Recudor: Lost in Quarantine

The people simply ignore his words or were unaware of them and start to stumble towards him. As they did Lox could notice certain magical traits about them. Nothing like his own magic, but something was definitely there. Considering he got to see some of their normal faces earlier, these people must have been infected only recently, and the magic must have been very potent or fast. He then remembers the anomaly that was seemingly following that man as he had left the place, and the people crowing around him as he did so, and a sudden sensation of guilt washes over him as he considers they had left those people and the anomaly slide to check out the old man's shop. He snaps out of it seeing the creatures before him beginning to move a bit faster towards him.


In the old mans shop, Air and the shopkeep are are conversing. "Well, I don't really sell anything in terms of weapons, unless its hunting knives or kitchen accesoires." as Air continues to speak of the quarantine issue, she notices the disturbance in the side of her eye. "Hmmm... It's a hard question to answer young lady. Sometimes a home is just a home, and no matter what you'll want to stay there. You might not understand this untill you're older." he says in mock tease and chuckles to himself a bit. Again the irritation persists and Air finally turns to the girl who led them to the place. She is standing in the corner of the shop, staring at the ground. At first nothing seems amiss, untill she looks up at Air, her lips quivering a little as she falls to her knees, black tears of shadows rolling down her cheeks and streams coming out of her nose. It is then that Air sees the shadow sticking through a crack in the wall, latched on to the girls back as she begins to shake and fall over on the ground. The shopkeep is a little confused at Air's sudden change of expression and looks aside, only to gasp and yell out as he stumbles forward and rushes over to the girl. "Lisa! Lisa!" he exclaims and gets down to pick her up and hold her in his arms. "What's happening, Lisa? Is something wrong? What's wrong??" he asks and turns her head. Within an instant, she opens up her eyes, covered in black shadows and pulls him down, biting into his neck. He lets out a scream but within moments passes out from the shock.

Airgetlam backs away in shock.

"God damn it, I know it's a touching moment, but if someone looks to be possessed by something infections, don't touch them!" She yells and she runs outside past the shadowy mess in the store. She finds Lox with a giant stone gauntlet, ready to bash some skulls in.

"Uh, ok, that might work!" She says and she primes her crossbow, readying for the fight.

"I think now would be a very good time for a tactical retreat instead of a fight, if I might say!" She hastily opens up the canister, viewing the contents. Same bolts as last time. She hefts it and aims it at the nearest victim but doesn't fire quite yet.

"I honestly think this is too much to handle, we either need more people, or more firepower. In fact since I'm the one with the ranged weapon, I'm going to give myself some more breathing room." She says to him and she runs a bit behind him, giving her more space to line up her shots.

"Don't worry, take all the breathing room you need, just try not to put a bolt in me." Lox chuckled a bit seeming awfully giddy about being in his first fight, his breathing was a bit fast, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. After giving Airgetlam a moment to step back, Lox stepped forward, with his adrenaline pumping he reared his stone gauntlet back, and threw his fist forward at the first creature lumbering close enough to catch the wild haymaker. Once the fist connected Lox's smile suddenly sank, suddenly he was thinking back to some of the books he had read in his childhood, more specifically the ones chronicling some of the greatest warriors of the past, and it began to dawn on Lox the extent to which the tales had been romanticized. After throwing that punch his adrenaline spiked senses could hear the crack of the creature's sternum, he could feel the give of the creatures chest, and in his mind he could see the shards of bone splintering into the creature's vital organs, rupturing them with ease. After his light frame was finished dragging into the momentum of the punch, Lox quickly regained his balance and watched the creature stumble back, the impact of the stone fist leaving an obvious concave in his chest. With his adrenaline waning that stone fist was feeling quite a bit heavier, and his heart sank as the realization that the creature before him was once a person. He had known it in the back of his head the whole time, it was obvious, but the thought began to dawn on him; what if they cured these people? Did he kill a man with a family waiting at home for him?

