Connor manifested ectoplasmic creation, sitting down in the small room below the stairs and making a bucket.
For safety's sake Connor added handgrips on the underside, as well as a large handle, a spout on one side's top, and a foldable flat cover to keep any water from spilling.
When finished, he picked up the empty bucket and handed it to Flann. "So, which statue do we do first?" he asked.
Flann speaks as he is filling the tub with bowl-fulls of golden water. "Guessing from the arrangement here, the soldier would be the first logical choice, but it probably just gets walkers access to the hawk. The flowers are a break in what looks like a pattern, since all we have is one painting... The hawk is a pain... I like your suggestion of trying the woman with the flowers in the big banquet hall..." When the bucket is full, Flann snaps the cover into place. "We should hover to pour the water, rock it back and forth so it comes out in bits... unless we want to upturn it like we're making a sand castle."
Adran nods.
"I can fly whatever you need around boss. Anything to keep the blood moving. So cold in here."
Adran does whatever is needed or asked.
"I like dipping with the clay pieces better - the death-water freezes so fast that anything connected to it gets frozen too." Connor said.
"To the room with the woman with the flowers!" Connor ordered, pointing.
Inside the room, Connor studied the reliefs while getting out his tools.
It takes Connor 10 minutes, and a dozen buckets, to make a 6 foot block the roughly correct shape for the statue.
Once completed, he begins carving on the ice. THe job is made easier because he can pour more ice back on if he makes a mistake. However, it still takes 20 minutes to complete the statue. . When completed, There is a statue of a woman with flowers sitting on the marble block over the stairs with stairs leading up. However, nothing happens in that room or any other room as far as you can tell.
"Whats the next step boss?"
"Back to the hawk." Connor growled, upset at the inaction. "I'll sculpt one, you put it on the dais in the water, this time it won't shatter, and we see what happens." Flann, Connor sent, failure here. Now going back to hawk, then other places.
"Telv!" Connor called out as he walked back to the main bridge room, "Nothing happened. I'm trying the hawk again, and then it's a matter of what statue goes where! But we're still racing the clock here!"
While crafting the second hawk, Connor kept bouncing thoughts off of Hero. Need a tiny clockwork next time. My inertial armor is set for nine hours. Wonder what time it is. Should've packed cold weather gear. And a collapsible bucket. And a ladle. If we get out of here now it'll be a miracle. I wonder if we can make our wish to get out of here, the same way Volita and the other...woman did. You can't solve this with an army from the Regent, you need a puzzlemaster or three.
Flann peeks into the room where the others are looking at the blocked stairs. When Connor storms out, Flann takes the bag, repeats Connor's vanishing act (it takes a few hops and flutters to get the bag over the top of the statue) and moves the statue of the woman with the flowers onto the dais in the middle of the huge chamber, poised to dive toward the lower floor should there be a gush of death water.
The woman with flowers statue does nothing when placed on the large square dais.
Connor meanwhile makes another copy of the hawk, and carefully sets it on the round pedestal.
Once on the pedestal, the pedestal sinks into the freezing water. When it does, the statue is completely submerged. After a minute, it seems as if it will remain submerged. Just as Connor and company is beginning to think that's it, the freezing water bursts upward, and a hawk (a living hawk, all white) zooms up out of the water with an explosion of frothy white foam. The hawk zips around the room, screaching, and then it explodes into a cloud of snow that floats down through the air.
A large pure white feather is mixed in with the snow, and is slowly floating down toward the water again.
Disappointed but satisfied, Flann walks out into the central room to wait for Connor to finish the hawk.
Flann points, and telepathically pulses the wordless concept of a feather out through the network. The death-water is all that keeps him from lunging for it.
Surprised by the white hawk, Connor just barely saw a white feather in the midst of the snow explosion. "Feather! Yes, Flann!" he called out, and dove first for the feather, grabbing it and then quickly adjusting his flight to land safely on the tiled floor.
"This," Connor stated, breathing hard from the exertion, "this makes me think: water poured onto the vase of flowers in the stair-room over there." He pointed across the moat. "Would the flowers turn into living flowers, and would the statue of a woman with flowers use those flowers?"
"And what do we do with this?" Connor asked, holding up the white feather.
