Episode 4 - Reverence

## Transcription

*SWIM's exploration of the Trial of Reverence, from 06:00 to 58:25 with some out of character content omitted. Transcribed by Sarah Z.*

**Luke:** The three of you make your way over to the Eastern Archway. To the left of this collapsed archway is a statue of a robed individual holding a thin knife to the sky. As I said, the archway is collapsed. How would you like to proceed?

**Ben:** Hmm.

**Sarah:** So there’s gonna be like, rubble, specific stones and stuff kind of blocking it, right? Can we lift anything up, or are the stones too big?

**Luke:** Uh, no, they’re fairly small, as if something… it looks as if there was an earthquake or a tremor or something that just knocked some stones loose. It wasn’t like, someone intentionally sealed this so that you can’t go in there.

[SWIM digs through the rubble with mage hands]

**Luke:** Inside the room is pitch black.

**Winsler:** Quick, let’s all squeeze through the hole at once!

**Mira:** Wow, we’re not fitting! If only there were an easier way to do this. I guess we can’t go in, guys, sorry.

**Winsler:** Looks like it’s time to grease up!

**Sarah:** I don’t have any light spell to see better… oh actually… actually… I’m going to cast Faerie Fire, which I have!

**Luke:** Can you read to me what Faerie Fire does, just to be certain?

**Sarah:** Blue, green, or violet lights outline objects in a 20 foot space, all creatures make a Dexterity save or be cast in light as well. The light cast in this spell illuminates a 10 foot radius. Attacks against affected creatures are made with advantage, and affected creatures can’t be invisible. So it’s really for combat, and the lights seem to be a symptom, but in this case there’s still gonna be light outlining those objects, even if we’re not fighting anyone.

[Mira picks violet light to “shake it up a little” because the orbs are already green and blue; the room is lit up]

**Luke:** It illuminates the room; you see that it’s triangular this time. In the center is a smooth stone altar, upon which is a statue holding a knife.

**Sarah:** Does it look like the one outside?

**Luke:** The knife?

**Sarah:** The statue.

**Luke:** The statue… no, it’s very small, maybe only a half foot tall? It looks to be two snakes wrapped around a coil.

**Ben:** Suspicious.

**Luke:** In each of the corners of this triangular room is a small nook with an urn sitting upon it.

**Kharla:** In one of the corners?

**Luke:** In all three.

**Sarah:** Luckily there’s three of us. I’m gonna go to the closest urn to me and examine it: see if there’s something inside, see if there’s any markings on it, or anything special.

**Luke:** It’s either to your left or right, they’re equidistant.

**Sarah:** Right.

**Luke:** Right. You walk over, you see runes carved in the stone beneath the urn, like on the actual stone of the alcove itself. The urn is small, ceramic, but firmly attached to the stone itself. You don’t understand the language written here, and trying to remove the lid of the urn is unsuccessful.

**Sarah:** Okay.

**Mira:** Integrity! Can you read this?

**Integrity:** I can try!

**Luke:** You run in. There, written on the wall, you see the word, in Draconic, “Ascend”.

**Ben:** That’s cryptic.

**Integrity:** Umm.. it says “ascend”.

**Mira:** “Ascend”?

**Integrity:** I can try to look at the farthest one.

**Kharla:** And then I will start running over to the other urn.

**Luke:** The one on the left or the one directly across from you?

**Kharla:** Directly across from the door.

**Luke:** That one says, “envisage” in draconic.

**Kharla:** And then I will run to the left one!

**Luke:** This one says “devour”.

**Ben:** Oh.

**Sarah:** Oh dear.

**Ben:** Okay.

**Kharla:** So, after seeing ‘devour’, I will walk towards my acquaintances or friends, and I will tell them that that said devour and I will be very scared. Wait no. Roleplay.

**Integrity**: Um… guys? Uh.. that said… devour.

**Mira:** So.. ascend, envisage, and devour. What do you guys think that means?

**Winsler:** Bad.

**Mira:** Yeah… is it something we’re supposed to be doing, or…

**Winsler:** Have you tried to move them?

**Mira:** I tried, but it’s stuck. The urns are just stuck. Which is probably good because if we were supposed to be like devouring the urn or something, I think that probably wouldn’t go down well.

