Misplaced arrivals.

[Paroxysm]

Circe had, without too much deliberation, headed towards the sand dune and attempted to climb it. Every so often, she'd find her body sliding downwards, where she'd have a moment or two of panic, pumping her legs and feet, up and down, climbing back up to where she was previously, and continuing onwards with only a few curses on her--no, Myrria’s lips.

The higher Circe climbed, the harder it became, the more she hurt, but she kept going: physically, she was in better condition than her partner, but only because she was her partner ... Still, Myrria was at least lighter and Circe, while not strong, was conditioned, she was trained, her body had near-no ounce of fat on it, and she owed that much to the man who conditioned her. Still, ... It only made a bad situation a slight bit better.

“H-how,” Circe’s tongue bled saliva atop her lips for a moment. Her head felt like it was going to rupture and something was definitely off, she tried to bring that fact up to Myrria, too, if she hadn’t already noticed it, but it was too late: Circe’s knees buckled just shy of the dune, she caught no such sight of a man wearing a duster before the fall, sadly, and would be out before even hitting the ground. Even despite something uncanny being at work, Circe was not meant for desert (her current body be damned) and the teleportation had taken enough out of her that a splitting migraine, the desert heat and the body switch did nothing to really help, either.

“What?”

She blacked out.

Offtopic: So body switching instinctively makes me want to describe more than I need to. At any rate, where I was talking about Myrria being lighter, I was referring to Circe's body ... In case that wasn't obvious. /Sigh

[Zach Kaiser]

Climbing a dune was a familiar experience for her, though admittedly it was a little more difficult in Circe's body. Nothing was natural yet; it was going to take some getting used to.

But when pain began to stab into her head as she climbed, she quickly realized that something was wrong besides that she was in someone else's body. She spent a second clutching her head, which prove to be a mistake. By the time she recovered enough to say, "Wait!" Circe was already down.

It was a common tactic in the desert: hiding on top of a dune, just enough to not be seen by someone climbing it. With as little cover as there was it was one of the few ways to ambush someone. Her legs bounded up the rest of the dune, intent on taking whomever the attacker was by surprise with a bull rush.

But the second she saw the man in the duster, all her strength left her. She crashed to the ground, unconscious even before she hit the sand.

[Nayt]

The next time the two girls opened their eyes, they'd not find themselves in the middle of the Godforsaken desert, but a dry structure set somewhere in the middle of the Godforsaken desert. They both lay in the same room and were clothed just as they were prior to their fainting. In fact, they had an extra cloth over their bodies at this point: rough and uncomfortable tarps that'd been converted into blankets. They lay on a small and uncomfortable stone floor, and the tiny room was lit only by a torch hanging from the wall.

They weren't in a cell, though. Right ahead of them was an open hallway. There was no door or doorway to block them, though it was unlikely that either would go off to explore their locale immediately, anyways. Waking up would be a difficult experience, particularly because their minds would be the first things to snap to. The second would be their heads. Third, their necks. The bodies would awaken in a slow and borderline painful process, starting with their heads and ending at their toes. The whole process had no defined time. It simply took as long as it needed to, but it'd be impossible for either of them to move a still "sleeping" limb.

Though a torch burned overhead, there was minimal heat for the two ladies. The stone building didn't seem to be holding heat well, which would normally suggest poor insulation . . . outside of the desert. Myrria would perhaps know the reason for this rude chill right off the bat, though.

The sun had long since gone down.

[Zach Kaiser]

A small groan escaped Myrria's lips as she awoke. This was not like waking from a pleasant sleep, it was painful and she did not feel particularly rested. She turned to check on her partner, and bit back a yelp when it was her own face she saw. Dammit, that's right. Wish that had just been a dream.

As the events leading up to her passing out came back to her, she decided to take stock of the situation. She couldn't move yet, but her body was slowly gaining feeling back, accompanied by an almost painful pins-and-needles sensation. She was still clothed, for which she was good, but judging by how cold it was it was now well into the night, which was rather bad.

So, someone had brought them indoors and even covered them up. Had the man she'd seen brought them here for some reason, or had he just left them and they'd been picked up by some benevolent stranger? It was hard to believe that the same person who'd knocked them out would not only not harm them, but even ensure they remained warm (if not exactly comfortable).

