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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Altalazar" data-source="post: 3182398" data-attributes="member: 939">Sir Cordozo – Chapter One-Hundred Sixty-Two – On the Abyss, We get the Shaft    Morwen, as always, examined the door for any surprises.  She determined that it used to have a massive trap.  As I looked around at the rubble that surrounded us that used to be a demon mansion, I wondered if the trap going off was what caused the destruction, but Morwen interrupted my reverie and said that it was the mansion’s destruction that set off the trap.  Oh well, it was a nice thought.  Morwen then spent a great deal of time picking the complicated demonic lock.  Then, with much effort by everyone, the massive copper doors were pulled open.      Looking down the doors, we saw a circular shaft 300 feet deep.  Valaria tried to teleport to the bottom of the shaft, where we saw some sort of grating, but she was unable to do so.  So I climbed on her back and she flew me down as Ee did the same for everyone else.      Once we reached the grate, we looked inside and saw a large, spherical room with lots of vents.      Sir Cordozo – Chapter One-Hundred Sixty-Three – Sitting Spiders    “Bebliths.  Why did it have to be Bebliths?”  I said to myself as I looked down through the grate and saw TWO of them, both sitting on the bottom of the 150 foot wide chamber.  Just when I thought it couldn’t be any more treacherous, one of the vents erupted with a blast of magma and then emptied out an opposite grating, filling the room with a searing heat.  The other vents, one by one, did so as well, every six seconds, in a rotating pattern around the room.      I foresaw a massive combat in that chamber, running between streams of magma, Bebliths rending our flesh into tiny pieces, Morwen screaming as her flesh was seared off her body, Ee screaming as his armor was shredded and melted into oblivion, Larch screaming as his body died in an unnatural place, far from his grove, and Kyrnyn screaming as his soul was snuffed out in a place his god could never find.  Then I looked down again and realized some time had passed and the Bebliths were too big to fit through the grating at the top where we were and they were still just sitting there like dumb rocks.      Twelve seconds later, where the Bebliths were there were two roughly Beblith-shaped piles of dust.      “Ee wonder what in next room,” Ee said as he picked his teeth with a toothpick.      “Ee see pattern,” he said, and then he flew down to the grate at the bottom, along with the rest of us, where we found yet another shaft downward.     Sir Cordozo – Chapter One-Hundred Sixty-Four – My Nose Bleeds for Cold, Fire is Put Out    In the next room we saw a fancy platform of concentric circles over a pit of lava.  In the center of it was a large cauldron.  But most immediately, I noticed the five large beings of fire that stood next to it.      “Ok, I’m going to take those fire beings out with a little blast of cold,” I said.    Morwen responded, “Wait, are you sure they are evil?  What if they are guarding this room to prevent the demon from getting to it?”    “Oh, they are definitely evil,” I said with the same cool, smooth tone I’d used a thousand times when declaring a dyed-in-the-wool criminal “not guilty.”  It wasn’t exactly a lie if I never asked the client if he had done it or not, and it was not exactly a lie here, since I figured they must be evil here – everything else is.      I split my mind in two, then readied my brain for a surge of power, overchanneling my mental energy in a dangerous feedback loop.  I told Kyrnyn to stand by to heal me, because it was going to hurt me considerably.  Then I let forth two blasts of missiles of cold energy, one to each of the beings of fire, the cold maximized as I pressed my brain to its very limit.  Blood surged out of my eyes, ears, and mouth, and my brain felt ready to explode as the cold missiles came forth, missiles of a size I never imagined possible.  Two each slammed into the fire beings, consuming them utterly, and snuffing their life-fires out in a single instant.  Larch helpfully healed me before I fell over from the pain.      “Ee wonder what in next room,” Ee said as he descended to the room to look around.  Looking again at the Cauldron, I realized was the long lost Soul Cauldron, lost for eons, the greatest treasure of the Lord of the Damned, rumored to have the power to grant a demon his greatest desire.  It was rumored to have caused the god of love and peace to do evil only once, when it drained his consort of her soul without its consent, and then it drank from it itself, a major blasphemy.  The Cauldron of Souls contained a powerful elixir that contained the distilled essence of all of the souls within, melted to their trace components.  It was a horrid artifact of evil that had existed for eons.  Three seconds later, the horrid artifact was slowly sinking into the magma, its platform reduced to fine particles of dust.  I looked up and saw a portcullis leading to a passage that presumably led to the final chamber of this abyssal mansion cellar.  Morwen unlocked it, Kyrnyn and Ee opened it, and we began to walk down the long, dark passage.  