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Azura casts a quick spell to help, since there's not much she can do to fight.
Letting Ulfr's song incite his instincts Zev rushes to close the gap between the fiend, hoping he could get to him before the statues could act and Saersha could do... whatever she was trying to do.
Zev's blade opens up a nasty wound across one of the runes on Cormac's chest, causing him to recoil in pain.
The two sentinels on either side of him turn their attentions on Ryn and Zev as Azura's spell takes hold of the brawler...
Their spidery limbs slice at the two fighters with deadly precision!
Ada concentrates and suddenly a weapon in the shape of a glowing great sword appears next to the demon. She moves up behind Ryn drawing her longsword.
As the spiritual sword forms, Cormac whirls around and parries its strike with his own blade.
Grunting with the pain of the heavy blows delivered by the constructs, Ryn focuses on taking out the deadlier target first, driving her sword into the demon with a skilled strike, her other arm keeping her shield up to defend against her enemies' blows
Cormac almost doubles over when Ryn drives her gladius into his gut, but he starts to laugh like a maniac and swing his scimitar in retaliation!
He swings at Zev first...
...but his wild swing causes him to overextend and crash his scimitar into the stone floor yet again.
Undeterred, he swings wildly at Ryn...
...and manages to score another cut across her chest.
Zev snarls as the fiend wounds Ryn, causing him to take the opening to lunge at him.
Cormac lets out another deranged laugh as Zev hacks into him.
"YES! YES! KILL ME! FREE ME AT LAST!" He howls in a mix of pain and glee.
Saersha was pissed that the constructs had ignored her commands and decided to try one more time. She called out to them, "Constructs, you betray your duty to protect this place and the supplicant's! This incubus is a traitor trying to kill Mistress Sorshen's toys! Restrain him, put him in a cell to await the Mistress displeasure alone, and let us pass!"
The sentinels abruptly stop attacking Ryn and Zev.
Ulfr charges in to support Ryn.
He arrives with a brutal fury and unforgiving wrath incarnate!
Ulfr lunges at the nearest sentinel and manages to rock it with a blow to its marble head.
The two sentinels turn on Cormac--and they both fire green bolts of energy at him!
Both beams of energy converge on the incubus, and in response the runes adorning his bleeding body flare with green light. The incubus suddenly goes stiff, every muscle in his body locking into place.
"GGGRRRGGHHLLL--!!!"
The demon topples forwards, and the two sentinels move to seize him.
Ulfr's magic takes a moment to fade, leaving your arms and legs tingly with the after-effects.
Azura lets out a breath. "Whew. For a moment I was worried, but that didn't go badly at all."
We got lucky. Let's hope that luck holds.
"Yeah...that bastard hits hard!" Ryn says, wincing as she cleans and sheathes her sword, giving the constructs a wary glance. Bloodied and bruised, the gladiatrix looks ready to make somebody pay. "He wanted out so badly, I'm half tempted to leave him like this now."
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Saersha nodded to the two constructs who finally listened to her and said to them, "In the name of Mistress Sorshen take Cormac to a solitary cell and lock him up until the Mistress can express her displeasure with his actions."
Saersha looked to her companions and said, "If we kill him it may just send him back to the Abyss. Far better to leave him locked up here where he can't cause us further trouble later on."
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Azura provides Ryn with a soothing touch while the constructs go about their business.
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Ada moves to Ryn. "I almost feel bad for him. I'd go crazy being locked up here for eons." She casts Cure Moderate Wounds
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"I would too, buuut being a Fiend he was evil before he got here. Real evil." Zev thinks aloud.
Ryn lets out a soft sigh at Azura's soothing touch, taking another relieved breath as Ada adds her own healing a moment later. "Thank you, that feels so much better," she says giving Ada a smile of thanks, and Azura an affectionate squeeze.
"Yeah, I'd say keeping him locked up is the best possible outcome for everybody...well...other than him. Now we have a clear path forward as well."
One of the sentinels taps twice on the stone doors Cormac was guarding, and they open outwards with a cacophonic noise. They then clasp the incubus by his paralyzed shoulders and calves to begin hauling him away.
The air in the large octagonal chamber beyond is dreadfully hot and humid--the very air shimmers with heat and just about every surface in the room is shiny with condensation. The walls, floor and thirty-foot-high domed ceiling are made of polished white marble. Ten feet into the room, the floor rises up in a three-foot-high step, then again at twenty feet in. At the room's centre is a firepit, in which a strange grey flame dances. Two smaller octagonal chambers lie to the south and the west, while to the east a ten-foot-square section of wall is a dull grey in contrast to the white walls surrounding it. A single torch in a sconce protrudes from the grey wall.
The sentinels drag the incapacitated incubus around the central platform towards the octagonal chamber to the south before depositing him in its centre and leaving. A screen of bright blue energy rises from the floor to cut the chamber off from the rest of the room.
"Ugh! Heat and humidity? Ew!" says Azura. "Why would someone do this when they obviously can shape the environment here to their will?"
"...to encourage nudity? I dunno." Embyr replies, tugging on her collar as beads of sweat start to run down her face.
"Why force the issue with this sticky humidity? Just ask your guests to dress for a tropical theme," says Azura.
"Gonna wind up sweating all through my gambeson. Yuck."
"Ugh...definitely uncomfortable, but yeah, making it the kind of environment where you'd be better off naked, sounds about right considering who we're talking about." Ryn says giving Ember a grin of agreement. Shifting a bit in her armor, she is grateful that she's wearing a skirt. "At least there's magic until we can get to a long hot bath."
