Summoning Ocellus

In the morning they headed up to the top of the path and executed the ogres. They had to fight past an Ettin who lived in a cave halfway up the trail, but Ocellus spat goo to make a ladder up the small cliff the Ettin probably intended to slow them down, and once everyone could focus their attacks it went down quickly. Ocellus neglected to copy the two-headed giant’s shape, out of trepidation for what it would be like to have two heads.

The ogres, on the other hand, were pathetic – during the night some weird green creatures – trolls, according to Danielle – had emerged to harass them and keep them from getting any sleep, so the fight wasn’t an exciting, deadly battle so much as a foregone conclusion.

“But now we have trolls to deal with,” Danielle said with a scowl. “I hate trolls.”

“Have you ever even met a troll?” Keeper asked.

“No, but I hate the stories I’ve heard about them,” she replied. “You need fire or acid to keep them down and we’re on the edge of a giant pool of water they can use to put themselves out or wash themselves off.”

“Ijj and I know acid splash,” Tixi volunteered. “Make them unconscious and we can splash them.”

The trolls weren’t as bad off as the ogres – although there were only a few of them left from the dozens that used to live in the little fortress atop the dam. They seemed deathly afraid of the water, at least, so there was no worry about the acid used to finish them being washed off.

“Skulltaker clan,” Danielle translated from the guttural screams.

“Does that mean anything in particular?” Keeper asked.

Danielle shrugged. “Presumably it means they take skulls.”

A staircase led deeper into the dam, and at the bottom was the skulltaker chieftain, lurking in a swimming pool with a humongous pile of skulls behind him, piled up almost to the ceiling.

“Come on out and fight us!” Danielle taunted him.

“No, you come in and fight me!” he replied in common.

There was a bit of a standoff, until the troll finally got bored and lunged out of the water to try to pull William in. Scorching rays and other prepared attacks went off, and he was driven back for the moment, only for his wounds to slowly heal once he was underwater – except for the burns, of course. He tried this a few more times before screeching in anger and fleeing through an underwater tunnel. No one volunteered to make chase.

“That was… interesting,” Keeper remarked.

There were two side chambers. One was empty except for another pool with an underwater passage that seemed to lead to the Stormval Deep at the top of the dam, the other held a scale model of the dam – an undamaged version of the dam – and a giant scorpion seemingly made of skulls. Flicker, who’d been the one to peek through, quietly closed the door. “Nope.”

“What’s in there.”

“A giant nope,” Ijj said, having peered over her shoulder. “And a scale model of the dam.”

“Do you think those might be the dam controls? They’re guarded pretty well for something useless,” Tixi asked,

“Thye’re guarded by a giant nope, apparently,” Danielle said. “And the mayor said the dam was automatic. We shouldn’t need to touch the controls.”

“There was also a shiny gem, but I’m not fighting a giant nope for a shiny gem,” Ijj added.

“Well, something’s broken somewhere,” William said. “We should do a thorough search.”

“Maybe it’s under all the skulls?” Tixi suggested. “Skull-based pressure might have broken it.”

“Better than fighting a nope,” Flicker said, leaping over and digging her way into the pile.

It didn’t take long for them to reveal the door. It took several more hours to clear away enough skulls to be able to open it, since it opened towards them and thousands of skulls piled up actually did get pretty heavy.. It was locked and barred, but that wasn’t a problem since it was barred from this side and Flicker, despite rarely using the skill, was pretty good with locks.

Inside was a pit fiend. Fortunately, one trapped inside a circle.

“Ahhhh, company, after all these years,” the fiend croaked. “Come, stay a while and listen to my plight.”

“I think that would be a bad idea,” William said.

“Do you know how to fix the dam?” Danielle asked.

“I do, I do,” the fiend said, glancing towards a second circle. “I might even know how to fix it without you dying. But first, release me from my prison.”

“That’s not going to happen,” William replied.

