Following the audience’s applause for their performance in the play, the group exited stage right and up a ramp to the auditorium’s balconies. They had no idea what that play was about, yet some tiny part of their minds felt that the play seemed somewhat familiar somehow. Regardless, they had a tower to climb.
They emerged from the ramp to a number of ghosts who appeared to be the wealthy patrons who frequented the tower for the plays. At least, that was the impression they got when they found several men in the balcony seats with several women hanging on to him. There were also female philanthropists who had other female patrons around her, likely to learn about the latest gossip, whatever passes as that in this place.
From this point the VIP tickets Mena used to get into the auditorium no longer had meaning as the ghosts were hostile toward them once more. The patrons were not difficult to deal with and the only thing the philanthropists did was throw money at them.
This went on until they reached the other end of the hallway where a ramp took them to the upper balconies where more wealthy ghosts awaited. They didn’t have to go as far on this floor before they found an archway that appeared to be an exit out of the auditorium.
The gilded auditorium with the marble flooring and numerous busts and tapestries soon gave way to dark and dilapidated halls once more. This area was inhabited by wraiths of various colors of green, purple and blue. Bella and Mena’s light magic quickly exorcized them into ectoplasmic orbs.
They soon came across a rectangular wooden double door which seemed to open on its own when they approached. On the other side was a set of stairs leading to a small portcullis which seemed to lead outside.
“This might be the other entrance Berthold told us about,” Stella figured.
They made a mental note of that before proceeding. Not far from there was another doorway under a ramp that appeared to lead to a terrace. However, the terrace appeared to be devoid of anything. Even the undead seemed to avoid this place. Stella had a feeling that something important happened here and she had a good idea what that was. She would still need the journal to know exactly where to put the urn though.
They left the terrace alone and resumed their climb up the tower by going up the ramp. Dealing with more wraiths, they briefly walked outside along a walkway which led back inside where they walked through a ruined section of the tower where the wall had blown out. They ended up climbing a number of flights of slightly rotted wooden stairs. They had to be extra careful not to fall off as the railings, whenever there were any, were not reliable.
They soon entered another arched hallway that led into a new area with a marbled floor and in much better shape.
However, they also encountered a pair of arcane golems like the ones they encountered in the Tempest Keep satellites. Stella quickly found that her usual strategy of pulling or overloading the power cores didn’t work this time as there was a barrier around their cores. Medivh had likely found the flaw in the design and made preventative measures to keep their weakness from being exploited.
Thanks to that, the group was forced to deal with the golems the normal way. Raida rushed in and emitted a green flame from her body that heated the area around her to metal-melting temperatures. This allowed her to deal heavier slashes with her warglaives because her Immolation Aura softened the metal the golems were made of. The others attacked the other golem with Stella using her magma breath to heat the metal on their golem while Bella pounded away at the heated areas with her hammer which left some large dents. Flutashe didn’t need the assistance as much since her cat form was pretty strong. Of course, slashing metal didn’t do her claws any favors.
Once the golems collapsed, the party moved onward past a room with the statue of a dwarven golem in the center and into a hallway infested with arcane elementals and mana wyrms, small serpentine creatures that were filled with arcane energy. The hallway itself appeared to be composed of rows of raven statues with eerily glowing green eyes and lines of chandeliers.
Dealing with the mana creatures was easy enough, even though the serpents tried to steal mana from Bella, Mena and Stella. The elementals protected themselves with a strong barrier that was powered by whatever magic they could afford to give from their forms. Without the shield they were extremely fragile. They also had to beware a massive arcane golem who appeared to be patrolling the room.
Once the hallway was clear the group prepared to face the golem. However, once the construct detected their presence, it moved faster than what they would expect for a huge construct. Though it was what it said that made them realize that they needed to take the fight seriously.
“[The menagerie is for guests only.]” it said in a smooth robotic voice.
They suddenly realized that they were in the menagerie which didn’t really look much different from the rest of the tower. Bella, frankly, expected something more along the lines of a museum of magical artifacts. Perhaps the artifacts were cleared out some time ago.
