The Grey Maidens, really only now processing the depth of the deception that has befallen them, are uncertain of their next steps, "It seems that following others has served us poorly in the past... maybe it is time to take back control of our destinies? Ahhh, but it is too soon... let us rest - we will guard this place until you return... and then we will leave the Lady's Light behind us"
Helanda nods, "Forever..."
"Alright," Joanna says, letting the matter lie for now. "Something to eat and a good night's sleep would be good."
A thought comes to her as she sees the dead lying where she'd laid them out.
"Where will we lay them to rest," she asks.
Joanna returns with the Gray Maidens and busies herself with taking off the armor she'd pilfered. Halli stays beside her, her eyes darting from person to person, sound to sound. A few minutes later, once she is out of the armor, she grabs something to eat from the rations in her pack and finds herself walking over to Shadlah and her companion.
"Do you mind a little company," she asks. Halli keeps back, eyeing Shadlah warily, though a spark of the curious pup she had been causes her to keep glancing at the little, stone creature playing in the stone.
Shadlah turns her bald head upward at the intrusion, before shifting to one side and patting the bedroll. "Of course not." The small carvings jolt at her touch, flying to her hand in a swirl; she sets them aside, plucking one from the armadillo. The creature, for its part, waddles hesitantly towards Halli, but rolls itself into a tight ball at the slightest movement from the wolf.
Teldon shifts uncomfortably while Briana works to retrieve something from her pack. The strange tension between becoming, for the moment, the center of attention and yet most of the onlookers seeming so disinterested appears difficult for the young man to process.
Opening the package, he smiles and immediately holds the glass to his eye to check the magnification. When Briana explains the story behind it, his eyes go wide. "It's magnificent, thank you!" he answers, "but are you sure..."
"We could use a celebration after all we've been through in here," Teldon concurs. Lowering his voice he adds, "Which is probably why the others aren't in a very festive mood."
He turns the magnifying glass and examines the engraving. "I wouldn't dream of changing it," he answers, "perhaps one day I'll use it to read to our grandchildren and you can tell them the story of how your grandfather used it to read to you."
Joanna sits down next to Shadlah and settles her food on one knee as she calms Halli down when the now skittish wolf jumps at Shadlah's companion rolling into a ball.
"Easy, easy," Joanna coos, "Everything's okay. See?"
After a moment, Halli settles down and lies next to Joanna, wary eyes on the ball of stones.
"I wanted to thank you for helping me out when I... I just lost it after fighting the Gray Maidens yesterday," she says without preamble, "I can't imagine what it was like to see that, to hear your friends and companions slowly dying and being able to do nothing about it."
She sighs as she takes a bite out of the dried meat she'd grabbed.
"You're right. I can't be stone, and neither can you," she says, "I want to know the Shadlah that doesn't wall herself off. I want to know who you really are. I want to know the Shadlah that wants to have a gaggle of badger kits around her, and I hope she'd want to know me."
Joanna lets the last sentence hang in the air for a moment before taking another bite of her food. She holds out a hand towards Shadlah's companion and waits patiently for it to uncurl and come to her.
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The small ball of rock shifts, its head and tail exchanging places as the food is offered, and it unfurls and waddles closer. It lunges clumsily for the food and snuffles at it, nudging it around Joanna's hand with a small, pointed nose.
Shadlah watches the small ball, her posture stiff and her face unmoving. Eventually, she relaxes her shoulders slightly, and says, "It has been a long time. After so much loss - a father I never knew, a mother I lost young, and the last party I cared about - the fear of loss never goes away. It is better in some ways to not become attached." She runs her hand over her bald head. "But perhaps some changes are not to be feared.
"For now," she says, a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips, "I can tell you that, as a child, I dreamed of finding a perfect sphere of black marble, and my favourite food is mushrooms fried enough to still be chewy."
Joanna smiles as Shadlah's companion sniffles the morsel in her hand. The smile fades as she listens to Shadlah and realizes she's no the only one who's been hurt.
"Uncle Titus used to joke that my favorite food was anything that couldn't run away," she replies when Shadlah opens up a bit, "I'm willing to try anything once. I even had roasted giant tick and stirge blood sausages once."
There's a shadow in Joanna's eyes as she remembers Ravenmoor. The pain wasn't as great, but Joanna was beginning to suspect that those memories and the scars they'd left would always be with her.
"I thought about running away and becoming a sailor once," Joanna says as she forces the darkness back and remembers a silly episode from her childhood, "I even made plans to sail to the Shackles with Briana to be Pirate Queens together and then steal all the candy from Korvosa."
"Back along the river, there is an island and a beach... we lost two of our sisters there to the glass Sorshen - we buried them there in the sands and it would seem peaceful to bury the rest of the dead with them... tomorrow... we will do that tomorrow", and the Grey Maidens return to a silent vigil - it is a slightly discomfiting sight - their stillness and their impassive helms lending them the look of statues as they stand over the dead.
