”We must work together to unravel the magic anchoring the rift! And someone needs to pound that demon back where he came from!” responds Gunnar.
Shooting a bolt of lightning at one of the demon claws at the edge of the rift, the Dwarven Abjurer begins a powerful dispelling spell!
Bonus Action:
Fourth level Dispel Magic on the rift:
It is a well known and documented fact among the scholars and practitioners of the arts of power that every time someone taps into the wells of magic, they not only tap the world's natural energy sources, they must also use resources contained within their own selves. Most often those of a sorcerous or wizardly aptitude tend to rely on energies of the mind and body. Those who require the guidance and affinity to another being or god often expend energy from their spirit or soul. Usually this energy is so minor and irrelevant to the greater powers drawn upon and expended, that it is of little concern unless one manages to exhaust oneself to the point or complete depletion. Even then, the mortal ability to recover the expended energy through rest and recuperation means there are usually very few consequences to using this energy.
It is also well known and documented that the natural elements and powers otherwise known as 'magical energy' are in essence the basic building blocks of both creation and destruction. An odd amalgamation of Law and Chaos from which the entire multiverse was born and even now slowly drifts back toward its original primordial and chaotic origin. As any first year wizard or newly anointed acolyte finds out quickly, manipulation of such energy requires a very high level of control and containment to avoid potentially unwanted consequences. The larger the power, the more vital the controls.
As you calculate the enormous flow of power currently being generated and carried up the central core of the tower, enough to manifestly manipulate and completely control the weather across a vast region of Midgard, you belatedly realize that even the tiniest alteration in the magical flow and the surrounding field to which this particular chamber is directly exposed to, can result in vast and wildly chaotic consequences. As long as any magic is produced within the direct exposure of the core flow, the resulting effects, back flows, random events, are entirely unpredictable. Even the very fabric of space and time are potentially threatened.
It is then you realize the bulk of the machinery so recently destroyed must have been developed to both tap but then also secure, contain, and separate the residual power flowing freely from the core. You also realize just how wildly dangerous and unfathomably irresponsible this entire complex truly is.
To attempt to dispel such manifestations is like trying to dry a drowning man with a washcloth. First, you must get the man out of the water. First, the sources of the magical imbalance generated by your own and your companions magical castings must be removed. This will immediately move the chamber back into some tenuous balance and eliminate the backlash. It will also likely allow the world's natural healing to quickly repair the still minor rift as long as those agents of chaos from beyond are pushed back long enough and not allowed to enlarge it via their own methods.
”Change of plans!” shouts Gunnar as he realizes what is going on. ”Stop all spells and focus on damaging the demon coming through the rift—it should close on its own in the absence of active spellcasting!”
After his storm sphere damages the incoming claw with its bolt of lightning, Gunnar ceases concentration on it, allowing the spell to dissipate naturally. Deep in the threads of magic, he readies to cast Dispel Magic or Counterspell, but only as needed to stop magical energies from feeding the rift.
After praying to Khors which calms the prophet, he draws his new sword and replies, "I agree. Time to use the first sword." He regrips his shield for confidence and approaches the demon.
From what Raseri calls the high guard position, Luthael swings his blade at the demon. Khors was with him, and his practice paid off. The blade bites into the demon's flesh causing a bolt of electricity to originate from the hilt shocking the demon.
"Like I have any spells!" Ingryd growls as she goes to smash the demon thing.
Raseri growls and stabs at the demon with Logi.
And misses thanks to her newly acquired condition.
"What about Darrel? He's going to just float away if none of us grab him!"
Scram, who was definitely no longer in the tower, hoped beyond hope with her black heart that no one would.
Following Gunnar's shouted warning and cessation of his lightning charged magic, the fury of the Narg Nasty Six is suddenly and fully focused upon the demon currently clawing its way through the planar rift. Being closest, Ingryd is the first to land a pair of crushing blows that shatter hellforged carapace and spew forth an toxic burning shower of demonic ichor that sizzles and burns with malevolence. The pair of blows send the creature tumbling backward with a glassy eyed daze and drool streaming from its gibbering mouths.
Hell is stocked with an overabundance of demonic cannon fodder, for no sooner does Ingryd dispatch one vile denizen of doom, another begins to grasp at the rift and squeeze its way through. This one meets the electrified sword stroke of Luthael, Prophet of Khors. The strike lands and sparks fly as the ancient blade unleashes its own power upon the startled demon.