Though if this was the menagerie, this must be the golem that was guarding it.
Stella made an attempt to avoid conflict by showing her the key into Karazhan, hoping to make it recognize her as a guest. However, this was in vain from what the construct said next.
“[Error: guest recognition program malfunction. Running diagnostics…error: system corruption at sixty-five percent. User maintenance required, please give passcode for Curator system reboot.]”
They had no clue what the passcode could be so they had no choice but to fight the construct, which they guessed was called The Curator.
Given its size, Bella and Flutashe focused on dodging its massive hands while keeping its attention on them. Stella soon realized that The Curator had a thin arcane barrier around itself which dulled their attacks somewhat. Every now and then, the machine suddenly launched a powerful bolt of arcane magic at someone that they had to avoid.
“[This Curator is equipped for gallery protection,]” it said as its hands began sparking. Seeing that the intruders were persisting, The Curator diverted a portion of its mana stores to create a sentient spark of arcane magic. The spark arced lightning for a moment until Stella used her arcane manipulation to contain the spark in her hands.
Over time, The Curator created more sparks from its soon dwindling mana reserves and Stella continued drawing the sparks to her and containing them in her hands. It wasn’t long before its reserves ran out. Without its reserves, the arcane protection dulling their attacks was deactivated, allowing them to unleash their wrath upon it.
In its powered down state, The Curator stopped attacking and seemed to switch into a recharge mode as streams of arcane energy from around the tower began being pulled into it, recharging its systems. They weren’t sure how long they had to do some real harm to the machine but they were sure it wouldn’t be long.
Stella smirked as she came up with a devious idea on how to really do some damage to the machine. She was sure that there was a limit to how much mana The Curator could take in all at once and if she fired all of the sparks back at it, which she figured the thaums amounted to the construct’s full capacity, it would overload its systems. There was also the risk that doing this might cause The Curator to blow up a huge chunk of Karazhan and them with it, but she also considered banking on someone like Medivh putting an emergency mana battery on it somewhere that would mitigate the potential damage caused by a mana surge.
She was glad her hunch paid off because when she unleashed the power at it when its capacity was nearly full, some of its parts erupted in minor explosions and severely damaged the construct. One explosion exposed an emergency core in its head which had likely absorbed most of the excess energy.
“[Danger: power levels within Curator unit at one hundred and ninety-seven percent. Initiating emergency shut down until power levels are within safe parameters.]” Once the machine said that, it stopped moving entirely.
“Let’s get out of here before it bleeds off that extra power,” Stella said. The others nodded and quickly moved past the golem, turning a corner and coming into the next room.
The next room was a librarian’s dream. Bookshelves lined the walls of the area as well as shelves full of experimental concoctions that had likely long since lost their potency. Books that were not on the shelves were either on small tables or thrown out onto the floor haphazardly.
In a certain observation room, a certain unicorn templar made a comment about the library resembling a certain princess’s library a thousand years ago. Of course, said princess was still on her trip to the Crystal Empire at his time.
Once they entered the library, they had to deal with a pair of golems like the two they faced at the entrance to the menagerie. Strangely, they were standing next to a bonfire.
Before they moved forward, Mena looked around the library but when she looked up her eyes shrank by what she saw. “Girls, look up.”
The others followed the gnome’s eyes and had the same reaction. The ceiling of the library looked like it was falling away into the sky but the pieces of the structure were suspended in the air at the same time. The sky above looked like it had a green tint to it.
“What in Elune’s name is that?” Raida asked. She may have been a fel-infused demon hunter but she still held some reverence for the Moon Goddess.
“If I were to guess, that’s probably a rift into the Twisting Nether,” Stella said. “From what I read in the Dalaran archives, Karazhan is where the barriers between worlds are at their weakest. The rift will distort reality in the tower to a degree that depends on how much power is in the area, be it a being or an artifact.”
They then descended a ramp into the library proper and encountered larger golems. These proved to be more troublesome as they had a defense program that allowed them to shoot arcane bolts at whoever hit them with either a melee weapon or a spell. Stella discovered which protocol they used when they mentioned “EL-7M”, which reacted to weapon strikes, and “EL-2S”, which reacted to when it was struck by spells. There was also a mention of “EL-5R” but they found that the golems didn’t react to any of their attacks while in that mode.
