Invading Sahr'rhazad's lair

Two days later, you stand alongside Selena and your champions at the entrance to Sahr'rhazad's lair. The forest floor opens into a jagged cleft in the earth, plumes of steam jetting out of small vents in the bottom. A winding path leads down the side of the chasm, splitting about half-way down: each trail ends in a cave.

"Okay, looks like we'll be approaching this in two groups, assuming neither of those is a dead end. I'll lead the first group. Ari can take the second." Your first champion nods. "Other than that..."

"Athy and I should be in separate groups." Mariel pipes up from beside you. "Based on the heat pouring out of those tunnels we'll probably want cold magic with everyone."

"Alright. Ath, Selena, and Sera are with me." Groups chosen, you make your way down the split, then lead your party north towards the larger of the two caves. Sera and Seramiel are covered by a thick sheen of sweat by the time you reach the chasm's floor. They sigh in relief when a frigid fog pours out from Aethane and surrounds the group, snowflakes hissing slightly as they melt in the jets of steam. The cavern entrance is unguarded, but the moment you step inside a window confirms that you've found the right place.

Dungeon: Sahr'rhazad's Ten Thousand Nights

The priestess ahead of you suddenly bursts into a fit of dry coughs. "Euch, the air is awful in here! This guck is going to take hours to get out of my tails later. Anyone care to help a girl out?" Selena's hair begins to float slightly and soon a breeze picks up, swirling Aethane's fog around your group and clearing the air somewhat. "Thanks Sel, you're alright."

"Erm... don't mention it." Selena gives the priestess a slightly bemused expression before shaking herself out of it. "Least I can do."

Sera laughs. "Say, where did that confident invoker who used to trash our dungeon go? Still not used to being on our team, girl?" She vigorously rubs her newfound ally's hair with another chuckle. "Don't worry, I'm sure we can find you lots of monsters to kill, make you feel right at home. Unless, of course, this whole dungeon is nothing but more smog and heat!" she kicks at a loose rock on the ground and the crack of it bouncing off the wall echoes through the cave.

A dull red glow grows down the tunnel as you make your way deeper into the earth, and a bend in the cave brings you to a small pool of bubbling lava. Little puffs of steam hiss as the swirling ice above it melts and little drops fall on to the superheated liquid. Another bend hides a second pool, and at the third bend the tunnels opens into a wide cave.

Stalagmites and stalactites ring a large pool of lava in front of you, the rocky protrusions forming an enclosure within the larger cave. A narrow walkway winds through its centre. The glow of more lava and more stalactite rings show through the gaps in the rocky teeth to either side.

"Hey, check this out!" Sera jogs forward past a particularly large spire of rock, and her body is suddenly illuminated in gold. You walk forward to see a huge heap of gold and gems, reminiscent of a portion of Prometheia's horde, nestled in a ring of rock. "Don't mind if I do!" She reaches to grabs a gem-encrusted crown.

"Hold on a minute, something's wrong!" Selena holds up her hand in warning but Sera has already grabbed the crown. The gold immediately begins to shudder and contort, starting to pile higher and higher. The lava in the middle of the room begins to gurgle in response, a section of the centre sinking away.

A clawed, scaled hand reaches out of the pool and grasps at the rock. It pulls a long, scaled torso reminiscent of a snake crossed with a dragonkin—a salamander. The beast holds an obsidian trident in its clawed hands and opens its jaws to reveal a growing red glow. Aethane waves her hand and a wall of ice shoots out of the ground, rising just in time to block the roaring flames from the salamander's maw.

Salamander, Level 38
Monster, Daemon, Elemental, Explicit
Salamanders are daemons infused with fire elementals, resulting in a powerful creature that merges the physical might of its hellish kin and the fiery power of the spirits.

Clang. Sera grunts and you turn to see her kneeling, her sword in both hands. A huge golem stands where the pile of gold once sat, the rubies from the crown forming two eyes. Its chunky fist pulls back after its recent punch. She leaps back just in time for its second punch to come crashing down into the floor, then cuts a deep gouge in its chest with her black blade.

