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After leaving Cat, Angel, and Ellie at the Suchart home in Arabel, Dawn 'ports directly back to his workshop. He inspects the warehouse to be sure no one has tampered with anything, then he goes into his office and burns the three just-in-case letters he wrote (retrieving the key from Bienca's and returning it to its hiding place). He opens the crate of Sylvia's things and digs out one of Sylvia's dancing ladies, and goes into the house proper to show it to Bienca, so she'll know what she's after when she goes to Suzail. Then he falls into bed and sleeps determinedly for the next twelve hours. Eventually, he gets up, does his usual waking-up routine, and takes the Box back out to the warehouse. He opens it with more confidence this time, and a bit faster, since he's done it before -- though it still takes some time, because he takes care to jot down the rest of the path as he goes, completing Flip's notes. (Why he does this when he has Bonesteel's completed notes in his pocket is anyone's guess, including his own.) This time, he steps into the Treasure Room without looking at its accumulated wealth (well, mostly. He *is* a thief, after all), and instead heads for the back wall, where he thought he remembered seeing a glimpse of the odd honeycomb construction that marked the Magic Jar and the book-box. Dawn's sharp eyes did not deceive him; although it's not easy to get to *any* of the walls, given the amount of glittery stuff piled about, it looks like a previous owner cleared a path to the back wall so as to have a through-route to the older treasures. What from a distance appeared to be a foot-wide band of mosaic encircling the room at about head-height, up close, proves to be the same honeycomb hole-pattern he saw inside the book-box. Some "flaws" in the pattern prove to be sealed holes, stuffed with the same substance Dawn pulled out of the elf woman's jar. As Dawn surveys the room, he notes more than a dozen of these. Two mar the portion of the pattern right in front of him. Although one is identical to the mouth of the elf-woman's sealed jar, the other looks... strange, as though the plug has dried out or decayed with age. It doesn't adhere to the sides of its little hole as the other does, and appears as porous and brittle as bird's bones. Did the magic fail, perhaps, or is there something else at work here? Could there be a soul still trapped within? Dawn ponders the wall for several moments. "Fourteen bodies..." He turns slowly on his heel, counting sealed holes. Dawn counts fifteen sealed holes scattered around the room; the desiccated one in Dawn's immediate reach is one of that number. He can't tell at this distance if any of the others are the same. Finally, he shrugs. "No place like the present to start." He draws his silver casting knife and begins chipping away at the desiccated plug until he can pull it entirely free and peer into the hole. "Anyone in there? You're free." The plug, already dry and loose, comes out with only the lightest of prodding on Dawn's part. Although Dawn is braced for a sudden gush of wind, a breeze, anything... nothing happens. Not even the slightest draft of air stirs Dawn's hair as he peers into the little hole. It appears to be empty. "Ah, well." He turns to count the remaining seals again, then starts prying free the "good" seal in front of him. "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." This opening, in contrast to the other, was tightly sealed. The thick plug comes free under the careful ministrations of Dawn's blade, and a sudden rush of cold air pours from the little hole, spiralling towards the ceiling. Within seconds, though, Dawn feels a tingle of active magics, and a faint moan-- the sound of a man in deepest despair-- echoes in Dawn's ears and crawls down his spine. With a soft sucking sound, the roving breeze reverses its direction, and before Dawn's eyes a different hole suddenly bubbles up with wax and seals tight. Dawn's eyes narrow as the new hole seals, and growls. "Very funny, Fred. Fine, we'll do it your way." He peers into an unoccupied hole for a moment, thoughtfully. He turns around and surveys the room, putting his dagger away. After a moment, he leaves the Treasure Room and returns with a crowbar. "Just the tool for the job." He peers into the nearest unoccupied hole, then slides the crowbar in, and with a sharp jerk, pops a hole in the wall that separates this compartment from its neighbor. He pulls the crowbar out (without bothering to be delicate about it) and moves on. He takes his time about it, but systematically works his way around the room, destroying the unoccupied cells. Groans, as of strained timbers or a settling house, accompany Dawn's