We continue on down the road, and another mile on, we come to a man with long black hair who stands roughly 5’ 10” tall.  He is leaning on the pommel of a two-handed sword.  “Which one of you is leader?”

            “That would be me,” Ulric replies.

            “What be your business here on my island?”

            “I’m here to retrieve something,” Ulric answers.

            The man looks at Ulric, “To retrieve what?”

            “What business is it of yours?”
“If it something of my people’s, it is not my business.  If it is not of my people, then I will send you on your way with no hostility at all.”

            “Who are your people?”         

            “My people are the tribe who lives on this side of the river.  You’ve met some of them.  I’m told you did well against them, which told me you should be met in person.”

            “You worship the old gods?”

            “We worship the earth.  The river.  The air.  You speak of the gods of the temple beyond here?”

            “We do.  What we seek should be there,” Ulric explains.

            “We do not worship them,” the man says.

            “So it appears we have no quarrel.”

            “You are prepared to face the lizard that talks?  And the snake men?”

            “Yes, we are prepared for whatever may come.”

            “Well, we have no quarrel with you, but the snake men will kill you.”

“They’ll try,” Ulric grins.

He looks us over, “Very strange group you have.  Down the road you will come to a river, on the river is a bridge.  The bridge is not as it seems.  Across the bridge you will find – or he will find you, anyway – no one can cross the bridge without meeting the lizard who talks.  Beyond him is the first temple.  Beyond that you will find a lake with an island which has other temples, or another temple depending on how you look at it.  There are snake men, and there are not enough of you, even with your dragon.”  He lifts his sword and hooks it into a holder on his back.  “You seek no violence to my people.  I see no reason we should seek violence to yours.”

“Thank you,” Ulric replies.

He walks to the edge of the road out of our way, “Whatever god you serve had better be powerful.”

“Most powerful,” Ulric answers.

“That’s what the other people said, too.”  He walks into the woods, and we can sense motion, though we are never able to see the people who surround us.

We continue on the road for another quarter mile or so, when suddenly, the well-worn and oft-used road turns to something barely touched.  I search the area, and find nothing of note, so we continue.  Korvinean finds markings from some large predatory beast and explains that this is something’s territory.  It is marked, which is why nothing uses the road.  A bit further on, we come to an old wooden bridge. 

Korvinean and I look carefully and realize that the center of the bridge has a hidden pivot point which will turn you over and dump you into the watery depths below.  I jam the mechanism, and we begin to make our way across two at a time.

When Finn and Silas reach the midpoint, a giant snake head rears up from the water.  Finn’s gruisarme begins to sing loudly, and somehow manages to sound satisfied when it makes contact.  The beast falls into the water, and we continue along our way.

We come to a totem pole with a wide open mouth for the bottom face, a very stoic male for the central face, and a snake on top.  As we approach, the totem speaks, “Who are you?  Whom do you serve?”

“Cuthberts, cuoatls,” Briggette says in a bored voice.

“The cuoatls are dead, go home,” the voice says.

Briggette has had enough.  “Burn it,” she says.  Korvinean explains that we would need to gather wood.  “Never mind,” she says, and we turn to keep going.

The totem appears to move a bit, and the voice says, “The cuoatls are dead.”

“Not all of them,” Briggette says.  The eyes on the totem seem to make some strange mesmerizing shapes, but she turns away.

We hear a noise behind us, and when we turn, Korvinean and I immediately fire at the 20-foot-tall lizard coming toward us.  “Die, intruders!” the lizard yells.  Ulric charges, and strikes true, but the beast manages to pick Ulric up in its massive jaw.  As the rest of us pelt it with arrows, bolts and swords, it drops him, and we continue to rain blows upon the creature.  “Get them, you cowards!” he screams just before falling to our attacks.

Two smaller giant lizards, each roughly ten feet tall, step out and attack us, but we make quick work of them, also.  Now that we have vanquished these foes, we turn to Arany, who is happy to oblige in lighting up the spooky totem pole.

A half mile further on, the road becomes more of a path with the strange forest closing in much closer on either side.  The going becomes much slower as we must now chop down random vines and leaves crowding our way.  Korvinean suddenly reaches out and stops Ulric, then uses a stick to poke the path directly in front of us.  A pit opens up about fifteen feet deep and filled with spikes at the bottom.  As we make our way into the woods to move around it, I hear a tiny voice right in my ear, “you should run straight forward.”  For some reason, this sounds like a stellar idea, and I take off as quickly as I can.  They send Korvinean after me.

A moment later, I am in the air, still trying to run, but a net has caught me and lifted me up.  Still, though, I must run.  Back with the group, Arany lets out a deep growl, “Briggette, Ulric, something is here—right here.  I can feel it, but I can’t see it.”  He pauses, “Instructions?”  They don’t give a definitive answer so he rears back and breaths into the forest around him, lighting the trees and everything else in his path on fire.  In the wake of this, a creature that appears to be a giant snake with the upper body of a man is revealed.  He leaps, flames and all, onto Brianna, but doesn’t appear to hurt her.  She punches at him several times, and he goes down.  She reaches down and twists his head all the way around several times until his spine finally snaps.

The net I am caught in begins to slide down a line on into the forest.  “Something’s got Gizli!” Korvinean yells out, and the others start to make their way to my direction.

