A Maze of Devils

by Luke Thomas

Dear Diary,

I never thought I would see the day where Hayley turning a powerful ally into a writhing pile of venomous snakes would be considered a *tactical advantage*, but the Feywild changes a person. The tunnels leading to the dungeon beneath Davozan’s palace were barely five feet wide in places—impossible for a giant. So, snakes it was.

We slipped back into the cavern where we had fought the Fomorians, the only viable entrance to his realm. Davozan had opened a shadow door for us before his snake transformation.

We found ourselves in a natural cave network. It was ancient, claustrophobic, and dripping with freezing water. These were the tunnels where the Eladrin and Davozan’s ancestors imprisoned Mother Aura centuries ago.

The signs of history were everywhere: scorch marks on the stone, rusted armor, and triggered traps that had long since rusted into uselessness. But there were no bodies. What we *did* find were massive, unsettling scuff marks scraping along the stone walls and ceiling, as if something impossibly large squeezed through these tight corridors on a regular basis. The most recent tracks were fresh—less than an hour old. When we found a splintered human bone in a narrow pass, the silence of the cave suddenly felt very heavy.

Then, we heard a faint rattling.

Gael and Dadroz melted into the dark to scout. They returned with reports of an ancient tent, a desk covered in scrolls, and someone sitting there reading. The rattling was coming from a macabre chandelier of bones floating against the ceiling, constantly bumping into one another.

We approached cautiously. Alistan announced we were just there to talk. The figure at the desk coughed a cloud of literal dust. In a voice like grinding stones, he asked who we were. Alistan introduced us and stated our mission to stop the unsealing of the primordial spirit. The creature agreed not to attack if we showed no hostility, introducing himself as Ramozes.

When we asked what he was doing down here, he gave a wonderfully cryptic answer: "Studying."
As a fellow scholar, I respect the hustle, even in an ancient, cursed dungeon. He offered to trade information for books. Ileas and I both happily parted with a tome. As Ramozes stood to accept them, his joints cracked, and more dust spilled to the floor. He was ancient undead, bound to these tunnels.

The intel he gave us was terrifyingly specific:

Another force passed by two days ago. Six drow assassins and two Goristro fiends acting as muscle. The Leader, Viceroy Trom, is a Blue Abishai.

So a fiendish spellcaster specializing in controlling other devils. But more importantly to me: *immune to fire*. A fire mage's worst nightmare.

Before we left, we noticed a heavy tapestry hiding a door. Ramozes nervously admitted his "master" was behind it—the actual recipient of the curse that bound Ramozes here. When Liliana asked if his master was a lich, Ramozes sadly replied that there was "little left" of his master now. We wisely decided to leave the tapestry exactly where it was.

We pushed on, the cave eventually opening into a fork illuminated by glowing mushrooms and motes of ambient energy. The air was warmer, the floor smoothed into worked stone. Three doors presented themselves. Gael found tracks leading in multiple directions.

We chose the middle door. It was unlocked and untrapped, revealing a dusty storage room of old crates.
Then, Alistan and Gael both froze. They heard a mechanical *click*.

Total, magical darkness instantly suffocated the room.
Blinded, I felt the air rush past my face as floating, magical swords began slicing at me in the dark. Gael acted fast, casting a localized dispel to shatter the darkness. The moment my vision returned, I spotted two drow assassins lurking in the shadows behind us. I didn't hesitate. I threw a *Fireball*.

The cave rocked with the explosion. The drow were fast, expertly backflipping out of the worst of the flames, but they landed right in the path of Alistan's charging blade and Dadroz's arrows. They started falling.

Then the darkness dropped over us again.

The battle devolved into a chaotic, blind melee. I kept a *Firebolt* kindled in my palm, waiting for the shadows to break. The moment Gael managed to suppress the darkness a second time, I let the fire fly, catching a drow in the chest right as Gael put an arrow through its throat.
Gael, honorable to a fault, shouted for the last surviving drow to surrender. Dadroz, pragmatic to a fault, simply stabbed the drow in the gut before he could answer.

The assassin survived, barely. We tied him up and interrogated him. He confirmed that Trom was to the north, actively performing the ritual.

We moved to the northern door. Liliana kicked it open and was immediately greeted by a Goristro punching her squarely in the face.

She barely flinched. She shoved past the massive fiend, her eyes locked dead on the Blue Abishai at the back of the room. Hayley, reading the room perfectly, cast *Vortex Warp*, teleporting Alistan right to Liliana's side. The twins drove their blades directly at Viceroy Trom.

Coward that he is, the Abishai turned invisible and fled, leaving his Goristro bodyguards eager to tear our frontline apart.

I stepped into the room and opened my *Third Eye*, my vision piercing the arcane spectrum. The invisibility unraveled before me. I spotted Trom sneaking toward the flank.

Since my fire would be useless, I pulled on the raw, destructive fabric of the weave. I pointed straight at the invisible fiend and unleashed a *Ray of Disintegration*.
The emerald beam struck him dead center. He shrieked as his flesh began to turn to ash, his concentration breaking and rendering him visible to the rest of the room.

He staggered, but before he could cast a counterattack, a wave of glowing darts of pure force slammed into his chest. Hayley had followed up with a perfectly timed *Magic Missile*. Trom collapsed with a pathetic whimper, his fiendish life extinguished.

With the boss dead, it was just a matter of cleanup. Gael summoned a swarm of fey spirits, and I summoned a crushing tidal wave of an elemental to bypass their resistances. We ganged up on the Goristros, chipping away at their devilish flesh until the massive beasts finally crashed to the stone floor.

The Viceroy is dead. But if the ritual chamber is here... where is Mother Aura? And did we make it in time?

— Luke

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