After saving Chris and killing two demons we were taking a rest to catch our breaths, but we were still rather damaged and exhausted. Sitting there thinking about the mirror room, Darion went in once more to try to look at the plaque through a mirror. But that wasn’t it. It mus be the message itself:

The heart of a warrior is still
when faced with themselves.

Like two thirds of a Haiku.

As a group, we tried all the potential secret exits again and could not open any, but worse, we could not even open the one we knew directly because we had just come through it from the other side. The mechanism to open it was exclusively on the outside.

After ages of going over every mirror surface like a CSI team we gave up and returned to the demon room, with Thippet taking the long way around and opening the short way for us helpless mirror-investigators.

From the demon room we opened the north door and found ourselves in the northern part of the corridor going all the way around. Aretain look around the corner and found a giant raven — human-sized — pecking on a dead body. She suspected it might be an imp in bird-form. Darion wanted to rush and kill it fast, but the others were not thrilled about the idea: If we failed to surprise it, it would sting us again, and worse, report back to its mistress. Apoqulis suggested avoiding it, going all the way around the east, and exploring what we did not yet know carefully while staying out of the raven’s face.

Scuttling legs

That went decently well and we found a bunch of narrow corridors, whereas the raven seemed to have failed to notice us. At least it did not interrupt its pecking. But then we saw another of those were-cockroaches scuttle past at the extreme edge of our lantern light.

Moments later a group of them had circled around us and were attacking our rearguard, IN the very corridor with the raven.

Apoqulis pushed Chris out of the way and into cover, then cracked one insect head open, Thippet and Darion sliced one pincer attacker in the south in half, Chaos ensued, and Chris shrieked and flailed in great distress.
And then, when Darion and Thippet came north to support the others in the corridor, he turned into a cockroach too, and we had to take him down too.

Finally we had them, with Apoqulis bleeding from a fresh wound, and quiet descended on the halls. Obviously, the raven was now gone: he would have to be unconscious to miss all the clanging, yelling, fluttering and roaring during this fight. No cigar for our sneakery then.

Lair of Chaos

We looked around and lo, found the Were-cockroaches lair in all its stinking glory. Decaying old foodstuffs, moldy cloth, random stuff covered in grime and shit. We struggled to keep our proverbial breakfast down, but Darion muttered darkly: “Soon we will learn to find this smell homely, once our transformation advances sufficiently.”

While D’arion rifled through the garbage in the hopes of finding something worthwhile among the junk, the others discussed Lycanthropy, the level of control Chris may or may not have had about his transformation, the influence of the moon, blah, blah. Darion tried to fade out this academic stuff.

Worry tomorrow

Then Thippet came to him and begged Darion to watch him: “I shall try to transform myself into a cockroach. Please watch me do it, and if you get the impression that I may succeed, please kill me.”
Darion refused: “Don’t try such nonsense. We are not here for science, we are here on a mission! To stop Azuequia opening a portal from hell.”
“But I don’t want to turn into a cockroach!”
“Then don’t!”

Thippet slinked away, unhappy and worried, but Darion was set on his stance: No hand-holding, no sharing of feelings, just good, cold steel and an enemy. If we die, we die anyway. If we live, well, then we can start to look for curse-breakers. But that’s a worry for the survivors, tomorrow.

Loot

In the rotten junk we found a knife, a tiny wooden bird totem on a pedestal, a protectiive talisman against magic. Also a tiny wooden box that smells of pipe weed. And a scroll case with two elven spells, Magic Missile and Wizard Lock. Plus a scroll with clerical spells: Light, Protection from Evil, and Detect Magic.
And we had a small dragon statue and an old, severed human head.

Apoqulis read the Detect Magic and discovered the power of the bird totem, but otherwise nothing was magical. Aretain would be able to learn Wizard Lock as a spell, and she could cast MM from the scroll when needed.

Now we circled the whole floor and found footprints suggesting our big raven had really been an imp, as Aretain had suspected.

Apoqulis at 9 HP, Darion at 8, everyone bruised and scratched and bleeding, and Chris dead. In this sorry state we went back to the mirror room once again, and Darion declared that this HAD to be the key to reach the lower level and find Azequia. We just had to understand this damned plaque.

The heart of a warrior is still
when faced with themselves.

We bedded down to sleep in the mirror room, because you don’t get more still than sleeping right next to your mirror golem. To become centered, and calm. A still heart.
We would meditate on this, eye in eye with our mirror images, to finally understand it. This room HAD to be the key.

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