Having a three headed chimera on the team certainly made a difference to how the party operated. Stealth was clearly out, the towers’ guards had been alerted to intruders by the bear-skunk. Traps were active, guards were at their posts, but none of this had been prepared to fend off a chimera with backup. Garn breathed flame, hurled razor sharp sonic blasts, used hooves and claws, and twisted the elements into obedience. If that didn’t work he had Nocuous perched on his back, the kobold hidden by curve of necks and wings. His enchanted crossbow the Varsi Joursi loaded and ready to fire in a surprise attack as needed.

Azimuth usually stayed in the air, a fly spell holding her aloft to save her strength and leave her free to cast spells. She'd been focussing on buffing the chimera, armour spells, arrow wards, protection from element runes; all directed through the growing crowd of silver mirrored bats on her team. She'd left the alchemist with three but the second level up had been guarded by a squad of orcs and after Garn had incapacitated them, Azimuth had knocked them, converting them into bat kind, sealing their transformation with the enchanted mirror around her neck. Now she had seven of them forming a flock of mirror bright lights around her body. Their minds, skills and powers had been subsumed by the hive mind, individuality a forgotten dream as the mirror enchantment forced them to submit to Augustus’ will and obey Azimuth’s desires.

Tileki meanwhile moved through the shadows, staying hidden and out of sight, the pink kobold’s armour and head covering made him a shadow. Not even his eyes were visible, covered as they were in a gauze of mesh woven into the hood that covered his horns and pale-pink scales from sight. He only ever attacked when he had a flawless opportunity to lunge from concealment and sink one of his daggers into an unsuspecting enemies back. The others didn’t seem to mind him not joining in the fighting as long as he pulled his weight with traps and doors. After the incident with the alchemist's laboratory he was taking extra care with every archway, trapped flagstone, magically shrouded death-wall and locked door.

Brushing a mirror bat away as it tried to land on his shoulder the kobold peered back at Azimuth, “I’ll have this door open soon, stop pestering me.”

“Sorry, their just eager to be helpful,” she caught the bat as it fluttered back over to her, “I’ll have Auggy keep them under control, how is it looking?”

Turning back to the latest impediment to their progress the kobold traced his gloved hand over the small ceramic tiles built into a recess in the door, “It’s a number puzzle, we need to arrange the tiles in order of descending prime numbers to unlock it without triggering any of the traps.”

“How… do you … know that?” Garn asked, each head taking a turn to say words, it was weird but the former otter didn’t seem to be able to stop himself, “We should… know in case… we have to do… any.”

“It’s in the pattern around the frame,” the kobold hissed, gesturing at a series of obscure marks around the edge of the puzzle tiles, “It’s in dwarven, you just have to know the languages and it’s written backwards so you need to know basic ciphers.”

“I’ll take your word for it scale-bro,” Nocuous called out from his seat atop Garn, “Open it up and let’s get going, maybe they’ll be more orcs we can ambush on this next floor.”

“We walked... up enough stairs... to get here,” Garn grumbled, “It had… better be… worth it…”

“Working on it, leave me alone, keep watch or something,” Tileki hissed, starting to slide the tiles around, clicking them back and forth, rearranging them until he had the numbers arranged as they should be. With a grin and a twitch of his shrouded tail the kobold depressed the central tile and the door clanked. The whole thing then slid down into the ground revealing the path ahead.
“See, child's play now be careful,” the kobold moved ahead, eyes examining the stones of the short corridor and then he peered out into the small cube like room beyond. It was small, maybe ten foot by ten foot, a cube of plain stone with three doorways and a ceiling coated in lots of tiny metal spheres on bronze sticks.

Azimuth peered past the kobold and frowned, “So that is what they meant, my bats have memories of this floor, it didn’t make much sense to me. It’s a floor of trapped rooms and doors, each room has only one safe way to cross it leading to the correct door, or riddles or something similar that mean only one door is safe to open.”

“Great,” Garn growled from all three mouths at once, “Just what we need..., do your bats... know the way through?”

“Afraid not,” Azimuth murmured, peering up at the strange ceiling, “They have no memories of every coming up this way, they lived and worked on the floor below.

“Well that explains the barracks and store-rooms,” Nocuous yapped, “Was plenty of nice things to acquire down there.”

“Yes… we noticed…. You filling your… pockets with loot…” Garn grumbled, the gryphon head twisting to look back at the purple kobold, “I assume… you shall be sharing… what you found later?”

“Of course,” Nocuous grinned shifting his crossbow, “Cross my heart and all that,” he jumped off the chimera’s back and padded over to join Tileki and Azimuth in peering up at the ceiling, “So what’s the solution to this puzzle then?”

