Editing The Third Eye (section)

====The Royal Palace====
After leaving the Mondar Crypt, the group went directly to the estate Nandor told them about. As expected, one of the massive kegs in the basement was actually a secret door that could be opened to reveal a narrow staircase descending down into a long, narrow tunnel. About a hundred feet in was an ornate gate with a complicated locking mechanism. They opened it with the Master Key, then continued for some distance before hearing a horrible voice rasp out of the darkness: "You are my meal that was promised and the carriers of my treasure. I will implant my eggs into your body, and you shall bear my spawns!" What scuttled out towards them looked like a naked, pale-skinned woman from the waist up, and a giant cockroach from the waist down. She had festering scabs all over her body, and her face was flat and chitinous, lacking ears or a nose and with mandibles, feelers, and large insectoid eyes. Leon, Sylas, and Isabelle promptly hit it with their biggest spells, quickly destroying it.

The tunnel eventually emerged through a secret door into the king's cabinet, a private room to which no one else, not even the queen, was allowed entry. It was finely decorated, including fine wines and liquors and a rack with some very fine swords. From there they passed through the king's bathroom (with a gold toilet seat) into the royal bedroom, where a dead naked elf was lashed to the bed, having bled to death from hundreds of cuts. After looking in the queen's bathroom, they entered the royal wardrobe, which was filled with expensive outfits and also a leather dress made from flayed people. Sylas found some unusual plant matter and odd bits of brimstone and ash on Lyrencia's clothing, and began to suspect that either she had been replaced by a devil, or she had summoned the devils they found back in the mill. Ililen poked his out out one of the three doors leading out. With Nandor's map, they knew that this was a large sitting room that surrounded the royal chambers. From the door he could saw a bunch of thick vines spread throughout the room, some of which were sprouting large purple flowers that Leon identified as carnivorous death cups. He then poked his head out of the second door, and was immediately spotted by a pair of werehellhound knights standing guard. After a brief fright, the group decided to take a rest before continuing on. Sylas looked around, saw that the vines were thickest where they emerged from a nearby door, and cast blight upon. As the vines withered, a loud angry screech was heard from behind the door, which burst open to reveal four furious dryads.

During the ensuing fight, one of the dryads magically charmed Ilara to protect her, and another charmed Ililen to let no one through the door. While Ililen did his duty and defended the door against his comrades, Ilara took her order more literally than the dryad expected and defended her... from the other dryads. The four soon fell, and the group stepped into the next room and found what was left of the royal treasury; it had obviously been plundered, and only a handful of scattered coins remained. After taking a few minutes to rest, they passed through the door that the werehellhounds had been guarding to find an absolute mess of a bedchamber: rotting food and torn clothing strewn about, questionable stains on the bed, a decapitated stuffed bear, and a partially burned dollhouse with the dolls hanging by their necks. Within this room they found Queen Aphinah playing with a fey creature that Ilara recognized as a mumus. Her mother had once told her stories of them, and the scream she let out was so terrifying that Ililen leapt into the room and beat it with her staff until it stopped moving. Sylas demanded to know where the crown was, and Aphinah simply grinned and said it was her sister's turn to wear it. Ilara stabbed Aphinah, and though the queen dropped bleeding to the floor she stood up a moment later, giggling wickedly and scratching at Ilara with her nails. Ililen smashed her over the head, but she once again rose, seemingly free of injury, and Sylas realized that despite her human appearance, she must be something else capable of regenerating. They tried fire. They tried lightning. They tried necrotic energy. None were capable of slaying the queen. Eventually Ilara cut off her head - something that made Ililen visibly uncomfortable - and she simply got up and put her head back on. Enraged at being constantly scratched, Ilara finally cut off her hands and flung them across the room, causing Ililen to go nearly catatonic from shock. Finally Leon conjured a beam of moonlight to bathe her in radiant energy; at this, Aphinah shrieked in pain and, at last, died. While Leon and Isabelle helped Ililen come back to himself, the others searched the queen's room. Though there was nothing particularly valuable, they did find a number of scrawled notes with messages like "Born in hell, burn in hell!" and "It's my turn, bitch!"

Continuing their exploration through the breakfast nook and across the sitting room, they found another bedroom that was dusty and unused; it was clear that no one had been here for years. The sitting area was filled with defaced paintings of the late Queen Elyssa, while the bed was without a mattress and a nearby armor rack stood bare. When they pulled out a desk drawer, they found that on the bottom someone had drawn a picture of Kill Waldrann, Queen Lyrencia, and Princess Aphinah being violently tortured. Above it was a drawing of a glaive and the words, "I will avenge you, mother." They concluded that this was the bedchamber of Prince Krasnar, mostly untouched since his death fifteen years ago, who clearly blamed his father and stepmother for his mother's death. They recognized Elyssa's face as having been on the erinyes that slew the king, and the glaive as the spectral one that had appeared during his funeral, but they still weren't sure how the clues fit together. Was King Waldrann really responsible for Elyssa' death? Was Krasnar justified in demanding recognition of his status as heir, leading to the fight that claimed his life? Was it a legitimate concern, or was he merely making a pretense to usurp his father? They could not yet answer any of these questions, however, and still had the crown to find besides.

