Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (89)

    Ashu, Miyara, and I are in the library, waiting for the others to come in.  Two by two everyone climbs up the rope ladder and through the trapdoor into the room.
    Hosei and Baraku are both too shocked to look at the heads.  Hosei concentrates on something else entirely, and announces that there is a magical being 10-15 yards from us towards the cliff face.  It is not moving.
    Miyara walks up to the index and says, "Crystals of Power", in the barbarian tongue.  She is directed to rack 6, head 5.
    Miyara walks up to the head and asks how to destroy it.  It looks at her but says nothing.  She is more specific, "How do you destroy the crystal of power?"
    -- they cannot be destroyed.
    She asks how to dispose of it, and it says nothing.  She asks how to remove the crystals of power from this world, and it says, "Return it to the void."
    She asks how to reach the void, and it does not answer.  She goes back to the index.  The index says to be more specific.
    She asks how to travel to the void.  Rack one, head two.
    She asks this one how to reach the void and return to this world.
    -- find or open a portal to the void.  I do not know if it is possible to return from the void.  I know of no living being who has returned from the void.
.   She asks how to get past the guardian of the void.  The head stares.  She goes back to the index and asks that.  The index says this library has no information on such a thing, O Great Master.
    So she returns to Mr. Void Head, and asks how a group of people could fly to the portal in the sky.
    -- it depends on how the people are flying.
    -- what is the best way?
    -- the one that works.
    -- how can we fly up to the void with non-magical means?
    The head does not answer.
    I say that using the sogin roku to fly can give others wings, and we can all fly up.
    Back to the index.  Non-magical flying.  Rack 3, head 1.
    To this head, and Miyara asks for three methods of non-magical flying.
    It stares.
    She rephrases.
    -- the false followers of Tzeentch may destroy the crystals of power with the Leather Hawk of the the East Egg.
    Where is the Leather Hawk of the East Egg?
    It stares.
    The index points back to the same head.
    Miyara keeps rephrasing but the head just stares.
    Pito asks if the head has been compelled not to answer our questions about the LHotEE.
    It says it will answer questions that it knows.
    Miyara asks to tell everything it knows.
    -- there is one reference to the LHotEE.
    That reference is the quote delivered earlier.  Miyara and I discuss briefly, and she then asks where it comes from.
    -- it is part of a larger prophecy about the destruction of the crystals of power.
    She checks with the index about that, and it sends us back.  She asks what the prophecy is.
    -- it is said that the false followers of Tzeentch may enter the fire that chaos orcs guard and take back the human temple lost.  May enter the human temple of knowledge built by a blue dwarf.  May enter the dwarven burial mountain.  May enter the chaos dwarven temple.  May ride the Leather Hawk of the East Egg.  May return the seed of Tzeentch to the void.  May end the storm that destroys the empire.
    Miyara takes out her statue and looks at it.  It is the statue of an eastern dragon.  (Hosei later would insist that the leather hawk would be a dragon.)  She asks the head where the East Egg is.
    The head stares.

    Baraku has been looking through the box of junk.  It contains a large number of broken ceramic and glass jars, damaged alchemical tools, a book and a tarnished bronze disc.  The disc is about 4 inches across, and could be a mirror except fo the tarnish.
    Baraku polishes it.  It begins to shine, then ripple like water in moonlight.  After a little while the image of the moon Manslieb (the bad moon) appears.  He nudges Hosei and shows it to him.
    Hosei says it's magical, and the phase of the image is the phase of the moon, as if he's looking in a reflection of Manslieb in the water.  Hosei looks over and sees the magical grimoire.  It is clearly a book of spells, to learn spells.  It is a thin volume.
    Hosei considers that the disc could be useful to someone who lives underground but wants to know the phase of the bad moon for chaos magic.

    Miyara says that perhaps the book contains a way to find the Leather Hawk of the East Egg.
    Hosei says it's more likely to contain a chaos spell.
    Miyara tells him what the heads have told her, and says the prophecy.
    Hosei says it sounds like riding a dragon.  He adds what he believes about the demon that attacked me on the other side of that curtain, and that it's simply a protection spell.  The first one in will be attacked, and everyone else would be safe until the trap is reset, but the one who set it would know that the area had been entered.
    Hosei then does a spell to detect magic.  He looks around the room for magical things other than the heads.  Only the disc and grimoire show up aside from our things and the heads.

    Miyara goes up to the index and says, "Dragon."  It asks her to be more specific.  She says Eastern Dragon, and it redirects us to another head.
    -- Eastern Dragons are found in the East.
    Miyara asks how far away the nearest one might be, but the head stares.  Miyara and I look at each other and agree that Eastern Dragons don't really look like hawks.  I suggest that the Leather Hawk might not be a beast, but a machine.

    Miyara returns to the index and says, "Mechanical flying."  This library has no information on mechanical flying.
    She then asks us if we can think of anything to ask the library.  I say that we have pretty much discovered what we came here to find out, how to dispose of the stone.

    Hosei tells us that the book contains: Zone of Life, Control Undead, and Create Memorizing Head.  These are all necromancer spells.  Zone of Life uses a holy relic to create a magical field that keeps any undead from entering it, or firing missiles or casting spells into it, while the others are obvious.

    Hosei wants to know if the library wants to be destroyed.  The questions are met with stares.  Hosei thinks the library should be destroyed, but Miyara and I argue strongly that it should not be.
    Hosei leaves, and we follow him down.

    All we need now before we leave is the sogin roku.  But suddenly we hear screaming, probably coming from other caves, and it is a lot of people screaming.  We rush to the front of the temple, past Pietra who is still lying on the altar.

    All along the cliff face the whole net has gone, and there are flames coming from the cave we used to live in.  Hosei looks up, and sees someone heaving a large crock of probably oil on a rope, and using it to try to aim it into caves.  They are shooting for the cave where the rock is.
    Miyara believes it is the Cold Fire Knights who had been following us.
    Hosei calls for the rock, and it is coming.
    The people here aren't going to be missed -- are they really people as such? -- but I do respect Pietra.  I run back and try to warn her.  A pot explodes by the door, and I grab Pietra and pull her along, but she resists.  I knock her unconscious and launch out of the doorway carrying her and try to take off fast to the far side of the valley.  I leave the others who are discussing what to do.
    She is too heavy for me -- we are headed down.  I change course and sweep downwards but along the length of the valley, out of the way.  An arrow shoots past me, shot from the top of the cliff.

    ((The others conjure elementals, Rabena using air elementals to take Pito across the valley.  Ashu summons a fire elemental, tells it to burn everything in the library cave, and behind the curtain.  Everything in the room, living, dead, or undead.  Soon there are sounds of one man screaming, presumably the Great Master.
    Hosei can't get an air elemental, so gets an earth elemental to carry him.  He heads after me.
    Baraku gets an air elemental.  He tells the elemental to take the smallest chaos warrior to the valley, drop him -- telling the chaos warrior to follow the birdman -- and come back for the next one.  Slurk is carried down that way too.
    The others start to leave too, Carimera on a fire elemental, and anyone with their own elemental rides on one of Rabena's.
    Miyara stays last.  When Ashu's elemental is done, it is directed to guard the entrance of the cave and deflect oil.  It does so, catching a bucket and blowing it outwards.  That allows everyone to get out safely.))

    I take an arrow in the back, but keep going.  I come in to land once we're far enough away, tend my wound, and check on Pietra.  She's still unconscious, but I make her as comfortable as possible.
    Eventually the others arrive.  Rabena heals me first.  Rabena heals Pietra, and she wakes up.