Gold Golem, Level 41
Monster, Golem, Explicit

You leap back out of range of the golem's bulky arms and begin to channel a flame strike, the air above the magical construct roiling as the pillar of heavenly fire begins to form. The fire washes over its golden body, heating your enemy to a slight glow. The holy portion of your magic is more effective, cracking off little bits of gold from its form. The frozen wall to your side shatters and falls, and you leap backwards, and none too soon: the salamander's spear is where you were only moments ago.

Aethane charges ahead with a roar, a frigid shield frozen around her left arm, and deflects the salamander's next strike. The beast lets out a roar as she brings her icy mace down on its shoulder; tendrils of frost grow around the wound and work their way down its arm. The wolf woman starts to sing a triumphant hymn, the words lost in the roar of the wind and the crashing of blows, but you feel power coursing through your body with each verse. The salamander's next blow shatters the ice around her arm, and Aethane reels backwards as she tries to regain her footing from the impact.

The hairs on your body suddenly all stick straight outwards, the noises of battle suddenly seeming far away. The salamander opens its mouth to release another torrent of flame at its icy foe, but suddenly a deafening crack blasts out from behind you, and you're blinded as white-hot lightning connects Selena to your two foes. The salamander falls into a heap from the blast and the golem reels backwards, giving the frost priestess time to recover as the salamander slides back to its feet. You launch an **** of your own on the downed lizard, three lances of yellow fire shooting from your fingers and striking it across its torso.

The golem knocks Sera to the side and comes crashing over to its staggered ally, throwing itself between Aethane and the salamander as the latter struggles to recover from the rain of blows. Your wolfish ally brings her mace crashing into the construct's side, but achieves little more than chipping off a few more flecks of gold as its sturdy form absorbs the **** of the blow. However, Sera nimbly leaps past its other arm and tosses her whip at the half-recovered daemon, yanking it back off its tail before it can get a chance to defend itself, then finishes it off with a well-placed thrust of her sword. The golem is little threat on its own, and after a few minutes of sustained attacks and careful dodges it crumbles to the ground, leaving a small pile of coins in its place.

Sera rummages through the coins for a moment and then gives them a kick. Coins go flying in every direction, some sinking into the pool of molten rock while others clink off of the surrounding rock. "Stupid thing, we go to all this trouble and it doesn't even drop the crown." You laugh and she shoots you a glare, then spins to face the opening in the stalagmites across the chamber. "Whatever, let's get out of here." You and Aethane follow behind, and Selena brings up the rear after pausing to scoop up the pile of cash.

The chamber on the other side of the stalagmites has three pools of lava forming a rough ring around the edges, with small offshoots moving towards the centre, and two huge piles of treasure lying near the flat centre. "Not falling for that one again." The angel glares at a huge ruby-set necklace in one of the piles, but steps by with a sigh, and the moment she does the room rumbles as two more golems form, another salamander climbing out from the left-hand pool to join them. The fallen seraph spins around with a grin, gouging holes in one of the coalescing golems with her black-clad sword and barbed tail, and the rest of you leap to join her.

"Hells, get them off of me!" Half an hour and several more ambushes later, you're out of the maze-like cavern and in a long tunnel bordered with rivers of lava on either side. Aethane and Sera giggle as a swarm of tiny fiery beetles bites and scratches you. The minute elementals are unable to pierce your immunity to fire, but their stings are still incredibly uncomfortable, like an itch that covers your entire body. Another swarm tries to bite at the priestess, but a thin layer of frost thwarts their ****, while Sera casually hops away whenever the swarm chasing her get near.

"Stand still already, will you?" Selena snorts as she shoots tiny arcs of lightning at the swarms, dozens of tiny bugs vaporized by every blast. "Serves you right for the bugs in your dungeon. Reconsidering your roster?" You glare briefly, then clamp your eyes shut as the swarm moves up your face. Another crackle sounds out, then another, and a few more of the biting sensations disappear.

All of a sudden the sensations stop, and you try to move your hand to brush against your face but find it's stuck in place. You open your eyes to see a solid block of ice, but moments later a loud crack resources and it crumbles away, revealing Aethane with her hand now pressed against thin air. When she sees you, she gives a smug grin. "Moment of inspiration."

