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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnifex" data-source="post: 1365819" data-attributes="member: 227">Known interlopers within the tower and some of the defenses were active, and yet the sages still insisted on continuing their progress. Cazamir blew an exasperated breath as he waited for the group to decide upon a course of action. They were faced with locked doors and a choice of paths, yet some of the sages were preoccupied with some bizarre floating skull like one would find inside a charlatan’s tent. Cazamir narrowed his eyes at Sebastion, trying to determine if he liked him or not. He possessed at least rudimentary knowledge, shown by his comments about towers and staircases. Cazamir had bristled when the man ordered him as he had his own group. He could appreciate decisive action, but Sebastion was not paying his coin, and if he blundered his charges into a large trap… Cazamir would not let it happen that way. Yet again, silence and patience would have to serve him for now. He relaxed, letting himself adopt a more casual posture. Years ago, he could not have done this; he would have been at the forefront, leading down a path and damn the consequences. He supposed this way was better. For now.* * *Wyshira almost jumped at the opportunity to ask the mimir her question. "We would have to choose a door anyway, so why not choose one and ask if it is a good choice? Your suggestion, Ebri, is a good place to start." Sebastian's observation about 'designing for defense' and keeping the enemy turning to its right (into their own swordarms??) meant little to her. "Mimir, if we choose the door that is directly opposite the stairs, will the way lead us to the..." she glanced at Johanne for help here, "the top of Primary Spire?"* * *It was quite a scene, the whole lot of them standing about an ancient iron landing, scratching heads and making choices which way to go. Passively, Kale stood with a good view, admiring Anas'turi's short work at the ancient lock, while he fingered the stubble on his chin and wondered how to send power to the lift. With everyone concentrating on getting in, why not have a mind for getting out again? he thought just as Ebri spoke. Suppressing a cringe, he had forgotten how bitter he'd grown toward the woman. As she produced the mimir, he wondered just what it was about her. "By all means, by all means," she said, and it seems that anything she spoke was another reason not to trust her. Grimmacing slightly, he had no idea what to do with her. Could he send her off without upsetting the others? And of course, how would she take it- the deadly monk warrior of... Immar? She may be handy with her... hands, but deceit was her prime weapon of choice. To what ends? To what ends? Just another complication he didn't want or need. Jarvis had no trail on their quarry, Melisande had no hint of magic... it was a shell game, and standing before the three doors, they could do no worse than guess, save stand around for too long talking. Carefully, he watched the sages' reactions to the floating mimir: a road-dusted mercenary in an ancient shadow-tower watching a field trip of sages examine a curious creepy relic. And things hadn't even gotten interesting yet. Having finished his assessment of the situation, for all the attention it seemed to have garnered, Sebastion turned back to see the mystics and magicians eying the Mimir almost hungrily. "I don't know," he muttered, quietly, to Kale. "I wonder if they'd listen more to my advice if I had glow-in-the-dark eyes and floated?" Kale grinned wryly at Sebastion's comment. The platoon-size group stood in indecision and consulted the silvery head. Brow furrowed in realization, Kale considered that consensus rule might not be the best approach for storming a tower. "We could ask the mimir how to get moving when time is of the essence," he replied to Sebastion as he walked to where Anas'turi sat patiently. Her work was smooth and effiecient. As he surveyed the work, a thought had ocurred to him, too late. Turning to peer over his shoulder, he found Jarvis standing over to the side, eyes on guard for gods-knew-what surprises the tower might have in store for them. "Any chance of a sign?" he asked curiously, knowing it was a lot to ask, if a scout could find track or sign on metal deck. Yet any oil, any handprint, any passing at all could reveal itself in the tomb-like place. Of course, we could always guess...* * *"Mimir, if we choose the door that is directly opposite the stairs, will the way lead us to the...the top of Primary Spire?" The mimir paused for a moment, eyes flaring with energy. "Weal." "Well, I guess that means we can get to it through there then," Johanne said, eyes still focused on the floating skull-construct. "Shall I?" Ansas'Turi asked, gesturing to the door in question with a tool."Right," Kale drew his blade and directed his glowing light toward the lock works. Taking a knee next to Anas'turi, he offered her a nod to proceed while holding the light steady. It didn't take long. Kale wondered if the land across the sea could keep any secrets at all. They probably have better locks...