Chorussina's eyes widen again when Isilme and Xanderghul abruptly appear right next to her. Quickly Isilme steps down and lances the remaining chanting cultist through the back of her neck. As she collapses to the ground and starts to bleed out, the portal starts to waver and draw into itself, forming an enormous rotating circle, with outstretched tendrils like a whirlpool in the astral plane. Not missing a beat, Isilme twists her rapier to side and lances her through her thigh, while Anevia appears abruptly alongside them, and looses an arrow at her center.
Across the force wall, while Hinagiku is an appealing target, the obvious caster standing alone is a greater target still. And besides, with the ground covered in rocks, it would take a lot of effort to circle around the portal just to get at a lone monk. So the schir hop across the battlefield to get at Ehren and start stabbing at him with the pointed ends of their halberds.
Meanwhile, back in the sweltering heat of the forgeroom, the salamanders back away from Ary and start stabbing at her repeatedly with their polearms. Enhanced with supernatural speed from Haste, she ducks and blocks each blow flawlessly.
Valaria is up!
Val half turns and looks back at Ary standing between the salamanders and Ayavah. "Keep her safe!" the tiefling calls back before she dashes forward and draws her starknives. She stays low, rushing in toward the demons closing in on the schir menacing Ehren.
Valaria maneuvers over to Ehren's side, ducking under the demon's blades and jabs both starknives deep into one of the schir. She rips them out, causing the goat man to evaporate into black ichor.
Meanwhile across the wall, Chorussina seethes with anger as she watches the portal she had worked so hard to create destabilize before her. "You'll all pay for this," she hisses, stepping back from Isilme and vanishes down the hallway from them. She raises her hands slowly upwards and intones a quick incantation... and black tentacles suddenly surround the heroes! They wrap around Isilme and Xanderghul, ensnaring them, but Anevia is too slippery a rogue to get caught up in the tentacles...
Hinagiku is up!
After an apologetic look toward her allies who are being overwhelmed by black tentacles, Hinagiku carefully makes her way to the closes shir while carefully avoiding the portal. The thing might have shrunk, but she was not ready to risk herself now.
With one swift sidestep, the monk avoids the oni's halberd, slaps it aside with a flick of the wrist, and as her last steps draws her closer, jabs her foe's knee.
"How can we cross that wall." she calls out to the others as she fells the schir.
Seconds after the schir hits the rumbling floor, the portal collapses in on itself, seemingly winking out of existence. The tremors completely stop, and the glowing markings on the floor go inert.
Once the tremors stop, Xanderghul moves a little away from the closest tentacle, no longer cloaked in shadow....
Round 3!
Ayavah, Ehren, Xanderghul, Anevia, and Ary are up!
Ayavah looks extremely grateful as Ary shields her with her body and raises her hand to fire a barrage of magic bursts to try to take down the more injured salamander and try to defeat the threatening enemies as fast as possible.
Xanderghul rushes forward, out of the black tentacles and towards his enemy. Summoning up the concentration for his final powerful evocation spell, he throws his hands forward towards Chorussina and from them bursts a torrent of tiny, sparkling slivers of diamond. They envelop her in a sea of cuts.
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"I did not consent to this!" Anevia yells at the priest as she deftly avoids the tentacle's attempt at gaining prize on her form. With the help of Ehren's magic, the tentacles can't gain any form of grip, allowing her to slide nimbly through the tangled mass and alighting across the rubble he'd left throughout the room. She lets her shortsword slip out of her sheathe and into her hand as she does so, letting it fall from her grip to land on her toe as she fires an arrow at her foe, kicking it back into the air and nimbly catching it, hoping to pin their foe down a little further by holding her blade at the ready.
Meanwhile, back in the forgeroom, protected by Xanderghul's scroll, Ary simply steps past the salamander's glaive strike, bringing Radiance singing in a deadly golden dance. The light of the forge blends with the light of the blade, as she finally sends the poor creature toppling and broken across the room.
Ehren is up!
