Annie nods. "It's a good job, everyone. This is exactly what we needed to know! Let's go find them!"
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Annie reaches for one of Bryson's hands, if he's relaxed enough to let her grab it. If not, she'll just stay near him. She asks Phillip, without looking at him, "Are they ensorcelled, or permanently enchanted, can you tell? Curse my foolishness for not asking Cayden Cailean for the ability to see magics myself today! I might be able to dispel one."
"Oh, for the love of Cayden!" Annie mutters as she climbs back into the boat. "Thank you, lads, for holding the launch steady." Annie looks distrustfully back at the island. When they get back to the launch, she admits "I don't have the ability to detect magic today. Might anyone else be able to look for magics here?"
Annie mutters a mild curse under her breath. "If something tries to eat them, I can't be out here, too far to help!" She looks at the men manning the ship. "I'll go see if I can get the Professor to come back here and wait. Don't wander!" She climbs out of the boat and moves a bit toward shore. "Professor!" she shouts, trying to reason with the man, "Come back here, please, I have something of critical importance you need to know in order to proceed!" "The critical information that research is harder to do if you get your fool head torn off!" she thinks to herself.
First, Annie checks on Jon.
Annie has a few channels left. She'll patch up the crew as best she can.
Annie gasps out a thanks to the men who pulled Jon up, and calls upon Cayden Cailean to lend his aid to the men desperately fighting for their ship. She excludes those pirates that seem most injured within 30' of her from his blessing.
"I'm going to see if I can help Phillip!" she says, then moves below deck, patting Bryson on his shoulder as she slips past him.
Annie grits her teeth and focuses on pulling Jon to the surface so he can breathe. Antagonizing the shark seems like a very bad idea to her.
Seeing Spinnaker Jon take a ballista bolt to the chest, Annie sacrifices her Lesser Restoration and turns it to Cure Moderate Wounds as she flies into the water. She tries desperately to touch Spinnaker Jon with the healing magic at her fingertips.
Seeing the preponderance of enemies is on the ship, Annie swoops down to cast prayer, bolstering her allies and lessening the abilities of her enemies.
Annie keeps her eyes on the man aiming the ballista, but sees nothing much she can do about it except to brace for the blow and hope she can charm her way out of it.
Annie is holding actions, staying out of ranged attacks as best she can, until someone needs healing or the rigging is aflame or damaged. She'll prioritize healing people over the rigging.
Annie throws a smile at the pirate calling her a witch, managing to make him hesitate when considering taking a shot at her, but the other bolt hits her squarely. "Oof! Of all the cheek! Witch indeed!" Annie cries out angrily, and shoots up to take cover amidst the sails and masts above. "Cayden Cailean! Protect me from harm!"
Annie draws her crossbow and stands by the mast. Her general plan is, as the ship approaches, she'll cast bless (50' radius, +1 to attack, +1 will vs fear) on the men. She'll next cast entropic shield on herself (20% miss chance on ranged attacks), and fly, and she'll fly into the air, focusing on keeping the sails mended with the mend cantrip as necessary, using her channel positive energy to keep her shipmates going (2 enemies can be excluded when she does this via Selective Channel), and shooting at likely targets when mend and healing isn't needed. All three spells above have a duration of 5 minutes.
Annie quickly does as Phillip suggests.
Annie calls out "Anyone have any magic that changes the color of things? I can cast fly to let you up likity-split!" Annie grabs any flag that is a single color, hoping someone can cast prestidigitation and fly it up there.
Annie, concerned about the flag, jumps forward to try to take it down. Phillip is faster than her, but she does what she can to assist.
Maybe it was Cayden Cailean's own splendid bravery coursing through her veins as a gift, maybe it was simply that Bryson's nervousness emboldened her, but Annie felt like she could take on the world. "No," she said as she let go of her loose hold around his neck and grabbed the front of his shirt to pull him back to her, "it's my turn!" and she kissed him back, a happy chuckle she couldn't quite suppress making it a little awkward. "A she-cat waiting to pounce, am I?", she demanded with a laugh after coming up for air. The room seemed empty except for the two of them, she was focussed so sharply on Bryson. "I think I've been incredibly patient!" Realizing she's still got a death grip on his borrowed clothes, Annie gasped and let go, trying to smooth out the deep creases she'd left. "Oh dear!"
