Even if it's the most helpful sword ever forged I don't think I can swing it if it's incapacitating me at the time!

"Did you hear that?" Seelah says sternly to the magic sword. "That was bad. If you are trying to be helpful you must not do that. Bella isn't an angel, so you need to use your - not-angel rules, if you have those.

Want to try it again?"

I think if it were a person I would have been able to notice, so, no, I doubt enormously that that helped and I do not want to try it again but I guess it didn't kill me the first time.

She pokes the sword very gingerly.

The sword does not send any terrible visions this time! It just glows! And...maybe gives everyone a tiny bit of supernatural protection, as a very small apology. 

"That definitely did something."

Okay. I will hold the sword until it does something else horrible and I will see if it holds up okay against giant spiders and stuff like that in spite of the fact that I got a B in Basic Knife.

"I think the light's doing a little bit of - soothing and strengthening us - all by itself," says Seelah encouragingly, apparently not hurt by the unwillingness of the sword to function for the paladin who actually knows how to fight with a sword.  

"With this, we can go into the Shield Maze and save the missing children."

       "Lann, that's still a terrible idea," says the other mongrel.

Bella does not have enough context to have strategic opinions on the viability of this plan! She gives the sword a couple experimental swings.

It's probably helping her at least a little bit relative to her baseline ability to swing a sword. It has not made her a master swordsman overnight but probably someone who'd get an A in Basic Knife.

"I can take you all to the mongrel camp. Then we can show them the light, and make plans for the Shield Maze."

What-all's in there? What is a shield maze, anyway?

It's a huge old fortress. I don't think it was a maze originally, but it is now, the route through it to the surface is very hard to find. 

Okay. I don't have a better idea.

"We press on, then, I suppose! Lead the way, Lann."

There are more giant vermin. Lann and his companion, who is still glaring daggers at everybody, can shoot most of them before they get close. "Earthquake scared them all up out of their burrows," Lann says after shooting a giant centipede off the ceiling before it can drop on his head (it still does drop on his head, but it's dead when it does.) "Things aren't usually quite this bad."

         "It is madness to take the tribe through the Maze," Wenduag says. 

"There's safety in numbers. And Lariel's sword is a sign that it's time."

Bella experiments with swording the ALREADY DEAD vermin on the way to get a feel for how hard she needs to swing to get it through carapaces and out again. She has no comment on how mad it is to take the tribe through the maze.

It's been probably another hour, and a lot more dead things, by the time they reach the underground bog in which rises the underground island where Lann's tribe is camped. Those persons without supernatural endurance are fairly tired. 

Lann and Wenduag run up to argue with their tribe's leadership. 

"What a deeply unpleasant place," Camellia says as soon as they're out of earshot.

"Oh, it's not too bad. I'll take a roof over my head even if it's made of stone and smells of rot. - we should probably not attempt the Shield Maze tonight." She's looking worriedly at Anevia, who has been doing a steadily worse job of hiding that she's in pain. 

"I don't know how much good one night of sleep is going to do me. I suppose more than none."

Bella's not used to being tired in quite this way, anymore, with no treelight, no timeslide necklace she can take off to sleep so that nothing seems urgent and any insomniac anxiety she's picked up will melt away. She has nothing against resting but is also having a hard time imagining it will help.

If we're going to sleep here and I'm not going to need my subtle arts - uh, psionics - stamina to talk much more or do anything else, I can soothe the pain, probably long enough for you to get to sleep if not much longer past that?

A weak grin. "That'd be neat."

"Bella shouldn't run down the last of her powers for it but I actually want to talk a little bit more! If we all know what each other can do, we'll be able to help each other out more. And it's easier to fight with friends than strangers."

"Optimistic of you to assume that on speaking more we'll become friends."