When the creature goes down, Orin drops his bow, moves foward to it and draws and strikes it with his sword.
For
If it continues to heal, he will coup de grace it next round.
Orin's decisive slash opens the goblin's throat and puts an end to any hope it had of healing.
Kaede sighs and releases the tension that was quickly built in that blender of a combat, almost falling over as a result. She quickly fishes out the healing potion that she brought with her, and drinks it, wrinkling her nose as she does so. So bitter...Well, I suppose that's a lesson for getting hurt, I guess.
When that doesn't heal her for nearly enough for her comfort, she reluctantly unravels one of her spells to further heal herself.
Then she takes a good look at how bad off Orin is, and tears her last spell apart, as well as emptying the divine grace that her Lady granted her into helping him recover.
"Kaelaah, what's in the pit?" she finally asks after emptying her reservoir.
"A zombie... I think?", Kaelaah had little experience of such things so was only guessing that the shambling imitation of life was a 'zombie'. There is a note of pity in his voice, although were the creature out of the pit and attacking he knows there would be little room for sentiment.
"If it is indeed undead, then we should end it," Tera says after recovering the one arrow she'd loosed that had managed to survive the fight, "but I don't have anything that we could use to do that, though."
Kaelaah nods sadly, "It is an affront to natural life and must die... I will do this thing"
...and, standing near the edge of the pit, the shoanti calls forth his flame - with the inferno swirling and roaring around his arms, he fills the pit with fire.
Kaelaah channels fire down the pit until the zombie is consumed. In the silence that follows another morose moan can be heard elsewhere in the room...
"Thank you, Lady Mayumi." Orin says, feeling much better after the healing. "I believe that was the closest I have ever been to meeting my end."
"It would seem there are more of those pit creatures, be careful on anything that you are not sure is solid ground."
Orin moves to the nearest pallet and moves/examines it.
Orin finds another twenty foot deep pit with another rotting figure standing motionless at the bottom. When light spills down into the hole it moans and shuffles mindless into the shadiest wall.
"Master Kaelaah, are you able to command fire to cleanse this pit also?"
Being called a 'lady' by Orin almost immediately flusters Kaede, and a faint blush blooms once she mentally translates that comment. "Please, I'm not nobility of any sort. I just was bought up in the service of my Lady, nothing more. The only difference between you and I is what we chose to defend, and where we were trained to do so. I'm not that special. Kaede is fine."
In an effort to push the subject to something else so she can get a hold of her embarassment, Kaede starts checking the other pallets for zombies.
Further investigation does, in fact, reveal that there is a zombie in each of the eleven pits concealed under the wooden pallets. Fortunately, as long as nobody falls into any pits the zombies are helpless to reach you. It is a fairly simple task for Kaelaah to send the stranded undead to their rest.
Inspecting the goblin's corpse reveals nothing of the source of its mutation. Aside from its tattered clothes it has only four possessions: the faintly glowing longsword, the well-made handaxe, the silver dagger, and a tribal fetish made of leather and bone.
Tera, seeing the glow and needing a distraction from the undead moans, casts a minor dweomer and attempts to see what manner of sword the creature wielded after Sal finds it. As she tries to determine the enchantment upon the blade, her mind also wanders a bit, and she begins to feel an itch in the back of her mind, like there was something that she knew, but couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.
"Well, the sword is magic, but I doubted you needed my help in determining that. I believe the fetish is of a style that the Seven-Tooth goblins use, though they don't always use fetishes. I wonder if it got stuck down here after the raid," she muses. Despite her light tone, however, her pale skin and the worried look in her eyes belies how badly shaken she is at the moment.
"I don't know, but if you see something suspicious, don't touch it," Tera says, "although that should be common sense, I guess. Either way, the sooner we're done with the place, the better."
Slightly queasy from the stench of immolated zombie, Kaelaah doesn't get involved with the examination of the peculiar goblin... instead, he starts to look for exits from this room and keeps a watchful eye for movement...
Orin does not interfere with the groups examination of the room, but does remember to take the ear from the goblin once they are done looking it over.
As he moves about the room dealing with the zombies, Kaelaah notices that an opening on the southern wall of the chamber is a hallway. When he finishes his grim task he investigates further and discovers that it is at least forty feet long , and there is a second hall that branches of it to the east about thirty feet down.
Seeing the deed done, Tera takes up a position beside the flame wielder and sends her humanoid light down the hall.
Orin looks over his remaining wounds and tests the strength of his shield arm, then nods and takes his position in the lineup.
"I am ready"
"Orin," Tera says, struck by a sudden thought, "do you know how to use a longsword? The one the goblin was wielding is enchanted. It would also be a good idea to take the axe, though I don't know if any of use are skilled with them. If no one wants it, I'll take the dagger."
