Meanwhile, in the arena ...
Kadi Qadamayn, "I don't know. They have no reputation. Why should I back a horse with no known past?"
Yoy'ya, "For the thrill and the payoff. I tell you Kadi, they are going to surprise everyone here. You'll kick yourself if you shy away from this opportunity."
Kadi Qadamayn, "But they are so young."
Yoy'ya, "Did you not see what the youngest has just accomplished? She has destroyed the last two rooms. And what flare she showed, figuring out the mechanism then bowing to the crowd."
Kadi Qadamayan, "No, I am already planning on sending a gift to Twins. I will not spend more on these Blackbirds."
Yoy'ya, "Ah, I see. You are following after that Baronet de Vertbatton fellow and his wife. It is a safe bet. No one will question it. I simply thought of how furious he would be if the Blackbirds should beat out the Twins. How you could rub it in his face that you knew all the while. But that's ok."
Prem, "Excuse me, ahem, are you Yoy'ya? The one looking after those blackbirds?"
Yoy'ya, "Why yes. Is there a problem???"
Prem, "No, not at all. I'd like to buy the Blackbirds a boon. I'm afraid I don't have much to give but did you see that grappling hook throw? I couldn't have made that in a hundred tries."
alQadamayan, "Yes, and me too. What would be appropriate?"
Yoy'ya, "Perhaps a salve or unguent. Something to heal a hurt during the next challenge would be very appropriate."
...
Dounia motioned to Tymythy, "Would you mind? I know I might need to climb up if the grate is the way out, but I could use a moment." She was feeling a little shaky from the adrenaline of the last few minutes. "Zahra, can you make him a light that he can drop into the well?"
Once Tymythy started up, she said, "Well, which one of us can hit that illusion first?" She held up three stones with a grin, then hurled hers across the room.
With Dounia’s first rock she struck the area of the far wall where both Cairee and Zahra could see the aura. Nothing happened. The rock struck the wall with a clack, left a small white mark, and clackled on the stone floor.
Dounia motioned to Tymythy, "Would you mind? I know I might need to climb up if the grate is the way out, but I could use a moment." She was feeling a little shaky from the adrenaline of the last few minutes. "Zahra, can you make him a light that he can drop into the well?"
”No trouble at all,” Tymythy said, accepting a piece of rubble Zahra had enchanted so it glowed with a soft radiance. The hunter slipped the stone into a pocket, tested the tension of the rope once last time to make sure it would hold his weight without sagging so much that he’d end up with his back pressed against the ground two feet into his climb.
”Just in case the trap Dounia expected will be sprung once I enter the room, rather than walk on the floor, be ready to act,” he said, then wrapped his legs around the rope and began pulling himself up the gentle slope towards the grate up above, enjoying this much lighter exercise after all the recent fully vertical climbing.
Tymythy scuttles up the rope that, at first, threatened to sag to the ground. A glowing piece of the wall was held in his teeth so that it lit his cheeks with an internal glow. He reached the grate and was amazed to find the hook almost upside down with one prong precariously caught through a two inch square hole. How it was lodged there he’d never quite work out.
From the top of the rope he could see the grate clearly had hinges so that it swung upward and there was a lockset on the bottom side.
He looked down at the well and, before he could drop the stone, noticed that the recess was quite shallow and lit by the sourceless light of the room. It was perhaps a foot deep but still obscured from anyone looking from the doorway. On the bottom of the recess there were nine tiles. Each tile seemed to bear some inscription.
Moving more carefully now that he realized how precarious the hook’s hold on the grate was, Tymythy wasted no time in seeing what he may, studying the lock securing the grate shut. Once he felt he had learned what he could, he turned his head to spit out the glowing stone as instructed, but hesitated as he saw the truth of what they had taken as a vent on the floor for excess water. Grunting, he held onto the stone and shifted his hold, sliding slowly and smoothly back towards the door, to be caught and pulled back into the hallway by outreached hands.
