Editing Challengers of the Unspeakable (section)

===The Ziggurat and the Dragon===
[[File:The Ziggurat.jpg|thumb|right]]
A few days later, after bringing Elytra back to life, she was recruited by the [[Order of the Topaz Crusaders]], a group dedicated to battling incursions from the Far Realm with psionic powers. As her first mission, she and her companions were asked to deal with aberrations that had been spotted near [[the Ziggurat]], a structure at the eastern edge of Estorium. They and a few other Crusaders flew there on the back of the [[silver dragon]] [[Orantis]], who bore a scar on his chest from an aberration that had attacked him and had to be burned off. While the Crusaders set up camp, the Challengers set off to the Ziggurat.

They found the Ziggurat infested with aberrations called [[sebacean]]s, searching for an artifact to deliver to the "Mad Architects" within the Far Realm. While dispatching them and searching for the artifact, they found a journal detailing how the ancient Estorians had conducted research on the Tear of Boccob until one of their own, a wizard named [[Kask]], betrayed them. Their efforts yielded an [[Estorian Hourglass|hourglass]] that could manipulate the flow of time, however, which they used to kill their betrayer. The centuries and the Tear's power had turned Kask into a larva mage, and the Challengers were forced to battle and destroy him once more. In order to reach the innermost sanctum of the Ziggurat where the hourglass was held, though, they needed to first defeat the [[dracolich]] [[Rukaleth]] whome Kask had placed as a guardian centuries earlier. Though it was a formidable foe, Harthur ultimately used Nightbringer to consume its soul. Passing beyond Rukaleth's chamber, the Challengers ultimately located and claimed the Estorian Hourglass.

When they returned to the Crusaders' camp, they found them slaughtered. The one survivor, Macaebus, told them that the aberration they thought had been burned off Orantis had in fact remained within him, and had now driven him to madness; under its influence, Orantis slew his fellow Crusaders before disappearing into a demiplane he controlled. Macaebus sent the Challengers into Orantis's demiplane, urging them to stop the dragon. Within they found the once-pure and radiant demiplane to be full of rot and corruption, its very nature growing increasingly unstable as the passages reoriented themselves. Eventually they made their way to Orantis's lair and found that the dragon himself was rotting away even as he attacked them. When they finally killed Orantis, the aberrant parasite burst from his chest and attacked them anew, but they were eventually able to destroy it as well.

With Orantis's death, however, the demiplane rapidly began to collapse. Kayleth and Chrip immediately put their magical skills to use trying to frantically slow, then stop the collapse, and then finally to bind it to Kayleth's lifeforce to allow it to stabilize once more. Kayleth chose to name her new planar dominion [[Solaris]]. Meanwhile, Elytra discovered a tablet bearing a longer version of the prophecy that had led to her being trained in psionics from childhood, revealing information about the twin sister she had been separated from in infancy and clues as to the coming conflict. Worryingly, it suggested that only one of them would survive it.