"Anyone want to take a look at that flame through...magical eyes? If it's been burning for hundreds of years...plus it being grey...there must be quite the significance." She asks as she moves up to the first raised step.
The grey flame briefly flares when Ryn steps on the platform's first step.
Seeing the flame's reaction to her approach, the gladiatrix pauses for a moment. "Saersha, want to check the flame out? I get the feeling this is likely a lot more attuned to your skillset than mine, given everything we've seen so far."
Saersha was pleased that eh sentinels finally drug the incubus to a cell where he could enjoy his time in relative isolation once he woke up. With that dealt with Saersha looked at the two constructs and said, "Well done, I will make sure the Mistress knows how well you performed your duties."
Saersha rejoined her companions in looking around the room and heard the suggestion that the humidity and heat were to encourage disrobing. Saersha wasn't sure but that certainly sounded like something Sorshen would have done. "It makes as mych sense as anything I suppose."
Saersha's gaze turned to the flames when Ryn asked her to examine it. She cast a spell to allow her to see magics and began to approach the flame. She was careful to avoid touching any auras on her way and stopped if that proved impossible. Once she reached the flame she tried to discern what it was meant to do.
You ponder what it means for a moment, and you come to a realization--that odour is the stink of Abaddon, the planar realm of daemons. The grey flame must be a portal to Abaddon--or at least a conduit through which something may travel.
Some of the colours streaming from the flame match the lust-runed choker around your neck--and they blanket the entirety of the platform you're standing on. The presence of that lust rune must be what's keeping the planar conduit from opening.
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Ada waves her hand in front of her face trying to get the still humid air moving. "Now I wish I'd taken up fighting fans. At least I could use them too move a bit of air around."
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"Oh, that would be very pleasant to watch," Zev happily thinks aloud inbetween pants.
Ulfr lets the sweat fall where it may. The sooner we're out of here the better. This heat is nothing like the heat the Desert. It is... oppressive.
Saersha was surprised at the variety of colors she could see and then she smelled it, the stink of Abbadon and the daemons it held. She realized quickly that it was safe since they bore the runes she had made for them but she felt bad for whatever was dumb enough to step up here without one.
She looked back at her companions and said, "It is safe enough since we are wearing the mark of Sorshen but if someone who isn't steps up here, well, they are in for a very rude surprise. The grey flame seems to be somehow connected to that cursed realm and could open a passage if someone not bearing Sorshen's mark was detected."
She left the platform and Saersha said, "I think we should avoid messing with that for now unless we find we have no other way forward.."
Ulfr nods and moves to check out the western exit from the sweltering room.
The doors to the west open readily.
-------------------
A total of ten wooden and iron doors line the walls of the hallway beyond--five doors to a side. Each door bears an identical inscription on its face, as does the blank wall on the western end. Only the easternmost door to the north seems to have a different inscription on it--and said door is coated in a layer of frost.
The inscription on the easternmost northern door reads:
Thou wouldst enter to enjoy the company of the Runelord of Lust herself? Then thou must touch!
The inscriptions on the other doors and the blank wall read:
Thou wouldst enter? Then thou must touch!
"... do they really think we're that stupid... or just think only with our crotch?" Zev flatly says after looking over the doors.
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"I guess when your only tool is your crotch, every problem looks like... this," says Azura in reply to Zev.
"Well..." Embyr starts before shaking her head and moving to investigate the hallway.
The rogue gives only a cursory glance at the frost-rimed door. "Don't touch that--pretty sure that's rigged to do something bad."
"The wall, though..." She points at the wall at the far end of the hallway. "...looks a bit discoloured compared to the rest of the hallway."
She moves to investigate the wall further.
"I guess when your only tool is your crotch, every problem looks like... this," says Azura in reply to Zev.
"Fair."
"Don't worry, I'm gonna touch as few things in here as possible," Zev comments at Embyr goes about sleuthing the traps.
I don't think I've wanted to touch anything less. Ulfr says as he walks down the exact center of the hall.
Ryn snickers at Azura's quip, quickly followed by Ulfr's comment, especially as it's given with full seriousness. Holding her shield up she moves behind Embyr, ready to act should the discoloration in the wall prove to be something dangerous.
Ada shakes her head at the boys. "I would touch a freezing door even if there was something behind it I thought I wanted. That's a really bad sign."
”No touchy!”
Embyr fiddles with the wall on the far side of the hallway, and her bare finger brushes against one of the words. In response, it glows for a brief moment--
--and a harsh *GRINDING* noise floods the hallway, causing Embyr to jump back in surprise.
The wall recedes into the floor until it's completely flush with the stone beneath.
"...um... it's open?" Embyr turns to the rest of the party and sheepishly giggles.
The opulent marble chamber beyond is dominated by an enormous bed that sits on a raised dais. The walls bear frescos of a woodland scene, with leering satyrs chasing nubile nymphs. The domed ceiling overhead is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and rises to twenty feet above the bed.
Scattered everywhere around the bed are several well-crafted longswords, each with a red tassel and pommel complimenting their polished grey blades. Curiously, they do not appear to be made of conventional steel--rather, they're forged of cold iron.
Another set of double doors leads to the north. They swing open with a touch.
The erotic frescos in the domed room beyond the doors are faded, but enough details remain to inflame the passions of whoever looks upon them. Four marble benches sit against the walls and a complex mosaic of thousands of chips form a huge starburst on the floor.
Another door lies in the northern corner of the room. The sound of rushing water can be heard beyond it.