"Ugh, remind me to summon a bunch more bugs when we get back," you brush your arms and face as if to knock away more invisible bugs, and let out a huff as you resume your path down the tunnel.

"Oh? And here I thought you hated them!" Selena chuckles behind you, her hands still tingling with electricity. "Not one to stand by what you believe in?"

"I do hate them, and I've decided to make it my mission to teach every invader exactly why." Finally satisfied that there are no more bugs on you, you stretch a bit and then shoot a firebolt where they first emerged from the molten river. "Save the moralizing for the angels. The way I see it it's my job to make every invader's life as awful as possible."

"Well then, sounds like you're a fan of our djinni friend here." Aethane walks casually forwards, a thin rime still clinging to her from her earlier spell. "Planning on getting her autograph?"

"Let's stab her a few times first, then I'll think about it." You chuckle as well, already forgetting the intense discomfort from moments ago. "She certainly seems to know what she's doing."

The long tunnel ends in a chiselled door, the first bit of stonework you've seen in the dungeon. The rivers flow into small holes to either side. You step through to see a long flight of stairs, grooves on either side letting the glow of the lava illuminate the gloom. A sumptuous purple carpet runs down the middle of the steps, and Sera sighs in satisfaction as her feet sink into the soft material.

"Stop!" Selena's voice echoes back and forth through the long tunnel, and the three of you turn to her with confused looks on their faces. "Let me go first."

"Leave the hand-to-hand to the doggie and I, babe." Sera gives her a grin. "You just keep up the good work with the zapping. No need to show off."

"Look, babe, if you had your way we'd blunder into every trap this side of Fairweather Bay. Cool it with the bravado and move over." Selena rolls her eyes and smiles as she steps past Sera, carefully tiptoeing down the uncarpeted edges of the steps.

"Ooh, she's alright," Sera laughs at the stormsoul's response. "Say, Sel, ever thought about giving up this epic quest thing, joining the dungeon for real?"

"Wouldn't you like that," Selena smiles in turn and carefully descends, one step at a time, bent over so that her face nearly touches the ground. "Okay, you can follow me down, just stay off the carpet. The middle of some of the stairs are trapped."

"To do what?" Aethane gives her a curious look.

"I don't know, and I don't really care to find out. The easiest way to check would be to set it off, but I'm not exactly looking to do that." She checks a few more steps as she speaks, then stands up. "Okay, I think we should be fine as long as we stick to the sides. All of the traps so far have been in the centre."

"'Bout time; I was starting to think you were stalling!" Sera leaps down several steps at a time, nimbly landing on the edge of each one as she drops. She gives your adventurer ally a flick on the back of the head as she passes, then laughs victoriously when the lightning Selena shoots in response sizzles a smoking hole where she landed a second ago. "I'm not a golem, babe: you'll have to do better than that!" Selena just turns to you and Aethane and rolls her eyes, a smile on her face, then the four of you set off deeper under the earth.

The long staircase ends in a large, opulent stone room, the purple carpet filling most of the centre in a large oval. Channels in each wall carry the lava along the walls and then into a corridor on the other side of the room. Marble pedestals to either side hold embroidered red cushions, a burnished brass lamp sitting on top of each one.

"Say, what about here? My feet are killing me after all this walking: not all the carpets can be trapped, can they?" Sera takes a step towards the regal centrepiece, but stops when Aethane lets out a low growl. "What? Don't tell me you love walking on bare rock?"

"Can you please just listen to the woman here who has forty-some levels of experience raiding dungeons and stay off the goddamn rug?" Aethane glares daggers at the angel, who recoils a bit. Sera looks pleadingly at you, but you just shrug.

"Fine, message received, I'll give my feet the bad news." She rolls her eyes and turns away, walking over to one of the lamps. "Sheesh, glad I got the no-fun crowd. Say, what do you think this is? And don't worry, I won't touch it."

"She certainly gets points for style," Selena smirks and steps into the room. "A fight, that's what that is. Probably unavoidable, since any adventurer would recognize it."

