The heroes start the episode in front of mimic’s corpse, now an inert and empty treasure chest, that they ganged up in the previous session. Soto pushes the treasure chest half-way through the portal on the opposite side of where they found the chest, and then tries to pull back the chest but it doesn’t budge. Despite signs on the floor that creatures have been arriving from the other side of the portal and ended up dropping a lot of blood in front of the mimic, the concerned heroes decide the portal is too risky.

Nemo then scouts one of the corridors leading deeper into the dungeon while the rest of the party stays behind. After a few turns through increasingly hot and glowing red corridors, he reaches a room that is a mix of a magma version of an aquapark, a temple and a torture room covered with devil bones pinned against walls and scrambled over the floor. Chains cover the whole room. At the end, which looks like the entrance to this temple, he sees the same barren world that the party saw during the fight with the devils.

While he’s digesting this, suddenly chains spring at him but they fail to grab him. A devilish voice chuckles and says “Funny” in infernal, a language that right until now Nemo didn’t know he could understand. On one of the walls, Nemo sees a detailed wall and can’t resist rushing to it. The map depicts a barren world and says “Avernus” on the legend.

Meanwhile Soto arrives into the room as backup and gets attacked by some of the chains. The feminine devilish voice continues talking with Nemo and, boringly, reveals that a lich version of Gray passed by a few days ago and went into Avernus to free Tiamat, the goddess of the chromatic dragons who is imprisoned on this hell plane. Nemo shares that he’s also trying to fuck with Asmodeus for his own reasons and the devilish voice is pleased to hear that. She tells him ot invite his friends into the room and then she will ask something of them and then let them go. While she’s saying that, another chain does manage to grapple Nemo and hover him over the magma pool upside down.

Sweating and increasingly nervous, Nemo uses his currently active psionic link to invite the rest of the party into the room.

Ike, preferring to leave this place asap, turns invisible and steps into the portal with the mimic’s body split half-way across. He then finds himself in the same barren world he briefly visited the other day with the suffocating heat and the bright orange sky. This part, however doesn’t have armies of devils and demons fighting against each other, but feeling a bit lonely and finding it unlikely that he would be able to relax and have a piña colada, Ike crosses back through the portal that was invisible on this side, and gets back into the dungeon.

When Ike returns, though, the rest of the party has left following Ike’s invitation. The devilish voice reveals herself showing a grotesque monster covered in chains like a mummy. She tells Nemo, still talking in infernal that although she has a very fulfilling life torturing everyone who enters the room, she hasn’t tasted a kiss in centuries and asks for a kiss from Brand. Very reluctantly, but feeling peer pressured by his friends, the paladin gives an acceptable french kiss to the Freddy Kruger-faced monster who then allows them to leave because Nemo promised to go back to help Gray free Tiamat to mess with Asmodeus, something that the devil, called Nabulozan, says will deeply enjoy.

Nemo asks her how to get out, and she tells hem to just go through the portal through which they went in, which should still be up. They go back to the top level and after a couple of trials throwing first Ike, and then Nemo, they get hold of the exit and get back to the chapel and to Skeldharbor.

The heroes arrive at the inn, get three beds for a good price after lying to the innkeeper that Nemo is so short becausae he’s a kid, and that Ike is his puppet, and go to sleep.

The next morning, after a barnacle chowder breakfast, the party goes to talk to Sister Helka, the bodybuilding assassin nun that gave the party this side quest to find out what happened to little Lenny. The party reveals all the info, Lenny, gesticulating, confirms the part he can confirm, that he got shocked by the “make me a lich” ritual that Gray seems to have gone through at the chapel, and then the heroes haggle for a bigger reward for their side quest. The nun refuses and she only offers them 30gp if they demolish the abandoned chapel to close the portal. The party refuses because that’s too little money for too much work and tell her the portal should close by itself in a few days and hopefully nothing will come out of it.

The party then goes to talk to Paco and the rest of the crew who still need one day and a half of repairs before leaving, just enough to leave before Sister Helka receives the mail she expects from Sister Gloria back in Ironwound. With some spare time, Ike proposes to chill out, but the rest of the party wants more money and goes to talk with the fishermen.

The fishermen tell them that for weeks they have had fish, fishing equipment, and tonnels of fish oil stolen and that their boats are regularly damaged, all happening at night. They’re pissed off but scared to go close to where whoever is doing this seems to be hiding, the Coldwater Caves a walk away from town. They offer the heroes 350gp to fix the problem, and the heroes agree and accept a boat the fishermen offer them.

When the heroes reach the entrance to the huge caves, Ike jumps into the water and starts swimming into the entrance. He expects to see XV-7 and his friends. Soto follows him climbing easily over the rocky cliff and moving more quickly than Ike swimming with his little hands.

As they approach the cave they start hearing songs like Going Around the World, and Harder, Better, Stronger sung by warforged voices.

Once they’re inside, Ike approaches the shore while Soto tries to climb the tall rocky archway that covers the entrance. The monk, though, fails and falls into the water attracting the attention of two warforged. Soto dives away from the cave while Ike goes into “still puppet” mode. The warforged see him, grab him, and start playing with him. When the play is about to result into Ike being dismembered he starts talking and scares the hell out of the warforged, who are clearly stoned. Ike finds out the gang is not XV-7’s gang, this Severance Protocol cell is led by Brine-9, and he hates XV-7. The warforged also invite Ike to snort what they have been snorting for weeks and he wants to try it but suggest liquifying it so that he can soak it in. The warforged think it’s a cool idea and do just that. While, through a misunderstanding, Ike is forced to snort the liquid orange substance, Brine-9 arrives and with much less mental clarity than his minions, explains that they got distracted from their original mission of harassing humans, dwarves and elves and starting working for a white dragon in the Ice Kingdoms. The dragon persuaded them to go search for clues about something called the Wyrmspine to destroy the world in this area, but then they got distracted again when they found a magic stone that made their stolen ship, really, really fast, but also caused this mineral accretions to show up which, when converted into powder made them feel very good. The ship is metal, like them, but it needs lots of fish oil to work.

While this is all going on, Soto climbs to the top of the archway and gets a clear view of the gigantic cave: