Arolitic

"Another round!" An orb cried. "Yes!" Another agreed. "We haven't had this much fun in years!" The orbs dipped and dived, orbiting around Nova as they celebrated her victory. Their excitement was so contagious that Nova almost forgot where she was. "Enough!" Ordered the orb that Nova assumed was the leader. "We made a promise." There were cries of disappointment but eventually all the orbs receded. Only the one which glowed yellow - the leader - remained. "We will send you back." It told her. "But first, we must give you this warning. They are coming-" ERROR CODE 404 RESTARTING… Nova woke in her bed. For some reason that felt… wrong. As if she shouldn't have been there - not at this point in time at least. But if she hadn't gone to bed before falling asleep; where had she been? Working was the logical conclusion. Yet Nova did not remember working on anything last night or even the day before. Had she gone out? That felt right but she couldn't remember where she went or why she

"Urgh…" Consciousness returned to Nova slowly and painfully. Her head throbbed with every pulse of her heart. If it weren't for the lack of nausea, Nova would have written it off as nothing more than a very bad hangover. Something felt… off. She wasn't on her bed. In fact she wasn't on anything. Her heart stopped. Eyes snapped open. She made an attempt to roll over but without anything to push herself off of or gravity to work against, she simply flailed uselessly. All around her was nothing but an all consuming darkness. "Okay get a hold of yourself, Nova." She whispered to herself even as her paws came up to grip her own head tightly. "You are a scientist, there's got to be a logical explanation to this." She squeezed her eyes shut once more. A deep breath in. And then counted down from ten. By the time she finally reached zero (after a couple of decimal places first) her heart had slowed to a more regular beat and the cold rush of panic had receded. She could think clearly

Nova hated the town. She hated its streets. Hated its markets. Hated its Kamis. But above everything else, Nova hated that she was dragged away from her research. Being in town meant no one was manning the observatory. It took over a day to travel down the mountain - so that was a minimum of two days she would have to spend away from the observatory and her work, creators only knew how much she could be missing in that time! That was why she set up the deliveries in the first place. Her research could not afford for her to be MIA for upwards of three days just to get supplies. Deliveries were supposed to come bimonthly, same day every time, with enough food and other necessities to last her til the next delivery. Such service did not come cheap, so Nova expected zero delays with it. So when the delivery boy - Jerome or something like that - didn't show, it left Nova with two choices; wait and starve, or march her ass down the mountain to demand answers. "Babs!" Nova shouted into the

As far as Kore was aware, there wasn't supposed to be anything under the Nightmare Tree. Nothing in her research thus far had even suggested that something lay beneath the tree - until she found the black book that was. The book in question was held by Calliope whose nose was deep in the book as she trotted alongside the Stygian. The red eyes drawn onto the cover seemed to be… watching Kore. Every so often she swore she saw them blink. Unsettling to say the least. Following the directions the book gave, Kore found herself at the mouth of a strange tunnel. It was dark, incredibly dark, yet at the end a red light seemed to glow softly. Almost like it was beckoning her inside. Distantly, she could hear voices crying out. While Kore would ordinarily advise a Stygian in this situation to run as fast as they could, she was simply too curious to turn away. This place - this Labyrinth - clearly had secrets and she wanted to unravel them. Calliope tensed as the cries got louder. The small