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Dacys – Noble Dragonborn Monk (Amiee)
Urthez – Half-Orc Folk Hero Rogue (Charles)
Twig – Half-Orc Soldier Barbarian (Jake)
Zelona – Noble Half-Elf Paladin (Tam)
Kai – Tiefling Sage Bard (Sami)
Brolimir – Wood Elf Sage Druid (Matt)
As the party rested by the cliff side, inside the ancient temple, at the foot of a lake full of blood; Kai took first watch, but as the others drifted to sleep, her own world when black where she suddenly saw herself, and her comrades, all attached to what appeared to be a single string for each one; and a demonic hand strummed the strings like a lute. When Urthez took next watch, he suffered the same vision, however, after the demonic hand strummed the lute, a growling voice whispered, “Come closer…”
After the party woke up from their rest, they made their way along the left side of the blood lake, moving across a narrow path. Urthez spotted a trap, where a line connected itself to a pillar in the middle of the blood lake. As he tried to disarm it, he unintentionally triggered the trap which turned the pillar and formed a light beam. At that very moment, the blood lake also began to rise. The party verified that they could not pass through the light, because it’d incinerate anything that tried. Running back around the other way, the party struggled as the blood lake continued to raise, causing the rocks on the narrow path to become extremely slippery. Some form of beast living in the center of the lake was awakened by the trap being triggered and attempted to snare Twig, who struggled the most. Zelona, putting aside her differences with Twig, jumped back into the lake and assisted him, and together were able to escape the rising lake. Climbing up the stairs, the party continued down a narrow hallway where they heard chanting. Urthez successfully sneaked into the room where he saw a lone cultist – standing behind a fifteen foot statue of a demon. Kai, knowledgeable in the Infernal language recognized that the cultist was chanting, “Summon Belaros…” over and over. The party rushed in, and found that an arcane trap triggered four skeletons to become animated and attack them.
Dacys pummeled through a skeleton with her fists, only to have the cultist cut his hand and whisper a spell that rose the skeleton again through foul necromancy. Urthez found himself cut twice, rendering him unconscious; just as Kai entered the room.
When Kai entered the room; reality broke for her. She found herself standing in the center of a pentagram, which each of her friends as a point on the star. At that moment, Urthez’s body in her vision bled out and began filling the pentagram.
Brolimir moved past the skeletons and went after the necromancer, only to have his life force drained from him. His body was the next to appear to bleed out in Kai’s vision.
Twig ran across the blood fountain with the gigantic demonic statue and climbed the wall, again with some difficulty, due to being covered in the slick blood. The party, with the cultists surrounded, were able to defeat him and kill him; breaking Kai out of her vision, where she heard her father, Belaros, say, “This is not the end.”
The party recovered the key, which was in the ancient tome’s lock, and Kai took the book where in the back of her head, she heard her father’s distant laugh.