**Ben:** Did any of us inspect the statue in the room?

**Luke:** No…

**Ben:** I want to! I am going to run over.

[Ben rolls a Nat 20 investigation check]

**Luke:** You fiddle methodically with the knife. You feel it sway a bit, as if it’s not part of the statue, as if it’s just being held in place by these two snakes that are wrapped around it, made of this brown stone. Looking around the actual altar itself, you see a small circular tile in the side of it. Leading up to this tile are brown stains, which cover most of the floor.

**Ben:** Eugh. I don’t wanna know what that is.

**Sarah:** Nope. Gross. Super gross.

**Ben:** What if I stand on this circular tile?

**Luke:** So to describe it, because I feel like I’ve done a poor job-

**Ben:** Yes you have!

**Luke:** I apologize. The altar juts out approximately three feet from the ground. So it stands taller than you, Winsler. And the actual tile, the circular tile, is in the side of the altar.

**Ben:** Oh. So, to reiterate, I want to press it.

**Luke:** It does not move whatsoever. Actually, with an investigation roll of such a high caliber, you ascertain that it seems to be locked in place.

**Ben:** Hmmm.

**Winsler:** Found a tile over here, but it’s locked!

**Mira:** Oh! Maybe we have to do something to unlock it! And then, like, we push it, and we get the rock from it..

**Winsler:** Any of y’all got a key?

**Mira:** Maybe there’s something in the urns we can use?

**Winsler:** Oooh. That’s a good point.

**Mira:** We might kinda have to break them? I mean, I don’t wanna break them and then that means the whole room is broken and we can’t do anything, but I don’t see-

**Luke:** Like an escape room.

**Luke:** So you wanna smash one of them?

**Sarah:** Yeah. I punch it. I punch it hard.

**Luke:** …with your hand?

**Sarah:** Yes! She’s already got a freakin’ spiral on it!

**Ben:** Just fucking break that shit!

**Luke:** Are you gonna punch that right one? Or the left one?

**Sarah:** The one that I’m standing next to right now. The one that says ascend.

[Mira makes an attack roll and rolls 14]

**Luke:** Yes. You very quickly realize that this is made of solid stone, and you take one damage as you punch it.

**Sarah:** Oh. I thought it was made of like.. ceramic.

**Luke:** It looks like it’s made of ceramic. But punching it, it seems to be like, enamelled on the outside.

[Mira is in pain and suggests using the knife. Winsler picks it up and sees that it is covered in brown stains. Winsler cleans it with prestidigitation and it becomes apparent that the knife is identical to the one outside.]

**Winsler:** I did it!

**Ben:** I wanna go over to the devour jar. Does it look like it can be opened?

**Luke:** As your… friend… already told you, and as you quickly figure out for yourself trying to open it, it has a lid but it is fixed in place as if it is one solid object.

**Ben:** I wanna see if I tap the knife against its side?

**Luke:** It sounds hollow.

**Kharla:** Can I smell the brown stuff?

**Luke:** Make a perception check?

[Integrity rolls a 16]

**Luke:** Hmm. It smells like when you were a kid, and your older brother fell off the platform, like the actual wooden platform that Dry Falls is situated on, onto a flat rock beneath, and then you guys walked home, and his knee was bleeding, and it just kinda dried and had mud and gunk in it, and it got a bit infected. That’s what it smells like.

**Kharla:** So blood. Like, old, muddy blood.

**Luke:** Yes.

**Integrity:** Um, guys? I think someone was here before us.

**Luke:** There’s a lot of it on the ground.

**Integrity:** I think someone was here before us. And it didn’t end well for them.

**Mira:** You think that’s their.. blood?

**Integrity:** It smells like blood. And dirt.

[everyone freaks out about the devil girl smelling blood, and everyone briefly thinks she murdered her brother]

