Rutgar begins systematically cutting down the Nothics as they train their rotting gaze on him. However because he is raging with anger and has a high constitution he takes very little damage from their rotting gaze - the only weapon they can use as they are shackled to the walls. Meanwhile, back in the chamber of the soulmonger, Acererak looks at you all. "You pointless slugs", he rasps, "you may have destroyed my creation, but none leave my tomb alive". While he says this he scans the chamber and assesses Tlad the wizard as his greatest threat. DIE". As he says the word 'DIE' a dark magic swirls around him and suddenly Tlad feels the life being sucked from him. He desperately casts a counterspell and against all odds his counterspell is successful, the magic dissipates and Tlad survives. Tlad throws a lightning bolt in response which strikes the lich hard, but the lich seems to take little damage from it. Javelin quickly ducks into an alcove to hide. The lich taps his staff and a sphere of darkness appears which he sends shooting towards you all. You all manage to dodge, but even being close to the sphere hurts.Run", shouts b'Urp as he retreats, "this enemy is beyond our ability to survive". He turns invisible and flees out of the room and up the stairs. Grizz, who is still in the form of an air elemental from the last battle agrees with his sentiment, picks up Besh and blows on out of there, up the stairs and along the passage. Acererak mutters a few words and suddenly time stops for everyone but him. He strolls through the room, up the stairs and down the corridor to Besh. " You shall not escape from me ", he mutters and points his finger at Besh. Suddenly time starts again and Besh crumples to the ground, dying. b'Urp sees this and starts running the other way down the corridor, through the secret door he found earlier and into the main area. b'Urp feels that he has a moment of safety, having run away and being invisible when suddenly the lich appears in front of him. " None can hide from me in my domain ", the lich declares hitting b'Urp with a painful blow. b'Urp starts kicking and punching the lich and finds that his blows contact the lich, damaging him. Maybe there is a hope after all. b'Urp begins dodging away, hiding, then leaping back and attacking again. Meanwhile Grizz has turned back to his normal form to heal Besh and the two of them try and find an exit. The head down into the cog, but the only exit is through a gap in the cog. With his shell, Besh is too large to fit through the gap. Grizz turns Besh into an owl so he can fit. Meanwhile, back in the chamber below, Tlad and Javlin are perplexed. Everyone seems to have disappeared. Javelin tells Tlad to go upstairs and Javelin decides to follow Rutgar through the portal to the south. He finds himself in the room with Rutgar who has disposed of 3 of the Nothic. He helps him dispose of the rest and then shows Javelin what he found behind the curtain to the north. Behind the curtain is a ten-foot-wide, forty-five-foot-long hallway set with four decorative archways that have blank walls within them. Three paths marked out in red, gold, and purple tile snake along the floor, each leading to one of three archways. A charred skeleton on the floor points to the fourth archway, which has no path leading to it. A single torch burns in a wall sconce at the far end of the hall. Mounted below it is a bronze plaque that bears a warning in Common: "Behold the fate of those who defy me!" I'jin urges Rutgar to follow the purple tiled pathway as purple is her favourite colour at the moment. Rutgar follows this advice and follows the path to the northern archway. He touches the blank wall and finds it has the consistency of mud. He pushes himself through, finding himself in a new chamber. Soft dulcimer music fills this room, the walls of which are painted the color of dried blood. Bookcases draped in cobwebs and dust line the walls and stand four deep in the middle of the room. Hundreds of leather-bound tomes weigh down their sagging shelves. At one end of the room, a small study contains a padded leather chair, a footstool, and a small table—as well as three corpses dangling upside down from shackles and chains bolted to the ceiling near the north wall. A lantern-shaped device resting atop the table appears to be the source of the music. An old man lies asleep in the chair, his horn-rimmed spectacles slipping down to the end of his nose. Rutgar approaches the old man, who stirs. " Why do you disturb me ?" "Who are you. What is this place?", replies Rutgar. " I am Mr Fox and you find yourself in the library of Acererak. You are welcome to look through the books if you wish, although you cannot take any from this place ". "What are the books about?" " They are filled with the secrets of the universe and the histories of several worlds. In here you can find spells of great and devastating power and the secrets of the great civilisations of the Flaeness, of Khorvaire and of course of Faerun. Here you can find details of the many planes of existence and a record of gods, demons, devils and angels. This is a place that scholars would kill to enter and rulers would blanche if they knew it existed ". "I don't really like books. How do you get out of here?" " Me? I don't get out I'm afraid, Acererak has bound me to this place and I am now merely a slave. Oh if only I could return home. You, however, can leave whenever you choose if you take nothing from here with you. He gestures to a dusty passage opposite where Rutgar entered ". "Um, thanks I guess". Rutgar leaves through the passage that Mr Fox identified and finds himself at the back of a secret door. He opens the door and surprisingly finds himself in one of the other arches near Javelin. Javelin by this time has found another secret door, set off a glyph trap and accidentally created a curtain of fire at the southern end of the passage where the curtain was. The curtain has been consumed by the fire, but it would be a painful business to leave. Javelin shows Rutgar what he has found through the secret door. A pool of jet-black ooze glistens inside this silent chamber, whose walls are decorated with relief carvings depicting black stars. Javelin has realised that a black marble they retrieved from the corpse of the hag, Peggy Dreadbells, has the same deep darkness about it and has pulled it from his pack, but is unsure what to do next. He and Rutgar take turns standing in