Raseri steps in to finish the creature off, but her usually graceful blade work is hampered by her stiff and unfamiliar skin. The strike glances off the demon's armor eliciting a mocking grin for a trio of leering mouths. These soon turn to snarls as with a mighty heave a quartet of arms start to pull the bulky demon further through the portal.
But as quickly as it formed, the rifts suddenly slams closed. The arcane maw biting the emerging demon completely in half in one fell instant. For a brief moment its coal black eyes widen in surprise and its mouths gasp. Then a multi-toned piercing scream rattles the chamber even as the creature slams to the floor into a pile of its own innards which just happened to slip free of its body due to the lack of anything from the stomach down existing in this realm to continue holding them inside. A few gasping, struggling moments later and the creature expires. Given that half of it died on the mortal plane and half within its own hellish plane of existence, there would be an ongoing debate among many academy classes as to whether or not the demon would or would not return and renew itself back within the confines of hell.
Meanwhile, Scramsax, after putting a swift end to the final lizard researcher, disappears into the swirling, shimmering haze of magic, smoke and smoldering demon remains. From her hidden nook she gleefully wishes Darrel a safe journey into the upper reaches of the hag's tower.
The air in the chamber still tingles and shimmers with magical energy even as the worst of the chaotic whirlwind begins to fade as quickly as it emerged. The soulful cries and haunted screams from the core still echo up from below, the great pillar of energy still flows. But all else in the chamber is now silent. The hellish stench of brutal death standing out from the usual smell of dirt and dusty stone.
Gunnar prepares to cast Fly on himself if the risk has abated for spellcasting, though he first asks, ”Can anyone else retrieve our guide without chancing spellcasting?”
Gunnar's senses tingle alarmingly as he utters the first few syllables of an well known spell. Stopping himself the dwarf can't help but sense the still present and potent power coming off the flowing energy core. Although the effects of the initial flurry of castings have dissipated, any further conjuring within such proximity to the pillar of power could surely result in another unfortunate set of unexpected consequences.
With the rift closed, the prophet activates his winged boots and flies to retrieve their floating guide.
”I must study this to see what we are up against,” says Gunnar, backing out of the room and getting out of view of the column of energy. Once he feels it is safe, he starts a Detect Magic ritual, preparing to come back into the room carefully with the spell already active so he can study the torrent of energy.
Raseri ties a weight to the end of a rope and tosses it up at Darrel if he's in range.
Raseri tosses the rope to the hapless Darrel who on the second try manages to catch the likely life-saving line. His bloated, gas filled lower half waves back and forth in the drifting air currents while nothing but gibbering panic and soft sobs seem to emerge from his mouth. The foxkin's glazed eyes stare into an inner world of sudden madness and deep regrets.
Meanwhile, Gunnar returns to the chamber with a resolute focus and enhanced vision. Almost immediately, he is overwhelmed by the currents of energy flowing within the room and certainly along the tower core. It is like standing next to a raging river during the height of the spring flood. Energy from the core spills into the chamber, the open area a welcome breach in the tower's inner levee.
For all intents and purposes, he might as well be standing in the middle of a massive ley line. In fact, the dwarf can only reason that the hag must be tapping one or more ley lines as part of the whatever dastardly magic she has engineered and conjured for her nefarious scheme.
The completely destroyed machinery used by the lizardkin reveals nothing of how it worked. There is simply not enough left. But the wizard is able to deduce that is was likely just siphoning off a small amount of the power to then focus and reuse elsewhere. How it did so without triggering any backlash or other side effects can only be guessed. Likely a significant amount of shielding, but he can't be sure.
Any kind of magic initiated within the room or likely any area fully exposed to that core flow will have unintended ripple effects for both the caster and the surrounding area. It is that last thought that causes him to reach down a grab a shattered piece of stone. What appears to be quite a solid piece of chipped granite simple crumbles and turns to dust in his fist. Prolonged exposure to raw chaos infused power, was indeed having a detrimental effect upon the entire structure of the tower and perhaps even the entire cliff it was built upon.
The dwarf moves to a nearby wall and taps a hammer along the stone surface. Nearly an inch crumbles away in a wide circle around the spot. The stone beneath appears sound enough, but Gunnar can only wonder for how much longer.
Ingryd stands in the weird room looking around as Gunnar does his magic things. She looks about and wonders at the insanity of it all. Then looks to Vanity and Ennui.
