S11E06 - Azaernara's Second Form

The heroes start the adventure at Jinu’s farm after failing to infiltrate the magistrate’s villa. After calling it a day, the heroes go to bed.

Ike takes another foot bath, but tonight Jinu goes directly to spend some sexy time with Nemo. During that time, Nemo asks Jinu if he’s heard about parasitic entities sealed into books. Jinu replies that he’s read about powerful souls, including those of ancient gods or demigods, being imprisoned in books. When asked where he can learn more about that, Jinu looks funny at him and points him to a tribesmen of white elves that live in the Red Sea desert.

Later that night, when our heroes are deep asleep, Lyra is taken out of her meditative trance by rapid footsteps and a heavy weight being dragged over the ground towards the farm. Before she has time to do anything about it, the sounds reach the front door, and the door is slammed open. Gray and Ike are under its frame, panting. Gray, bloodied and with a killer look in his eyes, is carrying one half armchair, messily hacked, and says, “Ike didn’t know which warts were his.” Next to him, Ike, with his usual wooden innocent look, is carrying the magistrate’s head, still dripping blood, and says, “Gray’s done with his quest.”

Ike explains that they went right back to the villa because Gray was furious with so much failure. They then methodically killed the one giant goat left, one of the guards, the maids, and the magistrate. One of the guards escaped. During combat, Gray got knocked unconscious, but Ike brought him back to life with one of his potions. When they were about to leave the villa, they heard footsteps and hid. They saw Azaernara, who calmly observed the situation, and, unfazed, went to her room, grabbed her belongings, transformed into a winged naked creature, and flew away towards the mines. She had a tail like the one that Lyra saw a few days ago. Ike also hands Lyra a ring he stole from Azaernara’s belongings.

Nemo, Soto, and Lyra realize they’re in so much trouble that the only sane thing to do is to leave town. But, before leaving, they want to take care of Azaernara because they worry she’s a bigger threat to the town than themselves.

While the party comes up with a plan, Ike goes to a corner to hack his wood out of the armchair. They decided to leave for the mines that instant because tomorrow morning, they want to be far away from the area.

They first inspect the trail that Gray and Ike left behind, leading any pursuers to the farm, and make it look as if the trail continues past the farm.

After that, they head to the mines. Thirty or forty minutes later, and after a few false starts into uninteresting mines, they reach a mine entrance that is guarded by two drows. They’re talking in Elvish about whether a certain person they don’t name prefers one of them or the other. After that, they wonder whether they’re going to be killed after “the ritual” ends.

The heroes decide that the conversation is implicating enough and shoot them dead from their covers before the drows have a chance to do anything.

They enter the first level of what looks like an abandoned mine, but they don’t find anything of interest and quickly move to the next level. There, the corridors are dustier and filled with cobwebs, but it’s clear someone has been walking through them recently. They explore it carefully and find a big room where Azaernara is waiting for them in her monstrous, naked, and winged form. Behind her stands a portal to a place with a red sky, air thick with smoke, volcanoes, and molten lava.

Combat ensues.

During the first round, a monster hidden above the entrance jumps down and attacks Nemo, who is leading the group.

After a few frantic rounds of combat in which the heroes throw every spell they have left at the monsters, they kill the monster and force Azaernara to plane shift out of the room.

Unluckily, little demons start coming through the portal, the first of them carrying a javelin, like a unicorn, that Gray had accidentally thrown inside the portal. While the heroes try to get rid of the little monsters, Azaernara, from a place the heroes can’t see or reach, tries to charm them one at a time, but she succeeds only in charming Ike.

As the room starts to fill with poisonous gas bearing balls, and entangled terrain, Lyra comes up with a way to close the portal. She sneaks through the monsters and, with Gray’s help, lights the candles that surround the portal that had been blasted away by the battle, and casts Thunderwave on the door while holding hands with Gray, which causes the portal to close. The episode ends as Lyra hears in her head Azaernara’s voice, “I don’t like that.”