While everyone dragged all the unconscious bodies to one side, Nero went and grabbed the two artefacts. He studied the blank slate but found nothing significant. On a whim, he channelled his aether into it and discovered that the slate absorbed the aether easily, but showed no reaction.
He instinctively knew that he did not have enough aether in his body to elicit a reaction from the slate, though perhaps that knowledge in itself was a reaction from the slate. Comparatively, the statue did even less. It did not absorb any aether, and besides showing the appearance of an odd being, had no value as far as Nero could tell. But finding their value was not his mission.
Nero put the artefacts in his backpack once more, careful to put them in different pockets from the key and Eldrim card he already took, before getting up. The others were bound to start waking up soon, so they all quickly began to retreat.
