Relieved that they had finally taken down the wall, the Company headed toward the doorway that the wall protected. As Cirend opened the door, he saw the two dwarves � and three spectral abominations hovering inches above the stone floor. The diaphanous humanoids floated toward Cirend and Jeremi, and attacked. As one touched Jeremi, he felt his very life and knowledge being drained from him. Moments later, Jeremi struck the attacking creature with his mace and the undead creature exploded into nothingness, utterly destroyed. Cirend and Avi dispatched the other two creatures.
The Company entered the room, where Uso acted as a make-shift rogue and slowly but carefully searched the chamber. The room widened at the far end, and its plastered covered walls were chipped with age. The bronze braziers were tarnished with age and dark. After nearly an hour, Uso located a secret door that opened into a long hallway.
The dark hallway was capped at its end with a silver archway as it opened into a wider chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Frescoes on the ceiling depicted cavorting angels and metallic dragons. At the far end of the room was a matching silver archway that narrowed into a dim hallway. The Company pressed on, eventually coming upon two doors � a vault door and an unadorned stone door. Bypassing the vault door (and the banes that no doubt existed within), the Company proceeded through the other door and discovered another hallway that forked.
Taking the left fork, the Company came upon a chamber in which a winged lion of stone was hovering above them, waiting for their entry. The lion belched a foul liquid at Cirend as Cirend struck it within his halberd, but the mighty warrior shook off its foul magicks. Uso called upon his arcane training, and a ray of scorching flame shot from his fingertips, ultimately killing the lion that Cirend and Avi had significantly weakened.
Uso once again turned to a methodical search of the room, which turned up a hatch in the floor. When the Company opened the hatch and cast light to the chamber below, they found a pool filled with an acrid and thick sludge. Jeremi summoned an invisible hand of force to stir the pool. Within seconds, the sludge began to shoot up through the air toward the hatch above. The Company barely managed to close the hatch and seal it magically before the sludge reached them.
The Company then retreated and explored the right fork of the hallway, to discover a room filled with bones and offal. Jeremi called once again upon the arcane powers bestowed to him through his Dasidia ancestors and rooted through the refuse with a magical hand of force, but found nothing.
When the Company retraced its steps and followed the long hallway to its end, they came upon a massive chamber with a smoky glass floor and an arched ceiling that disappeared into the darkness above them. Beneath the smoky glass lie a dark shape of great size with giant wings and strong, powerful legs. Above the Company floated a large silver throne.
The Company moved along the edge of the room, away from the glass, toward a door to the south. The doorway opened into a staircase that descended downward into a wall. Uso discovered a secret door and opened it to find a chamber that had one purpose and one purpose alone � torture. Rusted implements of torture such as pokers and spikes were hung neatly on the stone walls, iron maidens and a rack squatted on the floor, and the Company felt a strong sense of revulsion to the evil that occurred in this place
Seconds later, however, a boney arm reached out and stunned Uso with a shocking grasp. The Company then saw the perpetrator � a desiccated skeleton in billowing robes � dart across the long chamber and recede nearly into the darkness. Before the Company could reach the foul creature, seven copies of it appeared out of nowhere and the Company continued to strike the images and not the creature. Once the images were dispatched, the creature tossed a black pebble into the Company�s midst, from which issued a blast of force. Moments later, a globe of gold expanded outward engulfing everyone except Cirend and Jeremi, who narrowly jumped out of the way, and Uso, who was standing away from the Company at the time. Uso called upon a cascade of explosive fireballs, which rained down on the creature. Cirend tripped the being, and slashed at it with his halberd. Jeremi pounded at it with his mace, hoping to disrupt it. Ultimately, the force missiles shot from Uso�s fingertips brought down the creature.
From its surroundings and calling upon Uso�s and Jeremi�s knowledge of Things Religious and Arcane, the Company surmised that this creature was once the living, breathing man who oversaw this chamber of torture. But the Vault of Evil refused to let mortality end his torture, and the raw evil of the Vaults themselves animated his corpse to inflict torture for millennia to come.
