(no subject)

[tu_vas_triompher]

[And now they're at the Labyrinth. Carrying on...]

Bahorel's already heading in. Hey, if the watches chime on either side of the door that's useful to know, probably!

And on the other side of the door is...rock, lots of it. Rock walls, rock floor, all very properly mythic. There's some sort of vaguely sparkling, purple-green mold growing along the walls. Bahorel runs his thumb through a patch of it; it puffs little glittering spores all over him in return. They don't seem to do anything besides make him somewhat sparkly, which is more than all right, if not particularly productive.


Feuilly shrugs and follows; God knows what Bahorel might do left on his own in a magical cave even for a moment. (Honestly, Bahorel would be fine. But it's the sort of thing one feels the need to say around him.) He raises his eyebrows briefly at the sparkles on the wall and on Bahorel. "Rococo. It's a new look for you."

Comments

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel considers the effect. "Rococo is a fine style. I shall embrace it. My next coat will have cornices. More decoration; at any rate our fashions were on the verge of becoming depressingly spare. Perhaps some architectural--" he cuts himself off with a shout as Enjolras starts to walk through the entrance and vanishes.

The obvious first move is to check the door, so Bahorel does, leaning out to see the ground they just crossed looking as innocent as the Milliways grounds ever look-- and entirely empty of their friends. Bahorel curses and swings back into the stone hallway. Feuilly's still there. He checks watches; on 12, he hears the answering chime from Feuilly's pocket and nothing else.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly turns at Bahorel's shout. Jesus.

He'd been reaching for his watch, and fishes it out now. No more luck with his: nothing but the chime from Bahorel a few feet away. He walks tentatively ahead just a few more feet. No sign of anyone. No one answers his Hello?

"Have they gone to another world?" It's a logical question in Milliways.

[clayforthedevil]

"The same way Joly and Combeferre and Bossuet and Courfeyrac did, most likely." Which is no answer at all, but then Bahorel doesn't have an answer.

What he does have is a length of climbers' rope, properly spooled in the middle, with carabiners on either end. He clips one end on to his own belt and tosses the other to Feuilly. "I don't know if this'll actually help if the Labyrinth's really determined to split us all up, but it's worth a try."

He's also got some rock hammers and prybars in his pack. He starts trying to loosen one of the bricks near the archway; maybe there'll be a different view on that side. It makes as much sense as anything else.

[tu_vas_triompher]

The climbing gear gets a surprised look. "Do you know how to--" Never mind, Bahorel obviously feels that he knows how. Feuilly studies the carabiner, but he isn't wearing a belt. "I'll just be here with the other end of this rope, then."

(Not everyone gets to hear Feuilly being sarcastic. The truth is, it's a rather mild effect really.)

While Bahorel makes himself ready, Feuilly takes the time to look around some more. Glittery walls, and-- "Bahorel? The door's gone."

[clayforthedevil]

So it is!

Bahorel's sure he knows where the door was. He feels along the lost outline; solid.

...But not too solid. The mortar's old and flaking; a few of the stones have tufts of grass growing up. Bahorel's pulled up more secure paving stones. It's the work of a few minutes to pull one of the rocks out of the wall.

And there's another rock still in the wall. A different rock, he's sure of it, the moss and cracks on it are distinct, but just as settled in as the one in his hand. He tosses it idly up and down and look at Feuilly with a raised eyebrow. "The masons work quickly here. --Ideas?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"None." At the moment, anyway. Feuilly has a look at the new stone, tests its edges for himself. "It's good the Bastille wasn't built this way. What did Lesgle have to say about the Labyrinth? I haven't heard the full story. Just that you keep going and find new places."

While he speaks, he's searching through his bag for the pocketknife he'd packed. It's an unusual one: the Bar had given him something with some half-dozen different sorts of blades that folded into the body. There's a blunt one, sort of an awl, and Feuilly starts scratching a mark on the stone.

He has the feeling it might not last.

