The door slams open.
A dwarf bursts in. Short. Ragged. He looks frightened, checks over his shoulder. “Help me!” he cries. “They’re after me!”
It’s another prisoner, escaped from the kobolds. He speaks frantically of a kitchen, a horrid stew made of dwarven limbs. Now a conundrum: to go back and clear them out, or push forward to cut the head off the snake. Well, snakes have proven to be quite dangerous. Hopefully this one doesn’t have two heads.
Onwards into a room of floating isles, each with size enough for one. Each bearing a blue stone like the dragons. Keeps them aloft. Crossing them wasn’t too difficult, Ranak manages it with ease. Until a kobold crosses his path on the final leap. But it wasn’t expecting them. A quick stab in the gullet sends it into the abyss below. A splash betrays the presence of water at the bottom.
More attacked from behind, slinging stones to knock the islands out of the air. Two fall, two flee. One of the ones that fell screamed all the way to the bottom. Kept screaming a long while after that. The horrors it might have seen are still unknown.
The newcomer, Benry the Cowardly, flees down the next corridor. It’s a long corridor. Dreamlike. It ends in a sharp bend, but the corner is rippling. Warping, reshaping. From within protrudes a hand. A Claw. Skin like tar. As the gang rushes past in fear, a demonic visage emerges from the stone. Far removed from their comrade prior, the figure now looks demonic in nature. The gang’s passage is blocked by a door, and a lever. The lever does not open the door. Panic begins to set in. The figure, it’s traversal of the wall almost complete, has two wings afixed to its back. It is wounded. Bolts and arrow shafts stick out from its flesh. It’s passage from the wall complete, the gang expects the worst, but the creature pursues them not. It exits down the way they came.
Collecting themselves, the gang ponders their dead end. Setting out to explore the only passage yet unknown, they find a watery room with a chest on the other side. The murky water hides bear traps, the chest: a lever, two hourglasses, and a spell that can turn one to an object.
Ranak got caught in one of the traps. Lived through it, but sore. The whole gang is sore. They are tired. Wounded. Out of spells and sleep. They need to rest. They return to the old armory. A defensible position. A good nights sleep.
The next morning they sweep through the kitchen, finding the horrid meal but no kobolds to eat. None but the chef remains now. It is swiftly dealt with. The cells in the back, where Benry escaped from, holds three dwarven boys. One is missing an arm, one a leg. The other is fine. The key is recovered from a kobold executioner. The dwarves vow vengeance on their tormentors.
Kobolds are crafty. The lever in the chest matches the one on the wall. You have to pull them both at the same time to open the door. Kind of them to include hourglasses. Leaving the legless dwarf to man the chest, the other 5 rush to the door and enter without interruption.
They enter the room on the upper level of the room. A balcony overlooking a veritable horde. Robed kobolds sitting at tables. On a stage at the forefront of the room, a giant throne. Sized for an ogre. Inhabited by a demon. Black tar skin. Sunken eyes. No wings, though. Perhaps more than one demon lurks these halls. One a plinth next to it sits a white glowing orb.
The gang contemplates what to do. Sneak onwards through the back door to find the ogre? Or take on the demon and its followers. Only one is alive to remember the original aim of the expedition. Having been snuck up on before, they choose to make a stand.
The crafty use of the two chandeliers sends the assembly into chaos. The last of the fire bombs claims two of their lives. Dwarves are stationed at the stairs waiting for an onslaught. But it never comes, the robed kobolds are unarmed. They cower in fear as their master begins to act.
The demon throws of the chandelier effortlessly. Bending over and writhing in pain, two wings erupt from it’s back, and it surges towards the upper balcony. Before it can strike, lady luck bares her fangs. Kuzome rends the beast out of flight with a meat hook on a whip. Now lying on the ground, the beast is grabbed by Warthog who stretches the wing taut in a burst of strength. Taut enough for the newcomer Benry to attack with his gardeners sheers, cutting the beasts wing clean off. A lucky stab from Ranak severes the other wing. If this were a man, it would be dead. But it is not a man. The beast, in desperation, turns to flee, spitting a pool of acid behind it to cover its tracks. But the beast will not escape again. Warthog reads his spell of haste and charges down the stairs, grappling onto the beast, determined not to let it escape. Benry reads the spell of objectification and leaps, turning into an anvil that smites the demon upon its head. The beast, deseperate, pinned by an anvil and out of options, sticks a claw through Warthogs chest. He dies rescuing his dwarven brothers. He does not die in vain. One of the rescued dwarven boys throws his sword in a desperate bid for execution. It lands true, impaling the demon against the stone wall. Halfway into a new dimension, the beast finally dies, becoming trapped in the stone with which is means to escape.
A ripple of fear and relief in the gang. The monster slain, losing one of their own in the process. This has gone beyond their pay grade. The outside world needs to know what transpires within this cave, but the dragon still needs release.
The next course of action will take time to decide. With luck, their valiant efforts will not be in vain.