The Tenebreal Shard rises from the floor, one hand against the wall to steady himself. Morgwaeth goes to help him.
After a moment, the assassin growls, "We must pursue him," and without waiting for assent, staggers through the portal! The witch and the mage look at each other, then follow wordlessly.
Kyre looks back the way they came, longingly. "Well, I've come this far," he says to himself, then runs into the orange mists.
The party contemplates a Narrow Ledge
As he emerges, he finds the others examining a strange chamber. As they watch, the sound of clattering gears fill the air, and sections of the floor rotate away until only a narrow ledge remains. As the Tenebrael Shard begins his first tentative steps across that precarious span, an unnatural zephyr begins to blow!
Despite his injury, the shadow aelf steps nimbly across the ledge. Morgwaeth follows, then the Mistweaver, but just as she steps onto the precipice she is buffeted by a crosswind and slips! Leaping desperately, she catches the far ledge as the cogworks beneath clank and growl like some ravenous mechanical beast. The others help her across and she takes a moment to catch her breath. Then it's Kyre's turn.
Kyre steps gingerly onto the platform, his leg blade skittering nervously across the smooth steel, unable to find purchase. Wobbling worryingly, he stumbles first, then reaches the other side with a sigh of relief. Sparing the chasm a respectful glance, he then begins to examine the far side of the chamber in earnest. There, amongst the glitter, he finds a shining gold piece, and tracks, possibly of daemonic origin, leading into the shrouded mists to a golden portal. They follow.
The party meets a Librarian in his study
As the great golden portal swings wide, beyond is revealed a library that seems stolen from some madman's dreaming. The air grows into a thick and a billowing multi-colored smoke and from that fume steps the daemonic librarian of the strange chamber, one digit laid upon his rubbery lips in a mocking appeal for silence.
With sudden alacrity, Kyre lunges forward, slashing the daemon twice. The injured Shard darts around a pillar, emerging at the creature's flank to add his own red marks. Morgwaeth ululates a high-pitched war cry and joins the fray, her fearsome glaive finishing the Librarian, tearing it cleanly in two with a wet and monstrous ripping sound. Where once stood a great pink-fleshed being now two smaller blue simulacra took its place. They tell the hag queen a precious secret, an ancient incantation that will still the blinding light of sorcery for a time, then they vanish returning to the shimmering smoke from whence they came.
The Mistweaver strides imperiously into the library, casting her gaze about, her stillness suggesting a preternatural concentration. Then, at a gesture, the Tenebrael Shard steps forward into the glittering mists, heavy with half-glimpsed shapes and the shattered fragments of memories. The sound of running footfalls soon resolve themselves into those of fanatical cultists, like the ones that attacked them in the tavern far above - or perhaps, by now, elsewhere?
The party encounters a roving band of cultists
The two groups meet in a vicious clash of steel. The Cultists are quickly dispatched, but not before one of them deals the witch aelf a grievous wound to her flank. In the aftermath, Kyre searches the chamber and finds a bag of gold. The Mistweaver scrutinizes the door and suggests the left most. When the party arrays around it, blinding light engulfs them, a searing luminescence manifested without warning. For a span of time which may have been seconds or centuries they hang in that eerie void, before reality springs back with a roar. They reappear exactly where they stood. Exchanging bewildered glances, they push forward into the next chamber.
Glittering white and yellow, the floor of this room seems filled with endless piles of gold coins. Before they have time to contemplate their good fortune, however, the party is cowed before the grotesque sight in the middle of the room, facing them...
(At this point, a short pause while I paint the model I need for this encounter. Will the party survive this new peril? Stay tuned!)
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