"The hawk was looking for something... Maybe we need to give something from each... thing to the next... thing. Did the warrior have a feather in his cap?" There's a pause, the Flann says, "oh, if you're right, then we can use the woman's reliefs to carve the flowers for the pitcher."
Watching the bird people fly back and forth, Telv does what passes for a shrug as an Ooze and then makes his way to the section that hasn't been explored yet.
With Adran's help again, Connor went to the Western room up the corkscrew stairs to where the flower relief was posted. He got out his tools again while Adran used the ectoplasmic bucket.
"Adran, go back down the stairs, the last time this happened the freezing water came out of the ceiling." Connor warned the smaller Atalantian. When Adran was out of sight, Connor made the last adjustments to the ice carving.
Flann walks to the other side of the large chamber. "Weird, I could have sworn there was a wall on this side a minute ago..."
Telv turns to ooze, and crawls along the wall 15 feet above the icy water, over to the door, and then down and through the doorway, taking some cold damage in the process.
Once on the other side, Telv finds himself in a corridor, with two exits.
If he has nothing else he can do for a few minutes, Flann will start making an ice plank to try and place across the narrow pools of water.
While Connor is sculpting, Flann begins pouring golden water next to the water stream, building it up slowly and finally makes a very rough (and somewhat slippery) 5 ft wide bridge over the water.
Connor finishes sculpting the vase and flowers, and then after he's done, he places it on the platform.
The water again rains down from above, coating the flowers and the vase. The flowers seem to grow icy thorns, and then the flowers explode! Bits of ice ricochet around the room!
The vase remains on the platform, half full of icy blue water. There's a grinding sound somewhere.
Ouch! Connor sent through Flann's network. Attempt Number Two resulted in another explosion! I've got some cuts. I'm hearing a grinding noise. I'm leaving to avoid getting trapped in here.
Connor went down the stairs as quickly as possible.
The finishing touch on Flann's slab bridge are a pair of long handles, supported by a few branching limbs Carefully, Flann slides the bridge into place, bracing the back end with his boot as he tries to get the lip of the bridge to line up with the far edge. He'll stop and pull it back if it seems to heavy for him.
Flann hops and flutters across the chunky ice shield.
"Right or left, Telv?"
"I can check the right path if you check the left one."
"Well, that still didn't work." Connor told Adran at the bottom of the stairs. He sighed. "Unless Flann finds something, or somebody can decipher what's on that obelisk, I guess the only thing we can do is the swordsman next."
Connor flew over to the Northwest side of the room.
Flann and Telv each take one of the doorways off the corridor.
Flann finds two more rooms, one that's half-circular with ornate tiles on the floor that form two smaller circles. The other is a simple square room that leads to that room, and has flowers motiffs on the walls (but no reliefs).
Telv finds a room with a massive pedestal that looks similar to the really large room. On the pedestal is a four armed statue of a woman, naked from the waste up. The statue is white marble.
In her upper right hand she holds nothing, but her hand is poised as if she were holding something.
In her lower right hand she holds a sword made of black marble.
In her lower left hand she holds a shield made of black marble.
In her upper left hand she holds a set of black marble scales.
Moving back out to where he can shout to Connor, Telv will shout "Hey, I found another pedestal. It has a four-armed human on it."
Connor stopped at the archway to the West side of the water rooms. "On my way!" he shouted back. "Let's go - they found something new." Connor told Adran.
Connor slowly and carefully made his way up the stairs, Adran following with the bucket.
Seeing the water-made bridge across the freezing moat, Connor stopped as if slapped. "So that's what the water is for!" he announced, shocked. "Why didn't I think of this - good job, Flann!" he said loudly. Testing the frozen bridge with his feet, Connor decided to spread his wings for stability, motioning to Adran behind him to do the same.
Walking the new Eastern corridor, Connor and Adran followed Telv to the new statue room. Taking the four-armed statue in, Connor asked "Does this look familiar to you, Flann?" Seeing the empty hand, Connor held up the white feather they just acquired. "I think this goes there. But I'm not ready yet." Connor declared. He paused, thinking.
Crafting a panther statue to cross the first moat, unfettered access to glowing-water room, trapped stairs going to hawk room, magical hawk leaves behind feather. Flowers lead to negative result.
