The battle was on! And everyone did their part. The Captain and Ciddar weathered fearsome blows from the undeath-demon's claws, teeth and flinging necrotic energy, and dealt it a torrent of powerful blows that wore it down, and soon it curled up in a ball again to hide its battered skull, its essence dispersing. Meanwhile the rest of your party and the undine did their share of battering away at the gem-nodes around the room, and by the time the demon had been crippled, the nodes were all destroyed and their magical bond to the demon eliminated.
The demon dissolved into just floating bones and ichor, and some of you took trophies from these. But then you felt a rippling in the room's still waters, and a current that swept back toward the two “storage rooms”. You swam in two groups back to each room, finding that the portals blocking each room off from the waters had faded, and now water was pouring in from the flooded areas as well as through every crack in the walls, ceiling and floors–the place was coming apart now that the energies of the demon and whatever its master is/was had been broken. Change was coming to a place of anti-change; the centuries were catching up with it.
Seeing no sign of Cyroosta back in the pond-room, you fled for the entrance, being pulled by stronger and more capricious currents. Once in the entry room with the odd rune-carved slab, you had troubles avoiding being sucked into the corkscrewing exit tunnel toward the surface, and some of you lost control, bashed against the walls by the furious upward-flowing waters.
Eventually, most of you got pushed or swam out of the evil crypt-place, but Boamund and the Baronet swiftly realized that Maugis had not made it out. You'd all been clutched at by malevolent roots of the tree on the surface, and you figured he'd been caught. Indeed, you found him barely alive just inside the tomb entrance, and cut him free just in time. Cyroosta had swum safely to the surface once the place went to shambles, and was sitting their in an ill mood, wet and coughing, but soon she treated Maugis's wounds.
The twisted tree atop the necromantic lair shrieked as you stood up out of the mucky flooded grounds around it, and the tree writhed, shaking its branches like a rubbery horror. Suddenly it straightened up violently, cried out a terrible banshee wail of “Umbrodriiiiiiiiiiiiiith!!!” and then slumped over limp and dead. Boamund conjured fire to burn it, while in utter panic Miguel fled into the swamps waving his arms and yelling– he'd had enough of this terrible place! With many wounds from the necromantic energies in the final chamber, most of the rest of you could hardly disagree.
But you'd clearly vanquished the power that had chafed Quick Sister for so long. Questions plagued you: what was this power? Who was Umbrodriith- it did not appear to be the demon, but the master of this place, entombing his servants for some vile future purpose? The rune-carved slab had hinted at this, but a bad feeling crept over you that more was to come of this fearsome ancient power of anti-Life…
Regardless, the Baronet had a big demon skull as a trophy to show to his wife-to-be, and so your quest was not yet complete.
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