systematic destruction of the unsealed holes. As he makes his way around the room, he confirms his initial count of remaining sealed holes-- still one more than the number of bodies he removed-- and discovers that all but four (and those include the newly-sealed hole) have the same loose, dry stoppers of the first one he opened. Dawn smashes through the dry-stoppered holes as well as the empties as he goes. He pauses each time, to make sure they have the same non-reaction as the first. He leaves the sealed holes alone. He stops every so often to peer into the holes and try to see their support structure, hoping the walls won't collapse on him. The dry-stoppered holes react no differently than the empties, except that the room does not seem affected by their destruction. Some of the bottles come completely free of the wall with more vigorous yanks of the crowbar, and smash to pieces at Dawn's feet. Behind them, he sees, is a hollowed-out space like some sort of conduit, and then more wall. Whatever is causing the creaking and groaning, it doesn't seem to be purely from damage to the physical structure. Finally, he finishes the job, and stands near the door for a few minutes to catch his breath. Then he draws his knife again, and pulls out the plug on the nearest sealed hole. The crowbar is still held loosely in his off hand, and he watches the results with narrowed eyes. As before, a cool breeze slides out of the bottle mouth and spirals up towards the ceiling, growing in strength as it moves. And as before, Dawn feels the tingle of magic activating. The magic does its mindless best to complete the task laid upon it, and bind the fleeing spirit. But this time, the result is far more spectacular-- and dangerous, for the single living person in the room. One after the other in rapid-fire succession, the damaged spirit-bottles embedded in the wall explode like river-stones dropped in a fire, sending hot, sharp shards of crystal flying into the room at high velocity. Several more delicate treasures-- the larger vases make particularly vulnerable targets-- shatter under the barrage. Statues grow fresh dings and chips. The golden scorpion-man idol gains a third, crystalline eye in the center of its forehead. The racket is unbelievable, and the room itself seems to shriek in pain. The wind zips frantically around the room before at last diving over Dawn's shoulder and disappearing out the door with what Dawn could *swear* was the glad cry of a boy. When all falls quiet again, the floor is strewn with wickedly sharp shards of crystal and the room reeks of smoldering bone. A thin pall of smoke drifts towards the ceiling. Only a few bottles remain in the twisted and broken honeycomb strip that rings the room: the three remaining sealed bottles, miraculously (magically?) intact, and a few mostly-shattered bottles whose pieces remain stubbornly lodged in their silver and ivory settings. Dawn watches the destruction with an expression of something like glee. Though he flinches away from each explosion of crystal, by the time it is done, his exposed skin is bleeding from dozens of tiny lacerations, and his clothes glitter with embedded remnants. He laughs as the soul escapes out the door, and pulls a somewhat tattered cloth from his pocket to mop his face and hands of blood as casually as if it were nothing more than sweat. He laughs again, as if he had found some catharsis in the wreckage, and looks around the room. Everything breakable, he notes, has either already been broken, or seems to be adequately shielded, and so he does not bother to take these items out of the room before approaching the next sealed bottle. The tip of his knife is touching the seal, and then he hesitates. Almost reluctantly, he summons a protective spell to shield him from further flying shards. And then he pops the seal, an anticipatory gleam already shining in his eyes. After the last symphony of explosions, this release is decidedly anticlimactic. The mage-lights in the room flicker briefly, as does (perhaps more disturbingly, for Dawn) the golden light of the portal behind him. The magic builds, and tries again, fruitlessly, to bind the free-flying soul into the useless bottle shards remaining. The last few, hardy, empty fragments that remained somewhat intact explode under the renewed pressure. Dawn is saved from losing an eye to a flying shard by his protective spell, which bounces it harmlessly away in the last crucial seconds. This spirit-wind seems less energetic than the last; it meanders as it circles the room in its search for an exit, and circles Dawn twice like a curious animal before veering out the door with a soft, sad sigh. A faint scent of orange blossoms drifts in the wake of the departing