It was true that the more time they wasted discussing their plan, the farther and farther away the rest of the crew got, as soon as they stopped they'd already put themselves in too deep. There was no going back now, they may as well go along with it.

"Oh?" Henri widened his eyes and pursed his lips into a small O shape, exaggerated like all his expressions usually were. "Well if your plan fails it can be your fault instead of mine. Perfect!" Widely smiling he turned to face the more travel beaten road, walking down it with a spring in his step, only to stop himself short to wait for his friend.

"Then what're we waiting for let's go!"

"But my plan has already succeeded!" Roland exclaimed, although not quite so loudly as to draw the unwanted attention of the others. After all, then there would be no point to any of this!

"Right," he agreed, took a step forward, back, and then stopped, looking around. "That Bhatt chick might know where she's goin', but, uh, we don't."

Not that he was backing down, of course, but he didn't even know where to start - off the road, obviously, but which direction? Left or right, should they go back? It was his idea to get off the beaten path, but he wasn't too fond of getting lost and dying some miserable death in the darkness, either.

Roland lifted his torch and held it out, casting a dim light forwards, but not really making a difference against the darkness outside their general area. Silhouettes crept across the ground from broken pillars and chunks of earth; he pulled the torch back, turned around, and repeated the action until he had gotten an idea of either direction.

“All of it looks the same to me,” he said, “mostly just shit we could break our necks on if we tripped, but whatever, which way should we go?”

"Hm..." Henri looked pensive, stroking his imaginary beard deep in thought or somethinglike it. "Prooobably the simplest way, so we don't get lost. Actually we should mark our way somehow so we can follow it back."

His dad had told him a story once about a boy and a girl who went exploring in the woods, and left a trail of breadcrumbs behind. In the story the birds ate the crumbs and they got lost, then the children stumbled upon a house made of candy which they were tortured and almost murdered in, then narrowly escaped.

If fairytales were meant to teach a child an important moral or lesson, then they did a damn good job on Henri. He didn't want to end up riding a rocking horse made of a sawblade, or fattened up to eat, and he was seeing so many similarities between the situations that it seemed likely to happen, yet he didn't carry anything in of the sort in his bag, and after a patdown of his pockets he remembered he had only matches and a sadly, empty flask.

Bending his torch lower to the ground, Henri began inspecting it for something he might use. "You got anything on you?"

Roland pointlessly patted down his front pockets with his free hand, but he didn't find anything useful; in fact, he had nothing extra on him except the sword he had received from Colonel Dasari. The one day he wasn't prepared to explore subterranean caves unguided, dammit!

“Nada,” he shrugged and pointed his torch down, illuminating the ground around his pack. “But we have rope,” he said, remembering that both of them had been given a few feet worth, “and you’ve got a knife-dagger-thing, too, so we could cut pieces off to make trail.”

Roland was not particularly keen on the idea of leaving an obvious trail for the soldiers to find and catch up to them with. It would keep them from getting too lost, sure, but it worked both ways - they would be mighty easy to find.

“Ha,” he laughed before bending down to pick up a rock. “We could get creative and make a landmark or something, or hell, it should leave a mark if we scrape one rock against another. What do you think?”

Actually the real moral of the fairytale was lost to Henri. It probably was "don't venture into dark and scary unexplored places" but to Henri it meant "don't venture in unprepared." Neither of them were prepared, but neither of them were exactly ready to go through ancient ruins today, so Henri made an exception. He always did for adventure.

"You're right!" He did have a fancy knife thing after all. He tucked it away discreetly underneath his shirt, but it was so discreet he briefly forgot about it! In one swift motion Henri slung his backpack over his shoulder, opened it up and took out the rope. His hand almost went for his knife, but he hesitated.

"I like your rock idea better, we're probably gonna need the rope for something else." He said, bending over and lighting the ground, inspecting it for a suitable looking rock. After some selection he found a good palm sized stone and scraped it against the wall, making a mark.

"Is this good?"

Offtopic: Not sure if that would actually work, I can edit it if need be.

“Should be,” Roland said and tossed his rock aside.

Once again, he peered into the darkness, looking for some sign, some . . . inspiration on where to go; it did not present itself readily and, defeated, Roland slumped his shoulders, took a few steps, crook his left arm and placed it at his side, and pointed the opposite arm outwards, his index finger gesturing forwards; he took more steps forwards.

“We’ll go this way!” He announced, albeit muted enough to not draw too much attention.

Roland dropped his eccentric pose and resumed walking normally.

“’Cuz it’s not like it matters,” he muttered, “it all looks the freakin’ same to me.”

Roland's method was basically identical to anything he would have thought of. There didn't seem to be much ahead of them, just blackness followed by more worn down road, but if they kept going they'd find something eventually, and he couldn't wait.

"Okay!" Henri exclaimed excitedly and practically pranced along side his friend, torch in one hand, stone in the other constantly scraping a line on the cave wall behind him. While Roland had dropped his pose, Henri basically fluttered along, the stone making erratic waves up and down the wall instead of being drawn in a straight line.