The library also had an infestation of arcane elementals and mana wyrms. While the arcane elementals were no trouble, the wyrms proved to be an aggravation as they soon realized that it had an ability that nullified any magic sent at it. Mena and Surprise’s light and void magics were nullified, Stella’s spells and essence attacks, which still had some magical nature to them, were nullified, and Bella’s holy strikes were rendered mundane. Only Flutashe’s claws and Raida’s swift slashes had any real effect on the wyrms. Because of how annoying they were, Sophia also chipped in by grabbing wyrms by their heads and crushing their skulls one by one.
Once the ground floor of the library was mostly cleared, Stella spotted a trio of purple-robed ghosts, the outfits she recognized as Kirin Tor robes. They must have been the missing agents. Despite the commotion, they continued looking through the books and scrolls in the library.
“Hello? Can you three hear me?” Stella asked. The three ignored her.
“Chances are they were looking for the journal but got distracted by the selection in the library so now their ghosts are obsessing over the knowledge,” Sophia figured.
Stella decided to ask the three agents if they had seen Medivh’s journal. She desperately hoped one of them had seen it because if she couldn’t get anything out of them then they were stuck.
The first agent directed her to another and the second directed her to the third. The third, Kamsis, was able to give her the lead she needed. “Medivh’s journal…I think it’s coming back to me. I think I had it at one time until this nice mage named Aran came by and asked for it. I just had to give it to him, he is Medivh’s father after all.”
“Aran? Nielas Aran?” Stella inquired.
“Do you know about him?” Bella asked.
“He was the court conjurer of the Kingdom of Stormwind during the reign of King Llane Wrynn. He’s a powerful mage and the father of Medivh. And I fear that we are going to be fighting his ghost for that journal.”
“Just one more interesting fight to look forward to,” Raida shrugged.
It was time to continue forward. The group ascended a spiraling ramp to an upper level which led them into a large circular room with more bookshelves and more books on the floor. The uncontained magic in the tower had also formed numerous arcane elementals and mana shades, ghostly beings saturated in mana.
“We have to be careful around those smaller elementals,” Stella warned. “They are highly unstable and will be prone to exploding. Even if I drain the mana from them, that energy has to go somewhere and there aren’t a lot of safe places to unleash such energy.”
“So how do we keep them from not blowing up?” Raida asked.
“We need to stun them while we destroy their bindings.”
“I’ll prepare an attack that can stun them all at once,” Sophia offered. “You will have to make sure to get all of them before it wears off since I’m pretty sure it will push them into exploding once it does.”
The mana shades could, apparently, cast spells like a mage so Stella dealt with them. The larger elementals were not complicated to deal with since all they really did was fire arcane bolts at everyone. Once Sophia unleashed her psionic disruption pulse, tuned to the frequency of the elementals to avoid affecting the others, Surprise quickly sliced off several bracers with her Shadow Blades while Raida quickly sliced off the rest using her speed. The smaller elementals harmlessly dissipated back into the flowing magic of the tower.
Once the shades and elementals were cleared out of the room, the group proceeded up a walkway into a smaller room with more bookshelves and a number of mana shades who were quickly disposed of by Stella.
The next walkway led them into a gathering of Shadow Council warlocks and pale gray imps. Their presence was unusual since they were alive and there had been no sign of their presence in Karazhan until now. Regardless, they were quickly dispatched.
As they were about to proceed, Sophia felt the presence of minds that were coming from…inside the walls…? “Hey girls, hold on a second. Do any of you sense the presence of a demon nearby?”
“It’s hard to feel their presence with all this nether energy around us,” Raida said. “But I can feel something. It’s faint, but it’s there.” Using her Spectral Vision, Raida detected demons inside the walls. “Is there some side route to get to them?”
“I think I have an idea,” Stella said. She began feeling around the nearby bookcase, more specifically the one that was more outward than the two next to it. A little bit of force allowed her to move the bookshelf aside to reveal a hidden passage. “Aha! Figures that a place like this would have a hidden passage or two somewhere.”
