Hunting: Loch Ness

Michael took another piece of gillyweed and ate it. Somehow when he was already part fish, eating slimy seaweed didn't seem so bad. He pointed to Jack to the left. He was heading for the left tunnel. How much worse could it be? As he saw it , it was a coin toss. Unknown was unknown no matter what. He kicked off into the tunnel and pushed ahead, using his wand to light his way. Damn, dark could certainly be dark. Michael was accustomed to the dark, but sometimes there did seem to be something beyond dark. And this was coming close.

Oh well, what the hell, Angus thought. He could only be eaten once, right? He ate the second piece of gillyweed offered to him. Disgusting. Still. Michael had made it look easy. He watched Michael simply pick a direction and kick off into the tunnel. That only left the right tunnel. He didn't know if Michael had seen something he hadn't, but there didn't seem to Angus to be a reason to pick one tunnel over the other. He decided that he didn't have a whole lot to lose. He deliberately chose the other tunnel and pushed off to the right, and swam into the deepening darkness.

Jack was not in a hurry, really. They would need to be deliberate and careful from now on, and that was what Jack intended. She followed Michael, indicating that Mari should follow Angus. Jack was fairly sure she was following the older man down into the cave where she had found buried treasure- a gold chess set. She swam forward, letting her hands travel the walls of the cave to make sure she knew where she was going.

Mariana looked at Jack and understood the motion so she swam right to catch up on Angus and hope he knew what he was doing more then her. Her thoughts skipped so fast wondering how to ask Angus about finding that plant in the dark. Going in blind would not help them, there was no chance to see anything in this deepness of the lake. The tunnel seemed pretty tight in size so she swam forward and tried to see the shape of a plant in all this darkness. Nessie was still fairly noisy though she couldn't conclude where he was coming from.

As Michael swam through the tunnel in the near pitch black conditions, he noticed the rocks above his head were not as firm looking as he would have liked. He paused and lifted his wand to the ceiling of the tunnel to show Jack that she needed to be careful. He was wondering if this was new damage here. It didn't look like it was old enough to have weathered all that well, but who or what would have cause such damage and how? He turned back and started forward again. He hadn't gone more than a few feet when one rather large rock dropped from the ceiling of the tunnel, just when Michael was underneath it. It cracked him rather hard on the back of the head. His wand slipped from his hand and went out, and he fell limp to the tunnel floor, momentarily stunned.

Angus didn't know it but he wasn't having any better luck than Michael was. He skimmed too close to a jagged rock in the tunnel, and his leather belt got snagged on it. He couldn't swim forward or backwards. He found out in a fraction of a second that, yes, it was possible to cuss underwater.

He figured the best way out was to unbuckle the belt and unthread it from his black jeans and then perhaps free it. Or, since Mari was smaller, perhaps she could free it when she got to it. He didn't particularly like the idea of having to leave his favorite black leather belt behind in an underwater tunnel. That was just not amusing whatsoever.

Mariana swam forward not too fast and not too slow. As the minutes passed she heard a lot of strange sounds which made no particular connection whatsoever. The scream of the monster in the distance, the crack of rocks, none of them sounding particulary friendly. She decided Jack and Michael could take care of eachother so she went to help her partner instead.

The sound of the rocks made her be extra cautious with moving them. She hoped that no one would die for rescuing angus's belt. She removed the rock slowly and only high enough for her to get rhe belt out. Nothing fell this time, she gestured to Angus to move forward carefully, the fact that rocks were still stable did not mean they would stay like that for long. She was satisfied with her success as only someone very thin could fit between those rocks without damaging anything or anyone.

Angus nodded to Mari, grateful for her help in not leaving his belt behind. He pushed forward again slowly, seeing nothing ahead of him but dark tunnel. And until he had some way of turning around, he wasn't able to turn back unless he and Mari could swim backwards the whole distance. It was starting to get a bit unnerving and a bit disorienting. Besides that, his stomach was starting to growl from hunger, and his head was starting to feel a bit odd from the prolongued pressure of being underwater. He needed to surface. Soon. And if he felt that way as an experienced diver, he felt the rest of the would soon feel the same way, and perhaps already did.

Jack was going slowly, careful about treading the water. She was rather slight, so she had room to move and twist, but Michael would be slowed down considerably. She stayed slow to stick near him, and she let her hands travel the rounded walls of the cave, feeling for any flora that might be of use. She had stopped to observe some moss when there was a deafening crack. Jack turned and saw Michael pinned to the ground, or so it seemed. She swam forward and pushed the rock off, careful not to hit him, and she turned him around, shaking him to see that he was not unconscious.

It took Michael a moment for his head to clear. He was still laying on the floor of that stupid endless tunnel. He pushed himself up off the tunnel floor, and realized there was a bit of blood now floating in the water. Most likely a bit of a gash to the back of his head, he figured. Lovely. If they were lucky, whatever carnivorous things the blood might attract would be small enough to either ward off or kill before it ate them all. He was beginning to wonder if perhaps they needed to abandon the dive for the night and rest up and try again in the morning. Besides prolonged exposures in deep waters would most likely cause some degree of 'the bends.' And nobody needed that.