Winning Vote: said:
[X] [Path:] Rune of Speed.
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"It's the riddle," Karstah says suddenly.
You glance her way, and see your heir look at the Rune with newfound understanding.
"Speed, Preservation, Might, Cleaving, Sanctuary, Vision, Light, Fire, Concealment, Spellbreaking, Warding, Courage and Stone," Karstah recites like a mantra, gaze going unfocused for a split second before her mind returns to the present, "The Runes that pointed to it being Karaz-Kazak-Rhun. And of the three presented, Speed is the first in the sequence."
Rubbing your beard in thought you mutter, "Fits with our theory. Hmmm…"
You look at Karstah one more time, see the conviction in her gaze and come to a decision.
"One lead's better than none. We follow my heir's intuition and see where it takes us," you announce to the others, earning several nods and grunts of confirmation.
Without any more fanfare your party takes the rightmost path, the sound of your combined footfalls echoing through the confines of the tunnel.
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You continue walking for another five minutes before the tunnel empties out into a large cavern.
Pillars lined the path, hewn out of the stone into perfect hexagonal columns that were two meters apart from each other. The pillars seemed to be endless, stretching out until they were but distant specks. You all fan out and begin scouring the room for clues or signs of
something, anything to prove you had not chosen incorrectly.
You come up to one of the pillars with a Rune of Light in hand and, after finding no visible markings, run your hand down its surface to see if the same trick earlier had been repeated here as well.
Much to your disappointment your hands feel nothing but smooth, well cut stone.
Before you can voice even a snort of distaste however, several shouts of surprise draw your attention to the center of the room where you see that Karstah has accidentally stepped onto a pressure plate, lighting up the ground beneath her feet.
"Kars-" you begin to say only to get cut off when your heir simply
pops out of existence.
No.
Not again.
Eyes widening in alarm, thoughts of the pillar leave your mind as you make a mad dash to the spot she was last in, Dreng coming from where he was standing as well.
"Where'd she go," the old warrior demands, eyes looking around the room methodically for some sign or trouble.
"I'm finding out," you snap, kneeling down to look at the stonework with both eyes.
Without Karstah's boot pressing down on it the panel has become flush with the floor once more, leaving no trace of its activation or the Dawi that had triggered it in the first place. Your Windsight eye is equally unhelpful, showing no unique concentration of magic from the pressure plate either
You were just about to press down the area she had just stepped in before your mind catches up with your body, and you slowly draw your hand back.
"A rod! Someone hand me a rod!" you order, eyes not leaving the space Karstah had occupied mere moments ago.
It takes only a moment but one of your Hearthwardens passes over a spare bolt that you cautiously use to push down onto the tile. You suck in a breath when you feel the stone give way and the plate depress, but nothing else happens.
"You better not die Karstah, or I'm coming down there to give you a proper haranguing," you grumble angrily.
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Karstah draws out her hammers instinctively and falls into a combat stance.
Everyone is gone.
She scans her surroundings, cursing herself for being so complacent even as she tries to get her bearings. It was Idiotic of her to think that there wouldn't be something to test her, but she pushes the reprimand off to the side. She could reflect
after she got back to the others.
To her eye this place was a perfect copy of the room she was in originally sans, of course, the sixty other Dawi that had come with her here.
She eyes the ground critically before putting her foot back down onto the spot she had lifted it from.
Much to her chagrin, no hidden tile depressed downwards and lights up.
Course that was too much to ask for, she grouses.
The sound of fracturing stone makes Karstah pause, listening further she feels a small pit form in her stomach even as she begins craning her neck to look at the now failing pillars flanking her.
Further cracking from ahead draws her eye towards the hairline fractures already forming at the base of the pair just ahead of her position.
"
Speed," she mutters with dawning comprehension.
Needing no further clarification Karstah begins running, the Runes on
Stonestrider rousing to life as she picks up her momentum.
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In the end you don't have to do anything.
One moment you are kneeling before over the plate, growing increasingly frustrated by your lack of progress and mounting worry then the entire cavern begins shaking hard enough that you think an Earthquake is taking place.