The group filed into the passage and explored its brief, yet seeming empty, hallway. At the end, they found a room that contained a few alchemy labs and two racks of lit green candles at the back corners of the room along with a demonic ritual circle in the center of the room surrounded by candles. There were also a fair number of imps in the room along with a larger orange imp and a red satyr.
Bella and Mena quickly lured out and disposed of the lesser imps through their holy magic before they entered the room.
“Ah, you’re just in time. The rituals are about to begin,” the satyr said with a smooth voice. “Allow me to introduce myself, I am Terestian Illhoof. Now, let us begin.”
Terestian made the mistake of magically pulling Sophia into the ritual circle and binding her in chains. A precision psionic lightning strike shattered the chains and halted the ritual. In retaliation, she then grabbed the orange imp, threw him to the floor and crushed his skull with her foot.
“Try that again and you can fight them without your arms,” she warned.
Strangely, Terestian grunted in pain, as if killing the imp had caused him some pain as well. Seeing this as a moment of weakness, the others charged in and began assaulting him with their respective weapons and spells.
Despite the overwhelming aggression, Terestian managed to resummon the orange imp again and his pained expression faded. Raida picked up on the connection and quickly summoned Loki who grabbed the imp and self-destructed, killing both of them and causing the satyr to howl in agony again. Raida mentally made a note to reward her imp for that.
Raida used her warglaives like scissors to decapitate Terestian.
With that detour finished, the group returned to the original path. The next walkway brought them to another small room with mana shades which Stella dealt with before they found two more paths for them to explore. One appeared to be a walkway that was built along a wall leading into another room where they saw part of what was likely another mana shade while the other led to a large wooden door.
Suspecting that the former path would lead further upward, they decided to check out the door. They found that it opened with a loud creak and led into a circular library with a few books on the floor and a few tables around the room.
More importantly was the ghost of an elderly mage dressed in ornate robes in shades of purple.
Stella remembered his picture from the archives. She was certain that this was Nielas Aran and if he was going to react to their presence like most of the ghosts in this tower, they were in for quite a battle. At this time, the conjurer was looking through some books with his back turned to them.
Once everyone was inside, the door shut behind them with a loud creak and a bang. Nielas turned around and quickly began channeling magic. “Wh-who are you? What do you want from me?”
“Easy Nielas, we just want to talk,” Stella gently spoke.
“I don’t know you. Are you thieves here to ransack my tower?” Nielas asked, his anxiety showing no signs of letting up.
“I am an agent of Dalaran, we have need of your son’s journal. We believe that it contains information that is vital to our quest.”
“And what quest would that be, girl?”
“We need it to discover the moment of death of the blue dragon Arcanagos. After Medivh burned him from the inside out, his remains have been haunting the tower since. We need his heart for our quest.”
“I would call you fools for trying to take on that beast, but seeing as you managed to get this far you might stand a chance. I will make you a deal, miss…”
“Stella, sir.”
“Miss Stella, I wish for you to end my miserable existence in this tower. However, my pride would not allow me to simply be destroyed. I was the court conjurer of the Kingdom of Stormwind and I refuse to go down with a whimper. Therefore, I challenge you to a magic duel to the death! Destroy my form and you will have my son’s journal, but I will also be trying to kill you as well.”
Stella had no choice but to accept, not only for the book but to honor the old ghost’s wish to be free from the tower’s curse, though she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be that easy.
“I accept your challenge.”
“Very well, your allies shall wait outside then.” Nielas then teleported everyone but Stella out of the library. With any potential for interference eliminated, the two were free to begin their duel.
Nielas began by sending a few fireballs at Stella who teleported away and countered with several frostbolts. Nielas raised a barrier which absorbed the shots. He followed up with several waves of Arcane Missiles which crashed against an icy barrier.