"Well this road looks a little bit different at least. It's a lot...messier. OOF!"

Skipping wasn't a practical mode of travel as he smashed his toe against a rock. His toes took a lot of damage, they probably looked disgusting. Walking straighter now, he pondered to himself awhile, "They didn't build this like the other one, unless...they didn't build it at all."

Like Henri pointed out, this road, while 'existing', was far more erratic - barely a road, even - and splintered off in several places, ancient and fragmented crevices reaching off into the distance like the legs of some great, giant spider. This was probably not a good comparison to make, actually, since the two were currently in some dark, foreboding ruin of an ancient civilization that could very well have been great, giant spiders. Spiders with a large, pulsating, bulging collective of eyes and venomous fangs dripping and oozing with toxic, paralytic poison, or, even more horrifying, their body-destroying, wound-inflicting, man-murdering legs, unyielding and unbreakable, even despite the fact that both men had weapons ... Yes, that was a very bad comparison to draw, given the circumstances; in fact, Roland thought silently to himself, he was most definitely going to stop thinking on this right now. Right. This. Very. Second. No, seriously - quit it.

The thought did not leave him, but he kept it to himself, at least.

After some time walking, Henri and Roland would come upon a massive archway constructed into a large wall of stone, stone that was obviously touched, molded, and sculpted by a discerning hand; it was not natural, although it could hardly be called ’manmade’, either. Upon the stone, just above the entrance, were sharp, jagged letters that appeared to twist and squirm when looked upon.

To Roland, the letters looked entirely unintelligible, but Henri would find that they looked downright familiar and, provided he devoted enough time to it, he would even be able to make out a rough translation of the engravings.

Each word was like a blade wedged into the stone, Henri would discover, and each bladed-word, if he continued with the translation, would be a piercing pain in his head, at least until he moved onto the next word and re-started the whole process over, repeating over and over until he finished reading the words.

The engraving seemed to be both the partial telling of a story and a description of where the archway lead: a vault or treasury, it would seem. There was something more, however; it was something that was lost when translated into the Mercoran language. There was a lot of emotion and meaning in the words of the original text. The native language, the foreign (although familiar) script was quite noticeably powerful. To even throw a cursory glimpse up at them was to invoke a great deal of pain, of loss and regret.

If Henri did, indeed, translate the words, these feelings would, like they had with the stone, engrave themselves upon his soul, and follow him for a bit of time, before slowly fading away. That was this forgotten language's power.

Aside from the obvious dangers of separating form your group to go explore the unexplored in the dark, Henri didn't seem to worried so far. He was wide eyed with wonder, taking it all in, his eyes followed the ground, the debris, up the wall, onto the ceiling, cataloging every detail. It was amazing, and besides, there couldn't be any giant spiders, spiders needed bugs to eat and he didn't see any bugs large enough. Unless, maybe the road wasn't built by people, or built at all. They could just as well be walking through a giant worm tunnel.

Well at least the giant spider would have a giant bug to eat other than themselves. With that in mind, and his throbbing toes as a reminder he was weary of traps webs and the like, he was stepping more carefully now, still scraping the rock behind him, leaving a long white line against the wall for them to follow.

Kkkkkshhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....against the wall. Aside from their breaths the sound was all that filled the tunnel, echoing and reverberating off the walls. Until suddenly Kssshk-! It stopped abruptly.

Tunnel worms don't build archways. It could have if it had the hands and tools to, at this point he couldn't rule it out. Did tunnel worms need archways?

"Holy! Roland check it out!" Thrilled by the archway, standing on tip toes, he held his torch higher up to the archway, illuminating the words carved into it. Suddenly his expression changed, like a cocktail of fascination, shock and unease. "Roland? Remember what I said earlier? That I've seen this before?"

"Déjà vu?" Roland looked over to Henri, bringing his torch to bear and looking a tad perplexed; he remembered Henri mentioning it, but if it was just déjà vu again, then it was going to be a bit tiresome. Roland, himself, was not an expert on the subject by any means and he really did not want to have to explain the concept, in detail, to Henri. That would have . . . Well, to put it simply, that would have been quite the undertaking.

“What about it?” he asked, pulling himself away from his fearful thoughts on explaining anything, whatsoever to Henri.

Waiting for an answer from his friend, Roland looked up to the engravings in the wall and marveled at them for a moment, but was eventually forced to look away. It looked like chicken-scratch, sure, but there was something weird about, too. It made his stomach churn.

Henri suffered the same ache in his stomach from looking at the strange markings, the letters seemed to stab into his mind, giving him a nagging headache as he read, but he persisted since despite being almost certain he'd never seen it, he could read it, and he never learned how to read in his life!

"No no this is different." Henri shook his head, dismissing the idea of deja vu. How would he explain it to Roland without getting scolded for nonsense? Roland wasn't the type to believe in spirits or prophecies, and yet here he was in a tunnel he'd never been in before looking at words he'd never seen that made perfect sense...almost.

