[Stomoxys]

I was still sleepy and went back to the roof to sleep after the meeting. Wolfram woke me up about an hour before sunset and we went to have a final consultation with Pakk and Gromann, while Nuur-Karif got a more suitable weapon for destroying statues. In Pakk's opinion, the binding on the spirits powering the statues would break if we destroyed the statues and the spirits would go to the underworld. Ebsalon and Isa followed us to the Kabal temple and Ebsalon placed a new ward on the entrance in case we screwed up and released the spirits. Grogg led the way in, forcing open the bent gates and marched in followed eagerly by Wolfram and then me and Nuur-Karif. The branches that were scattered all over the floor had rotted unaturally fast and now crumbled when we stepped on them. At the far end of the room, we could see Lunari's corpse, but the shattered golem next to it had been completely eaten by the birds. As we approached the corpse, we passed a shattered clay chest that had contained coins and clay tokens. From the tracks, it looked like the birds had been rummaging through the pile and on closer inspection, there did not seem to be anything special with the remaining tokens. The corpse had received a rough treatment and did not look pretty, but putrefaction seemed to have proceeded as expected after two days in a hot and humid environment. A bit of a relief, considering the medium in the cave. When Grogg bent down to pick up the corpse, Lunari's pipe fell out of a big tear in their backpack and Grogg screamed out. In the following silence, I could here a faint rustle in the trees and prepared for combat. However, nothing happened and Nuur-Karif was able to recover the backpack and we followed Grogg carrying the corpse out of the temple.

Searching Lunari and their backpack thoroughly, we could not find the ring anywhere and the silver key was also gone. The thing we thing out of the ordinary we could find on the dead elf was a clay token, but there did not seem to be anything special about it. From the state of Lunari's clothing and backpack, it seemed the birds had taken everything magical, presumably into the forest. Hopefully the items have not been used to power the golems or something similar. In order to trigger the golems to attack, we decided to break the chests and urns. When we reentered, we could see an intact chest in the corner to our right and Wolfram tried to detach it from its plinth. This triggered chirping from birds in the forest and just as it seemed that the chest was about to come loose, it shattered and coins and tokens fell out in a small avalanche. Still, nothing seemed to happen besides chirping and I and Nuur-Karif gathered up the tokens in Grogg's helmet. Many of them were clearly magical. As I approached the gate with the helmet, the gate slammed shut, but it was so bent that I could walk through and placed the tokens in a corner. The chirping had died down when I rejoined the others and we proceeded to an urn that Wolfram promptly smashed. This triggered a cacophony from the forest and we retreated a bit, but again nothing happened and we approached the urn again. There had been a slot in the urn and it seemed that the birds had tried to extract the magical tokens through it, but they had not reached the bottom. Before I could collect all the tokens, a passage opened in the forest and a statue came rushing out, sounding and acting like a horse and another statue followed close behind.

The ensuing battle was short. The horse statue rushed passed us, shaking the floor making Grogg fall over, but was driven off by Wolfram with flail and pick axe and Nuur-Karif with brass knuckles. The other statue took up position in the passage and was rushed by me, Wolfram and Grogg. Begind it, a third statue, which must have been the bird statue, was powering up a spell with a large, white shining sphere floating between its hands. It had sent a similar sphere towards Lunari when Grogg had been there and hit them, even though they were a distance away. Considering how bunched up we were, I realized this could be bad. While the statue in the passage was no match for Grogg and Wolfram, I was not able to get past it to reach the last statue before it sent the sphere flying towards Wolfram. I instinctively leapt away, but everything went white.

The next thing I remember is lying on the floor and all the clay in the room had been turned to dust floating in the air and slowly settling on the ground and on my companions. They where lying on the ground where I last saw them, but Grogg and Nuur-Karif seemed awake and were getting up. Wolfram on the other hand were still lying on the ground and I stumbled over to check on them. There was no sign of the statues and the trees in the magical forest were slumping over having lost all vigour, some of them having snapped under their own weight. The hut in the middle of the chamber seemed untouched, however. From the gate, I heard Ebsalon making their way into the chamber, so we could not have been out for long. As far as I could tell, Wolfram's pulse seemed normal, but I called Nuur-Karif over to take a look. Thankfully, they woke up after Nuur-Karif gently shook them.