Ehren grins ever so slightly when the portal shrinks away into nothingness but otherwise tries not to make his relief too obvious. The source of impending doom might be gone, but victory would not truly be theirs until the Sword of Valor was in their grasp.
"Thanks Valaria, Hinagiku," he says as he touches his fresh wound. It was not terribly deep, but he would not be surprised if he came down with gray pox in the near future. A fairly insignificant concern, all things considered. With the two women watching his back, he turns back to the wounded salamander and fires another blast of acid at it.
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Ehren tosses an acid dart at the salamander, but he hits the doorframe leading into the forge-room instead. Ary steps over and cuts down the other salamander, while its brethren fearlessly slithers closer to her, hoping to stab her in the back. But she spins around at the last moment, smashing aside its spear with her shield, and then stepping out of reach of its wickedly sharp tail.
Behind them, the other schir backs away from Valaria as best as it can, though the rubble and debris covering the floor makes it difficult. It then swipes at her with its halberd, but the tiefling nimbly jumps back, avoiding the creature's filthy blade.
Across the wall, Xanderghul readies a spell.. but with a wave of her hand, Chorussina dismisses it, unraveling his magic as fast as he can weave it. But she can't unmake an arrow to the face - though the spellcaster manuevers fast enough that what would have been a fatal shot to the neck lands deep in her shoulder.
Valaria and Isilme are up!
The tentacles erupting from the ground brought up memories of the group's mission to Storasta and their nearly fatal encounter with Caggrigar. Isilme had spent much of the fight unable to act, pinned by one of the tentacles. Despite the worries the memory brought, she found it significantly easier to break free this time.
Aided by the bolstering effect of the heroism spell she'd used, she had little trouble twisting out of the tentacle's grasp, dropping back to the ground as she watched Chorussina dispelling Xanderghul's magic with a smug look on her face. "Step left, Xanderghul," she called out as she dug deep to draw on her own divine power and lunged forward. She cleared the distance between her in the mage in what seemed like a single step, breezing by Xanderghul--who had only just barely stepped out of the way--in a flash.
It was clear from the look on Chorussina's face that she'd been expecting another spell now, instead of a rapier delivered like the arrow she'd just taken from Anevia. "I believe this is the part where you say something about dying for the swarm, and how others will step up to take your place," the azata says as she draws back her rapier and drops into a low twirl, bringing the rapier around again to slash across the tiefling's legs. "Unfortunately it seems we will have run out of vermin after you."
Val whips around and cuts at the schir as it tries to strike her, leaving gashes in its form. Then she sidesteps so she can get into proper position between the two demons and becomes a whirlwind of blades, hacking at the injured schir and its uninjured ally with furious abandon.
Valaria cuts a swath through the two remaining schir, leaving nothing in her wake. Meanwhile, Isilme manages to escape the writhing mass of tentacles. Mustering up her goddess' power, she moves to drive her rapier through the cultist's eye. She stabs straight through, but before she can push it deep into her brain the woman screams and pulls back. Undaunted, Isilme twirls low and slashes her across her legs. Grasping her blind eye, the cultist staggers back against the door and attempts to cast another spell... but finds herself unable to summon enough concentration.
Hinagiku, Ayavah, Ehren, Xanderghul, Anevia and Ary are up!
Anevia cringes at the squelching sound of Chorussina losing her eye... given that things were do or die, she didn't quite feel alright about making jokes at this point. It was better to put the woman out of her misery. She takes a step back and releases one... two arrows.
Ary steps forward, allowing the Salamander's mistake to be made clear as she brings Radiance fully to bear against the creature, just as she'd done with his brother.
Xanderghul staggers to the side as Isilme rushes past him, her speed an incredible blur and display of skill. Shaking his head at the screaming cultist, he tells Isilme, "Well, I suppose she didn't have anything to say after all."
