Phantoms of Light
Eleventh Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
What does every king wish for that is the ruin of warriors? you ask yourself. No single weapon could encompass the whole of that. Then it comes to you: "
Time... I've certainly wished for more hours in a day more times than I can count," you say aloud.
"How do you represent time, though?" Lya asks. "I doubt the magics of this place would be overly impressed with a Myrish clock," she adds with a smile. "Perhaps a spell..."
"Or better yet an enchantment, one that belonged in this place," you finish. With a thought you allow the Blackened Rod which Valaena and her companions had found months ago to fall from the golden folds of the Serpent's Sin cloak and into your hand. As you raise the instrument to see if the runes upon it in any way match the ones upon the hand, Ser Richard interjects.
"Might be worth checking to see what the future holds before we place anything we might have trouble taking back in there," the knight points out, earning an approving hiss from Vrath.
So Vee sets cross-legged upon the stone, surrounded by dark smoke that shifts with every moment in look, in taste, even in texture. Yet when she rises to her feet it is with only an annoyed shake of her head. "It said nothing'll happen, good or bad. I don't trust it, this ain't the sort of place where
nothing happens."
"Let me try, then." Dany matches your friend's posture, and from dreams she spins the same spell, bones rattling upon worn stone: "Weal and Woe," she proclaims. "That sounds more like our luck, too much rather than too little done. Should we do it?"
"We must be at least somewhat on the right track given the result, which would leave us with finding another manner to represent time, if the wards are even designed to detect such a thing," Malarys muses. "I might perhaps argue more strongly for caution if this place were not overrun with the the black ichor and perhaps other parasitic life like it. Under the circumstances best to count the wine cup half full..."
"And drink up already," you finish, affixing the rod within the palm of polished malachite.
At first nothing seems to happen, then a warped tone rings through the hall, accompanied by what might be words, though too degraded to make any sense of. From the way your guide jumps though you know he too had understood their nature if not their precise meaning: the hissing tongue of Serpents spoken in days of yore. At once you cast upon a spell for the knowing of all tongues, not wishing to miss a single moment
Six serpentstone 'eyes' open in the foreheads of the ancient statues, light and sound together flowing from them like water dripping from some distant reservoir. Alas even these arcane devices have been worn by the hand of time, images flicker, sounds cut out into indistinct hissing, but every moment is still more precious than diamonds. You count four figures, more frantic in their motions than you have ever seen in those of the Serpent's blood.
"...the Great Net has failed, we should begin preparations to safeguard the remaining viable eggs on the journey south." The speaker is a golden-scaled mage, his form halfway between ordinary serpentfolk and a naga.
"Savages... beasts... dirt... of us," a second figure, one of which you can see little more than the flaring crimson hood as the figment wavers like a reflection seen in swift flowing water.
"...still time."
"More time than... to calibrate. Pride has broken..." This time it is nothing more than a voice imposed upon a flicker of black hanging in midair, though if one can assign such a word to a wavering echo of a serpentfolk's sibilant voice, it sounds old, old and wary. The ancient device surges into a moment of clarity with his next words:
"The Children of the Spider patrol Crescent Pass, they need less power than us to be active." You catch but a glimpse of a black-scale, almost akin to Vrath, though wider of shoulder than the assassin and a good half-a-foot taller. Though many of his scales had chipped off and one eye had turned milky-white, you recognize at once that this had been a great warrior in life.
"Prioritize," the last of that ancient council speaks with dreadful finality even through the dying gasps of the device. He appears the most like the sun-walker serpentfolk you are familiar with, though the long flowing amethyst robes are not something you would associate with them.
"Destroy... might live... the Net... mind and purpose."
With that the device sputters out like a dying candle, the 'eyes' go dark, and the hand thankfully unclenches, allowing you to reclaim the rod.
What do you do next?
[] Return to the Deep for a few days and try to pry more information from the light projectors
[] Try to find the graves of some of those you have seen within the necropolis, the bones might help fill in the gaps in the tale
-[] Write in which
[] Continue on your exploration as planned
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: You can of course combine the options above, like sending Lya to do the research while the rest of you continue here. Also congratulations on figuring out the riddle, guys.
