"Its another unique treasure I found in my travels," he told her as his head throbbed as Mazerine helped him back to their small campsite, "one that reveals secrets of the world itself. Just think of it light this: The room becomes darker, but things that people would not suspect would contain a hidden passageway would glow with a bizarre blue, leading those who can peer through this dragon eye patch to see secret routes. However, since the secret is the entire room except for one area, it was more like seeking what was not hidden."

Settling back to the fire, he added more fuel to the fire before continuing with, "Course, with relics that strong, it has its unique bites to it. After all, it distorts the world you are used to seeing as well as very draining on your energy supply. So I can easily agree with getting some rest there." Still, it made him wonder how long they had actually been inside. A couple hours at most, probably, but without any sign of time, it made it feel much longer… Heading inside top to mid-day, plus a couple hours, he doubt it was hardly evening outside. Still, the drain on their systems definitely asked for them to stop and recover. After all, who knew what was passed there, and he wanted to make sure her injury would not hinder her.

The two laid down on their own bags, only surrounded by the echoes of the water settling down from the stir they gave it along with the snapping of fire from their set up. While he did look like he was ready to sleep, Douken felt like he could not. At the very least not until he knew Mazerine was, resting on her other shoulder to ensure there was no pressure on her arm, even if it meant her more curled up towards him because of it. When she was asleep, though, he lightly swiped the rune, causing it to shatter and sigh lightly. It was not a seal, so it should not flood her arm back with pain, but it would be difficult to get energy back when it was still being consumed by another active rune. However, he still kept the light rune on his spear for when the fire died out, as that did not consume as much as the medical one.

Still, the echo of the chamber was quite peaceful, the churning water dulling the pair into a light sleep as they rested near the popping of the fire, warming up and drying off. However, they knew that once they were awake once more, and after another ration breakfast, they would be back on their way deeper into the temple, seeking whatever was past the second seal.

Mazerine was asleep a very short amount of time after she laid down. She had not quite let on to Douken how draining the incantation to steer the guardian away from them had been, and that had been for two reasons. One, she did not want Douken to perceive her as weak - she prided herself on her ability to perform magic. Two, she did not want to admit it to herself. So, when she had seen the opportunity to suggest resting as Douken seemed a bit drained from his own practices, she seized it immediately.

She did not stir when Douken removed the rune from her arm - her sleep was deep enough where it had no effect.  She slept for quite some time, though when she awoke it was impossible for her to tell the time of day by any of their surroundings.  The fire had all but dwindled out, Douken's spear giving off the only light in the area minus the few embered coals in the remnants of the flame.  Her clothing had mostly dried, but her hair was still slightly damp, causing her to shiver in the damp cold of the room they were in.  She could make out Douken's face, and it seemed that he was still asleep.  Taking a moment, she studied his features briefly, before pulling herself into an upright position.  She groaned, half expecting her arm to throb angrily, however it was just a faint, dull pain - it seemed that the rune Douken had drawn on her had done a rather good job of healing as she was left with only a bit of stiffness now.

Mazerine reconjured her fireball, as it had disappeared when she had fallen asleep, and it hovered above her head, giving off its soft glow once more.  She sat for a good while, contemplating whether or not she would wake Douken, letting him rest for a while longer.  She fumbled with the fire, casting at it and causing it to reignite once again, a bit smaller than previous, and busied herself with getting some more food out of their packs that they could eat before they ventured on.

When she had everything prepared, she knelt down beside Douken and gingerly shook his shoulder, waking him up with little effort.  The two sat around the fire a bit more, Douken taking the wrappings off of her wound.  They conversated for a brief moment about how well it seemed to be healing, with Mazerine thanking him again.  He fished around in his pack for a moment before pulling out a small bottle.  He proceeded to pour about half of the concoction on the remnants of her wound and instructed her to drink the remaining amount, which she did while making a bit of a face.  They proceeded to eat their food and pack back up, while Mazerine made final preparations for the next part of their task.

"So, if I'm reading the map right, we have to stand in the center of the crest while I perform the incantation," she said, examining the map as she spoke.  "From the looks of it… the room is essentially going to collapse around us - but if we stay in the crest, we won't be hit with any of the debris," she said, mostly reiterating what she had described before they had taken some rest.  "So, whenever you're ready," she said, and the two began gathering their things up and dousing the fire, before situating themselves in the middle of the crest, rather close together as the crest itself was not overly large.

Mazerine took a few deep breaths with her eyes closed, readying herself for the incantation.  She opened her eyes once more and looked down at her hands, which were shaking rather profusely.  She was confident in her ability to decipher the inscriptions on the map, but the thought of tons of stones cascading down around the two of them was not exactly comforting.  She flexed her fingers and glanced at Douken for reassurance, who gave her an encouraging look.  With that, she proceeded to recite the incantation.  "Ipsum conteret et revelet Deus absconsa tua."  

