The party returned to the chamber where they first saw Baron Geddon. Without that massive fire elemental racing all over the area the chamber seemed less crowded. There were still numerous lava packs in the area though and they had to deal with the blue flamewaker in the back of the chamber.
“Shazzrah is the only flamewaker here who doesn’t have his own guards,” Thanatas informed. “Though he is an odd one; he’s an arcanist. He’s practically like a mage who specialized in utilizing raw arcane magic.”
“Maybe I can counter his spells?” Stella offered.
Thanatas shook her head, “Despite him being an arcanist, he seems to prefer two spells to fight with, Blink and Arcane Explosion.”
Stella clicked her tongue. Arcane Explosion took no time to cast at all. It was a short range pulse of arcane energy that hurt a little. Of course, Shazzrah likely had a way to make such a spell really painful. If he was using Blink as well, which was a short range teleport spell, he was probably going to teleport all over the area to blast the most people he could with an Arcane Explosion.
“Anything else we need to know?” Talia asked.
“Other than a curse that amplifies how painful his blasts are and a spell that dampens any harm he receives from spells, not much else.”
The party took the time to clear out the chamber of lava packs along with Flutashe driving away a few core hounds while they took out more firelords and lava annihilators who were along the path deeper into the caverns.
It took some time but they finally eliminated enough enemies that they wouldn’t have to worry about any minions interfering with their fight against Shazzrah.
Before they were ready, the party was taken off guard when Shazzrah teleported next to them and unleashed a pulse of arcane energy. The blast didn’t push them back as the energies didn’t displace the air but the energies did leave painful burns.
While Lokosh was getting the flamewaker’s attention, everyone else ran away from the area to avoid being hit by another Arcane Explosion. Stella chanced a look at where Shazzrah was and saw a transparent Mirror Image of the arcanist standing in place repeatedly casting Arcane Explosions.
Before everyone moved too far, he afflicted his curse upon the party to amplify any damage his blasts dealt to them, leaving Stella and Groun to focus on breaking curses. Farra’jin made sure the flamewaker couldn’t dampen any magic damage he took from the others. Whenever he tried, the troll used a spell to purge the enchantment.
Shazzrah blinked again into the party and released another arcane blast, forcing them to move away again. Stella saw another image where Lokosh was. The warrior noticed this and moved away, suffering a couple of blasts.
“He’s leaving Mirror Images whenever he blinks,” Stella noted. “The images are programmed to continuously cast the same spell so we can’t go into that area again until we take Shazzrah out.”
Jaqueline cursed, “If this fight goes on too long he’s gonna box us in with all these damn fakes.”
Knowing that they were now in a race against time, Flutashe in her cat form and Jaqueline ran in to fight Shazzrah, enduring the searing pain inflicted by the flamewaker’s arcane blasts. Bella and Groun focused their efforts in keeping the melee attackers from succumbing to their magical burns.
Against the swords and axes of the warriors and the claws of Flutashe, Shazzrah did not falter as he blocked most of their attacks with his staff while continuing to unleash pulse after pulse of arcane magic.
As the fight progressed, Talia used a spell a warlock trainer once taught her; she began to pull magic from Shazzrah. While she was pulling only a small amount of magic from the flamewaker during the fight, he drained his own wellspring with each pulse he unleashed.
After a few minutes, about a quarter of the chamber was filled with Shazzrah’s images. At the same time, the party endured as his magic began to dwindle. He could feel how low his wellspring was getting while his enemies were more conservative of their magic while their tactics minimized harm to them while wearing him down.
It was then that Shazzrah decided on a desperate action. Drawing on every last drop of his wellspring, he filled the entire chamber with Mirror Images, leaving the party with no room to move without being caught up in one or more Arcane Explosions.
Seeing that the flamewaker was playing dirty, Thanatas raised her sword into the air and pulled everyone to her before she plunged her sword into the ground and created a black dome around herself and her allies. “This dome should protect us from the blasts for a time but we need to finish him off now!” Thanatas said.
Sophia nodded and created a psionic barrier around herself before she lunged at Shazzrah and broke his staff in two with a downward slash of her wrist blades. Her shield held against the onslaught of arcane energy but she didn’t push her luck further as she returned to Thanatas’ shield.
Stella had a crazy idea on how to use Shazzrah’s magic against him. Placing a shield around herself, she flew upward and out of the flamewaker’s reach. She then drew all residual arcane energies to herself. Upon learning that the secret to the images’ endless casting was a magical feedback loop that expelled the excess energy then drew it in to release it again, she used the Blue Dragonflight’s ability to manipulate arcane energies to collect the images and condense them into a huge sphere of volatile arcane power.