Lox quickly took a few steps back, his stone covered hand dangling lazily in front of him, as his face took on an almost sickly pale. After a moment he shook his head and cleared his throat a bit, in a vain attempt to shake it off. "We have to get through these guys, we need to inspect that body, and get some more leads to find out who's been tampering with these people." He couldn't tell if he was trying to convince himself or Air, but he did know that the two of them could use some convincing right about now. He may have been psyched up at first, but he was definitely regretting it now. "Besides, if we tried to go back now we might drag those things back with us, and the last thing those refugees need is one of these things wandering amongst them!" Lox grimaced a bit as another creature stumbled forward towards him. After taking a moment to cast aside his hesitations he threw another punch, and while it wasn't as strong as the one fueled by adrenaline, the stone gauntlet was still more than enough to knock away lumbering enemies like these.

The things go down pretty easily. Unlike the creature from before, these seem squishy and soft. Their body structure easily gives in to whatever minimal force they are put through. It seems they are more vulnerable in their early stages of development. Most of the creatures stumble over the others as they mindlessly try to reach Lox, but continue to move forward. Moments later, the girl from the shop stumbles hastilly through the door. Most of her skin has begun to recede and heavy globs of shadow are dripping down her body. She falls onto the floor but quickly and with an inhumanly strange mobility pulls herself up from the ground, defying muscle strength or gravity for that matter and continues towards Air.

Airgetlam pouts at Lox's remark about her aim.

"I'll have you know I'm one of the best shots you'll ever meet!" She says, and she watches him take out the mob with his hand. He seems to stumble a bit, she's unsure of why that is. Perhaps he's just fatigued? He's not very large in stature and musculature after all.

"You ok?" She yells after him, and her attention gets turned toward the girl who just lumbered out of the shop. She can't help but feel a deal of weight on her heart, but she knows it's for the better, as as of yet, there is no cure.

She takes and cycles to her normal bolt, not really wanting to waste her incendiary bolt just yet, since these things seem rather squishy; they might as well be gelatin. She takes aim and pulls the trigger, firing a normal bolt into the chest of what was once Lisa, the innocent girl, but now a victim to physical corruption. She loads a normal bolt, but then cycles to her incendiary bolt, just in case the thing decides to get back up again and aims her crossbow, again for center mass. She'll put it down for good and test a head shot on another target, assuming the first shot took the thing down without incident.

Lox turns back to Air with a weak smirk, in a failed attempt to mask his sorrow about having to kill off the creatures. "I'm fine, the fist is just a bit heavy." Lox didn't realize as he had turned to face Air, he was letting three of the creatures lumber up to him, though once he turned to back to face them he obviously became very aware, very quickly. "Shit!" He exclaimed as he threw his fist into one effectively knocking it away, while holding his left palm out towards the remaining two. He grunted a bit as he concentrated his energy into his left palm, and just before the creatures could get their hands on him, a blast of wind shot from his palm. The wind was obviously non-lethal, it's only purpose was to push away the creatures that had snuck up on him as a result he put very little energy into the blast, making the wind that he produced significantly reduced to the winds he had created earlier on the boat.

Still the magic did take a bit of a toll on him he was slowly starting to become more fatigued, and it was slowly starting to show. Lox quickly looked down at his left palm, the symbols he had drawn on it now vanished, and with a small sigh Lox simply muttered under his breath. "Damn...kinda wanted to save that..." He returned his attention to the creatures, figuring after what happened he should keep his eyes on the fight. Though this made him miss what was going on just behind him, with Air and the girl Lisa.

The girl collapses infront of Air, just like that, with a single bolt. Lox meanwhile is still being slowly pursued by the other creatures. He notices now, that he has had some time to think, that they actually move incredibly slow and inefficiently. They stumble and stagger towards him at such a small pace, he is almost emberassed.

Airgetlam looks down at the corpse and frowns and lifting an eyebrow up, disappointed.

"Really? That's how tough they are? Pfft, that's not much, I guess the newly-turned are quite flabby!" She says, and she loads another two normal bolts, taking the other incendiary one out. She clacks the cylinder back into place, and brings the crossbow back up to aim. She looks over to see the creatures slowly but intently shuffling towards Lox.

