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The next day when we woke we laid Holwer's body to rest; I still couldn't believe that he had died, and from falling down a pit trap no less. It was a loss that we could ill afford in this house of death and his was a life that was cut off much to soon. I prayed to Mystra that his soul was able to move on to which ever domain it belongs in. Once I had made sure that Howler was taken care of we got our gear together and headed off to investigate the chanting that was coming from deeper in the dungeon.
We headed on back to where we had fought the zombies, the remains were still all over the place, and found ourselves with a decision. The path branched of into two separate directions, one way led to the right and the other to a closed door on the right. I took a moment to listen to the chanting to see if I could figure out which direction that it was coming from but with the way that it was echoing off the walls it was impossible to tell. That's when I heard something new, it was very faint and almost impossible to hear over the sound of the chanting, someone calling for help. I took a minute to make sure that it wasn't my imagination and that it was real and sure enough there was someone calling out for help.
I told the rest of the group about the voice that I was hearing and we decided to go investigate it, fully expecting that it was some sort of trick to draw us in and brutally murder us all. We all carefully headed down the passage to our left and made our way in to what clearly was a ritual chamber. There was a huge pentagram on the floor and another on the wall between to statues, dark arcane writing covered the walls around the room some of which was blurred out by old blood stains, and what caught the eye though was the person that was chained to the pentagram on the wall. Once we had checked the room to make sure that there was nothing lying in wait to kill us I headed over to check the person on the wall; when I got to him he was barely awake, it looked like he had screamed him self hoarse and had seeping wounds on his wrists from trying to escape from his chains.
As I got closer to him I noticed that he was a half-elf and was looking like he had been there for quite a while, the first thing that I did upon reaching him was heal his wounds then checked on my companions who were currently exploring the chamber. After I made sure he was healed and fully conscious I introduced my self and learned that his name was Lyrudar. He didn't know how he came to be here or where he even was, he told me he was heading to his village after going to the market at a nearby town when a mist started to creep around him. Once it disappeared he was standing in the street by this creepy run down house when something struck him in the back of the head and when he came to he was chained in this dungeon. It seems that there is some mysterious force that is abducting people and bringing them to this strange land though for what purpose I didn't know. I decided that I could ponder this at a later time and started to examine the chains holding him in place, and after a few minutes I realized that there was no way that I could unlock these so I called over the cat and went to examine that statue on the right that had caught my eye.
I noticed that the statue on the right was holding something, something shiny and round; once I got closer to it I could tell that it was a crystal arcane focus. I decided to take it, you know to prevent it from being used for evil, and as I was reaching up for it I could hear Lyrudar being released from his chains. I grabbed the focus and the second that I lifted it free from the statue eight shades appeared in a burst of darkness in the center of the room letting out ear piercing shrieks. I stuffed the focus into my pocket and blasted one of the shades out of existence with a pillar of divine energy from the heavens.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Lyrudar making the motions for the same spell I had just cast and summon another pillar just as I had before. As Lyrudar destroyed another of the shades the cat comes leaping across the room to land in front of a shade and pummel it before destroying it with a blast of radiant light from his fist. Iliad was facing off against two of the shades and stabs one with his spear tearing wispy tatters from it as there is a loud crack and the shades head explodes in darkness and the body fades away, I look over to see Gorza reloading her still smoking musket. As we all prepare to eliminate the remaining enemies they struck, two of them tearing through Iliad stealing his life force while another narrowly misses me as I dodge out of the way and another two chase after the cat.
As the one shade swoops past me I reached out with by hand and discharged a blast of electricity as my hand passed through it, while the cat and Lyrudar both destroy the one chasing the cat and one facing Iliad with blasts of radiant energy. There was just the one shade left, the one that was still facing Iliad. I prepared myself to blast the foul thing with a bolt of fire when Iliad thrusts his spear right into the center of the shade tearing it in half and causing it to fade away into nothingness. We all then took a moment to catch our breath and I introduced everyone to Lyrudar.
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Once introductions were made Lyrudar mentioned that he thinks he saw someone take his gear in the direction that we had just came from. We all decided to head back the way we came and check out the room that was down the passage to the right. As we get closer to the door the cat comes pushing past everyone one saying "The loots all mine!" and grabs the door and tried to force his was through. As he touched the handle the door comes to life and a mouth forms with jagged teeth and completely envelops his arm. The cat starts screaming in agony, yelling that its eating his arm, and as soon as he started screaming we unleashed a barrage of attacks against the door. The door just disintegrates under the magical and physical blows the pummeled it into a million pieces and the cat got free.
We found ourselves looking into what looked like a very nice bedroom, there was a huge bed in along the one wall, a ornate writing desk in one corner and a pile of what turned out to be Lyrudars gear heaped in one corner. As Lyrudar started going through his stuff to make sure it was all there I tended the cats torn up arm while everyone else looked around the room to see if there was anything useful. Once I was just about finished with the arm I heard a loud grinding noise and a section of wall disappeared revealing stairs leading further down into the dungeon. It seems someone tripped a switch revealing a secret passage that led to the source of the chanting as it got much louder when the door opened up. We decided that we were going to take a quick break to eat some food since this seemed like a relatively safe spot to do so. Once we were done eating we checked our gear and headed deeper into the dungeon, not knowing what kind of hell was waiting for us next.....