The net stops moving and after a moment, folds open, dropping me into a cage.  A moment later, there is a roof closed over me.  Korvinean can see that there are four of these snake men pushing a cart with me in a cage.  He fires at them and hits one well, but two of them break rank and charge him.  They hit, but don’t hurt him badly, and he steps back and fires at them again, taking one out in the process.  Arany appears above me, and swoops in with one claw, lifting the cage and carrying me back toward the group.  He drops the cage, and it shatters.

This time when I start to run, I run directly into Ulric, who picks me up, “No more of that, now.  Where are you going?”

“Forward,” I answer matter-of-factly.

Korvinean takes out the second snake man just as a third approaches him, but Arany joins in the fight, and the beast doesn’t last long.  Ulric carries me still, and about an hour later, we reach the edge of the jungle.  At about the same time, the magical effect wears off, and I finally stop trying to run; however, I am exhausted and badly in need of rest.  Ahead of us looms a large step pyramid, so we decide to make camp for the night. 

Silas casts and we enter our secure mansion.  We eat, clean our armor, bathe and sleep.  The next morning, we awake refreshed and we have a hearty breakfast.  As we open the door to leave, we see a snake sigil someone or something has painted on it. 

We make our way over to the base of the step pyramid and notice that the shadows of the stairs appear to make a snake form going down the staircase on the side, and at the bottom, the stone is carved into a large snake head.  I check the area for any signs of a trap and find none.

We make our way up the staircase which is comprised of 490 stairs.  Briggette has Arany fly her up and make a few sweeping circles around so they might get the lay of the land.  The top of the pyramid is much smaller, and has a large solid copper door.  I check the door, but can’t see any way to unlock it from this side.  I decide to shadow jump to the other side of the door, where I find a dark room.  The handle of the door is trapped, but I disable that and start to open the door for my friends.

I feel something coming toward me, and I am able to dodge out of the way.  I see a shadowy hand reaching for me, but it can’t quite get a hold on me.  As the light begins to pour in from the door opening, the creature flees in terror. 

Now that we have a chance to look around, we see an altar in the center of the room.  Carved into the altar is a giant snake’s head with teeth, as well as several snakes carved around the edges of the stone.  Silas tells us that the symbol represents the Serpent Mother’s consort, the Glutton.  I check the altar and find that there is a secret door in the back of it.  The door is trapped and locked, but I defeat these barriers.  The door clicks open to reveal a very steep and narrow stairway leading down 49 steps into the bowels of the pyramid.

Ulric heads in first, and takes the stairs as a ladder, carefully making his way down.  There are just straight stairs with no rails and sheer drop-offs on the sides.  We each make our way down carefully.  The room below is roughly twenty square feet and has a sarcophagus against one wall.  It is covered in writing that appears to be old Ar.  I check it for traps and notice two tubes feeding into it along the back wall.  Ulric and Briggette work to push the lid off of the sarcophagus.

A gnome lies inside.  He opens his eyes and sits up, “Hello?”

Inside my head, Dece tells me, “You need to kill him.  Kill him now.”  I step forward and stab him in the chest.  His eyes bulge, and he turns into a gaseous cloud and begins to move up through the tubes in the wall.

Suddenly, the shadow creature appears next to Boian and slams its fist into his chest.  I see the veins in Boian’s face turn black for a moment, but I don’t dwell on that, and instead, lash out at the creature killing my husband.  Ulric joins in, and slices into it causing it to dissipate. 

Back inside the sarcophagus we find a golden mask and 30 pieces of old Ar gold.  Silas studies the mask and tells us that it allows the vampire to walk around in the sunlight.  We smash it and gather the gold before going to examine the door on the other side of the room.  It is not trapped and doesn’t seem to have a lock; it is a simple large stone heavy, thick door that slides into the wall.  Briggette and Ulric push it open, revealing two figures just standing there on the other side.

The two figures sport bronze armor.  One has a spear, and the other has a mace with the head of a snake.  Briggette steps through and attacks one of them.  Her blow rings true, striking between the joints of the armor, but as Helga comes out, there is no blood.  “Mummies!” Dece yells.  Both the Heltragens attack, and Silas casts a Fireball on the far side of the room.  Within a few seconds, the two have made mincemeat of whatever did not burn. 

I look around the charred room where there are two additional sarcophagi there.  Checking them carefully, I find no traps, so Ulric pries them open.  Inside the first, we find piles of bones—entirely too many to be just one person.  We salt and burn the bones.  The second reveals another set of stairs leading down further in to the pyramid.  The staircase is extremely narrow, and I go down first, counting another 49 steps on the way.

As I approach the bottom, I hear a voice speak.  I cannot understand the words it says. I take the final two steps onto the floor, and the voice speaks again, this time using different words, though they are in the same language.  Ulric is right behind me on the stairs.  As I move to take another step, the same voice comes out menacingly with another word I don’t know.  Green flame shoots out around me, surrounding and burning.  It hurts badly, but doesn’t kill me.  It does not happen again when Ulric comes down onto the floor. 

We see a large circle inscribed in the floor.  Silas is able to determine it’s a teleportation circle, and he and Ulric decide to ride through to see where it leads.  About five minutes later, the circle flashes, and the men reappear.  They tell us they found a big temple to all seven of the old gods.  We decide that, though we do want to destroy it, we must first take care of our intended purposes on this island.  Silas promises to bring us back to this temple so that we might be able to get back to the temple.