Luckily for Henri, nobody present was a mind reader and he didn't have to fear being executed for his lewd, unnecessarily offensive thoughts. Good for him!

As Henri approached Colonel Dasari, the other men, along with Roland, would be lead to the entrance of the ruins by Ira, and the first of the men to go down would start his descent.

“Mm, yeah?” Dasari acknowledged Henri and looked down at him; he kind of figured at least one of the Mercorans would have an issue, a question or two, possibly, but that was to be expected, wasn’t it?

The Lighthouse, he thought to himself silently while recalling that something was mentioned about Henri being its keeper.

“I’ll have someone look after it or send word to the dock-master about it,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about it today, probably. If something does happen, I’ll take responsibility. You just need to focus on the task at hand.”

If Henri pressed the matter, he would be told that it was far too late to quit now, he had already accepted the job, and the option to turn down the job had expired, too. He was now locked into this job and if he needed to be escorted down, even as a breach of safety protocols, he would be, and that was that. Leaving early was also a no-go, too; when the mission started, there was no coming back up without express permission from Ira Rajat, who was in charge of the expedition.

Henri was stuck.

“Was there something else?"

Henri cocked his head to the side in confusion, the same way skinny little wide eyed puppies do when ladies cooed at them in those high pitched voices. If Dasari imagined hard enough, he probably looked the part, especially with the bandanna around his neck.

There was a reason for his confusion though. Someone else was going to look after it? How? Henri was certain he was the only one with the keys to get into the place. The idea of someone else having access to his lighthouse upset him. A super secret awesome party tower is only super secret if Henri was the only one with access to it, and he didn't trust a single soul in the town other than Roland with the keys. Hopefully they wouldn't find the cellar. More importantly, did they know how to work the thing? Who else could have the keys? The dock master, that meant Mr Dufort. Mr Dufort meant fucking business and he didn't doubt he could do it but damn, if he found anything it meant trouble.

At the very least, if there was a fire (which wouldn't be unlikely considering the amount of kerosene and alchohol was in the building) or if any boats when crashing into the rocks he wouldn't be held accountable. Oh well, Dasari said things would be handled, so he tried not to worry.

"N-no everything is good." He shrugged. "Thanks for your help."

Turning around back to his group, he noticed his friend was already gone, which made him sad.

In truth, if Colonel Dasari did send someone, a key would not be absolutely necessary, but it was most likely best not to mention that to Henri; honestly, he seemed the type to overreact.

“If you’re sure,” the Colonel said before heading off to check with the rest of his men and leaving the descent group to head down under the Bhatt’s supervision only.

Soon after Henri caught up with the rest of the group, a second soldier would start his way down, moving down the makeshift scaffolding with relative ease before ultimately disappearing from sight, vanishing into the shadows below; in the end, it would take just under twenty-five minutes for Henri’s own turn to come around, but he was not the last to go down, either; indeed, Roland and Ira both waited, respectively.

“Try not to break anythin’ on your way down,” Roland said, jokingly.

Dasari was an excellent judge of character, if anything happened to his light house Henri would lose his shit, but would be too scared to approach him. All for the better too, since Henri didn't even think to give Dasari the keys and instead turned tail to go see his friend Roland.

Roland's comment went unnoticed by Henri. He was too excited.

"What was it like down there?"

"Nobody knows," Ira frowned in reply. "We haven't explored too much of it," she moved alongside Henri and Roland, peering down into the darkness below; it was impenetrable after a few feet down and pretty intimidating, too. The path was, thankfully, easy to follow, even as light died, and the closer to bottom one went, the more they would be able to see: torches were being lit by those who had already descended.

“We don’t have the time to spare,” Ira urged, gesturing for Henri to continue on and make his way down to the ruins.

The first thing Henri would notice when he stepped onto the first wooden platform was that it was somewhat rickety: it creaked, moaned and groaned with each shift of weight; it was solid, thankfully, and it could hold his weight and more.

The wooden-platform would give way to a slight decline, a ramp of sorts, and from there, stairs and another platform, which was connected to a large and well-pronounced ridge in rock; in turn, this ridge would be connected to another platform, continuing on in a similar pattern all the way until the bottom.

Once Henri reached the bottom, he’d be greeted by the soldiers and scouts who had went before him, who would toss him a torch and offer to light it, but would turn their attention away from the younger man afterward.



“Guess it’s my turn,” Roland said, stretching his arms above his head and yawning.

Ira nodded, opened her book, scribbled something down, and then closed it again:

“Y-yes, please go ahead and, um, I’ll catch up behind you,” she said and stepped away from the platform, allowing Roland to climb atop it.

Like the soldiers before him, Roland wasn’t too hesitant about climbing down, it was a little rocky, sure, but he had worked a few high-risk jobs once or twice, and he was actually pretty used to this type of situation: When something could give away or he could misstep or some other equally horrible thing could happen and it’d mean near or certain death; he just had to deal with it.