Shazzrah stared in horror as the drakthyr took all of his magic that he had available. It didn’t take any stretch of imagination to know what was coming next as he covered his face with his arms in a futile effort to brace himself for the end.
Once ready, Stella hurled the volatile sphere of concentrated arcane magic at the flamewaker. Upon impact a blinding flash erupted through the chamber. Everyone covered their eyes before the mana bomb hit. The sound of the explosion echoed through the Molten Core, drawing the attention of all of the remaining denizens. Tremors were felt as the explosion rocked the cavern.
When the light of the blast finally subsided, all that was left of where Shazzrah used to be was a crater that was now filling with magma. Nothing remained of the flamewaker.
Thanatas banished the anti-magic dome and picked up her sword. She saw the Alliance and Horde party around her show stunned expressions and dropped jaws as they stared incredulously at the aftermath of the massive explosion.
“Impressive, that blast was almost as destructive as a tactical nuclear warhead,” Sophia said through the link. An idea suddenly popped into her head. “This gives me an idea to think up a way to use psionic power to mimic the explosive power of a nuclear missile.”
“Be careful how you use that if you go through with that idea,” Sweetie Drops warned. “I know how destructive those nukes are. One time I literally made it rain on a Terran base. It was beyond overkill.”
“I only wished you could have used those missiles to level Mengsk’s palace and the grounds with it,” Sarah added.
The rest of the party finally began to regain their wits before Jaqueline spoke first. “Ah always heard magic weren’t no plaything. Now ah understand why that is. Ah was almost afraid that blast woulda caused the whole place to fall on us.”
Stella landed near the party. “Sorry about the intense blast,” she apologized. “If there was another way to handle that I would have considered it.”
“Do not worry darling,” Bella said. “I’m just glad that it all worked out.
“Let’s keep going,” Thanatas said. “We have three more enemies to deal with before we can face Ragnaros.”
The party was soon off once more. This time they walked up a ramp that was teeming with elementals of every type they had encountered so far. By this point the party had little problems with them since they figured out how they fought.
Once the party left that part of the chamber, Zoias appeared next to the Rune of Mazj that Shazzrah was guarding. She pulled out one of the last three vials of special water that she had and poured it on the rune, extinguishing it.
It wasn’t long before the party was on a narrow walkway that overlooked a pool of lava on their right and a pit that held many more elementals on their left. They also saw a molten giant at the bottom of the pit near where they were. The giant’s back was turned to them. They also realized that he was even larger than the largest molten giants they had seen so far, leaving them to consider that the giant was Golemagg the Incinerator.
However, they decided to face him later as fighting him by jumping into the pit was very dangerous and too risky.
Their path soon turned right and ramped downward. They faced more lava packs while Flutashe drove away more core hounds.
At the bottom of the ramp they found two paths. One would lead through a rising passage in the cavern while the other ultimately ended in an alcove with another rune that was guarded by five flamewakers. One was colored similarly to Gehennas with his bright orange scales and dark gray underbelly and horns while the other four were dark yellow.
“He doesn’t really have a name, he is simply referred to as Sulfuron Harbinger,” Thanatas informed. “He’s also the commander of all lesser flamewakers here and answers to Ragnaros’ majordomo.”
“And your advice for this fight…?” Talia asked.
“Don’t let any of those four priests cast a heal spell. It’s a shadow class heal spell so beware of that.”
Sulfuron Harbinger didn’t wait any longer for the battle to begin as he yelled, “The intruders have gotten this far into the Core? Eliminate them all!”
The five flamewakers charged after the party. The four priests began their attack by inflicting a shadowy affliction on them. Mena and Talia’s felhound worked on removing the afflictions while Lokosh got Sulfuron’s attention. Flutashe, in bear form, got the attention of two priests while Jaqueline, using her sword and shield, got the attention of the remaining two priests.
Going with the strategy to eliminate the priests quickly, Talia, Farra’jin and Mena attacked Flutashe’s priests while Groun, Stella and Bella targeted the other two.
Unfortunately, their strategy hit a snag when they saw that any and all harm they inflicted was hardly doing anything at all. Thanatas, being the specter of death as she was, noticed waves of life force being transferred between one another. “They are using a life bond ability!” Thanatas called out.
“A what now?” Jaqueline asked.
“I’ll explain after the fight, just keep attacking. Try to hit multiple enemies at once.”
