With the brazier behind her, its call still beckoning her to return to its side, Kori moves onward. The final obstacle left on the dais strewn about before her as she approaches. Stones of various shapes and sizes, some precious, some mundane. Skulls and bones of all sizes from all manner of beasts large and small. Icons carved from a multitude of materials, some blurring the lines between what she should count as bone or stone and what is an icon. All these things intermingle in the final meters between the edge of the dais and ring of draconic braziers.

These items all glow with an inner light, the same as those worn by the seated shaman in the inner ring. Totems. Stronger than those she’d seen earlier. Emotions swell within her chest as she takes in each. Clearly foreign. Giving her impressions of their natures. As she watches, more motes flit out from behind her. Fewer than before, but each with a bulk and brightness beyond the previous ring. Each step in the path seemingly winnowing their numbers but strengthening their form. These spirits continue outward into the field of totems.

One by one, Kori watches the little spirits gather and land upon the strewn totems and their journey ends. A brightness flares and recedes from the mess of totems periodically lighting them each up and when it passes none of the gathered motes remain.

Are the little ones just food? Struggling each step of the way, only to be fed to these larger bound spirits?

Walking around the ring until she stands just beyond the brazier containing the scale of Emberscale once again, she sees the pattern repeat several times. Spirits gather upon a totem and once enough are present it flares with light and consumes them.

Are they going to try to eat me?! That can’t be right… Though they mentioned perils a few times, didn’t they?

Picking her way around looking for one seeming to be the least threatening of the bunch. She settles on a chunk of quartz that gives her an impression that it is just content to sparkle, just contentedness and a little pride. There were others that seemed equally benign, but the path to reach them was cluttered with less pleasant totems while this one is near the inner side of the ring.

“Hello… Shiny? Sparkly? Uhhh… Little spirit?” Her voice still sounding to her ears like a twisted echo of itself. Making an attempt to address the spirit bound to the chunk of quartz larger than both her hands clasped together. There is no response, not a shimmer or change in the impression she feels from the crystal as she gets closer and closer.

Reaching out to gingerly place her hand on the stone, flinching back as she first touches its smooth surface and sharp angled ridges between its faces. When nothing happens she gives herself a light chuckle, jumping because she touched a rock seemingly ridiculous, and returns her hand to its slightly warm surface. As best she can tell, it’s a rock. A somewhat pretty rock, but still a rock.

Well, that was a lot of stress over nothing.

Moving her hand about the crystals surface she finds it no different than any other smooth stone. Reaching with her other hand and attempting to lift it however is found to be an impossible task, no matter how she pushes, pulls, lifts, or twists, it remains immovable to her.

With nothing to be learned from the first, she tries again. A slightly bulged round stone and a carved form of an animal she does not recognize follow, neither quite as nonthreatening in nature as the last, but both equally without reaction to her touch.

Okay, so these ones don’t seem to even notice me. Can I just walk through this part? Is there no point to them in the test?

Carefully threading her way between the various debris, Kori makes her way to the edge of the dais and the broad stairs that encircle its circumference. Nothing impedes her path, though she nearly jumps out of her own scales when a nearby totem flares with light, consuming the little spirits.

Now how do I find the doorway… Or tell if it’s the right one… Ortik said there were many.

Giving yet another walk around the dais, now a much longer walk than when she did so upon its surface, she sees everything much the same as before. The glowing totems, the steps down to the floor of the rest of the cavern, and around twenty meters before the leather clad walls. When nothing stands out, she continues to the outer wall, poking at the leather as she tries to find a passage beyond.

It takes her very little time to find her first exit, a dark tunnel hidden behind the hides, and less time to find her second. Then a third. Then more still until a dozen exits from the place are found and she believes she’s made the full circuit.

There wasn’t anything different about any of them… How am I supposed to choose which one leads me out… Maybe there’s something to do with the totems and this outer section is just all one big test?

Heeding her thoughts, her ideas had been decent so far after all, Kori returns to the dais and begins to carefully pick through the variety of totems. Her spiritual senses giving her snippets of information on each as she passes. Emotions, desires, and concepts bombard her senses as she passes through them, trying not to look at the unornamented bones. For some reason, those are always the worst. She avoids them the best she can manage, having to weave in and out of the others to maintain a distance.

Aside from the impressions they give, none of these totems seem to differ from the rest. Sure, some shine brighter, or are larger, but regardless they are all simple chunks of immovable substance. Even the one that feels like its flighty and weightless to her senses refuses to be moved in even the slightest.

Feeling hungry again, she could have sworn she just ate before the brazier but can’t quite place how long ago that was, she sits down for another meal of bland fish, the moss lacking even texture to be pleasant. At least the water produced by the water rune she had been given was fresh and refreshing. Rooting through her satchel to see if there were anything at least semi appetizing, she spots the bundle of herbs she had been given. Opening them to give them a sniff she finds its scent to be rich and robust.

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I think this is tea? Like really good tea too, the stuff I make for Ortik or the Elders.

Her mouth literally watering at the prospect of something with at least a little flavour, she begins filling the small metal kettle from her satchel with the rune. It takes little time to bring the water to a steady boil with the flame rune before she sets it aside for a moment to cool before dumping in a helping of dried leaves. Once poured into her cup she inhales the pleasant aroma on the steam and once cooled she savours the first taste of, well, anything in days.