breeze. Two bottles are left, and the mage-lights in the room appear dimmer, muted. Dawn is disappointed, if not terribly surprised, that this second wave of destruction is less impressive. He IS rather disturbed by the diminishing magic, and when the soul has departed, he puts his knife away and mops his face again (head-wounds are SO messy, even when they're negligible) and looks around the room. "Fred, you fuckhead... I should've known you wouldn't have actually invested in a permanency spell." He looks around the room again. "It's all going to be fucking lost, isn't it? And me, too, if I'm not careful. Hah." He walks around the room slowly, silently appraising the remaining treasures. He picks up a gorgeously-carved teakwood box from Bonesteel's collection and fills it with the most unusual rocks and the biggest, clearest gems from the unknown geologist's stash. (He verifies that everything in the box is non-magical, then cancels his active spells and strips off all his magical gear before handling the bottle of nulling sand, nestling it carefully in the middle of the box.) He takes this box back out to the warehouse, and goes back into the treasure room. Dawn puts his gear back on, and finds an enormous, wide-mouthed vase made of stone that was sturdy enough to withstand the explosions. He sets it in the center of the room, and casts a magic-detection spell. He turns slowly on his heel, then walks through the room to look behind and under things, making note of the magic items (well, those remaining, as he surely removed a few on his first pass through, while Ellie was sleeping), and their telltale auras. He collects as many of these as he can, starting with the strongest or most unusual, piling them in the stone vase. He grunts at the weight when he picks the vase back up, but lugs it back out to the warehouse (setting it a fair distance from the box containing the nulling sand, just in case). After a pause for breath, he picks up the remaining containers, and fills them with the best of the jewels and art, relying on his thief's eye to pick out those which will sell high. He picks out two or three of Bonesteel's rugs that he likes best, rolls them up, and moves them into the warehouse as well. When he's done, he stops to survey his efforts. He's made a reasonable dent in the treasure, though its volume isn't reduced as much as he could have hoped. Bonesteel's lovely furniture is a lost cause -- he doesn't have enough room in the warehouse for it, not with the Box opened. He wonders briefly how Bonesteel got it in there, then shrugs. He considers attempting a teleport, but eyes the dimmed magelights and decides it would probably be dangerous to experiment too much. It's not as if he hasn't already recovered several lifetimes' worth of fortune, right? Right? He looks around, sighs, and stuff just one more necklace into his pocket before returning to the problem of the trapped souls. Well, maybe the matching bracelet, too. Dawn eyes the last two cells for some time, his mind working. He picks up the broken plug from the previous release and pokes at it for a few minutes, testing its similarity to wax and measuring its thickness. He goes back into his workshop and fishes out a contraption he's been working on for Bienca -- a dagger with a grappling hook concealed in the hilt. The claws of the hook curve around a round stone to form the pommel. The contraption isn't working very well, yet -- the hidden catch that opens the claws works perfectly, but the hook is so small, it has a tendency to break when Dawn tugs on the rope to set it. Luckily, he won't need more than a few pounds of pressure for this. He pops the catch and puts the pommel-stone in his pocket, and pulls the line free. He finds the cell-soul furthest from the door, and carefully sinks the grapple's hooks *almost* all the way into the plug. He backs as far away from the cell as the dagger's line will allow, almost to the room's door. With a quick, sharp tug, he pulls the grapple taut and sets it -- and then he pulls more steadily, hoping that the entire plug will pop out at once, or at least be damaged enough to break the seal. This seal must have been a little looser-- perhaps older?