With the goat demons and salamanders taken care of, all that remained was to eliminate the cultist leader. Ehren strides across the chamber, his light steps allowing him to ignore the thick layer of earth dropped by his own spell. He reaches the other side, only to find that his passage has been barred. Seeing that Chorussina is on death's door, he opts to simply wait for the time being, allowing Anevia, Isilme, and Xanderghul to finish her off.
Hinagiku blinks once at Valaria's impressive display of martial prowess, but soon takes back control and heads toward the heat of the forge to help Ary take down the last salamander.
Hinagiku quickly moves back into the forge room, feeling the strange oppression of the Abyss muddle her senses once more as she crosses the threshold into that unholy heat. She strikes the remaining salamander once, then Ary cuts it in two, leaving nothing but smoke and ash.
Meanwhile, across the force wall, Anevia loses an arrow into the woman's neck. She grabs around her throat and starts to sputter, blood dripping down her once beautiful green robes. The next lands right in her skull, and she collapses onto the floor in a heap, truly dead.
Combat ends!
With the threat completely ended, Isilme breathes a sigh of relief. "That was, perhaps, a bit closer than I would have liked," she says to Anevia and Xanderghul. She looks briefly at the two and then back down at the cultist leader, taking a moment to reflect on the situation. For all her boasting things could have easily turned out differently, especially had Ary not trivially dispatched the cultist in plate by launching her through the portal. The image of the cultist stumbling back through the portal manages to make her laugh though, the irony of the person who was likely supposed to shield the other cultists while they finished the ritual being lost to the very rift she was helping them complete was not lost on her.
Looking back towards the others she reaches out and touches the wall of force separating the room. The doors to her right were with all probability where they needed to explore now, but they would need to wait for the wall to wear off before proceeding further.
Despite her resignation, the door calls to Isilme, piquing her wanderlust and desire to explore. "Xanderghul, can you remove anything of value from her? I am going to check the door," she says, turning away. Moving quietly to the door she inspects it cautiously before placing her hands upon it. As she does, the butterfly on the back of her hand glows a soft blue. She focuses on the sensation, and as she does the door begins to become somehow less solid, fading from opaque to translucent and eventually transparent.
Val pants softly as the fight finally comes to an end and she slides her daggers back into their sheaths and grabbing her throwing knives before spinning around and hurrying back into the forge room. "Are you two okay?" she calls out, the concern obvious in her voice as she rushes over to Ary and Ayavah.
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Given the end of the shaking, and Valaria's attention to her and Ayavah helped to sate Ary's worries about what was going on. The continued oppressive nature having not gone away was still a worry... how long would it take to cleanse the environs of the abyss..? "I think I arrived in time. We need to get out of this heat," Ary says, nodding towards the chamber riddled with stone and corpses. "Not that I feel it, thanks to Xander. Right, so... ritual disrupted, now to try to figure out where the Sword of Valor is. No time to celebrate, I'm afraid."
Anevia stays right where she is, while Isilme gets touchy-feely with the door. She had no idea what was going on and hoped she wouldn't suddenly be sent on a strange acid trip... regardless, she needed to focus on her own readiness.
Ayavah hobbles slowly back out of the forge-room and into the ritual chamber. She presses her fingers gingerly against the stab wound in her midsection and winces in pain. "I'll live, I think," she says, tossing the empty wand of Haste onto the floor.
Ary picks up said wand from the floor, and follows Ayavah into the ritual room, where she first takes a moment to clean herself with a twist of her ring and an intoned "I will shine in her legion." The grit, grime, and ichor simply slough off, leaving her appearance slightly tattered - it couldn't mend the damage to her clothes from enemy blades after all - but leaves her servicably not squicky.
She then simply stands in the doorway, refocusing on the tasks at hand. Afterwards, she heads into the side hallway to investigate. "A hallway with no doors..?" she asks aloud, but if she doesn't find anything of note, she'll simply move back to the doorway to wait out the wall dropping.