[clayforthedevil]

"Bossuet said nothing this dramatic of the Labyrinth itself." At least not to Bahorel. "That it led to strange places and quickly; that we might find dragons or other monsters. Not that the very walls change their pattern." It would be amusing, if it hadn't just resulted in swallowing up two of his friends into nothing. "I'm going to try for to the top of the wall; maybe there's an outlet in view."

It doesn't look like a terribly high wall;but he's not betting on that.

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Mm." Feuilly will leave the experimental climbing to Bahorel. He has succeeded in scratching a mark into the wall, just a dent. Halfway expecting it to vanish, he takes his eyes off the stone to watch Bahorel, ready to try to catch him if he falls.

(...try)

[clayforthedevil]

... Feuilly's mostly a sensible sort, in his own way. As the lower edge of the wall shades into invisibility beneath something like mist, Bahorel's trusting that Feuilly will use that mostly-sense to not try and catch him after all if he falls from this distance.

The wall is an easy climb, as walls go, nicely rough and maybe even a bit of a slope to it, and his recent weeks of roaming up and down and around the forest have left him in good shape for it. Still, it is a surprisingly long climb--although not long enough that, when he pulls himself onto the top of the wall, he shouldn't be able to see the ground.

Of course he can't see the ground, on either side.

He considers this.

He can probably only die once.

He gives his climbing-line a hard pull and reels the other end up, anchors it in the top of the wall, and swings down and slightly out on the far side of the wall from their entrance, aiming to slide down a little and back into the wall.

Instead he lands, boots down, very solidly on the ground, right next to Feuilly.

He is impressed. His cursing is colorful in keeping with the event.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly has many areas of strong practical sense, yes.

Strong enough to assume that when Bahorel swings his leg over the top of the wall, after a peculiarly long wait, the man will not come dropping down right next to him.

"How did--" And then it's Feuilly's turn to curse as well, because the mark he left in the wall has spun around when he wasn't looking. That's-- "It's not fair," he mutters under his breath.

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel considers that it speaks to something about the nature of man, or at least of Feuilly, that he can even say that with a straight face. "Indeed, the location seems despotically intent on ignoring the intentions of the populace, which at the moment is, as far as I could see, us.-- And only us. There was no sign of the others from the top of the wall, but indeed there was no sign of the ground, either. So, a vote! Stay here and try to find a door, or take a walk and see if the scenery improves?"

He's ready to do either! Maybe the wall will run out of rocks if he digs at it enough.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly gives the wall an indignant prod with his pocket-knife before answering. "--It's not a good number for voting. I saw we keep walking. That was the gist of what Lesgle told us, wasn't it? Something about always going ahead?"

[clayforthedevil]

"If he did not, he did, I believe, tell Joly that he was trying to find the Republic. Probably one of the later ones. Ahead into the future, then." It is an interesting idea, anyway. "And perhaps the Labyrinth is more personable later on. Ah--" he pauses to connect the loose end of the rope to Feuilly's backpack, at least. "Not that I expect it to be very secure-- I left that nailed into a wall before I landed back here-- but it might matter a little. Or your backpack may begin singing protests against its chains, but then that would also be interesting. Shall we?" He waves down the corridor.

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Let's."

The corridors prove much of a muchness. They also prove to turn only to the right, unbranching, so that Feuilly and Bahorel are very clearly walking in a circle. Or a square, more accurately.

When they've gone around it one and a half times, Feuilly stops to lean his back against the wall and close his eyes. "Are we supposed to wait for--for some irritable dwarf, or old witch-lady, or cunning-eyed wolf?"

[clayforthedevil]

"I don't expect to see our neighbors running around, no, though they have as much right to getting lost out here as we do. You see any of them, you might invite them to share our lunch, as much as it might interfere with the speedy progress we're making." Bahorel crouches down while he talks, running his fingers along the outside of paving-stones around him. They're broad stones. Flat, fairly smooth, sunk who knows how deep?, and nearly flush with each other. The one nearest him has a slightly raised edge; his fingers catch on it.

[tu_vas_triompher]

"...Our neighbors are dwarves, witches, and wolves?" Well, okay, in theory he'd known that, but.

