With all the preparations of . . . carrying the note and whatnot . . . complete, Emma was able to move on and start off of this new found journey.

She was pretty excited about this, to say the least. Bubbly, even. She nodded to herself, took turned on her heels, and started away.

"Yep," she said and smiled, "And I call dibs."

And with that, Emma skipped off, back down the hall they'd come from, almost completely oblivious to Fenix's existence from that point on. Well, until he said something important or something. Once there, she decided on a whim that it was necessary to take the rightmost path, she set up her bone arrow, and skipped off again. Suffice it to say, this would probably be the most enthusiastic that Fenix had ever seen Emma Vaerbond.

While seeing Emma excited and even cheerful was a good thing, Fenix did wish that it wasn't at the prospect of acquiring a weapon. Still, he didn't argue with her for now; he didn't know what the note said, but if there was something so powerful down here, even with his fairly weak sense of mana he should have been able to sense it...and just off the road, would a powerful weapon go unnoticed for long even underground?

And if it was powerful...well...he'd just have to deal with it when it happened.

Much as she may have wanted to leave Fenix in the dust, without a light Emma wouldn't be able to get too far ahead unless she wanted to wander around in pitch black.

The corridor extended straight down into another room; with no rooms built off the hallways, Fenix had to wonder just what the purpose of having a hall was. At least it made navigation easier.

More skeletons littered the room, along with tables with a fair amount of broken glass in them. All kinds of destroyed remains of...things were inside. Stone, wood, bone--different kinds of materials were scattered and shattered all over the floor and tables.

He was piecing together a vague theory: whatever happened here had been violent, its occupants likely killed for a reason, the place destroyed intentionally. But what the purpose of this place was, and what killed its occupants were still a mystery.

It made him wary. When investigating strange places for treasure, "what killed these men" was not a question one wanted to not have an answer for, lest one find out the hard way.

Another at the other end of the room seemed to lead further in.

Emma was not nearly as concerned as Fenix. She knew the contents of the note. She knew why (though not exactly how) these people were killed, and she knew it was so far in the past that she hadn't a single thing to worry about. All she needed to do was collect this freakishly awesome swag and call it an excellent night. It was just going to be that simple, really. Or, at least, that's the image Emma had painted for herself.

On the way, Emma made note of all the glass jars filled with varying ingredients. This was a military barracks for mages; they researched the true depths of magic and tried to create things that should've never exist on this world.

"Defenses," she said aloud as she motioned towards all the glass jars.

At least, this is what she deduced was the scene they'd walked in on. She didn't know much about magic at all, only that it existed on some inhuman level and that half of all old magic items were stupid and useless. This was really just her deductions, but she was pretty convinced of them.

"They were trying to make something to defend them. Desperate warrior mages on the low end of the karma pole, about to get what they earned themselves. 'Scusie."

That last bit came about when she stopped, grabbed a skeleton by the hand, and bashed its fingers off. She was running out of fingers for markers.

With that, she continued onwards, always at the edge of the light Fenix provided for her, always just a few steps ahead of him.

"I think this room was a laboratory. One for magic." He neither agreed with nor disagreed with her assessment; it was as good a guess as any, and she had read that note.

The next hallway was again devoid of any side paths; however, part way in Fenix began to feel something. "Careful; something's up ahead." Chances were it wasn't dangerous, and it may well have been what they were looking for, but he figured Emma should be on her guard regardless.

What he felt wasn't too hard find; once they rounded a corner, a pale orange glow was visible from the end of the hall, enough that if Emma wished to run further ahead of Fenix, she'd have the light to do so.

The room itself offered little at the moment; a few feet in, a glowing orange wall blocked further progress.

Danger? Well then. Emma cleared her throat and walked a little slower, ready to break out with the old shin in the crotch trick if need be, but despite her fervor, she was surprised to find Fenix's gut feeling to be a problem not so easily fixed.

"Huuuh," she drew out as she approached the wall.