"I have not had a good blood sausage in months," Shadlah sighs, watching as the armadillo, swallows the small morsel, only to have it fall through the large gaps in the rocks. "And sailing sounds like a nightmare to me. To be cut off entirely from the land, from everything that I know..." She stares into the middle distance for a moment, before shaking her head. "You would be a terrible pirate queen. Your heart is filled with too much goodness." Her smile widens, only slightly, but noticeably.
Joanna gives a snort of amusement as the morsel falls out of the little armadillo's "stomach."
"The stirge ones were surprisingly good. Maybe I can talk Mr. Korzha into making you some," Joanna says with a wicked grin flashing across her face, but as Shadlah moves on to how she feels about sailing, the grin vanishes.
"The trip out here must have been pretty bad for you," she replies, knowing the truth of it. She remembered how stiff Shadlah had gotten when they'd rowed out to the Crow. As Shadlah's companion tried to eat the morsel again, Joanna slides a little closer to her and puts an arm around the taller woman's broad shoulders.
"I'm here for you, Shadlah. You and the others are family to me, even if there's not a drop of blood shared," she reassures the normally unshakeable shoanti. "Besides," she says with a grin, "I thought all pirate queens were terrible."
After finishing her meal, Joanna and Halli bid everyone a good night and find a place to sleep.
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Showing off his excellent hearing, Teldon unexpectedly chuckles on the opposite side of the chamber. "You would all make terrible pirates," he announces with a laugh.
"I agree with Briana. After teleporting, we can't be at all certain where we are, but those chambers are too big to be inside the Lady's Light; so, assuming they're part of this complex, their most likely position is below the monument. Ergo, up is most likely the way forward and the secret door is probably a small side chamber that can be checked out fairly quickly. And, if its not we can always leave it for later and double back to the stairs."
"At least we would make cute ones," Joanna shoots back with a laugh of her own.
Joanna looks at the plate she'd liberated from the Gray Maidens with more than a bit of exasperation, but figures she'll be needing the greater protection now more than ever. As she and Arsith help each other get armored up, she whispers in the other fighter's ear.
"Do you think you could make me something lighter and easier to move around in when we get back to Magnimar," she asks.
Once she's armored up and ready to go, she joins the others and nods at Teldon's reasoning.
"I'm sure that we'll have time enough to check all of the nooks and crannies of this place before we leave. Which reminds me, there's this place a ways back that we left alone to wait for your expertise. It might not be a bad idea to sweep through this place and rid it of anything dangerous before we go about doing the sketches and catalogues and whatever else it is that we need to do."
Halli, meanwhile, stays with Joanna, though she doesn't get any closer to the others than she has to, and refuses to get less than a half-dozen paces from Shadlah, even going so far as to put Joanna between her and the Shoanti and always keeping a wary eye on her and her companion. Joanna gives the wolf a reassuring petting, though she remains worried about her friends behavior.
Before they leave, she turns to the Gray Maidens and warns them of the strange undead monsters in the tunnel between the two lakes, the cacodaemons, and the giant. She even suggests waiting until they can return to help deal with the threats they'd left behind.
Whether or not it is truly the next day, or not, is impossible to tell without sight of the sun's passage across the heavens... but the group, after having rested through the 'night' with no interruption feel rested - and ready. The debate in the morning centres around whether to explore the concealed areas discovered by Teldon... or whether to push onwards, find this 'Sorshen' that had the Grey Maidens in thrall and to retrieve the shard.
In the end, the decision is taken to explore - at least briefly - the hidden doorway,. And so, with the Grey Maidens remaining behind to stand vigil over their dead and to act as a rearguard, the group make their way back through to the chamber where the Korvosan warriors were making their plans. Even though Teldon points out where the door is, it remains remarkably imperceptible... that is until, with a shaking off of an age's dust, the door mechanism is fired into life and it grinds open...
Columns resembling sensuous limbs entwined in a complex and improbable embrace support the ceiling of the large chamber beyond the door. Its walls are covered in a minutely detailed mural depicting imaginative and horrific acts involving bloodletting and blood drinking. The blood in the painting seems to ripple and reflect light as if it were freshly painted onto the wall. However, the project is unfinished, and the remains of partially collapsed wooden scaffolding slump against the walls to the southwest.
To the east, the chamber narrows to a passageway... and into darkness...
I admit the erotic frescoes were more to my taste, if I'm allowed to say so. This is more repulsive. You can't always find beauty in an artist's work, sometimes you find beauty by getting your eyes away from his "art", and look at the world around you.
Arsith looks at Briana and smiles kindly to her
Joanna's eyes narrow in distaste as she sees the paintings. After a brief prayer for her friends' safety and giving Teldon a chance to look it over, she steps into the room and up to one apparently freshly painted blood splatters. She dabs her fingers in the paint, careful not to smear it, and tries to see if she can tell anything about it.
