With no rest and few resources left to me I was getting worried. Here I was standing in the middle of four armed salamanders with a warrior on the ground under me. Distraction was the first thing to enter my mind and that is what I did, I thought if I could confuse them and keep them from attacking I could give my companions some time to get down. It worked for a moment, but its kinda hard to keep someones attention when an enormous bear comes charging at them.
My comrades rushed down into the room and Frenzy was on his feet in seconds. The salamanders created walls of fire to try and stop us but Gims magic still protected most of us. The battle was over in seconds. The salamanders lay dead and most of us were badly in need of rest. After a brief discussion Tenedos said he would create a magical place for us to hide and rest. He removed a rope from his pack and used the arcane art of the rope trick to give us a temporary haven. I was grateful, I had nearly exhausted my abilities and needed to rest up.
We spent as much time in there as we could but the spell only last so long. We were on the move again soon after that. There were four doors and we tried the all. One was unlocked and we avoided it. Another was protected by magic. We tried a third and were attacked by a swarm of tiny fire elementals. We quickly retreated closing the door to block them.
Next we moved onto the enchanted door. Tenedos used his magic to suppress the arcane lock and we headed in. No swarms waited for us in here. Only more tunnels. We kept going remaining aware of ambushes and traps. We did find something of importance. We entered a small room with a great machine in it. After some examination we determined we had found the portal to the realm of fire. We debated briefly whether to let it be for now and Frenzy started to move toward it. I intervened drawing his attention away from it so we could talk some sense into him. We began to leave the room when a bolt of lightning struck us from behind. There was someone in the room, and they had a greater invisibility spell on. We spread out trying to locate our adversary. Its hard to attack someone you cannot see. Hard but not impossible. It turned out to be another salamander. It must have been a guard set to protect the portal from anyone like us. We knew we could deal with the portal later so we returned to the forge room.
We tried the open door. This way lead us down another chimney like the first. Once there Frenzy and Hunter moved ahead to scout the way for us. They would have been fine but there were some type of hounds in the room. In no time we were fighting a pair of fire hounds and their very large salamander keeper. While most of us face the three enemies Tenedos moved to the far corner to free three prisoners, three azers to be exact. I think the hounds were brighter than their keeper, for if were not for his great strength the salamander would have fallen quickly.
Once we salamander and his pets were dead we were able to speak with the azers. They told us more of how the salamanders and themselves had come to be here and what they had learned while being imprisoned. We agreed to help them get back to their home plane and they told us what they new of the dragons heart. They revealed a small crawl space in the wall and Tenedos volunteered to check it out. I over heard him having a conversion with what I learned later to be the spirit of the red dragon whose heart we had come to collect. It told him to find its heart and offered him rewards. I dont know if Tenedos would have excepted or not, red dragons are not to be trusted. When he reemerged from the hole a cold chill came over all of us. As chilling as the feeling was I felt refreshed after. I believe the dragon was sharing its power with us to better prepare us to face what was ahead. Joined by the azers we returned once again to the forge room.
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