Tempting as it was to just jab her finger or a stick or something into this weird orange wall, she decided against it. It was for the better that she didn't. She'd have probably lost a finger or something. Magic was kooky like that. It was definitely a predicament, and not one Emma expected, though she definitely should have. Crazy magic fun times was afoot; she should have expected some lingering messes outside the usual skeleton. So, on a whim, she did the only rational thing a person of science would do in this situation:

She decided to poke it. With someone else's finger. From a far off location.

Which is to say, Emma ducked down a few feet from the wall and whipped a handful of bones at it. In the best case scenario, they popped off like fire crackers and smacked Fenix in the face. In the second best case scenario, they broke the wall. In the worst case scenario, they did nothing. She had all the science to gain and absolutely no way to lose.

Fenix entered the room just as the bones hit the wall...and bounced harmlessly off of it. "At least you didn't touch it haphazardly," he noted. Touching random glowing magical things was a good way to get in a lot pain and potentially lose a limb.

Fortunately, this time the wall was harmless. "A barrier...hmmm..." He went up to the wall to examine it more closely. Seeing as the bones hadn't been incinerated or anything, he placed his hand against it. It was solid, but not long after he did so something appeared on the surface of the wall. Many somethings.

"It's a password wall," Fenix remarked with a little surprise. On the wall, in a lighter orange than the rest of it, was the alphabet.

"Damn," she frowned.

She was really kind of hoping those bones would smack Fenix in the face and look purely accidental. Oh well. She was sure something else would come up another day.

Anyways, when he started something with the wall and announced his surprise soon after, the pieces of the puzzle came together in Emma's head. She immediately stood up and grabbed for a bone.

Just what the hell was with this arrangement of letters, though? In the upper row, right there in the corner, she was pretty said the letters read "qwerty," which made absolutely no sense to her. That wasn't even a word. Silly mages and their silly poor letter placements.

"Scusie," Emma said again as she popped up immediately between Fenix and the writings on the wall. She had a bone in one hand and the letter in the other. And provided the opportunity, she'd hold out the letter before her face, skimming the lines for the password she couldn't exactly recall off hand (the "name" of their first subject?), and using the fully intact index finger as a glorified pen, tap in some letters: Subject V.

Emma pressed the bone to the wall...and nothing happened. "It's only going to react to living material," Fenix informed her. "And you do it like this." Having seen that she'd been trying to write an S, he tapped the letter with his hand, and appeared above the rest of the letters.

Assuming she followed his example and finished the phrase that way, Fenix would see she was finished and pressed a symbol on the wall that wasn't a letter, a symbol that would indicate the password was complete and ready for verification.

...The wall flashed red, and the phrase she entered disappeared. "Incorrect," Fenix remarked in case that wasn't clear. "Subject V?" he asked, wondering where she'd gotten the phrase.

Okay, so she couldn't avoid the potential of having her fingers burned off by putting in the wrong password? That sucked. Oh well. At Fenix's lead (who, by the way, was standing strangely close to her; she was not ignorant to the fact that he had to be right up against her back to tap anything on the keyboard), she typed in the ideal password, and--

". . . Damn," she muttered at the failure.

So, Subject V wasn't the password. Well, that was a problem. The note didn't say jack shit about anyone else. Not even a single name was mentioned (one of which was a name fit for a person who enjoyed the scent of a public zoo and was also probably lord of some manner of sewage; immediately following that failure was the words "klatu barada nikto," but there was no dice on that one, either). In a show of exceptional maturity, Emma tapped out a few vulgarities. Not that she found it funny or anything, it was just retaliation enough . . .

Emma skimmed the note again, looking for a name--but . . . nope. There were no names to be found here. She sighed lightly.

"The password is supposed to be the name of their first test subject. This guy," she tapped on the note, "called him Subject V. He doesn't give an actual name, though. Hmm . . ."

Fenix resisted the urge to sigh and roll his eyes when Emma started entering words most children would hesitate to say aloud (at least in the presence of an adult). Still, it wasn't as though they had any other clues to go on. Or did they?