”No well on the floor, but a set of marked tiles,” he said, dropping the enchanted stone on the floor by the door. ”Perhaps a way to open the lock on the grate above… or perhaps a way for challengers to waste time if the real solution lies behind that illusory wall Cairee spotted. The grate does seem to open upwards, but I doubt you’d have an easy time working on the lock, with one hand on the rope to hold yourself in place. Besides, the hook is not very secure where it is, and it won’t take much yanking on the rope for it to come loose.”
”I think there isn’t much more we can learn from here,” he said after a moment of thought. ”I think we should just go ahead, and presume we do not have all the time in the world to figure out what the room expects from us.”
"Tiles?" Dounia's brow creases. "I want to see."
She shinnies up the rope a ways, then says, "Let it loose."
The rope, once loosened, dangles directly over the indentation with the tiles in it. She shimmies down close to it, and tries to figure out what it is.
”Just be careful – the hook might come loose at any moment, when the angle of the rope changes,” Tymythy repeated his warning, but untied the end of the rope from the piton and held it as Dounia shimmied up the slope until she got far enough into the room, them began pooling it out, swinging Dounia further into the room and close to the floor, until the rope ran straight down from the hook, with Dounia acting as the pendulum at its lowest point, a couple feet up from the tiles she was to examine.
Dounia hung from the rope and looked down into the recessed space. There were nine tiles and each tile had some markings on them. She couldn't make most of them out but the fourth word was sahradhurone, the desert word for snake.
The tiles looked like buttons. There was also a very faint mist inside the recess. It was as if the area was very cold. Dounia also spotted four doors inside slots along the sides.
The door began to slide shut. The stone Dounia had jammed it open with was starting to break apart.
Tymythy put his back against the door as it began swinging shut with the slow, steady inevitability of a boulder sliding down a slope, but it was to no avail - his feet couldn't find purchase and the door simply moved him with it.
"We are not going to stop this!" he grunted. "Everone inside!"
Tymythy glided effortlessly up the rope to inspect the grate.
"...The grate does seem to open upwards, but I doubt you’d have an easy time working on the lock, with one hand on the rope to hold yourself in place. Besides, the hook is not very secure where it is, and it won’t take much yanking on the rope for it to come loose.”
"Can you tell what's on the other side of the grate?" Cairee asked. "Does it open up to a room, or a tunnel that we'd have to climb?" She hoped not the latter as climbing was not her forte.
He climbed back towards the hall and Dounia jumped on the rope, eager to see what was in the middle of the room. But before she could share her findings, there was a CRACK of stone and the door started to slide shut. Without even thinking, Cairee scurried into the room. She wouldn't leave Dounia alone. Besides, this was their way out, so there was no point being stuck on the other side of it.
Once through, she pivoted and grabbed the bottom of the door, straining desperately to slow its decent so Zahra and Tymythy could join them.
"Uh oh," Dounia said, as the door started to close. "Leave the door," she cried, "Come and figure out this puzzle thing. And the illusion thing. I'll work on the lock." It would be bloody hard to actually open the grate upwards while hanging from it, but if they were swimming, it would be easier. She scampered up the rope like a monkey, held on tight with her legs, and began working on the locked grate.
When Dounia threw her rock, Zahra held onto the one she was given and wished that she had her crossbow with her. She would have easily hit the target had she had it with her but she wasn't so sure about throwing the stone. She tossed it up into the air a few times to get a better feel for its weight.
Just as she was about to follow suit and throw her stone, she got distracted by people scuttling up and down the rope which apparently was precariously attached at the top.
"If this place fills with water but we need to do something with whatever is in that recessed area, we'll have to work quickly and master holding our breath."
The scraping of stone on stone warned them all that the door was closing. Knowing that the Blackbirds shouldn't be separated, Zahra moved into the room just behind Cairee and made sure Tymythy got through as well. "I say we head straight for the recessed area and see what's what."
Even as Tymythy and Cairee fought the door it pushed them into the room. There was enough time for Zahra to squeeze through the doorway. Then, finally, the three found themselves standing in the room. No water flowed. No trap sprung. But the door closed behind them and made a sucking [b]thwaaammmb as it did.
