Better call Lassie

[stockingfeats]

HOLED UP


You and whoever replies to you are stuck together after falling in a hole.

You're in a deep, dark pit that you can't climb out of easily, and you're trapped together. Maybe it was a trapping pit, maybe it was an open manhole cover, maybe an uncovered well or elaborate secret trap in a spooky house - but whatever the cause was, you two fell for it. Literally.

Comments

[alcryst]

[ alcryst peers at her, shoulders still hunched tightly. ]

Uhm, I'm Prince Alcryst of Brodia.

[astraledge]

[...Hm. Well, he's not immediately an enemy.]

Fine. You can stop hiding behind your bowstring. I'm not going to attack you for no reason. [corollary: she will absolutely do it if he gives her a reason.] Is your royal retinue up there with a rope?

[alcryst]

I don't know . . . They're usually close by . . . Maybe they're busy with something else. I'm not really much of a priority.

[astraledge]

[Huh. That's an odd thing for such a dandy-looking fellow to say. Larcei regards him with interest.]

Let's assume that we're on our own to get out of here, then.

But why would a prince not be a priority for his own retainer?

[alcryst]

Oh, I'm not really much of a prince. Or a person. Or anything . . . It's fine, though.

[astraledge]

[Well, uh. Larcei's not sure how to respond to that.]

You look like a person to me. [She can't make herself really believe that nobody up there will care his absence from the surface. She knows hers will be noticed.] I think we should see about getting out of this pit, Alcryst. What do you say?

[alcryst]

[ alcryst knows people care about him, he just has a very low opinion of himself. ]

Yes, we should. I'm decent with a bow, but there isn't anything like that in here.

[astraledge]

[Larcei does consider the possibilities from the bow. Of course the string is too thin and too short to use as a rope, but...]

We could try it as a signal--but there's no telling what kind of people are up there. [After all, they're strangers to each other, and that means there's no guarantee of actual friends nearby.] We can't let just anyone know that we're trapped and vulnerable.

[She starts to run her hands along the walls of the pit, searching for possible handholds or footholds--she'll accept just about anything as a possibility.]

Are you much good at climbing?

[alcryst]

No, I'm definitely not.

[ brodia may be more mountainous than other places, but that doesn't mean alcryst possesses those sort of skills and he had certainly never been trained that way. ]

[astraledge]

[Larcei considers how good she might be at climbing. She hasn't had that much experience, now that she thinks about it.]

Then we're both going to learn how to do it right now.

[No better way than to launch right into it!...

...so that's what she does. She leaps up against the wall as soon as she sees something like uneven brickwork, and she does manage to get her hands around it, scrabbling with her feet. But it's not going to last long...]

Give me a hand!

[alcryst]

Oh — Yes, of course.

[ alcryst scrambles to help, immediately giving his aid. for all his self-doubts, when it comes to helping, he never holds back. ]

[astraledge]

[OKAY GOOD. If he's got her feet at least, that means she isn't immediately going to tumble off the wall.

...Of course she isn't too sure how she's going to get up higher.]

All right.

[...]

[....]

I'm going to try and get my hand--here--[There's another unevenness in the brick just a foot away, and that's not that far, right?

but as soon as she takes one hand off the brick, she realizes that gravity is stronger, and--]

no no noNO--!

[YOUR CHOICE WHETHER TO KEEP HELPING OR GET AWAY FROM THIS GRAVITY DISASTER, ALCRYST]

[alcryst]

[ unfortunately, he's a helper.

which means he's going to be flattened by larcei. ]