[Nexus] Outside XXXII

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

"I'll do it." Nadia says without hesitation. Irena didn't even want to do this, and besides, it's not like Nadia is scared of climbing down some well. "I'll tie the vine around my waste, and we can attach it to something on this end."

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The witch seem to hesitate at Nadia's eagerness. "I dunno, maybe I should do it instead, it could be dangerous after all. I mean, I could shadow jump up here if something goes wrong, you can't." Of course, considering the baby is said to be at the bottom of the well, they might need to swim a bit or somehow remove the water down there.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

"Yeah, but if I need to I can just bend the water and use it to cushion my fall." Nadia puts a hand on Irena's arm and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "I'll be fine."

And maybe part of her doesn't want Irena to be the one to do the dangerous thing, but she won't tell her that for obvious reasons.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

Irena sigh, "Alright, but be careful." She says, while squeezing Nadia's hand back, looking at her with concern.

"I'll tie the vine down to the stump of the bolts, it should do." The witch states before doing just that. She also hand Nadia her flashlight once she's done. "Just scream if something happens and I'll drag you up."

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia sets about trying the vine around her waste. It's a nice, strong knot too. She stands on the edge. "Okay, wish me luck." And then she begins the long climb down.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

"Good luck." Is the last thing Nadia hear Irena says before she starts to lower herself down into the well. The further down she goes, the damper and slippery the walls become.

Slowly but surely she makes her way down until she finally is just above the water level. If she looks up she can barely see the opening of the well anymore.
She can't see anything through the black water down here though, even if she aims the flashlight right at it she can't see what's down there.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia tries to see through it for a minute before giving up. Okay, new plan. The water isn't too deep. so she carefully lowers herself into it. Once she's done that, Nadia takes a big breath and dives under. She uses her power to propell herself downward quickly, and soon enough she's feeling around the bottom of the well.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The water feels cold to touch but as this well is already rather cool, the submergence isn't likely to shock her that much at this point. Diving down she can first well the walls of the well but then she can feel something at the bottom, it feels like wood and there are also something tied around it. Ropes presumably.

[Devixer]

Wizard's Tower

There's several shelves and a display cabinet. A quick search of the shelves shows books on illusion, magical artifice, enchantment, hypnotism, necromancy, and a rather mysterious-seeming tome without title or author; it's bound in leather taken from the hide of an elf, and its cover is adorned with a skull tattoo. There's no books on how to come back from death, though several shelves have gaps suggesting a book has been removed from it.

The display cabinet has a collection of magical trinkets.

Cass grumbles. No obvious ways to know what this stupid thing was that kept those monkeys alive. She looks at the mysterious tome with her magic-sight, hoping there's no obvious kinds of traps.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia tries to get a grip around whatever it is and pull it up to the surface. She's running out of air here, and is going to try and do so as quickly as possible. She'll go up for a breath if she needs to, though.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia manages to lift something she can feel be shaped like a small coffin, but as she attempts to lift it out of the water something seems to be tying it down. She won't be able to get it up like this.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia swims back to the surface and gasps for air. Dammit. "Irena?" She calls. "I found it, but there's rope trying it down. I need something to cut it."

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

Thankfully sound carry quite the distance down here so she can soon hear the witch reply. "A knife? Alright, just one moment. Just watch out so I don't hit you by mistake." She shouts back. "Okay, dropping it now!" She exclaims before Nadia can hear a dagger falling down from above.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Wait what? Nadia presses herself against the well wall and lets the knife plunge into the water. Okay, the lampades will first dive under to find the knife. Then she comes up for air before going down again. She'll try to cut the rope holding the coffin down, and then lift it to the surface.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The coffin is actually tied to three large rocks which been used to lower it to the bottom. The ropes however have grown quite weak due to their long exposure to the water so they are actually easily cut through, eventually allowing Nadia to lift the coffin from it's watery prison.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

If it weren't for Nadia's water bending, this task would have been a lot more difficult, but as it is she manages to get it to the surface in one go. But now that she's above water, she can't move it so easily. ""Irena, I got it. Pull me up." There's no way she's climbing, so hopefully Irena is up to the task.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The coffin is actually rather heavy even without the stones pulling it down so Nadia have to hold on to it with her both arms as she can feel Irena slowly dragging her and it up the well.

It's hard work but eventually Nadia sees the edge coming closer as she finally is pulled up to the edge of the well, Irena looking rather exhausted at this point. Still she offers her hand to help Nadia out of the well though.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia is looking rather tired when she's dragged out as well. Climbing down and all that swimming was tiring enough. Holding onto the coffin on the way up was just exhausting.

So when she is on solid ground again, she just lets the coffin lie where it is and lies on the ground. After taking some time to recover, she sits up. "We did it." She looks at Irena to be sure she's doing alright.

