A Lesson in Risk and Reward

The stairs led to a long, low hall that was magically lit. In the floor, there was a long groove that had been dug out.

The walls had chipped mosaics and were glistening with moisture. Every so often, we'd hear a drop of water fall to the ground. One of the mosaics was a man with a gourd, pouring out the contents of the gourd.

At one end of the room was a small booth. From that booth extended a statue of two outstretched woman's hands. Fasil directed us to place the residuum in the hands. The hands slowly absorbed the residuum, and from one end of the room, a long tapered, alabaster cylinder slid along the groove toward us. When the cylinder reached us, it stopped.

"This is something that they used to travel from place to place," explained Fasil. "It is part of the ruined city."

He led us into the cylinder. Once we stood on the platform inside, the cylinder began to move along the groove again.

We were moving quickly. Once, we passed by a section of light. It passed too quickly for us to see anything, but Tiny noticed that there was a battle between Demons and Animata that was taking place there.

The cylinder kept on moving. Suddenly, we jolted to a stop, and we were all thrown to the floor. Two large spiders (Blade Spiders) jumped in to attack us, along with two other spiders (Swarm Spiders) and a dark elf (a Blade Master).

We were struck and poisoned again. Bran shot one of the spiders in his opening move and was quickly able to dodge two powerful blows from one of the Blade Spiders. Kale set the spiders on fire.

The dark elf summoned a cloud of darkness around himself and Firinne. Firinne was able to stumbled out and, in a Berserker rage, badly damaged the spiders.

Tiny weakened three of the spiders, but the spiders fought back. They stunned and poisoned Tiny and brought him close to death. Garg inspired Tiny to fight on, and Tiny healed all of us in a brilliant beacon of hope.

We continued to fight the spiders but held back in our abilities. Perhaps we were worried that we'd expend too much of our energies in this battle, and we wouldn't be able to fight the next battle as effectively. But in restraining ourselves, we let the dark elf escape with any treasures that we might have gained.