For a moment, nothing happened – and then the ceiling collapsed around them, along with the walls.  The sound was deafening, and Mazerine clapped her hands around her head and fell to her knees, partially in shielding herself, but partially due to her legs buckling beneath her.  Small pieces of debris cascaded them but nothing that would do harm, mostly just covering them with dust.  It seemed to take hours but really only took seconds, and as the dust began to settle, another room could be seen as having been revealed by the collapse of the wall opposite of the water they had swum through.   

After a moment, Mazerine's muffled voice came from beneath her arms which still covered her head while she was crouched down.  "Did… did it work?" she asked, clearly afraid to look, waiting for Douken to affirm to her that it had, in fact, been successful.

Douken was woken  up by the light rattle on his arm, Mazerine stirring him awake. From the look of things, she was feeling a bit better, considering she was able to move her arm without too much hassle. Still, Douken was concerned about how it looked and, after swiping the rune off his lance (its fuse was running low anyways), he took the moment to remove the bandages to examine the wound itself. To his surprise, his healing runes were quite effective in closing the wound, or at the very least enough to ensure they did not have to hurry to a doctor for some stitches. Still bad enough to most likely leave a scar afterwards.

Still, just as a precaution, he dug into his bag for a bottled potion before popping it open and pouring half its contents on the scab from the wound, watching it bubble and fizzle as he handed her the rest to drink. Her face alone said how bad it tasted, and he did not blame her. Since when was medicine ever not bitter?

After getting a bit more food and drink in them after their rest, the pair cleaned up their camp and got ready to head off again, Douken once more re-drawing his crest to the bright white he was after. The two stood close together in the marked safety area (which must have been terrible for any larger exploration team, considering the two were essentially connected by the hip to be in the safe region). Still, it did not stop the nerves from becoming overwhelming. After all, if the translation was wrong, they were dead. It still did not stop him from giving her an assured smile when she looked over at him. After all, he trusted her work, else she would have not dared such an exploration.

After the incantation, the floor began to rumble, with the debris above falling down and around them, forcing him to use his spear as a point of balance while Mazerine morphed into a ball. It did not take long for things to settle, but with the sudden chaos, it felt more like an hour had passed. When he heard her mutter, he could not help but smile.

"Bad news, we are not dead," he said as sarcastically as possible, hoping to pass it as a joke and not as a man wishing to die. If he got hit for such a terrible joke, he would not blame her. "Good news is that we got ourselves a new pathway.. One more seal, and we should be fine, right?" Offering a hand back up to her feet, he gave her a pat on the back before the two pushed forward.

Heading down a small hallway, the two found themselves in more of a shrine region than the other rooms, with decayed furniture barely holding together facing a recess in the wall, where the same crest rested before them. However, unlike before, the room was lit up with multiple crystals, glowing in colors that best represented the pair. "This crest again," Douken said as he walked forward. "These are symbols of the goddesses Angela and Dalanesca, right? The symbols of Life and Death. Not often are they seen together, but it seemed this temple worshiped them as a pair like this in some fashion…"

Mazerine peeked out from beneath her arms as Douken assured her that the worst was over and they had not been crushed by falling debris - though his comment caused her to smack at his upper leg rather playfully.  "It's not funny!" she said, though she was laughing softly as she did it.  Her eyes looked a bit watery as though she may have been on the verge of crying, and she wiped at them quickly with the back of her hand as she looked in the direction of where the pathway had opened up, taking Douken's hand and standing up so they could move on.  

She stopped when they entered the main room, her eyes scanning the entire vicinity.  She subconsciously began wringing her hands together, as though she were very nervous of what was about to take place - which she was.  She had left out some details to Douken when she had described the seal they were going to be finding - the one they had just found.  The inscriptions on the map that she had been able to translate more or less spelled out exactly what she was going to have to do to lift the seal, and it wasn't going to be pretty by any means.

"Well, here we are," she said, her voice a bit shaky.  She made an attempt to pass it off as being cold from the chilled air around them, but if Douken had any amount of perception he would be able to pick up on the fact that there was a different cause for it.  Her eyes glazed over the dilapidated furniture before locking on to the recess in the wall, the sigil of Life and Death inscribed behind it.   For this, she didn't pull out the map, but instead took her pack off and lay it on the ground.  "This one is… a little different," she said, looking at Douken and taking a rather deep breath.  