**Mira:** This much blood. Is not a good time.

**Winsler:** So we have a knife… we have stained blood on the floor. There’s jars that we can’t seem to punch open.

**Luke:** And there was blood on the knife!

**Ben:** There was.

**Mira:** Are we supposed to.. bleed into the jars? Cause I kinda don’t wanna do that?

**Winsler:** We can’t exactly open them, though.

**Mira:** You think blood’s just gonna open them?

**Winsler:** No?

**Ben:** I’m gonna look at the statue again.

**Luke:** The one outside?

**Ben:** The one inside.

**Luke:** It’s two snakes, almost making a helix around this slot where the knife was.

**Sarah:** It’s an RNA challenge!

**Ben:** So was the knife originally kinda loosey goosey within this slot?

**Luke:** It’s almost like a sheath? Like a holder?

**Ben:** Okay. So I’ll put it back in the sheath… slowly? And then leave it.

**Kharla:** Are the snakes wrapped around the blade itself? Or like, is that how the statue is designed?

**Luke:** Yes.

**Kharla:** I think we need our genetic… wait, there’s no genes in this.

**Luke:** Pause. Pause.

**Sarah:** Do we know what genetics are?

**Luke:** No. You don’t. You absolutely don’t know what genetics are.

**Kharla:** Veto. Veto. Veto.

**Winsler:** What’s a genie?

**Luke:** Well, now I have to leave that in, Ben.

**Ben:** Ha! Yes! That’s what I wanted you to do!

**Kharla:** Can I try to use my thaumaturgy and cause a tremor on one side of the room and maybe an earthquake can break the stuff open?

[Kharla reads the description of thaumaturgy and changes her mind; the tremors are harmless]

**Winsler:** Whoa! Earthquake.

**Mira:** Uh… guys? I hate this so much, but there’s blood on the everything, there was blood on the knife, there’s three things, and there are three of us. It might actually want blood, which is super gross and I super hate it, but that might be the answer?

**Ben doing a Kermit voice:** Yo, this is fucked up.

**Luke:** So, Mira, what are you going to do?

**Sarah:** I’m going to go over and I’m gonna pick the knife up, and I’m gonna like make a tiny prick on my fingertip.

**Luke:** It beads out very quickly.

**Sarah:** And then I’m gonna go touch one of the jar things, the devour one, how about?

**Luke:** Absolutely. The lid slides very easily off once you touch it with your bloody finger!

**Sarah:** Gross! I reach inside.

**Luke:** Inside you feel a squishy organic meaty feeling. Like raw meat. And as you pull it out, it looks like a black, rotted heart.

[Everyone shrieks in disgust]

**Mira:** Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Oh my GOD.

**Luke:** With three bites taken out of it.

**Mira:** Oh my GOD, you don’t think we have to- eughhhh.

**Sarah:** And I almost vomit.

**Ben:** I rolled a 3, so does that mean Winsler faints?

**Luke:** Winsler can faint if you want him to faint, just like a narrative faint.

**Ben:** He’s fainted.

**Luke:** He just flops over on the ground, in a light ‘poof’.

[The gang checks in on Winsler and he regains consciousness. We establish that this was not a nightmare.]

**Mira:** Okay. Why don’t we open the other jars, and we can see what’s in there, and… maybe that’s all they want! Maybe they just want us to open the jars and we don’t have to do anything super super gross!

**Winsler:** I have major doubts about that, but we can try that.

**Luke:** Yeah. Doesn’t seem that’s likely.

**Mira:** At least we know what’s gonna be in there, if we do that.

**Luke:** Alright. Do you wanna touch one of the other jars, Mira?

**Sarah:** Yeah.

**Luke:** Which one?

**Sarah:** How about ascend?

**Luke:** Ascend. Your finger’s still bleeding, so it’s perfectly fine. You don’t have to make another cut. You touch the lid, it slides easily off, and inside, almost up to the very top on this one, you see this dark green powder.

**Sarah:** This one’s a little less obvious. What do you guys think we’re supposed to do with this?

**Kharla:** I’m going to move towards Mira, and I’m going to investigate if I recognize the powder to be some magical powder, maybe?

[Kharla makes an ‘alchemy check’ and rolls 8]

**Luke:** Oh. There’s lots of powders in alchemy, there’s lots of green powders in alchemy. If you had to narrow it down, this is probably an edible one.

**Sarah:** I’m gonna go and touch the other one.

**Luke:** The final.

**Sarah:** With my gross, bloody little finger.

**Luke:** The one which reads ‘envisage’. You slide the lid off, and inside you see an oily black stone talisman in the shape of a stone spiral. Similar, if not identical, to the one on your wrist. There’s a hole through the center, and it has a leather cord wrapped through it as if it could act as a necklace.

