Episode 1

Maeriks hits and pushes past the Ulathi corpses. Five in a row. The spacing is so tight that he is forced to dip low each time and heave upwards, throwing the bloody bodies over him so that he can pass under. Blood is everywhere.

By the time he is past the last obstacle the passage is too narrow for Maeriks to sprint down normally with his arms swinging to the side. He shifts his shoulders to keep moving. Soon he is completely sidestepping, stumbling and leaning forward as he tries to keep moving.

His body begins to catch and drag on both block walls. First a hit on his back knocks him one way only to be hit in the belly by the other wall. Still a few feet to go.

Maeriks yells out and lurches forward with everything he can. Now he is scraping his own body sideways along both walls, heaving forward painfully for he last set of powerful drives with his legs.

Finally he is able to reach out with his arm and get his elbow and shoulder just past the edge of the closing. He arcs his arm around the block and pulls his chest and other shoulder and arm through with a dragging scrape against his hide armor both front and back. His weight fully forward, he topples over to the ground.

Now lying on his side on the stone floor, he uses both hands to press hard against both blocks. His hips drag free. His thighs, knees, shins, and then feet scrape hard against corner of the left block. Maeriks grimaces from the pain.

The stones cinch shut with a dull thud and low-toned pulse. Maeriks jerks his left sandal free just before it is clinched tightly between the blocks.

The seam between the two great blocks has no gap between it. Once it is shut, it is barely noticeable that there are two blocks at all. The Great Cube Door is restored. It slides forward flush with both corners of the hallway and completely blocks the entrance to Throne Room.

Thorn has grabbed Maeriks and pulled him forward, helping him make the last drag free from being crushed and moving him completely clear from the sliver arc edge of the Throne Room and into the hall.

Maeriks lies on the ground. Bruised. Scraped. Covered in sweat and blood. Gulping and spewing huge puffs of air in and out.

He cannot get enough air to speak, but he is able to look at Thorn and the others around him.

He feels sick at his stomach, his vision is splotchy, and his head is pounding. He fights the urge to wretch.

Maeriks suffers small damage below for brutal pull through door.
CON save DC 8 or puke all over the floor and suffer woozy Poisoned condition for 1 round.

In the hallway, the passage of time shifts back to normal. The veil of enlightened perception falls away.

All players:

Clarity of Time and Space, and related Throne Room Offense/Defense, cease completely.
Any Rage ends.
The extra Action Surge, if it is yet unspent, disperses.

Everyone is gathered in the stone hallway. It is a perfect 20' wide by 20' high. No features except perfectly smooth block walls ceiling and floor.

A 60' stretch northward out to daylight at the exit. Rather blinding for a moment after emerging from the gloom. You can see the blue sky, but no features of land.

Hinka is there at the edge, sending hand signals back to Bryn.

Laoise and Casidhe are already running ahead, just seen moving past Hinka and not looking back. They are sinking down as they exit, so it must be stairs leading downward.

Maeriks is huff and puff, bubbling on the brink of puking.

Everyone is getting their bearings as sensory slows down to normal.

Doirind has Sorcha Rhone. Previously dying, Doirind is surprisingly recovered, but still not in tip-top shape. Still has a nasty wound on the left side rib cage, parting gift from Bear Donnchad at the divorce signing. Plus there is blood in her hair from a split on the back of her head when she hit the stone floor, slammed by the invisible force. That wound too though is sealed a bit (Ivor can tell that it has physically improved from his last inspection of it). Her bounce-back seems highly unusual in fact. Miraculous? In any case, she is still beat up despite all of this, so she passes Rhone off if help is offered.

Princess Pearl is still unconscious. Sweating and flushed. She is stirring and twitching slightly, with some facial expressions, as if in fever or experiencing dreams.

The Great Cube Door is locked in place. For now.

What's the plan, Party People?

Maeriks gathers himself up ...Everyone moves down the hall, maintaining a sense of urgency. Soon all understand that though they entered the Black Ziggurat beneath the surface of the lake that stretches to the south and west, they have clearly climbed many stories high within the above-ground levels of the colossal structure.

From the view, the group is on a landing that is likely 150+ feet above ground, even quite a bit higher than the line of tree tops below!

There are stairs going straight down north, in the same direction as the hallway, to the forest floor.

Near the bottom of the stairs, and to the left (west), there is a ruined structure of stones that runs right into the water of the lake.

The opening is probably 2/3 of the way up of the entire above ground structure, so the highest reaches and eventual top of the ziggurat a above and behind. Though there are no stairs that seem to reach any higher up than this landing on the outside of the structure.

Looking to the west, you can see the lake.

Looking to the east and north, you see the tops of trees - seemingly endless swamp-style forest.

A mist hangs over the entire region. At longer distances, the view is obstructed by the concealment of the fog.

You cannot look south because of the structure of the zigguarat and where you are standing on it.

Judging by the sun, the feel of the air, the mists, your own internal clock, etc. it is likely somewhere middle morning hours of the day - some few hours after sunrise.

Laoise and Casidhe are still in full flight running down the stairs with hands clasped together. They are well on their way now.

Maeriks nearly loses his junk, dry heaving as the slap disrupts his focus on keeping it back. A moment passes and he surpresses the sickness from over exertion.

"Ok." He begins plodding down the hallway at a half jog, fast walk.

Everyone makes the descent down the exterior stairs of the ziggurat.

Soon they are down in the forest and on the ground. After a quick movement with Hinka in the lead, other Tcho-Tcho emerge from cover and approach Hinka to talk.

Kray tries to follow the conversation, but it is extremely fast and the Tcho-Tcho are known to speak lower and mumble more when they are talking between one another.

Everyone follows another short distance. The Tcho-Tcho have all of the team members' bags and backpacks stashed away and assembled at a cache point, and they pull back the camo and point it out to everyone.The Tcho-Tcho have bags with them and they are asking to recollect the krekutils and the necklace light bulbs.