[D-Class Mission] Verlassene Zauber

A brief exchange between Leo and Eris left Eris glancing at Blitz with grin, though not a strictly-unfriendly one - her sarcasm was still a bit present, but not in the same biting sense it had been before the wolves showed up. "Not that I had an issue with you being a part of it, but I've decided to embarrass myself on a one-on-one basis today, and you just had your turn - wait patiently and I'm sure I'll say something else that sounds perfectly obvious to you." he said with a slight grin. Thankfully, she didn't seem to mind, and even teased Leo about the boredom they had no doubt suffered through on the way here from Earthland, leaving Leo slightly flustered. Glad my unknowing questions didn't ruffle any permanent feathers, Blitz thought with a slight sigh of relief.

"It does make some degree of sense - getting higher education requires two things at a minimum, money and time. The former wouldn't have had a huge amount of use on the ship - at least compared to back on Earthland, that is," Blitz added, "And there was ample amounts of the latter, enough for anyone with even the mildest interest to open a book or two. Usually you get your higher education and go out into the world, but wasn't really an option until the ships landed." Eris looked a bit nostalgic as her mentioned the greenhouse - which would make sense to a person with plant-related magic - and Blitz chose to just keep his mouth shut this time. He'd tried to play the knowledgeable card enough for one day, at least with nature.

Blitz glanced up at Leo at his sudden comment, curious and confused as to where the comment on racism was even coming from. Blitz raised a hand slightly when Leo moved to slice his own flesh, then paused when the ruptured skin sealed up all on its own. "Well...that does answer a few of my questions. But I'm surprised your final factor in whether or not to reveal that was whether I was prejudiced or not," Blitz said with a slightly bemused scoff.

Blitz walked over to examine the wolf as Leo pointed it out. "I'm no expert on wolves either - and even if I did know a bit, I'm not sure I'd try to share at this point," Blitz added with a glance at Eris, "But anything forced to grow unnaturally fast generally tends to be unhealthy for the one doing the growing. And if whoever worked at this lab had managed to find a way to harmlessly enlarge the muscular structure of animals, I doubt it would have had the effect it did on the plant life."

A wistful smile crossed his visage as Blitz spoke, his gaze falling downward onto the forest floor as he replied, softly. "Of course it was. It doesn't matter how human someone may be, a drop of the unknown in their blood condones immediate damnation, in the eyes of many. Let's just say there is far more than a drop, between Eris and myself. I'd rather not have the past repeat itself though, so do pretend like you don't know anything when there are others present, please." Leo really was hoping he wouldn't have to spell out the truth any more clearly for the man, though why he was compelled to continue in the first place was somewhat perplexing. Then again, Blitz already knew a fair portion of that particular story, so he supposed there wasn't too much harm in a few more details, ones that would inevitably be surmised, in any case.

Eris chuckled a little at Blitz's sudden bout of apprehension as he commented about the wolf, slinging Benediction onto her back at the same time. "Well, you can take solace in the fact that we're both terrible with technology. Piloting a ship is about the best I can do, and he's even worse."

"Yeah, my ultimate weakness," Leo joked, standing back up. "Right, so our current hypothesis is that the wolves simply seemed to have benefited from whatever contaminated the rest of the forest. Which... isn't terribly useful in determining what exactly the contaminant in question is. I suppose we may be walking in a bit blind, then; there's no point in standing around here." And with that did he continue down the path, turning to the left as the ranger had previously instructed. Within only a few paces of doing so did a collapsed building come within the range of his sight, no doubt the abandoned laboratory.

"I expected it to be a bit less run down...." Eris commented, standing beside him. "From the looks of the request, it hadn't seemed like the place had been cleared out for too long, and even if it was built on a shoddy foundation this seems a tad severe. At least, without some sort of outside, or inside, force aiding the degradation."

He nodded. "Perhaps it would be best to get a closer look. Does anything stand out to you?" Leo turned to Blitz, provided he had followed them past the junction.

