You run out through the tunnel into the open expanse of the volcano pit. First you are blinded by the sun shining through clouds above, so bright in contrast to the flickering torch light in the underground tunnels. Your ears are overrun by a wave of battle sounds. You hear the roaring of dragons, the metallic clanging of sword against sword, mages shouting spells and their effects impacting the brimstone. You can hear the screams of people being hit by swords and spells.
The air is filled with the smell of burning flesh, acid eating through stone and blood seeping into the ground. Below you, you can feel the ground rumbling and shaking and as objects impact close to you and as a gargantuan mass pushes up from somewhere beneath.
Slowly your eyes adjust to the brightness and you see the Temple of Tiamat rising from the earth. The Temple is made up of 6 jagged spires, five of them surrounding a larger middle one. Each of them consists of two storeys of archways, illuminated in the faint light of a chromatic dragon’s colour. The construction of the spires does not seem to follow any reason or plan and sharp edges protrude from the obsidian stone they are made of.
Through the archways you can see, floating on each level in every spire, a wizard in red robes deep in concentration muttering incantations. On the top most spire you see a man, wearing purple robes, a tiny red dragon sitting on his shoulder, arms outstretched, his gaze fixed on a point below him. His head is crowned with a mask of five dragon heads.
Our group, the F Five immediately threw ourselves into battle with all we had. Possibly for the last time in our lives. There were five wizards on the ground level, five on the spires and Severin on the middle spire, 100 feet above the ground. We attacked the lower wizards first who were busy raising the spires.
Posmet drew first blood, chopping a wizard’s head right off. Tiamat’s green head appeared meanwhile, immediately spewing acid towards a group of Frost Giants who were approaching, to devastating effect.
Kajya killed a second wizard with a bolt between the eyes. Shan, in what looked like an impossible move, ran up one of the spires striking down the wizard there. Suddenly, a cone of cold hit him - Tiamat’s white head had appeared!
Stuck on the lower level, Thoredim and Kajya mount our metallic dragon ally Elias who swooped in and brought them close to one of the wizards on top. Elias quickly kills this one, neatly biting his top half off. Revenge came right away from Tiamat with a poison attack that almost killed Kajya and caused her to jump off the dragon’s back to seek cover.
Severin luckily so far was still focussed on raising Tiamat, giving our group an opening. Thoredim and Elias dashed to his position at the top of the cathedral and attacked him, however he quickly teleported away to a middle spire. Shan immediately seized the chance and closed in with Severin, heroically jumping through a wall of fire and just… dealing with the damage, somewhat helped by his now magnificent Ki aura.
Posmet remained stuck on the lowest level and we could really need his power up there, so Elias swooped down to pick him up. Halfway down, Thoredim jumped off to face Severin a second time, unfortunately faceplanting, but unfazed to join Shan in the fight. Suddenly - a bolt out of nowhere! Kajya, from a great distance, had shot Severin in the head and sent him tumbling to the ground. She took note of where he landed to check out his body later, as she couldn’t help but hear a slight hint of familiarity in his voice when he was shouting his incantations before…
Now, there was only one foe left to face: Tiamat, now almost completely risen and out for blood.