Lefty grabbed the bag that fell from the dusty ashes of the demon and motioned to Salazar. When he approached, he sighed relief as we had recovered his bag of holding. Pulling the inventory list out of the bag, he began to go through his possessions within until, unfortunately, he announced an item was missing from his bag . . . a manual of flesh golems. After all this time, our enemy had finally gotten his hands on exactly what we were trying to stop him from obtaining.
With that, Salazar thanked us for our assistance in getting back his possessions and took his leave, retreating to the entrance of the dungeon. Meanwhile, picking through the remains of the battle, Feefifo found a key among the ashes. I produced the book from my own bag of holding and both the key and the book now glowed red as if they belonged together.
We unlocked the book and it was passed to both Inrah and Sai to inspect for arcane knowledge. We discovered exactly what we had thought, we too were now in the possession of an opposing manual of flesh golems. Though Vax protested at the demonic thought, we knew that only one choice remained for us. What better strategy to combat a Thay wizard's Flesh golem than to summon one of our own! Sai agreed to construct our foul creation as I dumped out the head and arm we had gathered from the bag of holding and Feefifo rounded up the rest of the parts from around the dungeon.
Before Sai was to conduct the ritual to summon our lesser golem, there was one last thing for us to do with the book. We placed it in the bookshelf with the missing book and, as we suspected, unlocked a hidden passageway beyond. the passageway beyond the bookshelf had a short hallway and two doors. Using my boots of the elven kind, I stealthed forward, not making a sound and checked both doors for noise. No sound came from either. Peaking in, I saw giant sized weapons in a weaponry past the door on the right and a barracks past the door on the left . . . both were empty.
Sai began the hour long ritual to construct our golem while the rest of the party rested for the battle that was sure to come beyond the final door of the barracks. The door glowed red and was inscribed with an arcane sigil to bind it. Once Sai had constructed his golem, it arose and followed his commands to arm itself with a longsword and a scimitar from the weaponry. Next it was commanded to burst open the door containing the arcane sigil. With a mighty rush and a crash, our golem severed the defensive magic on the door, and we walked behind the mighty creation as we entered the room. (side note, Lefty had affectionately named our golem Jarold von Deathknight . . . Can't say a bit of humor before the grisly scene beyond the door wasn't warranted.)
There on a makeshift throne sat the "old" priest of shar from Phandalin. He sneered and told us we had troubled him long enough as he finally dropped his guise and the true, red Thay necromancer was in full view. In front of him stood, as we suspected, a horrifying Flesh Golem constructed of the parts that had disappeared throughout the dungeon.
As the battle commenced, more undead minions of the necromancer crashed through the wooden parts of the floor to join the fray as our golems battled each other in the center of the room. Sai had used the enlarge spell on our golem and turned him into a monstrous giant while the rest of us rushed into the room and attacked the enemies before us.
Shadow, moved forward with frightening speed, his mind single on the Thay wizard. As he approached, he put a sphere of darkness around the wizard and rushed forward. Before Shadow could strike, the wizard cast fly and hovered over and out of the darkness. Sai to the opportunity to throw a bead of fireball upon him as Shadow once again pursued.
Meanwhile on the backlines, Inrah began a kind of wizard battle with the Thay who played a defensive game, casting shield to block her attacks. Feefifo, Zax, Lefty, and myself started to thin the army of undead that continued to pour out from the floors.
About the floors . . . as it turns out, the floor of this room was suspended above a giant pit. As the golems attacked each other back and forth in the center, the blows were enough to start to crumble the sections of the floors below us. In fact, a section of floor that Shadow was standing on gave way and he tumbled down into the pit. Luckily, our friend landed on his feet and was able to sprint to a ladder at one end using his monk's Step of the Wind ability.
After several back-and-forth attacks from the Golems, both of our creations were looking worse for wear. With a flair of genius, Inrah used Dissonant Whispers on our Thay's creation and mentally shattered the golem with a final scream inside its twisted mind and the battle seemed to suddenly sway in our favor . . . until our golem, bloodied and confused, went completely berserk and turned on Sai, simply because he happened to be the closest thing next to it.
With three vicious and mighty strikes from his own creation, Sai collapsed to the ground. Zax rushed to his side and pulled him back to our secondary line where we could heal his wounds. The Thay wizard was looking worse for wear from the attacks of ours that were able to get through. Getting back on his feet, he looked at our Golem and sneered, seeing the mayhem it had created. Unfortunately, the very Golem in the center, crashing against the tiles would be his demise as the tile he was standing on crumbled underneath his feet and he fell to his death in the pit below.
The undead constructs attacking us immediately fell to the floor becoming inanimate and Sai, now back on his feet, took a heroic leap at this creation and pushed himself and the golem into the pit below, falling deep into a central pit below. It was a brave act that ultimately saved us from a rampaging golem as we rushed out of the dungeon before it would collapse in on us.
Emerging from the entrance, we did not find the cool chirping of the Neverwinter Woods. What we found instead were deep, ominous mists encircling us. Something outside had changed. Evil now seemed to thicken around us.
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