**Mira:** Um. Okay. So guys. There’s three things, and there’s three of us. I bet we don’t all have to do each thing, maybe like.. one of us has to put on the necklace and one of us has to do other stuff and one of us has to do other other stuff. So…

**Winsler:** I’m not eatin’ that piece of heart. No way.

**Mira:** Nobody wants to eat it! It’s super super gross.

**Winsler:** Well, I call dibs on not eating it!

**Mira:** I also call dibs on not eating it!

**Winsler:** Well, it’s just you!

**Mira:** You are so brave, Integrity. You are so, so brave.

**Winsler:** Go get ‘em, Integrity! You can do it!

**Mira:** You really are the best of us.

**Kharla:** I’m going to walk, reluctantly.

**Luke:** Yes. You walk towards the open urn. And inside is a large black heart.

**Kharla:** And I stare at it.

**Luke:** It’s huge. It takes two hands to hold.

**Kharla:** So I take it with two hands, and I look at my friends, and I’m like:

**Integrity**: I think we should do it together.

**Mira:** Uhhhh…

**Integrity:** No, like. Do your stuff, like wear the necklace, and-

**Mira:** Oh!

**Winsler:** I was about to say, what the-

**Mira:** I thought you meant we should all bite it at the same time-

**Ben:** What is this creepy cult shit?

**Mira:** Okay. I already have this weird spiral, let’s put on another weird spiral.

**Luke:** How do you grab it?

**Sarah:** I just… I just grab it. By the leather strap.

**Luke:** Okay. Okay. The sunlight glints off it, and it looks like it’s the blackest stone you’ve ever seen. It’s the exact same one the statue of that amorphous creature is made of. Winsler?

**Ben:** I guess I’ll go over to inspect this green powder.

**Luke:** You wanna inspect it before you ingest it?

**Ben:** Uh, yeah. Yes please.

[Ben makes an ‘alchemy check’ and rolls an 18]

**Luke:** You recognize this as a very… it’s not the same, but it’s incredibly similar to a reagent called Ark-Sand, which is lightning infused sand, which is kind of sold as a… it’s used as a spice in small portions and alternatively as an enchanting reagent on order to enchant a weapon or item with lightning. But that is blue and this is green. But the general properties and makeup seem to be similar.

**Ben:** Okay, so it’s either really old Ark-Sand, or it’s magical cocaine and I have to snort it.

**Sarah:** Why not both?

**Ben:** Sure! I’m gonna take a handful of this-

**Luke:** It’s like… how best to describe it? It’s like icing sugar consistency. Like it’s very powdery. So, simultaneously, what happens, everyone?

**Sarah:** I put the necklace on, as a necklace.

**Kharla:** I take a small, but scrumptious bite. I had my eyes closed and I was trying to think that it’s like, some turkey leg or something.

**Ben:** I’m not gonna snort it. I’m just gonna sprinkle it onto my tongue and eat it.

**Luke:** Who to go first. Integrity? Make a constitution saving throw.

[Kharla gets a 21]

**Luke:** It is singlehandedly the most disgusting thing you’ve ever eaten, but gosh darn it you’re gonna eat it. You take a small but scrumptious bite of this spongy, rotten heart, and manage to keep it down. Although there is a weird film on your hands now and on your face where you touched the heart.

[Winsler rolls con and gets 14]

**Luke:** Okay! You see the walls kind of close in as haze kind of fills your vision. Your legs feel like Jello under your body, and you start to hear this weird rhythmic chanting that’s kind of in the background. You can still see your friends, but beyond like probably 20 feet, it’s just green haze.

And finally, Mira. I need you to roll a percentile dice.

**Sarah:** There’s no good that comes out of rolling a percentile dice in any scenario. 66.

**Luke:** 66… ooh!

As the oily black stone touches your chest, your eyes go, or your vision goes black, and all of a sudden you find yourself in a shadowy plane, for lack of a better term. The ground beneath you is this oily black stone, it feels slick on your foot. You can’t see any more than thirty feet out in any direction and it’s just black shadow.

Standing in a semicircle in front of you are all the people who you’ve met at Wildcliff, along with your friends and family from back home, anyone you’ve ever met is in a crowd standing before you. On his knees in front of you is a white dragonborn, his face covered in blood like some kind of macabre flower. And he’s looking up at you with tears in his eyes as you raise a crystal cube to the sky. And then you’re suddenly back in the room.

**Sarah:** Has any time passed?

**Luke:** No.

**Sarah:** Has anything happened? Do we hear any clicks, any stones?

**Luke:** You hear the small tile on the side of the altar fall on the stone floor, revealing a two-foot diameter tunnel!

