"That's not great," Evy says.

"I don't know what to do but keep moving forward." Val says, feeling a little defeated. "The impossibly magical tunnels are going to be the death of us."

After a long sigh, Val sheaths his blade and removes his war pick for its belt loop. He stares at the wall of the tunnel just next to him for a moment and says to Evy: "Maybe we can make our own way? Let me see what happens..." He then begins hitting the wall with his mundane weapon, hoping to use the battle pick as a regular mining pick for this experiment.

(Val’s detect magic has a number of uses, right? It’s not unlimited?)

OOC: Yeah, I only have one use left, and it is not exactly the same thing as detect magic. They nerfed it.

OOC > I kinda wish Warlocks had a Wild Magic option.

Five athletics checks for Val: 25 26 25 11 12

Val begins hammering away at the wall with his pick. After about 30 minutes, he's made quite a dent in the wall (and a mess on the floor), but he's beginning to wonder how much more his weapon can take.

Val pauses and turns to Evy: "It all seems and feels pretty real even if we know it isn't completely feasible. I am not sure what else this may accomplish... Any ideas?"

“I’m not sure we could leave now even if we wanted to,” she shrugs, glancing back over her shoulder. “ Maybe prepare to beat on that armor the same way as you’ve attacked the wall?” She ignites her hand, Readying a firebolt as she pushes Val lightly in the direction of the suit of armor.

"We can only keep fighting like this for so long," Val says as he moves toward the armor. "Why don't you preemptively blast it from a distance and we can have it come to us?"

If she agrees, Val will then ready an attack once he reaches a distance from the armor that would allow it to reach him after being blasted.

“Fair,” she says. “But if we’re doing that, we can back up a lot.” She will back up as far as she can go and still target the armor.

Spell range is 120’

Once Val has joined her, she will let a firebolt go at the suit down the hall.

Attack: 23 Damage: 6

(That probably misses, but I’ll wait to post another shot in case a near miss causes the armor to do something.)

You just turned a corner, and the armor is 60 feet away. If you "back up" any further, you'll be around the corner and won't be able to see the armor.

Val moves back to stand beside Evy, and the female cousin throws a fireball at the armor. As the projectile is about to make contact, the armor runs to the right, disappearing around a corner at the end of the hallway. Before the cousins can say anything, a voice echoes down the hall: "At my heels you nip in this game we play. But cursed is the maze, and lost am I. So who’s chasing whom? Oh, who’s to say? The front is the back. Hello is goodbye."

"Oh boy..." Val says surprised. "We found an... armored poet? And they just stood there silently for half-an-hour while I picked at the wall? Strange."

Turning to Evy, he asks: "Do we give chase or do we run back toward the way we came? That's sort of what he was hinting at, right?"

"My first instinct is to help it... him? To work together, but it runs from us, and I'm too angry to chase. Let's see if we can go back, though I doubt it will be that easy." Evy runs her hand through her hair in frustration.

She will turn around and try to retrace their steps.

Evy turns before Val to head back down the hallway and finds it has changed without them realizing it. Now, she stands at the entrance to a large, empty room with walls the same as the hallways they have been navigating and a high ceiling — all still seemingly illuminated by candlelight, but with no candles in view. The suit of armor is standing in a doorway on the opposite side of the room. "You solved my first riddle," it says. "Now can you find the missing piece to finish my collection?" It points upward toward three shelves above the doorway you hadn't noticed before. The armor then turns and steps through the doorway. A door immediately closes behind it. Looking back at the shelves, the first two shelves each have two small statues, and the third one has only one statue.

With a sigh, saying something foul under her breath, Evy goes to examine all five statues, without touching them.

"I don't think we have ever solved a riddle this quickly." Val says in a pleasantly surprised tone. That said, it is obvious judging by his facial expression that Val is not amused to see yet another new room simply by turning around. If they solved a riddle, shouldn't this place start making more sense?

Val keeps close to his cousin, trying to point out any details of the statues which she might overlook at first glance.

On the first shelf are a man with a crown and a bag of coins. On the second shelf are a woman with a crown and a jar of honey. On the third shelf is a common woman wearing an apron and an empty space for a second statue.

As Evy is puzzling over the statues, Val impatiently looks to the side and sees that a large table covered with many small statues has appeared. Atop are a cake, a pie, a spinning wheel, a basket of laundry, a plate with a steak, a toy soldier, a sword, and a murder of crow sculptures.

When Val points that out to her, Evy goes to look at those statues, too. Then she starts to think out loud.

"Okay, king with coins, sure. Queen with honey, though... is she a queen bee? And then the... um, common woman. Hm. How about... King, queen, commoner. Coins, honey... I mean, I like the murder of crows best, so I'd be happy to pick that one, but I doubt it's right. Then, we could just throw it all to the Hells. Put the King and the queen together. The commoner with, I don't know, the spinning wheel? The crows with the pie, there's that old nursery rhyme about crows coming out of Beelzebub's pie..."

She glances at Val to see if he is inspired, at all.

"The missing piece to finish his collection... that suggests that we need one piece, and it completes something. Others I might just chuck the coins and the honey on the table and leave the three people, they're a set."

"Looking back at the shelves, the first two shelves each have two small statues, and the third one has only one statue."

So the first shelf has two statues, one of a man with a crown (on head or hands?) and one of a man with a bag of coins. Is that right? Similarly, the second shelf has a statue of a woman with a crown and a second statue of a woman carrying honey, right?