Sulfuron didn’t like getting called out on that ability so he hurled his spear at the death knight who knocked it away with her sword. She then pulled the leader to her with her Death Grip spell before running her sword through his body. The flamewaker smirked as he summoned his spear and attempted to drive it down on Thanatas who was forced to pull her sword out and back away. The wound healed quickly, but she noticed the pained looks on the priests’ faces.
The priests attempted to cast a healing spell on themselves but Jaqueline slammed one in the face to interrupt his cast while Flutashe, headbutted another in the jaw. Mena, with Surprise in control, cast a silence spell on the third to prevent him from uttering magical words. Stella roared in the ear of the last one which caused him to lose his train of thought and lost the spell completely.
Sulfuron Harbinger was a warrior, but unlike his fellow flamewakers in the Molten Core, his magical prowess was lacking. He could imbue his weapons or his fists with flame but that was about it. He made up for his lack of magic with his martial prowess and because of that, he could still best the likes of Lucifron, Gehennas and Shazzrah in a fight since he knew how to deal with magic users.
However, the death knight before him was a master of martial skill and magic. She blocked every strike he sent at her, she hurled him over her shoulder when he tried to punch her with a fiery fist despite the difference in their sizes, the frost magic she inflicted upon him chilled his elemental body and threatened to extinguish his inner flame. Indeed, she was slowly proving to be his superior in every way but size. Thanatas was tempted to take that from him too but didn’t want to reveal that card to the others yet.
Over the next few minutes, the wounds accumulated over the five flamewakers and the life bond was only delaying the inevitable demise of the five. Their injuries were grievous and the only thing keeping them alive was the bond. Sophia noticed this and decided to put them out of their misery by moving fast enough to create four images of herself before she ran her blades through the chests of the four priests and Sulfuron Harbinger, striking their hearts. The five collapsed at the same time, their spirits returning to the Firelands.
Once they were certain that the flamewakers weren’t getting back up, the party relaxed and put their weapons away for the moment and turned to the death knight. “Now then, perhaps you can enlighten us to that ability they used?” Stella asked.
Thanatas shrugged as she began her explanation. “I doubt this will be the only time you come across an ability like that on your adventures, but life bonds are a pain to deal with. The user ties their life with that of the others, effectively pooling it all together. It makes them tougher altogether and harder to kill, but their overall pool of life force is still the sum of their combined life force. It also means that they will either stand together or die together, meaning that you can’t just kill one off to make the fight easier.
“Still, you guys handled yourselves pretty well and kept the flamewakers from healing themselves and extending the fight.”
“So when ya suggested that we hit them with abilities that hit multiple enemies at once, ya were sayin’ that to make our attacks more effective?” Farrajin concluded. Thanatas nodded in affirmation.
“Alright, let’s keep goin’,” Jaqueline said. “We still got a few more enemies to take down.”
Since Sulfuron Harbinger’s alcove was a dead end, the party backtracked to the passage to explore it. There was little in the way of resistance up until they came across a fork in the path. They figured that the path to the left would take them to the pit where they saw that colossal molten giant. Thanatas told them that they would explore the path to the right after they took down Golemagg.
Meanwhile, Zoias appeared next to the Rune of Koro that Sulfuron Harbinger was guarding and doused it with her penultimate vial of liquid, leaving only one more rune to go.
Clearing out the pit took some time since it was filled with elementals of nearly every type they had encountered so far in the Molten Core. They noticed a while ago that there were no other molten giants in the areas with the lava packs except the one in the back of the pit which seemed strange but they decided not to question it.
Once they cleared out the pit of elementals and Flutashe drove away the core hounds, they were soon facing Golemagg the Incinerator.
Sitting next to Golemagg were two core hounds who seemed a bit smaller than the ancient core hounds they had seen around the caverns but larger than the juvenile core hounds in Magmadar’s cavern. The two hounds wore chain leashes with the giant holding one in each hand.
As they prepared to face this powerful giant, their usual strategy was thrown out the window the moment Flutashe saw the eyes of Golemagg’s core hound companions. From any other core hound that she had seen, their eyes were still ablaze with vigor and fury. The two next to the giant though, the druid could somehow feel the despair, the sorrow, the forced acceptance of their lot in life, and a desire for release from their lives.
Red filled Flutashe’s vision as a rage she had never felt so strongly before bubbled to the surface. In her bear form, she snarled at the giant. The others could see a faint amount of foam coming from her mouth. “HOW DARE YOU!” she screamed. She then charged in to face the giant. She quickly began swiping at the giant’s ankles with all her might.