"Well, I think if you want to kiss me, that's what matters." Annie tried to sound serious, but her lips kept involuntarily turning up into a smile. "To be honest, I couldn't care less what Avner says." She leaned in close, her grin widening. "And now I've finally got you next to me - shaking like a scared rabbit - but here you are. I say, if you still want to kiss me," her voice dropped almost to a whisper "you should probably kiss me."
Annie's eyes widened as Bryson walked in, doing his best to copy Avner's speech and mannerisms, then she smiled as Bryson took her hand and kissed it in as courtly a manner as he could manage. "My dear, you are as lovely and refreshing as the first rays of the morning sun," he said. Annie giggled and responded, "Why sir! Surely you flatter me too much!" She allowed him to continue his determined courting for just a bit longer, then chuckled and turned her wrist he held so gently so she could grab his arm and pull him closer. She put an arm on either side of his neck and laced her fingers behind it. "Silly man. You don't have to pretend to be anything than what you are - a good, kind man. I adore you just the way you are." Her eyes twinkled as she raised an eyebrow at him. "Now what are you going to do about that?"
Annie turns the full force of her smile on him, and her hand tightens on his. "I'm glad."
Annie took a deep breath in the sunshine, hacking a little as she inadvertently inhaled a gnat. "Ah...I suppose this is better, though I"m already missing the coolness from underground. I suppose you're right Bryson, but I don't really feel like that was Cayden Cailean. I don't know." Annie looked back over her shoulder at the diminutive professor. "I wonder if the professor has any idea what that could have been. I suppose if I look at the golden statue with him, I could find out a bit more."
Annie followed the group around in something of a daze, going over the events of the battle in her head and still coming up blank on what happened between taking cover in the sarcophagus and bat pieces falling to the ground in gloppy splats. She was relieved when Bryson became human again. As they stared at the opened portal, she sidled up next to Bryson and spoke softly to him. "That...that wasn't me back there, what blew the bat monster up. Something...someone...I don't know. Something else did that. Shoved me aside in my own head like I was without a will of my own. I don't much like that feeling. And it didn't use my spells! Whatever it did to splat the bat all over you, I haven't lost any magics today. So it has power of its own." Annie reached out and grabbed Bryson's hand for her own reassurance. "We should be careful, as we go further in, I think. This time it helped us, but I don't know much of it, except it likes exploding bats."
Annie converts protection from evil into a cure in an attempt to heal herself some more (if that low will save allows it).
Annie cries out, bleeding heavily as the bat creature claws her deeply. She barely manages to keep her footing.
Annie casts a spell, turning what was weapon of awe into cure moderate wounds.
Annie gasps "I can't take another pass of that thing."
The second claw attack hits Annie squarely, though her armor protects her from the first claw and the nasty looking tail stinger. Annie glares at the bat as it circles the room, holding her clawed arm. She looks at the Professor at his reassurance Phillip and then at her companions at the bottom of the stairs. "Anyone want to fly up and take the fight to that nasty beastie? I've got the ability to let one of you fly up and make him sorry!"
Annie turns and follows Bryson down the stairs as quickly as she can manage.
"Interesting..." Annie muses as she slowly moves forward. She lowers her sword as she moves, obviously a little more relaxed. "These carvings seem to protect against this poor fellow rising as anything nasty. He's an older fellow...and that necklace..." Annie can't resist an low and impressed whistle. "...is powerful priestly magic indeed. Appears to be prayer beads of blessing and healing." She turns and smiles at Phillip. "It's good you found this, my friend. And grateful I am it's not standing up and taking offense at our intrusion here! What do you think, Professor?" Annie asks Professor Forol.
"Powerful priestly enchantments on a dead body in this place of magics is unsettling, I think!" Annie responds, cautiously approaching the coffin. "We've had one nasty trap already above us, and there's some reason that great big wall of metal was placed just so, blocking our entrance to this place. Let's looks carefully before we disturb abything too much, that's my thought on the matter." Annie casts Detect Magic and looks carefully at the body as she gets close enough for her magically enhanced sight to catch wind of the enchantments on the necklace. "What do we have here?" she mutters to herself as she looks it over.