"Can I see the note?" he asked. Assuming she complied, he quickly scanned the paper. It was...an interesting story. There were many implications in it, like the existence of something he'd only heard rumors about previously, but that was something to mull over later.

"Hmm...well, presumably Subject V stands for the name. There aren't too many names that begin with V..." It wasn't very helpful, admittedly. Handing the note back to her, he focused on the other side of the wall. It wasn't quite completely opaque.

"Oh. I . . ." she trailed off.

. . . Thought the V was implying a number. Specifically the number five. Which would've meant they'd have failed four times before him, then succeeded, and continued to fail after him.

"Hmm . . ."

Emma mulled it over for a bit. A name that started with V. Hmm. She couldn't exactly think of any--but one, that is. Emma rolled her shoulders. What did she have to lose?

Vaerbond, she typed in.

Fenix wasn't paying attention to what Emma entered in at the time; he was squinting, looking beyond the wall. "It looks like there's some kind of box or case on a table. But it's a ways back there. Why did they put the barrier so far away?" he wondered. Usually it was standard practice to keep the barrier as close to whatever it was protecting as possible, at least in the case of protecting an item. It deterred people from trying to overpower it, lest they damage the item they were after.

When Emma entered in the name, the wall flashed again...yellow, this time. He backed off from the wall to look, but what she entered had disappeared already. "Well...you must have been close. Yellow flash is usually used as a sort of reminder, if people are suppose to regularly go through the barrier--just in case the person knows the password, but misspelled it, or needs to be more specific."

Now he was watching with interest; Emma likely close to figuring it out. "What kind of power could someone have that could topple a nation of mages?" he wondered aloud as she thought about her next guess.

The "wall" turned yellow soon after, leaving Emma virtually confounded. What was it, a permanent wrong answer? That she'd given so many wrong answers that it wasn't going to let her try again? The real answer was not something she was exactly prepared for, though . . .

". . . What?" Emma asked rhetorically.

That-- no. That was all brands of no. Fenix would probably be able to see how her mood shifted in a heartbeat. She'd been so cheerful and casual before this, completely devoid of all brands of seriousness, but now her mood dropped significantly. It . . . the realization that came to her . . .

Emma took a step back. She was trying to stay out of this place, this horrible, horrible dark place, but she couldn't stop it. She tried. She was still trying, but she wasn't succeeding. In stepped back, she closed the distance between she and Fenix, bumped into his chest, and stopped there. She leaned back into him, pressed the back of her head against his sternum, wrapped her arms around her diaphragm, and bit her lower lip.

"Emma?" Fenix was more than a little confused. She'd gone from being excited about potentially finding some incredible magic weapon to being visibly upset. This was...odd. Given that he'd said she was likely close to whatever the password was, he would have figured she'd be even more excited.

When she bumped into him, he placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her. "What's wrong?" he asked. It had something to do with his answer, but other than her becoming suddenly nervous at the prospect of actually getting her hands on a magic weapon (and he seriously doubted that was the case), he had no idea what suddenly changed her mood.

Emma just wanted to shake her head, shut her eyes, and stop breathing until this realization died away. Then, she could have just moved on with the rest of her life, having disregarded that this could have ever happened. What? What was it? They took him? They experimented on him?

She felt the sudden urge to either tear up or punch the first thing she could find as hard as absolutely possible. If she hadn't dropped her wooden sword, she'd have been hitting the wall until either the sword or the wall broke. She bit her lower lip, took in a deep breath, and put a couple of inches of space between she and Fenix.

"Y-- ya could've hugged me, ya dumb oaf," Emma stammered, only to calm enough to speak without an accent as she preferred, "I wouldn't have stamped on your foot or anything. I'm not even wearing shoes."

And with that, she cleared her throat, swallowed back her apprehensions, took a step forward, and set her fingers to the wall. She typed out her brother's name in full, shut her eyes, and pressed the unmarked button next to the keys.