Flann seems to be developing a habit of rubbing the end of one elongated ear in thought. As Connor reaches the end of the corridor, the halvavian shrugs. "Nope! Can't figure out how that might be useful to us. See you again in a couple floors. Maybe I'll think of something then." Then, he joggs to catch up with the group.
Sobs follow Flann down the hall.
The rest of the creatures they pass are a mix of horrible creatures, obviously powerful things like a dragon with crystals growing out of it's skull (how it fits in the cell gives you a headache to think about). And there's one cell that seems to have nothing in it except a single lonely cricket chirping on the floor.
The group finally reaches cell #198, and the prisoner inside is a well dressed woman with pale gray skin, dark hair, and silver eyes. She smiles, and her upper canine's are pronounced, and seem to grow longer as the group approaches. "Mistress. My time was up Fifteen Hundred, Eighty Seven days, Fourteen hours, Twelve Minutes, and Thirty Two seconds ago." The woman sounds annoyed in the extreme.
Volita nods. "Do not blame me, those two idiots, the devil and the elf thief, killed the caretakers in their escape."
The woman narrows her eyes. "I remember seeing them flee past, they were in quite the hurry. I shall have to track them both down and kill them, if they are not already dead."
Volita shakes her head. "They have eaten of the tree, you cannot kill them, nor even attempt it. You do not want to be put back in here again do you?"
The woman shrugs. "I would trade five thousand years for the pleasure of slicing the devil's head off... Not sure I'd waste that much time on the elf."
Volita moves to the control panel, and punches in a code on the crystals, and the door to the cell ceases to glow. "If you insist, but remember, we cannot use this place as easily as we could."
The woman steps out, stretching, and her sword vanishes from her hand, then reappears, then vanishes. "Ah, finally able to put down my sword, you have no idea how having it in hand these centuries has been. On the other hand, I dare say I've had more practice with it than any being ever." She turns to Connor and his friends. "Mmm, and you did bring me lunch, so I shall have to forgive you Mistress. I must still punish you of course, for leaving me in there so long, but I do forgive you." A long black tongue leaves her mouth and licks over her lips as she takes a step toward Connor.
Dear, I wouldn't let her bite you. Unless you want to know what it's like to have your soul sucked out by a near immortal whore with the mores of an alleycat and the disposition of a mad demon.
"Volita-Kalvara; Kalvara!" Connor said hurriedly, taking a step in retreat. "Your bargains are your own! We are here on behalf of the Regent of Masiaarin, and we honored your assistance for Volita's sake, but we are still under a time limit here! We are not your servants, nor your servants' sustenance! We must all pass the next level and get to the two-hundreds!" He raised his hands in protest against the released prisoner, his wings unfolding and following his forearms in a defensive posture.
"You should just be happy to be out and leave." said Telv.
The woman turns on Telv, and then glares. "If I want your input, vermin, I'll shred your protoplasm and read it in whatever passes for your entrails!" She stalks closer to Telv. "I had hoped you were dead."
After all this time, it took Telv a minute to click the memory, but Telv knows who this creature is. She is an assassin, she specializes in killing things that could become a god, or who are personifications of gods on the physical plane. She's been locked up since she tried to kill Bast and failed. Well, technically she succeeded, but Bast got better.
Kalvara looks at Connor and Telv with black eyes, then gives a very small smile. "Come along dear one, We have made an agreement with these particular mortals, and that one is an Avatar of the Halfling b*#&@. Let's go find you a village to feed on."
The woman pauses, looks at Connor. "He is? Well then, I shall feed on you another day then, Avatar." She licks her lips. "The halfling's using non-halflings, good. I never liked halfling blood. Too filthy." She takes a sniff in Connor's direction. "You smell.. odd. I'll remember that smell." Then she frowns, and sniffs in Volita's direction. "Your new Avatar smells odd as well, Mistress. We should investigate."
The woman then reaches out to touch Volita's shoulder, and the two vanish.
When the two disappear, Telv, Connor and Adran find Flann, hands shaking, as he aims his pistol at the space where they had stood. "I'm going to regret not pulling the trigger sooner..."
"Only if you could have assured a kill, Vitalist Swallowtail." Connor replied, letting a pent-up breath out slowly. Sweat beaded his brow, even in the still air of the cell passageway. So psychoportation is possible here? Or only if a godling initiates it? he wondered.
"Adran! Here we go - water should be the next element. I hope it is frozen, or that we can fly above it! With you, Telv, of course." Connor offered.