The pink bold adjusted his stealth suit and peered back and forth between the ceiling and the metal spheres attached to the ceiling, “It’s a reflection of the path, see how the shadows of some supports holding the spheres touch the next sphere along? They form an open grid and show you the path to follow.”

Nocuous shook his head, “Nope, I just see shadows and metal but I’ll take your word for it, lead on!”

Tileki shook his head and started forward, “Just follow me, nobody stray,” he then led the group in a winding trail across the room, straight, then left, back down the other way, right up, left. It took much longer then just walking across the room but when Tileki pushed open the door on the right hand side of the room no horrible, disfiguring magical doom struck and the party joined him on the large entrance area of the next room.

“I’ll never understand how you work these things out,” Nocuous said with a shake of his head, “I could never do it.”

“It takes a lot of training,” the stealth suited kobold whispered, “The Chief put me through hell making me learn how to recognize patterns and ciphers.”

“There seems to be… more to being… a thief then … I first… thought,” Garn rumbled as he peered through into the next room, it was a plain cube but this time the floor was covered in multicolored tiles, “What.. do we.. do here?”

“Give me a moment to think,” the kobold yapped, crouching down and lifting the hood of his stealth suit so he could see without the gauze shading his vision, “This is a primary colour test, see how … you know what never mind, just follow me.”

“I’d like to know,” Azimuth chirped, “Just because these two aren’t interested I am”

The short lizard settled his hood back over his head and peered up at the bat, “Well ok, but I’ll explain as we go,” and with that he led the way forward onto the coloured tiles, each one lightning up as Tileki moved across the tiles, illuminating a path for the others to follow. The next two rooms followed a similar theme, puzzles that required Tileki to work out the correct path from clues hidden in plain sight. The fourth room was a massive octagonal chamber with an orrery in the middle. The massive bronze and gem reconstruction of the solar system hung from the ceiling and gently rotated, for this puzzle the kobold had to get yappy at Garn and Nocuous to discourage them from looting the gems that represented planets. The solution in the end was devious but simple once he worked out the trick, the correct door to use was based on the position of the planets in relation to the gems set over each door. The solution to this chamber would change every few days meaning that even people who lived in the tower would have to work it out every time. He was impressed by the security the mage who owned this place had gone to keep their upper sanctum safe and secure.

The next chamber was strange, as the party of four walked a series of lights flickered on revealing a grey feline strapped to a metal chair in the middle of the room. He was naked except for a simple loincloth and a turban wrapped about his head that seemed to be made from folded lengths of silver foil. His arms and ankles were held in spelled manacles attached to the stone chair in which he was trapped.

“Oh thank the gods,” he mewled, blinking in the lights, “You have to get me out of here, that bastard has kept me locked up down here for weeks!”

“Of course… we will be glad… to help you…” Garn hissed, squawked and baaahed from each head, moving into the room, “What… happened to… get you here?”

Tileki slipped off to the left, melding into the shadows, examining the room as Nocuous and Azimuth followed Garn toward the apparent prisoner. There were runes hidden in the darkness, a circle around the pool of light illuminating the chair. This room was another trap, cutting out of the shadows in front of the chimera he put his hand on Garn’s Dragon head and stopped him, “Yes, how did you wind up here?”

“I was trying to sneak in, the treasure vault for the Archmage is just one floor above us, I was sure I could get through here but I messed up a puzzle and got captured. Please you can’t leave me here like this, get me free and I can help you reach the next floor!”

“Yes, I bet you could help, but not in the way you promise,” Tileki yapped, shaking his head, “No body enter the circle of light,” he warned his friends, “It is a trick, we can’t help him, even if he is a real prisoner which I doubt.”

“What do you mean?” Nocuous asked, watching the cat with a wary frown, shifting his crossbow to point at the prisoner.

“He’s a trick, probably a demon or a efreet in disguise, we’re supposed to go a blundering into the middle, help free him from the chair but by then it is too late. We’ll have crossed into the ritual circle and as soon as we let him out he’ll shuck that mortal disguise, eat our souls and hollow us out. Then the next people to come into this room will find one of us trapped in a chair pleading for help.”

Azimuth frowned at the cat who was glaring at the stealthy kobold with a cold, imperious gaze, “That’s quite terrifying if you’re right, we’d have just bumbled on over to help him, I never even thought to check…” one of her bats flapped up to the edge of the circle of light and glowed gently and the feline flinched backwards in his chair with a meow, “You’re right, he isn’t alive, that body is just a shell…”

“Let’s get going then,” Nocu muttered, shifting the crossbow, “Which way Tileki?”

