He squinted at the sunlight just barely peeking through the thick canopy far overhead. Far, far overhead. Much farther than it had any damn business being.

How many feet below was he? An extra fifteen, twenty feet? … Who had the time to dig something like that? At the least, Frey supposed he was grateful they had not been so cliché as to line the bottom of the pitfall with spikes. Ugh. Picking up one of the long fronds that had in part camouflaged the hole, he scowled fiercely as he examined it before bitterly tossing it away - only to trip over its cousin not two feet away as soon as he began to move forward.

Today was really not his day. Someone was out to get him - he'd bet his life on it.

With a loud growl of frustration, he kicked at what he thought was a rock - turns out, it was a clump of earth quite solidly attached to the ground. His growl turned into a yelp of pain and soon enough he'd sat himself down for a spot, time enough to nurse his foot.

Today was really not his day.

Cedric walked through the rainforest, he had wrapped himself up in clothing as to not catch a disease from a random flying insect. His beaked mask giving him a strange, yet terrifying look, he walked deeper into the forest, consulting a map drawn onto a journal. Cedric walked mindlessly before walking into a thicker part of the humid wood, he walked until he nearly fell into a hole, he saw a figure below the pit. "Hey there! What happened there?" Cedric shouted at the figure, before the figure could respond, however, Cedric was kicked into the hole himself, he threw a fireball the direction he thought where he was kicked from. As he fell, he heard an explosion go off and a few men shouting at each other.

He hit the ground. "I think my spine is broken." Cedric said, sitting up, a cracking noise came from his back, he stood up and examined the journal a bit before snapping it shut and tucking it inside into his jacket, the hole smelled foul, he realized quickly that he fell a bit farther from where was the other person was, he was examining his foot, Cedric examined his surroundings, the dirt walls ended and was replaced by primitive bricks, and the rocky walls led to a dark doorway, ancient writing was engraved on the right side of the walls and the left side was adorned with pictures. "Well then, there's no other way to go than up! … or through there" he told the person, pointing to the dark doorway. He looked back, and noticed the skeletal arm on the male.

Cedric didn't mind it much and went ahead, giving himself a head start on the journey that awaits them..

The man's shadow caught his attention before his voice did. Glancing up, Frey met the stranger's inquiry with a pointed frown. What did it look like had happened? Furthermore, the curious individual above wore a mask - and where Frey had taken to wearing one himself of late, it had suffered an unfortunate accident and was, for the present, tucked away in his backpack awaiting repairs. Bitter, Frey opened his mouth to reply - perhaps in the hopes that some bit of scathing genius might escape - but was beaten to the punch. Or, in this case, to the 'kick.'

He could but blink his surprise as the dust cleared following the man's impromptu fall. Either the guy had pissed off some of the locals or he was suffering an equally unlucky day. If the latter, Frey supposed that then made them fellows, in a manner of speaking. The thought of having another guy around suffering a curse of ill luck seemed to Frey an awful thought, however.

"Don't think you'd much be moving if your spine were broken, would you? Or should you, is perhaps the better question?" he noted dryly as the guy abruptly sat up, appearing none too shabby for a guy who'd just been pushed into a pitfall. Frey offered a shrug. "Suppose I've seen weirder," he mumbled in afterthought to himself. It was, after all, a strange world they lived in. Magic accounted for a great deal of the impossible becoming possible. Brows furrowed nonetheless in mild irritation - and maybe just the slightest smidgen of concern - Frey observed the stranger as he paced about the small space of their surroundings.

And then, the guy took off, leaving Frey barely the time to gather his composure. "Wait! Wait just a second!" Bounding to his feet on instinct, he gave chase, shorter legs jogging to carry him astride of the other. "You didn't even bother to introduce yourself! Do you not even care about your current predicament? By the gods, what even happened up there?"

And around them, the darkness encroached.

Cedric paused walking when he heard the man's calls, he turned around to let the person catch up to him, but before they could say anything, an arrow whizzed by Cedric's head and pinned his hat to the wall. Cedric pulled his hat from the wall and examined from where the arrow came from, it was a gargoyle's head, it had an arrow loaded into it's mouth.
He covered the mouth with a rock he found on the ground, but realizing that the hallway might be trapped as well, he threw a rock across the hallway to prove his theory, arrows flew about, coming from recesses and similar gargoyle heads. The arrows turned the walls into pincushions, and eventually stopped when the arrows clogged the passage ways of other arrows.

"Name is… Cirdec" Cedric had amalgamated his name on purpose, as he cannot trust this other person either, he was just pushed to a pit in the middle of a forest, after all. Cedric continued onward, thinking that the man would follow him, Cedric entered the next room, a large cage with supposed hands sticking out of it was suspended above the ground and was right below a cult's ritual grounds, which was marked with several drawings and lines, all ended in circles and all began from the same circle drawing, perhaps pointing to different members and where they were supposed to stand, Cedric examined the markings further, paying little to no attention to the mysterious person he was stuck with.

The cage made a rattling sound and the hands started moving..

He came to a jarring stop, for once in his life glad for his shorter stature as the arrow whizzed near harmlessly overhead. With no small curiosity, Frey watched as the stranger picked up a rock and lobbed it. His eyes widened in shock as the path before them turned suddenly into a frenzied chaos, projectiles flying every which way. Blinking away his surprise, he shook his head in wonder, smirked slightly in amusement, and glanced over.

"Well, Cirdec, that there was right clever of you. The name's LeSilve." Frey, too, was cautious, and was not in the habit of giving away his own name so freely. It was a trait they shared unknowingly. Trotting along behind the self-proclaimed Cirdec, the mage looked this way and that, inevitably intrigued now by their situation but wary of further traps. At his fingertips, his magic lay at the ready. The next room's entrance yawned up ahead, and without any further obstacles, it soon welcomed them.

The cage was the first thing to catch the aerkai's attention, and the hands, suspicious but still, sent shivers the length of his spine and stuck the hair at the nape of his neck on edge. Keeping a (hopefully) safe distance from the cage and its supposed prisoners, he took to scoping out the rest of the room. "Huh… These look… sort of… familiar," he mused aloud, eyes drifting over the runic circles beneath them and the various symbols inscribed here and there in the room. "Similar to a language I've learned but, not quite," he elaborated, of no mind to have himself associated with whatever was going on down here. "Maybe, ah, we should get a move on, if we-"

And that was when the cage began to rattle and the chain holding it suspended above snapped, dropping it to the ground in a cloud of dust. A rank odour arose, along with the sound of something scraping along the ground floor. Squinting from behind a sleeve as he backed away toward the far wall, Frey made a few swatting motions with his skeletal arm with the aim of magically clearing the dust and smoke. Better they know what they were dealing with.