Hush Griffin is using an unknown skill. Aspects: Sonic. Auto-naming: Incantation (Sonic Attack)

I won't argue that that's the most boring choice ever for an auto-name, considering my ears are leaking and I can't hear. I leave it to [Rapid Healing] to take care of and make sure my party is largely okay before trying to delve into the griffin's aura to try to give information that might help fight it.

Peace maintains the griffin's attention while I keep [Symbol of Healing] focused on giving her a little healing over time. I have no illusions about making a significant difference in this fight, but damned if I'm going to let a mentor-figure immediately die nobly if I can help it.

Peace has got a handle on this, though. She never wavers in confidence, and soon has defeated the griffin monster.

"I will be fine, young Hero," Peace says. "Save your Inspiration for the bell."

"Right," I say.

Although there are five bells in the tower, the massive one in the middle is the focal point of the curse. It's over two meters tall and wide, and weighs almost 15 metric tons, according to my [Measurement] skill. Aspects of silence and 'Hush' cling to it like dense cobwebs.

More alarming, however, is the fact that the corruption seems to be increasing. Rather than someone having cursed the bell and fled, someone is still channeling energy into it. I trace the connection and find the signature several floors directly beneath us.

[There's an invader in the core room actively making the situation worse,] I tell my party, scanning intently for secrets around the room. [And I think that griffin spawned just last night. It might have been the next monster flying over the domain every night.]

"Oh, that would have been bad…" Melody says.

[This isn't just a case of dealing with monsters anymore. From the magical signature on the bell, we're dealing with a Heroic Warlock holed up in the core room.]

"If it weren't for the griffin, we might have still been able to handle this ourselves," Rowan says. "How do we get into the core room?"

[There!] I point toward the mechanisms around the clock face. [I found something. I think the entrance to the core room is from a chute behind the clock.]

Once I point out where the opening is, Peace descends first, and we all follow her one by one. The chute sends us sliding down, down, down, until we tumble out in a heap in a dimly lit catacomb. [Soft Landing] keeps me from taking damage, and Peace is on her feet again in an instant, sword drawn and alert for danger.

Bats swarm at us from every direction, more of them at once than we might have been able to handle if we didn't have an Epic Paladin.

A corridor leads off in the direction of the core room, and Jade stops Peace in her tracks to warn her of traps before starting to disarm them. If someone is in the core room right now, and I'm quite sure there is, all of their vis is being sucked down into the aether core. None of it leaks far enough out for me to detect it until we're past the trapped corridor and outside the core room door.

Name: (?) (?) Hush Tiganna Race: Halfling | Gender: Female | Rank: Heroic | Tier: Master | Class: Hush Warlock Disposition: Hostile | Mood: Annoyed

Why? Why did it have to be an evil halfling?

The door is locked and trapped, of course, and Jade sets to work on getting it open. When she finally does, it opens not into the core room but into another hallway curving around away from it.

"More traps," Jade says, starting in on disarming the next one.

[I'm going to bet that she has made the dungeon alter itself to put a huge maze of trapped corridors full of monsters around her. We need to remove her before she entrenches herself further. Please ignore what I'm about to say aloud.]

"By the time we get through, the villain will probably have made themself an exit and escaped," I say. "We shouldn't have brought the Epic Paladin. That will just spook them into not staying to fight."

My Subterfuge (Bluff) skill doesn't budge. I suppose it only counts as a bluff if you don't have an ace in the hole. Camden apparently thought we needed some extra help. It wasn't wrong. It must have known the situation was escalating.

[Make a big show of carefully disarming the traps in the maze. Don't go too fast now. Letting her escape isn't ideal, but I know what someone in full control of a dungeon is capable of doing, and I have skills that will let me track her down easily.]

"Oh, look, it's adventurers here to save the day," a high-pitched voice says from nowhere. "Well, you're too late. You may have killed my griffin, but it will respawn tonight and lay waste to Gleam!"

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"You will not escape here alive, villain," Peace declares.

"Bah, did you have to bring a Paladin?" the halfling's voice complains. "You thought you were being subtle, sneaking in through the Underground. But I caught the disturbances. The Chaos shifts. I knew someone would send a Hero sooner or later. I detected a group of Elite children bumbling about, so I spawned an Epic griffin to take you by surprise when you got to the bell. You would have been torn apart! Hah! Stupid Paladins ruin everything."

For a [Hush Warlock] whose schtick is silence, she certainly didn't miss the opportunity to do a villain monologue, confident that we'll be detrapping a kilometer's worth of corridors for hours.

"Don't bother trying to leave so you can circle around to try to stop me from escaping, by the way. I changed the whole maze behind you already and it'll take you even longer to get out than it will to get to the core room. By that point, I'll be long gone. It's been fun, but don't think I didn't plan for what I'll do if someone sends an Epic after me. Ta ta! Enjoy the murder dungeon!"