Dounia tried to hold onto the rope with just her legs. She didn't slide down but the posture made her tip backward whenever she tried to use both hands to pick the lock. She had to wrap one arm around the rope, hold herself steady with her legs, not concentrate on the burning of her thighs, and pick the lock practically one handed.
The tumbler was almost free then she hit something and changed the tumblers hidden inside the mechanism. The lock reset!
Zahra, Cairee, and Tymythy rush to the middle of the room just underneath Dounia. They could see The Recessed Panel
..."Can you tell what's on the other side of the grate?" Cairee asked. "Does it open up to a room, or a tunnel that we'd have to climb?" She hoped not the latter as climbing was not her forte.
From what Tymythy could see, the grate opened up into a hallway that went in two directions. From below the grate he couldn't see how far the hall extended in either direction.
Abandoning his futile efforts to resist the door once the trio had followed Dounia inside, Tymythy made sure to take the rest of the rope inside with them, so he wouldn’t have to cut off a portion caught by the door, then joined Cairee and Zahra who were staring at the tiles in some puzzlement.
”I feel like those two should mean something to me, but I can’t place them,” he said, pointing at the left and center tile on the middle row . ”The one on the bottom left is Hlewmylani for ‘to take’, but without context I can’t say if it means take something against someone else’s will, or just pick up something. And the one next to it is Orcish for ‘to have or to possess weakness’,” he went on . ”Have you ideas about the others?”
Waiting for the ladies to voice his thoughts, he decided to keep moving, and walked to the area of the wall where Cairee had detected signs of magic, frowning at the stones first, then drawing a dagger to run its blade over the wall, gently, remembering Cairee speaking about illusions and knowing only one thing it might mean.
To Tymythy's dagger point the wall felt real in every way.
From her perch, Dounia calls down, "That fourth one means snake. Or maybe dragon? Damn!" she cursed as slipped a little, and the lock suddenly reset. "I can't do this one handed!"
Her thighs were already burning, and this lock was devilishly hard. Reaching down, Dounia grabbed the dangling rope and tried to feed the end up to her one handed. Once she had it, she looped it through the grate, pulling it down again. Soon she had a swing-like loop of rope she could sit on. "Tymythy! Can you hold this tight for me?"
Below her, the warrior grabbed the end of the rope and held it taught. Now Dounia could sit on the rope and just balance herself, instead of having to hold so tight.
"I was sure I'd picked this correctly...wait...ugh...it's resetting! I have to do this a few times in a row. Okay, take two...."
Zahra got her first glimpse of the recessed panel and once again marvelled at the degree of thought and consideration that went into these challenges.
The one tile that looked remotely familiar was the fourth tile that might be in the language of the desert people. But she couldn't make neither hide nor hair of what it meant.
She was just going to ask Dounia if she knew when it seemed like she read her mind and said it was snake...or dragon. "Dragon? That would be cool."
Now that she could actually see inside the recessed area, Zahra speaks familiar arcane words that open up her eyes to see the magical spectrum.
She then got down on her hands and knees and took a closer look at the tiles without touching them. She looked to see if they were raised and looked like buttons or if there was anything else noteworthy.
But where Dounia would have seen something important, Zahra only saw foreign words on stone.
"Tymythy! Can you hold this tight for me?"
”A moment,” Tymythy called back as he put away his knife and hurried back to the center of the room, noting how Dounia had managed to loop the rope to create a cradle for herself to sit in. ”Clever,” he said, approvingly, as he picked up the slack in the rope and coordinated with Dounia to get the tension just right, to bring her close enough to the lock she was working on.
”Whatever the illusion magic you sensed earlier, Cairee, it seems not to hide a doorway,” he said, relaying the little he had learned from his experiment. ”The wall appears whole. So, perhaps, the illusion will react to something we do here? Has anyone tried to push or move any of those tiles yet? If we can only make sense of three of the nine images, figuring out their message won’t be easy.” Still, there was at one tile that he still felt he should know something about… had he seen the glyph somewhere in passing?
