Editing Epic - Saving my People (section)

==Closing the Gate to Death==

We could see undead still milling around in the valley, feasting on the bodies of the dead but without any direction or purpose. After waiting for a time a small Githyanki ship appeared, a narrow ramp was extended and a few of their kind descended towards the temple cave. Fortunately Garuk and Fulgar had the means to make us fall gently so we could jump straight off the cliff and land gently right before them. I ran forward once I had solid ground under me and engaged them, landing the first hit. There was a battle of minds going on that I was unaware of, but what I certainly did notice was a fireball exploding that badly burned Fulgar, although Garuk seemed to just ignore it. Fulgar still ran forward, though, slashing the foe holding the device we knew that Chimeg had used from the visions the Gods had blessed us with.

Between my strikes and Fulgar's ferocity we were able to fell the device wielder. We paid a price for it, though, as I was hit twice and Garuk once; these foes were quick on their feet and hit with surprising strength. Suddenly the device flew out from the body at our feet towards the ship, but Fulgar seemed to be half expecting this and leapt forward, snatching it out of the air in a beautifully dexterous dive that ended in a roll that put him back on his feet! A Githyanki mage had been stood at the side of the boat and had tried to take the device by some dweomer, but now he was forced to join the fight and Fulgar struck him with his free paw. Garuk and I suffered more damage, and I redoubled my efforts to clear a path to Fulgar.

Then things took a dark turn as Garuk was compelled by some mental domination to attack Fulgar, striking a powerful blow at his exposed back! I was able to kill my attacker, at least, which left just the two Gith and one of the foe had been badly injured by Fulgar. I moved quickly and used the reach of my halberd, lunging forward and gutting the mage. Thankfully this seemed to release Garuk and he stepped back away from Fulgar. The last foe disappeared, then we caught a glimpse of him as he reappeared on the vessel just before that disappeared to leave us alone.

Fulgar snarled at Garuk and ran off, heading around and back up the valley side. I managed to catch up with him just enough to tell him that Garuk had his own mind back and was no longer a threat, which made him pause. Garuk approached gingerly, placing a healing ointment down as a peace offering. I said I would get it for him, making my way back, and found Garuk looking very ashamed at his mental weakness, as he saw it. He followed me towards Fulgar, but as I walked back up an eddy formed in the snow in front of me, and I heard a voice say "well done".

The world seemed to fade slightly and then there was a flashing image of a demon as if it were right before me, but it exploded in fire and a vacuum appeared that condensed into a blue stone. Then I realised that the stone was real as it fell into the snow and started to melt the stone around it. I picked it up carefully as it was clearly hot, but it was cooling rapidly. I showed it to Garuk... perhaps the Gods had given us a way to close the gate?  At any rate a gift from the Gods was valuable and I put it away to keep it safe.

I continued up to Fulgar with Garuk where they were able to make up despite some initial wariness. We rested for a few moments, tending our wounds, and discussed the gift and how we might close the gate now that we had the device. We quite quickly realised that it would only work if we were inside the gate when we closed it! Despite this unnerving us a little we resolved to do what we must and went back to the cave together. I retrieved a golden platter and we arranged ourselves, me with the Runestone and Garuk with the device as Fulgar entered one of the side caves to retrieve a wooden dog then made an offering of it in the right cave. As he did so he actually seemed to become even more dog-like, although we would not have thought it possible before - he had become the embodiment of Shang-Ti's dog essence and now we were ready to enter the central cave.

We crossed into the central cave in a similar formation and the runestone on the platter glowed golden yellow without any heat. At once we felt a shift and stepped into a different place, a corridor of black basalt with shifting carvings glimpsed within. The corridor ended in a room with a glowing green tube that contained a wooden creature inside, about eight feet tall, which was the source of the light. The stone worked in the device, with Fulgar using Shang-Ti's healing power to activate it, but as he did so his life essence was sucked into it, as was Garuk's, and they were both weakened... at least the gate was now closed, or we thought it was anyway - we had faith! The stone crumbled after this, leaving the device intact but without power.

Both the runestone and the device were warm, having had power channeled through them, but I put it away quickly and readied my weapon. A couple of animated skeletons appeared and rushed at us, holding bucklers with flames seeming to flicker within them, and wielding swords. We tried to get past because we wanted to release the wood creature rather than fight them ourselves. Garuk was first to do so, although he was cut by a sword as he did so. I slammed my head into the other skeleton and that sent it slamming to the floor, its sword skittering away. That freed Fulgar to approach the tube. He saw runestones in walls - aspects of life and death on opposite sides. Garuk tried my approach and headbutted his attacker, but unfortunately that was enough to destroy it!

Fulgar activated the rune on the wall, again with Shang-Ti's healing energy, and the glass tube dropped. The wooden creature was free and it immediately went for the last skeleton, pushing Garuk out of the way so hard he was physically thrown off his feet and slid back into the room. It rammed its arm into the skeleton, lifting it up, and then bone exploded everywhere leaving the creature's arm aflame. As this happened the outline of a door appeared wreathed in glowing flame, although still appearing like stone in the wall near where Garuk had landed. Fulgar shouted to us that we needed to leave and headed towards it.

Fulgar paused to study the outline, as the wall was still solid. There was a little stone projecting out at the top with a tube that suggested something was meant to flow, but nothing was coming out. Garuk stepped up to join him and sent flames shooting at the device. This seemed to work as what looked like lava started to squirt and flow down, some of it catching Garuk in the initial burst. As it flowed the door physically split into two with a flare of light, and when the flow stopped the two sides swung open away from us. I parried the attack of the wooden creature to give the others a chance to get through the door now that there was a way through.

