Once the dust settled and the chest regained its visibility to the crowd, the stone statue that had been inside was now gone. In its place was an aged female dwarf. The dwarf's hair and beard were both white as snow, and her wrinkled skin was covered in fine stone chips and dust - including even her loose clothing. The old dwarf lay motionless in the chest with her eyes tightly shut, just like a person in deep sleep.
"No wonder you, Bart, did not know how to awake someone from petrification," Pannis said, lost in thought. "It seems that after self-petrification, once the body returns to a certain state, the petrification lifts automatically. That's truly a powerful self-protection gift."