" What do you think that was? Also Ennui..grass? Really"
”Why must every power-crazed mad wizard or winter hag tap into the power of ley lines? Notoriously unstable they are when diverted from their proper flow,” says Gunnar with disgust.
Evaluating the flow of raw chaotic energy for any clues, Gunnar adds, ”The very earth groans under the burden of this aberration of the natural order. We must figure out how to settle this ley line back into its rightful course before the chaos created here become too great for even the mighty rock to contain.”
"Raseri, I didn't prepare the blessing which would recover Darrel. Hope you did." He ties off the rope to Darrel to a heavy backpack, to ensure that they don't need a hand to keep him.
There was some sudden movement from across the room, a lab chair with its back to the party stirred, and swiveled around dramatically. Sitting in the seat comfortably was Scramsax the Jewel Thief.
"My diagnosis?" lighting her pipe after examining the patient and answering the inquiry no one gave "...these kooky lizards were inches away from creating a gods-d*mned muppet super-soldier." Pointing to the experimental corpse "If that thing has any vim or spirit left that hasn't been wholly corrupted like the sands of that wall, it may be a greater mercy to simply off the poor sucker."
Scram paced around the broken machine, victim, dead surgeons and surgery stations with great interest...
Raseri pulls Darrel back as she answer Luthael with a shake of her head.
"I did not either."
Ingryd questions her mighty bone shattering hammer about its potential hidden botanical desires. The hammer is silent for a moment. The offers a psychic shrug.
It is acceptable. While grass is a simple foundational food source for many ecosystems across the multiverse, it is also quite resilient and capable of surviving under harsh conditions. It has a robust capacity for rebirth and given time its roots can delve into the tiniest of cracks and crevices to shatter mighty mountainsides. Finally, it is an unassuming plant, neither bound within the trapping or short lived blooms for attracting the means to propagate itself or stooping to the need of thorns, sticky poisonous saps, or other such tawdry things to defend itself. It does not care about death for it is certain of its rebirth except under the worst of circumstances.
The shield merely huffs at the warhammer's nonchalance. Well I for one would much prefer colorful, variegated blooms to some bland old boring grass.
It doesn't much matter to me what you think. Comes the dry response.
Bah!
Ignoring the debate, Scramsax digs through the grim remains of the surgical team and their subject. Here within the epicenter of the magical chaos, the halfling discovers a few lingering remnants of the bizarre encounter. First, there are a few chunks of adamantium fused to the fleshy remains of the lizardfolk. A bit of careful knife work could remove the pieces, although cleansing the metal completely of the scaled flesh and meat will be much more time consuming and likely require a forge able to melt the magical substance and burn away the final impurities. All in all two pounds of the metal can be salvaged.
In her search for surgical instruments, the halfling finds a pair of highly corroded and blacked scalpels, a trio of long thin clamps, and a fine surgical saw. All are coated in a thick black corrosion and extremely brittle making them useless. Another one of the operators has a set of fine clockwork tools. Fine screwdrivers, wrenches, grips, and files useful for very delicate mechanical work.
One of the assistants apparently had a second set, but when the halfling opens the case three dozen gear and clock patterned moths flitter free and escape down the corridor. Another carried a coin purse that rattles happily when shaken. When poured forth, the contents spill onto the table with the sound of silver and gold. Fifty-three gold coins and twenty-five silver. A final shake of the bag causes a ruby that had been clinging to the inside of the bag to fall free. It lands on the table with a clatter and then begins scampering rapidly away toward the far end where it makes a leap for the still open chest cavity of the former surgical subject.
"Not so fast, psychic prison! I remember you..." plucking the gem out of midair with a greedy pinch. Holding it in a tight fist "Though hers was amber I recognize the cuts...tis' the sentience of creature inside this gem. And if this muppet super-soldier were to be as deadly as it appears, I imagine it is not the good-natured sort."
Inspecting it more closely, Scram affixed her eye-loupe looking for signs of the trapped identity within the reflections...
" So you are telling me you do love life" Ingryd says as she giggles.
" Vanity, would you rather be beauitful for a season only to wither and die or be like Ennui and just be grass, enduring and dependable beautiful in its simplitity and vibrancy, with the ability to bounce back from the ugliest of appearance" Ingryd says with a humorous tone, enjoying her magical weapons very much like children and her there mother.
"Pfbbbbbbtttt!"
The gemstone blows a big raspberry at Scramsax and then squiggles and squirms to escape the halfling's grasp.