Dounia fussed with the lock for nearly a minute as the group below searched the wall and the recessed panel. She felt like this attempt wasn't even getting close. At least her legs didn't burn anymore.
Cyra's voice came into her head with a memory of the first time she let Dounia pick a door during a job, 'Use all of your senses on the lock, listen to the tumblers, feel with those sensitive fingertips, smell the oil, taste the metal tang in the air ... iron? ... and sure, look, but don't rely on sight. And don't waste your brain thinking about time. Don't get rattled. Things take as long as they take.'
[dice=Linguistics, untrained]1d20 + 1
Now that she could actually see inside the recessed area, Zahra speaks familiar arcane words that open up her eyes to see the magical spectrum.
No magic radiated from the recessed area.
The tiles did look like buttons. There was a slot near the top of the recess. Four doors lay inside them. The words were engraved into the tiles and back-filled with enamel. It was fine workmanship.
"This corner tile is dwarven. It means 'of a time' or 'when.'"
She turned her attention to the others each in turn, trying to determine what language they were in or if she recognized any one word from her studies.
Holding the rope as he was, Tymythy was rooted to the spot for the moment, but as it happened, he stood right next to the mysterious tiles and while his hands were busy his mind was able to roam free, trying to recall what he might of the tiles whose writing he couldn’t understand.
”The first one from the top left,” he murmured, eyes half closed as if he believed it would help him see things veiled by his memories. ”I remember seeing scrawls like that on documents carried by Aerthane soldiers who fell to our raids. I never learned the language, but the script… yes, I would never forget it, the sign of our oppressors. Of the Eusabionan Empire. The one next to it… didn’t the gnome guests wear robes decorated with such script? Although I could be wrong on that one. the last of that line… Orcish script? No, not that. But similar. Goblin language perhaps?”
”The middle line. The first tile Dounia deciphered already. The second one… didn’t we see markings like those in the desert tomb, the resting place of the Valaduth lord who lent me his spear? And the third… I can’t read the language, but I recall seeing the words painted on Haytham’s wagon. Repeated in several languages. An invocation, to some god? "Bring your compassion, take my blessings". This part… I think it corresponds to what the leftmost tile on the bottom row reads, in my clan’s language. ‘To take’.”
”As for the last two… the middle bottom row I recalled already, the Orcish word for having or showing a weakness. But the last one? No idea about that one. But since I think the 6th and 7th tile mean the same thing... could the others' meanings also be linked in pairs?”
It might have been the most stressful part of the challenge so far. The lock was very hard, and picking it from a swing wasn't making it easier. The others were talking about the strange words and languages below, and Dounia desperately wanted to help. After all, she knew languages that the others might not. And with every little sound, she kept glancing to the gargoyles, waiting for them to start pouring water into the room.
Just breathe, dummy. Focus. It takes as long as it takes.
Dounia tried to calm her breathing and her racing heartbeat and focus on the lock. And tried not to think about water racing up on her, trapping them in its cold, dark depths, while she tried in vain to open the grate and get them out.
After half a minute, Dounia could hear it ...
click, cha-chunk
Another half minute ...
click, cha-chunk
It was getting easier. Eighteen heartbeats ...
click, cha-chunk ... ting
She was certain she had done it. Now to figure out how to open a grate she was hanging from that opened upward.
Cairee listened to Tymythy's musings as she studied the tiles. "This first one is definitely Sciolingua, the language of scientists and lawyers. It makes sense the Eusabionan solders you met would have papers written in this language. I agree that the second tile is gnomish and the third goblin, though I can't make out what they say. The 5th is Valatudh, and the 6th Uyar, or high elven."
Cairee pieced together the fragments of words they'd puzzled out in her mind, trying to connect them. Of a time, Snake, take my blessing. How were they connected? Where they part of a story or parable? Maybe if they could connect them to a certain myth or prayer, they could figure out the unknown words.
"YES!" Dounia cheered as the lock finally gave way to her skills. "Okay, this thing is unlocked, but not sure how to open it. Maybe if I can reach through here...nope...."