The language on the arch brought back cold, miserable uneasy emotions, even the feeling was familiar, he'd felt it just last night.

"Oh!"

Think on the days past, of grief yet to come
Whereupon a gilded seat so sat the Blue King,
Alluring, focused, and foolish;

“The time has come,” the council warned in unison
Their king had earned no favor in their hearts.
“King made,” they explained, “but not king eternal.”

The dream from the night before. Unable to explain to a man who wouldn't believe him either way, he would just show him.

"Under the rule of a heathen, our world crumbles, slick with death and burdened with regret "at least we have our treasure," he had laughed. Er...s'what it says."

There was a blank expression on Roland's face as he stood there and blinked several times.

"Ha," he laughed and looked back up to the letters, "yer pullin' my leg, right? How could you read these words, anyways? They look like someone made a carvin’ of broken glass and needles.”

If not for his torch, Roland would have folded his arms and stood over Henri with a smug look on his face; it would have been akin to ‘you really are freakin’ retarded, aren’t you?’ But he kept his urge reigned in rather well, all things considered. Then again, while Roland wasn’t particularly superstitious enough to believe in prophecy or whatever, he did believe in magic, he had seen enough of it from River’s End’s occasional traveler, and actually, Donald had, in fact, shown himself to be something of a magician, now that he thought about it. He had done a pretty cool trick that made a seagull explode mid-air. It was as impressive as it sounded! Given that, if he thought of those words as magic - but not just magic, but a special kind of magic that only an idiot could understand - then it sort of made sense, he guessed.

No, no it didn’t! Roland mentally shook his head. Still, Henri did ... read off the words without hesitation and he wasn’t really creative enough to come up with something so serious sounding without throwing in pudding, naked chicks, cakes, and whipped cream. And probably a bunch of other irrelevant stuff, too.

"So . . .,” after a few moments of inward contemplation, Roland sighed with the decision of just going with it. For now. Surely, something more reasonable would present itself as an explanation. Right? "What's it going on about, then? Slick with death? Regret? Sounds nasty. - And treasure?"

"You're right," Henri sighed, faking defeat. "It's a poem I wrote for my girlfriend, do you think she'll like it?"

Of course he was expecting it, since they were shitting in diapers their friendship consisted of Henri saying something, and Roland instantly cutting it down, it had been routine. Roland even emphasized that there was no way a guy like him could read the words. Downplaying it was the best way to deal with it, and again like routine Roland's disbelief was constantly met with snarky remarks and sarcasm, whether or not he was right about Henri being ridiculous.

Anyway, the point was to show Roland what he meant. Roland knew very well he couldn't come up with a verse like that out of the blue, and like always the madness was so astounding that Roland would sometimes throw in the towel and play along. Of course sometimes that just made things worse.

"Ya man treasure. Treasure could mean anything though, do you think it's still worth a shot?" Henri looked behind him, concerned. "If we're gonna find anything of value we hafta keep it hidden, and we left a trail and everything." He was referring to the line he scraped across the wall leading right to them, for sure the others would have noticed they were gone, and if they found out they strayed to find treasure and keep it?

Roland ignored the comment about Henri's girlfriend. No woman would give Henri the time a day while they were swooning after him, after all; it was all bluster on Henri's part, obviously.

"So, we could go in there," he said, gesturing toward entrance of the archway, "and find treasure or possibly slick death, right? I do like the sound of treasure . . . Not sure about the slick death part, but treasure would be nice."

Roland walked a few paces forward, peering into the darkness of the archway, "well, we should leave some things, if they do catch up with us, probably. If we don't leave them something, they might get suspicious and I think Ira can decipher this mess of a language."

He had no qualms about taking something for himself. If the archway really did lead to some good stuff then it’d probably have multiple good stuff - plenty to go around, even! He didn’t even want to sell anything he could find; honestly, he wanted a memento more than anything.

If not for the fact that both his hands were occupied with a torch in one and a stone in the other, Henri would be stroking his imaginary beard deep in thought. There were perils, and then there was TREASURE. His mind was working through balancing the pros and cons of both. He settled for simply looking contemplative.

"You're right." He didn't say what he was right about, maybe just generalizing or forgetting altogether. "'S'a good plan, in and out real quick. We'll leave somethin behind and bail on the first sign of danger. Best part is, they can't get too mad if we actually find somethin' good right?"

He could always count on Roland to have a solid plan, at first it seemed pretty made up on the spot, but now it was piecing together quite nicely. Regardless of what the Colonel said he'd always planned on taking at least a small token of their trip with him in his bag, they'd get the adventure, the treasure and everything without much trouble!

But it was too convenient. Baring the ill feeling of the script he chanced a glance up at it one more time, looking over the words and back at Roland again. "But...it says our treasure and he had laughed, you don't suppose someone or something will be waiting there for us?"