"You think you got it or do you want me to put them down? I think it might be an act of mercy if I did." She says, and shoots one coming at him anyway. The bolt zooms out and strikes the thing in the head, instantly causing it to stumble and fall back, one of it's legs folded under it a little.

"Told you I was a good shot!" She yells to Lox. He's still looking a bit unsure, but he'll probably shrug it off in a bit. She reassures herself it's just his body type.

Lox watched a bolt zip past him and imbed into one of the creature's heads though he barely acknowledged it, instead he simply continued the fight and punched out what seemed to be the last creature before letting his right hand fall limp by his side and turning back to Air, only to see the girl from earlier. Seeing that the little girl's body looked sickly the bolt in her head made sense and kept Lox from yelling at Air for killing her, though it didn't make it any easier. After he had put the situation together he simply stared at the body for a while in silence, he was clearly made uneasy by the situation and looked to be almost in tears over her death. He knew it was stupid of him to get worked up so much over a girl he had only known for a few minutes, but he could still picture her smiling face. Lox cleared his throat a bit and turned back to the body he had come to investigate, his back turned to Airgetlam as he spoke. "Is the old man okay?" Lox knelt down over the body that the creatures were gathered around and began to examine it as he awaited Airgetlam's answer.

Lox's eyes scanned the corpse as the knuckles of his stone fist rested on the ground beside him, he knew he probably should keep his hands to himself until he discovers whether or not the corpse is infected with whatever the creatures had, and whether or not the infection was spread through physical contact.

As Lox investigates the corpse, he notices various things. Firstly, the flesh was decaying rapidly. It didn't leave any smell, and it didn't so much rot as it was simply shedding off of the infected victim. Most of their bones and muscle were left in tact, but even in death the body shows signs of genetic modification. A strong magical sense is coming off the body. Not overwhelming, simply well imbued and tightly knit into the body. Lox can't tell if it is a parasitic affliction or simply a disease, but either way it is definitely magical in nature and parts of the body show signs of reconstruction before the host succumbed to death. Small bits of shadow still weave through various parts of the body like black snakes coiling around their victims. What Lox can figure out though is that compared to the others, this body seems to have dealt with the infection only slightly before the others, but died of the affliction rather than being attacked by anyone or anything. This suggests to him that the infection happens rapidly, and progress is fast, but the hosts don't last more than a few minutes before their body gives in to the stress.

Airgetlam moves the girl's body over and sees her face and feels her stomach churn a bit, but tries to push it aside, thinking of flowing water since that always seems to calm her down. She looks over at the body Lox is examining and sees the magical residuals. She can't figure if its protraction or some other magic, and considering safety a higher priority, yanks the bolt out of the girl with her silver hand, careful not even to place that part of her in contact with the corpse. She walks over to the other corpse and does the very same, if with a bit more force to pull it free of the skull. She slides them into a section of her bolt pouch for ammo that is contaminated or needs to be otherwise cleaned.

"No, he succumbed, trying to help his daughter. I'll see how far gone he is and end his misery." she says, sorrowfully shaking her head. She opens her 'bow cylinder and slots in two more normal rounds. She approaches the door carefully with the weapon raised, and grabs the knob, ready to put a bolt in the old man the moment she sees he's not all fine and dandy.

Lox's eyes scan the corpse very thoroughly, almost to an extent one could describe as obsessive, when Airgetlam answered his question he simply nodded and kept his eyes glued to the corpse. He wasn't sure if she would even notice his nod, or to be honest WHAT she had even said, he was a bit too caught up in the intrigue before him and was now in his own little world. Once Air had left to the shop to check on the old man Lox began talking to himself almost as if he was trying to bounce ideas off of an Airgetlam he hadn't realized was gone, though it didn't really matter that she wasn't there he just tended to think out loud. "This seems like a really fast process, seems to me like these guys are just prototypes; mistakes that never made it into the final stage of experimentation. If these guys are just an earlier stage of what we ran into with Doc, it would seem to me as if the residual shadows here are possibly the residue of the shadows leaking out of those big guys. Though this raises the question, are these people really the experiment, or just a catalyst for the REAL experiment." Lox raised his left hand up to his chin, stroking it a bit as he thought to himself. "Either way if these things really do progress at this alarming rate that would mean that either they didn't get far away from the lab, or whatever is doing this has come a long way. So we're either right on top of the lab, or whatever is doing this to them, or maybe both. The fact that these things haven't progressed into what we saw before is also kinda odd what made these guys susceptible to the experiment, but kept them from progressing into true monsters? Does the magic feed off of their life? Does the subject live through sheer willpower? Or is it more complex than that? Maybe the magic provides them with this regeneration, but the subject needs to know how to access the power to stay...alive? That's another thing, ARE they alive, or is this magic keeping they're souls in a stasis of sorts, or are the bodies entirely dead and just serving as a puppet for the magic?"