"And it still doesn't make sense to me." Connor said lamely.
"I did see what you did with the woman-with-flowers in the marble room, Flann." Connor stated. "It looks like we were both wrong - the woman goes in the other room, here. The one with the tiles."
Telv starts looking around to see if there are any other places the group hasn't checked yet.
Connor used his bag of storage to move the woman with flowers statue from the large Northern room to the room with tiles.
Connor settles the statue on the circle at the top of the tile room. The tiles glow blue, and the smaller circle begins to glow behind Connor.
Flann winces from a distance.
"One last time." Connor said to himself. Going all the way back to the corkscrew stairs room in the Southeast, Connor took the broken vase with the freezing water in it. He brought the vase back to the room with tiles, placing the vase in the area of the smaller circle.
As Connor steps over the circle, there's a cracking of ice behind him, but when he turns, he can't see what cracked. Although the statue seems somewhat off for some reason.
When he reaches the room with the vase, he tries to grab the vase, but the water raining down earlier froze it to the floor, and touching the ice causes his hands to turn blue and even black on the finger tips as they begin to freeze.
While the others work on a new statue, Flann will build another bridge across the central flow of death-water.
"Ow, ow, OW!" Connor muttered louder and louder. Flann, medic! This room's hurt me twice now - and I can't sculpt with frostbitten hands. I'm down to three charges on my dorje. How's your mind-energy? Enough for a healing?
"Hero, mental note." Connor listed out loud. "More healing tattoos and dorjes when we get back home. A graduated scale so we don't use up a hangnail for a sword cut and some actual TEMPERATURE PROTECTION!" The last was with gritted teeth against the pain.
I could mend ten surface wounds, or six really bad injuries... four mortal wounds if I get really fancy. Maybe take turns putting yourselves in danger? I am not so great a Vitalist that I can disperse damage across my network, and it would help budget our resources if I could heal more in one go...
Flann stops to rub his hands together, focusing on the gestalt anatomical image in his mind, and pushing warmed blood through the damaged digits.
Thanks. Yes, lesson learned. We've almost got this challenge solved. Just a few more attempts. Connor sent as his hands turned pink again instead of blue and black, and the cuts on his face, neck, and arms healed.
Glaring at the offending vase of ice on the floor, Connor got out his tools. Chipping carefully at the bottom of the ice, using different tools, spare clothing, and pitons in a rotational pattern to keep from touching the ice and avoid one particular tool from becoming dangerously frozen, Connor unstuck the ice vase. With leftover twine, wood from his scrivener's kit, and chalk from his map maker's kit, Connor made a knotted cat's cradle, sliding the netting under the vase so that he could carry the object without touching it.
On my way again. Connor sent, once he could lift the vase.
Connor slowly gets the vase out of the room (takes about 10 minutes) and carries it back. Once it's placed on the smaller round circle, nothing happens.
Connor inspected the woman statue to see if the flowers could be removed.
As Connor walks over the circle, there's another cracking sound. When he examines the statue, it appears the statue's legs and arms have moved about half an inch.
I just saw the woman with flowers move a little. Maybe if I stand in the circle she'll give me her flowers? Connor sent to Adran and Flann. "I'm trying something new over here, Telv!" he shouted loud enough for the newcomer in the other room to hear.
Connor got out some spare clothing and held it in his hands. He carefully, his eyes on the ice statue of the woman, stood in the blue circle. Connor tensed, ready to jump if she came at him, or worse, freezing water poured from the ceiling.
Connor stands in the circle, and the statue begins to move again. It's slow at first, but then as ice continues to crack, the woman's arm suddenly moves, sending a shower of ice crashing to the ground as a perfectly formed female arm pulls itself free of the statue, then the head shakes, and the hair becomes flowing water that sends more ice to the ground. A jerky step and more cracking and her leg rips free of the ice. Finally with a last crash of ice, the woman steps free of the ice, her translucent body covered by flowing water forming the clothes originally carved into her form. She walks toward Connor, her body glistening. She stops in front of him, and then kneels and holds the flower bouqet aloft. As she does, the ice turns green and red and yellow and white, and then bursts into a puff of snow that slowly settles onto the floor. The statue freezes in place, holding aloft a bouqet of real flowers in offering to Connor.