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Singing Mountain
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For a few confusing moments, all four of you end up in separate rooms.
Cricket Moon was in the upstairs hallway of the original house. The corroded-copper watertight submarine hatch - entrance to the mysterious otherspace - is shut, but nobody's turned the central wheel to lock it, and has been hacked loose from the surrounding wall by the father of the family who lives here. He's actually quite enthusiastic about an opportunity to solve the problem using tools he's more familiar with.
With the detached door slung on her back, for the first few steps it seems almost like everything's going to work out fine.
Halfway to the coat closet, progress starts to slow down, like trying to push a wheelbarrow through increasingly deep mud. Right underneath the hatch to the attic, Cricket's feet lift off the floor, and she's carried along helplessly flailing as the detached door flips over in midair with the glacial grace of an avalanche. A deep, irregularly curving gouge is left across the ceiling - and upper portions of both sides of the hallway - which narrowly misses the family shrine.
Cricket and the man of the house manage to get that slow-moving projectile partly back under control, but only redirect its overall movement about 45 degrees, into the coat closet and crashing through a window, rather than taking out any load-bearing walls.
Next thing she knows, she's buried in a snowbank, starting to shiver. Only potentially useful things within arm's reach are her cyphers, nightvision goggles, the copper door itself, a single snowshoe and a pair of well insulated (but oversized and disgustingly sweat-stained) pants - camo cloak, backpack, tools, etc. were left behind inside the house.
Barn seems to be within shouting distance, but direction is unclear.
Natalina, meanwhile, was in the upstairs hallway of the Otherspace, plunging her rapier into the exposed underbelly of that lorub which just descended from the flooded attic. Blade connects, but practiced movements of a lunge intended for flat ground puts her forward foot atop the fins of the beast's muscular tail. When it flexes, she's lifted off the ground at exactly the same moment, and along roughly the same arc, as Cricket Moon in the other hallway, not that either of them are in a position to directly observe this coincidence.
There's no actual moment of impact with the water's surface. Phase sprinting plus reflexive efforts to protect her own head result in skipping straight from fully dry to fully submerged, floating upside-down, between two other lorubs who vigorously attempt to avenge their fallen brother and/or secure their next meal.
>18, 15, 16, 15, 20
Fortunately the glowglobe is still stuck to her off-hand, so in between effortlessly dodging all that, Natalina observes the scenery. Water's actually surprisingly clear, beyond a thin layer of silt at the entrance, and continues to the limit of visibility - at least a hundred feet - in every other direction. Roughly where roof-beams would be in the actual attic, there's... well, it might be the burned-out wreckage of a crashed airship, or a cyborg whale's ribcage, but either way it's a level 5 mechanical salvage source, which can plausibly yield quantium.
Reiko Lastname, remaining behind while Nat was launched, thoroughly confirms the kill on that first lorub - then extracts an intact venom gland and 3 units of Allophene Nodule from the corpse. Plenty of good meat in there too, and maybe other useful stuff for crafting, but full disassembly and preservation will have to wait, since teammates are still in immediate danger.
Paprika is carefully climbing the spiral art gallery when Nat flickers away to help Reiko with something way back near the entrance. Even with multiple walls in the way, her relative proximity remains reassuringly clear. There's a sudden cold breeze from overhead, and she's ba... wait, no. Nat's up in the attic now. Movement from the corner of her eye was the curved "portrait" abruptly going blank, flat image shrinking near-instantly to a single horizontal line, like a cathode-ray-tube display when power to the vertical scan is cut.
Then that thin dark line starts to come closer, shedding sparks and broken-off fragments of iron lattice as it passes smoothly through stair risers.
Confused shouting, and splintering-wood noises, echo oddly from overhead, soon followed by a deluge of snow.
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