Aishin asked quietly, "Before you light it should Match and I enter the stone and leave it down there for the two of you to retreat into? What if the whole tower falls?"
"I think that's a good idea," Shrubbery whispered nervously.
"I'm small enough to wait down there with them," MatchlessMinion argued. "You go in first."
"Ok," Aishin agreed after a moment. He entered the stone where the dolphin waited, and MatchlessMinion snatched it up and dropped through the hole. He bounced up from where he'd landed and scurried over to Shrubbery.
Shrubbery said softly, "Ok, light it, and I'll begin."
Danika set her spark cantrip on the pile of fabric, oils, and small pieces of wax in a half a dozen spots before flames began to rise enthusiastically. She hurriedly devoured more candy as she began casting a continuous chain of light cantrips beside Shrubbery, and she activated her dazzling for good measure.
Shrubbery seemed to bloom in the light and she hummed to the wooden pillar which began to creak and groan and suddenly half a dozen of the support staves that pressed against the pillar shattered. MatchlessMinion was fast enough to block the worst of the debris from Shrubbery's back with his own cloak covered back.
Shrubbery was cut in several other places, but her hum didn't falter as she encouraged the pillar to grow roots again and flex itself against the ice, until finally it split open like a tree bent too far in a storm. She stopped humming for a moment and cast her growth spell on the pillar before continuing.
New branches began to slide out of the crack a minute later, pushing a gleaming ice staff forward with their progress. A moment later the Turtle's staff vanished.
Shrubbery sagged against the revived tree, and MatchlessMinion pressed the stone against her and yelled, "Say the entrance word!"
Shrubbery barely whispered a weak "darkheart". She vanished just as a vibration passed through the ground, and ZipZing and MatchlessMinion exchanged a quick glance.
"Go in," Danika commanded. "I'll try to carry everyone out again!"
MatchlessMinion nodded and said firmly, "Darkheart."
Danika zipped over and snatched up the light stone first, and then the dark stone that held the room. After a moment she stuffed the light stone into her inventory and used her featherweight on the dark stone and her own dazzle to navigate out of the dark space.
Before she'd gotten any farther, SaltySiamese's cat messenger appeared and emitted an anxious and demanding meow. The message read, "You should all stop and hide inside your stone! The whole fortress is going to burn down in a minute!"
Danika dropped to the floor and entered the stone, coming out inside the room nose to nose with a very startled looking plushy rodent face. MatchlessMinion asked quickly, "You got her message?"
Danika nodded. "Yeah. How's Shrubbery doing?"
"I'm ok," Shrubbery herself replied.
Danika turned and saw that she was sipping on a potion and did look much better already.
Aishin said speculatively, "So probably Justin the Grey is going to cast his meteor shower and raze the whole fortress?" Danika shot him a glance and he winked at her, and said, "It's ok that one of your friends took a contract on me ZipZing, it wasn't personal."
Danika objected, "He wasn't one of my friends then, and technically he still isn't. Only Quin has ever sent a friend request." She looked at MatchlessMinion and Shrubbery and added quickly, "Not that I have anything against Justin."
Shrubbery giggled and asked, "But you have something for someone else?"
Danika replied thoughtfully, "I guess I kind of have something against that Callie Kyo and her guild?"
Shrubbery rolled her eyes and Aishin grinned, while MatchlessMinion asked sharply, "Oh? When do we go looking for them?"
Aishin complained, "She didn't seem to want to take revenge."
Danika shrugged and agreed, "It doesn't seem important."
SaltySiamese's messenger cat appeared again and delivered a small note to MatchlessMinion, who made a face and said, "She's asking if we're still alive, and ordering us not to come out until she says it's ok. Should I say 'No, we all died! You killed us!'?"
"We don't know if they've killed us yet," Danika pointed out. "We have no way to tell where the stone is and what's going on outside of it. What if it's at the bottom of a pool of lava now?"
"You are not going out first," Aishin declared.