-- than the others, and it pops out under the steady, gentle pressure, without the carving and digging the fresher seals required. There is an agonized groan of stressed timbers, and lights go out. The magic rises and fails with no additional fanfare of violence; there are no vials even remotely intact enough for the magic to latch onto. The portal behind Dawn flickers out for a heart-stopping moment and comes back steady, providing a dim, golden wash of illumination into the room. In the darkness, a small, pale, crepuscular ball of light drifts free of its prison on the far wall. The light does not have the even glow of magical illumination; the light is patchy, ragged, almost moth-eaten. It tries to rise, moving in an erratic path towards the ceiling, but falters and sinks slowly earthward again. It appears confused, or perhaps injured, flickering dimly as it bumbles its way towards the door. The light makes it about halfway across the room and pauses, brightening a little again as it stills as if it needed to stop and catch its metaphysical breath. It continues on towards the door, almost touching the floor now, slower and slower as it approaches. About two feet short of the door-- almost at Dawn's feet-- the corpse-light flickers one last time and winks out. The air is still and silent; not even the faintest of breezes stirred the hem of Dawn's cloak. One jar remains, its stoppered mouth gleaming faintly. It is composed of clear rock crystal and close enough to the door that, even in the faint wash of light from the gate spell, Dawn can see the smoke within roiling madly. Dawn takes even more care with the last cell. He uncoils the line and backs entirely out of the portal before he even pulls the grapple taut. He gives the piles of treasure a last look, then sighs. "No help for it, really." He looks around, making sure he doesn't even have a foot inside the portal, and then pulls the seal free. Dawn watches events unfold through the shimmering field of the portal. The grappling line appears to kink as it passes through the portal's surface, much as water "bends" a fishing line. And perhaps the analogy is apt, as getting this seal to move is about as easy as setting a hook in the mouth of a wary bass. A steady tug doesn't do it; Dawn has to tease the line back and forth carefully, working the hook's little claws side to side in the waxy plug until one manages to pierce all the way through and lock around the solid mass of whatever-it-is blocking the mouth of the bottle. A sharp tug nearly dislodges the bottle from its alcove, and the floor rumbles ominously. Whatever Fred's purpose was in capturing souls, it seems to be directly tied to the stability of this artifact. At the last moment, a bit of silver fretting restrains the curved body of the bottle, and the plug pops free. All hell breaks loose in the Treasure Room. The portal flares and dims wildly, and even out here in the Box's "foyer," Dawn can feel the warp and pull of strong magics gone horribly awry. Twin shrieks battle their way up the scale. One grows louder as it approaches Dawn: the freed spirit, blazing with cold fire and shedding fragments of solid light like blood as it spins wildly around the room, a tempest seeking exit from its teapot prison. At last, it finds the door and barrels through it with a ragged scream, blowing Dawn's hair back and sending a shock of icy cold through his body as it passes straight through him. The stressed shrieking of the room, grating already, grows to unbearable levels. Ivory pillars shatter; silver walls crumple like paper as the pocket dimension collapses into itself. The portal flares again, blindingly bright, and a gout of gold coins, jewels, and fragments of shattered furniture and mangled treasures spews out of it onto the warehouse floor. Squinting his eyes, Dawn gets a last look at the rest of the treasure sliding into a gaping black void opening in the Treasure Room floor before the portal winks out for good. The Box continues to collapse as Dawn stands clear of the carnage, sucking its satellite bits back into itself and closing down to its original size. A wide band of silver narrowly misses Dawn's head as a cyclone of failing magic draws it back inside. Distantly, Dawn can still hear rending and crashing, as if someone were tearing down a building a block away. The last piece disappears and the tortured sounds of destruction cut off suddenly as the Box snaps closed with a faint "click." For a moment, the Box hovers in mid-air, gleaming and perfect. Then it falls, breaking into its component parts even before it hits the ground. A little shower of silver and bone patters to the floor. Dawn stands stock-still for a long few minutes, even after all is quiet, panting softly through the remnants of the adrenaline rush. In perfect silence, he steps through the vomited detritus of treasure and nudges the pieces of the Box with the toe of his boot. He draws one long, slow breath. Another. Finally, he shoves his fingers through his tangled mop of hair and scratches at his face. "Necromancers," he says, his voice quietly disdainful. "Do you all have to be such fucking drama queens?" He picks up the pieces of the Box and takes them into his office. For several long moments, he sits at his desk, looking at the