"Alex, stop worrying about it!"  Dan told him.  "We're gonna hear it get closer a lot sooner than we'll see it!"  The slower Alex went, the slower he would be able to go, as he had to wait until Alex and his earth shield proceeded forward.  Eventually, they made it out of the room with all of the skeletons and to the next passage that lay beyond.  "Whatever.  Let's just keep moving forward and see if we can find a way out," Dan told his friend when he commented on the now not-moving creature.  Now that the shield was not necessary, Dan took the flashlight and the lead again down the pathway, since he could make out what was actually there more capably.  Thankfully, this passage held nothing but boredom - not the hour-long effort of having to climb of the previous passage, not the strange door that had first greeted them when they had arrived in this area, and<em>definitely</em>no creatures trying to kill them.<br/><br/>For once, Dan was glad to be bored.<br/><br/>"Looks like we're almost there," he told Alex as he spotted another opening in the passage at the end.  "Maybe we'll finally get out of here."  Inside the next room, this presented...well, this was different.  There was no apparent challenge anywhere, but if there had been any doubts before about this place being unnatural, this room definitely erased them.  The patterns on the floor, the sculptures and icons, all of it, definitely man-made.  "Well, Alex?  You're the magician, any sort of recognition of what these patterns might be?"  Dan walked one of them, trying to see if his barely-there teaching about such things in school brought back any memories.  But no, nothing.  They were just patterns.<br/><br/>At least, until the voice spoke and brought them both out of internal deliberations.  "'Champion's vessel'?  What the hell does that mean?  Alex, you'll have to fill me in on this one, because I'm sure I've never heard anything like that before...anyways, I'm pretty sure it's talking about this," he gestured to the crystal.  "There's not really anything else in the room that would qualify as something to be claimed...though how the hell are we going to get the crystals out of here?  There's not even a path yet..."<br/><br/>As he said this, Dan moved towards the crystal to touch it, at least.  They had been standing in front of them, so it was pretty much the only option, right?