"From my understanding of what I've read on this map and the things I've found surrounding it, it sounds like this place was a temple of Ouroboros - they worshipped both Life and Death, and the perfection of balance between the two.  What's beyond this seal is supposedly a gift from both - something that can take life as easily as it can restore it," she said, her voice still wavering slightly as she explained what she knew.  "I don't know what it is, but I do know it would be worth studying, or at least finding it out - plus, I want to see if I'm really capable of what it takes to pull this off," she said.

She took one more deep breath looking down at the ground.  Exhaling, she looked back up at Douken.  "Thank you for taking a chance on this - for taking a chance on me.  I wouldn't have made it this far without your help," she said, thinking back on the journey the two had been on thus far.  With that, she leaned up and planted a quick kiss on his cheek - thanking him being her only motivation behind such an act.  "Guess now is as good a time as any to give it a whirl, right?" she said, choking out a forced laugh.  Her hands were shaking quite noticeably at this point, and she turned away from Douken, walking toward the recess in the wall.

Within the recess below the sigil, there was a long ceremonial dagger resting upon a short pedestal, words inscribed into the blade.  Remembering the inscription on the map, she picked up the blade, closing her eyes and taking a steadying breath.  Holding the blade in her right hand, she quickly slashed the edge across her left palm, drawing a decent amount of blood.  Reaching up, she began smearing her palm around the circle of the Sigil, leaving a trail of her blood on the crest.  A faint red and green glow began to show upon the crest, and she turned to give Douken a quick glance.  "So far so good, right?" she said, though the second she turned to face the crest, the smile faded from her face.

Another deep breath and she looked at the blade again, the etching on the metal glowing in the fireball that hovered behind her.  Thinking back to the inscription, she spoke the words on the blade loudly and deliberately.  "Ut vitae necisque."  The moment she had muttered the last syllable, the blade glowed a strange purple, and without any warning, she plunged it directly into her own stomach, a strangled sound escaping her lips.  She fell to her knees, hands still holding the dagger lodged within her.  The purple glow that had taken over the dagger coursed through her body, her veins throughout her arms and neck pulsing with the same purple.  The sigil on the wall shone even brighter in its red and green, before the crest and the wall disappeared completely, revealing a small rather ordinary looking box.  

Mazerine, still sputtering slightly with a small trickle of blood now forming at the corner of her mouth, whispered one final phrase: "Mors est ex vita."  With that, she pulled the blade from her stomach and it clattered to the floor beside her, blood blossoming onto the white of her tunic below the leather belting.  Suddenly, the purple glow subsided from her veins and she fell sideways to the floor, limp and lifeless.

Mazerine's body remained motionless for a few minutes before a green glow began to pulse in her veins where the purple had moments before.  With a jolt, her body convulsed slightly and she began to cough rather violently.  The coughing subsided and she managed to pull herself into a sitting position, the glow vanishing from her veins.  Breathing rather shallowly, her gaze directed itself to the small box, before she looked back at Douken, smiling rather weakly.  "Well… it worked," she said, coughing again and wiping at the trickle of blood she had at the corner of her mouth.  She made a move to stand to go retrieve the box, but her legs were not for that idea and she wobbled, falling back into her sitting position, giving herself a moment to recuperate before attempting to actually get up.

It was hard not to notice how nervous this final phase was going to be. Mazerine was putting on a brave face for some reason, but it seemed she could not explain why. However, it was clear things were going to be fairly dangerous when she gave him a light kiss on the cheek. It was out of nowhere, shocking Douken with a light blush and she used that moment to head into the indentation where the dagger awaited her for the ceremony.

The moment it was taken from its resting place, the crystals that lines the wall around the shrine crackled to life, sparking with colored energy in the form of lightning. It seemed it asked for some type of ritual, as Mazerine cut her palm open and smeared it upon the rest. While she did turn around to ensure things were alright, Douken's gut twist. That smile of here… it was fake.

It was when he saw the purple glow in front of her did Douken ask, "Mazerine.. ?" not knowing his voice had been blocked by the crystal's enchantments. However, once the plunge of the plunge from the blade echoed in the shrine, his legs moved on their own, rushing to Mazerine's side to hit an invisible wall, only now being denoted by the colored energy cracking through the gems. "Mazerine!" he called out, slamming his arm against the wall, the color pulsing with each impact, cracking with energy on his end while everything remained mute on Mazerine's end. An implication to prevent an outside force to interrupt the thoughts of those who performed the ceremony.

When the purple flames died out, the purple crystals lost their energy, which at that time Douken was trying to shoulder charge the magical wall, this time only sparking with green energy. It was not until she was engulfed with green did the light start fading away, not fading away until after her words escaped her mouth, allowing Douken to crash through like glass, allowing him to rush to the fallen elf's side, ignoring the box entirely.

"Talk about a foolish ceremony," he said, curling Mazerine in his arms. "Why do you have to make me worry like that?  Why couldn't you warn me?"

