With a long break under their belts, the group returns to the mirror but finds that Tercival is no longer in the room. Looking closer at the mirror they can see a small image of Tercival slumped in despair in a small square chamber.
Morgan begins walking along the carved lines in the floor, from colored circle to colored circle. As he nears the mirror, an out-of-breath Tercival comes leaping out of the mirror. Tercival and Morgan do a double-take at each other, and Tercival says "They are coming, defend yourselves!" Backing away from the mirror, with his sword at the ready, two Morgan-sized human-shaped creatures step through the mirror. They appear to be walking mirrors, their skin smooth, reflective, and featureless. In each hand they wield a large jagged splinter of glass. Tercival yells not to look directly at them, so Modisto drops a darkness spell into the room. About this time, Salla uses a detection spell to discover that Tercival is giving off evil vibes.
Melee in the dark ensues, with Morgan smashing a couple of the creatures into bits who step through the mirror and into reach of his sword. However, he gets stabbed multiple times in the back with what feels like a sharp dagger. Jonl, Chul, and Snake finish off one or two more (they are not sure with the darkness) before they get to smashing apart Morgan's backstabbing buddy.
Cut and bleeding the group decides to rest again before messing any more with the mirror.
When they return to the room, they notice the mirror is actually more like a liquid pool then a solid surface. Morgan steps into the mirror and finds himself alone in a small-pentagon shaped room with a violet ambient light, each wall holds another colored mirror. He discovers that he can talk with the rest of the group, even though their voices sound distant and muffled to each other.
After some trial and error, Morgan manages to step through enough various colored mirrors to finally step out into a small stone chamber where Tercival sits slumped against a metal door. Tercival doesn't even register Morgan's arrival, his tear-stained face slumped down and his torn, bloody hands at his side.
Morgan dishes out some of his special medicine (boot camp instructor shouting) to get Tercival to at least talk to him. He finds out that Tercival was shown the mirror by the "silver-skinned archons" after he had drank from their chalice to gain their favor and strength. He first met the archons several months ago, before the Demonskar Ball. Visions of disaster in the horizon for Cauldron, led him to Vaprak's Voice where he encountered them for the first time. The vision told him that he must undertake the "Test of the Smoking Eye" to save Cauldron from the disaster.
During these talks, the rest of the group makes their way through the mirror and into the chamber with Tercival. It appears as if the mirror is a one way trip, so the group tackles the metal door. Morgan's great strength aided by a magical mace make quick work of bashing through the door.
Through the door is a larger chamber, in the middle stand four metal columns, and on the opposite wall an archway leading to what appears to be the outdoors, except that the outdoors glow a hellish red. Watching the metal columns, a small spark of electricity jumps around every couple of minutes.
One by one, the party crosses the room to the other side, timing their movement through the larger chamber in between sparks of electricity. On the other side of the room they are greeted to a sky made of flame, bathing everything in a reddish glow. Off in the distance looms a massive skull: a white monolith the size of a small mountain. Clouds of flame stream from the skull's eye socket and up into the sky. About a half-mile ahead stands a cluster of gently curving white pillars, almost as if giant rib bones had been stuck in the ground. Off to the sides, and surrounding the entire scene are steep mountains, whose tops seem to touch the fiery sky. It stretches around the entire horizon - as if standing inside a vast bowl with a fiery lid. The ground is spongy and wrinkled. It's more like skin than dirt.
As Tercival begins to cross the room there is a huge surge of electricity between the pillars followed by a loud crack and flash of lightning. Standing between the pillars is a creature as tall as a giant. Two of its four arms end with clawed hands, the other two with powerful pincers. Its doglike head is topped with horns, and its violet eyes are cold and dark. A loud barking voice fills the mind of everyone in the room, "Tercival must die! Peace is at an end!"
Like a man possessed, Tercival charges the monstrosity. Tercival's white shining sword carves into the creature, while its massive claws crush his steel-encased body. Tercival is soon tested to his limits and falls limp in the creature's claws. Snake jumps up and knocks Tercival loose from his claws, sending him and Tercival hurtling across the room.
Salla runs over and forces a potion of gaseous form down Alek's throat. The monster raises its claw in the air and draws out a glowing rune, barking out a sinister chant to match. Chul, Snake, Kreed, and Krylscar find themselves befuddled and confused as to where they are and what they are doing. Salla throws a silence spell on Morgan, which unfortunately for Morgan makes him the new target for the beast. Salla follows this up with a dispel magic on Snake, which dispels the magical confusion effect on his mind.
Morgan finally manages to get his hands on Alakast, and swings it down on the monster delivery a thundering blow that echoes through the chamber as chunks of flesh are blown off with the magically enhanced hit. But that is all the hits Morgan gets in as the creature traps him in its claws and crushes the consciousness out of him. He throws the limp body across the room near Modisto. Morgan's broken body stains the stone floor with blood as he is quickly fed a healing potion to keep him from dying to his injuries.
Salla casts a second silence spell, this time on Snake. Snake manages to move around the creature and grab Alakast from where Morgan fell. Snake gets two mighty blows in with the staff before the creature tears through him as well. Chul scoops up the staff, swinging it at the monster's knee. With Pelor smiling upon him, he drives the staff through the knee, exploding it out of the creature's leg.
The heavily wounded monster stumbles over to the gaseous form of Tercival. As he turns his back to the party, Morgan charges in pushing his sword through the monster's body, its tip bursting out of its stomach. The monster crashes to the ground, its body quickly catches flame and begins immolating itself.
The exhausted group relishes in their victory, high fives and shouts of joy are shared...
Gathering together at the fissure, the group goes back into the caves that Snake and Chul had previously ran through. They find, in what is assumed to be the lair of the giant men, large burlap sacks of silver and gold.
