The light fades as Erudisia crumples. Her mind sees flashes of her home, her youth. Her eldest brother is a child, her youngest brother a babe in swaddling. Her father smiles at her, and her mother in a summer aspect is as warm as love can be. 

Something isn’t right. 

Death roll: 3

Bell -- First Death Save Roll:  14     [success]

The gnome from the House of the Binder produces a small multi-tool from his pocket and begins to work on the silver music box in the spine of the book. After a few moments, he leans into the project, using the tool to bend out the dent in the device. Meredith sees him smile in delight as a soft ‘click’ punctuates the concentrated silence in the Temple.

“That should do it,” his little voice pipes. “Let’s see what else this thing has to say.” He winds the music box and releases it. The contraption plays and the pop-up scenes display as they had before. The mechanized scenes featuring cutout figurines of members of a family dying in a series of grisly ways play out while a shadowy figure looks on. But rather than sticking and clicking at the end, the little mechanical voice sings another verse, so far unheard, and another pop-up displays. The newly revealed scene depicts the daughter of the family, watching in grateful triumph as the shadow is destroyed under an enormous, heavy millstone.

See a daughter grinding grain

Wish the spirit’s time was through

Trap set for the shadow bane

Her millstone killed it true

Erudisia and Bell, you both awaken one round later, Little One’s huge face staring at you. He has fed each of you a potion of healing (2d4+2 HP healing each).

“Keeper of Emerald Door give me healing potions for you!,” he grunts, eyes flicking in horror to the door to Crinkle’s room then back to you. “She send me down. She fighting Shemshime shadow now! Must help her! Come, come! Stairs too narrow for me to carry you up!”

You are both conscious. In the near distance, you hear crackling electricity and in your minds, the echo of Shemshime’s insane laughter.

[8 hp healing]

Erudisia stands groggily. She blinks blearily at Little One and Bell, then smiles in delight and hugs his tree trunk like arm, then rushes to help Bell stand also. 

“Little One, this monster. She cannot be killed, we are missing something. Some key fact. We need to approach this like scholars, not brutes.”

She swallows nervously, and her legs are shaky, but still she says, “we must help the Keeper, but we must keep our eyes peeled. This cannot be as simple as brute force, the spirit itself has told us!” 

*Yoink*

" Thanks!", said Meredith as she grabbed the book from the gnome and began running back toward the cellar with it trying to think if she had seen any handy millstones around anywhere......not that she had any idea how she'd lift one, but first things first......

Perception- 11

Meredith rushes back to the Firefly Cellar, descends the spiral staircase down to the Lower Floor. She arrives there at the eastern end of the Lower Floor at the same moment that Erudisia and Bell arrive at the western end of the same level after climbing, with shaky legs, the staircase up from the basement living area with Little One bringing up the rear.

As all three of you approached, you heard the sounds of mystical battle, grunts of effort and pain from Valna Oxylanthrinn, and felt the goosebump-chilling sense of dread that marks the presence of Shemshime, the feeling that something terrible is about to happen.

When you arrive at opposite ends of the room, you all see Valna, Crinkle, Ebder and Gailby huddled together on the floor to one side of the room. Gailby is crying, Ebder wrapping his arm around her though plainly terrified, and Crinkle shivers in fear. In the center of the room, the Keeper of the Emerald Door floats above the study table, just under the huge carved-stone book statue hanging from rusted chains from the center of the ceiling thirty feet above.

Valna’s gonfalon-staff crackles with lightning and a pair of bolts streak out from it, twisting in an instant around the shadow’s arms and legs, restraining it and threatening to pull it apart. But you hear, in your minds, the sound of Shemshime laughing grotesquely. His form makes strange angles in the corners of the stacks, his eyes leering and enormous, and your heads throb as he launches a psychic attack at the Keeper! Valna suddenly drops to the ground, her staff clattering to one side. She grasps her head in pain, reeling and dazed.

A map:

You three may now act.

5 healed

Bell rolls on her side and spasms for a moment before groaning and sitting up.   "I do not know what just happened but I hope to never have it happen again."    

Listening to Little One, she gets herself up and aids Erudisia as they go staggering toward the stairs.