To Blitz's surprise, there was more to the comment than Leo had let on - apparently they were of mixed blood at the very least, or purely something else besides human entirely. Which might explain their longevity, Blitz thought. "Fair enough point - I'll keep that tidbit to myself in polite company." he said with a slight nod of agreement. While Blitz himself was a curious fellow, the only details he shared of lives in public were his own or those already publicly known - he wasn't one to spill secrets.

Blitz laughed at Eris's technology comment, though. "Fair enough - if it's a plant, it's all yours. If it's technology, I'll take a look at it." he said with a slight grin.

"Fair assessment," Blitz said as they stood up to continue walking, "But they might not have been the only ones affected. I'm guessing either the wolves were the subjects, and their release from the lab disrupted the wildlife, or all the nearby wildlife was affected, and the wolves won the resulting shift in power. A pack of roaming, super-sized wolves would be a fair contender for any woodland beast to deal with, even if that beast in particular had been affected the same way."

After a short time walking, they came across the lab in question - or what was left of it, that is. What had once been a full structure was now little more than ruins of a building, bits of rubble in the shape of something resembling a building. "If I had to guess, it's possible that the materials causing the degradation began to affect the building itself. If it can affect animals and plants, makes sense that minerals, given enough time and exposure, would also have negative effects,, and given the surroundings, it's clearly not sealed up in a protective manner anymore. In this case, it seems like it might have caused decay in the mortar of the building, causing it to come down. That's theory 1, anyway. The other theory is that if the wolves were from there, I suppose they might have disturbed the building as they left if they were indeed test subjects, but option 1 seems a bit more likely."

"Thank you," Leo murmured, voice carrying a more genuine weight than all he had spoken before. Relieved that the man had no adverse reaction, though, the conversation quickly moved elsewhere, as it would have done in all circumstances, in an ideal world.

Back to the task at hand, as he preferred, Eris soon responding to Blitz's suggestion. "Or perhaps whatever else lurks about has simply yet to reveal itself," she offered. "Wolves are rather vocal creatures, compared to other predators that inhabit forests. We might just have the lucky fortune of seeing another mutated species later, given that there's not much else to compete with for our attention." She smiled, the closest her visage could come to displaying excitement concerning a fairly mundane task manifesting. Neither held any fear toward such a prospect as more foes, even in the case that considerable danger could come from it. But alas, their particular task hadn't been ranked too high on the scale of threat by at least IMG, although all things considered most mercenaries didn't know of the inner machinations that could make magic so treacherous, at times. It was certainly a something he knew far too well, but that had little to do with the present.

"I agree. Those wolves didn't seem quite strong enough to be able to knock down a building, especially since they couldn't even manage to take down one of us," Leo replied, soon moving forward again. "It's possible that the laboratory wasn't entirely stable when it was abandoned, and this later led to the collapse. Given that it was a Boscan company tampering with magic, well, let's just say in my experience Bosco and magic do not mix. The apocalypse level of do not mix." His last sentence was played off as a gibe, but concern was held underneath it.

Closing in on the building now, it was clear that something emanated from it, a sort of greenish hue that just brushed the corners of the crumbled walls, almost a combination of gas and light. Clearly it was magic, yet what its purpose was seemed yet unknown. Stranger still, he noticed some of the substance clinging to the dead flora nearby. Walking over to an afflicted tree, he scraped some of it off with a finger nail, its texture filmy before it evaporated. "Well, it seems harmless, as of now," he said, moving within the airborne range of the verdant with little issue.

Leo looked genuinely thankfully for Blitz agreeing to keep his secret. I'm guessing that his hidden age and identity had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, Blitz thought to himself. Though given how long he's likely lived, that's a lot of time to get into trouble.

Eris did bring up a good point - that if other creatures had been affected, they might not have been defeated, but instead just scared off by the enlarged wolf pack. "Also possible, as we haven't seen any other corpses laying around from woodland beasts or signs of struggles. And I'd like to think that anything that was scared off by the wolves is easier to deal with than the wolves themselves, meaning we shouldn't have much of a problem handling them. I'd say we should have thought to ask that forest ranger, but his experience might not cover all the oddities the lab has let loose into the woods of late."