"Bah! Help! Help! Griz quick! Its a sour berry! Grab it! Nooooooo!!!!" the thief shouted before apparently getting murdered (the way her body was flailing this way and that) by a small soft fruit or pointy red crystal.
Could the halfling not cause a near disaster every few minutes, Raseri wonders as she hears Scram's cry of alarm.
"Will someone keep that sticky-fingered thief from killing us all!"
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Luthael does not respond to Raseri and Scramsax but nunverbally, his head and shoulders sag in a not again.
He looks to Gunnar for a hopeful solution, again.
Ingryd sees Scram and walks forward towards Scramand reaches out to grab the thing.
With the gem secure and the clerics busy scolding her for no reason, Scramsax the Surgeon took a closer look at the victim...
"Meh, they'll be fine I guess. Nice catch, Griz." giving a low-five to her other paw.
Ingryd reaches out and manages to grab the tiny mobile gemstone before it manages to crawl deeper into the corpses interior. However, the bearkin immediately finds herself regretting that choice as something pokes at her callused palm. Briefly opening her hand, she spots several tiny metallic pins retracting back into the red ruby as it blows another raspberry in her direction. A few drops of blood mark her palm where the pins broke her thick skin.
Attempting to seize upon the open air opportunity, the gemstone starts to scramble away, but the bearkin quickly closes her fist again knowing that another burst of needles is likely to be in her future.
In the meantime, Scramsax takes a closer look at the body. Giving a quick couple of pokes with her finger, the halfling declares the deceased quite deceased. Cause of death one of any number of things ranging from not having a working heart properly installed, to electrical shock, to simply losing interest in living under the current circumstances of existence. Ennui agrees with the halfling's last assessment.
Watching Ingryd get repeatedly stabbed in the hand "Think you're clever...the ol' pins and needles trick, eh?! I don't think so!" the jewel thief maniacally cackled as she pulled forth a complex, specialty vise. Cranking the adjustable jaw open on Sly Laura's chrome plated professional ball-swivel grip "Alright Griz, on the count of 3! I'll clench it quick with good old mechanical compression...right on its snotty little 9 carat pavilion! 1! 2! 3!"
Scram carried the vise and obstinate ruby away from the wild magic shaft "...I'm tellin' ya, I know this cut. Gunz, Prophet, theres someone inside...just as I were once in Illarya's amber heart the Narg hag had crafted. This one's more hostile though, I think it was supposed to pump some animation into the corpse that's given up..." thumbing back to the pried open victim, still uninspected by professional clerics.
"I says we try talking to it! You guys gotta have some hu-ju that can do it, like the girl back at the griffon riders house!"
"Scramsax, what did you find?" Luthael asks wondering what the halfling is getting into.
"...these kooky lizards were inches away from creating a gods-d*mned muppet super-soldier!"
"...tis' the sentience of a creature inside this gem..."
"...Prophet, there's someone inside..."
Scramsax the Unheard struggled to think of yet another way to get anyone to help, and was about to just give up and chuck the thing into the roaring cylinder of wild magic.
"It did stab me. I have it controlled" Ingryd says with the heart gem in her hand.
Luthael looks at Scramsax the Unheard and suggests, "I don't think that we can do anything about that gem right now, other than prevent it from animating a body. Maybe, Gunnar can Identify soon, and I know I can ask Khors about it tomorrow, if we survive today."
"Maybe, we could get going before there is a response to our destruction of this machanism." He finally sheathes the First Sword.
Startled out of his study of the massive ley line power flow when he hears his name, Gunnar says, ”Of course, I will Identify the gem as you like, but let us first find a safe place to rest. I believe the night has progressed as we have wandered here. Perhaps now would be a good time to make camp?”
"Pbbbbtttt....Urk!"
The rebellious gemstone is cut off mid raspberry as Scramsax secures it with a specialty vice designed for just such an emergency. Spiked protrusions spring forth, but cause no harm even as they retract and then burst out again and again while tiny thin arms and legs squiggle about in the air.
(It is actually quite a well known fact among the jewelers guilds that precious and semi precious gems often have minds of their own and are constantly leaping, diving, or rolling themselves of workbenches and into the darkest, dustiest, and dankest corners of a workshop hoping to never be seen again. Thus, a variety of tools have been designed over the centuries to keep the cantankerous gems properly secured until they are shackled properly within the gold, silver, or other metallic setting. This of course does not prevent the future hapless owner from having the dastardly things leap into the nearest drain, trash heap, or sofa cushions in yet another attempt to escape mortal contact.)