"Aron and the others are going to have their work cut out for them," Ehren remarks, eyeing the numerous large cracks on the ceiling. Considering how close the citadel had been to literally collapsing into the Abyss, hopefully, it had not sustained too much damage from the earthquakes. After lowering his eyes, he sighs, not out of relief, but of exasperation. He nods his agreement with Ary. "Time is still of the essence. The army won't be able to hold the citadel forever. Not without the Sword."
As they wait for their spells to wear off and for Isilme to check the door, Ehren visits the cultists' corpses one by one, checking for anything useful they might have on them.
After the door finally becomes transparent to her sight, Isilme is disappointed to find there only a short hallway covered in glowing red lichen ahead. Looking to the side, she sees the wall of force gone and gestures for the others to approach. Once they do, she cautiously opens the door.
Ary walks over to the other side of the temple and finds that there is a small set of steps that lead up to a raised platform. Along the walls are racks of robes, and in the corner, a lit brazier. On the floor is a small open crate filled with small wooden musical instruments - mostly flutes and rattles.
Meanwhile, Ehren examines the cultists. They carry light maces and daggers, and have chainmail under their robes. They have silver unholy symbols of Deskari attached to small pouches filled with material components. They additionally have an extra pouch filled with what appear to be marked animal bones - the jaws and ribcages of rats.
Isilme opens the door, revealing a short hallway that turns to the left.
Xanderghul loots the lead cultist, rifling through her pockets and picking up anything that looks remotely useful. Then, he gets going along with the others to continue searching for the banner.
Xanderghul looks over Chorussina's body. She isn't wearing armor, though her green robes are well made, and she has a lot of jewelry on her person - earrings, a silver necklace, and multiple silver rings on her fingers. She also has a sheathed dagger at her waist. She has a small knapsack on, and inside is a spellbook and a silver unholy symbol of Deskari. 2 scrolls are jutting out of the spellbook haphazardly as if they are bookmarks.
The spellbook is emblazoned with the demonic rune of Deskari on its cover. The contents within are written in Abyssal runes.
0: All cantrips (28 of them total)
1 (11): Cause Fear, alarm, charm person, mage armor, magic missile, shield, grease, expeditious retreat, summon monster I, stumble gap, infernal healing
2 (6): Bull's Strength, cat's grace, bear's endurance, false life, mirror image, Eagle's splendor
3 (6): Rage, dispel magic, displacement, lightning bolt, stinking cloud, suggestion
4 (4): charm monster, dimension door, Black Tentacles, Summon Monster IV
5 (2): Summon Monster V, Wall of Force
"We'll get medical attention as soon as we possibly can," Val promises as she looks as the smear of blood on her friend's side. "Hopefully there isn't anything worse than this ahead. For now, stick close. I'll try to keep a better eye out for trouble." She looks ahead as Xan ransacks the high priest's body and Isilme pokes ahead. "I feel like we should stick together at this point. We don't have the resources to patch up if something goes wrong."
"We've slain their commander, their jailer, and now their high priestess. Is there anyone else we're forgetting about?" Ehren asks, joining Isilme at the doorway. He had even less power than he did when they first stepped into the room, but they had little choice but to push forward regardless.
The heroes head down the hallway and turn left. It ends in another closed wooden door after fifty feet.
Leading the group around the corner, Isilme is unsurprised to find yet another door at the end of the hallway. Despite her eagerness to put her newfound abilities to use again, she decides against it. The troops up top were still fighting, and it was urgent they get the Sword of Valor in place as soon as possible. With that in mind, she examines the door quickly, lest the Deskarrans have placed any wards to prevent entry by the unwanted.
You don't detect anything unusual about the door, and you do not hear any sounds beyond your companion's breaths.
Satisfied with her examination of the door, Isilme opens the doors and steps forward cautiously, surveying the room around her.