pieces, his expression unreadable. Finally, he shakes all over like a wet dog and goes into the house. "Calis? Calis! Dammit, where did you *go*, boy? CALIS!" "Dawn?" Calis' voice drifts down from the second level, where the bedrooms are. Dawn tracks footsteps as they come along the hall, down the stairs... "Did you call me? I was just reading this--" Calis stops short as he sees Dawn, his mouth and eyes both opening into perfect round Os of astonishment. "What? Don't just stand there like that, what the fuck-" Dawn turns and catches his faint reflection in a glass display case, and falls silent. He turns and runs into Jethell's room and snatches up a silver mirror that they'd put in there so the baby could smile at his reflection. Dawn does not smile. Inside the brightly-painted frame, his face is dotted with drops of dried blood, and under the blood, he appears to have aged most of a decade. His skin is slack, his eyes and cheeks hollow as if he hasn't eaten for a fortnight, the dark blonde stubble of his beard tinged with grey at the extremities. Calis peers uncertainly into the room while Dawn is examining his features. "Master Dawn?" Calis must be frightened; he hasn't appended a "Master" onto Dawn's name in months. "Are you all right?" Dawn closes his eyes, takes a breath, and opens them again. "I will be. I think. I'm going to go wash up and change clothes. I want you to go out into the warehouse. There's a big mess on the floor. Clean it up. Don't throw anything away, just... sort it into piles. Don't touch the stuff in the big stone vase, or the stuff stacked around it. Just the loose stuff on the floor. Be careful; there's these shards of crystal everywhere, and they're very fucking sharp. Got it?" Calis nods briskly and backs out of the room. Dawn goes to the door and listens until he hears Calis's gasp of surprise at seeing the treasure. With a faint smile, he heads for the room he shares with Bienca. An hour or so later, he emerges feeling -- and looking -- much better. He still looks half-starved and subtly older than when he got out of bed in the morning, but not so much hovering at death's door. He fixes himself a substantial snack, and stops in at the warehouse. Calis is almost done sorting the random stuff on the floor, so he suggests that when he's done, he could sort through the other mundane items as well. He moves the magical things to his own office/workshop so the boy won't accidentally trigger any of them, and then settles down to the fun part: figuring out what they *do*. Dawn's new collection of magic items-- or, at least, items with spells on them of some sort-- represents a surprisingly small portion of the total treasure, tho' given the *amount* of treasure that was in the room, that's not saying a great deal. The items are still many and wildly varied. A hefty percentage of the enchanted jewelry-- items that look like they would fetch a tasty enough price even mundanely-- turn out to have been merely enspelled against theft. A collection of delicate-looking porcelain jars and figurines that somehow survived the destruction of the Treasure Room are permanently enspelled against breakage. Dawn sets the protected stuff aside, secure in the knowledge that if it was valuable enough to be worth protecting, then it must be pretty valuable indeed. There is the usual assortment of protective or enhancing rings and pendants and suchlike. The strongest of these appear to be a ring of feather-fall-- handy in Bie's line of work, one would think-- a wide collar of heavy steel links that provides protection equivalent to light chain mail, and an opal pendant that enhances the wearer's beauty. A little stone horse Dawn first took to be a child's toy proves to have a transportation spell on it that will provide the user with a wizard-steed twice a day. Dawn tests each item and tags them with a slip of paper on which he jots coded use-notes. Bonesteel's collection contains very little in the way of magical items; his tastes ran more towards fine art and antique furniture, neither of which made it through the Treasure Room's destruction terribly well, and many of his magic items were not impressive enough to make Dawn's short list (although he couldn't pass up the set of self-lighting candlesticks). Sylvia's box, on the other hand, contains a number of small and beautiful toys, magical and otherwise. A small box of onyx and jade reveals four different gaming boards, depending on the way it is opened; the pieces are neatly stowed within. An egg-shaped puzzle made of gold and jewels (and most likely worth a small fortune) unlocks to reveal a tiny but lifelike illusory image within: a winter scene with dozens of children sporting in the snow around a grand palace crowned