The scene of now two battles in this kobold barracks of a waystation between the stairs would be left behind. Orchid weighed himself down with more weapons, Brannor refused to follow suit to any degree be it weapons or armour, and the cleric was the first to descend the stairs that would turn out to be surprisingly long. Those of the group that were keeping track of directions they were taking in this cave might note that this descent had to bring them below the hall of the bats and then some, possibly even beyond it towards the South-East. Few would possess such a compass, but these people weren't just any people. A fair few of them knew nature like the back of their hand, and so keeping directions in check was actually rather trivial a task.

Once the stairs finally came to an end, before them opened an enlarged, even reshaped chamber, its original form long since mauled away by several tools just like the kobold barracks. Yet here care had been taken as the walls were smooth, not to mention how stalactites and stalagmites had all been polished into gleaming columns. Every single surface glistened with moisture here, the air oddly warm and understandably humid. The flat walls were decorated too on a closer look, though one needn't get very close at all to recognise the depictions. Shallow and abstract carvings of what other than dragons, tails coiling into intricate patterns and knots flowing along the walls. Yet in the North-Westernmost corner of the chamber a figure stood out in the carvings: A five-headed dragon rising from an erupting volcano. Other dragons, in their depiction much smaller, flock to this great figure. And there, at its foot, a small wooden chest with silver and mother-of-pearl inlays sat still.

Nothing came to greet the adventurers, but the room wasn't completely devoid of every sign of adversity either. In the middle of the floor lay a winged kobold, one wing still attached to its back, another torn asunder with a large chunk of the creature's shoulder with it, a hand barely attached to the poor thing's body clutching at the shaved off part. The lifeless creature lay in a pool of its own blood, still rather fresh. It couldn't have been here long. Yet this was hardly the end of everything as far as the size of the cavern went. In the South-Western corner one could see a passage turning back Northwards, curving beyond vision, while due East a hefty set of stairs hewn into stone led further on down to another platform of solid stone.

[@Zverda][@Ryonara][@Lucius Cypher][@Norschtalen][@The Harbinger of Ferocity]