"I don't have that spell, but Aviel, might," says the merfolk. "Hmm...what about this other door, Ferrek?" She extends a hand at the aforementioned other door.
"I'm afraid that I've run through my dispelling ability for today. It's so difficult to correctly guess what to prepare for in this level of unknown circumstance. I prepared for many eventualities, but not enough for this it seems. Without returning to the surface to rest and renew my cache of magics, I cannot deal with this."
"We might want to consider that. We've been at this for quite a while."
Ferrek nods. "We have been down here for quite some time. Lets take a look at this other door and see what makes the most sense." Under his breath he adds "I just hope the lich doesn't decide to rearrange things while we're gone..."
"Be wary, Master Ferrek." Said Aviel in a serious tone. "All too many tales of adventuring parties have ended poorly when one tempted fate by suggesting, 'Just one more door.'"
He paused for dramatic effect. "But let us continue anyway."
The door is unlocked and, strangely untrapped... and so Ferrek opens it. Beyond is a simple stone hallway, turning right after about twenty-five feet. This hallway seems strangely damp, and a low, very soft howl can be heard from down the hallway, like the sound present in a massive cave when air rushes through.
"Trap checkers, I have a feeling there's something here for you to find," says Shadassa.
Before moving in, Ferrek looks to the others. "Well, this looks unpleasant. Shall we close the door and go regroup at camp, or do we give this a try?" and to the merfolk, he adds "On the door? Or in the hallway?"
"Camp." Garret says, turning back around. "This can wait."
Aviel sighed. "Ah, well at least now I have some clearer insight of what we're up against. You heard the man. Let's get moving and call it for today."
Shadassa takes rear guard up the stairs, the uneven terrain hindering her not a whit.
The tomb-delvers return to the surface once again to rest. Isletta informs them, once they're up there, that she's had enough of this frustrating tomb and she'll be taking her leave of them, but Saren and Gralamin greet the tomb-delvers cheerfully.
The night will pass without incident.
Garret wakes in the morning early, as usual, says a few prayers, makes a simple breakfast, and does some popping and stretching before buckling his armor back on.
"Ready?"
Aviel awoke in the morning. He had had a truly restful night. More than he had in quite some time. It was certainly good to be out in the world adventuring again. Even if he was going head first into one of the most dangerous places.
He took his time to study his books and prepare his mind for the trials ahead they might very well face this day.
He watched as his cousin donned his armor and again shook his head. Conjuring up some water into a small bowl, he took a small rag and dipped it in before washing his face.
"Are you so eager to run off into mayhem, cousin? Enjoy your morning here and the time you have with your companions."
Ferrek spends the night under a camouflage tent with a bell net draped over it. In the morning, he checks that his companions are still outside (and not turned into undead) with his periscope before emerging to dismantle his protections.
"Morning," he grumbles as he emerges squinting into the light.
"No locks on the tent, Ferrek?" says Shadassa with a grin, splashing water liberally upon herself.
"Ready to go, Sir Garret. Let's poke more holes in the Tomb."
"Well, alright then. Let us begin our next undertaking."
There are several rings in the room of illusory circles - only one of them has actually been traveled to.
The gold, orange, bronze, bright blue, silver, black, and red spheres are all revealed to be illusory doorways, although to where no one has any idea, save for the black one, which leads to the strange and profane church that the heroes had been in prior.
"Is this where we choose 'night's good color'? A knight, perhaps? We may as well choose anything. Red appeals to me," says the reddish merfolk without a hint of guile.
"In this place, anything that isn't the right color is liable to kill us. I'm not sure I like the idea of just experimenting."
Ferrek nods in agreement with the knight. "Agreed. The lich has his game, and watching us make a wrong turn and die a horrible death is almost certainly part of it. We've followed his riddle closely so far, and we're still alive. Wandering randomly will quickly decrease the chances we stay that way." He looks to the others and says "If you can think of another interpretation we could follow, like the 'fortuitous fall' we never fell down, it might be worth trying. But only if our current path dead ends without making us dead."
Aviel had stood in quiet contemplation for some time. Something had been bugging him for a while now and it finally occurred to him what it was. The prattling, however, was starting to get to him.