[Chaotic Bob]

[A Wheat Field]

Zee nods in response to that question. "The spell is still active. Ibby's probably hoping that Twilight can be brought back to the library so the rest of the taint can be scoured from her. Though the more the taint integrates with her the more likely it is that removing it may cause... unwanted harm."

And now?

Now it is time for a very VERY eloquent reply from Zee. "...another Magic...?"

Nope.

No idea what Luna is talking about. The Elements of Harmony didn't exist when K'rax had visited that horse-infested world.

Zee wrinkles her nose. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

Luna fixes a long stare on Zee, at this point, considering immediate options.
She obviously couldn't sit in this field forever, trying to distract this...whatever it was. Inaction is another means of treading the road to failure, just as surely as brash action.

"There is a very particular magic, that has proven to be of use at the direst of moments. Specifically aligned individuals are necessary for its casting.
One of them needs replacing."
Informative enough for her purposes, but vague enough to be kept from manipulation in the wrong hands.

Perhaps callous to speak of Twilight so simply, too...but this is important.

[Rebonack]

[A Wheat Field]

Well.

That's a cagy answer.

"I see. I hope you find a solution quickly then. Because time is just as quickly running out."

And then there's no more Zee.

No flash. No fancy light show. Not even a poof of smoke.

Just a patch of flattened out grass betrays the fact that she was ever even there to begin with.

[Chaotic Bob]

[A Field of Wheat]

Cagey answer...perhaps.
Luna is good with such things, perhaps a little too intentionally.
It backfires in her face almost as often as it works out.

The princess frowns a little as Zee vanished, both pleased and faintly concerned.
Where was that creature going? What of her children?

...that Ibby child. She needs to find him.


She takes to the air and flies.

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The witch looks alright, even if she is sitting leaning against the wall at the moment. "Damn girl, you need to drop some kilo." She says between labored breaths. "My arms feel like they been stretched a meter by now. That was not fun."

The coffin Nadia can now see is made of dark wood and inscribed with faintly glowing red runes, covering each centimeter of it's surface. It's been nailed shut completely.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia laughs. "It's all this muscle." She flexes her arms, demonstrating her muscles rather nicely. Her mirth quickly disappears when she looks at the coffin.

"Geeze..." Nadia doesn't know what to make of that. Why would they do that? Why would they need to do that. "You don't think we need to... open it, do you?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

It's not until now Irena focuses her attention on the baby coffin and look at it in shock. "I'm not opening it, that's for sure." She says while slowly standing up, backing away from the little casket. "If they spend so many runes on sealing it, I don't think we should undo it. They probably had a good reason to." Though Nadia might recall that Adriane wanted to hold her baby in her arms, something she never got to do in life. She might be able to figure out what that means.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

Nadia stands as well. "She said she wanted to hold it... him in her arms. What do you think that means?" A couple ideas come to her, none of them pleasant. "You think we need to bury him with her?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The witch makes a face, disgusted by that idea. "I guess. But I don't think it's worth opening that thing. Maybe there are other clues around or something."

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

"I don't know, maybe." Nadia's eyes don't leave the coffin. "I guess we could. Maybe someone else wrote something down about why they sealed it. I have a feeling that if we want to know what Adriane knew, we're going to have to open it."

[Shadowcaller]

[Ancient Temple]

The witch sigh, "I think so too. But maybe it's better to just buy a new promise ring? We don't need the rings back that badly do we?" Though then they might fail their quest. Or they could just wait for Niccaru to come to them, that might work.

[Gullara]

[Ancient Temple]

"I need to know." Nadia says. It goes beyond the rings now. She needs to know what happened, and why.

[Reinholdt]

Spoiler

Show

{Feed the Refugees}

((Looks good. ))

While Vincent is serving the first two bowls of soup, Caroline runs back and begins mixing the second serving.

She decides to stick with simple, for now.

She mixes the Beef with Onions and Potatoes, this time. Adding 1 Salt.

Spoiler

Show

{table=Head]Time|Event
:05|Caroline makes Beef Stew
:25|Caroline carries the kettle to the Refugee Village
:30|Caroline runs back and makes Beef Stew
:40|Vincent serves two servings
:50|Caroline delivers the second kettle
:55|Vincent serves two more servings, and finds the second kettle already delivered.
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|
[/table]

{Feed the Refugees}

Since he teleports back Vincent sets up a strategy in which he'll feed the first and the last and then the second and then second to last and so on and so forth until he's fully finished in the middle. This way all his timing is consistent and roughly the same each go through.

Aside from some early spilling and one particularly bad botch where he was carrying three servings and choose his head and spilled soup all over the refugee, things go pretty smoothly. All in all, each trip takes an average of 15 seconds, making an average of 30 seconds per kettle as he always grabs servings in such a way to make it two trips per kettle (unless Caroline drops a lot and there are only three servings in one of the kettles. Then Vincent only makes takes all of the servings in a single trip). He loses roughly 20-30 seconds from inefficiencies and mistakes that were mentioned above.