Golemagg felt the druid’s claws slashing at his ankles before he let go of the leashes and attempted to stomp on her. Flutashe dodged each stomp with ease while switching feet each time the one she was clawing at was raised.
The others were stunned by her sudden display of ferocity, including Thanatas and Sophia. An order from Flutashe snapped them out of that state, “Keep those two out of the fight and help me bring this monster down!”
As the two enslaved core hounds moved in to bite at Flutashe, Sophia rushed in and lightly kicked the two hounds in one of their jaws each, drawing their attention on her. She then lured the core hounds out of the pit to let them chase her for a while.
With the hounds out of the way, Flutashe continued smashing her paws against the molten rock of the giant’s body. She often had to jump away for a moment while Farra’jin used water magic to heal her burns. He also placed a water totem to provide resistance to Golemagg’s molten body.
Talia, Surprise, Stella, Jaqueline and Lokosh battered and blasted at the giant’s body despite their attacks not doing much but making him angry.
Lokosh changed tactics to defend the spellcasters when Golemagg started hurling fireballs at them. He knocked them back with his shield and sent them back at the giant.
Now fully angered, Golemagg began stomping the floor and causing tremors through the cavern, knocking everyone off balance. He used this chance to stomp on Flutashe but a glacial spike from Thanatas erupted from beneath his foot. The spike pushed his foot up and caused the giant to become unbalanced. However, he used the cave wall as support to regain his balance.
Golemagg continued stomping on the ground to unbalance the party while attacking the spellcasters with fireballs. Groun tried to bind his feet with roots but his molten body burned through them in seconds, though that did slow his attack.
The giant then grabbed handfuls of magma from the back of the cave wall and hurled it at the party, forcing them to dodge. With another quaking stomp he managed to kick Flutashe away and she slammed into a wall. She was slow to rise because of how hard she was hit.
With the troublesome pest indisposed temporarily, Golemagg attempted to stomp the others. They were still recovering from the last tremor so they wouldn’t be able to dodge the next stomp and he would flatten someone into paste.
Before he could bring his foot down, a pillar of earth erupted from beneath it and sent him off balance. This time he was too far from a wall to regain his balance and fell to the floor with a ground shaking thud.
The party looked at Farra’jin who shrugged. “That was not my doing.”
Golemagg tried to get up only for a giant jewel-embedded ax to come flying and embedded itself into his head, knocking him back to the floor. A female blonde human wearing a set of mismatched armor landed on Golemagg’s chest. She held a hand out and the ax shrank as the handle flew to her hand. She gave an innocent smile as she addressed the giant, “I’d stay down if I were you. Consider that the best advice of your life.” She wasn’t sure if Golemagg would read the hidden meaning behind that, but would make him understand if he didn’t take the advice.
It turned out that Golemagg was too stubborn for his own good as he tried to rise again and roared at the human on his chest. She responded with a vertical chop of her ax onto the giant’s chest which caused his entire body to tremble. His angered roars turned into pained roars as he laid back down again.
“Do you really want to try that again?” she asked. “You won’t survive another one of those.” A minute passed and Golemagg didn’t try to get up again. “Good, now let’s extinguish this rune.”
Golemagg’s eyes reignited its fury once again and he tried to slam his hand against his chest to try and crush the woman who jumped out of the way. The giant tried to rise once more in a desperate attempt to protect his master’s rune.
The woman shrugged, “Have it your way…” She then channeled her earthen powers into her ax to maximize the impact of her next attack. Golemagg was too large to avoid what was coming so he unleashed all the flame he could muster to burn the woman to cinders, but an ice barrier from Thanatas blocked all of that before it shattered. “Thanks sis.”
With a leap into the air, aided by launching herself with an earthen pillar, and a vertical downward spin her ax struck the head of Golemagg once more but this time it cut through his massive body like butter and did not stop until the ax came through the bottom of his body, splitting the giant in half.
Golemagg stared in disbelief as the light from his magma body faded and turned into a pile of rocks.
The woman picked herself up and shook her head in disappointment as she stared at the giant’s remains, “Shoulda listened…”
The party wasn’t sure what to make of the newcomer so they weren’t about to lower their guard yet. “Excuse me madam, but who are you and how did you get in here?” Bella asked.
“Fer that matter, ah think you called Thanatas ‘sis’ during that fight,” Jaqueline noted.