The door opens, revealing an enormous chamber with a 30-foot-high roof. Swaths of pulsating red lichen illuminate the walls. About 40' straight ahead from the door is another wooden door. Stepping further out, Isilme finds that to her left is a very long hallway, akin to a grand cathedral. Along the hallway appear to be six alcoves, though Isilme can only glimpse into one. In this one is a large, 20' tall painting of what appears to be Deskari himself savagely ripping the arms off of a bronze-skinned angel with hair made of flame, her blue and white robes stained with her blood. There is an inscription chiseled into the stone below it, but it is too hard to read at this distance in the dim, red light.
At the far end of the 120' hallway is a massive iron framework which displays a red banner, which prominently displays the sword-cross of Iomedae at its center.
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Ary purses her lips, moving forward to be just behind Isilme, Anevia sticking just as close. "With Torag and Iomedae above, for whom was this space originally intended? Or has it simply been transformed, and if so, did the Deskarans actually work together to accomplish the feat..?" Ary whispers through the link, taking in the image of the tapestry that had come into view. With Sana still on her mind - Eustoriax had claimed to be in Drezen - it weighed heavier on her mind. A temple of Sarenrae had been desecrated by the ritual that had cost Li'an her life, and cost Sana her family. She huffs, trying to clear her mind of the failures of the past, and failing.
Isilme takes a step further in and turns, staring at the end of their journey somehow finally within reach.
"Ary," she says quietly, simply gesturing down the hall.
That the location had been converted into a temple of Deskari was of course troubling, and somehow the presence of it seemed too good to be true, but that was all secondary now. To comment further would be to detract from a moment of reverence for Ary which she could only imagine would be to Ary what the encounter in the jail had been to her own self only a few brief minutes ago.
Val's old thieving instincts pop up as they pass the body of the high priestess. She stops and strips off all of the jewelry adorning her body, stuffing it into her bag of holding along with her unholy symbol. You never know when pretending to be a cultist of Deskari instead of Baphomet might be handy. Then she checks the dagger to see if there's anything notable about it.
Valaria checks out Chorussina's dagger. Unfortunately it is just plain steel.
"Be careful," Ehren warns somewhat unnecessarily, as he comes up behind Anevia. The adversaries they already defeated aside, he had expected the Sword of Valor to have some kind of guardian; an elite group of cultist warriors, a hulking demon, or another slavering, multiheaded beast. For the banner to be left out in the open, unguarded, was just too good to be true.
At Isilme's insistence, Ary follows her out a few steps to look. Her heart flutters for a moment at the sight, but she quickly squashes down the feeling; victory was in sight but not yet in hand.
"Three options." she whispers, "Either they're idiots and left it completely untrapped and unguarded, they moved all of their defenses to the forefront to ensure the ritual was completed, because stopping us there prevented a pyrrhic victory... or they have likely trapped it and are simultaneously guarding it. So... they can't simply not know that we're here and have succeeded. Care to walk with me into the trap?" she asks, looking to the others. She wasn't going to celebrate having found the Sword of Valor until it had been delivered to Irabeth to be placed and utilized.
Hinagiku takes a few steps forward, but goes no further than by Isilme's side.
"It does look incredibly suspicious... should we have a magically summoned creature fetch it?" she says, as she surveys the room, looking and listening for anything peculiar.
Leaving them for later, Xanderghul pockets the book and the scrolls, slotting them in alongside the other looted books and scrolls he had in his haversack.
Then, following along with the rest of the group he heads to the special chamber with the Sword of Valor. What they had come to retrieve! How fortuitous, this torturous war-campaign might finally get some kind of break. But Ary was right - it wasn't truly over until it was over. Still, what could they do? He couldn't summon anything. "Valaria, check for traps," he says. "I'll check for magic, but we had better hurry. No sense turning this into a committee."
Xanderghul steps out alongside Ary and Isilme and glances around with detect magic.
You don't see anything magical, but also the chamber is much larger than your cone of sight.
The disturbing artwork notwithstanding you do not notice anything of interest in the room.
As Xanderghul uses his magic to probe the room, Hinagiku starts to focus her senses even more strongly, calling on her divinely gifted powers to search for even.
The entire room radiates faint evil. The walls, the floor, the paintings.