pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

Grantaire looks at the walls. The ominous encroaching passages do not, it must be said, hold a great deal of homely appeal.

Still: "Ipso facto - the possibility of a door."

Enjolras nods.

On they walk, and the ominous encroaching passages continue to encroach.

The silence also encroaches.

"I took a visit once to the catacombs," says Grantaire; it's the first thing that comes into his head. He takes a gulp from his near-empty bottle, and goes on, "That was in the halcyon days when any M. Surveillant might bring his private party down for a refreshing dose of ars moriendi. Ah! Now that was a friendly atmosphere; everywhere you looked, a face with a grin. I don't know that I've ever felt so cheered. I don't think much of our current situation by comparison. Not so convivial, nor so instructive. Come, somebody present me with a moral! It's been a good half hour since our last metaphorical interlude."

Edited 2015-02-05 03:22 (UTC)

Grantaire can generally be counted upon to fight back against encroaching silence, whether or not one would prefer him to do so.

Enjolras ignores the call for a moral. Grantaire can also generally be counted upon to provide his own.

"Do you see anything that looks like a door?"

Two stones have fallen against each other up ahead, making an archway, but that seems by accident rather than design. The rock-edged hallway stretches on before and behind without deviation.

(There's a Δ scratched around knee height on one of the rocks.)

"A boundary," returns Grantaire, "a barrier, a portal, an aperture, a perimeter, a threshold -- perhaps, yes. A door?" Grantaire shrugs, eloquently. Each man must decide for himself how wide the definition of 'door' may stretch.

Thank you for your assistance, Grantaire.

Enjolras suppresses a roll of the eyes, and carries on along the path and under the arch.

Having passed through, he stops abruptly, and glances back.

For a moment, it's difficult to see anything through the archway -- but only a moment, before Grantaire comes swinging through. His eyebrows rise as he sees Enjolras looking back at him.

"We may live in an enlightened age, Enjolras, but me, I'm a poor superstitious fellow at heart, and the classicist in me leans against looking backwards when climbing out of Hell."

It's difficult to see for another reason too: there's a roof over their heads now, heavy pale stone quite different from the dark slabs of before. If this is a cavern, it's been worked and expanded by humans; if it's a hallway, it's extremely well-made. A torch is set into a wall sconce a little ways off, and smoke from it coils sluggishly.

"This is neither Hell nor Hades. In any case," he adds somewhat dryly, "neither of us fit the role."

Both of them would make extremely poor Orpheuses, and extremely poor Eurydices, let alone together.

"Apparently that was a door." He's looking around as he says it, at the walls and ceiling and the way the corridor or tunnel curves gradually away.

They still seem to be alone. No footsteps, anyway, and no voices, and no forms or motion to be seen.

He asked Bar for matches and a candle or lantern, and got matches and a little device like a colorful smooth stick with a glass lens at one end and a button set into the side. It takes him a moment of fumbling to turn the thing on.

"You're very certain on that score," says Grantaire -- meaning the first one, and goes on, with virtuous hypocrisy, "For myself, I embrace prudence."

For all Grantaire knows, everything that's happened since the Musain has been Hell or Hades, or some strange variant thereupon; it's never been entirely ruled out.

The light blinks on, and he glance down at it. "Thus armed," he remarks, "you need not wait upon the landscape to generate metaphors, but are perfectly well equipped to supply your own."

Enjolras deems all of this unworthy of response, choosing instead to shine his stick-lantern on the walls.

They're... walls. Nothing especially familiar about them, and nothing immediately alien either.

"We might as well venture on."

There's nothing to tie a string onto. All the same, this corridor is sufficiently reminiscent of a labyrinth that he elects to unspool some to allow the loose end to trail on the ground behind them.

The most prominent distinction between this landscape and the last is a certain musty and faintly rotting smell that pervades it, intermixed with the smell of the torch-smoke. Though they can't see them, it seems evident that they are not the only living things within the bounds of the structure.

"From Eurydice to Ariadne," Grantaire remarks -- though he's careful not to disturb the string as it trails down. "Enjolras, I pray you, at all costs avoid Medea."

To be, or to encounter? Grantaire intends whichever will amuse him more, most likely.

"I hadn't planned to do otherwise."

He sets out cautiously down the corridor, towards the smoking torch and the corner beyond. There are no sounds that seem worthy of note, at least not yet, but there's that musty and faintly rotten smell, and that burning torch.

Grantaire follows after Enjolras, the narrow point of a circle of light.

"Neither Hades nor Hell," he muses, returning to their earlier point of discussion. "If not -- then what? Tell me, Enjolras -- what does the optimistic mind make of a landscape such as this?"

"We came to a labyrinth. You and I, at least, seem to be finding a literal one."

The corridor has yet to branch, but it does turn a corner, and up ahead another corner only a little ways on. The air is musty, the pale stone smudged with soot and dotted with mildew.

And, around the next corner, a pile that under the light of their stick-lantern reveals itself to be bones, and a scrap of once colorful linen.

"Seem to be, yes, indeed," echoes Grantaire, with a hint of impatience -- which may have something to do with the fact that he just lifted the bottle to his lips, an found it empty -- "but how, why, for what purpose? Not even the faintest hint of a speculation, an iota of an inkling as to a greater pattern? I, I embrace the irrational, but you --"

Oh, look! Portents of death. How charming.