Lox sighed a bit and shrugged. "That's all speculation anyway, none of it can be proven without finding the source, though whatever the source is, we seem to be right on top of it." Lox rose from his knee and away from he corpse, only to turn and find he was by himself, Airgetlam had gone into the shop. He blushed a bit, hoping no one heard him rambling to himself, though given his current setting, any bystanders being around was highly unlikely. Lox shrugged once again and placed his left hand on his stone gauntlet, giving it a firm tug to pull it off his hand...only...it wasn't coming off. Lox's eyes widened a bit as he frantically tugged at the stone fist, though it was no use, it wasn't budging. "Oh...damnit..." Lox frowned and let the stone fist fall to his side as he reached back to remove his inkwell with a sigh. "Right...joints...those are kinda important." He places the inkwell on the ground and knelt down once again, dipping his finger into the ink and beginning to draw some symbols onto the back of the fist, the same ones that he had drawn to form the fist in the first place. Without any legit joints in the makeshift gauntlet, his fist was trapped in the rocks, and he was going to need to fix that if he wanted to remove it.

Airgetlam opens the door to the store. Not much to her surprise, the old man has already turned. He stands up against the wall with huge gushes of shadows flowing out of his neck where his blood should be. His eyes are a dark glowing purple. On reflex she aims her crossbow and is about to decide on whether she is going to pull the trigger or not when the man roars an inhuman gurgling roar with such force it causes her to stumble. As she looks back at him, he's already completely lost his human form. Black boney spikes are protruding out of what used to be his arms and a mask of bone and shadows compliment the sudden armor of the same style as well. He steps into the wall behind himself and merges with the shadows on it, disappearing.

Outside, Lox hears the roar, just feintly, and feels a chill run down his spine.

Airgetlam regains her footing a bit and stumbles back, feeling a bit frozen, but not unable to do action. She can feel her heart had started to race, and that the thing might have lunged out of her, but decided not to for whatever reason. Perhaps it sense she was ready to end it's existence. It really spooks her though how the thing can just meld into the wall and phase out, that'll be a potential hazard they will need to take into account - an attack without any warning from any direction, nothing to telegraph that it will happen, except perhaps to be wary of the shadows in the nooks and crannies to come next their way. She steps back out, her body squirming a little trying to rid herself of the image of the old man's fate. She wishes that she could have put him out, though she doesn't even know if he's still conscious or even alive to know what he's become anymore. Maybe his soul was all but annihilated in the process.

She looks back to Lox as she steps out of the store.

"He's gone, but the thing escaped. This one though didn't seem like some mindless shambler, it knew to retreat I think... so what did you find? Sorry if I missed anything." She says to him.

"Nah don't be sorry, it's fine" Lox replied, he did his best to hide the fact that the creature's roar had rattled him up a bit, his face becoming a bit paler, though he was already fairly pale to start with so there wasn't much of a tell there. Lox pondered a bit to himself before turning to Air. "Well I guess that sound means I was right, we are...or were right on top of the source. You say it wasn't just another mindless drone? This one was more highly evolved?" Lox sighed a bit, once again getting lost in his own thoughts for a moment as he finished drawing the runes onto the back of the stone fist. "What made the old man a more successful experiment? What made him more easily turned? Plus if he was holding his daughter before he was turned, that means he wasn't in a lab, I guess that means he's just a catalyst for the REAL experiment. So whatever's turning these people is sentient and mobile. That's...bad..." Lox placed his left hand over the runes he had finished drawing, and soon an orange light began to glow between his left palm and the stone gauntlet. After a moment the rocks began to crumble away until all that was left was a stone disc, a bit bigger than his palm, and perfectly round. Lox lifted the stone circle from the back of his hand with a devious smirk as he examined the stone. Somehow the runes he had painted on with the ink, were now etched into the stone as if from an expert with a chisel.

