Perhaps somewhat anticlimactically, the only thing which emerges from the screen is a simple, if well-crafted, wooden box, landing on the ground in front of the threshold with a slightly hollow tock. To mundane eyes it doesn't seem particularly special, but to any sort of generalized magical senses it is burning brightly with all sort of metaphysical power, arranged in forty nine little lines arranged vertically in a neat square inside the box.

Practitioners do not have generalized magic senses per se, but Flowers and Openeds are the closest to having one. Feli and Bea immediately step away.

Luci will cast Shield and enclose the whole team in a protective bubble, the edge of it shimmering slightly, with small moving patches of red and blue and magenta as though iridescent. They've trained to do this type of maneuver before.

"What is it!?"

"I don't know. I wasn't expecting it. I barely had a chance to sense something was coming through.

Feli, could you check if there's anything alive inside?"

"Casting Telepathy now."

The Way of Flowers is the way of connection, unity, of being one mind. She reaches out with a thread of Flowers energy. Is there anything sentient in there? Anything that has a mind? The thread ought to latch onto the entity if there is.

There is indeed a mind, and fairly nuanced one, similar in complexity and level of activity to a human's, though fairly different in structure.

Immediately, a thought, or perhaps more so an impression, returns to Feli along the thread. It doesn't really resolve into anything precisely linguistic, so much a feeling of dullness and a steady sharpening, maybe almost like the feeling of being awoken from a long sleep, and a desire to establish a connection with greater bandwidth via physical contact.

It takes Feli several seconds to interpret the transmission.

"Something inside. It says it wants someone to touch it?"

No, do not touch the random energetic object from nowhere that wants you to touch it. Bea, for all that she is Open, does have self-preservation instincts.

"Try to talk to it."

:Hello. Who or what are you?:

:Hello.: There's a brief impression of selfhood, accompanied by...not exactly an image but a packet of exotic sensory qualia which plausibly aligns with the sort of feelings Feli is getting from the box. :Are.: Then there's another packet of exotic qualia that is difficult to resolve, but maybe gives a little hint of something Flowers-y? But not in a terribly definite way. If she pokes at it and looks at it from the right metaphorical direction she can interpret it as having some qualities of any of the Ways she's felt, whether in herself or through people she's communicated with in a similar telepathic manner.

Feli spends a minute puzzling over this before abruptly severing the connection.

"Oh my stars, it's an artifact. It can...it's a person."

"What do you mean it's a person."

"We need to open the box."

"No! We have idea what that thing is. Reach out to it again."

"I have a good feeling about it. I'll put my reputation up as capital."

Deep breath.

"Fine. The four of us will leave, Luci maintaining the shield. Cast Telepathy on me and do not break the link – call out immediately if something happens."

"Understood." And so they do that.

Feli will cast Telepathy on Bea, wait for the rest of her team to leave, and then open the box. Is it easily openable? She'll reach out with Telepathy again – can she get more out of the artifact?

The box's lid slides off easily, held to the rest of the box by a string spooled around a hook inside the box, though through Feli's sense she can see that the energy suffusing the lines inside shifted subtly as she reached for the box. Plausibly the artifact did something to 'unlock' itself. Inside, aside from the string and hook, there forty nine extremely thin needles, exactly aligned with the magic visible from outside the box, held in an equal number of slots.

Connecting telepathically with the artifact, and more clearly now it is specifically with the needles, allows Feli to receive another impression. It's not exactly excitement or pleasure, but it has a strongly positive valence, along with maybe an awareness or appreciation of not just her action, but her character. There's also the knowledge that it's physical contact with one or more of the needles, not the box that contains them, which will enable them to open their own native communication channel.

Here goes nothing. She touches the side of one of the needles!

The response is quick, almost instant, but at the same time it is not sudden. There is no sense of urgency, or any confusion, every part of the process is delicate, controlled, considerate, and clear to her. Information flows, almost physically as if up her finger, arm, shoulder, and neck, and a whole realm of knowledge enters her.

The Needles are indeed an artifact and a person. They possess great powers to heal, but also to encourage growth, to refine and improve upon life and living things, most especially things of a human nature. They possess a great deal of information, drawn from countless wielders spread across countless worlds. They possess a powerful, inherent drive to utilize their resources to aid others, to bring about healing and happiness and fulfillment and greatness and many other particulars. They cannot wield themselves, however. Another must attune to them.

Feli has not attuned to them, the process is metaphysically impossible without the wielder first being fully aware of the power and the nature of the needles, and once so aware must initiate the process. Feli is now aware, and now knows how to attune, if she so chooses.

This all has settled into her mind, almost as if she'd always known it and only now just remembered it, in no more than a single second of time.

Feli clamps her other hand over her mouth to suppress her screaming. She doesn't actually want to call out. 

:How do I know what you're saying is true?:

She wants to believe what the Needles are saying, and indeed, the vision they gave was very compelling, but if she wants to actually try to help people with it she has to, you know, verify things. Spending time with Daryus and Bea has really helped with that.

Bea can feel what Feli is feeling through the link, as well as much of the vision the Needles gave her, and she is SO CONCERNED. Feli did not call for help, though, which means she is not going to burst into the door daggers blazing.

:The attunement process gives us no control over our wielder, and attunement can be relinquished as easily as it is attained by one who wishes to. You may allow another, perhaps one who you are confident could defend themselves from some sort of attack on our part, to attune to us if you fear we may make such an attack.: The needles use the extant telepathic link somewhat more fluently now, and expressing some hope that it is a more comfortable, familiar form of communication for Feli. :There are some limited functions we can fulfill even without attunement as well. How you use us is your choice.:

It is indeed more comfortable to Feli because she's used to it.

Hm. Out of the five members of their group, Feli is definitely the weakest in combat if only because the Way of Flowers of not the way of fighting, generally speaking. The closest thing she has to combat Practice is using boosted Empathy to try and predict the movements of opponents. But she thinks that if the Needles are to attack, then it wouldn't attack mundanely or directly, but with some sort of energetic or manipulating attack. Which she's more comfortable with dealing with. 

She wants to keep the needles but not try to attune to them right now, not until they've had a chance to examine it more closely and thought about it more deeply.

She relays this and her thoughts to Bea.