"Circe, are you awake?" she whispered. She hoped her partner would keep her voice down too; while whoever brought them here could very well be benevolent, she didn't want to take any chances, and would much prefer to be back in good condition before she found out who brought them here.

[Paroxysm]

It would take a few moments for Circe to answer Myrria's call; in fact, it would be almost a full minute before Circe was capable of doing much of anything. Regardless, as her body started to regain feeling, though painful as it was, she whimpered a few times, but eventually managed an answer: "Nnh, y-yeah. I'm awake."

Although her voice was hushed, it was not out of recognition for Myrria’s own tone, but because it was all she could muster at the moment. Feeling came to her body slowly, seeping from her head to her body, but not at regular increments, it felt. As her borrowed legs came back to life, she managed to sit up, throwing the makeshift cover--the tarp--off of her body, but quickly regretting it as a special kind of chill ran through her body.

“What,” she whispered on purpose this time, “happened? Where ... Where are we? Why is it so cold? Ugh,” it dawned on her. “How long were we out?”

Circe looked about the dimly lit room, allowing her eyes to adjust.

“Just our luck," she admitted.

[Zach Kaiser]

The minute before Circe spoke seemed to take an eternity; if it weren't for the fact that she could see her breathing, she would have feared the girl was dead. Fortunately, it was simply taking her a little longer to recover from...whatever happened to them.

"The answers to two of your questions are that night's fallen, so it's going to be very cold. As for the rest, I don't know. And yes, ill fortune does seem to be our fate today."

First the body switching and now this; Myrria was only grateful that whoever knocked them out and/or found them (if they were two different people) wasn't some kind of pervert.

As she regained the use of her arms, her first reaction was to try and warm herself up. The trenchcoat's heaviness was more or less offset by the fact that it was all she was wearing, which was making her a little colder than Circe probably was in her body.

[Paroxysm]

"That and then some," Circe acknowledged.

Although it took great consideration, she did finally manage to stand up, losing what little warmth she had managed to gather, and rubbed her hands together forlornly while looking about the room once more. The dim light afforded her a decent grasp of their situation; rather, a better grasp now that she was actually awake enough to think. From the look of it, they weren’t’ quite prisoners... Something kin to it, but things could be much more ... dire.

“We should get out of here soon, h-uh? Unless you, uh, do you think we might’ve been accidentally picked up by the guy we were sent after in the first place?”

She didn’t say it, but she doubted their bad luck would allow them to get that lucky. Still, it couldn’t hurt to check, right? And Circe was pretty fond of the idea of paying someone back for getting the jump on them, anyways. Embarrassing.

[Zach Kaiser]

Following Circe, Myrria begin the slow, somewhat painful process of standing up. Her entire body was covered with the "pins and needles" sensation, which exponentially intensified the uncomfortableness past what it would have been if it was just one limb.

"I doubt it. From what Thompson said, our target would have no reason to keep us alive. Plus we should have been able to sense a Voleur d'Ame before running into one like that."

Of course, that still didn't answer the question of who had brought them here, or if it was the same person who'd knocked them out.

But speaking of Thompson had reminded her of something. She fished around the trenchcoat's pockets before pulling out the piece of paper she'd been given. "Thompson, can you hear me?" she asked quietly into it; there was no sense in alerting whomever else was in the building that they were awake and mobile just yet.

[Nayt]

Sadly, there was no response. It seemed Scott either wasn't listening or wasn't at his station anymore--

Well, actually, if either of the girls' were capable of handling it this soon after waking up, they'd only have to get a feel for the spiritual energy of the area in order to realize that the slip of paper had lost all the spirit it once contained. It was virtually useless.

Down the hall, the candle that dimly lit the far room flickered once, before a shadow passed it by once over. Seconds would pass and nothing would come of this, however, but one thing was clear: Circe and Myrria were not alone in this building, wherever this building may be.

[Paroxysm]

Circe looked towards the paper, quirked a brow, and attempted to speak: “Maybe I can try an--”

A flickering light in a cold, maybe even windy Xexorian structure would not have normally caught the girl’s attention, but from the corner of her eye she had seen a glimpse of an unfamiliar silhouette, which caused her focus to shift immediately. She turned to the side a little, just enough to keep both the hallway and Myrria in view:

“Did you see?”

