She doesn't expect it to work.

[thaumobabble]

The floor is quite solid there.

Oh, also, there's a wall back the way they came now.

"Sherlock?" says Bella's quavering voice.

[calendarofcrime]

"I am not presently able to join you," says Sherlock.

[thaumobabble]

"Sherlock, where'd you go?" Bella asks, overlapping enough of Sherlock's sentence to make it clear that the floor is soundproof in one direction.

[calendarofcrime]

That is annoying. Sherlock is annoyed.

[thaumobabble]

Is it also unpleasantly surprising? The cave does strive to live up to its name.

"Can you hear me?" calls Bella. Sherlock can hear tentative Bella-footsteps.

[calendarofcrime]

It is liable to cause Sherlock to set something on fire if it goes on long enough.

She follows Bella as best she can.

[thaumobabble]

Bella's path veers off to the left, judging by the footsteps and occasional calls for "Sherlock?".

Sherlock's path - pitch dark with the loss of Bella's glowy thing, unless she chooses to set something on fire - divides, as best she can tell by listening to echoes and groping around, into stairs up and to the left, stairs down and to the right, and a scrunchy twisty passage that goes forward and slightly angled downwards.

[calendarofcrime]

Twisty passage it is.

[thaumobabble]

The twisty passage is slippery and damp, and it gets cold in there as Sherlock proceeds.

She can't hear Bella walking anymore after she's gotten about ten feet in.