with golden, onion-shaped domes. Sylvia owned several puzzle-boxes, many with some manner of magical treat as the "prize" for solving them, although none match the complexity or danger of the Box. Dawn works through two puzzles and then, before he can be tempted into further distractions, puts them away. (No, really. Away. Out of sight.) Very few of the world traveller's collection proved to be magical, although whoever-it-was had exquisite taste. Two of the Malatran jades are revealed to have some sort of priestly use. One has a healing aura; another provides a radius of protection against evil (although perhaps it didn't do the best job of it, to have wound up where it did). Dawn stumbles across the healing one almost accidentally -- turning the statue over, searching for simple visual clues prior to casting any sort of divination spells, he happens to notice that the lacerations on the backs of his hands look less inflamed. He looks at his hands more closely, and sees that a couple of the smaller cuts have already closed; before his eyes the scars fade from pink to white and then disappear entirely. The healing provides enough direction that his identification of the other statue is swift. He tucks both into a pocket as he works. The winged serpent statue likewise seems to be a powerful blessing piece of some sort. The necklace of coral and pearls allows the wearer to breathe underwater. A rather plain-looking stoppered brass bottle fashioned in the Zakharan style appears to have some powerful containment magics on it; Dawn sets it aside unopened, wary of releasing whatever might be inside without further study. The geologist's collection appears to defy identification. Although several of the stones appear magical (or strongly inimical to magic, as with the mysterious bottle of sand), only two prove to have active spells laid upon them: the floating bit of rock, unsurprisingly, had a permanent levitation spell upon it, though for what purpose Dawn can't fathom. Though he can't imagine why someone would have expended the effort and energy necessary to make a rock float permanently, he can envision a few uses for it, now that it's been done. He locks the rock up, and an almost whimsical grin decorates his expression as he jots down his notes. A cut stone of cinnabar veined with gold simply reeks with transmutation spells. (Tests also show the surface of it to be highly toxic, so Dawn has reason to be glad of the precautions he's been taking, such as handling things with gloves.) Dawn frowns at the collection for a little while, and decides to try a slightly different tack. He casts an Appraisal spell and looks over the collection slowly once again. This time, he learns a great deal more. The ugly, pitted, black stone is revealed to be a piece of the Tears of Selune-- in other words, a meteorite from one of the moon's celestial hangers-on. The dark purple crystal is mined only in the Underdark, and radiates light in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. The iron lump is a lodestone, of the quality only found from the Mountain of Iron in the Hordelands. The double-pointed, silvery-white rod is revealed as a particularly fine specimen of the rare, naturally-occurring mithril crystal. The fire opal likewise appraises very highly; it is the sort of higher-quality stone favored by salamanders for their nests. The enormous black pearl is not a pearl at all, but the fossilized egg of an amethyst dragon. Dawn grins widely as he scrawls his notes. Each of the rocks and stones will be worth a fortune, sold to the right buyers -- the ones he doesn't keep for magical research, at least. When he's finished with the items that are likely to be benevolent in purpose, he carefully sets out Fred's items, both magical and mundane. The mundane items he checks for traps -- and then double-checks. The magical items, given Fred's talent for contraptions, he checks for traps as well, before submitting them to magical examination. Three of the items Dawn retrieved from Fred's collection appear to be completely mundane. The black crystal dragon statuette is, for the most part, no more than what it looks like, although an intriguing poison-delivery system inside of it would make it a very short-lived housewarming gift. A lingering aura of priestly magic suggests that it was used as an object of veneration at one time, but it has no active magic upon it now. Dawn recognizes a handsome ring of understated wealth and elegance as Chondathi manufacture-- and so triple-checks it for traps. The tiny, poison-tipped hollow needle would have been very easy to miss otherwise, hidden at an acute angle in the stone's setting. Merely putting the ring on would not be enough to activate it, but if the wearer