Five minutes after his start, Roland would reach the bottom, and seven minutes after that, Ira Rajat would jump down from the final platform, as well.

Nobody knows.

"Hm?" He raised his eyebrow in interest and walked over to the entrance to peer down it. Nobody knew, it could be anything. The opening was a black abyss of endless possibilities, gaping and beckoning. It was intimidating and made him nervous at first, realizing that soon he'd be plunging himself into a sea of black unknown territory, and it excited him.

Ira didn't need much help convincing Henri to go down."Okay!" He rushed down the steps, and at the first loud CREAAAAAAAAK he reconsidered the speed he traveled. He peeked over to see what condition the stairs ahead of him were in, nothing. Slowly he traveled down, carefully shuffling over the ramp. Since he was hardly picking his feet up on the ramp the sudden change into steps almost caused him to reenact his interpretation of a sparrow in flight. Roland would hear a familiar...

*THUD*

When Henri stubbed his toe on the step, followed by the standard "Ah fuck!" and some scrambling noises while Henri's hands and feet flailed around to grasp something before he fell. He caught himself by grabbing either side of the wall, if he hadn't he'd probably be injured or worse. Carefully he finished his descend into the ruins, and when he got there the rest of the workers were smiling and snickering when they passed him a torch.

"Thanks."

Once Ira arrived, the explorers, Roland included, would place their attention on her, as she looked around the bottom-level and entrance to the ruins; she looked to be searching for something in particular, something that was necessary or, at the very least, important.

“What are you doin’?” Roland asked after being handed his own torch. “Is somethin’ wrong, maybe?”

She ignored Roland’s question and instead focused around the wall of the only path leading outside of the otherwise perfectly circular room. When Roland approached Ira, perhaps to jostle an answer out of her, the light provided by the torch lit up a few symbols engraved into the wall, bits and pieces were chipped, missing, but it definitely looked something like writing, although what language this writing was in, Roland could not begin to explain. If Henri was paying attention, he might feel a slight bit of nostalgia if he stared long enough at the words, but given how time had degraded them so, he really wouldn't feel much more than that.

Ahaha, I see, Ira thought to herself and leaned in closer to the engravings, peering at them for what seemed like a long time; after a while, she backed away, opened her book, used Roland’s torch for light, and flipped through pages, stopped, checked the engravings again, and then started flipping through yet more pages; eventually, she’d come to a page, guide her finger over some unintelligible words, and then slam the book closed, heaving a sigh of relief.

Still inadvertently providing light to Ira, Roland flashed Henri a confused look and noticed that none of the soldiers seemed surprised. Did it mean that this was normal? Was this Bhatt-girl checking for something or could she read the weird chicken-scratch on the wall? To Roland, it just looked like hard to follow scribbles and nothing more.

When Ira arrived it went without say that Henri was paying attention to her, both admiring her appearance and holding his breath for her instructions while she inspected the cave walls, expectantly looking for something.

Gravitating towards Roland he approached him from behind, but stayed a safe distance because of his torch and spoke in almost a whisper. "What's she doing?" Observing her actions, he wondered to himself what the Hell was going on. As he watched Roland and Ira, their torches revealed some strange markings on the wall.

"Whoah." He brought his own torch to the wall to inspect the markings. They must have been some ancient hieroglyphs or some kind of secret code that he'd...seen before? The feeling of deja vu was weird and unjustified, obviously this was his first time seeing this, so feeling so nostalgic over it was uncalled for, but it was definite. He definitely saw this before. He had to tell Roland.

When he turned around to call him over, he was standing next to Bhatt, providing light for her so she could do that weird thing she did where she kept on looking at the walls and the book and back, like she could read it or discovered something important. Henri caught Roland's confused expression and returned it with his own confused expression and a small shrug, then pointed with his head towards himself, motioning for Roland to come over there.

Roland gave Henri a look that meant something like 'what' and went to walk over to him, but was stopped by their boss suddenly walking out of the room, grabbing a torch from one of the men and heading through the low-passage that the words had been engraved beside.

The soldiers followed, but Roland would allow them to go ahead of him, waiting behind the group until Henri could walk up beside him; and only then would he follow after the rest of the group.

“What’s up?” He asked, watching his step carefully. Although there was a fair bit of minor debris wherever they stepped, it was mostly large, white rocks, broken and shattered, making it easy to maneuver around as it was to trip over, but in general, the area was actually pretty clear; Roland had expected something much different, in fact.

The air was heavy, stale, and the darkness above the explorers made it impossible to see the ceiling, especially once they left the previous room, and there was something odd, too: after a while, it felt like they were most definitely traveling on a road - a sunken, nearly erased from existence-road, but a road none-the-less. Was that possible? They were in ruins of some sort, but this was more than a simple path, Roland felt.