The two spent several minutes firing bolts of fire, frost and arcane at each other before they decided that the warm up was over. “I’ll freeze you!” he declared before he conjured a blizzard that chilled half of the room in a semicircle where the storm rotated slowly. Stella took this opportunity to bombard the conjurer with fire spells which broke through his barrier and burned him a little. Of course, since he was a ghost, he didn’t remain that way for long though it still drained his corporeal stability.
Nielas put a stop to the mage’s fiery assault with a counterspell to lock her mind out of that school of magic temporarily though he underestimated her adaptability when she quickly switched to frostbolts and ice lances which forced him to conjure a molten barrier to block and melt the attacks.
“Impressive, young mage, or are you perhaps an archmage?” Nielas asked.
“I haven’t earned that rank yet, though my master told me that I could become one with some worldly experience.”
Nielas chuckled. “If your skills are as good as you claim, I will need to fight harder.”
The conjurer raised the intensity by conjuring several water elementals around the room before he bound her feet in place with ice and surrounded her with a circle of fire. Stella had a feeling that she would get more than singed if she crossed the circle. Though Nielas wasn’t finished as he conjured another rotating blizzard. Stella really began to feel the pressure when she sensed him gathering a high volume of arcane energy, likely intending on unleashing a powerful arcane explosion.
He was not giving her any room to escape his attacks this time. She could easily escape the situation with her essence powers, but she wanted this to be a fair magic duel. Instead, she raised an icy barrier and performed a short-range teleport to escape her icy bindings, though this also triggered the Flame Wreath spell which impacted and shattered her barrier. The barrier managed to absorb most of the blast.
The water elementals began unleashing their own attacks which forced her to teleport around to avoid them. She then teleported into a small alcove and raised an ice wall just in time for Nielas to unleash his arcane explosion which shattered the ice wall and pushed Stella back to the library wall.
As the elementals closed in on her, she decided to give them something else to distract them. For each water elemental, she conjured a fire and an arcane elemental for each of them.
“You continue to impress me, Stella. I have never been pushed this far while I was alive. Though do forgive me for I need to replenish my magic.” He then channeled a spell that she was familiar with and she was not about to allow him to get his way. Spotting a nearby mirror, she used her telekinesis magic to pull it to her just in time for him to cast the spell which got reflected back at him. However, the spell wasn’t designed to work on the dead so he was unaffected by it. He then tried to launch a powerful fireball spell, a Pyroblast, to incinerate her but she ended up countering that spell before bombarding him with icicles.
The shards pushed Nielas back to the other end of the room from her which gave her room to unleash her own Pyroblast which broke through his barrier and blasted him back into a wall. Stella didn’t let up as she unleashed a barrage of arcane missiles until mana exhaustion took her and she fell to her hands and knees breathing heavily.
Nielas emerged from the cloud of dust which was kicked up by her assault. Despite that, his form was too unstable to continue fighting. He chuckled again, “You are an amazing sorceress, Stella. You have been taught well. If there are more magi of your caliber, I believe the future looks bright.” He then pulled out Medivh’s journal and slid it on the floor to her. “Alas, the magic of this tower keeps all souls bound to it. Every soul who was defeated here shall return in time. Even though I have been defeated, I cannot rest until my son frees me from my captivity.”
“But Medivh is dead,” Stella informed.
“An echo of himself remains to protect the secrets of this tower. You seek his journal to face the dragon he had wronged, but your quest in here is not limited to that, is it? If you seek to eliminate the demon atop this tower, you and my son’s echo are likely to meet soon. Be wary, young mage, the worst that this place will bring upon you is soon to come.” Once he said that, his form fell apart, his soul returning to the magical aether that the tower kept contained, awaiting his renewal.
The door was forcefully opened a moment later as Raida, Bella, Mena and Flutashe fell into the library. Sophia was behind them watching in amusement.
“We might have gotten this door opened sooner if you had helped, Sophia,” Raida groused.
“One, doors that are supernaturally locked are not so easy to open, unless you intend on causing destruction to the tower which, need I remind you, that we are hundreds of feet above the library floor,” Sophia said. “Two, that door was locked so you wouldn’t consider interfering with their duel. All you could really do was trust that Stella would succeed and seeing that she is still here and still alive with the journal at her feet, she did.”
