Qui is level 4
Ariella follows suit. Better get while the gettin's good.
Edmund also asks for experience.
Hermann waits for the other shoe to drop before doing anything.
Ariella and Edmund go into the circle (separately) and nothing happens.
Jokbur didn't get hit, though. Only Qui got hit.
"Reawakening?" Ariella says cautiously on the stone circle.
Jonas just stands and watches, concerned.
Nothing happens when someone says reawakening or experience in the circle
"Two steam bursts, then two activations." Jonas says scratching his head.
"So what causes the steam burst?"
Fighter(Lore Warden)/1 - HP:
Qui looks confusedly at his hands.
What was that? I feel as though I understand combat a little better. Did anyone sense the same?
Jokbur replies: "I feel much better at my craft. It is worthwhile to pursue using this magic as much as possible. It was quite beneficial."
He looks at Edmund. "Keep trying to get this up."
"This is way beyond me. Anyone have any idea how it works?"
Knowledge Arcana:
"It's some sort of construct, not a magic item. As such, it could do...anything. There aren't ways to activate constructs like there are magic items. I would say that either the construct is only able to grant its boon twice within a certain time frame (like each day, week, year), or maybe it had a certain number of charges when it was created, and we just used the last two, or there are some other criteria it uses to select who it grants the boon, criteria we are unaware of. I would say that anytime we come back to return to Zelkor's Ferry, we swing by here and try to use the magic again, in case the statue has reset itself."
"As for 'reawakening', I was afraid when Ariella tried it that the statue would 'reset' all of the target's knowledge and experiences, rather than add to them, but now I wonder if perhaps it is more useful...that should one of us fall in battle, we should bring the body back here and try the 'reawakening'."
As everyone is examining the construct and talking about what it might be, Ariella suddenly stumbles. She reels for a moment before reaching a hand out to the wall. Leaning heavily on the wall, she puts her back against it. "Jonas, I don't feel so good..." she says before sliding down to slump against the floor. Sweat is rapidly beading on her face, and begins to run down in rivulets. Her eyes roll back into her head until only the whites are visible, and she begins to have a seizure. Ariella tumbles fully onto the floor, where she spasms and thrashes fitfully.
"Lady...!" Hermann exclaims, forcibly not rushing to her side so that Jonas may, instead.
Qui looks around the room before turning toward the circle wondering if that might have caused the problems being suffered by Ariella.
Perception:
"Maybe it is like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon?" Jokbur adds hopefully.
Jonas grabbed his sister, lowered her to the ground and put a strip of leather in her mouth and talked to her while her body seized.
"It's ok. She's going to be ok. This happened a few times when we were kids. It's a condition of some kind. It's unpredictable and there isn't much that can be done to treat it. Her fits usually lasts a couple minutes. I've never seen it last longer than an hour. She's going to be pretty tired when she comes to, and maybe a little confused, so we're resting here."
"I'm right here Ari..." he said, talking her through her episode, holding her head in his lap so she didn't crack it on the floor.
After a minute or so, the fit subsides. Ariella tiredly opens her eyes, only managing to raise the lids halfway. After seeing Jonas there she smiles a little, then frowns. "Sorry," she whispers before her eyes drift back closed.
============================
In her dream Ariella is standing naked in a desert, with a scimitar grasped in her hand. The scimitar has an iron-ring for a pommel. In that way that dreams sometimes have, she knows what she is to do before she does it. She kneels in the sand, and thrusts the blade of her sword down into the sand so that the pommel is pointing up into the air. Looking through the ring she can see the western horizon. It is evening, and the fat red disk of the sun is slipping slowly down towards the horizon. She doesn't know what's going on, but has a terrible feeling. Ariella begins to pray to Sarenrae, supplicating herself in the sand and begging for her divine mother's aid. There is no response. As the minutes pass the sun slips down, until hovering just over the distant horizon, it fills the iron circle of her pommel. Instead of sinking into sunset, the glowing orb of the star sticks there surreally. As Ariella grips the hilt darkness suddenly falls over the dunes of the desert and the light shrinks down to the single point of her pommel.
As she rises in confusion, the blade of the scimitar ignites burning brightly. She holds the blade ready, unsure what to expect next. Her heart is pounding and the feeling of dread in her gut is so palpable that she feels nauseous. The ground below her begins to fall away. She tries to run, but the hole is growing faster than her legs can propel her. A shadowy, indistinct version of The Maw rises up from the sand to engulf the screaming cleric, swallowing her. Inside, everything is pure darkness except for the light flickering from her blade. It creates a small orb of visibility around her, which is soon penetrated by a serpentine lash of shadow flicking towards her. Spinning in a graceful pirouette Ariella slashes the black "tentacle" in two and it disappears. More of the ebon psuedopods lash out at her, and she begins to dance. Each twirl of her body brings the flaming scimitar around to slash through another of the dark, grasping shadows. She dances as she has never danced before, feeling the fire of the Dawnflower rise up in her and fill her. Soon she is a whirlwind of spinning slashing flame, holding back the darkness. She becomes one with the dance, and the scimitar becomes an extension of her will. Disassociated from her body, the experience seems to go on forever, and for no time at all, in that way that only dreams have. Finally the attacks from the darkness slow, and off in one direction, things gorw lighter. Ariella stops dancing, slick from head to toe with sweat and panting in exhaustion. The darkness recedes and the rim of the dawn sun peaks above the horizon, blasting away the last of the shadows. As the first rays of dawn touch Ariella, the dream ends.