Eventually Luthael and Gunnar step over to give the curious gem a closer look. The two men each quickly suggesting they should perhaps investigate it further using magical means after moving to a safer location.
It is worth noting that this is the very moment when Scramsax the Unheard truly joined the Sisterhood of Every Woman Ever. Her actions and ideas completely disregarded by nearby males only to have the same ideas regurgitated like yesterday's chili dog as their own insightful and amazingly relevant ideas. Up until this moment the halfling had merely been her old male self oddly switched by the fates into the body of woman. Now she had truly become a card-carrying, dagger-wielding, eye-rolling, curse-muttering, member of the Sisterhood.
Scram shrugged, putting the gem away as the others started to do what they wanted to do. The thief would have to go with the flow and leave mysteries for another day.
Getting closer to the gem, Luthael notices bodies among the debris of the explosion. Before they go, he looks it over for anything useful.
"It's dead. Let's go."
Once Darrel is safe, Raseri does take a look at the poor victim. Even if they are dead, she figures they might be able learn if reversing the process is possible.
Luthael examines the body and like Scramsax, finds it quite dead. Raseri, not entirely trusting the prophet's rushed diagnosis takes a bit more time.
Just before you turn away deciding that indeed both Scramsax and Luthael were correct in the matter, your eye notices a curious scabbing covering several of the smaller wounds. The wounds are not old. In fact the blood upon the flesh nearest the damage is still damp. Yet, the cuts have sealed themselves. You take a closer look at the chest cavity. Here you see something that causes a chill of uncertainty to ripple through your own bones. The victim's flesh appears to be slowly weaving itself around the various mechanical devices inserted into the patient's chest. Veins and arteries are sealing themselves to the mechanical heart. Some kind of manufactured filtration and biodigester that has replaced the stomach appears fully interlocked with the still biological intestine. Even the single bulky clockwork eye is surrounded by healed pink flesh.
The body is still quite inanimate and dead. But as you push aside some of the grim and grizzly obstructions within the chest, you come across a final curious device. Several thin wires radiate from a small circular device mounted to the side of the mechanical heart. The wires all run to the spinal column where they seem to embed themselves into the thick nerves housed within the vertebrae. There is a small opening in the center of that device. Was almost exactly matching the curious shape of the animated cut gemstone that Scramsax just carried out of the room secured in her set of jewelers clamps.
Hearing the second opinion of an expert bolstered the young surgeon's confidence "Ah, just as I suspected, Prophet. You've taught me well. I had a tingling suspicion from the unresponsive pupils, but the rigid lungs (made easily visible by the convenient chest cavity) really sealed the deal. Welp, time for a nap."
There was no use working overtime. From what Scram had been able to figure, the Heart Alive Haggy Hospital here used some variation of the so-called 'eight and eighty' system. Time-and-a-half wouldn't be allocated until the healthcare professional was over 8 hours if scheduled for a 40 hour week, or more than 80 hours in a 14 day period. Scram wasn't trying to impress anyone.
Forget these lizards.
Raseri looks from where the others are leaving back to the corpse, or the not-corpse, the un-corpse? True, she can be cold as ice, but something about this situation reminds her too much of her own, before she had run away from the hag and the cycle of being born only to live a wretched life that ended when the woman who gave birth to her and her twin drove a dagger into heart. She unconsciously rubs the spot where the dagger had plunged again and again on her breastplate for a moment before realizing what she's doing. She can be cold. She can also be flighty, and even erratic, but she still tries to do the right thing.
"Please don't make me regret this," she says to the woman before carrying her out of the strange room.
"She's not dead, not all the way," Raseri calls out to the others when she catches up to them. She points out the places where her wounds have begun healing. "I--I can't just leave her like this. I know we have to take care of the hag, but--" her voice trails off, uncertain of what she should do.
Time. We need time and a place to hole up. Someplace safe. The Shadow Roads are too dangerous. We can't just go back the way we came, and, she glances up at Darrel, we really need to get him back to normal at least.
"Do we have any spells or skills that can hide us away for a few hours," she asks. "Time is pressing, but I don't think we can keep going with our guide as he is and I do not think he would wish to be alone in or near this place. Scramsax, I know we keep asking you to go off ahead into danger, but could you find a haven for us in this place?"
Raseri's words really got the scoundrel thinking.