"And without Volita, it's up to us to decide on that wish!" Connor reminded everyone as he turned to the last staircase.
A disagreeable godling and her mad servant loosed upon the world after centuries - will you alert the other godlings, Tenfa? Connor asked. And thank you for the warning. That one didn't look as helpful as Telv.
She has her uses, but shes consumed enough by-blows from idiot gods who can't keep it in their pants that she's pushing the limits of what a vampire can be and still be not a demigod. She stabbed Bast and tried to eat her too, so she got locked up as punishment. If we're lucky, she'll decide your lizard thing is a nice snack?
"Now that would have to be a carefully worded request for a wish." Connor muttered to himself in an undertone.
"That woman is hunting my father. I don't like her. I'm going to eat her head the next time we meet."
After a moment, Telv adds "I'd like to leave now, yes."
The group continues on down, and as they do, their breath begins to frost in front of their faces, and the temperature drops rapidly. The temperature drops below freezing as they turn the corner in a corridor at the bottom of the stairs.
The floor is rimed with a thin layer of ice.
There is a room with a white pedastal and beyond it a moat of water, there's a strong cold aura emminating from the water.
"Ice it is then. Well we are almost there at least. We need to move fast or we all may freeze."
When the group is ready Adran moves forward leading the way.
"Bbbrrrr." Connor opined, his breath visible in the much colder air as he looked around. "From the barbecue pit to the ice freezer. I should have guessed." Cocking a head towards Adran, Connor added "Yes, I have hot weather gear and another set of travel clothes, but not even a winter blanket in my bag of storage. Fan out, and call out, if you see anything!"
Connor released his psionic focus, changing the element from cold to fire. It wouldn't be pleasant if he had to make an astral construct to resist any creatures here, but he might be able to set something on fire with energy splash to keep warm.
The room to the east, with the pedestal and the water is extremely cold, much colder than the room to the west. Your breath frosts and actually slowly falls down, little bits of ice floating out of the air. Breathing the air is painful.
Telv looked around for more cells, unsure of what they were specifically looking for.
Telv finds another room to the north, and also notices he's leaving a small thin trail of green ice behind him when he moves. He also, upon getting close to the pedestal in the other room, realizes that his gel like self is getting harder and harder to move in the cold room, and ice crystals are beginning to form inside him.
Telv is fairly certain that the cold blasting off that water would crystalize him in an instant if he got too close.
B..b..boss can we just move. I'm g..g..getting chilly. It is m..m..much colder in this room. Probably the source, but looks like we need to cross.
Adran takes a moment fooling with his sleeves as furs and cold weather outfit forms around him.
"That's a bit better. So we heading east? Tev what did you see to the north?"
Flann stands on the white pedestal and looks for clues to the first part of this floor's puzzle.
Telv quickly moves away from the pedestal and towards another room.
"We s-stay here more than a few minutes," Connor answered Adran, "and we'll all f-freeze." Telv seemed to agree as he left the area. "Or we'll have to burn something made of wood." Connor added, with a thoughtful look at Flann's rosewood armor.
Flann notices that there is a miniature ice statue sitting on a miniature pedestal that is a duplicate of the one Flann stands on, on the opposite side of the icy stream that runs through the room. Despite the cold, it hasn't developed any icycles or extra frost on it, unlike the rest of the room or hallway.
Flann watches the little ice statue as he steps off of the pedestal.
Nothing happens.
Adran watches for a moment.
"M...m...maybe its a trap, maybe it is warm to the touch and will protect the one that holds it."
+3 vs Trap
Adran doesn't find any traps associated with the pedestal. The cold water seems to be a trap however, but there's no immediate method of bypassing it. The pedestal does seem to have a magical trigger mechanism, but it doesn't seem to be a trigger to a trap.
Very carefully, Flann unscrews his canteen and lowers it slowly into the water to see if he can collect some.
As Flann pushes the canteen over the water, the canteen's surface grows covered with frost, and the tips of his fingers, where they touch the canteen, cover with frost, freezing solid!
Unable to control his hand, the canteen slips from his fingers and hits the ground, half over the water, and half on the icy marble. The canteen shatters like fragile glass, shards of frozen metal tinkling on the marble.
"Just a few more minutes at this." Connor warned. "Then we're leaving this room and going North instead."
"Flann!" Connor shouted, going to the smaller Halvavian. Pulling him away from the freezing water, Connor called out to Adran "All right, wrong room! Get back to the corridor!" To Flann, Connor asked "Do you need my dorje?"