Leo agreed with Blitz, pointing out what Blitz himself had noted earlier - Bosco usually wasn't keen on using magic. "Indeed, they don't mix well. Back during the Boscan War - or Great War, rather," Blitz said, remembering the 'new' name for it, "They tried magic on a few occasions with terrible results, most of which wiped out more of their own forces than ours, and would have actually been a boon, except that we had to clean up the mess they left behind. Like that tar-beast they'd sealed up inside the fortress statues. Nasty work, that one, even before all that Blight business that I only have scant memories of."

The source of the harm to the forest came into sight as they approached the lab's ruins - some kind of greenish, glowing mist that was just dense enough to cling to various surfaces like morning dew. Leo touched a bit sticking to a nearby plant and seemed unaffected. "A bit of contact with it here and there might not harm us like it did the trees, but given the wolves, I'd recommend against touching too much of the stuff. Being mages ourselves, we likely have some low-level resistance to any magical effect just on contact, assuming it's magically-based. We still need to find out what's pumping out that magical biohazard, and find a way to disperse what's already been emitted by the lab." Blitz pointed out.

"Well, if you remember the tar beast you remember the Blight, because that was what started it all," he said. "They weren't quite fast enough on the clean up of the castle, which led to one Colonel Wesker getting his hands on some samples. A madman, if I've ever seen one." And indeed he had bore witness to the rogue officer, just before his truly despicable machinations had been unleashed upon Earthland. Completely and utterly unable to fight back in any way, oh how horribly the task force had failed. And in all likelihood he was the only remaining member of it, all others swept away by time and mortality.

But that was just the way things were. The damage had already been done, and it was irreversible, irreparable. For those who thought otherwise he took it upon himself to correct them, or to implement more drastic measures were they incounselable. It was simply what needed to be done, nothing more, nothing less. "Oh, I'm afraid I'm not much of a mage, at least anymore. Technically, yes, but only to the point of being able to see in the dark," Leo replied, shrugging.

Eris examined a metal sheet of the building that had fallen out of place, the vines on it brown yet on top of them the same film was found. "Yeah... I'm not entirely sure if this is what's affecting the wilderness, at least on a larger scale. It doesn't seem to have spread all that far, nor have we seen any of these growths on other afflicted flora." She continued to skirt the parameter of the laboratory, one side collapsed in yet still high enough that potential entrance was barred. Smaller cracks were found throughout, however, and retrieving from her pocket a crumpled palm leaf did it transform into a minuscule snake, slithering into the facility. A few moments later it returned, wrapping around her finger, in which her face was set in contemplation for a moment. "Leo, try the door," she said, in which he twisted the knob and pulled, yet it did not open.

"It's deadbolted," he responded. She nodded, dismissing the serpent and instead snaking a vine through the hole, mouth upturning in concentration for a moment before a small click could be heard at the entrance and her visage morphed into a grin.

"Try it now." He did, and the contents of the space spilled itself to the outside world, although not truly considering sunlight already filtered through the most of the roof that was collapsed. The ground floor seemed rather unremarkable, and quite small, yet a just barely human sized shaft leading downwards into black could be found, partially covered by a misplaced cabinet. It was the only clue that seemed to hold any promise, or at least as far as he could tell.

Blitz paused as Leo brought him up to speed on the details. "Wait, that thing was the origin of the Blight?!" Blitz said, more intently focused on Leo's answer now. "There were a number of mages who.....well, most of them avoided contact with that thing, but that tar got damn near everywhere when that thing popped like a soap bubble. I managed to avoid getting any on myself, because I figured that mess aside, it was steeped in some foul magics, and therefore best avoided, but still, yeesh." Blitz said with a slight shudder. "To think a few samples of that getting into the wrong clutches ended up leading to the entire planet going under..."