If there was already one secret door in this proto-tower, mayhap there were more? Unfurling her special listening cone, the thief took to the task of examining the chamber for hidden exits...but not before "Hum. Guess there's work to be done, after all. Probably a secret library around here somewhere...mechanus like that's gonna need a hefty user's manual. Freakin' chocolate licker is probably the one who built it all, and drove 'em straight-sucking mad. When they realized the instructions were in a different language, they should have just given up...right Ennui?"
”If it comes down to it, I can create a wall of stone, making it look like part of the cave wall from the outside. We could rest behind it, then break through it when we are ready to move on,” offers Gunnar, though it is clear he has no intention of casting spells in view of the ley line.
Having studied the raw power of the diverted ley line with Detect Magic, Gunnar notes Raseri’s interest in the mechanically augmented corpse. He goes over and focuses his spell on the being, seeing what he can glean from it.
"She's alive?! Let's get away from this ley line overflow and hole up somewhere. Let's use Gunnar's Wall of Stone, because I can Shape a door after we've rested." The prophet agrees.
"Maybe. It--It seems impossible, but her wounds are healing, slowly." She looks up at the others. "Thank you."
Scramsax does indeed find a previously unnoticed exit from the room. Set into the stone wall and operated by pressing a simple pressure plate. The door opens silently into another much smaller room. A trio of benches fill the center area while multiple pegs line the wall, some holding gowns or aprons very similar to those worn by the lizard folk in the other room.
Another doorway opens into a narrow hall that stretches onward for another forty paces before ending in another tee intersection. Along the hall are four more doors, each closed. Two on the right two to the left.
The two on the right appear to lead to another surgical theater. This one is blessedly empty at the moment. The room is much larger than the previous chamber. A halfmoon arc of seating rises up from an open area where another stone surgical table sits unoccupied and surrounded by similar, but inactive equipment.
The left hand rooms are small, simple affairs. Both appear to be offices that also double as living quarters of some sort. Each has a small bed, desk, a pair of guest chairs, tiny cooking area and a cramped water closet located in the far back of the room. Fortunately, there are no windows or other openings leading out to the tower core, so the side effects of the potent powers flowing along the pillar are nullified by the thick stone wall.
A desk of the first room is tidy, well organized, and contains a small stack of files and a journal. The bed is made and a small plate, mug, and stewpot sit on the counter next to the sink to dry.
The desk of the second room is a stark contrast to the first. The bed unmade, papers scattered in a haphazard fashion atop the desk. A thick ink stain marks the surface of the desk on one side. A pair of mugs each half filled with a dark brown liquid, mold floating on the surface. The entire room room smells of old tobacco, probably due to the over filled ashtray sitting on the corner of the desk.
While Scramsax scouts out a place to hunker down for a few hours, Gunnar comes over to examine the surgically altered body. At first, the dwarf finds it difficult to discern between the surrounding magics caused by the core and the residual effects of the earlier combat and arcane backlash. However, with a little further concentration and focus, the wizard does indeed detect traces of Necromancy, Abjuration, and Enchantment magics woven into the very flesh and fiber of the subject.
The dwarf finally pauses a moment, his brow suddenly furrowing in concentration and puzzled thought. While magical energy and power certainly infuses the body, the subjects mind is completely dark. Not a trace of the usual power or energy that is commonly found within the mind of any living, sentient creature. Wizardly studies have often found that even after death, the energy of the mind can linger for hours, days even until it all finally dissipates back into the aether. And yet, there was evidence the victim was alive a mere few minutes earlier, at least judging by the beating heart he'd witnessed being removed. Thus the wizard can conclude only two possible explanations, either the subject was dead long before the operation began. Or whatever mind, Luthael and Raseri might call it soul, the poor victim had was forcibly and completely removed from the body prior to the surgery.
The Most Reliable Thief in Midgard delivered the detes ripe with important features such as bed quality, magic nullification, unoccupied toilets and gladiatorial medicine. Her description complete, the Barsellan only added "...you got your one that looks lived in recently. Then you got another, cocoa addict living life to the fullest. Point is, both well treaded spaces...we rest in there we wager the risk of being found."
Scratching her smooth, surprisingly stubble-less jaw "Guess I could save ye some ju-ju. Seems pretty taxing when you gesture magic up like that. Er, what I mean is I could sabotage that trick door...set it up to be as good as a wall of stone."
As they move to put Scramsax’s plan in motion, Gunnar informs his friends of his findings. ”I don’t know if allowing the gem into this…being…would be wise or foolish, for it could be controlled to destroy the hag’s foes or have free will and decide to aid us in her destruction.”