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'''17 Horse Moon, 1372'''

The building of ice was not fun. Chara burning through it? Fun. Well, warm, at least. 

We went through the next portal, into a hallway. It looked a lot like the ice place, but, well, not ice. A couple of doors down the hall revealed guard bunks that had been hastily exited, and we decided not to open up the barred door. Also, there was a clear, firey path where Chara had been. We followed it.

Next up--TREASURE ROOM(s)! Awesome stuff on pedastals, most of it magical (according to LichBoy). Two staves, a sword, a pair of boots, a bunch of vials, a cool amulet, a neat choker, and oh yeah! A worthless glass bauble. Except, not! LichBoy saw it only as piece of glass, but the rest of us saw it as a shiny gold sphere. It was heavy, too, and made of awesome. I could just tell. The funniest part was Ezel saying it wasn't heavy, but he was putting it down because his arm hurt for some reason. Yes, we're taking it. I suspected it was the Gold Dragon <s>ball</s>Orb and handed it to Michael and asked him to try to command me to do something. Nothing happened, except him blushing. He's such a cute little kid. I pocketed the orb. 

Next rooms--More Treasure! Well, magical weapons, some scrolls, and a magic book. Ezel was happy, even if he didn't understand why we wanted to bring the cheap glass bauble with us. It really seemed to irritate him. I wonder if he can't see it because he's undead, or because he's inherently evil? If it's because he's evil, will we not be able to see the evil dragon orbs? Like, is the red one similiarly shielded against good folks? 

And finally, the big throne room. Chara was here, along with most of her elementals. She was having a grand time, fighting some demon. Her lesser elementals were routing the smaller demons, but the big elementals were grappling with the demon on the throne--something big and ugly. It was time for a quick debate. One of the magic things we'd found had been a quick way out to the plane of air, and Evanth could take us there easily. Should we ditch? Or should we go after the big bad Gratz who was an easy target for now? Michael did some of his paladin style detecting and said the fiery sword Gratz wielded was not evil. So, he wanted to fight. The sword did look pretty cool, and it wasn't like the fire was going to hurt me. Ezel warned us that demons of Gratz's type tended to explode when killed. He was with us, though.

So Michael and I rushed in to fight, with Ezel just behind us to do some more of his demon singing... or something. Chara did some crazy leap attack off the back of one of her elementals, and her other ones finished off little opponent. With my first strike, I very nearly took Gratz's head off. Like, <i>this</i> close. It would've been really cool. Michael whacked him with one of his pretty katana's, and Chara did massive damage with her swords. The elementals kept him pinned (I took a hit at some point--no biggie) and Ezel put up some kind of magey shield. He was just in time, because Chara's next hit started the demon explosion. I got clear, as did Chara, but Michael got blasted by it and smacked up against the shield like a bird in a windstorm meeting a wall. That poor kid. He was still alive, thank goodness, but looked like hell. And he'd been hit in the head with the gem from the pommel of Gratz's sword. The sword had been blown away, but Mikey kept the gem as a souvenier. Better than a lousy t-shirt.

Chara was estatic. She said Lord Pazuzu would reward us well. That sounded pretty threatening. She also claimed all the contents of this castle for Lord Pazuzu. Uh... yeah. Sure. This was a good time to retreat. I heard dragons coming, and we saw a green dragon poke his head down through the ceiling as we left. It was carrying another demon, who started arguing with Chara about... something demonic. I don't know, we were so gone at that point.

Except, in the hallway, I heard a little laugh, and the gold orb started doing something weird. I touched it briefly, and suddenly just knew that there was another orb <b>right there.</b> It took a lot of willpower to not just grab whatever invisible thing held the orb, but it was too dangerous. Evanth found a place to drop a portal for us, and we shortly landed in the plane of air, narrowly escaping with our loot and our lives. 

Altogether, a pretty awesome adventure, except for the smell.


'''18 Horse Moon, 1372'''

Once back in the plane of air, we got our bearings and retied ourselves together. Querca is once again unhappy. Michael is a little better, but still so beat up... some of the wounds on him look like old scars. He got extra shy when I asked him about them, so I'll leave him be for now. The kid is only 16? I wonder what happened to him. He said something about all of them being 4 years old. Poor little thing--we ought to get him home to his mother. Well, I hope that Old Man found a way to change his mother back to being a celestial. I think we're headed back to our world now, because we have the gold orb.

First things first, we want to go talk to the silver dragons about stuff. I don't think the little egg would have hatched yet, but you never know. However, we don't know where they are with respect to us. Evanth thinks he could get to them with some complicated math. Bleh. It was easier to find that town again. Also, we have a bunch of treasure to identify, and we're all in great need of baths.

We get back to the inn we were at a few days ago, and damn do we stink of the infernal realm. They closed down the bathhouse to everyone but us while we cleaned up. And then we were all tired. I woke up in the middle of the night because the gold orb told me there was a gold dragon far away in a certain direction, and then it was gone.


'''19 Horse Moon, 1372'''

The next day, we went back to Saula to get some of our stuff identified, then to his cousin, then to the mages guild, and then to the alchemist guild. We haven't sold anything yet, though Ezel has said we can get rid of the staff that controls/makes undead. He really has something against his own kind. I don't know if there's any sort of organized undead solidarity, but if so, he has the opposite. He's so self-hating. 

One of the bits of treasure turned out to be a headband of intellect, so I put that on. It's always good to be a little smarter when dealing with merchants. After we left some stuff at the alchemist's guild to be identified, Michael wanted to go to the temple of Virton to get healed up and chat with the priests. It turned out that the gem that hit Michael in the head contained a good soul, and the mages didn't know how to set it free without destroying it. The priests, however, might. I went with him. 

There was a service going on, so we sat in the back and got some stares. The priests were having a discussion after the service. There was something about "how do you lose a dragon?" ... Uh-oh. We talked to the priests about the soul-gem, and they said they could research it, but they had a more immediate issue. Apparently Seth has gone missing, and Mirenuth is desparate to find him. She's on her way over here, and I'd been sensing her for most of the morning as she came into town. We offered to help her along with the paladins, and the priests are going to look into freeing the soul in the gem.

Mirenuth showed up shortly thereafter. Baby is not hatched yet, and she wants to get back to her, but in the meantime Seth has gone missing! She can't even sense him. She gave us directions to where he was last, so we're going to try to help find him. I think the gold dragon orb will help in this regard.