**Sarah:** I immediately take the- like, I just rip the necklace thing off.

**Luke:** Hm. Absolutely.

**Mira:** Guys? You didn’t see that, did you?

**Integrity:** See what?

**Winsler:** I can’t feel my legs… where is everybody?

**Mira:** Are you okay? Am.. am I okay?

**Winsler:** I can’t see anything…

**Kharla:** We’ll put the heart back into the urn and I’m going to run to my jelly-legged friend.

**Luke:** You see him wobbling across the floor, kind of like he’s drunk.

[Integrity offers him her arm to hold onto]

**Luke:** You see a distorted form. Normally her skin’s red, but now it’s a light green. And her horns start to twist as they go up towards the sky instead of being like they regularly are, like straight. And she offers you her arm, and you hear her say the words that she said.

[Kharla forgets Winsler’s name and calls him Wilmer and comforts him and Winsler continues to be high. Wiggles informs the group that he’s seen people look this high before and that it will probably pass. Winsler rests and Integrity talks to Mira.]

**Integrity:** What happened?

**Mira:** I saw something. And it wasn't good. But I don’t know how to understand it, I just know it wasn’t good.

**Integrity:** What was it?

**Mira:** It was everyone I knew, and they were all there, they were all watching me, and there was a white dragonborn with blood on his face. And he was kneeling there, and I had a cube, or something, and I don’t know what was happening, and I don’t know if it was the future or if it was made up, or if everyone who puts the necklace on sees the same thing, but something bad was happening, and I don’t know what to do about that.

**Integrity:** Oh.. that doesn’t sound good.

**Mira:** I don’t know if I was helping him or hurting him. I don’t know if I should have been helping him or hurting him. I don’t even know who that was!

**Luke:** I will say, you did know who it is. It’s the white dragonborn who, earlier today, was arguing with Silvi.

**Sarah:** Oh, it’s THAT white dragonborn.

**Ben:** It’s Murundeen Purebone!

**Mira:** I do know who that was. Still don’t know if I should be helping him or hurting him, he was kind of a dick, but still? I think we just have to keep going, but I don’t know if what we’re doing is gonna help people or hurt people, but we’ve gotta do it, I think.

**Integrity:** I think so, too. If you get a vision like that, it must mean something pretty big.

**Mira:** Yeah.

**Luke:** Winsler. At this point, you seem to regain your bearings and notice that you’re being held dangerously close to some disgusting hands.

**Winsler:** Aah!

**Mira:** Winsler, you okay?

**Winsler:** Did you touch me with those hands? I swear to god did you touch me with those hands?

**Integrity:** No! No I didn’t. I went out of my way to not touch you.

**Ben:** I am immediately going to snap my fingers and clean it off with Prestidigitation.

**Luke:** It flies into small little drops everywhere, landing on the three of you.

**Mira:** Oh my god, dude, that’s the second time today you did that!

**Integrity:** That’s worse!

**Mira:** That’s so much worse!

**Ben:** I faint again. I have fainted once again.

**Luke:** After casting this spell, he seems to faint, falling face forwards onto the ground in a small heap. Mr. Wiggles looks up at you and goes:

**Wiggles:** Sigh. What a rough day.

**Mira:** Does he do this a lot?

**Wiggles:** No. Not really. With the crying? Yes. With the awkward social interactions? No. He’s never really… had friends?

**Mira:** Oh…

**Luke:** And then he kind of… walks over and licks you on the face and wakes you up, Winsler.

**Winsler:** Ah! Oh. I’m scared…

**Mira:** C’mon, buddy, let’s just keep going.

**Ben:** Tears, once more.

**Luke:** Gosh.

**Ben:** Only a little bit. Not like I turn the faucet on full, just a little bit.

**Luke:** Mr. Wiggles climbs back into your small robe pocket.

**Ben:** Comfort!

**Luke:** So, would you like to proceed in the tunnel?

**Everyone, overlapping:** Yes!

**Luke:** Who would like to go first, cause it’s gonna be one at a time?

**Winsler:** Not it!

**Kharla:** Does anyone have like.. vision in the dark?

**Luke:** You all have vision in the dark, but it’s not in pitch black.

**Kharla:** So it’s pitch black down there?

**Luke:** Mhm.

**Ben:** I do have produce flame! Make a light source.

**Kharla:** Okay!

**Integrity:** So, who’s gonna go down first?

**Mira and Winsler:** Uuuuhhhhhh…….

**Mira:** …I’ll do it…

**Luke:** Okay, Mira. As you walk over, you see written in the floor a word that you don’t quite understand right in front of the tunnel.