After examining the stone Lox tucked it away in his bag, as well as the ink, and then turned to the shop, walking to it as he spoke. "If my theory is right, we'll have to find that thing if we have any chance of stopping these monsters at the source, which I guess means we'll have to search the shop again. For some reason the real experiment reacted miraculously well with that old man, which means either he is a great host for this thing, or there was something in the environment. The first is FAR more likely, but the second is the only lead we have right now." Lox opened the door to the shop, stepping in and immediately examining the room for any clues.

The door opens to the general store. The lights are a bit more dimm but it's by no means difficult for Lox to see everything clearly. The store, just like their previous short visit, has rows of shelves and even some tables with various items for sale, and two wide but low shelves going straight through the middle of the place with the old mans desk being on the left side of the narrow room. It's by all means a convinience store, as there are various packaged foods and candies, and next to it some kitchen and washroom utensils and a bunch of different cleaning agents. Some tools and even various hobbyist kits, including a gardening, woodworking, and metalworking kit. Everything in the store is mediocre quality at best, but given the poor location of the shop it wasn't really any surprise to anyone. On the counter where the guy had welcomed them previously are various amounts of random small goods for sale, alongside a little tin box with a protraction seal on it- Likely where the guy had his money stored. The newspaper he had held previously is a little torn and lying on the floor infront of the counter. Likely in his haste, he let it go and it flew over the counter and on to the ground. Moving further down the building there is some fresh blood on the ground, alongside various gross collections of skin and muscle tissue. The odd thing here is that the bright blood is mixing with some darker slightly discloured blood and there are some drag marks leading towards the wall. From what Lox can tell, the guy likely got attacked, and then crawled towards the wall before turning. He had lost a lot of blood so the wound must have been near a vein, either on his wrists or his neck, though there is not much spray along the shelves or wall, suggesting it clotted up rather quickly.

Once Lox walks inside the store, Airgetlam muses to herself on how the man is too eager to find trouble. An attitude like that begs danger. Then again he does seem to exude the kind of aura that an absent-minded mage-person would normally have. Considering as well, he uses runes, it pretty much solidifies that image. She sighs and walks back in, looking at what might be there.

Immediately she spies a metalworking kit and thinks that maybe that could have tools to repair weapons. She walks over to it and checks out the packaging, and takes it. The old man probably wouldn't mind her having it, considering that he's probably dead now and they'll likely be the ones to stop whatever is causing this, albeit her being reluctant to pursue that initiative right this minute.

"I would suggest taking whatever you think would help us out, we'll likely be needing it. If the man gets cured later on, we might be able to compensate him on damages." She says as she walks over to the lock box she just noticed, whilst peering about the room. She walks over to it and takes a look at the lock, which seems to be a protraction seal, something she won't be able to crack, as it's not a conventional lock. Her eyes drift to the newspaper on the ground, and she picks it up, unraveling it and trying to smooth out the paper on the wall. She looks it over for the news, but it seems to be things they've already heard, or some economic related things, world events whatnot. She turns back to Lox when she sees the blood on the floor, then looks to him for a question.

"Does it look like there might be a storeroom in the back? There might be something of use in there if it is." She says, then adds to it. "Carefully also, don't want something to just lash out at you and gobble you whole!"

As Lox stepped in the room he spotted the blood on the floor, the pattern, drag marks, and rotted flesh gave him a pretty clear idea of what happened to the old man. With a small look of disgust he averted his eyes and began searching the rest of the room. He had no idea how he was going to track this thing, Air said it escaped so he expected to see maybe a busted wall or something but he didn't see anything of the sort. Did it just run out the door? "Hey, how did you say the old ma-...um...the creature escaped again?" Lox ran his hand along some of the rather dusty shelves, wiping it off after a bit, and then knocking on the back of the shelves in an attempt to find a false wall somewhere. After a few minutes of examining the shelves Lox suddenly stopped, his eyes were fixed onto a particular spot on the shelf, and he remained silent for a few moments.