The pink thief led the way around the room to a door on the far side, glaring back at the cat as he mewled and pleaded for them to help. It was all a trick, a lie, they couldn’t just leave him here please! Garn and Azimuth followed the thief through the door but Nocuous paused and fired the Varsi Joursi at the creature. A crossbow bolt of pure ice slammed into the feline's head and he yowled, body crumpling like a deflated balloon as a creature of ice and lightning rose out of the discarded corpse. It howled and shrieked but seemed unable to leave the circle of light, flashing and crackling against an unseen barrier keeping it in place.

“What… did you… do that… for?” Garn asked as Nocuous joined the others and pushed the door shut.

“To be sure, it was either a trapped cat who couldn’t be rescued who needed putting out of his misery or,” the kobold grinned, “A fiendish efreet who doesn’t have a body to hide in any more so he won’t be luring anyone else into his trap, at least for a while.”

“Good plan,” Azimuth looked back at the closed door thoughtfully but shook her head and joined Tileki in examining the next puzzle, the floor was bronze and there were massive cogs sticking out of the walls. Standing between them where a series of machines, a grandfather clock had pride of place opposite the door. The others were all beautiful clockwork automata, a wolf with silver and copper plating wielding a sword was fighting a lion using a halberd, his mane a cascade of spun gold whilst the bare framework of their body allowed you to see the cogs inside. Their fight was endless, thrust, parry, block with perfect unison as their cogs and gears twitched and turned through the endless routine.

One of the devices was a series of tubes tooting out a jolly tune being played by a marmoset whose body was made from iron and crystal, sparkling light dancing over complex machinery inside as its hands played the keys of the steampunk organ. Next to that was a loom, a spill of gorgeous tapestry being woven by the ewe sat on the stool, her body part of the machine. Mechanical hands of bronze and steel creating a masterwork from spools of yarn thread stored on spindles inside her chest. Then there was a palm tree with a trunk of copper and glass with bronze leaves. Small gears turned inside the tree, making the leaves shift and rattle and twist as if they were turning to face the sun. Up in the canopy a capuchin monkey held on with his feet whilst his hands clicked through a routine. He was juggling bronze coconuts, smooth body of blue metal and silver a sharp exotic contrast to the stoic and plain tree trunk. The most disturbing machine was the gigantic mechanical spider, legs clicking up and down as it scuttled endlessly in place, it like all the other automata had a coloured gem embedded into its forehead, a peculiar light flickering in its depth as it operated endlessly through it's frozen routine.

“Now what?” Azimuth asked as the pink kobold advanced forward slowly.

“I’m not sure, this is different… stay back and let me examine it, we don’t want to set anything off by mistake here.”

The other hung back by the door whilst the thief scuttled from device to device, peering up at them with interest, trying to ascertain their function and what the trick to this room was. The puzzle clearly involved the clock somehow, the hands told the time, currently wrong, there was a second hand, a barometric pressure dial, sun and moon slides and a gorgeous bell just visible through the slatted wood covering at the apex of the clock.

There was more than one bell however, the wall above and behind the clock and the ceiling was suspended with a variety of beautiful bells. The door was shut, the glass panel showed weights and pendulum but he'd have to unlock the door if he wanted to adjust any of it. His first task was to determine what the puzzle was and see what needed to be fiddled with before he tried anything. This turned out not to be easy, the clues were incredibly cryptic in a mixture of languages, even a few he didn't know. They were saved by a spell from Azimuth and Nocuous’ skill at elder-draconic runes otherwise he would have been stumped.

Each of the automata had a certain time of day when its routine would change or differ and he had to work out the time of day, barometric pressure, which set of bells had to ring and most importantly of all which order to play them in. Tileki actually had to break out some parchment and charcoal to work on some of the clues. Garn settled down to nap, the big chimera snoozing heavily and after he'd translated the runes Nocuous curled up against his feathered body and dozed as well, crossbow in his lap, loaded and watching.

Azimuth stayed awake however, helping Tileki with the maths hidden in the clues, the bat and kobold whispering ideas back and forth until they had a sequence they were both happy with. Moving over to the clock Tileki opened the front panel and wound the mechanism into place, a minute to six in the morning, ten, noon, three, ten, midnight. With the sequence set, including type of chime and pressure the kobold scuttled back to the middle of the room. There was a switch embedded in the floor and after a look back at Azimuth who nodded at him the kobold depressed the switch. The clock ticked, the weights shifted and then the bells rang out a cascading series of chimes that made the cogs embedded in the walls begin to turn.