Overhearing the others working on the tiles, she added, "The one that says snake is in sahradhurone."
Zahra looked up at Dounia and smiled, "There was never any doubt about whether you could open it or not. Nice job!"
She then turned her attention back to the tiles. She had encountered so many different kinds of people in the bazaar. She had never thought that learning their languages would come in handy, not to mention that learning was hard. But she had always made time to listen to the many kinds of stories that they had about their lives, cultures, and traditions.
Zahra thought hard, which meant she thought really hard, about whether there was any story she had heard that was in common with each one of these races or cultures. Or whether she had heard any of the phrases that the others had deciphered in the stories she had been told.
"The slots and doors are curious. And the tiles look like buttons. Beautiful work, that's for sure. Maybe we have to either push them in the correct order or else push the correct one? Is there something we need from behind the doors? Or maybe this whole thing moves up to the grate if the proper sequence is pressed. One thing is certain, the masterminds built this challenge are way smarter than I am."
As soon as Tymythy said, 'bring your compassion, take my blessings", Zahra was mentally transported back to Zhayalahmar. "Tymythy reminded me of something. Back home there had been a short man who stood between the lesser bazaar and the inn district for visitors, whose sole purpose seemed to be to greet travellers. All day long, he could be heard saying, 'Welcome to my house. Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.' Most, regardless of where they were from, would smile at him or give a nod and then would relax a bit and willingly spend more at the bazaar or else take a room at one of the nearby inns." She chuckled, "They would definitely leave something of their happiness by spending coin."
"Not that that's what is important. It just seemed like most cultures and races recognized the greeting in some form which makes me think that most have some sort of variation of the greeting back home." She paused and frowned, "I'm not sure how that helps exactly but I thought I'd share what memory it triggered for me."
Again, in the arena ...
Premuroso called out anxiously to Yoy'ya but loud enough that it could have been to anyone near, "The view of The Blackbirds is gone ... why was it cut off!?"
Yoy'ya, "They did that yesterday to several of the groups. Whenever Hallwyn doesn't want to reveal too much of a challenge they cut out the image. They did it when things got too slow also, or when they wanted to focus on just a few contestants. I wonder if there is a group of disciples somewhere editing the feed."
Premuroso, "But it hasn't been slow. They're close to making a move!"
Yoy'ya, "I bet they don't want The Blackbirds to reveal an element of the code to the other teams. It's good for us. That desert girl has been blowing through the challenges. So far it's been flashy but if she avoids this one it could make the challenge look too easy." Yoy'ya had been staring at the lake but she snuck a glance at Prem, "Don't worry. She's been doing well since the sideways room. She'll be ok. That Dounia will probably get the gate open and they won't even have to complete the room."
Prem's ears turned from light grey to a little pink, "I don't know what you mean. I'm worried about all of them."
Yoy'ya's attention was back on the lake, "Mmmm ... now shhh, here comes another snippet of how The Twins are doing. This six hour lag is a killer."
Dounia stared at the grate, trying to figure out how to open it. The grate fit snugly into a metal frame which was set into the hole. There were hinges on one side, but even if she pulled the pin, she still couldn't lift it while hanging on it. She needed leverage.
Shimmying down the rope again, she asked, "Are there any pitons left in the climbing kit?" Grabbing one, she climbed up again, her palms starting to sting. It had been a while since she'd spent this much time on a rope. Getting soft, her sister's voice chided her.
It took some work to bang the piton into the ceiling while balancing on her rope swing, but she made it work. Finally, she fed the rope through the piton twice, making a narrow swing loop, and tied it off. Then she was able to disengage the hook and rope from the grate completely.
Dounia heaved on the grate, but it was too heavy. Descending yet again, she rubbed her hands on her thighs and said, "Tymythy, can you get the grate open? It's too heavy for me?"
She then took a look at the puzzle, which the others were still puzzling over.
"Let's wait and see if Tymythy can open the grate. Then we can start pushing buttons. This thing is probably worth points if we can solve it instead of just skipping it. And there might be a secret objective behind one of these doors."