Watching Bahorel, he has to laugh a little. He didn't really expect any sitting still to happen.

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel has many skills. He will tell people about them! At length!

...But no, sitting still isn't one of them. He gets a short chisel out of his pack and starts working at the raised edge of the one paving stone. "Oh yes-- at least one dwarf, though I haven't spoken to him much. Magic users of various sorts. The goddess Demeter, she's an old woman sometimes. Wolves, yes. The ones I've met sometimes have human shapes. Fine people in their own way. The Wyr, anyway. I won't speak to all the magic users. There are a great many of them, after all. I expect you've met a few-- or have you been spending all your time in the Library?"

...The stone's buried pretty deep. But the soil around its base is soft and full of grass-roots; he's making progress.

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Not all my time!" he says, half-indignantly, and then laughs. "...more time than I probably know. It's just--there's so much to catch up on. You know that. But I haven't been talking to any dwarves. Or--Demeter? Really?--or Wyr?"

Come to think of it, he hasn't really seen some of his friends here in a while. He had meant to ask Joly to show him around the infirmary. Feuilly pushes his hair up from his forehead. "Have I been spending all my time in the Library?"

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel laughs, not unsympathetically. "It's not as though we've great demands on our time. The Library's as good a place to set up camp as any.-- Have you read Hugo's little pamphlet while you've been lost in your studies?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"It's that or take the library back to my room with me. --Hugo?" He frowns, questioning. "No, I--what is it?"

Did Hugo write about Poland...? He wrote something about Iceland, so...?

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel grimaces slightly. "Ah. No one else mentioned it then--? Sometime in the year 1862, Hugo will publish a bit of a novel about France in the, oh, 18 or so years after Napoleon. Nothing too ambitious, of course, only about the fate of the nation and the souls of man, all those little things. Anyway--we're featured." He's slightly distracted in talking by finding roots on the underside of the paving-stone when he gets an edge pried up. Is the thing growing?

[tu_vas_triompher]

"About us--? The Amis, you mean? The barricade?" his face registers doubtful surprise. "What does he have to say about it?"

...The roots on the underside of the paving-stone are distracting. Feuilly pulls out his penknife again, finds a sturdy flat blade, and starts working on another stone.

[clayforthedevil]

"Not about us, precisely; we feature, we appear. It's quite a tome." There's a thicker root; he cuts through it and the stone lifts another bit, smaller roots tearing free--but only a little. "Some of us appear more than others, mostly in a sympathetic light. It seems Hugo took a republican turn in later years. He discusses Enjolras a good deal, of course, and Courfeyrac; Bossuet has a good few pages. And Grantaire, for that matter. You're not given many scenes; I must warn you, you suffer for having a schedule that prevented you from associating much with Marius Pontmercy."

The roots are getting thicker and denser; now it's more like uprooting a stump than pulling up a paving stone, and Bahorel interrupts himself with curses at the plants as he talks. "You do have a few words at the barricade. --Very likely your actual words; Bossuet tells me the whole account is surprisingly accurate."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Did Pontmercy dictate to Hugo...?" He shakes his head. "Well, I didn't make any speeches at the barricade. Enjolras spoke very well about the future--about what we would achieve, what France would achieve. Equality--of opportunity, of conscience, of the vote--made possible by universal education. 'The right to the alphabet is where it must begin.' My God, Bahorel, how can it be a revolutionary concept to call something so simple a right! --But you know Enjolras, there was no bitterness, only hope--"

He breaks off and goes back to work on the paving-stones, suddenly embarrassed by his outburst.

[clayforthedevil]

"Yes, I noticed he agreed with you rather enthusiastically at points. You, specifically." Bahorel's grin is more fond than teasing. Enjolras never makes any secret of his opinions about anything, including his friends; it's one of his better qualities. Which makes Feuilly being embarrassed about it even funnier, of course.
"I gather that part of the speech was indeed recorded correctly, then. Good; Enjolras doesn't need Hugo's editing, if one can call it that." He wrenches at the stone; more of the small roots tear up. "How'd it all go over with the other men there?"