the pool with or without the marble in their hands but it seems to do nothing. Rutgar gets bored after this and goes back to the passageway. He touches the wall in the final archway and disappears. While this is happening, Tlad has gone up the stairs and wandered around looking for his companions with no luck. He is alone. Meanwhile, Acererak tires of b'Urp's jump and kick tactics and teleports to the cog where Grizz and Besh are. Grizz has just gone out through the gap in the cog to the lake outside and Besh was about to follow. Acererak blasts a zone of necrotic energy around him which kills the bird that Besh was transformed to and hurts Besh badly. With his escape cut off, Besh runs down the passage to the south despite knowing it is a dead end. He is trapped as Acererak walks towards him. However by this time Grizz and Tlad have entered the cog. Grizz turns back to his own form and starts attacking while Tlad starts casting spells at the Lich. Acererak points a finger at the drow and Tlad falls to the ground, dead. By this time b'Urp also enters the space and Grizz, Besh and b'Urp start attacking the Lich in earnest. Besh falls first, then Grizz but b'Urp keeps jumping in, attacking the Lich and diving away out of the cog again. Acererak does terrible damage to the grung, but that damage is absorbed by the energy provided by the trickster god inhabiting b'Urp. What b'Urp has not realised is that by this stage Acererak has nearly used all of his most dangerous spells. Realising that he is in danger, Acererak casts his final teleport spell and disappears to safety. b'Urp quickly runs to Grizz and pours a potion of healing down Grizz's throat, reviving him. Grizz then runs to Besh and casts a healing spell, reviving him. Tlad is beyond saving. Meanwhile, Javelin realises that Rutgar seems to have gone very quite and goes back out into the passage. He does not hear him but can hear conversation coming from the newly revealed passage to the library. He sneaks down the passage until he can see and hear what is happening. Acererak is talking with Mr Fox. " ...almost spent all of my power. I must depart through the pool at once and return to Xendrick where I can recuperate. You will wait here and protect my works while I am gone ", says Acererak. " As you will master, but it may not be as simple as you feel. The intruders have been down here already. The brute talked with me and has left towards the portal " replies Mr Fox. " Did he have one of the marbles? " " Not that I saw or felt, master, and without the marbles he will go nowhere " " He will die in this tomb. Stay here and protect my works " Acererak turns to leave, but Javelin has managed to sneak closer by this time. He has the rage of a trickster god in him and revenge will not be denied. He launches himself at Acererak. Meanwhile, Rutgar finds himself in a new space. A horrible space. He is in a room half-filled with rotting corpses. Protruding from one wall is a large green devil's face, its flared nostrils set just above the putrescent mass. A sconce above the face holds a flickering torch. Rutgar senses movement below the corpses and sees an eyestalk looking at him. Suddenly a horrible creature launches itself at him and the battle is on. Rutgar defeats the creature easily enough, but there are no exits from this space. He examines the devils face and finds a small lever hidden up each nostril. Not knowing which one to pull, he pulls both at once. He is teleported again, finding himself falling out of the dark maw of another devil face and into a moss-covered corridor. Tree roots hang from the sagging ceiling, and the air reeks of rot and damp. Behind him a bas-relief carving of a bearded devil's face adorns the wall at a T-shaped intersection. The devil's open mouth is a well of utter darkness. He realises that he is back in the entrance of the tomb. The stone door to the tomb is closed so there is no easy exit from this place. He starts to make his way to the grand staircase and down to re-find his companions. Meanwhile Javelin is battling Acererak who is attacking back with his staff and throwing his sphere of annihilation around the space, destroying books and shelves. Mr Fox watches on. It is obvious that Javelin is finding strength for some godly source, but even that will not be enough to defeat Acererak, even in the Liches weakened state. However Mr Fox notes that Acererak is using brute force rather than his spells, he is obviously depleted and cannot teleport away. He realises this may be his only chance to escape this place and transforms to his true form, an Arcanaloth. Mr Fox start casting spells at Acererak while Javelin continues the assault. Between the two of them they manage to whittle the lich down until he is defeated. As he crumbles to dust his voice echos through the tomb, " I will return, and there will be no escaping my wrath ". Mr Fox looks at Javelin. " I do appreciate what you have done my boy. Now that the liches hold on this place is weakened I can escape. He will be back within days though, so I suggest you get as far from here as you can ". With that he disappears. Javelin gathers up Acereraks staff and other belongings and then heads back to the room of the ebon pool. He is exhausted though, and alone in that room he rests. Before too long he is joined by the others. You all find treasures beyond belief in the library and gather what you can carry. By this time Javelin has discovers the secret of the pool. He tosses the marble in the pool. The black marble sinks into the ooze, which rises up suddenly to form a four-foot-tall black obelisk—a miniature version of the obelisk that stood outside the tomb entrance. Together you place your hands upon the obelisk and find yourself transported. You are outside. It is night and a warm, ash filled wind blows across a destroyed but evil looking town. All around you you see the glow of volcanos and above you you see 5 unfamiliar moons. You are no longer in Faerun. Behind you stands an obelisk and further back a hill in the shape of a skull looms over the town. You can see that the mouth is the entrance to some cavern or complex. Your journey has only just begun... Loose ends: You have arrived in Xendrick. It appears that Acererak has a presence here too Artus Cimber was the person in the bag that Rutgar killed, but he no longer possesses the ring of winter Acererak has been defeated, but you did not destroy his phylactery. He will return.