"Is...Is that what I think it is!?" Lox suddenly darted forward, grabbing an item off the shelf, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "FINALLY!" He shouted out in excitement, the item in his hands being a simple, thin paintbrush. For a few moments Lox seemed like a giddy little boy before clearing his throat and composing himself. He slipped the brush into his backpack and blushed a bit in embarrassment. "...Fingers were getting kinda inky..." He cleared his throat again awkwardly and quickly pulled an additional inkwell from the shelf as well, slipping it into his pack as well before continuing his examination of the room.

Lox and Airgetlam search the shop a little bit longer, but there doesn't seem to be any hidden rooms or areas. Behind the counter Lox manages to find a trapdoor which goes only slightly below the building, into a little crawlspace stacked with boxes. It's not the ideal place to store items, but it doesn't look like the shop has any alternative than in plain sight. The boxes are varied between Wooden boxes and Cardboard boxes, But the contents of at least the cardboard boxes seem like everyday items and sealed foods for travel. Lox burries through the stuff for a little bit and finds a small box with a few coins. Nothing else of Value.

Airgetlam chuckles a little but before returning an answer to Lox's question.

"The thing seemed to melt into the wall, phased through it or something, probably the shadows using magic to manipulate their physical surroundings. Forgive me if my responses sound lame, I'm not really versed in magic." She explains and apologizes. She keeps pacing around the store, but decides they've been there long enough and heads back outside, crossbow aimed up just in case. The immediate area doesn't seem to really hold any danger to them, and she judged it reasonably safe, but not without warrant to caution. She looked at Lox and nodded.

"We should get going. Don't want to stick around this town much longer, would rather move on and try to find the Doc at least." Thoughts of bleakness creep into the back of her mind. She shakes them away, preferring to think they aren't far from one of the districts.

"I wanted to ask too," she adds, "you looked kinda tired in that fight. Don't fight often?"

Lox smirked a bit upon finding the silver coins and places them into his pack like everything else, though his smirk quickly sinks as he listens to Air's explanation of the creature's escape. Lox sighed and observed the walls for a bit before walking closer to the door. "Shit...I have no idea how we're going to track something like that." Lox hung his head in defeat as he began to catch up to air, lifting his head as he heard her question. "Yeah...I uh...well that was kinda my...first fight. Like...ever. Unless you count getting beaten up by bullies, but in that scenario there wasn't much fighting back." Lox averted his eyes and blushed a bit awkwardly. He felt kinda ridiculous for it but he was definitely feeling a bit...Emasculated. He didn't know why it mattered, or even that it really did. It wasn't a contest and she wasn't even making it into one, but he still felt kinda weak. "Well...I mean I was kinda tired from the runes, too many of them at once can drain you, and depending on the runes...plus the stone fist was kinda heavy." Lox sighed once again.

Excuses...truly the mark of a great warrior.

As Lox was about to leave the shop he suddenly stopped and turned back around. "Okay one more thing, and then I promise we'll leave." He knew she was probably getting annoyed, but one last thought had occurred to him. "Where exactly did this thing phase through?" Lox's eyes scanned the walls again, maybe that thing had left a trail, some residual magic like what was left on the corpses. If he could spot those maybe he could trail the thing through that, and if need be he could probably figure out a way to open up some walls with his runes. Though that might require a small refresher course from his brother's notes. If they hit a dead end here he would join Air in leaving as he promised, but he wanted to exhaust every option before putting this place behind him.

Airgetlam shifts her mouth to one side. First fight? Surprising, but then again, maybe he grew up sheltered.

"Well then, first time for everything, right? Just know that I'm not really one to fight myself, if I can move around a situation quietly, I will. I suggest you follow suit as well when the issue presents itself. I don't want you being the one to mess things up. Though, I guess I can't exactly make sure you won't mess up, all I can do is try as hard as I can to prevent a reckoning." She says, poking her head back inside.