Annie turns around from the hidden stairway to see Dgrim and Phillip messing with the pyramid in the center of room, and holds her breath, expecting something awful to happen as she reaches for her rapier.
Annie gulps as she interprets the symbols, and her hand involuntarily tightens on Bryson's fur. "This stairway is priests of these people's animal gods during funerals - the only time non priests enter here is to be sacrificed. Mayhap we want to leave this stairway for later..."
Annie looks around in interest as Bryson and Ghirrak confirm the city replica appears unoccupied, and smiles as the Professor darts about the room looking at things and muttering to himself. When Bryson tugs on Annie's sleeve, she follows him, muttering a surprised exclamation as Bryson's head appears to go through the wall without effort. She closes her eyes thrusts her hand through after Bryson, and after feeling around for a moment, also places her head through and then opens her eyes and looks around.
"Interesting..." she whispered to herself as she looked around at the religious symbols in the stairway.
Annie, seeing the darkness is an issue as Ghirrak and Bryson peer ahead offers her lighted stone to Bryson, holding it near his mouth if he wants to take it from her hand. She'll hold it out toward Ghirrak if Bryson seems uninterested. "I didn't want to make us too much of a target, but I can give this to one of your or toss it into the room if you'd like," she says softly. Annie does her best to stay alert as well.
Annie smiles and shakes her head. "First I suggest we see what we see from here. Let me see if anything close looks magicked first."
"Ghirrak, Bryson, what do you see?"
Acting almost at the same time, Annie also reaches for the impulsive Professor. "Ho! Wait there! I think it's best to be mindful of what we do in here. Fires and man eating bat pictures and magical iron walls all tell me we need to a little careful, don't you think, Professor?"
"At least let us look for more magics and look around a moment before we set something else off here. That wall was put up for a reason."
Annie looked worried. "Some sort of attack magic? And it came from this side? But there's no one here now. Was there another fire trap in this room?" She looked down at Bryson. "Can you see any other signs of people that were here?" She looked around herself, knowing her eyes were less keen than Bryson's and unlikely to see something he didn't.
"Ooof!" Annie landed poorly on one arm and blinked tears out of her eyes as she struggled to sit up. She could fight if she had to, but as Phillip's light allows her to scan the room for danger, she can't help but breathe out thanks to Cayden Cailean that it doesn't appear she has to at this very moment. "Oooh," she whispered, "my bumps have bruises. Wait just a moment, I sure don't find myself wishful to move much feeling like this." Annie grasped her holy symbol with one hand and closed her eyes for a moment, murmuring a prayer to Cayden Cailean, while her other unconsciously sought out the comfort of Bryson's furred shoulder. Perhaps distracted by the pain, her first prayer doesn't produce much result, and she took a deep breath and tried again.
Annie stood up and joined the rest of the party in looking around at the strange room before them.
"Well, it looks like we can get out,eventually. That's good, I suppose. I don't look forward to the digging, though." As Phillip mentions that the strange iron wall was put there by magic, she frowns. "That's worrisome. Was it put there to keep something nasty out of this room? Or to keep things in?"
Annie will follow Bryson, then, and once safe from the worst of the fire, begin casting Create Water every round as rain at the ceiling of the entrance of the "cave"
Annie stares in horror at the destruction, and doesn't see anywhere obvious to go.
Annie blinks and stares at the fire wall, her magical detection still active.
"See! Like I said! Fire and stuff!"
"Ooh!" Annie whispered as her hand involuntarily tightened on Bryson-cat's shoulder for a moment, and then whistled in appreciation of the magic she saw before her. "Careful, now, everyone! That smokey stuff appears to be some sort of powerful magic. It's like to burn my poor eyes! It appears to be the same type of magic that fuels fireballs, lightning and missile magics! Beyond is something else...I can't make it out, the explosive magic is so strong, but it looks to be conjuration and illusion. Summoning? Acid? And some sort of trickerly, it seems. But it's beyond my skill to produce." Annie shakes her head and looks at the other magic users in the party. "What do you think? That archway is worrisome, I think. It feels...shaky. Like it wants nothing more than to fly apart in our faces, it's so old and rickety."
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