09/05/2026: Sweat Equity

The cliffside radiates heat through Diro’s shoes and he realizes his proximity to the salamander is causing his skin to become pink and scalded. The air between himself and the creature is shimmering with heat haze, just like the air over river of lava, far below. Realizing he is burning, Diro retreats downward, followed by his stand.

The salamander watches him with patient contempt and only half-heartedly slashes at Diro and his stand, missing them widely. It slithers into the crevice of the rock, out of sight from the other companions, forty feet below..

From below, Diro clears his throat and attempts a greeting to the salamander in Ignan, a language he does not know fluently, but has some familiarity with. He attempts the rock-language, pitched somewhere between song and landslide. The salamander's head appears over the ledge, high above. It has heard him.

Diro tries again, hoping to get closer to the actual grammar this time. The creature's reply comes back low and cracking. Diro parses it: “Buzz off! This ledge is mine.”

The artificer does not buzz off. Instead he asks in his poor Ignan— with as much confidence as a man forty feet below a giant salamander can muster, “May we have some of your sweat?”

The creature considers this request with what might generously be called bewilderment. 

Alistir’s plan is to get close enough to cast Charm Monster on the salamander, but this is complicated by the facts that the salamander is forty feet up and out of range of their spell. They attempt to climb atop Diro’s stand, butthey still fall short. Alister clambers down and tries to climb straight up the cliff to the salamander’s den. He discovers this is challenging when gravity asserts itself.

They land on the rock below with a thud that is more indignity than injury

⚔️

Meanwhile, KFC is digging out the empty phial that held the potion she shared with Debbie, the one that allowed for a safe and heat-resistant reunion between the singer and her fire elemental not ten minutes ago. She tosses the phial to Diro and Diro throws it up to the salamander. The salamander, apparently deciding this is the strangest but least dangerous thing anyone has asked of it all week, it produces some of its sweat to drip into the small bottle. It corks it and drops it over the side to Diro. 

The artificer catches the filled vial with his shirt rather than his hands. It is, by a narrow margin, the correct call: the tiny bottle, filled with the sweat of a very puzzled salamander, is extremely hot.

⚔️

The stone bridge crosses the river of lava fifty feet below. Its middle section has, at some point, mostly stopped existing. What remains sags and crumbles at the broken edges. Suddenly, things beneath Mt Strix seem much less safe.

KFC crosses first on her broom. Hester and Diro’s stand follow, crossing with their own powers of flight. Alistir, still limping slightly with wounded pride, wild-shapes into a large crow that ferries the broom back to Diro, then Debbie and finally to Reyna so that they can follow to the other side. 

Beyond the bridge, past mushrooms that have no business growing this close to lava, a cluster of mephits guard infest a small lava pool, hissing at anything that moves to approach them. They make it clear that the party may not continue down the corridor.

KFC, giving a double thumbs up, is disappointed to discover the universal language of “Can we pass?” is not understood by the mephits, who gnash their teeth ominously.

Diro sends his stand forward to them to make a distraction. It attempts something between a threat and a tap dance but manages neither — the mephits do not scatter in fear so much as converge to watch in fascination.

The rest of the party opts for stealth to get them past the mephits, flying or dashing past the stand and the captivated mephits. Debbie slips past without them so much as glancing her way. Hester follows, on silent wings. Alistir, still a crow, crosses  without disturbing so much as a mushroom cap.

Reyna goes last. She is midair when the mephit sees her.

The fire breath catches her across the shoulder. She twists in the air, more from instinct than plan, and it costs her only half of what it should have. She lands hard on the far side, singed and irritated in roughly equal measure.

⚔️

The tunnels beyond fork twice. The first choice is easy — one way ends in blank stone, the other keeps going. The second fork offers nothing so obvious, and the party is midway through arguing about it when KFC goes still.

There is a breeze coming from somewhere ahead of them. It is cold.

For a cave system built around an active volcano, cold is not a word anyone expected to use today. They follow it anyway, deeper into rock that grows steadily cooler under their palms, the heat of the lava river now a memory rather than a threat.

The breeze leads them to pumice — heaps of it, pale and light and exactly what Titania’s spell had asked for. Diro starts filling a sack.

⚔️

They resume moving, drawn by the breeze, and what it leads them to is not more cave.

It is a palace.

Dwarvish stonework rises out of the solidified lava plug around them, arches and columns cut with a precision that has survived — undisturbed — from whenever it was put it here. Dwarven script runs along the top of the curtain wall, ancient enough that only pieces of can be understood by Debbie, who can ordinarily read it. No one answers when they call out through the gates. No footsteps but their own.

The air here is properly cold now, no lava anywhere close, no heat radiating up through the stone. It looks abandoned, and abandoned for a very long time.

It looks like exactly the kind of place a queen might be.