"This old thing? Not even a nice crown or something?" She bends over in front of the pedestal and puts her eye up to the lamp. "Can't see what's so special about it; it's just a piece of junk."

"Never seen a djinni before, have you?" The lamp gives out a puff of smoke as if in response, and Sera coughs as she inhales some of it. "They're frequently bound to items, and lamps are one of the classics." A thin trail of smoke suddenly gushes out of the lamp, gathering into a vaguely humanoid-shaped cloud. Ice cracks and grinds as Aethane shields herself in cold, and lightning arcs around Selena's body as she gathers her power.

"Welcome, welcome!" A cheerful voice booms out, and the smoke dissipates to show a bald, red-skinned man with a fiery beard and a bare, muscular chest. His lower body is simply a trail of crimson smoke, thinning like a sort of vestigial tail, and he bobs up and down in the air.

Efreet, Level 38
Monster, Djinni, Explicit
Efreeti are especially large and warlike djinn famed for their anger. Although any djinni can be associated with any element, efreeti are the djinn most commonly associated with fire.

"For making it here, I will grant you one wish. What is it that you desire, my lady?"

"Okay, even I'm not dumb enough to need to be told not to walk into that one." Sera gives the djinni a deadpan glare. "Any clever retorts before I stab this guy?" She looks over her shoulder, but the three of you just shrug, the efreet simply floating with crossed arms while he awaits her response.

"Just don't reply. Djinn can twist your words, but not if you don't explicitly make a wish."

"Sorry dude, you heard the expert. Shall we dance?" The efreet grins and uncrosses his arms, shooting two jets of flame at the boisterous angel. She leaps out of the way, but the flames ignite the carpet, burning it away to reveal a wide pool of lava from which two more salamanders surface. The moment their clawed hands grip solid stone you snap your fingers, lighting a ring of fire tinged with holy power around the pool. Serpentine voices hiss in pain as the divine flames lick their exposed flesh.

Two more jets of flame streak across the room, these ones finding your chest. You howl in pain as the fire sears you, somehow burning through even your immunity to the element. The flames lead back to a second efreet materializing out of the other lamp, and he lets out a booming laugh as you respond in kind, your fires burning away some of the smoke that makes up his lower body.

Aethane starts chanting another battle hymn, but her voice is quickly replaced by a growing roar, the air in the room moving faster and faster until the smoke from your fire wall coalesces into a swirling vortex at the top. Selena walks forward seemingly without care, her eyes glowing bright white and bolts of electricity shooting from her body to the floor. The two salamanders finally **** their way through your wall with a hiss of pain, their tridents raised as they charge the exposed mage. A jet of frost hits their side from the priestess, and although you can see her shout something to the adventurer her words are lost to the cacophony. Just before the two salamanders reach her, a boom of thunder echoes above you, the sound so loud that you lose all hearing an instant later. There's a flash of light and then another, and suddenly a streak of lightning connects Selena's body to the storm cloud above. The bolt seems to hang in the air for a moment, then your vision goes white as bolts leap to each of your four opponents, blasting them with such energy that they're thrown into the walls.

A high-pitched ringing fills your ears as your hearing starts to return, and you toss more jets of flame at the far-away efreet, Aethane's barrage of icicles meeting them as they disperse the battered djinni back into a cloud of smoke. Sera decapitates the other spirit with a powerful swing, and her whip lashes across the room to coil around one of the salamander's arms, angry green welts forming where the fiery tongue lashes at its flesh. A flick of her wrist pulls the monster straight towards Aethane, who crushes its skull with a well-placed swing of her mace, and the final salamander fares little better than its friend. Enemies dispatched, you dismiss the raging wall of flame and lean against th wall while you wait for the ringing in your ears to subside.

Selena winces and sits down, and Sera practically bowls her over as she flies over to give her ally a clap on the back. "Damn girl, do you even need us here or are you going to clean this place out all by yourself?"

Selena laughs, groaning a bit in between. "Pass me a mana potion?" Sera reaches down and unclasps one of the vials from the stormsoul's belt, and Selena gives an appreciative nod before downing it in one gulp. "Ah, that's much better. My, my, daemon—you weren't lying when you said this new class would be more powerful than my old one." She tries to stand up but stumbles, and Sera takes her by the shoulder and helps her up. "Probably shouldn't use that spell every fight though, fun as it was. It cost... well, just about all of my mana."