Her hands instinctively went to her--Myrria’s--sides, feeling for the weapons she recalled Myrria having on her, weapons that Circe was quite incapable of wielding with anything remotely similar to skill or technique.

“Maybe you should take these,” she offered.

[Zach Kaiser]

Myrria nodded tersely. Indeed, she'd seen it, and she didn't like the idea of anyone sneaking around the shadows. It suggested that, as she feared, they weren't rescued by a benevolent benefactor.

"Thanks." She took her sheathed swords, securing them to the trenchcoat as best she could. As awkward as being in another's body was, she instantly felt better as she ran her hand along the hilt of one of her swords. Even if Circe's body, it would take a tough opponent to overcome her skills.

"Let's find out where we are and who brought us here." She began to walk down the hall, keeping her senses alert and one hand on her sword.

[Paroxysm]

Circe silently agreed with Myrria's decision to find out more of where they were and followed behind her; however, she did momentarily stop and wet her index finger with saliva, which she then used to draw a symbol onto the wall not unlike the common letter n, differing only in the fact that it was considerably more pronounced than normal, and each line extended further than usual, as well.

Regardless, aside from that brief moment of preparation, Circe followed at a relaxed pace behind Myrria, not too close or far from her partner, but more than capable of seeing what was ahead of them, just over the other’s shoulder (which was still pretty weird for her to get used to, truth be told.)

[Nayt]

The hallway wasn't quite wide enough for the two of them to walk side-by-side, anyways. The closer the came to the light source, the louder a sound they would hear: a subtle scratching noise that permeated the room and attached corridor.

Once they were out of the corridor, or at least reached the end, the girls would be able to see just what filled this room. A man sat alone in the room, his back to the door and his face buried in a book. He was situated behind a desk and uncomfortably hunched over with his elbows upon the edges of it. He was . . . large, to say the least. Like a bull or a boxer, the man had barely any fat content on him, and was instead thick with musculature and large in height. He wore a dirty muscle shirt and slacks, and there appeared to be a tattered old green overcoat hanging from the back of his chair. He had hair as red as a smothered flame, all long and pulled back into a bushy ponytail. From behind, it was impossible to see his face.

He was very carefully writing on a sheet of papyrus paper with a quill pen, and every time he dipped the feather into ink, he withdrew it with uncertainty and unease, checked it twice, dabbed his finger on it, and was consistently surprised when he discovered there was too much ink on the tip. He had an open book next to him, and he seemed to be glancing at that habitually (and numerous times, at that) before he took the effort to meticulously scrawl on the paper.

A lit candle next to him illuminated the major of the room. This was a small and sparse room. It had enough room for maybe four or five folk to stand comfortably, and two desks. The man sat at one and the other, a shorter one, sat adjacent to him. It lacked a chair behind it. A single bookshelf occupied the far wall, and there weren't too many texts to find there. It looked less like a permanent home and more like a temporary squatter's resort . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

As she'd thought there was another person occupying the place. Well, there had to have been, she supposed, they wouldn't have ended up there on their own. And the person was...writing something?

The situation at least caused Myrria to relax slightly. Absorbed in his writing as he was and with his back to them, he was fairly confident they meant him no harm--which meant he believed they had no reason too. Not that it was reason to completely let her guard down, but at least things weren't pointing towards a fight.

"Hello," she said simply. She wasn't much of a talker when it came to anything other than the mission, and figured how he reacted to them would be a good indication of what kind of person he was.

[Paroxysm]

For a moment, Circe, too, wanted to allow herself to relax, but she instead chose to become a bit more attentive; it hadn't been that long since they had seen the shadow, and this guy was pretty absorbed in what he was doing. Either he was simply that damned devoted to his craft and could get into the mood right away, or he wasn't the owner of the shadow. Still, Circe wasn't alarmed, just on guard, and pretty content with following Myrria's lead, anyways.

“’Lo,” she echoed from behind Myrria.

If Myrria moved out of the hallway and into the larger room, Circe would move to the other’s side, but if not, she would remain in the back; regardless, she was probably worrying for no reason, but lately it seemed like the most random of things were occurring. Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes.