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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jon Potter" data-source="post: 429816" data-attributes="member: 2323">[PLAIN][Realms #194] Trapped Between a Door and a Cold Place[/PLAIN]"The hidden doorway seems the most appropriate path for us to follow," Ledare told the others. "Are we in agreement?""I wonder if it would be worth while to sneak down invisibly and scout things out?" Finian hypothesized, unconsciously spinning the Ring of Invisibility around and around on his finger.Kirnoth peered down into the darkness below and shrugged. "It's pretty dark down there," he said, turning back to the Archer. "You'll need a light source. And with a light source, being invisible's not much help.""And you'll need to be wary of any more silly traps that would alert others to our presence," Ledare reminded and Ruze chuckled."Wouldn't want you running off again like a little girl," he smirked and the Janissary glowered at him."You rallied your courage and helped us in the end," Ledare said to Finian before turning her eyes back to the Battleguard and allowing a disapproving tone to creep into her voice. "Think no more of it.""I appreciate your tolerance," Finian said, a trifle shame-faced."As long as you are well, it doesn't matter," she consoled him. "I have not forgotten my own loss of control when we confronted the ghost at The Five Elements Inn. It can happen to anyone. If Ruze had been there with us, he might have known that."The Battleguard looked a little uncomfortable and he squirmed a bit under Ledare's scrutiny. "Sorry," he muttered. "Just trying to lighten the mood a bit, kitten. I didn't mean anything by it.""Let us press onward," Draelond suggested. "The longer we delay the longer our enemies have to prepare.""He's right," Finian admitted and drew the longsword that had been given him by the king. It flooded the area at once with pale, blue-white radiance. "I would not be surprised if more booby traps are set either, but this should provide sufficient light to search by." He marched over to the doorway and held the sword out into the stairwell. The blade filled the claustrophobic passage with light as far ahead as the bend where the stairs coiled out of sight 25 feet down. "I'll go ahead, checking for traps as I go," Finian told the group. "You all stay behind until I reach the bend then come that far and I'll continue on. We'll go like that until we reach the bottom or a door or something.""Sounds good," Ledare nodded."Let us remain on our guard and assume those within know we're coming," Kirnoth told the others."Keep that poem in your mind, Kirnoth, and be on the watch for anything it might reference," Ledare added. "We should all do the same, but you seem to have it committed to memory the best.""Don't worry, Ledare," the mage explained with a serious nod of his head. "I will be on the lookout for anything magical, hidden or that looks like a piece of the poem.""Wish me luck," Finian said and started his examination of the stairwell by the light of his enchanted blade.He'd almost made it to the bend - about 20 feet down - when he suddenly stopped.The stair that he had just begun to put his weight on wasn't a stair at all. It was a trigger for some kind of trap and it gave just enough when he started to step down that he was able to detect it before he set it off. He eased his foot off and began to examine the surrounding area for some indication of what the trap did. In the ceiling above he saw a narrow slit, and a blade glittered eagerly in the dark fissure. It was clearly some sort of scything blade trap.Finian licked his lips nervously before turning to the others clustered at the top of the stairs and gesturing for them to wait. Then he pulled out the thieves tool kit that Abernathy had located for him and went to work disarming the trap. After what seemed like an hour - but was actually less than a minute - he heard a satisfying click from inside the triggering mechanism. He leaned back and let out a sigh of relief before slipping the tools back into their kit and the kit back into his belt pouch. He gestured then for the others to join him, pointed out the false stair and whispered, "I think I've disarmed it, but you should probably avoid stepping on it anyway.""Better safe than sorry," Draelond whispered back and the Archer nodded."You all wait here and I'll move on," he told them and he did.After another 20 feet, he encountered another trap. This one gave no warning, except for an ever-so-faint hissing sound and instant before a five-foot area on either side of Archer was flooded with magical cold. Luckily, Finian's reflexes - which had improved somewhat since the damage that the viperwolf venom had done to them - saved him. As soon as he heard the hiss, he lept forward, landing six steps down and well outside of the icy blue curtain of elemental cold.He stared up at his Companions through the scintillating blast and then glanced down. About 20 feet below, he could see a small landing with a set of double doors at the bottom of the staircase. A sickly green light could be seen pulsing through the thin gaps between and under the two doors.The narrow staircase was growing cold and Finian could see his breath in the air. A thin layer of ice had begun to form on the stairs and wall and the Archer had begun to wonder how he would get back to his Companions when the curtain of cold dropped."It's a magical trap," Finian hissed up at them. "I don't know if I can disable it.""Can you do anything, Kirnoth?" Ledare asked and the mage shrugged."Maybe," he said and began casting Detect Magic. As he completed the spell, the others saw his eyes take on the opalescent silver quality that they always did when the mage was looking for magical dweomers. Kirnoth saw his companions glowing dimly, the stair halfway between them and Finian glimmered in the dark and something dimly radiating from below and behind the Archer. As Kirnoth concentrated, the auras became clearer: Finian's sword and the Ring of Invisibility glowed so brightly that he had to blink. He concentrated on the stair that radiated both Divination and Evocation magic and after a few more moments of concentrated effort, he determined that there was a small magical rune or glyph inscribed on the stair. "But there's no way for you to get to it without triggering the trap," Kirnoth told Finian. "And even then, I'm not sure what you could do to it; it's carved into the stone.""Can we not just avoid that stair, like we did above?" Draelond asked and the elf shook his head."The magical cold is keyed to some sort of Divination magic," the elf explained. "I don't think that touching the stair triggers it so much as passing within its radius does. Even if my magic were at full strength, it is beyond my ability to dispel.""Mine too," Ruze said before everyone even had a chance to look at him."So either I deliberately trigger it by trying to disable it, get caught by the spell, and *maybe* succeed in disabling it," Finian summed up. "Or you each try jumping through and *maybe* avoid it like I did.""Oh, and I should mention that there's something else down below you that's radiating magic as well," Kirnoth added. "It's out of my line of sight, so I can't tell anything more about it. But it's definitely there."Finian glanced back down at the double doors. "Yeah," he muttered. "I think I see it too."</blockquote>

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