"Starting to regret your choice of goddess, Athy?" You grin and look at the priestess, who's staring at the adventurer with no small amount of awe.

The priestess looks up at the ceiling. "Borea, would you smite me if I say yes?" She laughs and then crouches down to wipe her bloody mace off on one of the singed pieces of carpet that clings to the edge of the lava pool. "I hope the other contenders can't do what you can do, or else we're going to have a bad time when we go up against the more powerful adventurers."

"I doubt they can; different types of monsters tend to have fundamentally different powers, and the contract thing is unique to Azazel here and his kin." Selena gives you an energized smile, and Aethane looks relieved. "That being said, don't get too excited. Level 50 adventurers are no joke, and while I think I got a power boost I still wouldn't favour myself against one. Besides, just because they can't do precisely what Azazel can doesn't mean they don't have their own tricks."

"Say, if we all just feed you mana potions do you think you could just fry your way through the rest of this floor?" Sera grins as she looks at the charred stone where the lightning struck. "Because that would be pretty fucking cool."

"That spell has some limitations on room size, unless you want me to cast it in a corridor and hit all of you as well." Selena uncorks a health potion and downs it as well, looking refreshed after she finishes it off. "Mmm, much better. I think even this room was a bit small. That being said, if you could be so kind as to arrange a bunch of these guys outside, we could really have some fun."

"Aze has a cruel sense of humour, giving you a spell which functions best when not in a dungeon, eh?"

"Hey, don't look at me: I barely know more about what these classes do than anyone else. I just get a description." You stand back up straight and start to make for the corridor that leads further into the dungeon. "We really need to show that off to some adventurers some time though: it'd make for a great recruiting tool. Ari and Tina haven't done anything nearly that flashy."

"Speaking of which, I wonder how Mary and them are all doing." Sera's expression turns serious. "Think they got dumped in that same cave?"

"Could be; it's hard to say whether we even visited the whole thing on our path." The adventurer swaps out the empty potion vials for fresh ones from her inventory as she walks. "Our contact said the paths should connect, although who knows exactly where."

"Do you think she'd really bolt if we didn't cover both entrances?" Aethane holds one of her tails in her hand as she walks, brushing bits of ash out of the fur. "She didn't seem like the type to run with her tails between her legs."

"No sense in risking it, especially if she figures out how bad her position is. It's not like she's got any reason to stick around: we aren't adventurers here to tear up the place and give her a bunch of fame." The hallway opens into a square room, this one with a ring, an amulet, a crown, and a bangle set on four pedestals near the corners. "Besides, if four of us can't handle any given path of this place we're going to have a very bad time when we have to take on Aura or Chronos."

"Ugh, here we go again." Sera brandishes her sword when she sees the jewellery. "Say, given that it's going to summon the enemies no matter what we do, maybe I should just go take it and put it on? Although knowing this place there's probably some stupid curse or something on it." She walks up to the crown and cuts it in two with her sword, a pained wail filling the air. "Hey, nice! Let's—"

Three angry women pour out of the other items, their bodies flowing like water and their blue skin in stark contrast to the rivulets of lava running along the walls.

Marid, Level 36
Monster, Djinni, Explicit
Marids are quick and nimble djinn who share a reputation for trickery comparable to the fae. Although any djinni can be associated with any element, marids are the djinn most commonly associated with water.

"At least there's one less this time." Aethane begins to chant shortly after finishing speaking, a vortex of snow and ice slowly filling the room.

"Say, gran, I'm glad you're coming around!" Sera grins and flicks her whip, the fiery weapon uncurling until it stretches nearly across the room. The marid at the end of it flows to the side effortlessly and unleashes a pressurized jet of water from her hands with a smirk. The jet stops and crashes to the ground halfway across the room as a look of shock covers her watery face and Sera's fiery whip wraps around her waist. Another flick of the angel's wrist brings the djinni crashing across the room, and with a roar of fire and lightning you and Selena join the battle against the latest foes.