Fulgar healed Garuk's wounds with a blessing from Shang-Ti and then they stepped through. There was an archway ahead at the end of another corridor, but it was flanked by ironclad golem-like creatures that came alive at their approach and slowly clanked forward, filling the corridor. Garuk tried throwing sand at them, but funnily enough it didn't really penetrate the iron in the way that we needed in this particular elemental challenge. Garuk was punched for his efforts, and an ironclad fist can really do some damage... he was badly hurt after taking a couple of punches, so Fulgar and I stepped up to parry and protect him whilst he worked out what to do. I did manage to block one punch, but another got through and he was injured again. He turned his fist into stone, hoping that it might help.

That wasn't helping much either, so finally he ducked back into the last room and turned my Khopesh into a hard stone instead. Fulgar backed off to protect Garuk, so it was just me now! I cut into one and it instantly disappeared, which was great, but... my Khopesh disappeared as well! I backed off, using my shield to defend myself against the other one, until Garuk handed me a dagger that he had turned into stone. I stabbed into the other iron thing and thankfully that disappeared too. That was too close!

I asked Garuk when I would get my Khopesh back, but he didn't seem to have an answer. He had been badly hurt, though, and Fulgar tended to his wounds. Thankfully the wooden creature had returned to its tube when we left the room, so we had a moment to take stock. We were expecting to have to introduce metal to water next, so we each took one of the tent pegs Garuk carried in case they became useful. Fulgar and I stepped through the archway first, although I couldn't see anything as the room was pitch black. Fulgar went ahead, seeing that there was a bowl in the centre that was cooler that the room around it. Water flowed down on us from above, then suddenly a metal sheet slammed down to seal us in and separate us from Garuk. The flow of water seemed to increase as well.

Fulgar thought that we needed to introduce metal into the bowl of water, but a peg didn't do anything. He had the idea that metal shavings might better introduce themselves to the water and I offered my whetstone to help. I couldn't find it myself in the dark, but Fulgar dug around in my pack to find it. He grated away at the peg I gave him, but as he was adding it something started to rise out of the bowl, swirling the liquid as it did so, and a strange hissing sound like rain striking a window filled our ears. The things continued to grow and began to attack Fulgar; in response he invoked the name of Shang-Ti and held aloft the gift from the fish Hengeyokai, and suddenly the liquid calmed and the creature was gone. The water stopped falling on us as well, so whatever he had done we were safe for a moment.

Garuk had created a hole in the door, but he didn't use stone to do so. This was a mistake as when he tried to climb through to join us he disappeared! There was nothing we could do about that for now, so instead we started a small fire to heat the liquid with the metal filings in it. This took a little while, but at least gave me some light to see by. Looking around we could see doors in each wall, but we were looking for the law symbol in particular, finally noticing that it was on the ceiling. Anticipating that we would have to go that way we tied ourselves together with rope and scooped a bit of the liquid up in my helmet. I climbed onto Fulgar's shoulders and splashed the liquid onto the ceiling, which opened a hole that we were sucked upwards into. We only rose so far, and then the stone began to close beneath us, forcing Fulgar to lift his legs up to avoid being trapped. As soon as it closed we were dumped onto the new floor, but we had taken another step forward.

We decided to light a lantern, despite it being a risk with fire being involved, because we needed to understand the way. We were in a twenty foot square room with corridors leading away, and could feel that the air was swirling gently clockwise around us. There were carvings of vines around each passageway and runestones by them, and a cascading canopy of leaves was above us. All of this was carved in stone but looked almost as if it were real. There was an eye inside a pyramid on the floor beneath us. We worked out what to do, needed to introduce water into air we used my pots to heat some water and let the air carry the steam onto the leaves above the passageway we needed to follow.

Unfortunately when we started it triggered another guardian and this was an air elemental that attacked at once. Fulgar's blows just passed through, so I went to meet it while he kept working on the steam. It used its mastery of the air to extinguish our lantern, and then ripped my halberd out of my hands! Fulgar was able to create another fire, but I had to let it keep hitting me, unable to respond, as I edged my way around to where the halberd had fallen. Thankfully the steam finally caused a reaction in the tree, causing it to suddenly grow and shoot branches into the air creature to draw it into the tree.

That was a relief, but it was short lived as the tree kept growing and the growth started to close off the passage! Fulgar ran and slid through the gap with the lantern, branches slashing at him as he did so, and I grabbed my halberd and followed just in time. Fulgar blessed me with Shang-Ti's healing after the punishment I had taken from the elemental, but once again we had found a way to progress; I just hoped Garuk was making his own way forward. We were in a room that contained a pagoda made of ice; in the center of this was a horizontal grill about halfway up, on top of which was a stone crucible touching each of the four ice pillars of the pagoda and holding wood inside. There were iron-bound wooden chests either side of the corridor we had just entered from. The roof was domed with birds carved in relief within a blue background, like the sky. There were runestones on floor: Evil, Chaos, and Good but a Neutral runestone on the wall.

We decided to wait to see whether Garuk would find us for a few minutes... and sure enough he appeared from the opposite side of the room not long afterwards! Fulgar was initially wary of a trick, so he asked him some questions and asked him to produce some items, but was eventually convinced that it was indeed Garuk. Together we agreed how to activate the pagoda, which opened a door in the wall. We saw that it led to the Heart of the Prime, which was perfect... but there were thirteen Githyanki inside conducting a ceremony! After a moment of anguish as to whether we should intervene or not, and deciding that it would probably be suicidal, we ran quickly to the exit we had used last time. I was torn, desperately wanting to challenge them, but I had underestimated them before and I had to think of the lives of the others, so I followed.