The stranger made her ax vanish into thin air before she turned to the group. “Nice to meet all of you.” She looked at Mena for a moment but decided not to count their last meeting as an actual meeting. “The name’s Zoias. I’m an elementalist, which is not to be confused for a shaman in that I don’t channel the spirits of the elements but the elements themselves. My power over earth is pretty strong right now so I can use that to get around through the land, which is how I got here.
“As for the ‘sis’ part, that is because Thanatas is my big sister.”
The party stared at the death knight in question, a non-verbal demand for confirmation was shown on their faces. “Yes, she’s my little sister…” she sighed in resignation. “She’s here to put out those runes we’ve been coming across.”
Bella looked at Zoias but backed away with a look of disgust on her face. “Does she have to go around in such a dreadfully mismatched outfit?”
Zoias deadpanned at Bella, “You try finding something that represents your affinity to the four elements without being mistaken for a shaman.”
“Ta be fair, ya abilities and that of shamans do overlap quite a bit,” Farra’jin said.
“If you will allow me, perhaps I can make you something that would fit the criteria you desire?” Bella offered.
A faint smile graced Zoias’ face. “I would like that.”
“Hey, are you two done with the fight yet? I’m getting bored playing with these pups,” Sophia complained through the link.
Once Flutashe’s injuries were healed, Thanatas directed her toward the area where they fought Sulfuron Harbinger to check on the templar. The druid shifted into cat form and raced off to tend to the broken core hounds.
Just as Flutashe ran off, Zoias approached the Rune of Theri that Golemagg was guarding before she took out the final vial, popped it open and poured the contents on the final rune to extinguish it.
The party spent several minutes resting while they waited for Sophia and Flutashe to return. In the meantime, Zoias told them the story about how she got her ax and the deal she made with Therazane to get it.
The templar and druid soon returned to the group to discuss their next move but Thanatas had the party relax for a while since she was waiting for something important to happen.
It was half an hour later that a deep gravelly voice rang throughout the cavern. “The runes of warding have been destroyed! Hunt down the infidels, my brethren!”
“And that’s our cue to get moving,” Thanatas declared.
“Who was that?” Bella asked.
“That was our next target, Majordomo Executus,” Thanatas answered. “I was waiting for him to show up now that the runes are extinguished.”
“So what’s the info on him?” Lokosh asked.
“He’s the right hand of Ragnaros, but he is a bit cowardly. He will likely have rallied the last of the flamewakers in the Core to stop us. Also, we can’t kill him. It’s not because he’s invincible, but because he’s the key to getting Ragnaros to stir from the magma.”
“How do we get him to do that?” Jaqueline asked.
“Kill his guards and he will beg for his life. We make him summon his master and we fight the Firelord.”
“He certainly sounds pathetic when you put it that way,” Talia noted.
“Oh, he definitely is.”
The party began moving forward once more. Once they left the pit they took the route they didn’t take before and began ascending a curving path up a hill. Surprisingly, there were only a few firelords and lava annihilators on the path to the summit of the hill.
“Sure ain’t a lotta elementals left around here,” Jaqueline noted. “Ah can hardly believe we took down a whole army of elementals to get this far.”
“We have certainly come far over the few months we have been together,” Bella agreed.
They soon reached the plateau of the hill to find a smoldering pit of burning coals and behind that pit was a small army of nine flamewakers. Four of them were orange-scaled, four were yellow-scaled and one was gray-scaled with coloring similar to Lucifron. It wasn’t hard to figure that the odd one was Majordomo Executus. The yellow ones were armed with spears while the orange ones were bare-handed. Executus carried a flaming trident.
As the party reached the top of the hill, Executus narrowed his eyes at them. “Foolish mortals, you dare assault the army of my lord? Have you come to steal the secrets of the living flame?”
“Actually…” Zoias began, putting on an innocent smile. “They came here to free the Dark Iron Nation from your master. I came here to personally declare war against Ragnaros with a promise that I will one day follow him into the Firelands and claim his essence for myself.”
“You dare make such bold claims in front of me!? Reckless mortals, face the Sons of the Living Flame!”
Executus and his flamewakers charged at the party. The flamewaker leader placed a magical shield around himself for his protection. Lokosh, Flutashe, Jaqueline and Bella each ended up fighting the four yellow flamewakers while Talia, Mena, Farra’jin and Stella fought the four orange flamewakers in one on one fights. Groun focused on helping whoever needed his assistance the most.
Meanwhile, Zoias was personally toying around with Executus by taunting him and leading him around the area while dodging his trident strikes. Sophia and Thanatas decided to help Zoias keep Executus entertained.