"Well, the room with the steam thing should help serve as an early warning. Let's spike the door's we haven't opened yet, just for safety, and hole up in here."
Jonas hands Jokbur a hammer and a pair of bronze spikes.
You are able to rest without interruption.
In the "morning", Hermann checks on the Hearths.
"Jonas, is she going to be okay?" he asked quietly.
Jonas nods. "If you make some breakfast, she'll probably come round. She's usually pretty hungry after an episode like this. She always used to be anyway. Hasn't happened in years. I actually thought she might have outgrown them."
"Ari and I are 'special' somehow. We were born under certain signs that make us blessed of Sarenrae. I used to spontaneously get bigger. Broke two cribs before our parents made one out of a full sized bed. I used to like to play in the fire place too, which caused it's own set of problems. I don't even know how many times I almost lit the house on fire."
"Ari had it worse than I did. She's more closely aligned with light than with fire, so the dark has never been good for her. Me, I just get nervous around water. Pretty easy to avoid. It's a lot harder to avoid the dark."
"She would get headaches and cry every night. Anytime she was away from the sun for longer than a few hours, she'd become sad and lonely and really tired. I don't think she learned how to store sunlight until she was a teenager."
"I think that might be what this is about. These fits always came when she wasn't getting enough light. We've been down here in the dark for too long without much but my torch to light our way."
"The thing is, every time this happened, she'd be a little different. I think it's the way her body adapts. The sun has phases, just like the moon, but they're hard to see because you can't really look at the sun. I can. The sun changes slowly, but every once in a while it flares with a big upheaval and it's phase changes all of a sudden. Ari's like that. She grew normally, slowly, and then every once in a while her body would shut down and reset itself. When she was six she had a particularly bad episode, and after that she was able to create her own light. She stopped getting the headaches after that. When she was ten she broke her leg, had an episode a few days later, and then learned how to use her light to heal."
"It's always been like that with her. I bet when she comes to, she'll be a whole new Ari."
Qui, who studied many of the Sarenrae holy techniques listens carefully to Jonas, but ends up even more confused than before.
Ariella's eyes gently flutter open at the sound of voices. She looks around slowly getting her bearings. "What happened?" she asks groggily, sitting up. "I had a nightmare...I was stuck in the darkness," she continues, and then she remembers where they are and stops talking.
"Well, its dark down here, but we aren't stuck. Hungry?"
"Quite. Is breakfast one of the insects we've killed lately?"
"It isn't if you're more'n two foot tall, m'Lady. I can make something in a few minutes with some of the food I brought along... but I'm an old soldier, not a fancy cook, so don't expect too much compared to what you're surely used to," says Hermann.
Making said breakfast, he offered the Hearths a pair of plates.
"Not too badly burned, ha!"
Qui digs into some of the bug innards he gathered up from the ants. He offers tastes to the others, but does not expect to be taken up.
Strange these big people, not liking fresh giant ant.
"Thank you." Jonas says, digging in.
"How are you doing, Ari? Do we need to go back up to the surface?"
Jokbur looks at the lady with concern:"We don't know what strange things have happened. We should be cautious."
Though Jokbur is inherently cautious.
"I do feel different. Much different actually. I feel stronger. I feel like I can dance the same way Qui does now. At least that's what I was doing in my dream. I could fight better than I ever have before. But at the same time, I feel less connected to the Dawnflower's healing light. It's as if she burned away the soft parts in me and left only the hard..." Ariella says. She moves into the center of the room, and and draws her scimitar. Before, she had always held the blade somewhat awkwardly, as if it were more of a prop than a piece of her. Now she holds the curving sword with the steadiness of a trained fencer. Furrowing her brow for a brief instant she concentrates and the length of the scimitar's edge crackles to life with arcing bands of golden yellow and red energy, which flow up and down the blade. "See?" she asks, holding up the crackling sword.
She breaks into a series of lighting fast twirling turns and leaps, using her momentum to whip the curved blade around her with frightening speed. The energized scimitar leaves burning slashes of afterglow in the air and in the others' vision. After a second she stops, the energy recedes from the blade and she sheathes it. "I think we're good?"
Jonas just smiled and nodded. "Guess it's your turn to stand in front of me. Stay close though. Just because you dreamed a frog dance and feel like you can fight now doesn't mean I'm thrilled with the idea of watching you put yourself in danger."
"Are we ready then? Where to next?"
Jokbur leads off west with Qui searching for traps and listening for creatures.
Yup continue down the hall searching.
Hermann follows after Jokbur and Qui from what he thinks might be a safe distance to avoid any immediate ambushes, but close enough to support them in case of an attack.
The corridor broadens into an open chamber here, with a very high ceiling (60 ft.). The northern wall is lined with five statues of gargoyles in niches.
Qui looks at the gargoyles.
Something tells me that those are not statues. Lets set up a defensive position here and then I will go and investigate.
Jonas nods and he and Hermann set up their usual wall of polearms in the doorway.
Jokbur moves cautiously in the room.
"Where are the nasties?!"
Ariella moves to stand in front of Hermann and Jonas, hefting her shield and scimitar. "We're like a little phalanx, now," she says smiling.
You move into room and into position. None of the statues move, however.