The wolf and lion stopped mid fight, turned and saluted the centre of the room, the gemstones embedded in their foreheads emitting a ray of light that stabbed up into the darkness overhead. Tileki risked a look up, he could just make out the outline of a huge bell hanging at the apex of the room, now illuminated by those beams of light. The organ started to play, the marmots hands flying over the keys as the clock wound forward to strike noon. It was a jaunty tune, a toe tapping number that reverberated through the room and at the end the marmot mecha turned on its chair and bowed, arms spread wide, crystal embedded in its forehead projecting a beam of late at the bell.

“Ok so far so good…” Azimuth said softly, breathing out as the monkey jumped down out of the tree and caught the bronze coconuts out of the air. It twirled them into a new circle then hurled them without warning at Azimuth, Nocuous and Garn. They slammed into them, bursting open and releasing a torrent of thick, sticky white gunk that pinned them to the wall and each other. Tileki turned, preparing to leap over and assist when the giant bell suspended above the centre of the room dropped. The massive, clear crystal bell clanged into place, trapping the pink kobold inside and forcing him to his knees as the air inside vibrated and deafened him with its song.

The bell was a blaze of light, of glowing runes and strange symbols curling across its otherwise see-through surface. Azimuth was struggling to get one of her wings free, calling out to her bats with her mind as the rest of the bells started to chime a deep, sonorous booming chant! It wasn’t qutie a funerary march but it was close, a doom song of angelic tones. Garn had woken up with a start and the chimera was already shouldering his way free of the webbing with a variety of growls, chirps and bleats. Poor Nocuous was pretty much lost beneath the tangled, sticky pile of webbing, his small body overwhelmed by the sheer amount of goop. The bell started to glow brightly, a piercing white light that dazzled and forced Azimuth to look away, she forced herself to look back however as she realised the new sound she could hear was Tileki screaming!

The kobold was suspended in the middle of the air beneath the bell, his back arched, clawed hands opening and closing as he kicked his feet helplessly. His clothing was being torn off his body, pale-pink scales revealed as his stealth suit was shredded by some unknowable force. That wasn’t what was making him scream though, sure the kobold hated letting people see the colour of his scales but something else was happening to him. The light was pulling off his scales as well, lines of blue and white light flickering over his body, leaving behind patches of bare skin when they passed over a part of his body that had already been stripped of armour.

Struggle as she might Azimuth couldn’t get a wing free, couldn’t cast, her bats were busy trying to spell the webbing off her body but she’d not prepared any of them for this sort of attack. Garn was pulling free but she could already see they were not going to be fast enough. Most of Tileki’s scales were gone and his flesh was being shredded beneath the relentless assault of the strange magical lights. Then the kobold thief stopped screaming, he seemed to be choking, suffocating on something, bloody fingers clawed at his throat and his chest before it exploded outward in a sickening eruption of blood, flesh and ribs. The bats own scream cut off as a glowing pink stone gently drifted out of the remnants of Tileki’s body. It tumbled slowly in place, glowing with a pale light that was worryingly familiar. Azimuth glanced at the automata circling the room, each one had an identical looking stone set into their mechanical body.

“Oh no…” she whispered in despair as she realised what happened to people who failed this room’s puzzle, “Garn we have to get free now! It’s going to destroy Tileki!”

Inside the bell the remnants of the flesh and blood that had been the kobold was changing, the magic was gathering it up into a spherical mass of matter, crushing it into an oily black pulp. Once there was nothing left that could have been recognized as the kobold the enchanted bell began to use the mass to weave a new form! The sphere stretched out into a skeletal framework of copper and steel, forming short digitigrade legs with big claws of bronze. A pair of short arms followed, an framework of metals creating an open, hollow torso, a plated neck, a line of ridged bronze horns running down the flexible mechanical spine. The head was kobold shape, a lifeless replica of Tileki’s own face, complete with short horns of bright white gold.

Once the framework had been constructed the empty cavity started to fill with strange machinery. The bell’s enchantment forming interlinked cogs & strange devices in place of organs, pneumatic tubes instead of ligaments and muscles. It was an incredibly sophisticated spell, transmuting the organic mass of the kobolds body into minerals and metal. Once it was done with the framework and interior workings the spell began to weave an exterior shell over the bare frame of the head. Teeth of bronze filled the muzzle, the white gold horns were joined by a sophisticated, flexible layer of scale shaped metal that cladded the head like skin that now resembled Tileki’s organic appearance.