Executus cast a spell on Groun which teleported him onto the bed of burning coals. The tauren was forced to quickly run out as his hooves felt the searing pain of the burning coals. Once out of the pit he cast a natural remedy to heal his burns.
The flamewaker leader did the same thing to the others which forced them to quickly move away while their flamewaker was pursuing them. It frustrated the party that they couldn’t do anything to the majordomo but took their frustrations out on his guards instead.
Talia’s demons assaulted her orange flamewaker while she bombarded him with shadow spells and shadowy afflictions. While she wanted to burn the creature with her fire magic, she knew such magic would be ineffective in the Molten Core as everything here was fire based.
Since she was fighting an opponent who used his bare hands, her felguard quickly began slicing into his flesh with his battle ax while her felhound drained the magic out of him. Her imp threw fireballs which did some damage even if it wasn’t much and her voidwalker kept the flamewaker’s attention.
At one point a magical bubble appeared around the flamewaker, courtesy of Executus, and she quickly found that it threw her spells back at her, forcing her to dodge her own blasts. Thankfully, the bubble didn’t reflect all of her spells, just half of them.
She soon wore her flamewaker down with her and her demons’ might and he soon collapsed. With her enemy down, she turned to the one the gnome was fighting.
Mena, with Surprise in control, had been able to dodge the punches and shadow spells of her opponent. She continued to assault the flamewaker’s mind and body with her shadow magic. As a gnome, she was a small target and strangely nimble for a priest as she avoided the flamewaker’s punches.
The priest’s opponent was mentally and physically weary where a few more blasts of shadow would finish him, but that became unnecessary as a bolt of shadow magic struck the flamewaker’s head and he collapsed in a heap.
Surprise glared at the one who stole her kill but Talia paid her no mind as she moved on to the next flamewaker while Surprise chose a different target.
Stella didn’t need help with her opponent as she made sure the flamewaker didn’t cast while her draconic instincts were slowly kicking in to allow her to use her wings to move around the battlefield while blasting the elemental with ice magic and red and blue dragon magic. The flamewaker was outmatched and defeat came quickly.
Farra’jin’s elementals were battering his flamewaker while he was free to unleash his elemental fury upon his opponent unmolested.
As he was about to finish his flamewaker, a sharp wave of shadow magic from Surprise cut through the unfortunate elemental and was severed from his lower body. Farra’jin dealt the finishing blow by having his earth elemental crush the flamewaker’s skull.
The yellow flamewakers proved a little tougher than the orange variants since they were armed with spears and deadlier spells as they began unleashing waves of flame around them along with bombardments of fireballs at everyone in the area.
Executus attempted to teleport Stella into the coals but was as surprised as she was that the coals were not hurting her like the others. This was another matter to look into at a later time. For now, she landed at the edge of the pit of coal before levitating in the air with her wings and, remembering how to use the black element of her powers, took a deep breath and flew over the coals while unleashing an explosive blast of fire that sent the coals flying. The others saw the flying flaming rocks and quickly took shelter in front of the yellow flamewakers, using them as meat shields as their bodies got bombarded by rocks. Their elemental bodies could stand the heat but getting pelted by rocks still hurt.
Not long after that, Bella’s, Jaqueline’s and Flutashe’s flamewakers fell. Executus took notice of this and knew that the situation was turning desperate. Using his strongest magic, he empowered the final flamewaker that was fighting Lokosh. However, his enhancements proved useless as the party unleashed their might upon the flamewaker and he too collapsed in a heap, leaving Executus alone.
With everyone preparing to unleash their fury upon him, he knew that he couldn’t win against that. For the sake of his own life, he had no choice. “Stay your attack, mortals! I submit! I submit!” The party depowered their attacks but kept their stances for a little longer in case of treachery. “Brashly, you invaded the Molten Core seeking to wrest control of this mountain from my master. You will soon regret the recklessness of your quest. I go now to summon my master. Should you follow me, your paltry lives will soon be forfeit. Nevertheless, seek out his lair, if you dare!”
In a flash of blazing light, Executus teleported away. The party knew where he was going but weren’t sure where that was.
“Alright, now to backtrack all the way to that cavern that I told you that we shouldn’t explore yet,” Thanatas declared.
The party suddenly remembered that part of the cavern, it was near where they fought Gehennas. They were told earlier that there was no reason to explore it until later. It seemed that “later” was now.
The party made sure they were rested and ready for the battle to come because they were about to face their toughest opponent yet.