* * *Why everyone was waiting for the creepy skull-like thing to finish talking to them, Meg would never know. All she wanted was to simply continue on throughout the tower and find the gnoll that she was looking for. It, however, did not look like it was going to be that easy. Had she not been so unwilling to touch the metal doors herself, the young druidess would have simply continued on, unwilling to wait for the rest of the group. They seemed so indecisive and lacking in strong leadership. It was all a waiting and guessing game. Sometimes, there needed to be a loud voice to quell the hushed mumbles of the masses. Gathering her satchel once more, Meg'anna took to the rear, not wanting to be the first through the metal mouth portal. * * *Ansas'Turi Set straight to work at Kale's direction, reaching into the guts of the doors mechanisms. A few moments later, she yanked her hand back out again, clutching a handful of broken cogs and gears. Standing quickly, the Ironjack grabbed the crank on the door and pulled down, swinging it open with a creak to reveal the gloomy room beyond. Past the door, the passageway quickly opened up into a wide chamber. Roughly circular, from what Kale could see with the magical light shed before him, more doors were spaced around, but they were not the primary features of the large room. It appeared that it had been used far more recently than the areas they had already moved through, though relatively still left untouched for qutie a while, for this seemed to have once been a laboratory of some sort. Scattered tables and benches were heaped with oddities, from strange pieces of machinery to piles of chemical compounds and unusual components. Snaking around the floor and from the iron rafters up in the ceiling, ironshod pipes wove around some of the larger steel structures arrayed around. A space had been cleared in the centre of the room, appearing at a glance to be some sort of runic array, but in the very centre of that a large pile of crystal chunks and shards were piled up, as if someone had taken a single crystal of massive size and smashed it to pieces. A low hum pervaded the chamber, and a few glimmering wychlights could be made out on some of the objects around the chamber. The crystal pile sparkled in the faint light. Over the other side of the chamber, another spiral staircase broke up from the floor, breaching the ceiling of the chamber. Where does the mimir get its answers? Wyshira wondered. She understood that arcane magic could mimic divine magic sometimes, drawing on another form of power, but delivering the same results. But in the case of an augury, it wasn't power that the spellcaster required from her deity. It was knowledge and the divine ability to see into the future and interpret events. The one and only time that Wyshira had performed an augury, she had felt a connection to Ishrak unlike any she had known before. It was distant, and the voice that spoke the one-word answer in her mind was cold and impersonal, but it was Ishrak's voice, she knew. She had contacted the Lady of Storms directly, not just drawn on a reserve of power. So what god or goddess had the mimir just contacted? While Wyshira pondered this, Ansas'Turi got the door open. Wyshira filed along with the others into the dim, circular chamber. The room reminded Wyshira of Lord Ecurius' laboratory where she had helped Burl with his healing salves. She had little interest in any of the items on the tables; and while she was curious about the crystal shards in the center of the room, she was wary of stepping into the circle of runes. She looked around for any hidden threat in the room, and then followed the leaders to the spiralling staircase. Leading the bulk of the group, not far from the heels of Kale and Jarvis, Sebastion drew up short as they did not far into the passage and stared at the arcana arrayed before them. The low, irritable hum reminded him of insects, but the threat here was more palpable - something had the power to crack the crystal in the centre of the room, whether by force or magic mattered little to him. "I don't like it..." he muttered to them, "but I don't think we'll be able to convince them to try another path - not after the Talking Head gave them their answer... You think it's safe, or should we get one of the wizards up here to take a look?" "Ooh, now this is interesting!" Mel exclaimed, shouldering past the scouts into the old, broken-down lab and immediately beginning to rummage around the tables, sniffing old alembics and peering into pestles. "I wonder what that was for," she exclaimed when she noticed the pile of crystal shards. "A crystal that size could focus quite a lot of energy!" Excitedly, she approached the circle of arcane writing to look at one of the shards.Kale's jaw dropped as he watched her piruette through the lab to the thrumming tune of mysterious energies.* * *The first clue that something was awry was the change in the lighting as Melisande approached the centre of the room. The humming noise of the arcane machinery increased for a moment, and then there was a hiss as a series of gas lamps lit up around the work area, apparently triggered into life merely by her movement. At this point the sages began to push forwards past Sebastion, some motivated by wanting to get a better look at the contents of the laboratory and the pile of crystal, and others steeping more cautiously, scrutinising the area for whatever had lit the lamps, if it was some automated detector or something else.Jarvis too seemed intrigued by the mass of mineral glittering in the gaslight, though he remained well-back for a few moments, hands at his sides; then seemingly remembering that his employers might need his protection, he started forwards. Ansas'Turi watched the gas lamps suspiciously from by the entrance. Kale was now moving rapidly though with an eye for danger across the room; Melisande looked over the laboratory contents through eyes that picked out streams of arcane energy glittering like crystals, the actual pile of crystal in front of her seemingly laced with latent magic still. Johanne had pushed past the people at the doorway now, throwing his gaze left and right over the chamber with a stern visage; though he seemde fascinated like his fellows over its contents, he seemed disapproving of their speed to investigate it. Looking further into the chamber, where only Kale and Melisande had reached, his face rippled with shock, his own vision augmented like Melisande's. "Watch out, Kale," he shouted over, "Magic in the chamber is shifting, something is..." With a wrench of movement and a cascading noise of tiny pieces of crystal tinkling to the floor, the pile of mineral shifted. "...starting..." he finished weakly. Only a few feet away from Melisande, the Crystal Eye surged upwards.Next Time: People get set on fire. Can you guess who? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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