And no, it was not because he was not sure about his pay if the ceremony went wrong did he make sure she was alright. Even if he took it on for pay, a life mattered much more than silver.

Mazerine looked at Douken rather sheepishly as he took her into his arms, asking her why she felt the need to hide what she was going to have to do.  "Douken… do you really think if I had told you what I was going to do, you would have let me go through with it?" she asked.  "If I had looked you in the eye and said, 'By the way, I have to stab myself in the stomach and die, and hopefully resurrect myself for this to work,' you would have been fine with it and let me go on?" she asked, her voice a bit weak as she spoke. "Besides.  If I had said, out loud, what I needed to do… I don't think I could have gone through with it," she added quietly.

After a moment, when he no longer had his arms around her and the two sat there in silence after the levity of what had just happened, she glanced back to the box.  "Could you… could you bring that over here?" she asked timidly, unsure of how upset with her he would be after her explanation.  Apparently, he was not upset enough where he still got up to retrieve the box that had been revealed and brought it over to her, handing it to her gently.  She took it from him and held it in her hands for a moment before lifting it open.

Inside was a single nightshade flower, though it had somehow been coated in flexible lacriamium.  It gave off a subtle glow that alternated between red and green.  She was careful not to touch it, as she was unsure what sort of effects direct contact with it would have.  "Going to have to spend some time studying this, I think," she said, tilting it so Douken could get a good look at it.  After they had both seen it, she shut the lid and set it on the ground beside her, moving to stand up.  Her legs wobbled at first, but she managed to gain her footing, leaning down to scoop the box up with a bit of effort and began to walk back to where she had discarded her pack, stumbling slightly.

When she reached her things, she set the box down again, and glanced down at the hand she had slashed with the dagger.  The wound was still open and she frowned slightly, realizing that the wound in her stomach was probably similarly still existent.  She fumbled with the buckles of her belt and pulled it off, discarding it to the side, and lifted up her tunic slightly revealing the site in which she had sunk the dagger into her own belly.  Sure enough, there was a fairly good sized wound, but it seemed to have healed slightly, and she felt only a dull throb from it.  Contrarily, her shirt had a large hole cut into it and was stained with the blood that had come from the wound.  "Well, I'm going to have to throw this shirt out," she said, before grabbing her belt and shoving it into her pack along with the box (with which she was much more careful about how she stowed it).

She moved to pull the pack onto her back and a wave of dizziness hit her, sending her down to her knees.  "Oh," she said softly, realizing just how drained she actually felt.  "Well… I had planned to caste a gate portal for us to leave through… but I don't think I'm going to be able to right now," she said, looking over to Douken.  "Any chance you have a way to get us out of here?"  she asked, hoping that the answer would be yes.

Douken couldn't help but sigh at her explanation, knowing what she said was true. While the item they held was of interest, their main concern was getting out. After all, there were no alternate doors outside where they were. He could create a wall of vines to return back to the entrance, but that would also ask for them to be able to swim through the caverns again, which Mazerine's condition did not even allow. However…

"Maybe…" he muttered to himself as he undid the necklace, holding it in one before reaching into his bag and pulling out a small, pink pyramid. Closing his eyes, the pyramid flickered to life in terms of color, a small beam of light flickering around, pointing in all directions, as if confused. However, the more he focused, the more the beam took aim, making a solid direction at a wall. With a smirk, Douken said, "There we go," before returning to the Mazerine's front, kneeling over and offering the tired elf a piggy back ride. Once settled, he got up and handed her the small gem. "If you hold onto this and think about a safe spot, where the walls are not a problem, I can guide us home.

He allowed her to settle on those thoughts, letting the gem point back to where it was before, letting Douken walk on over and trade a small room on a random spot on the wall. However, instead of letting go, he moved down before making a second. Left and a third. Up and a forth before connecting back to the first. With everything drawn out, the key resonated, covering itself with runes as Douken pushed it into the wall, twisting it and unlocking the wall before pushing it open, revealing a room right next door. Making sure the pair had everything, he walked through, the door itself moving back into place on its own as it reverted back to its own reality before the key pushed forward through the wall, dropping down into a welcoming palm. "And that is the power of this key," he told her before he followed the beam, opening the walls that the beam lead them two until the last door where the pair was blasted by a wave of cool wind and echoes of crickets.

It was late night when the pair got out, with the moon light filling the sky. The region was filled with beasts, letting Douken set Mazerine down after the wall closed off before working on his gate rune, this time making it large so he can pull out a cart from the realm. Using their sleeping bags, he padded the cart up as a bed before placing in their supplies and scooping Mazerine into his arms and laying her inside. "Be sure to rest up," he told her before taking a hold of the handle, pulling the cart along as he followed the light of the crystal to safety.