"I have trained a little with them, but I am more proficient with the scimitar."
"I lay no claim to it, the group may do as they wish"
"Well, I don't have any real use for them either," Kaede says, as she cleans her glaive. "But I'm sure that someone in town will be interested in them. Maybe Master Quint will what to look at them." As she finishes, she looks toward Kaelaah. "What can you see down there?"
"It's certainly worth holding on to," Zache agrees, flicking the blood off his knives. "I could use it, but I don't have any more hands," he adds, grinning sheepishly.
As she finishes, she looks toward Kaelaah. "What can you see down there?"
"The corridor goes on for a while, and seems to branch into two... It's a labyrinth down here!!! Doesn't seem to be anything moving... Least not as far as I can see. If there is nothing else here...", Kaelaah has a look of distaste as he can still smell the torched zombies, "... shall we continue along here?"
Tera hands the longsword to Salomae and keeps the dagger and the axe since no one decided to claim them. After one last check to make sure she still has everything, Tera nods to Sal and motions to the passage.
"Let's look at the side passage first before continuing on," she suggests as they once again prepare to scout ahead of the main group with Tera's humanoid light showing the way.
Heading off once again, the explorers discover that the passageway off to the left leads to a spiral staircase heading down. After only a few steps, however, the large stone steps are cracked and the staircase collapsed, as if closed off by a great earthquake or some similar calamity.
Following the original hallway to the south, there is a door some twenty feet further, at which the tunnel ends. After inspecting it thoroughly for traps (or sounds from beyond it), Tera cautiously pulls the door open. Beyond it is a strange room shaped as a fifteen-foot-diameter sphere. Several objects float in the room, spinning lazily in space-a ragged book, a scroll, a bottle of wine, a dead raven surrounded by a halo of floating and writhing maggots, and a twisted iron wand with a forked tip. Yet perhaps the most unnerving aspect of the room is the walls, for they are plated in sheets of strange red metal that ripple every once in a while with silent black electricity that seems to coalesce into strange runes or even words far too often for the effect to be chance.
"Ermmmm.... Sister Tera? Any ideas? This has got to be arcane, right? Is it just those things... or would anything float?", not waiting for Tera's response, Kaelaah finds a pebble or any other small item... and, half-expecting it to levitate, tosses it into the room.
"Definitely magic if not arcane magic. As for if anything floats," Tera shrugs before grabbing a pebble and sticking her hand in the room and letting go.
Seeing that there is no suitable rubble or refuse nearby, Kaelaah pulls out a coin and tosses it lightly into the room. It floats leisurely across the chamber before bouncing off the far wall and drifting part way back.
Tera also cannot find a pebble but her stationary coin floats in place after being released.
After a couple moments of staring at the room from the doorway like the others, Kaede shrugs off her backpack, and removes a length of rope from within. "The only way to test if it's dangerous is to enter," she says as she ties the rope around her waist. She offers the rest of the rope to Orin. "I'm willing to try, since it seems that things are floating around."
"Y'know, this place might actually be fun if it wasn't for the walls and the fact it's in the middle of one of the creepiest places I've ever heard about on Golarion," Tera says as she moves aside, "I just want to know why there is a dead crow here and a bunch of maggots."
The young mage casts a small spell to see if there are any auras from magically traps about that might be triggered by someone fully entering the place.
Orin takes the rope, happy to be part of a plan that let's him remain where gravity still functions.
"Be careful in there"
He adds, trying not to reveal the knot forming in his stomach.
"If it looks like I'm in pain, pull me in," Kaede adds, before taking a deep breath and diving into the room for the book.
Kaede soars across the chamber rather quickly. She manages to grab the tome successfully but then collides with the far wall after not slowing down at all during her brief journey through the room.
Kaede lets out a small grunt as she collides with the wall. "I-- I don't think so," she responses after thinking about it for a moment. "I can push a little against the water while swimming, here I don't even have that. I can probably push off from the wall though. As if to test that theory, she pushes off with her free hand toward the wand, hoping to grab that as well.
Before Kaede steps in, the young mage says it's clear as far as she can tell, and that the whole place is infused with magic.
===
Tera winces as Kaede hits the wall.
"Are you okay, Kaede? I could get those if you'd rather me do it," she offers.
Zache bites his lip to avoid a chuckle as Kaede clumsily tries to steer herself in the odd chamber. "Y'know, with the unnerving walls aside, it looks like fun," he grins, unable to help himself.
Pushing off the walls does prove somewhat effective, especially once Kaede starts tossing items back to her companions instead of holding on to them. With a little work, and one or two unpleasant brushes with the raven and its 'halo', she is able to secure whichever items she desires.