Why’s the tea good when nothing else has any taste?

Thinking herself in circles she can’t quite seem to wrap her head around the difference between the tea and the fish or moss, her senses for mana or spirits giving her no insight either.

Maybe I can reheat the fish in the tea? Would that taste any good?

Experimenting with her remaining food seemed a bit wasteful, but she was getting pretty desperate for a halfway decent meal at this point. She places one of her remaining little fish into the bowl and reheats the kettle to boiling before adding the herbs and then dousing the fish in it.

Okay, that’s not great… it’s got flavour, and the fish is better warm, but it’s really not great…

Her mealtime distraction settled, she finds a group of the work benches that had had Kobolds working at it when she first arrived and locates a tight space between several of the benches that is covered over and a bit confined and curls up to go to sleep.

Much better, it’s been weird sleeping with so much open space around me… Especially above…

Several hours later, unsure whether to call it a good nap or a night’s sleep, Kori wakes and begins assessing her options once again. Speaking her thoughts out loud, even though she finds the sound of it a bit disconcerting as she works through the issue.

“Well…” shaking her head at the sound of it. “Not gonna get used to that… What was I saying again? Oh, right. Well, I know the first ring was a test to follow the spirits, the second to find the right path through the braziers… So, the third is to find the right exit and navigate the passage to get back to the Clan.”

Pausing to ponder for a moment on what she knows. “I know that past the curtain is a maze and I’m nearly certain that Ortik moved so quickly without pausing so that I would focus on him and wouldn’t be able to memorize the turns he took… Which I didn’t…” Walking about as she mutters to herself. “There are twelve exits from the cave, I think there were at least the same number of intersections in the path to get here… Which was two hundred and fifty meters? Maybe three hundred?”

Thinking that it would be best to write these things down, Kori begins to search across the work benches and shelves that she can find. Unfortunately, the benches appear to be cleared off and none of the containers or objects on the shelves will even budge when she tries to grasp them.

What the scale did they do to me… I thought totems refusing to move was just weird spirit stuff… but I can’t even pick up a clay jug?

Trying across multiple benches and shelves all around the chamber she finds the same, she can’t even lift the lid off a jar. Checking on her person however she can manipulate anything she carries with ease, her satchel full of food, herbs, and dishes, the little clay pot of ointment, her tome… As her hand brushes across her tome she realizes that half of what she wants is right there, dozens of spare pages at the rear and space for more to be added if needed. Provided she figured out how to unbind the stitching keeping it together and didn’t make a mess of things putting it back together at least.

One side of the problem resolved, she looks through the rest of her belongings once again and settles on the kettle and tea.

It’s not gonna be good ink, but if I boil it down really far it’ll at least be good enough.

Doing just that she is left with a thin but dark liquid, though the leaves floating about in it won’t help her any. She tried to remove them as best she could by gently pouring the tea into her cup with her claws straining the liquid, but she could only do so much.

Wait… I don’t have a pen… Guess my claw it is…

Dipping her claw in the dark tea she slowly tries it on the final page of her tome, it runs and blurs slightly but does create a legible mark.

“Okay, so what do I know. There are 12 passages, each I think will have 12 turns, it’s a special number after all. And each passage is no more than three hundred meters long.” Scribbling down numbers as she thinks it through, “That means that each tunnel has nearly one hundred and fifty paths, provided the real and all the false paths are the same length at least…” Checking her quick math before scribbling it out. “No, that’s not right… How do I do this part… One path ends and splits to three options, which does the same thing eleven times… So that’s… Uhhh… Lots…” Potentially indicating she was doing something well beyond her meager mathematics skills as she tries to figure out how to calculate such an exponentially branching path, a notification begins blinking midway through her attempt.

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“OK, so I don’t think I can count that high… I think it’s over a hundred thousand possible paths from all twelve exits?”

Scribbling out her work she starts again.

“Like before, twelve exits… Twelve… Exits… Twelve!” Jumping up and running over to the edge of the dais, standing in line with the Emberscale brazier. “They wouldn’t make it that easy, would they?” She turns her back to it and quickly walks in a straight line out to the edge of the chamber and begins feeling around for a gap behind the leather. Finding what she was looking for exactly where she hoped it would be, she pulls aside a hide and sees the dark passage behind. “Well… Either I’m right and this is where I want to start, or I’m about to get lost. I’ll need to mark down every turn I take to make sure I can get back here…”

With reckless enthusiasm, Kori plunges into the dark tunnel and cheerily begins her exploration.

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“Lowy, did you see which of the spirits led her to that exit?” Ortik’s tone perplexed at the sudden turn around of his apprentice’s actions, over a day without any progress, frantic scribblings in her tome, and then she rushes straight to the exit and out of the room without even a pause.

“I cannot say I did Spiritcaller… It looked like she spent a day ignoring them all aside from poking and prodding a few totems like they were a strange mushroom on the cavern floor, then got excited and rushed off.” She pauses and a grin spreads across her features, “You don’t think she snapped finally, do you? Spirit walking’s not for the faint of will after all.”

“That little Kobold is more stubborn than a goblin is stupid,” Looking over to Kori’s form, still splayed out where she fell days earlier in the middle of the circle, “She won’t break.” A slight nagging doubt wondering what if she did is quickly dismissed. “One of them must of gave her a hint or something without actually accompanying her… Whatever guidance she got was correct at least.”