"Wow you're bossy," Sea Song Tione commented.
The dolphin had been so quiet that Danika had almost forgotten his presence, and she blinked at him in surprise, while Aishin froze. After a moment he said contritely, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I'm ordering you around ZipZing. It's just that you don't have enough Karma left to revive anymore."
MatchlessMinion said, "If you're wondering, I don't think you should be allowed to go out first either ZipZing."
Shrubbery nodded.
Danika laughed and replied, "Fine, I'll let you all protect me." She looked at the dolphin and asked, "Were you working on your songs again?"
"I was!" Sea Song Tione replied with enthusiasm. His voice fell when he added, "But I can't think of the right phrase to describe the power of the Turtle's staff and have it go with 'in the heart of the dying tree'."
Aishin asked with interest, "Can you sing the part you have finished?"
The dolphin obliged, and Aishin suggested a couple of alternate lines. One of his suggestions made Sea Song Tione say, "Oh, if I go at it that way…" He went silent again for awhile, and they left him to his composing, and talked quietly of other things. Danika felt surprised again by how realistic the NPCs could be, and kind of wanted to ask Aishin what he thought about the bardic composing the dolphin portrayed, but it seemed intrusive.
Finally SaltySiamese's cat returned with another message: "The fires are dying down, where should we look for you?"
MatchlessMinion sent back: "We were underneath the ground floor of the central tower when you ordered us to hide."
Her reply a moment later was: "Quin and I will look for magic in the debris around the tree that appeared there."
Danika asked questioningly, "They burned everything down, but the pillar kept growing?"
Shrubbery said suddenly, "Then I should be the one to check, if we're inside of the tree, it won't hurt me."
MatchlessMinion scrunched up his little furry face and grumbled, "I guess that's logical, but come right back in and report, don't wander around."
Shrubbery grinned at him and replied gently, "Alright." She reached out and touched the center stone and whispered "exit" without waiting. Before they even had time to get nervous, she was back. "It's ok, come out. We are on a branch, but it's not high, and they were all searching right below us."
The entire party followed her back out of the stone room a moment later. Danika even managed to hit Sea Song Tione with another featherweight spell as he rolled off the branch, before he landed on Quin. Salty Siamese shouted, "You won't believe how much Karma Justin got!"
Danika flew a bit higher and surveyed the smoking ruin of the goblin fortress as the sun rose and the twelfth night of the 12 Days of Goblins event ended. A large tree grew where the central tower had stood. Judging from its size, it looked like it had been growing for hundreds of years. Dryad gardeners were obviously a force to be reckoned with as far as trees were concerned.
People were everywhere, looting goblin bodies, and even the bodies of other players who hadn't been able to revive. In some places they were arguing, in others groups were working together industriously. There wasn't a living goblin in sight. She brought up her menu lens and looked down. Justin wore a red PVP flag and had over six thousand Karma, but no one seemed willing to approach him aside from his own party members.
"Speaking of Karma," Aishin said quickly, "we need a priest who can perform a Balancing."
Justin blinked at him, and then narrowed his eyes. "One is already on the way," he declared, "he's a friend of mine, but he'll do a fair job."
Aishin turned and told Justin seriously, "A friend of yours is fine as long as he doesn't try to kill me. It's not like they can cheat on a Balancing. But I need to give ZipZing some of my Karma while I've got extra from the goblin event, so that she's got enough to revive if she needs to. I owe her."
"It's fine," Danika objected.
Quin laughed. "Justin, you idiot, you didn't tell them what we plan to do," he said with amusement.
Justin grimaced, and then laughed ruefully. "True. She'll have plenty of Karma soon, because we called for a priest of the God of Balance so that the Karma I gained can be split with your party leader, and then leveled between each of the parties members. It seemed like the fair thing to do, since you guys made it so that the fortress would burn."
"Oh," Aishin replied with surprise.
MatchlessMinion said, "Woah! You destroyed the fortress single-handedly?"