Sir Cordozo – Chapter One-Hundred Sixty-Five – Soul Engine Room – Come out And Fight You Pansy DemonAs we emerged at the end of the long tunnel, we saw a huge room, at least 500 feet across, that contained four large pillars filled to the brim with billions of screaming, writhing, trapped, doomed souls.  The Soul Engine came back to me from an obscure legend about how 10,000 demons working for an entire eon built it, and then were all slaughtered, and its existence was hidden from even the gods.  So we knew more than the gods.  Which would explain why when Kyrnyn asks his god for advice, he usually tells him things like “Follow your Hart.  Drink lots of Water.”  Because they don’t have a clue.  There were three levels of platforms that had walkways between, above, and around the four massive pillars.  But other than that, the room was empty and quiet save for a gentle humming coming from the pillars and walls.  I had a bad feeling about it, so I called forth Moira to aid me while I climbed on Valaria’s back so she could fly me forward, just in case those platforms were less sturdy than they looked.  My companions all moved forward into the room, heading toward the center.  I hung back, slowly heading that way.  Moria then discovered our final foe, as he appeared out of nowhere and stabbed her through her heart, nearly killing her.  But she is one tough Valkrie.  She turned around and slashed into him with her mighty greatsword.  Valaria flew me up to the platform, and then flew down to flank him.  My companions followed suit and soon had him surrounded.  Not wanting any more surprises from him, like a sword through my heart, I slipped the tendrils of my mind into his and then gently removed all traces of my presence from his awareness.  As far as he was concerned, I no longer existed.  Now if only I could do that for our whole party and for all of the evil demons in existence.  Then again, that might limit our opportunities for employment.  The demon, rather than stand and fight, vanished into thin air, though Moria took a quick swipe at him as he did so.  We then began to carefully search the chamber, my valkries flying around, my companions walking around, looking for where the demon went.  Just when it seemed he was unable to be seen, Moira suddenly sensed his demonic thoughts within 30 feet of her position, as if he were standing right on the side of one of the pillars.  She quickly told me where he was in her mental, wordless way, and I quickly informed my companions using my own mindlink of her position, Morwen first.  Valaria teleported to her position, she flew to the pillar, and I called forth Lileth, a third valkrie, to cut off his other avenue of retreat.  Morwen flew up above his position, her goggles removing the demon’s invisibility, revealing him standing horizontally on the side of the pillar.  Ee took position on the platform, his bow at the ready, and Kyrnyn took position on the pillar below him.  Valaria noticed he had a wand in his hand, presumably of healing.  She tried to knock it from his grasp wither her greatsword, but he was just barely able to hold onto it.  But while he was distracted with her, Moira knocked it cleanly out of his grasp, and it fell right into Kyrnyn’s hand.  Ee’s arrows, Morwen’s rapier, my valkrie’s greatswords, and Kyrnyn’s stonewand soon rended the demon into a slashed torso of demon flesh and he fell down onto the platform below him.  Morwen deftly took up his sword and Ee grabbed his body as the entire chamber began to shake and crack and fall apart around us.  Moira, just barely held on to life, so I dismissed her as Valaria and Lileth grabbed me and we all flew out of there as fast as we could.  Not trusting my traveling magic within its walls, I rushed us up toward the entrance doors as fast as we could.  Pieces of wall, magma, and other things flew down around us.  It felt like we were going to make it.  Then I saw the huge copper doors sealed above us.  Without even slowing down, I disintegrated the doors and we then all sailed up and out of the shaft onto the abyssal landscape, surrounded by demons, about to be overwhelmed.  My companions all reached out and grabbed hands around me and just before we could be torn to pieces, I had a vision of home in my mind, and we all vanished from the plane.  Sir Cordozo – Chapter One-Hundred Sixty-Six – Home Sweet Home – And Coin Sweet CoinHe arrived in a lush, green meadow, a quiet place of contemplation and relaxation.  A place where we could spend days musing on the meaning of life.  We stayed there for about three seconds before I teleported us all to the magical consignment shop in the capitol.  “So, have you sold anything yet?”  We then looted the demon’s body, discovering rather a lot of platinum, a few items of considerable magical power, and we then added them to our consignment (after dividing them up amongst ourselves).  In the end, after our abyssal booty was sold, we all had more coin than we had ever imagined.  With the addition of selling my own piece of the demon pie, I ended up with well over 100,000 coins of gold.  Now I just needed to determine how best to utilize my newfound wealth.  Oh, and by the way, we saved the world.</blockquote>

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