She points at the wall that the creature phased into.

"That's the wall." She says nondescriptly. She can't really think of any other ways she can help, so she resumes her patrol outside.

"I'm gonna scope out what's around, maybe there's an abandoned shop or something somewhere else, or I can find perhaps what's ahead." She yells, and she starts walking down the street, patient and cautious, holding her crossbow up, keep it trained on where she's currently looking.

Note: I'm going to start adding an ammo count to my posts of what's currently in Air's crossbow.
2 Iron bolts
1 Incendiary bolt

"Yeah, definitely a first time for everything, though I doubt this will be the last." After she points to the spot of the wall Lox begins to examine it, hoping to find some trace elements of darkness like he saw with the corpses. As he examined the wall he began to wonder to himself, why this wall? Surely if this creature was so much more advanced than the others it could have easily taken Air on. To his knowledge the creature had no idea Lox was around so it could have easily assumed it was a one on one fight in it's favor, it had the surprise factor and with his being in close proximity to a person who is equipped for range... None of it added up. Lox began searching through his backpack as he spoke. "Yeah I can see that you like to skulk about in these situation, you like to play the ace up the sleeve, and that's a very reasonable way of doing things. you keep yourself safe and avoid trouble, but keep this in mind." Lox pulled the stone from earlier from his backpack and pressed it against the wall, covering most of it with his palm as he pressed down on it. "You can't handle all situations with the same tool, some problems you solve with a scalpel, others, with a hammer." As he spoke the stone began to glow with an orange glow, and within a brief moment, a slightly muffled thud could be heard.

Lox pulled his hand away to reveal that the stone had gone from a disc shape, slightly larger than his palm, to a cylindrical shape, leaving a hole in the wall that it rested in. Once again placing his palm to the stone, and emitting the same glow, the stone, with runes still etched into it began to return to it's original disc shape. Lox returned the stone to his backpack which left a large sized hole for him to peek through to view what was beyond the monster's escape point. If this revealed nothing to him, then he would keep his promise and join Air in returning to the Doc.

Lox inspects the wall thoroughly, finding it a bit difficult to see, as most of the lighting in the shop comes from the front, and this is in the far back where it is a lot darker. The wall is made of stone, wood, and some insulation in between. But there are no traces of anything. Looking through the hole, he doesn't manage to find anything. There is just a bunch of isolation and then stone behind the frame. Likely part of the City, possibly with a road on top. Either way it is solid rock beyond the wall. Lox finds nothing suspicious or any lead for that matter in the dimly lit back of the store.

Airgetlam heads away from the shop. Upon leaving it, everything seems more or less 'normal'. The corpses are still in their respective places, neither seem to have moved or been altered in any way. The underpass is rather deserted now. The creatures that attacked them were a lot less than the people that initially were there. Likely some of them might have fled when they showed up, or retreated into their homes. Either way, there is no one in the street-
At that moment, a familiar disturbance in the corner of Airgetlams eye catches her attention. She turns back to the other end of the underpass and notices a hooded person checking around the corner. Upon making visual contact with each other, the person quickly steps back beyond Air's viewpoint. At first she has the urge to follow them, and question them, but logic dictates if the person were to retreat so hastily after a mere bit of eye contact, they will have run far away by the time she gets to the end of the underpass. Still, she can't help but feel that she, and possibly Lox, might be watched.

Airgetlam immediately looks toward the hooded person, staring intently at their figure with the crossbow ready but not aimed. She keeps her gaze until the person leaves in a haste, and she relaxes. She figures the person will be able to use their better judgement and get away from whatever danger they run into. She wishes the best for them.

She turns around, looking back at the shop, and proceeds to make the walk back, as there doesn't seem to be much else there. Lox can't have taken that long. When she walks through the door, her eyes widen a little bit at seeing a large hole. When he looks back at her, she takes out her shortsword to indicate she heard him before she walked out.

"I have my ways, I wouldn't be so dumb as to overspecialize." She says. She looks around him, and at the hole.

"I'm guessing you didn't find anything?"