were inclined to toy with his rings and turn them around his finger, he'd be dead within hours. The little wooden box is a puzzle... literally. Although purely mechanical and nowhere near as complex as the Box, this little bit of wood seems just as determined to kill him. Dawn carefully disables all manner of poison, spring-loaded, and projectile traps before realizing that this little box is a veritable three-dimensional encyclopedia of Fred's trap inventions. Dawn narrowly misses getting his fingers broken by the powerful springtail trap, and then the top twists open. Dawn peers within to discover... a small, moldy, almost fossilized morsel of cheese. Dawn chuckles, and turns his wary attention to Fred's collection of magical items. A bespelled case of exotic tropical woods proves to be wizard-locked... and trapped six ways to Seven-day on top of that. The map within appears to be a survey of Chult's water system, strangely enough. A stylized yuan-ti snake being points the way north on one corner of the map. Wells and cisterns in various towns are marked with depth indications, and such odd names as "Small Teeth," "Dragon Turtle," and "Winding Serpent." Some are connected by wavy blue lines, presumably indicating the stream or aqueduct between them. Dawn frowns and turns to the next item, a crystal skull, which turns out to be a simple scrying crystal-- perhaps the most mundane magic of any of Fred's things, although it also seems to have a permanent "Speak with Dead" spell associated with it, as well. Dawn eyes the Mulhorandi scarab amulet and opts to pass it over for now, as legend has it that most such items are cursed. The ruined kris knife draws Dawn's eye, and he spares a moment of contempt for the person who destroyed a perfectly good blade by failing to clean it properly... until he realizes that it is not the blade that's magical, but the blood *on* the blade. Dawn sets it cautiously to one side until he can identify what-- or who-- the knife might last have been used upon. A necklace of black and blood-red stones is the next item to hand. The quality of the piece-- both in craftsmanship and the value of the stones-- appears excellent. But some finely-tuned instinct warns Dawn to proceed cautiously, and he inspects the stones with great care before even attempting to put the necklace on to identify it. At first glance, the immense, smooth-polished stones appear to be rubies of the first water. The settings are simple, antiqued to an almost pewter cast to show off the dark beauty of the jewels. Dawn triple-checks the settings for traps or needles, but finds none. Still, his sense of not-rightness keeps drawing him back to the rubies. He turns the necklace over carefully and inspects the back of the stones with bright light and a jeweller's loupe. Under magnification, Dawn realizes that the backs of the stones aren't *quite* smooth. In fact, those tiny, serrated ridges ringing the bottom of each stone remind him of nothing so much as very small, very sharp teeth-- Dawn rears back suddenly as a tiny movement of the stone catches him by surprise. Right. Either he's been going too long without sleep-- which he has, but never mind that-- or the red stone under his lens had just *pulsed* when he breathed on it. Dawn uses his pencil to lift the necklace again, depositing it this time into a small but sturdy lockbox and closing the lid. Time enough later to find out *exactly* what the necklace is... but meanwhile, he doesn't intend to have the thing moving around in his workroom in the dark. One item remains from Fred's stash: a long rod of some pale wood twined with two carved stone snakes along its length, one black, one white. The snakes' heads curve up from the end of the rod to regard each other like mismatched bull's horns, and the entire shaft of the rod is covered in strange pictograms. It looks quite old, and like nothing Dawn has ever seen before. He eyes it uneasily for a long moment before picking it up and divining the activation word for it. He is surprised to discover that there are not one but two activation words. One word per snake...? Dawn eyes the rod uneasily and ponders the wisdom of trying it out, given where he found it. Dawn yawns widely and comes to the rather jarring conclusion that he's been at this, without break, straight through the afternoon and night. He puts everything away, cleans up his workspace, and sets his wards. He rigs an assortment of traps, then retreats to bed and sleeps dreamless for most of a day. When he wakes, he locks himself in his library, and spends a day perusing his references in search of anything that might provide clues concerning the remaining unidentified items. |
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