**Mira:** Yeah, never mind. Integrity!

**Integrity:** What?

**Mira:** More words!

**Integrity:** Okay. Move aside.

**Ben:** Translate, please!

**Luke:** Mira points to the ground in front of the tunnel, where it says in draconic: “Kneel”.

**Integrity:** Hey, Mira?

**Mira:** Yeah-huh?

**Integrity:** It says ‘kneel’. Does that make any sense to you guys?

**Mira:** Umm, the guy was kneeling in the vision I had, but it didn’t look like we were here. Maybe we’re just supposed to do that and it’ll unlock something or, I don’t know?

**Kharla:** I am going to reluctantly kneel.

**Luke:** You kneel, and it seems like a pretty easy way to get in position to crawl through the tunnel.

**Kharla:** Oh.

[everyone laughs and quips]

**Kharla:** And it’s pitch dark, right?

**Luke:** It’s pitch black in the tunnel, yes.

**Kharla:** I’m going to light my match from my tinderbox.

**Luke:** Okay, you light a match. You have seven remaining, you’ve used three at this point.

**Kharla:** Yes. I’m going to light it, just to see anything that is in close proximity and I’m going to start crawling through.

**Luke:** It’s a tight squeeze, it’s only two feet in diameter, and it’s kind of a bit oblong, so it’s shorter than it is wide. But it’s big enough for you to crawl through. It would take time if you needed to have a hasty retreat, however. Crawling forward with the match lit in front of you, you go down a small slope, and then crawl a few more feet, probably only five feet total, and find yourself in a large open cavern.

Since you have a light, you see the skeletal remains of a humanoid, their wand in their hand broken in half, and gnaw marks in their bones. On the far side of the room, you see a immense skeleton of a serpent, and on the wall, large draconic text. It says “worship”.

**Ben:** Great!

**Kharla:** So I’m going to call for my friends.

**Sarah:** I follow the sound of Integrity’s voice.

**Luke:** And Winsler?

**Ben:** Yup!

**Luke:** Okay. So. You all find yourself in this room, standing right in front of the tunnel entrance. I will say, the serpentine skeleton- alliteration- has only four ribs remaining, and you can see large sections of its spine where the ribs were once attached, but they seem to be ripped off.

**Kharla:** By teeth?

**Luke:** No. Just broken.

**Kharla:** Like, snapped in half, pulled?

**Luke:** Uh huh.

**Sarah:** So is it just the text, the serpent skeleton, and the person skeleton?

[Sarah rolls a 9 perception, Kharla rolls a 19, Ben rolls a 17]

**Luke:** Winsler and Integrity, in the skull of this large serpent, you see a four inch diameter socket, just in the center between the eyes. It’s spherical- it looks like one of your orbs could fit perfectly into it.

**Winsler:** Aha!

**Mira:** What?

**Winsler:** There’s a socket in that skull!

**Mira:** Okay?

**Winsler:** Does anyone still have one of those orbs left?

**Luke:** No. They’re both in the hatch.

**Winsler:** Shit.

**Mira:** Should we go get one?

**Winsler:** Uh-

**Luke:** As you discuss, standing atop this skeleton remains, the four remaining ribs drop off to the ground.

**Sarah:** I go pick one up, and just… look it over.

**Luke:** In your hand, it turns into a serpent and attempts to bite you. I’d like you guys to roll initiative.

[The gang rolls initiative. The snake bites Mira on the shoulder and she takes poison damage. Integrity decapitates it. Mira steps on its head.]

**Ben:** Oh wait, that was it?

**Luke:** Yeah. That was it, guys. A single lowly snake.

**Ben:** I was gonna say, I forgot to roll initiative for Mr. Wiggles, but he got a 5, so…

**Luke:** It’s almost as if someone solved this trial.

**Ben:** What?

**Luke:** It’s almost as if someone already solved this trial.

**Sarah and Kharla:** Ohhh…

**Sarah:** Like somebody took the stone from the socket already.

**Kharla:** And killed the snake.

**Ben:** So in other words, this was pointless.

**Luke:** You ate a heart for nothing!

**Sarah:** Glad I got bitten by a snake and poisoned for no reason!

**Ben:** I got high for nothing!

**Kharla:** There’s absolutely nothing in there? Absolutely nothing else?

**Luke:** No!

**Kharla:** Can I go take her broken wand, and put it-

**Luke:** Sure! You have a Ron Weasley-esque broken in half wand. Sorry, we’re not allowed to reference Harry Potter because this is a magical academy.