"Well, if you two are quite done contemplating the risks, of which... I dare say that following the riddle might very well lend itself to us getting killed at the end of a long and well played out trap anyway. That said, I say we should follow along the next logical step of ciphered Draconian colors, which you either subconsciously or haphazardly guessed by starting with black... and go through the light blue sphere next. Following this line, we should then go through red, bronze, copper or if you prefer orange, gold, and finally silver. If nothing else, this has piqued my curiosity enough that I am willing to cautiously continue forward. Also, cousin. Anything we do that we do not have a clear answer for, is in fact experimenting."
"The difference is, there are a lot of questions I don't care much about the answers to. Sometimes the answers aren't worth the price you pay to know."
"If I had my way, I'd buy a few wands of earth elemental summoning and one of those Lyres of Building and just take the whole hillside down layer by layer until we found the Lich's bedroom. If this place gets much more obnoxious, that's my backup plan."
Looking back at the colored doors, he scratched the stubble on his face.
"What makes you think the colors are related to dragons? I've never heard of an orange dragon before. Do they exist?"
Aviel sighed. "As I said, all of the colors thus far are part of the noted Draconian colors. A few are missing of course, green, white, and brass, but the rest are all in fact part of the known colors. And yes, after a fashion, orange or rather copper Dragons do exist. You just have to mildly creative with the coloration descriptions.
Anyway, if we're not following my suggestion, just lead the way then."
"An orange dragon sounds very pretty," says the merfolk unselfconsciously. "Let's go try that last room near the impassable adamantine door, and then we can try looking for this fortuitous fall."
"Good idea. I don't really feel like 'experimenting' unless there's absolutely no other option." Garret said leading them back to the adamantine door.
"I would be curious to see what happens, but there's no way I'm going first through one of those portals." Ferrek twitches and draws in on himself a bit. "Too much could go wrong, and there's no telling if we'd be able to return."
As they head back towards the unexplored doorway, he muses "Now, if we wanted to summon something to send through, and it was able to report back..."
"As much as I don't like doing that, it's also a good idea. If this other door doesn't go anywhere useful, we'll try that."
The trip through the Tomb is a (relatively) simple affair, as our tomb-delvers are already acquainted with its various dangers and can avoid them with ease. After several minutes of tiptoeing, crawling through tunnels, jumping over pit traps, and walking through hallways, the four reach their destination - the creepy misty and damp room.
Edging into the corridor reveals little, as the hallway only continues a few feet until it opens into a large, seemingly natural-stone cavern. There is not, however, a whole lot to see, as the large cavern is filled with a thick silvery mist shot through with golden streamers. The mist doesn't quite reach to the corridor, so it can be observed from safety, but if one were to travel within the cavern itself, one would be fully immersed.
Shadassa frowns. "Another area of mist. I assume all will be full of acid or transmogrifying alchemicals, myself" She casts Detect Poison, nodding at Aviel.
"Probably." Garret said dryly. "So how do we test it without resorting to "experimenting" with ourselves?"
"Summons," says the merfolk.
Garret sighed. "Yeah. I knew you were going to say that." He grumbled a bit, but nodded. "Alright."
The cloud ahead is, in fact poisonous. It's also magical, in the case of examining it via detect magic.
"Well, that was easy. A trap. Any way to shunt out the mist, or do we leave this room be?"
Garret looks up at the ceiling with a sigh, half-seriously wondering how much work it would really be just to dismantle this whole place.
"What kind of poison? Contact? Or inhaled?"
Ferrek frowns at the mist. "Can we blow it out of the way somehow?"
Garret looks at the two spellcasters. "Good question. I definitely can't."
Aviel looked at the mist and tried to figure out if there was any way to discern it's properties. Finally after several long moments of attempting to guess it's nature, he shook his head and nodded to himself.
"This spell should keep it from getting to you for a while."
Garret slowly moved into the cloud while holding his breath, testing the spell.
The whirling winds from Aviel's spell push the gases out of the way as Garret moves into the room. The gasses seem to be flowing towards the rest of the group, though their own walls of wind deflect those gasses as well. The gasses eventually disperse as the wind rails against it.
Once the gas has dispersed, the room is revealed in its entirety. It appears to be simply an empty stone cavern, but for what appears to be its sole denizen.
In the center of the stone room hangs what appears to be a translucent elven woman. Suspended in the air by nothing, her arms are limp and her head hangs so that her raven hair falls in front of her body, obscuring her face and torso.
Shadassa casts Communal Protection from Evil and taps her teammates with alacrity.