An urgent knock echoes through the Foxes quarters. Stephen an I look at each other with surprise as Stephen answers the door. It is Lucian and he seems a bit flustered, odd since he seems to always have an air of composure about himself.

“Is Élensûl here?”

“No he is out and not expected back soon. What can we do for you?” Stephen offers.

There has been an accident and I thought Élensûl would be able to help, he hesitates, someone has fallen and may be injured.”

“Please take a breath and explain the situation as we get some of our equipment prepared.”

“Stephen you may remember that there is a secret, or at least not a well known meeting place that the apprentices use as a break room. Well, two apprentice rouges, Kenneth and Fonkin (Rock Gnomes) have been trying to find a way to get from the Stronghold to the tunnels under the city so they could do some clandestine explorations. You see they think there are still many treasures to be found. Another apprentice Milton, the son of one of the staff members here in the guild decided to join them in their search for a secret way out of the stronghold. You see he has a girlfriend and he would like to be able to spend more time with her after hours. Well they seem to have found some tunnels under the stronghold that looked promising. Unfortunately while they were exploring this morning Fonkin fell down a shaft, Milton and Kenneth went in after him but could not get him out so I came here for help.

We finish dawning our weapons and armor, or at least in Stephens case gloves and cloak. We follow Luchian down the corridors and quickly arrive at the lounge. What they have found appears to be a over sized drain in a closet. The opening behind the grate is just large enough to get through. There is a 3-foot drop and then a tunnel leading to the North, toward the cliff behind the stronghold. Stephen casts light on the claps of his cloak and we proceed through the tunnel. The apparent storm drain has a small amount of water running along its bottom. The first feature we stop at are some grooves that run perpendicular to the tunnel carved into the floor. These grooves channel the water under the wall. Other tunnels may be behind the walls here we may want to explore this area further, at a later time.

Beyond this the tunnel is dry and we are able travel easily. The tunnel eventually opens up to a large bowl shaped room. This apparent cistern has four main drains entering into it similar to the one we are currently in. These are arraigned at the cardinal points. There are a multitude of smaller drains entering from various locations as well. The curved walls are slick but we manage to pass without incident to the far tunnel.

Luchian leads us another 100 yards to where a feeder tunnel rises up at a 45° angle.. We travel up another 50’ until we get to an unusual crack running up. It does not seem carved out of the stone but formed in some other way. At the base I notice some unusual wear, a small depression perhaps just worn from water falling over the years. We squeeze through the gap and enter a new very different hall. The walls are finely polished obsidian and the floor made of flagstone. A faint glow emanated from somewhere but the black walls seemed to soak up what light there was. We soon came to a round room with three other corridors entering. The room is large, rising three stories high. High on the walls are statues of what looks like wizards, or at least figures in robes. The statues are not free standing but are carved out of the solid rock. They have great detail and it seems that they are meant to be likenesses of individuals. On the floor is a ring of script. Stephen was able to decipher the word fire repeated throughout the words and said it looked very reminiscent to a summoning circle. The stone in this room was not like I have seen before. It was obsidian but with shiny flakes embedded within it.

Luchian says it is not far now and leads us down the north hall. He said that these corridors form a grid work of intersecting halls and that Kenneth and Fonkin thought that there were rooms hidden behind the labyrinth of corridors. A short way doen the hall we can see a open metal door in the floor. Luchian said that Fonkin suspected something was here when he heard a change in the sound of his footsteps. When they removed the tiles they found this door. Looking down we could see steps leading into darkness.

Stephen now takes the lead as we follow him down the stairs. We enter a room but it is very different from what we have been seeing. It looked unfinished, still ruff stone but there were small niches, just large enough to hold a folded body, carved into the walls. At the end of the room the floor dips down into a crack.

“This is where Fonkin fell”, Lucian explains.

I call down but no one responds. All I here is a faint squealing sound.