Flann hops back, teetering on his heels and stiffly fluttering his wings to reach a stable footing. With clinical distance, he looks at his frozen fingertips, and fascination ripples across the telekinetic network.
"That may be wisest, thank you."
Connor released Flann and got the dojre out of his backpack, handing it to the Vitalist. He walked back to the starting corridor.
The northern room is a dead end, but the walls are covered in reliefs. The reliefs all show the same image, a panther on a bit of tree limb, shown from every possible angle.
Flann peers at the reliefs. There is something here, similar to his initial thought that the two pedestals replicated what was on the larger onto the smaller. "Wish I could get something onto that other pedestal. I could possibly shoot the figurine, but I don't think that would be a good idea. I think it would change these carvings."
Taking his dorje back, Connor looked at the reliefs in the room. "I'll have to change my psionic focus again," he muttered, "but I think I can make an astral construct that looks like that panther. With some cold resistance, it should be able to make it across that open water without being annihilated. Like with the lava river beforehand." Connor looked at Flann.
"Maybe if we make a panther in the same pose as the current figurine, and put it onto the pedestal? What do you think, Vitalist?" Connor asked. "If that doesn't work, we can always have it jump over and take the other figurine and come back to us and put the figurine on the pedestal on our side."
"Worth a shot. I would wonder, though, how this might be accomplished without psionic talents."
"Lasso the figurine with rope?" Connor asked. He tentatively touched the relief with the panther in the same position as the ice figurine, using the bottom end of his psicrystal staff.
As Connor touches the relief, all the images in the relief's move, as if he had pushed on a real statue, the views rotate based on where he touched it, giving slightly different views.
To Connor's eye, the miniature pedestal on the other side of the water is a perfect 1:100 scale of the large pedestal. The relief's also seem to be a perfect 1:100 scale of the miniature statue on the miniature pedestal, but easier to see the detail involved.
"Ooo, okay. Let's get it facing the door." Flann bounces back and forth between the two rooms a few times before deciding where to nudge the relief to rotate the figurine to face the doorway and the moat.
The relief's are all over the walls, there's about 20 in the room. Which one do you want to face the doorway?
The reliefs are scattered around the room so that all available space is filled up. They are arranged so that if you are in the center of the room, you can turn and look and see the statue from every possible vantage point without moving. The perspectives are evenly spread from all 3 dimensional cardinal points (north, south, east, west, NE, NW, SE, SW, Up, Down, Up/South, Up/North, Up/East, Up/West, Down/South, Down/North, etc)
Flann nudges the reliefs so that their facings match the real figurine. If that doesn't do something, he'll try the reverse. While he is doing so, he takes in the fine details of the figurine through a few different reliefs.
Nothing happens. But Flann notes lots of detail is present, in fact, it would be fairly easy for a sculptor to use the reliefs to make a sculpture, given how detailed they are.
"It's another time sink. We need to replicate the figurine onto the large pedestal in perfect detail."
"What!" Connor said as all the reliefs on the walls moved. He watched as Flann played with the scenes.
"I agree!" Connor said when Flann paused. "I wish it wasn't freezing in here - it's going to mess up my concentration. But I think we need a panther statue after all. That must be why that water moat freezes everything - to give you material to sculpt with." He looked around at the reliefs. "But this is almost as good as having a living creature to work with." Connor shrugged off his backpack.
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Connor got out his artisan's tools, rather than sculpt the creature with his fingers, like usual, a potter shaping the putty-like material as it formed between his hands. Shooing the others away, Connor began manifesting ectoplasmic creation.
First came the branch the cat rested upon. Then the basic shape of the hunter cat. Connor put his tools in hand when he began adjusting the head, the paws and claws, and the bark of the wood. Occasionally he reached out with his psicrystal staff, changing the relief pictures from one angle to the next, adjusting his squatting or sitting position to match. He didn't ask why the cat only had one paw outstretched, or why the branch forked a certain way; he copied.
When completed, Connor picked up the figurine, holding it at arm's length as he slowly twirled in a circle, eyes on the relief pictures behind the image. He added a final crease in the cat's neck muscle. "It'll last for five hours, maybe six." he said to the others just outside the room's door. "What do you think?"
Flann is floored. He had been impressed by the Marksman's long shot, but that had been something Flann could understand and break down into its constituent parts. By contrast, Flann had never had an aptitude for shaping, and had never seen a competent shaper ply their craft.
"That is amazing." Flann reaches out, but comes short of touching the statue. His eyes flick back and forth between the statue and the reliefs. "I hope it's not too heavy."