**Sarah:** Don Beasley, from the play Larry Grotto.

[Winsler heals Mira for 9 points with Cure Wounds; Mira thanks him]

**Winsler:** Now let’s leave.

**Luke:** Who’s leaving first?

**Ben:** Me.

**Luke:** You’re going first?

**Ben:** Ye.

**Luke:** Okay. As you wiggle your way through the tunnel- very easily for you, it’s roomy compared to what your compatriots are dealing with-

**Ben:** Winsler Wallaby wiggles whimsically.

**Sarah:** Whoa. Wonderful.

**Luke:** Too much alliteration on this show. You crawl out and see two scaly little feet standing in the doorway.

**Ben:** Oh no.

**Luke:** And you look up and see your cyclopean friend Teb, holding his green orb, looking sadly at you.

**Ben:** I’m going to fold my hat over my face.

**Winsler:** If I can’t see him, maybe he can’t see me!

**Luke:** He seems to have a little knapsack with him as well, and a walking stick in addition to his little green orb. And the two of you emerge and see the exact same scene, he’s kinda standing there, patiently waiting for you guys to exit. And he says:

**Teb:** When I touched the talisman, it showed me a bunch of humans that looked like the statue, killing another one. What did it show you?

**Sarah:** I re-explain what I saw, cause I already…

**Luke:** He seems to nod, and sighs. And then he says.

**Teb:** I really wish that you hadn’t explored this place. I know that I was the one that brought you here, but I’ve brought a lot of students here over the years and no one really explores. I kinda tell them, “oh, it’s very scary and dangerous” and that normally… wards them off.

**Mira:** …I mean, you can’t say something like that and not expect people to be curious, right? I mean…

**Teb:** I suppose I’ve learned my lesson, yes. I’m going away to find Digger, if she’s still out there.

**Luke:** And he holds out his… he kinda leans his walking stick against the wall and walks towards you and holds out his hand, and if one of you is willing to receive it, he offers a small sandstone coloured pebble.

**Teb:** This will get you in contact with my other friend, Artist. He’s still here. And if you ever need him in an emergency, this is how you contact him. I won’t be around for a while, so… I hope nothing bad happens to you all.

**Mira:** We hope so too?

**Luke:** And he kind of looks regretfully at you all, and then turns around and starts to walk out of the room and walk up the stairway.

**Mira:** Is there anything you can tell us about this place, before you go? Anything that could help us?

**Luke:** He doesn’t answer.

**Mira:** Okay. I guess not then.

**Luke:** No no no! He would answer! Sorry!

**Ben:** You fucking liar!

**Luke:** Sorry! He would turn back and say:

**Teb:** Just… don’t tell anyone else about it, for their sake.

**Sarah:** I nod.

**Ben:** I wanna yell at him as he’s walking away.

**Winsler:** We’re sorry!

**Luke:** He doesn’t answer that one.

**Sarah:** That’s fair.

**Luke:** So, he slowly makes his way up the stairs. Your blue orb is still sitting inside the hatch. He’s only taken the green one.

**Ben:** I take blue!

**Luke:** Okay. It stops glowing, and put it in your pocket.

**Ben:** If nothing else, it’ll be a good toy for Mr. Wiggles.

**Mira:** So, now what, guys?

**Integrity:** I think we should head back.

**Mira:** Yeah… are we just supposed to pretend we don’t see anything? Just keep taking classes and thinking this is completely normal? Cause that seems…

**Winsler:** It was all a dream…

**Mira:** It super wasn’t.

**Integrity:** We’ll just have to go back to how we were before. But, I think that we should meet up sometimes? Like, for lunch.

**Mira:** We could be like that play! The Lunch Crew!

[Everyone suffers]

**Winsler:** So, does that mean we’re officially friends?

**Mira:** Uh.. yeah, of course we’re friends?

**Ben:** I fuckin’ fist pump!

[They head upstairs; Integrity looks longingly at the hatch.]