Scanning the torch over the images,illuminating them row by row, he wracked his brain for the answer to where the Hell he could have seen these before. Seeing them ignited some kind of spark in his brain, or what would sound like complete madness to Roland.

Henri was completely transfixed by the markings, with that wondrous look that clearly indicated he was going to say something ridiculous. When he was done looking he did a sort of shuffle run towards Roland, and checked beside him, behind and ahead of him to make sure nobody was within earshot.

"Sounds stupid," he admitted, but in a quiet tone, since he didn't want the others to hear what he had to say, even though they were far ahead. "But d'ya ever get that feelin? Feels like I've seen this before, and that something big is gonna happen."

Henri looked around and up into the darkness and breathed deeply of the hot stale air. "Something bad." After a moment of Henri walking without stubbing his toe on something (which was weird for him) he couldn't help but notice the pathway was impeccably clear. The entrance to the place seemed like a rush job but they must have worked really hard on this.

"They did a good job on the road." Henri observed, shuffling his feet on the ground to see if he would bump into anything.

"Déjà vu?" Roland asked. "Well, yeah, 'course I get it sometimes," he answered after a moment, shrugging. He was pretty sure that most people experienced it a few times in their life, after all; it would be weird not to, right? But hell, Henri was a pretty strange guy, too, and so maybe he was just experiencing the sensation for the first time, ever. Roland wouldn’t be surprised, now that he thought about it . . .

“Huh? Oh,” Roland looked down as he walked, watching the ground; although it didn’t look like anything special, he had thought something was off too; it just didn’t make much sense, is all.

“Feels almost like we’re supposed to go in this direction, don’t it? Not much an adventure if we’re following a road,” he smiled in the low-light, “right?”

The two were behind the Esconians by a fair bit, weren’t they? And the soldiers, Ira included, all looked like they were pretty intent on following this road to the end, an end that didn't even look to be anywhere in sight, and, well, their bhatt or whatever did seem to know what she was looking for, too. Henri and Roland couldn't be blamed if they couldn't keep up with professionals . . . If they, accidentally, of course, got separated, would the Esconians even notice right away?

"Huh?" Henri was a bit shocked that Roland didn't tell him he was stupid or being ridiculous like usual. It went better than he expected. Deja vu was it? It wasn't some kind of ill omen? If that was the case,

"WeeeEEEeeeell..."

He was feigning innocence now, his head was cocked to his shoulder and he rolled his eyes around staring at the scenery innocently, the way cheeky children who are clearly about to do a bad deed did when they were trying to be discreet. Notably children and Henri were one in the same and sometimes subtlety wasn't Henri's specialty.

Especially not with a grin that would put the devil to shame.

"I suppooooooose we could take a little detour." Acting as if the idea didn't interest him at all. "But didn't the Colonel say something about them checking at five minute intervals or something?"

Roland stood dumbfounded for a moment.

"You... Really don't pay attention, do you?" He scratched at the side of his face in thought. "It was five minutes between people comin' down here, bro. Un'erstand?”

Roland undid the fastenings of his backpack and tossed it to the ground with a sigh. Looking around, he surveyed the area; he could still hear the soldiers walking along, not yet noticing that their two native Mercorans had stopped following. Taking the time to peer ahead, Roland could definitely see the telltale signs of a road, but it was broken, splintered and worn with age. It was still weird as hell, however, given that they were underground by quite the distance.

“You gotta start paying more attention to things,” he said. “You’ll wind up in a heap of trouble one of these days, mark my words."

"Ya that's what I said, five minutes!"

He said cheerfully, posing with his hands on his hips, clearly proud of himself for guessing "correctly" as if it was some kind of game.After that he'd drop his pose and stand above Roland, watching him put his bag on the ground and look off towards the rest of their party. His eyes did the same thing, forward and back between the two, ignoring the comment his friend made, sort of.

"Ya well!" Really he had nothing clever to say, so he changed the subject." They're not stupid they're going to notice we're gone eventually. What we need is a good excuse..." It took some stroking of his imaginary beard before his face lit up with a brilliant idea,"Oh! Let's say I went to find a discreet spot to pee or somethin, got lost, you went to go find me and that's why we were gone!"

"You ... No, you got the time right, but you're still wrong about us being checked up on," Roland heaved another heavy sigh, remembering that talking to Henri was sometimes like beating his head into a brick wall. He didn’t elaborate further on the subject, however; it would have been pointless, anyways.

“I know they’re not stupid,” he said, “and I got it all planned out,” Roland assured Henri, smiling wide: The longer it took for him and Henri to finish their conversation, the less they could hear of the soldiers who were ahead of them, and, in fact, they hadn’t been able to see the soldiers since the conversation began. In other words, they had already gotten ‘lost’ from the rest of the group.

Genius, Roland thought to himself.

“Just trust me, Henri. It doesn’t matter if they notice, ‘cuz we're already lost and turned around. We’ll just have to catch up later, I guess.”