"This can't be fresh, right" she asks as she rubs her fingers together, "And what's with all the bloodletting. I thought that would have been more of a wrath thing."
Halli stays close by Joanna sniffing about and keeping a wary eye on the gloomy darkness deeper into the chamber.
"Magical energies pervade this whole structure," Teldon answers, "It's entirely reasonable to think there might be an illusion in place to create the perpetual appearance of fresh blood..."
or a twisted conjuration to provide an actual continual flow of fresh blood...
"And, some people do associate bloodletting with lust... certain followers of Calistria and Urgathoa, for example, hold it to be erotic." Looking around for anything else not immediately obvious in the present chamber, he adds, "could somebody please send some light into that tunnel?"
Joanna shudders and does her best to push the wave of nausea she feels back.
"That's sick," she says weakly as she reaches down to Halli for support.
Their attention briefly away from the painting as Briana sends a quartet of lights tumbling down the passageway, the friends don't see as the 'paint' peels away from the surface... and coagulating into amorphous blobs of what seems, as far as it possible to tell, to be blood. Washing across the floor, at a surprising speed, a crimson tide crashes into the group...
And, forming out of the gore, teeth and claw... stabbing, slashing, biting...
Joanna is far from the young, sheltered noblewoman who'd first joined the Pathfinders a couple of months ago, but there are some experiences that one is never really prepared for or able to take in stride.
Having her skin shredded by something with the consistency of the foaming head of a tankard of ale was one of them. Halli shifts behind Joanna, just as startled and frightened by the sudden attack as Joanna. The paladin ignores the pain and trained instincts take over as horror sends her conscious thoughts screaming in a half-dozen directions.
She rips her sword from her scabbard and takes the blade in both of her hands to cut through the strange mist before the stinging pain and sudden dizziness hit her.
Joanna's blade tears through the mist as she hears the others under attack. Fear burns away under the wick of her anger that these things would dare attack her friends. A low, wordless growl escapes her throat as she curls her lips in a snarl.
,
,
"Vampiric mist!" Teldon shouts as what little color is normally in his cheeks vanishes. "They're vulnerable to fire..." Availing himself of his own advice, he draws a flask of alchemist's fire as he steps back from the clouds . Studying the first one that reached him , he throws the flask at it.
,
The wash of blood, flowing and changing as it crashes against the group, is pushed back - only slightly but it is still something - by force and by steel...
Arsith does something to push her attacker backwards - her mace crashing through ichor and spattering red against the wall... whilst Shadlah, seeing that Joanna has diminished the mist somewhat, sends a blast of rock through the chamber - obliterating one of the creatures entirely...
Yet, driven by a thirst for living blood, the wave continues to flow over the group... leaving Briana, most of all the group, heavily weakened...
Joanna steps up and fire blazes in her eyes as she begins slicing through another of the strange blobs of mist.
Arsith tries to strike back at the unholy creatures, but fails miserabily
Teldon, are these things undead? Would the power of our gods harm them? If not, using positive energy could at least close our wounds, don't you think?
Joanna and Arsith, maybe feeling the effects of losing blood to these horrific creatures, both swing wildly... and weakly at the creatures - their weapons ineffectively cutting through the air and missing their targets. Briana is more fortunate, her burning hand creating clouds of crimson steam as she thrusts it into the mass ahead of her...
Teldon draws his shortsword and charges it with arcane energy. As the alchemist’s fire smolders and goes out he swings desperately at the still moving mist it had been burning.
,
Teldon's blade, arcing out with devastating accuracy, cleaves his attacker in two... and the animated liquid, red and bloody, splashes to the floor - utterly inert... whilst Shadlah, summoning up another blast of rock, sends another of the mists flying back towards the painting... Only half of the original creatures remain in the fight yet, gorged with blood as they are, they continue to swipe and slash with their claw-like appendages...
Teldon steps towards the fleeing cloud of blood while sliding his shortsword back in its sheath.
can’t let it get back to the blood on the wall...
Pale as a ghost and increasingly unstable on his feet, he grasps his spear with both hands , studies the vampiric mist , and stabs at it .
,
Staggering towards the fleeing mist, Teldon catches it before it can truly immerse itself within the flowing crimson... and, dissipating to nothing, the mist is gone...
Arsith manages to land a blow, and quickly heals herself
Joanna winces as she feels more light-headed. Blood dripped from creases in her armor and splattered to the floor. She had to remain though, as weak as she was feeling.
Meanwhile, Halli curls up and whines as she feels the pain and desperation Joanna is feeling through their bond. She knows something is wrong, that she is too afraid of the humans that her companion had surrounded herself with, especially the tall, bald female at the moment. But she couldn't fight where her friend was, not against such horrible creatures.
Arsith and Joanna both swing their attacks once more... and this time find their targets as their weapons flow through, and disrupt the mists... not enough to destroy them but certainly enough to dissipate them somewhat...
"As long as it keeps us more alive than them, I don't care!"