"I have little evidence with which to speculate about a pattern yet," Enjolras points out.

Patiently; there's no point in being otherwise.

He does spend a moment studying the bones, his lips thinned, before he moves cautiously on. He's no anatomist, but they're unmistakably human.

Around the next corner is a very short stretch of hallway, empty of bones, and empty of everything else except another burning torch. But the moment they turn it, there comes a bone-rattling bellow from somewhere out of sight, echoing from the walls, a wordless roar of bovine rage, its source and direction indistinct, its proximity immediately apparent.

For an instant, Enjolras freezes, his wary glance flicking from one empty wall to the other.

Grantaire, on the other hand, lets out a sudden guffaw. He swallows it as soon as he can, turning to lean against the stone walls as he shakes with silent laughter.

Ariadne! He'd said it, hadn't he? Years of rambling off one useless, over-signified classical allusion after another, simply for something to say -- there's something enormously gratifying about finding one vindicated at last.

Not, Enjolras feels, the most useful reaction possible.

(Not precisely an unexpected one either, he would be forced to admit if pressed. He would have to suppress a certain exasperation first, however.)

At least Grantaire's keeping it as quiet as he can. It's something.

Enjolras shifts his grip on his walking stick; he's not yet twirling it defensively, but he's prepared to do so. Holding walking stick and flashlight prevents him from waving Grantaire back without making the light bob wildly across wall and floor. He opts instead for a very low-voiced, "Retreat. We'll see if the other way's safer."

It may or may not be. There's an uneven, unhurried thump of heavy feet now, echoing too much to tell the precise direction.

"It is a confusing path," murmurs Grantaire, his voice still a little shaky with laughter, "and hard to follow without a thread, but, provided the traveler is not devoured at the midpoint, it leads surely, despite twists and turns, back to the beginning ... though the proviso is more of a significant than they lead you to believe in your rhetoric class."

Does he even have a weapon? The bottle, he supposes. He can't remember the last time he used a weapon seriously, with intent to harm.

"Let us strive to avoid it, then."

In other words: maybe a little more quiet haste with the backtracking, please.

But it's no good. The tromping footsteps grow louder. They've barely passed the corridor with its pitiable human remains before there's a loud bovine snort, and a massive figure lumbers into view.

Now Grantaire has more than one reason for wishing he hadn't drained the bottle quite so quickly; it might at least have served as bribery.

Ah, well. "Our host appears at last!" he exclaims, taking two strides forward -- putting himself, therefore, a step in front of Enjolras. "Friend, the grounds of your estate leave something to be desired. Far be it from me to critique your housekeeping, but if you took my advice, you'd seek out a new steward."

Grantaire may or may not notice the quick look, half of startlement and half bemusement, that Enjolras flicks at him as he steps past.

Enjolras is prepared to take the lead in his turn; indeed, he's waiting for the instant to spring forward and do so. Grantaire knows his way around a boxing match or a sparring mat, but he's never shown signs of a lethal instinct. Enjolras, for better or for worse, knows himself, and that lethal instinct is something he's well equipped with.

His weapons are little enough, right now, but it'll have to do.

The Minotaur raises his shaggy head and bellows again, earshatteringly. And then -- speaks?

His voice is a thick rumble, clumsy and halfway to a cow's lowing, but it's comprehensible. "No host, tribute."

There's light enough from the torch; Enjolras lowers his flashlight, carefully. (He's prepared to drop it if he needs both hands. For now, he'll keep his ability to shine a bright light in the monster's eyes.) "And we're not tribute," he says evenly, eyes on the Minotaur.

"Poor and offensive tribute we would be, indeed," agrees Grantaire. "Wonderful guests -- for does not the host take the greatest joy in finding himself superior to his guests? -- but as decorative objects, we find ourselves, alas, somewhat wanting."

(As long as Enjolras has the sense to keep his face in the dark, and stay behind Grantaire.)

Unfortunately for Grantaire, not only does Enjolras not have that sense, but the low-burning torch's sullen light is nonetheless bright enough to catch golden hair and a pale face, and throw a glow upon both.

The Minotaur snorts again. It's begun to sway slightly from foot to foot, like a boxer weaving, or a bull considering a charge.

"You think I want decoration? Pah. You think I want you? You intrude. You talk too much. You are meat, tribute."

Enjolras's eyes have narrowed slightly at this speech. He takes one step forward, head high, attention intently fixed, flashlight pointed down, weight balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. "What do you want?"

It's a genuine question.

The Minotaur pauses, struck by the question; so does Grantaire, whose eyes glint cynically in the light of the torch.

Faint hope that Enjolras would ever keep himself out of danger! -- but through Grantaire's mind may be sodden, he's not entirely a fool. If Enjolras has decided to exercise his charisma, there's nothing Grantaire can do at this point to help, and a great deal to hinder that most dangerous of weapons. Resigned, he takes a step to the side and leans against the wall of the labyrinth, arms folded (looking, if it must be admitted, slightly sulky. He'll get over it soon enough; the prospect of seeing Enjolras charm a minotaur proves to be vastly entertaining.)