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[Arcalian]

(It's off, that is to say, by the time it's on, this quiz will be long gone).
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After all that, they had forgotten to do one of the challenges of that pretentious Helmite Ghost. Giovanni was still too weak, so Bhodi stayed with him and went back to the doorways behind the Ghost, to fight a horde of Orcs. Easy in everything save duration. No doubt three or four months previously it would've been an epic battle. Now, it was just annoying. No one died, though several got bad scratches.

Giovanni nodded, unsurprised, when they told him. The party took a full night's rest.

The next "day" they moved on to the final challenge, which was a room full of tubes and globes and magic machinery. That was Quayle's day, to show how "smart" he was. He correctly figured out what sequence of globes to release from the machine in what order, and which tubes to put them in. It was nothing compared to the complexity of the Machine of Lum the Mad. The monsters thusly produced were no challenge.

When it was all done they had three keys to the Final Seal. Giovanni had the momentary idea of opening all three at once and having the Hastened party run through the portal, but was resonably sure that each key would produce it's own set of guardians, and that by the time they got through more than half the party would've died. Not that he would've cared much, save for those closest to him, but he knew that each and every one of them would object, and rightfully so.

So they took the first key and opened it's lock to the portal. Six beings in shifting magical blue auras attacked the party. Five of them were no real threat to the party's combined might, but one of them was a mage of some power. Which is to say he got off one Time Stop and petrified The Reaper, and once the spell wore off the mages and sorcerers were really angry with him and reduced him to dust in less than a minute of combined spell attacks.

Once the Reaper was returned to flesh and healed sufficiently, they unlocked the second portal. This challenge was more interesting; a pair of liches and their flaming servants, some of which could produce Horror. A Planetar paid the ultimate price, imprisoned forever. Viekang was badly wounded. Bhodi had another costume burned away; she was starting to consider investing in magical leather.

Then they unlocked the third portal.

Giovanni looked at the infernal horde thus unleashed, swallowed, and admitted, "This may be something of a problem...."