Well, the past two days have put me on edge some, but it has been great in some ways. Vol and I now have a definite direction to go in, rather than wandering aimlessly to spread war (and some panic). I mean, there will still be fighting and panic, but basically, we accidentally resurrected a god whose divergence from nature spits at the feet of our gods. So we aim to put a stop to that.
That night in the fog room, the little raccoon must have wandered off, as we didn't see him or his traces in the morning. But we prepared ourselves to alert, anyway, and we walked down a long hall. At the end of the hall it opened into large room with a dais in the back with a large table and two thrones on top of it. There were pillars and coffins lining the side of the room. The Wilden, with his keen eye for starting trouble (the unnecessary kind) hurried up to a skeleton in one of the thronechairs, and tried to take the crown on its skull. The skeleton grabbed his arm before he could take it. Then Vol and I hid mostly behind a pillar, still looking out. We saw the skeleton growing organs and flesh tissue as he spoke to the Wilden. Asked why we weren't wearing our ceremonial garbs. It struck me that this was Vecna, damned and true before my own eyes. And I shivered of dread. Vecna launched the Wilden and his spider against the wall near the hall, struggled to walk forward to the center of the room. But once there, he folded his red fiery cloak over himself, and uncovered himself a large white dragon of ice.
Vol understood who this was as well, and ran out of hiding at the dragon shouting war cries for his god Kord, and unabashedly sharing the finest edge of his ax with our most modest of hosts. The Wilden disappeared for a while in battle. (I later learned this was because he was skilled in teleportation.) Vol at some point had received a blessing from Kord (I surmise it was as he leapt from the pillar at the start), and he was dealing intensely damaging strikes, until the Vecna collapsed and returned to human form. He stood, appearing to take much difficulty in this, folded his cloak around himself, once again, and said, "I will see you again". With that, his cloak burst into flames, a fireball rising to and through the high, brightly-glowing ceiling.
(M'lord Balinor and Kord are very similar. I like to think Vol had Balinor's blessing, as well as Kord's, with each of my healing words.)
With that, we checked up with each other, but we were all in good condition, despite the battle. We opened a few of the coffins, now that the god of necromancy was gone. There were bodies of his priests in there. I am not rightly sure why he hadn't summoned them from death to aide him, but I wasn't complaining. I took a few things from some of them. Of note: I found a pouch of platinum and a set of aerial hovering sandals among them. Those would have been useful yesterday, no doubt. The Wilden took the crown from the ground where it had fallen in battle, and pulled a large, diamond-shaped gem out of it. We turned back to see if this would fit in the setting in the wall in the first room. Once in the hall, we were teleported there, coming out of the room to the right, where the sunrod and the raven had gone.
As the gem was placed into the wall, everything around us rumbled, and a loud hissing sound drowned out our talking. It was the hissing of sand. The big pile of sand and rubble had shifted out of the way and revealed a door. We opened it, and... sunlight. Beautiful, eye-searing sunlight. We were above ground, and, how-but the temple had risen from the sand when we put the gem in the socket. We determined to not leave this temple of the damned remain here, so we had the Wilden ride back in the temple on his speedy spider, take the gem and race back out as it sank. And Vol and I stood outside, expecting the Wilden to come back out as the temple was slowly eaten back by the sand. But, no, the temple just collapsed as quick as that, with the Wilden still under it. The spider was able to crawl out of the rubble, but it looked real hurt. Vol and I started digging for the Wilden, and we pulled him out, looking just about as dead as death. But he wasn't, just knocked out. I fixed him up good, though, just like I did my family back home, when they needed it. Funny how you treat some folks like close, when all you got is three days of past behind you, and you're still a little unraveled by them.
We surveyed the pile of rubble, what was left of the temple. Everything was demolished, but the one spire. It glowed bright at the tip, and shone a straight light consistent to the east. The beacon was lit. It was calling to somebody, or letting something know the temple had been lifted, its god had been reborn. After a bout of trying to turn it off or cover the beacon, we lit many a thing afire, Vol fell from the tower, and I dislocated my shoulder; so we went back to Tal'Nir to rest and resupply before heading back east.
We arrived back at the Desert Pearl, and booked a few rooms at the inn. I rested up a bit, then went out on the town to find an alchemist who could teach me about the jar of fog water I collected. One was able to reverse-engineer the substance, and showed me how it was done. I learned a few other things from him, and stocked up on reagents for brewing in the field. Once at the inn, I holed myself up in the room for the next 16 hours, on an alchemy binge. Vol was in once at the beginning, then left a bit later. At the end, smelling rank of chemicals and humours, I bathed and decided to relax in the hotel lounge. I ordered a lightly bubbled, sweet wine, and found the Wilden there, enjoying his own drink. And we talked for a while, until Vol came in beaten and bruised, and we talked some more.
The Wilden... For one whose face I've known all this time, but not a name to link it, I wonder what his trouble is. I get that he's not the most trusting of people; fact of the matter is though, when it comes to trust, I'm not waiting to hear a name before I can poison him. If I wanted to poison him he'd be dead already. It's been, what, five days travelling and fighting together. I've been thinking of giving him a nickname.
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