thaumobabble | bewitched armor

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.)

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

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"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.

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That is annoying. Sherlock is annoyed.

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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.

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

She follows Bella as best she can.

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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.

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Twisty passage it is.

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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.

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Time to go back, then.

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The twisty passage's back end apparently now divides into three equally twisty passages (left, right, and forward-and-down) in that direction.

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She picks right.

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The darkness eventually gives way to a crystalline sort of glow; there is moss growing in this part of the tunnel that phosphoresces. Because this is the Cave of Unpleasant Surprises, it also releases a noxious smell when stepped on or otherwise touched, which is hard to avoid in a passage this small.

She can hear Bella again, if that's Bella running and making breathy fearful noises somewhere off to the left.

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Sherlock quickly becomes very good at not touching the glowing moss. She also keeps following the sound of Bella's voice.

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The tunnel path Sherlock chooses in trying to stay close to Bella exits into a large cavern with the phosphorescent moss completely coating the ceiling. There is a six-foot sheer drop into a deep pool of water with no less-sheer shore available, except the stream that's running at high speed off into that lower tunnel there.

There's a wall behind her again.

There may be something moving in the water, deep under the surface.

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Sherlock decides that more light is required.

She holds a hand out to one side and slightly behind her, and ignites her gauntlet.

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Well, if there was something moving in the water, it's not making the water ripple anymore, although it's possible that from her vantage point there are parts of the pool she can't see, cut under the tunnel she's standing in.

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Curiously, she douses the light.

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The water remains still.

Under this completely still water swims a dark shape.

Also, it does not appear to be limited to travel through the water. It rises, surface yet unrippling, and swims through the air, jaws wide; it looks like a cross between a shark, a weasel, and a sea anemone, and it's six times Sherlock's size.

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Sherlock attempts to set it on fire.

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It doesn't seem to be there enough to catch fire.

Till the moment when it bites her in the legs. Then it's there.

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At last, a target for her incandescent rage.

The creature steams, then smokes, then burns.

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When it is very thoroughly charred, it at last stops trying to eat her, and falls into the water, diminished but no longer insubstantial and therefore splashy.

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It doesn't take more than a few seconds, but that still leaves Sherlock with her leg armour somewhat crunched.

There is no exit but the water; therefore, logically, the water is the exit.

She doesn't jump so much as stumble gracefully off the ledge.

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The water conveys her to the exit stream and jostles her along.

She fetches up on a smooth, gently sloped shore in a cavern that is completely white, made of something that looks sort of like alabaster, and populated with rather a lot of frogs of various shapes, sizes, and colors.