KHAZUUL

Freki bears witness with Saffron as Flint does the deed in one powerful clean swing. He squeezes Saffrons hand to acknowledge that he's there for her and let's out a sigh of relief himself once the devil head rolls into the mud.
"I would usually agree, but I don't think we'll be able to burn it out here in this," he replies to Flint with the storm still raging around them. "And I definitely don't want to bring any part of it back into the shelter."

Instead, he pushes the body off of the steps into the rushing flood waters that have taken over the bog.

He puts his arms around his two companions' shoulders and says, "Now let's get out of this miserable weather," as they head back inside.

With some sadness, Cutwell dispatches the two men with a slice across the throat and then has their heads taken off too, for good measure. He eventually sends them down the river, but waits a respectable amount of time before pushing them off.

"With any luck, they won’t all end up in the same hole." he says, thinking it a shame that they might end up sharing a resting place with their tormenter.

Sow is pale as Cutwell does the real dirty work. She helps with the bodies and -- and the heads -- as best she can, but it's all she can do to not void the contents of her stomach when all is said and done and the former occupants of the shrine are gone.

After the feeling passes, though, those brass suns call to her...

The company dispatches the hapless souls and their tormentor back to the mud. They are swept away by the torrential floodwaters, swallowed by the murky quagmire below. Khazuul's fury knows no bounds, engulfing everything in a symphony of lightning, thunder, wind, and rain.

Returning to the ruin of bronze stars, the company hunkers down to wait out the storm. It is peculiar that wind doesn't seem able to angle into the unguarded entrance, and the flame in the brazier hardly flickers.

The morning progresses uneventfully. The party is able to dry their things by the warmth of the fire and reflect on the nature of the ruin and its bronze stars. Sow is particularly interested in this task, and works with Freki to test their strange nature. Sow and Freki make the following observations:

- Blocking the bronze hexagrams from the brazier's light seems to cause that part of the building to shrink slightly toward the center. When unblocked, the building expands back to its original dimensions. It is as if the shafts of light act as support beams that brace the structure from folding into itself.
- Lighting a torch or other light source seems to have no effect.
- As the brazier's fuel gets close to used up by the end of the watch, the walls seem to be coming closer. The bronze stars appear smaller as well.

Cutwell alternates between standing by the entrance and watching the rain bucket down, and sitting by the fire and staring deep into the flames. It was always grim work and made worse by it being morning. It was hard to lift the spirits back up, when you’d cut a man’s neck out of mercy over breakfast.

The man is largely quiet as the others go about the business of solving the mystery!

Flint has finally parted with as much clothing as propriety allows and hangs his things to dry. He begins to see his prune-textured skin finally fill out. Eventually, he feels warm again which makes him very sleepy but the stars make him nervous. There is an unnatural energy in this shack and he doesn't like it. He doesn't feel as glum about murdering a man as Cutwell but a kill by his own hands is always a little troubling.

He listens to Sow and Freki theorize for a while and then sits beside Cutwell in an attempt to offer solace to the man.

"It was a bad business, but you have to shake it off or it will follow you to the grave. We did the right thing. Use that to reconcile your feelings and move on. We made it through alive and we're in a warm place!" he says, slapping the man on the back in a gesture of solidarity and friendship.

As the fire has dwindled, Sow has tried to discern its effects on the brass stars that dot the walls. And so, when it comes time to rekindle those flames, she builds it larger than it was before in the brazier, both to see what that does to the strange an ancient metal, but also to help warm the chamber. Like Flint, Sow hangs many of her things to dry, including her sodden armor. Wearing only her smallclothes, she pads barefoot around the room. The others see, perhaps for the first time, the dark webs of veins that crawl and wind beneath the girl's pale skin. Her arms and legs, at least, look almost like they have been tattooed.

"I ain’t done for men like that in a long time." Cutwell says. "A lot of them beg for it, don’t they? But it ain’t the army’s way most of the time. We mend them up and ship them back home as best we can. If we can. Most of em make a go of it, and thank whoever that I didn’t do for them when they asked… he follows up, remembering all the agonized faces of the army camp after a scrap.

"Sometimes though, there ain’t nothing for it, is there?" he continues, and remembers having to do similar in a kind of no man’s land. Cut a fella’s neck because his body was too mangled to cart back to quarters, but not too mangled to give him a quick way out…

The company keeps the flame burning bright as they wait out the storm. Much to your surprise, the thunder begins to subside and by midday, the storm has broken. The winds die, the rain ceases, even the clouds begin to evaporate. Sunbeams spill throw the clouds and into the jungle. A thousand thousand droplets scattered across the foliage glitter in the light like so many diamonds.

The ground is still flooded and sundered by the fury of the storm, but Khazuul does feel like a different world in the sun.

"Whatever you done, it’s worked, hasn’t it?" Cutwell says with a laugh, as the sun starts to peek through the clouds!

Sow is reluctant to leave the Temple of the Flame, as she’s begun calling it, but eventually eats, dresses, and equips herself for the day with just a little coaxing from her companions. She is happy to again cover the strange, dark, web-like tendrils that seem to spread beneath her skin in places, and the old, puckered punctures that seem to be the source of them. No one called attention to them, or to the delicate circlet of brambles and flowers she wore on her head, and for this she was doubly glad.

"We should return here on the way back, make this a camp of ours," the girl says after shrugging at Cutwell, smiling and closing her eyes as the sun beats on her face. "I don’t think I did much… but there’s… there’s more to this place. There is magic here."

Again wearing her bulky brigantine armor, and carrying her shield and spear, Sow nods at the others, and especially Saffron. She’s ready for a dry day of adventure!

While the storm continues to surge, Freki follows suit by undressing and drying his cloths by the fire, although you'd be forgiven if you didn't notice for the pelt of hair that covers his body. It's a reminder how thick his hair was before Cutwell shaved it off. Even that is starting to show again after a week of regrowth.

Maybe it's all the time he spends with animals, but he doesn't think much about the others' near-nudity, it's just part of life. He does notice the Sow's strange markings under her skin while they work together with the bronze suns. He considers asking her about it, but he senses that it's something she doesn't like to talk about. Best let her dry her things in peace, otherwise she might cover up in embarrassment and end up staying wet. He does make a mental note to ask her about it later when she's not exposed and cramped together in the shelter with the others.

---

As the storm subsides and sunbeams start to poke through the clouds, Freki feels better than he has in days. However, the steamy heat already brings a sheen of perspiration back to his skin.

As they are packing up, a thought occurs to him as he's reflecting on the observations that he and Sow noticed. "The monster had called this place a device when we first arrived. I wonder if we let the fire go out, if it will shrink all the way down to become a portable device. You light it with flame it to expand it again?"

Once they are all packed up and out of the structure he puts the theory to the test.

"As far as I'm concerned we can put as much distance between us and this place as is possible. I know you're very curious about the place Sow, but it gives me bad vibes, evil ones. Look at what happened here. So much death."

He shakes his head empathically from side to side. "No. I don't want to see this place again let alone make it our camp."

He should have been delighted with the change in weather but instead he was glum and broody. Too many inexplicable things happened here with miserable people begging for death. And the demon thing ... no, no more of it.