Before I could muster the courage to touch the crystal the others defeated the smoking Percy and returned to the hallway. Then one of the Gems on the door lit up and we realized that we needed to defeat the other rooms to open the door. Almost immediately Bumble and Ravi touched the painting of a clock and returned to the hallway a minute later lighting the next crystal. All the while Alexander and I argued over which of the other two paintings to choose. By the time the others returned we had chosen the water painting. It was a room with 4 deep pools of water with 2 leavers at the bottom of each pool. As we tried to figure it out Bumble joined us. Each pool triggered a trap if the wrong leaver was pulled as Bumble found out, since he doesn't need to breathe he was the obvious choice to pull the leavers. One of the pools created undead that Alexander had a fun time destroying. Then I realized I could use a mage hand to pull the leavers without entering the pools and solve the room. Everyone entered the Lava painting as that looked the scariest. It was a room with furniture and lava began to fill the room. We had to navigate the room by jumping from furniture to furniture to get to the locked exit. Ravi broke his magic sword trying to smash open the lock but it was Bumble that found the book on a shelf that opened the door. Then Ravi dove into the Lava to get the broken piece of his sword and swam out of the room severely injured.
Once all the gems lit up we were able to open the doors at both ends of the hallway only to find a Beholder as our final test. As it turns out Alexander has Aboraphobia, a fear of Aborations, and immediately ran back to the ship! Then Ravi was disintegrated by one of the eye beams followed shortly after by Ignia. Out of desperation I accidentally triggered a wild magic surge during the fight. I was able to keep dodging its disintegration rays and with Bumble's help, we killed the beholder. Then the wild magic energy jumped out of me into Ignia reincarnating her from a Kobold into a Gnome! that's going to be awkward around family dinner next Winterfest.
Then we entered the library and met the librarian which was a magically animated Quill. We found out that the group we are after had already visited the library and magically cut some pages out of one of the books. We also found out from talking with Quill that the other group is called “The Cult of Nature's Death” and believes that nature is getting in the way of the way life should be. I borrowed the book “How to understand the planes” and the others borrowed other books and stuff.
We then began to head back to Whitestone to figure out what to do next and on the way we were almost hit by what we thought was a meteor. It turned out to be a person from the sky called Aleph Nautilus.