Raida grumbled as she and the others got back on their feet before they moved to congratulate Stella for her victory in the duel. However, they kept the celebration short since they still had a way to go inside the tower before they were done.
Stella looked through the entries in the journal, while drinking a few bottles of conjured water to replenish her magic, to find the entry pertaining to the dragon he encountered. She found an entry related to the dragon and his mother, the Guardian Aegwynn, infiltrating the tower to make him leave which ended with him banishing her and killing the dragon by burning him from the inside out.
Using a memory resonance spell, Stella used the journal to track the location of this memory. As she expected, the spell led them downward, likely toward the abandoned terrace. Wasting no time, she had everyone gather around her before she prepared a mass teleport to the terrace while also leaving an anchor in the library for once they returned.
Once the spell was cast, those around Stella, except Sophia, were overcome by a wave of nausea as they experienced the disorientation of the teleport.
“Ugh…why did we teleport instead of portalling like usual?” Raida asked.
“With the rift into the Nether, it’s too risky that the energies might interfere with portals. I could end up creating one to a distant world by accident,” Stella explained. “We will be doing that again once we are finished with Nightbane.”
The group got to work looking for the location of the memory. Stella continued using her spell to track the location as she moved from one side of the terrace to the other. The journal soon gave off a bright light which manifested into two transparent images. One was the familiar form of Medivh while the other was a blue dragon, Arcanagos.
“Wow, was the journal holding their souls or something?” Mena asked.
“These are memory manifestations,” Stella explained. “We can’t interact with them, only observe what transpired.”
Once Stella finished that statement, the two figures began playing out their confrontation.
“You have gotten my attention, dragon. You’ll find I’m not as easily scared as the villagers below,” Medivh said.
“Your dabbling in the arcane has gone too far, Medivh. You’ve attracted the attention of powers beyond your understanding. You must leave Karazhan at once!” Arcanagos warned.
“You dare challenge me at my own dwelling? Your arrogance is astounding, even for a dragon.”
“A dark power seeks to use you, Medivh! If you stay, dire days will follow. You must hurry, we don’t have much time!”
“I do not know what you speak of, dragon, but I will not be bullied by this display of insolence. I’ll leave Karazhan when it suits me!”
“You leave me no alternative. I will have to stop you by force if you won’t listen to reason.”
The dragon and magus dueled with magic for a short time with Arcanagos deflecting a Pyroblast back at Medivh which injured him. He was not deterred, however, as he poured his essence into a powerful fire spell which struck from within the dragon’s body.
Roaring in pain, Arcanagos retreated into the distance unable to put out the magical flames eating him from the inside out. Medivh used his staff as a crutch as he returned inside his tower to recover his strength.
The memory ended there. Stella sighed at the tragic event that took place. “Neither Aegwynn, Arcanagos, nor anyone had any idea at the time that Medivh was corrupted from birth by the Dark Titan Sargeras. Arcanagos tried to reason with who was, in a way, Sargeras’ avatar.
Raida and Flutashe gasped as they were the ones who had any idea who Sargeras really was.
“I had heard that someone looking like Medivh guided the Alliance and Horde to Kalimdor where they faced the Legion at the climax of the Third War,” Flutashe said. “Why would someone controlled by the Dark Titan aid in the defense of this world?”
“Probably because Sargeras’ influence left him when he died,” Stella guessed. “It may have been some echo of the magus free of dark influence who guided the Alliance and Horde.”
Stella pulled out the urn from her dimensional pocket and set it in the place about where the memory of Medivh stood before. “Get ready,” Stella warned as she prepared a fire spell to set the ashes alight. “Once the ashes are burning, Medivh’s essence will likely call Nightbane here.
Everyone nodded and drew their weapons as Stella set a small Fireball into the urn an instant before the ashes caught fire.
An unearthly roar could be heard in the distance, a sound that seemed familiar to Raida and Flutashe. After about a minute, the group spotted a skeletal dragon flying toward them which refreshed the two night elves’ memories as they remembered fighting such creatures during the Battle of Mount Hyjal, except this one was burning instead of radiating a chilling aura.