"Cover!" you roar, slamming
Zharrgal into the ground and forcing up thick pillars of rock to flow upwards and buttress themselves against the ceiling.
Around you the original pillars in the room crack and fall apart one after another in sequence, starting from the entrance you came from all the way to the end of the room. Despite all the of the commotion happening around you, you keep an eye on the plate were your eye Windsight eye reveals an absolute torrent of Ulgu spilling out of the stone before, just as suddenly as it began, the quake ends and Karstah returns to you all in another pop of displaced air.
You're about to ask her what happened, but stop yourself when you realize your heir's current appearance.
Bent over her knees, taking deep lungfuls of air like a drunkard having their favourite pint, her face grown ruddy red with exhaustion and a faint layer of stone dust coating her from head to toe.
Without a word you proffer her a drinking horn from your belt, though it takes Karstah several more moments of hard breathing before she takes it from you.
Neither you or Dreng say anything as she chugs down the drinking horn's content in a few impressively loud gulps, nor when the old guard passes her a second horn that she finishes just as quickly.
Eventually Karstah's thirst
is quenched however, and you think the reality of her situation fully sinks in.
"Thank the Ancestors," she whispers, "I'm back."
"What happened beardling," Dreng asks immediately.
"I was taken to a room that looked identical to this one. Before I could do anything more than blink, the pillars started to fail, one after another." she begins, absentmindedly handing Dreng and you your vessels back.
"Like these?" you mutter, gesturing with your chin to the broken piles of stone where the original set of pillars once stood, "Thought it was a damn quake with how hard things were shaking."
"Aye, aye like that. That was the trial I believe. Had to outrun the pillars." she explains, eyeing the rubble inscrutably. "By my guess I was running at full tilt for four hours. There'd have been no way I would have survived If I hadn't been wearing
Stonestrider."
That makes you raise your brows.
"It's only been ten minutes Karstah," you tell her.
She whips her head towards you, eyes wide and searching for some hint of deception.
"That- that makes no sense. I know how long I was running, and—what?" she finishes in a half astonished whisper, face falling somewhere between astounded and confused beyond measure.
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After Karstah's return you ordered the Hearth Guard to settle in and wait while you and your heir discussed what to do going forward.
"It seems Thungni is ensuring that whoever may yet take up Karaz-Kazak-Rhun is not only fit in mind, but in body," you conclude, looking at Karstah for any sign that she has overestimated her recovery.
"Safe to assume that the other chambers will have their own trials too then."
"I would have been more surprised if it was simply picking the right path. It's a sample of one, but I'll bet my favourite goat that every room we enter will have something similarly tied to the Rune it's associated with."
"Would they also single one of us out like what happened here?" Karstah wonders.
"I'm more concerned about what will happen if one of us
fails a trial." you murmur, eyeing the pillars.
"Thungni would not create a lethal test would he?"
Your eyes move to look at the pillars once more. Had one fallen on Karstah in just the right way or had she slowed down just for a moment you—
"—There's a world of difference between a test being lethal and a test actually going through with it Karstah," you lecture with a hard stare, "It would be dangerous to assume that we'd simply be plucked away to safety at the last moment. Treat everything here as if it was life or death."
"I understand," she acquiesces.
You hold back a sigh.
"Are you ready to move?"
"Yes Master," she confirms.
"Right then, the next Rune in the sequence should be Preservation, but that doesn't exactly narrow down what to expect. I can't say for sure if it'll single one of us out again either, but regardless, you won't be taking that trial. Is that understood?"
Karstah begins to say something, but the look on your face has her stop and nod.
"Good. Alright you lot, up and at them. We march!"
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You were open to seeing many different things after leaving that room. The most likely outcome in your mind was that the tunnel would branch out like it did earlier, with several paths each marked with their own unique Rune of which the Rune of Preservation would be one among them. Repeat thirteen times until you had run through every one of the Runes Karstah listed in the order she found them in. There was the strong chance that Thungni would of course throw a wrench into things in one way or another. Things like using more obtuse depictions of the Runes, trials within trials, even using variants of the same Rune as a way of testing your knowledge of history by selecting the first discovered variant among them.
