Lights Out

Glad to see the woman flee, Tarmen took a moment to splash himself in the water for any lingering spores. Seeing the Arbiter from his peripheral, he assumed she was covering him or preparing to leave.
He then saw her stance, the harsh glare and a madness behind it. He could only assume it was more of the spores and without a second thought, splashed Voah as much as he could.

The water... it was her friend. She blinked several times and Tarmen was himself again, but like a feral animal, Voah swung around, looking to each entrance, expecting something, anything to emerge. She stood there breathing, listening to the ominous, traitorous voices telling her to give up, that she was surrounded.

Spores dotted the room. Water... she needed water. Voah waved the airborne mould out of her way as she went to the font and dipped her head in. The cold was refreshing and worked well to relax the strain in her neck muscles and calmed her nerves.

"Tarmen... talk to me. Do you hear them?" she asked, drenched and still breathing hard from the combat. She kept looking toward the doors.

Tarmen could only stare in confusion as the Arbiter went through some sort of breakdown. If this was all from the spores, they were some nasty suckers.
“I hear nothin’, as far as I know we are alone.”
He retrieved the torch, bringing it back from its’ near extinction and waving the cloud away.

“Need a way to carry this stuff with us. I have no idea if just any water will do.”

He looked to the dead cave dwellers and began looking for anything to help.

His words sounded full of vehement malice, but as she kept her wary eyes on him, Tarmen's actions proved otherwise. He did not approach her, instead he was more concerned with gathering the supplies.

"We... need to get out of here." she said, still on her guard. "She will undoubtedly be back with more."

A shiver ran down her spine as her own words were laced with a fear stronger than what she was actually feeling. Her mind was infected, her own words felt like a poison.

She shook her head and desperately splashed water in her face some more.

"Yes... we will need to take everything we can. Especially the water."

Voah stalked over to the corpses and squatted down to loot what she could. Suddenly, a long, low, haunting bellow came from the hallway that the woman ran down and Voah's head flashed in the direction, her eyes wide. She scrambled to carefully gather the pickings when she noticed the mould markings trickling and slithering in a twinkling snakelike way toward her arm as if it wanted to be part of her now. She let out a shriek that was unlike her and stumbled back.

Startled by her outburst, Tarmen got ready for another attack. Looking all about him, he couldn’t see or hear anything. For all he could tell at this point, the Arbiter had lost her mind.
With the commotion, he failed to notice the torch slowly fizzling out, not until it suddenly died. In the darkness that engulfed them, he questioned whether he should call out at all. He stayed still for a few moments, noticing a distant pattering unlike the water still trickling down. Against his better judgement, he whispered.

“Arbiter, are you still there?”

The darkness was an all-consuming stew of black echos that exaggerated every shuffle, drip and breath both in and out of their minds. The voice of Zin came to the Arbiter's ears, asking if she was still there. No matter where she looked, she saw nothing. It was suffocating.

Her eyes searched the cavern. "I am here, Zinheim... I am not ready."

Finally her eyes came upon some light, the fading mould on one of the corpses. It was no longer slithering, it never had been she told herself from somewhere in the back of her mind. The water... it seemed to be helping somewhat but she kept going in and out of lucidity and control of her thoughts.