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The darkness spreads terrifyingly quickly and Morin and Jarek, last noticed leaping atop the spider's back, are lost first in the inky black, soon followed by Jiriki, enraged and driven - and too focused to follow any plans from Balin who is happy to continue to remove large pieces of spider with his sword.

The small spiders are multitudinous and biting now, stinging with bites at ankles and attempting to climb onto legs but Suva, having looked to his own severe wounds momentarily, begins to destroy them in swathes, shattering their frail bodies with righteous divine ire so that he may concentrate better on a spell to defeat the true threat.

The problem now is in striking - with spell or steel - a beast lost in magical darkness.

As Darius, wavering and weak of leg, but stout of heart, charges back into the battle alongside Kin (still hacking for all he is worth) with all the might he can muster, Dalrylshana advances unsteadily, the Illuminatus raised before her, counteracting the darkness just enough to reveal the skirmish as if in a thick fog.

Akkenophon is not yet defeated, though; crippled by Jiriki's blows on one leg and hampered by Morin's fire below - and worse with Jarek clinging atop the beast and stabbing at the skulls - still it musters attacks as it tries to move slowly south. Kin, also attempting to focus on the skulls, leaves himself open and is struck hard, sent hurtling backwards out of the melee, just as Darius crashes back recklessly into the combat.

Jiriki, blocking the spider's attempted movement, is also hit but almost ignores the blow as his fury consumes him and he repays the blow with added vigour, his sword roaring into flame as he does, driving the spider backwards; it stumbles, spearing Morin with a leg as it does, but he brings more fire to its belly and now it begins to stagger.

Suva is about to direct a spell at it when Dalrylshana shouts "stand back" and jabs her free hand forwards - lightning zig-zags through the air with a crack and strikes the beasts' legs. Jarek, has just enough reflex to hurl himself off the top of the failing body and tumble to safety as Morin also tears part of his own trapped flesh to remove himself from beneath the crashing bulk.

The eight-legged horror is lit for a moment all over with a blue corona - and then there is a sound like a thousand dry twigs being crushed underfoot and it falls to the ground, the smaller beast crumbling to nothing as the darkness recedes and only moonlight remains.

The party has prevailed!

Suva stumbles, looking dishevelled and hurt but mustering a comment "I think we have proved our worth as a party who CAN work together - I am honoured to know you all.”

As the party recovers, Suva goes about his exhaustive healing tasks with Morin, Kin himself and Darius. Jiriki is busy investigating the corpse and is preparing to make a small cairn of its remnants for Balin to offer up his thanks to Kord, a convert discovered!

Morin discovers a spider hair attempting to burrow into one of his wounds and, having been alerted to the problem, a careful check of the party reveals that Darius, Kin, Balin and Jiriki also have one or two of the little blighters in wounds. A closer inspection reveals them to have a circle of very small teeth at one end and they are in fact some bizarre beast in their own right. Fortunately, they have all been caught before they could get deep into flesh and are easily destroyed.

Rest is now needed and heavy prayer of thanks to St Cuthbert by Suva, and then the party is fit for tasks once more.

Morin has his kit cleaned and prepared, after his vicious encounter with the spider's leg, and Jarek has returned from a foray to search the room, awaiting all to be awake before nveiling the items he has discovered. They are identified as a Wand of Ice Storms, a Ring of Protection and something that seems to be a a Summoner’s Whistle.

Another detail is noted in the aftermath of the battle - there is a general aura of magic in the black garden (unsurprisingly) and particularly on the south and east walls (which look translucent) which would appear to be a warding of sorts.

After some discussion, Morin checking the door out, the party are gathered in front of the south wall, staring through its translucent darkness to the bleak and vast lands beyond. Eager to move onwards, Suva gingerly tests the wall with a hand - it gives, slowly. It's like moving through rubber, but movement through can be had and eventually his fingers break through to the opposite side where the air is cold and unwelcoming.