The torso received plates of a kind, the pale pink armour for shoulders, stomach and back, fitting perfectly along the white-steel spine ridges. The chest however was enclosed in a set of clear crystal squares that allowed one to see the machinery inside. This helped create the illusion of a kobold they even had a pebbled faux scale texture. The plates were however a luscious shade of pale-pink, like the softest, pinkest shade one could imagine, a springtime bonanza of cherry blossom pink. This was way more vibrant than Tileki’s natural scales had ever been and as

As Azimuth watched in stunned shock as this mechanical body was made out of her companions living flesh she saw the glowing gem that was, she presumed Tileki’s soul being being drawn toward the top of the bell. New symbols were emerging on the crystal, shapes and signs for obedience, domination, mind-control and memory erasure! With a screech that was very un-ladylike she pulled one hand free and hurled a fire-ball at Garn, burning him free of the layer of webbing, “Garn, destroy that bell!”

He didn’t need to be told twice, wings snapping out to either side to shred the last of the webbing the powerful chimera leapt forward and slammed into the bell causing it to rock unsteadily. He hit it again, getting his dragon tail under the gap he made and levering it up! The bell teetered for a second then tipped over with an almighty clang! The huge crystal shape rolled into the clock and stopped, until Garn span around and kicked it with both gigantic dragon feet on one rim. The grandfather clock exploded in a spray of broken wood and cogs and the deathly disturbing ringing of the bells fell silent. Azimuth dived forwards toward the pink gem that she hoped was Tileki, catching it on one of her wings as the Automaton’s came to life with jerking, clicking motions. The constructs left their displays and moved to attack Garn but the giant chimera crushed them. Metal limbs bent and snapped, fancy clothing was obliterated or dented out of shape. It wasn’t a very fair fight, the constructs had never been built to fight an enraged, three-headed shaman. It left behind quite a mess of springs and cogs and twisted metal and the five glowing stones which Azimuth surmised held the souls of previous victims.

Pausing long enough to help free Nocuous from his prison of sticky webbing she moved around the room, gathering up the glowing gems from where they had landed. Examining them she popped them in a pouch and walked over to the pink-covered kobold construct standing alone and unloved in the middle of the room. Nocu joined her whilst Garn lumbered around the perimetre of the room smashing and snapping at clockwork devices. Azi figured it best to let him get it out of his system. Turning the stone that had emerged from Tileki over and over in her hands she held it out to Nocuous, and offered him a tremulous smile.

“I think we stopped it before it overwrote his mind or filled it full of obedience charms but ah… his body,” she looked at the still, lifeless construct, “We were not fast enough for that.”

Nocu closed his eyes, stroked the crystal then offered Azimuth a smile, “At least there is a chance,” the purple kobold then slotted the pink gem into the space for it in the constructs chest. It settled into place, flickered and inside gears and springs and cogs began to turn and shift and click. Steam hissed out of Tileki’s head horns and then with a jerk his body shifted back half a step as a pale pink light filled his eyes.

“What… what happened!” he wheezed in a hissing, mechanical approximation of the thief’s voice, he clapped a hand to his muzzle in shock then froze as he stared down at his hand. It was bare, the ceramic plating didn’t start until just after his wrist leaving him with hands of sharp bronze claws, steel skeleton and lines of wire and tubing to simulate muscles so his claws could wiggle and his wrist could move.

“What happened!” He screamed, grabbing the purple kobold and shaking him, “What… how…. my body! I.. I sound weird! I’m PINK! Why am I pink!”

“Ah… magic happened?” Azimuth shouted, grabbing the metallic kobold by the shoulder, “You got caught in a trap and it tried to make you part of itself.”

“But… but we worked it out! I remember… the clockwork… we had it solved!”

“Yes, well looks like we missed a step or translated something incorrectly, it… tried to erase your mind! But we stopped that….”

Collapsing to the floor with a hiss of steam and rattle of chains the magically infused construct hugged itself and rocked back and forth whimpering. Azimtuh backed up and looked at Nocu, “Nocu dear, you stay with him, I’ll ah go try and find a way out of here with Garn.”

The construct turned those bright pink eyes pitifully in Nocuous direction, seemed the kobold could still pull off the classic, kobold puppy dog eyes of despair even as a construct. Crouching down next to his clan-brother Nocu reached out to touch his arm, “Ah… well good news is you seem to be alive and your own kobold still!”

The construct slumped staring in dazed disbelief at his arms, his legs and stomach, it was a lot to take in, “I don’t want to be a construct,” Tileki whined, “And everyone can see I’m pink!”

“You were always pink,” Nocuous murmured back, “Look it’ll be ok, the Chief is good at putting souls in devices. He’ll be able to fix this I am sure once we get back to the warren yes?”

Azimuth moved away leaving the kobolds to talk, Tileki needed Nocu’s advice right now more then her magic. They were running out of time, even with this setback she could not let them get derailed, they had to stop the ritual before dawn!

end part 3