Not this.
When the path opens up, you do not see another branch in the road, instead you come upon a massive cavern, wherein three Stone statues wait at the center. The entire room is bereft of light save for your Runes of light and a single shaft of light that shines down onto the statues themselves. As you get closer you can begin making out the finer details that differentiate the three from each other.
The first statue is that of a woman in a dress with an apron tied around her front, the patterning is modest but well made. Her hair is bound in a single braid that reaches to her waist. And a youthful face stares lovingly down at the swell of her stomach. She braces a pot in the crook of one arm, while the other holds a fire poker.
The next statue is of an elder, dressed in the richly decorated and incredibly well made clothes. His fingers all bear rings and a Gromril necklace dangles from his neck, while his beard loops around his belt twice over. His face is contemplative, and in one hand he carries a bundle of scrolls and books, while the other holds a staff.
The last statue is of a Fullbeard dressed for war. His armour bears the signs of battle; the chainmail scuffed, the helmet dented and one of its horns snapped off. His features are tired but resolute, his beard showing signs of only the most basic care. One hand rests on the handle of a hammer hanging from his belt, a dented and damaged shield in the other.
A closer inspection shows you that all of the statues stand on a special pattern in the floor, an entwined bit of knotwork that continues deeper into the cavern.
A pedestal with a protrusion stands beside each statue, while the same message has been carved into the base each one stands on.
What perseveres?
You move aside and let the rest of the group examine the statues for themselves.
"Clear enough we need to do something with those pedestals, but let's try and see what's going on before we make a decision. No one touches anything, don't want to deal with another one of you disappearing into thin air!"
With a final glance at Karstah, you raise the light in your hand higher and point it towards the opposite end of the cavern, looking at where the pattern in the floor leads to. Only to see them end unceremoniously in the far side of the room.
Now this is a beard scratcher.
"Reckon we press one and see?" one Hearthwarden hedges.
"If you want to risk meeting your Ancestors early, be my guest Thring." Another answers.
"Quiet you two," Ylva barks out, "Less chatting and more looking!"
You let your retainers bickering fade into the background as you walk alongside the pattern to its end point. Kneeling down, you use the crossbow bolt from earlier to do a few experimental passes over the floor to see if there was some hidden mechanism you were failing to notice. It takes a bit of finagling but your efforts are rewarded when the bolt slides into a small gap between two stones, you follow the divot with the bolt to trace out the shape of a suspiciously large rectangle.
Turning to face your heir who has been content to follow your earlier order and observe quietly, you motion for her to step back and off to the side. After all of you are clear of the immediate area, you compel Mhorni to stand where you found the plate, watching with bated breath as the stone sinks with the additional weight atop it.
For a moment nothing happens.
And then there is
heat.
Faster than you can react to, seven glowing circles appear along the wall for a brief moment before jets of pseudo fire and ore-melting heat strike the spot Mhorni stood on. Instinctively you order the others to move back, feeling the heat radiating off of the concentrated stream and knowing that if someone got too close their hair was liable to literally combust. Your eyes go wide as you witness Mhorni's physical form literally melt faster than it can pull more stone to rebuild itself with. A growing whine from
Barak Azamar makes you look away to see the Runes on your armour actually
flicker and the lines of power that illuminate the Dragon skin undersuit dim before the beams of destruction cease firing, somehow leaving a perfectly pristine floor behind while Mhorni has been reduced to a barely mobile puddle of molten rock
Dimly, you point your light towards the spot where the energy had come from, illuminating a mural of seven snarling Wyrms, their mouths open and ready to spew their flame once more, across the wall.
"Well," Karstah mutters dumbly, "I suppose that's what's whatever is being persevered against."
Dreng grunts.
[ ] [
Statue:] Mother
[ ] [
Statue:] Elder
[ ] [
Statue:] Warrior
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There will be a two-hour long moratorium for discussion.
AN: Hope you like enjoy, and don't forget to C&C. :^)