They proceed further into the caves and find a second room of even more giant-sized beds. The caves lead further in and connect to a masterfully worked stone hallway, with metal plates in the ceiling that glow with a soft light as the party approaches. Jonl investigates a door at the south end of the hallway, and as he nears the door it begins to slid up into the wall on its own accord.
Jonl leaps to the side of the door and hears a deep bellowing voice say something, he picks a few words out in Goblin, but not enough to be intelligible. Snake and Morgan lead a charge through the doors and into a circular room where five two-headed giants meet them with morningstars ready. Snake uses his shield to blind the giants with a well-timed flash. The blind giants fall quickly.
As healing is dished out, two silver-skinned winged men approach the room from a hallway deeper in. One of them carries a golden, gem-rimmed chalice of purple-colored liquid. They offer the party a drink from the chalice for rescuing them from their giant captors. The drink from the chalice is declined and questions are raised. The silver-skinned men respond by disappearing.
Salla tosses a glitterball where they were standing and catches one of the creatures in the glitter. Snake and Chul take on the glitter-covered figure. Snake is attacked from behind by two old crones, with green-tinged skin and hair, who appear out of nowhere. The old crones are slain and beheaded.
Continuing to move further into the complex, leaving the northern end of the large hallway unexplored, a strange apparatus is found that is generating the purple-liquid that was offered to them in the chalice. Two more doors lead out of the room, one to the north and one to the south. The party decides to explore the southern option, where Jonl finds a second door past the first, its edges covered in a resin. Standing back, Modisto throws a mage hand to open the door, but he is not standing back far enough and gets caught in a fiery explosion as the door opens. Beyond the door is a dead end.
To the north they find what appears to be some sort of throne room. The throne has triple arm rests, is white marble, and sits on a raised platform in the room. The base of the platform has carvings of six-armed gaunt figures holding a circular object in their lower arms.
Further north, a second room with a throne is found, but this one holds a pentagon-shaped mirror and an odd multi-colored diagram surrounds the throne. No one enters the room, but a slumped figure sits in the throne, who could very well be Alek Tercival by the dark hair and full plate they note the figure wears.
Backtracking, the party finds a finely furnished bed chamber with a loom and several tapestries and rugs decorating it. They find a chest with several valuables and a hidden cabinet with a quarterstaff.
The party decides to rest up and Modisto discovers during this time that the staff is Alakast.
Time passes as the party takes their rest...
The party prepares for a boat trip and overland journey. The Chisel hires several boats and supplies them with food and other basic supplies they request. Morgan hires several retainers who have experienced the boat trip down the river before and are handy with a sword.
The next morning they depart Redgorge and arrive near the headless statue around mid-day. Snake and Jonl disembark from the boats and swim ahead to scout out the beach where the statue stands. They uncover a small group of gnolls hidden in the jungle, watching the river. While the boats come into view of the gnolls, Snake quickly slays all of them. More gnolls come out of the jungle, and attack Snake in mass, while the boats hit the beach. It is a massacre, but the party suspects that a few of the gnolls were able to flee.
The hired help is left at the beach to stand guard over the boats and wait for the main group's return. They are left with enough food for two weeks and instructed to return to Redgorge if the main group has not returned by then.
After several hours of navigating the trail, it passes by a cave tucked away in a small hill. A large sloth-like creature is found in the cave, which is confronted and slain. Inside the group finds an empty wand, its last charge spent. The wand has clear markings of the St. Cuthbert adorning it.
A night is spent camped in the jungle, during which Morgan has some sort of strange dream or vision or personal visit (he is not sure which) from a winged messenger in the form of a beautiful silver-skinned woman with large white wings holding aloft a flaming sword. She says that the Lord of the Demonskar knows of their approach, and he prepares for their arrival. They should be wary of treachery from her false sisters, and should look behind the watchers of the north to find the mighty weapon Alakast, wielded by Surabar in ages past.
Another day passes on the jungle trail before they arrive at the edge of the Demonskar and at what they believe to be the great pipe mentioned on their map. They follow the pipe under the Demonskar, using the map to guide them through the maze. Eventually, they arrive at a large fissure. A ramp leads down into a wide pit that splits the fissure where a nasty pool of steaming liquid rests and a portcullis-covered cave entrance is found. On the far side of the pit, the fissure continues to the north, where they see two large metal pipes jutting from the ground, making a loud deep bellow as the wind blows over them.
Chul takes the endless rope and spider climbs over to the far side of the pit. During the crossing, boulders begin to shoot out of a small hole above the portcullis, smashing into Chul who manages to stay clung to the rock wall.
An invisible Modisto walks along the rock wall above the small opening (with his slippers of spider climbing) and peeks inside. He discovers a dirt-covered, brutish, giant of a man watching through the opening with a large pile of round boulders next to him. Modisto throws a mirror image spell followed by a bounced lightning bolt and fireball killing the brutish creature as it feebly swings its fists at the illusionary duplicates.
Chul and Snake get through the hole and with great flexing of muscles and mighty curses they manage to crank the portcullis up.
As this is going on, the sound of wood scraping on stone can be heard further down the fissure, past the two great metal pipes. Shortly after, three more of the giant, brutish men come down to the pipes and begin tossing boulders at the rest of the party. As the rest of the group takes cover, Morgan takes shots at the giants with the crossbow.
Snake and Chul race down the only exit of the supposed guard room, heading north into a larger cave that looks like some sort of barbaric living quarters. They quickly decide to take the northeast exit (one of several) and pass a large wooden wall that has been pushed aside. They come out to the fissure where they charge into the back of the boulder-tossing giants. Melee is had and the giants are dispatched with Chul taking a battering at the fists of the giants.
The open portcullis awaits...
