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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2168793" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 368The Heroes of Cauldron, now bolstered by the Travelers, set out once again deeper into the Cagewright stronghold.  Despite having just met, both groups contained veterans of untold combats and deadly situations, and they combined their skills to best advantage.  Benzan and Mole, cloaked in invisibility, took the lead.  Behind them came the three warriors, Arun, Lok, and Hodge, forming an iron wall of defense.  Just behind them came Dannel, able to shoot over the shorter fighters with his longbow, Dana’s planar ally at his side.  The deva’s superior senses would help ensure that they were not caught off guard, and his presence in the middle of their order ensured that everyone but the scouts could benefit from the protective aura that it radiated against all things evil. Cal and Dana brought up the rear.  At Dana’s direction the deva had blessed them all with divine aid, a temporary but useful warding that improved their durability significantly.The tunnel beyond the double doors on the far side of the Cagewright meeting room started curving almost immediately to the right, the bend in the passage obscuring anything more than maybe forty or fifty feet ahead of them.  They pressed on, their light sources indicating a side tunnel opening off to the left.  As they neared the split, Mole appeared suddenly ahead of them.  “Torture chamber, empty, no exits,” she said, fading back into invisibility even as she finished speaking. “Could be a trap or a secret door,” Dannel suggested.  Arun nodded and halted.  “Let’s check it out, quick but thorough.”  But the room proved to be as empty as Mole had said, and after a minute’s delay they continued down the main corridor.“So much pain here,” Lok commented.  “The demodands are the masters of Careri,” Cal explained.  “The entire plane is basically a giant prison.  Creatures from throughout the multiverse are trapped there… and there is no parole, or time off for good behavior.  The demodands are the warders, and from what I read, they take great joy in their duties.”“Just gets better an’ better,” Hodge grumbled. “And these Cagewrights seek to transform the Realms into an extension of that place?” Dana said.  “Madness…”“They delude themselves into thinking that they would hold power, when the portal opened,” Arun said.  “Ultimately, though, any revolution ends up consuming those who first ignite it.”“Your military exterior betrays the heart of a scholar, paladin,” Cal noted. Mole’s voice hissed in interruption out of thin air.  “Sheesh, you guys are as loud as a gnomish circus!  Keep it down… there’s a chamber up ahead, looks empty, but Benzan is checking it out.”Thus chastened, the group continued—with the clank of the heavy armor worn by the dwarves, only moderately more quietly—forward. The place was a fairly large bedchamber, dominated by a comfortable four-poster bed.  Mostly-empty shelf and workbench space carved into the stone decorated the walls, and an elaborate summoning diagram covered almost half of the floor space.  For being in a dungeon, the place was fastidiously clean, without a single speck of dust in evidence upon the floor or any of the other surfaces.  There were no obvious exits, making this an apparent dead end. “Either there’s a secret door somewhere, or that woman is still here,” Dannel said.  “As always, yer grasp o’ the obvious be amazin’, elf,” Hodge offered.“Invisible?” Lok asked. “There is nothing invisible within this chamber,” the deva said.  “I don’t sense any live auras,” Arun agreed.  “But dark things were done in this place.”  The warriors moved slowly into the room, avoiding treading upon the summoning circle in the floor.The deva turned, his heavy mace coming up into a ready position.  “Something comes,” he said.  A heartbeat later, they could all hear it, a rumbling noise that seemed to sound through the very walls near where the corridor met this room. “What in the hells…” Hodge began. He did not get a chance to finish his thought, for the wall abruptly erupted outward, and a huge figure strode into the chamber in an explosion of shattered stone and dust.</blockquote>

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