Blitz glanced at Leo on his comment about his status as a mage, specifically the 'not anymore' part. "Oh, I hear ya on that one," Blitz said, "Drifting in space for 1000 years with no chance to practice my magic has left my skills a bit rusty, as well. It'll be awhile before I'm back up to full strength. Right now, I'm running at....maybe 10% at best, given my former abilities." Blitz said, glancing at his hand as he clenched it into a fist then relaxed it. "With enough practice, it'll come back eventually, just a bit jarring as a transition."

Eris, ever the flora expert, noted that the effect had a somewhat limited range, as some of the forest wasn't affected. "That gives a bit more weight to the theory that it's an effect of being too close to whatever's in here. Still, I almost hope it's a living thing at this point - if it's a material or chemical that's leaked into the ground, it'll be difficult to fully expunge it in order to save the rest of the forest."

Blitz watched as Eris and Leo got past the deadbolt on the door, noting "You say you're not much of a mage anymore, yet your companion here can turn a leaf into a lock-picking snake...either that was a bit of an understatement on your part, or she had some kind of training montage when you weren't looking," Blitz said with a slight grin.

The space behind it wasn't huge, but the doorway further down into the lab wasn't hard to spot, Blitz pulling the remains of the cabinet aside, which fell to the ground with a dusty rattle of metal, one of the doors of the cabinet falling off completely from the slight rust that had infiltrated its hinge. "Well, guess we've got a path, now." Blitz said as he stepped down into the passageway.

"Well-" he started, before abruptly being cut off by his own voice's inability to continue. Leo grimaced for a moment and shut his mouth, nodding along as Blitz finished speaking. There was nothing else he could say, nothing else that wouldn't betray his experience and therefore be considered invalid by the thing that lurked just below the surface of his mind. Someday, perhaps, they would be released from its grasp, but at the same time the consequences and lead up to such a reality would in all likelihood be identical to his worst nightmares, if not even more horrific. Certainly it was not worth the risk; the Blight was a truly insurmountable foe.

Leo wondered for a moment if the same reason he could not respond was why Blitz could not recall the final years of his life on Earthland, but soon dismissed it. A possibility, yes, but what difference would it make? Absolutely none, nothing could change, everything was the same as it always was. He repeated the mantra over in his head, so much better than whatever recollection that would otherwise come. They had a task at hand, and it had little to do with such a distant past, other than a few base similarities that in the grand scheme amounted to nothing.

Eris shrugged as Blitz replied. "You'd be surprised, forests can grow back from nearly anything, so long as the actual source of the problem is removed. Nature is quite used to adaptation, some species even require catastrophe to grow." Granted, such events were usually on the scale of wildfires rather than death by magic, but the same founding principles still applied.

He chuckled when the man brought up the comparison between Eris's and his magic, a humorous jab that at least averted the darker reality. "Sure, we'll go with that," Leo said, moving a hand up toward his neck subconsciously and tracing the pendant concealed underneath his shirt. Yes, what Blitz spoke of was far from the truth, but there was no need for the man to know any more, for it could quite possibly be indicative of subjects best not brought up within the presence of the morally upright. He didn't know all that much about the mage, true, but something told Leo that he wouldn't be the type to condone murder. A shame, but he was more than used to feigning morality, though at times it wasn't a pretense.

They soon descended into the darkness, the staircase far longer than a single story ending in black. For him it was another entryway, a reception area in particular, ending in a door sealed by torch, or so it seemed. "Light switch?" Eris asked, drawing him out of the theories starting to form in his mind.

"Power's out," he replied after trying the nearest set of them a few times, the clicking more than audible given the only other noise in the room was a faint humming coming from the door he had previously noted. Soon the room was illuminated, however, as Eris tapped Benediction on the ground thrice did three bands of light emerge. He walked over to the entrance, tracing its charred outline with his thumb before attempting to push it inward with his full body weight. It didn't so much as budge, and the lock and handle mechanism had been sawed off. Clearly, no one was supposed to enter the room - which was likely the true laboratory - but unfortunately it was required for the task at hand.