Exhausted from the long day, and with their magical reserves fading, they decided to spend the night in Krasnar's bedroom and continue their search refreshed in the morning. Isabelle conjured a magical shelter in front of the door for them to sleep in, but it was not longer after doing so that they heard a scream from the next room, followed by angry shouting. Assuming the bodies of the guards - and the queen - had been found, they prepared for a fight while Sylas listened quietly at the door. He heard someone enter the prince's wardrobe, walk to the bedroom door, and try to open it. With the magical shelter in the way, though, it had no room to open. And as Sylas listened, the figure on the other side cursed in annoyance, and then left. Letting out a sigh of relief, they settled down for a wary sleep.

The next morning, they went back to their search. First through the royal kitchen, where they found a swarm of ghoulish pixies in the pantry, then through a dining room that was an absolute mess of leftover food and broken glasses, and then through the drawing room where they found a Hargram-stamped platinum bar wedged between two sofa cushions. Past the drawing room were the knights' quarters, where they interrupted and subsequently killed a pair of werehellhounds who were sparring. Their path led them downstairs, where they emerged into the back of the throne room, the middle of which was now filled with a veritable forest of dangling chains. Several of them were wrapped around bodies that writhed and twitched, so Isabelle levitated Ilara up to rescue one. Staring into the chains, she was surprised to see a devil staring back at her with the face of one she knew to be dead, which startled her so much she failed to attack it. The devil next turned its gaze on Ililen, but it had miscalculated; instead of being shaken by seeing the face of a dead loved one, the monk howled in fury, and swung up through the chains to kill the devil. With the creature dead, they realized that the bodies were dead as well, the devil having been moving them to look alive as bait.

Beyond the throne room they came across a long hall with two murals: one showing a ragtag army battling chromatic dragons, and one showing Master Arlen and King Tarn Hargrave standing outside the newly-built royal palace. Past the hall of history was the hall of monarchs, featuring statues of the late King Waldrann, Dowager Queen Lyrencia, and Queen Aphinah. The king's statue had been toppled over, and the Third Eye took the opportunity to deface the other two. The next room they checked was the hall of trophies, where the heads of great beasts (including a dire bear and a red dragon) were mounted. Three absolutely terrified servants were busy dusting them, but they happily told the group what they knew of the queen: one of them had seen a carriage from the Gorso family by the stable, and suspected she was entertaining them in the meeting rooms in the west wing, across the garden. They then decided they were done dusting and practically bolted out of the room. The group consulted their map and decided to take the most direct path there. This led them into the reception hall, which was dominated by a massive painting depicting the attack on the palace by the blue dragon [[Malzdreziret]] several decades ago, and occupied by half a dozen clearly inebriated royal guards. The guards tried to stop them, but when that proved beyond their ability in their drunken state, one of them staggered into the ballroom next door and called for the queen.

Surprisingly, Aphinah was in the ballroom with three werehellhounds, torturing servants for amusement. She sneered at them for interrupting her fun, and they quickly discovered that this queen, too, couldn't be killed until Leon shone another moonbeam upon her. Having now killed Aphinah twice, with neither one having the crown, the group was perplexed as to what was going on. Knowing they had little time to dally, however, they proceeded outside and across the garden to the open-air hallway of the west wing, guarded by still more werehellhounds. Though they dispatched them quickly, a group of the queen's witchservant cultists emerged from the direction of the meeting rooms to investigate, along with more royal guards. Isabelle hurled a fireball into their midst and charged in along with Ilara, where they saw Queen Aphinah, bearing both the crown and her father's Falcon Blade, seated at a table with her mother. The nobles they were meeting with were huddled in the corner, begging for their lives. Lyrencia took one look at the intruders and vanished, teleporting away. Ilara quickly relieved Aphinah of the sword and attempted to pull the crown off, but it seemed to be attached to her head. It was not until Leon killed her with another moonbeam that the crown came off. Suddenly Ilara's eyes glazed over, and she put the crown on her own head, declaring that they needed to find Queen Lyrencia, now the true ruler of Hargram, and deliver it to her. Isabelle promptly dispelled the compulsion from the barbarian, and Sylas used a magical hand to remove the crown and drop it into the Crate of Magic Nullification. Sparing one final look at the terrified nobles cowering in the corner, they took the Falcon Blade as well as the queen's mithril torc and swiftly made their escape; Ilara also stole a silver sword from the weapon rack in the king's private chambers on their way out. After dispatching two more werehellhounds standing guard in the secret tunnel, they emerged back into the afternoon streets of Hargram to find it as dim as twilight, even though it was still early morning. Looking up, they saw that the entire city had become enclosed in a massive dome of pure shadow energy.