"You won't get away with this!" Peace exclaims, but there's no response.

"Gleam's mercy…" Misty murmurs, some genuine fear starting to bubble up in her aura.

"We should have looked into them more," Melody says. "If we'd asked more questions in Westminster, we might have known that they were still inside the dungeon."

"Did she leave?" Rowan asks.

[She's gone. The core room is empty now. Any way we can get through this wall?]

"It's magicrete," Peace says. "It's nigh invulnerable."

"Okay, but what about that wall?" Misty asks, pointing at one of the labyrinth walls, distinctly less magenta-tinged than the core room wall.

"I shall see what I can do, but I fear my skills lean more toward slaying monsters and defending the innocent than committing property damage."

Peace bashes into the wall with her shield, to little effect. On a physical level, these walls are solid stone.

On the conceptual level, they're barely there. Unlike the magicrete core room wall, these walls were hastily constructed and contain virtually no essence. This had previously been an open area and we're the first living beings to have seen these walls. They might as well be illusions themselves, if it weren't for the fact that they were made of matter.

"Drake, can you send a ghost through the wall to touch the core?" Rowan asks.

"A ghost?" Peace raises an eyebrow at me. "You're a Necromancer?"

[My ghosts are my past lives,] I tell her. [They're willing volunteers. I don't enslave the souls of innocents. Right now, I'm going to summon a man named Alexander Fizzlesnipe from a domain called Earth, and see if he can reach the core and subjugate the dungeon before it kills us.]

Silencing mists descend upon us, suppressing any reply she might have had as a swarm of countless Hush Moths flood at us from the ceiling.

Peace conjures a translucent barrier around us and mouths, "Summon your ghost. I will hold them off."

I nod, and focus on casting the spell before anything more dangerous shows up. A pair of glowing orange eyes and translucent hands take shape. I need to make sure I can make contact with the core and don't know if [Ghostly Watcher] would be enough, so I summon a [Ghostly Enchanter] instead. It takes more Inspiration, but I can see a core not ten meters from me.

The magicrete wall stops the ghost from passing through. He lifts a hand and touches it as though it were solid. Keeping one hand on the core room wall, he floats through the stone one unimpeded.

The ghost circles around until he finds an opening. And there always has to be an opening, it's one of their Rules. He touches an ethereal hand to the crystalline orb, and telepathically relays the system messages.

Core: Tiganna/Gleam/Whitechapel Title: "Temple of Light" What do you wish to do with this core? Claim a reward for conquering the dungeon. Subjugate this core. (Core's current owner: none) Pledge yourself to this core. (Your current core: Corwen)

Core subjugated. Temple of Light is now a vassal of Corwen.

[Let me just dismantle this death trap now...] the ghost sends to the party.

Peace comments, "The Warlock must have relinquished her claim on the core before she left so that we didn't learn her name."

Melody says, "I'll have to ask my family what they know about this person they hired and why they thought this was a good idea."

The traps vanish, along with most of the walls, leaving us a clear path into the area the halfling has been living in. She left almost everything behind, and while none of it is especially valuable, it will still prove useful. I locate the object containing the most of her essence and collect it.

"She must have drunk a lot of tea from this cup," I say, holding it up. "I'll be able to track her with this. First, though, we need to figure out what to do with the dungeon and I have a bell to re-attune. Is there someone in Westminster who normally manages it?"

"I… didn't even know there was something to manage," Melody says. "I thought they just did their own thing."

"I'll leave my ghost here for now to try to undo the damage the [Hush Warlock] did," I say.

[I've made some stairs up to the ground floor,] the ghost tells us. [I'm going to try to put everything back the way it's supposed to be to start off with, but you'll still need to deal with the bell itself.]

We head back up several flights of stairs, back to the cursed bell. I put my hand on the cool metal, my [Copper Affinity] immediately starting to sing with resonance with the alloy.

Before I even get started, experience swirls around Peace, and a massive rush of aether pours into her being. When it settles, I can clearly see that her quest was enough to bring her to Legendary rank.

I would prefer to have a Legendary who likes me than a tiny bit more experience for myself. Camden clearly had either a lot of confidence in me or considered this to be an acceptable completion to her quest even if I haven't actually fixed the bell yet.

"Congratulations," I say with a small smile.

Peace's aura swirls with bewilderment. "That... that did it? That was finally enough? And I hardly did anything here."

"You essentially soloed an Epic Hush Griffin that would have surely killed us," Rowan says.

Peace takes a deep breath. "Far be it from me to question what my core considers a worthy achievement. I will need to consider my class options. I shall receive another class choice in just a month but it will affect what I will be offered."

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