Moving his fingers back, test complete, however, he notices that his fingers catch on the wall from that side - he can withdraw his hand through the hole he has made but the edges around the hole seem solid from the far side. Stepping through would be one-way unless the party could find something like a large barrel to keep a way through open.

Morin and Jarek head off into the room with pools to go north and see what they can find.- they return amtpy handed after an hour but have found something else, as Morin explains.

“Oh, yeah, sorry got side-tracked. We didn't come across any barrels, but we have discovered something else. Dal, we'll need you to provide some mystical vision with the Illuminatus. We have an invisible door with a lock and trap that might be useful to get past."

Morin and Jarek lead the party off to the new puzzle they've unearthed, going north from the room with the pools into a small cluttered room. There are a number of benches, stained and well-used, glassware in odd shapes, connected here and there into a trellis-work of intricate transparency, dark residues clinging to bits of the inner surfaces. Lamps remain, fixed at the edges of the benches but, like most things here, they are broken. The entire place is in disrepair and smells acidicly rank.

There are two doors - one east and another west. The west door is actually to what looks like a cell and is in reality more of a barred gate than a door. The small room beyond is entirely empty; the bars are sturdy but covered in scratches. The door is the same and has one curious aspect about it - it is iron-framed with just a latch on the outside, rather than a key, and near the latch there is a square hole in the frame. Clearly, anybody of humanoid size could squeeze their hand through the hole and flip the latch to escape.

Onwards the party quietly trek, into an octagonal room, through the east door which is slightly warped. It's considerably colder in this room, although no obvious reason presents itself.

The walls of the room are all plastered white, which is damaged in places and the room is empty except for a heavy stone pedestal at its centre. There are also three unlocked doors in the north, east and south walls, all of which are closed (and kept shut to by means of a simple lifting latch). In the centre of the room, there is a pedestal fixed in the floor; it's about 2 feet high, the base is a foot in diameter and as it rises it narrows in a curve a couple of inches before being topped with an inverted hemisphere, back to the full width. It seems to be made of dark stone with streaks of blue marble appearing here and there. There is nothing on it.

And finally, there is a fourth door in the northeast wall, one which was obviously hidden previously by its design - through this is a corridor (with a ceiling, unlike these other moonlit rooms) and the invisible barrier that has intrigued Morin and Jarek. Not to mention singeing them with some sort of fire trap when they first attempted to bypass it.

Jiriki, curious, heads back to the damaged lab and returns soon after, pondering vaguely on something; Jarek has carefully checked the southern door and opens it to reveal a small room. Dalrylshana, using the Illuminatus, points out that there seems to be an invisible, perhaps ethereal, key on the pedestal.

The small room Jarek has revealed has in it a stone pedestal of sorts, dead centre and similar in design to that in the centre of the room but lacking the hemispherical top. However, it makes up in intrigue by virtue of a secondary factor: there is a large brass or gold tubular fixing which wraps around a narrow recess going all the way around the pedestal. Two metal arms extend from this wrapping and hold a concave mirror atop the pedestal. Clearly this will rotate and swivel and at the moment the mirror is pointed at an interior wall in the small room. One odd thing is slowly apparent, too, as Dalrylshana approaches it and you notice the mirrored surface better. No stars, nor the Illuminatus but only moonlight is reflected in this mirror.

Suva suggests adding more magical light but the party first decide to open the doors – Jarek has theorised that each would contain the same curios item. His suspicion is entirely correct: the other two doors, after being checked, are opened to reveal another two small rooms with identical 'moon mirrors' in them, each facing a wall away from the door.

Jarek suggests that the mirrors should be aligned onto the pedestal but the party are temporarily averse to trying something so simple.

The ruminating barbarian, meanwhile, conjures a thought that will have echoes later: “Hmmmm, mirrors and moons, rings a few bells.... cells without locks, that can be opened from the inside if you have hands. But something with big claws on the inside that couldn't get out. Someone experimenting on something, perhaps themselves, built cells that they could get into but not out of until they'd resumed their more "socially acceptable" form?"..........