“After being linked to it for so long, I can feel the dam in my bones,” the pit fiend replied. “It doesn’t have much longer, if you don’t open the spillways. After ten thousand years, I’ll soon be free of Karzoug’s imprisonment… one way or another…”

“Karzoug is your enemy?” Tixi asked. “Isn’t he the one behind everything?” she said turning to the others. “We should let him go.”

“We should not do that,” William said, “He’ll just gather his strength and come back to kill us.”

Tixi started casting a spell.

“Yes, yes!” the pit fiend cried. “Dispel the circle and free me from my plight!”

Smolder appeared in the other circle. Both her and the pit fiend screamed in agony as life force was drawn from them… and then the dam rumbled as the floodgates opened at last.

The pit fiend turned to ash. Smolder stumbled out of the circle and cursed. “That hurt,” she said. “And now there’s no one left to fight. This is the worst dream ever.”

“How did you know that would work?” Ocellus asked.

“Seemed pretty obvious to me,” Keeper said, shrugging. “Two circles against evil, two creatures trapped in them. Except that Smolder wasn’t evil so she wasn’t trapped.”

===

“We don’t have long,” Ocellus said to Smolder, sitting down in front of her. “Do you want to talk?”

“There are other things I’d rather do,” she said, grinning.

“In front of everyone?”

“Shame isn’t a dragon thing,” Smolder replied.

“It’s a me thing, though,” Ocellus said. “How are things going at home?”

“Well, everyone thinks you’re dead,” Smolder said. “So the mirror project was scrapped and Starlight went kind of crazy trying to turn back time again, but the five of us stopped her. Twilight was devastated. Thorax declared war on this entire world but has no way to do anything about it, so I declared war too, but only on that stupid wizard. How’d you survive that anyway?”

“I’m Tixi’s familiar,” Ocellus explained. “Once it was safe they summoned me back.”

“Here!” Tixi said, rushing over and handing Smolder a tuning fork. “Ring it against the bedrock and bring it back, then after I get twice as powerful as I am now I’ll be able to come visit!”

“Have you been holding onto that thing this whole time?” Ijj asked.

“I have six!” Tixi said proudly.

“So,” Smolder said. “Just how far away is that wizard?”

As they watched the dragon fly off in a futile attempt to reach the city and wage war on the wizard, Ocellus smacked herself in the forehead. “The wizard kept giving tuning forks to Smolder because she’s the only one he knew. We should summon Gallus – he sat in on the lucid dreaming training. He might actually be lucid.” She modeled his bright blue griffon form, and Ijj cried out in pain.

“Ahhhh, the colors, I’m blind, I’m blind!”

“Kobolds are way more colorful than that,” Ocellus said, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, but we’re supposed to be so it doesn’t count.”

===

It was another day’s travel back to Turtleback Ferry, so they summoned Gallus at nightfall, not having run into anything that needed a dragon’s strength (or any fighting at all, for that matter). He wasn’t lucid at first, but managed to break through before the spell expired.

“So that’s what those tuning forks were for,” he said, turning it over in his foreclaws. “We were wondering why Smolder kept appearing with them. She never told us.”

“She just wants to fight,” Ocellus sighed. “She gave me a brief rundown of the situation back home, though. Very brief.”

“There’s not a lot to say,” Gallus replied. “You’ve been gone for a long time and aside from some outstanding declarations of war people have mostly given up. Seeing your corpse was pretty convincing.”

“Anyway, if you bring it back tomorrow then we’ll have a way back to your world, assuming we can find a wizard strong enough to cast the spell who doesn’t want to kill us,” Ocellus replied. “Not sure where we’d find one of those though.”

“Take this,” Tixi said, handing him a second tuning fork. “It’s attuned to this world, in case you have someone powerful enough on your side.”

Gallus read the engraving. “Golarion? Is that the name of this world?”

“It is,” Tixi said, nodding. “Please don’t destroy the whole world though, it was only one wizard who killed her.”

“And we have problems enough of our own without adding interdimensional warfare,” Keeper added scowling. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”

Gallus vanished as the spell expired.

“Nevermind,” Keeper sighed.