We ask Luchian to stay here and anchor the rope so that he will be able to help pull the apprentices up after we find then. We then toss the rope down the hole. As we descend we find the crack is not entirely natural, there are handholds carved into the sides. As Stephen gets to the end of the rope the handles turn into a ladder carved out of the stone. As we get closer to the bottom a soft orange glow can be seen. We enter an octagonal room through a hole in the ceiling. Directly below us is a pile of rubble and a small halfling sitting on top of it. Stephan calls out “Milton are you all right?” He does not respond but the squeaking is coming from him. We descend to the floor and find that Milton is unharmed physically but he just gazes into nothingness as if something frightened beyond belief. Stephen casts dispel enchantment but with no effect.

With the help of Stephens’s gloves I carry him back to Luchian. “We have not found the others yet.” I return to join Stephen. He is examining the room more closely. The room has four rubble piles along the walls and one in the center. It turns out the four mounds along the walls are the remains of marble chairs and the one in the center is actually a dais with a shattered bronze or brass bowl set into it. On the far side is an oval piece of furniture. As we approach it we notice a black silken fabric on the ground next to it. The furniture seems to be a mirror made of a large oval of obsidian in a finely crafted cherry wood frame. The frame forms an inverted U with a 5 pointed star at its apex. The wood toward the bottom of the mirror forming the stand is crafted with vertical bands and on closer inspections the band seem to have been once the colors of the rainbow.

Neither one of us has looked directly at the mirror but as we look at it from off center it seems to reflect tiny points of light in the black stone, almost as if you were looking at the stars during the darkest night. I try and toss a small piece of stone into the mirror but it just bounces off. There are no runes on it but after closer inspection Stephen finds that the black cloth cover is covered in them. They seem to be protection runes of some sort. As we look closer at the mirror we find that it has a pivoting mechanism and a positive stop in the center. When we tilt the mirror to its center position a swirl of clouds forms in it. I tossed a second stone at it and this time it vanished.

We are tempted to enter the mirror and see where it leads. I have read of such devices being used for communication and travel. I convince Stephen that we should tie a rope to the dais and have a peek. Stephen is tempted to go along with my idea as long as one of us stays back incase the mirror is jarred off center. We call up to Lichian and tell him that if does not hear from us within 30 minutes to go get one of the masters.

I do not know if it was just cold feet or the fact that only a swirl of angry gray clouds could be seen in it but we decided to just toss the rope through hoping that the apprentices were well enough to take it and climb out. Holding on to the anchored rope I feel a strong tug and then two small rock gnomes come tumbling out.

“We were so glad to see that rope. The portal to the mirror was in the air to high for us to reach. It was a horrible place thick with hot smoke and swarms of tiny white ember like gnats.”

“Why would you go in there?” we asked.

Well we didn’t intend to. After we took the cover off the thing it just sort of sucked us in. It was almost like something grabbed us.”

I took a closer look around the room to see if there were any signs of anything coming through the portal. The only thing I did find was two of the gnat creatures flying about. I then turned into a bat and managed to catch one and place it in one of Stephens empty potion jars. The other was killed in the attempt.

We asked them if they knew what happened to Milton but they said he was just fine the last time they saw him. We covered the mirror with the cloth. Stephen healed their wounds and we carried then out to Lucian. Our fear is that something entered the stronghold. After all something did something to Milton while you were trapped in there.

We mange to get back to the apprentice’s lounge and ask Luchian to stand guard over the grate until we return. We inconspicuously take the apprentices to the infirmary and Stephen convinces them to stay until they are check out. We the go to see Mistress Moria and tell her our story and our concerns that something could be in the stronghold. I show her the gnat in the jar and she said that she has heard of such things. They live in the Elemental Plane of Fire. That is where the portal must have lead. She calls Roderick and we all had back to the lounge.

Luchian is still there but there now is a distinct smell of smoke coming from the storm drain. As we all travel back into the tunnels the smoke gets stronger. We get past the cistern and start traveling up the 45° angle tunnel. We soon see a small pool of red hot rock fed by small ribbons lava. From her we can see the crack we traveled though just a few minutes ago has been melted closed.