Nightbane passed over their heads and turned around as he made a slow descent toward the terrace. Once he was directly above the terrace, he flapped his wings to halt his momentum before he dropped onto the terrace, prompting everyone to dive away from his landing location.
Bella struck the dragon’s skull with her hammer to gain his attention though she had to dodge his claws and fangs. His enormous size caused damage to the structure around him.
Nightbane’s large size made moving around difficult, though the intense heat his body was giving off was making Bella sweat. The heat was likely due to Medivh’s spell persisting long after the dragon’s death. Stella placed fire resistance spells on everyone to make the heat tolerable.
Nightbane breathed ash into the air which created a choking cloud and partially blinded those within the cloud. Stella conjured some chilling winds to blow away the ash cloud before sending several icicles at the skeleton which partially melted before they impacted on him.
Raida used her Black Eye Beam on the dragon which formed crystals on his ribcage. He quickly turned around to face the others before he slammed his side with the crystals into the building to knock them off before he “inhaled”.
Seeing the danger that was coming, Sophia quickly moved in and delivered an uppercut to Nightbane’s jaw which forced his head upward where he released the fiery breath into the air which created another smoke cloud that Stella blew away. Before the dragon could recover, Flutashe jumped over his head and slammed her paws on Nightbane’s skull which heavily impacted the ground, cracking it and Nightbane’s skull.
Now irritated with the way the ground battle was going, Nightbane flapped his wings and took to the air again where he hovered just beyond the terrace. Stella, Mena, and Raida continued firing spells at the dragon before they noticed him pulling numerous skeletons from the nearby graveyard at the bottom of the tower. The group prepared to evade as Nightbane launched the bones into the terrace before placing a little magic into them to animate them.
The group was forced to deal with the skeletal horde while waiting for Nightbane to change his tactics. For some reason, he continued with the same tactic where as the group was dealing with one skeletal horde, he would call on more skeletons from the graveyard to attack them with. Given how many people died in the tower, Nightbane could keep using this tactic all day while wearing them out.
Sophia wasn’t having that so she jumped onto the rooftop of the terrace before leaping toward Nightbane who was pulling another batch of skeletons from the ground. She reached the dragon’s back and began pulling on his wing bones which broke his concentration and caused him to drop the skeletons while also causing him to temporarily lose control of his flying. She then grabbed onto the horns on his head as Nightbane regained control of his flying. However, she forced his head downward which rendered him unable to see where he was flying.
The group moved out of the way as the templar made the dragon crash into the terrace rooftop which caused part of the structure to collapse while the skeletal dragon slid down the domed rooftop and onto the terrace walkway in a heap.
While Nightbane was recovering, the group unleashed their attacks on the dragon to cause as much damage to him as they could before he retaliated. The dragon proved resilient but an Eye Beam and Chaos Bolt to his head shattered part of his skull. This was followed by Sophia slamming her fists into the dragon’s back and shattering his ribcage against the terrace.
That was when Stella discovered the source of the dragon’s heat. Where his heart once was, there was now a ring that radiated flames. That was probably the Blazing Signet that one naga prisoner was looking for.
Nightbane reared up and prepared to unleash a torrent of flames until Stella fired a beam of concentrated frost at the signet in his ribcage. Instead of breathing fire, Nightbane ended up roaring instead as his flames began to weaken. Acting quickly, Stella placed her best fire protections on herself before flying into the ribcage to grab the ring before making her escape.
When the ring was removed, Nightbane lost the source of his magical power and began to fall apart. Within moments, the dragon skeleton collapsed and ceased movement.
Once they were certain the battle was over, Stella stored the ring in a dimensional pocket in case it flared to life again.
“I hope we don’t have much more of this crazy tower to explore, these battles are starting to wear me out,” Raida said.
“Agreed,” Bella added.
The others voiced their agreements while Stella prepared another teleport to return them to the library. “The library should be safe enough for us to take a break and regain our strength,” Stella said. “Let’s make sure we’re at full strength before we tackle what I hope are the last parts of this tower.”
With the spell complete, the group vanished from the crumbling terrace.