I snapped awake about one in the AM with a sudden thought. Huh?! The bottle! That weird bottle thing! We never did find out what it does!! I suddenly realized. I scratched my head, softly grumbling to myself. It was pretty late. Although it was early in Panarena right now, I knew. Hrrmmm... I wrestled with the thought for a moment more, and then decided to log in just for a bit to try it out. A few moments later I was loaded in again, and to my surprise I found Ariana there as well.

“Huh? You too?” I asked her, and she nodded.

“I suddenly woke up in this weird panic, and needed something to calm down.” she smiled softly. “What are you doing up?” Ari asked me.

“Hmm... I was gonna try out that bottle thing we got from the Marshes of the Wyrd...”

“Oh!!! We never did use it, did we?”

“Exactly. Wanna see what it does?”

“Absolutely!” she exclaimed, and we headed out of town a ways to experiment.

“I bet it's some sort of bonus dungeon,” I mused as I brought the weird looking thing out of my storage.

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“Or it summons something up for us to interact with in some way... hopefully a chat instead of a fight.” Ari said.

“That'd be a nice switch.” I said, looking at the bizarre thing again. I tapped it, and found an option to activate it. “Ready?” I said, and she nodded to me. I pressed the activate option, and the bottle then began transforming.

“Wahh!!” the two of us shouted in surprise as I dropped it. It then turned into some sort of steampunk automaton armed with a jagged twohanded sword that turned hostile at once.

“Bah!!” I groaned angrily, hastily equipping my daggers and vanishing to do a couple of attacks from behind while Ariana cast Relentless Thunder upon it, a channeled lightning attack that stunned it and wore down its health. The two of us finished it off quickly, catching our breath as we stared at the former automaton now scrap pile, exchanging a wry grin.

“Oh! It dropped a few crafting ingredients... yip-pee...” Ariana sighed.

“Right...?” I bemusedly agreed, reflecting on the literal hoard of resources we already had in our bags.

“Well that was anti-climactic.”

“Mm. And I'm weirdly calmer now.” she nodded.

Heh? Heh?! Ehhhhh?!?!

“Let's get a drink and go back to bed?” she smiled at me then, seeing my somewhat terrified expression and intuiting my thoughts.

“Heh? Ah, uh, sure!” I nodded. Once again, remind me to never make you mad, I thought to myself as she took my arm, and we headed back into town to get a drink and then log out for the night once more.