We use the clues from the first piece of the nexus to map out the location of the next. Looks like we are heading up north, a lake up in Canada's Northwest Territories. We prepare for cold and another possible extended stay and portal over the boarder.
The lake is frozen over and we don't see any islands or platforms. Danno busts a whole in the ice and turns into a shark and goes for a swim. I project my mind into twilight and head to the bottom of the lake the warm and dry way. After a few hours of searching I finally find the platform down at the bottom. I get a good lock around and return to my body. Ohm makes us a little more resilient to the cold water and I portal us down to the portal. I quickly imbue the door with mana and the portal opens just like the first temple and we hurry in to get dry and warm.
The temple is nearly identical to the first one. Now that we know a little of what we are looking for Ohm and I can deduce this temple is dedicated to the Watchtower of the Lead Coin, The Moros. We take the first hallway and we firget to llok for traps and Danno takes some spikes in his legs. He shrugs it off and we continue on to the first room. The room is filled with a black fluid. As we near the fluid all our active spells except for death magic quits functioning. It was quite alarming at first. I've spent so much time lately encased in my protective magics and quite accustomed to my empathic link to Kat that I felt vulnerable and alone. I could at least tell the magic was still there just suppressed so I shrugged it off and focused on the how we were going to get across this fluid without magic. That question is soon answered as we notice a skeletal dude in a boat. I'm not sure if he was always there or I just wasn't paying attention but I don't remember seeing him. Danno gives him a quarter and he lets Danno into the boat and takes him to the other side. Well that was easy and luckily Ohm brought change and we all to do the same and make it over unharmed.
Other side of the pool of death is another door that wants some mana and a circular room. This room has an alcove on the other side and a construct looking thing in the middle. After the last one of us enters the doors closes and the room starts to fill up with a slightly dark mist. The construct looking thing come to life and starts building up some kind of energy. A few seconds later he releases something and everybody in the mist feels there life force drain. Alcove is looking cozy right about now. We make our way to the alcove and see there are 10 golem like things sitting idly. In front of each is a crystal. Danno makes it in first and gets the idea to grab onto the crystal. He goes into what seems like a deep trance, kinda hard to tell since he is already dead and all. The crystal he is holding soon grows brightly and the golem comes to life. Looks like he is controlling it. Danno takes the golem out into the main room and throws some rocks at the big construct and it looks like it hurts. The big construct summons up some small gremlin looking skeletons that head toward the alcove. Red hold them at the door while Ohm and I head in to grab a golem. The big construct keeps sending out shadow bolt volleys and igniting the shit in the room and that slowly takes Danno's golem down. As his ceases to function I have mine going and head into the fray. I soon realize that controlling these things is a simple mental task. Since I can actually multitask I manage to grab hold of another golem and start flanking the bastard. Danno and Red keep the gremlins from harming our comatose bodies while I beat the crap out of the construct. Ohm has some issues getting his started but finally enters the room and helps finish off the construct. As the construct falls we hear the now familiar unlocking of ones of the doors back in front and we head out to the other side of the temple to see what matter has in store for us.
The matter room is just empty. Danno steps into the room and is greeted by a metal spear shooting out of the wall and hitting him squarely before he could even think about getting out of its way. I conjure up several of me and place them around the room. I then teleport into one of them and sure enough a spear fires out of the wall but I teleport back and it passes through my now insubstantial form. So it does appear to be pressure plated. The spear this time was made of wood which makes Danno a bit nervous so he turns into his mist form and floats over to the other side without any issue. I move my insubstantial self over to the other than teleport to it. Ohm gives himself and Red wings and they flutter on over.
We head into the matter circular room. It has spikes spaced evenly on the walls made of different materials, iron, wood and silver. In the center is giant thing that kinda looks like a troll of some sort. As we finish entering the room the troll comes to life and attacks. After a few attacks we realize we aren't doing much in the way of damage to it and have to figure out what the trick to this room is. Red calls on a gift to attempt to analyze the troll's weaknesses. All he can figure out is it has anger issues. Danno starts taunting it too see what happens and the troll charges him slamming him against the wall. Looks like we can taunt him into charging the wall and maybe get him to run into a spike. Since it looks like a troll it seems logical we should taunt it toward an iron spike. Danno does just that and gets out of the way this time and the troll impales itself on the iron spike and cries out in pain. Seems like we found our trick. I spread the other Cygins out amongst the spikes and have the one in front of the other spike start taunting him. To make sure he falls for it quickly I use the mind arcanum to enrage him. This works nicely and he charges into the next iron spike he then begins to change shape a bit and is kinda looking like a werewolf of some kind. So I do the same trick with my other selfs but this time in front of a silver spike. The troll thing charges into it and cries in pain. Another silver spike and it turns into what we are guessing is some kind of vampire. Same tricks on the wooden spikes and the troll thing goes down. Onto the middle room.
As the doors open into the middle room we see three golem like things with large spikes instead of arms. Once is made entirely of silver which makes Red shiver a bit, another made of cold-iron, and the other made of a dark iron with the stench of death upon it. They stay inanimate until we all enter the room. Knowing we have what could be a nasty fight on our hands we rush into the room and spread out and Danno charges the silver one as soon as it starts moving. Hector and Ohm engage the other two. As the fight progresses the silver golem looks around the room (the best he can without actually having eyes) and singles out Hector fighting the cold-iron one. The silver ones seems to recognize what Hector is and in a blink of an eye the silver and cold-iron change places. The silver one then stabs Hector. That makes Hector mad and he lays into it, it was already hurt from Danno and falls to the ground inactive. Seemed a little to easy and before we could finish that thought the death metal one gestures at the silver and it stands back up and doesn't have a scratch. We figure that is the purpose of the death metal one so we all focus on it and it goes down quickly under our coordinated effort. As we move to focus back on the silver one the cold-iron golem gestures at the fallen death metal golem and it stands back up without a scratch. Well shit looks like we have to take down all three at the same time. Everybody seems to come to the same conclusion at the same time and split their attacks amongst the three. Dano does his best to keep the silver one occupied. I bide my time and wait for all three to be mostly injured and begin digging deep into the supernal. The Abyss is not going to be happy with my next action and it takes a large chunk of my power reserve to fight the Abyss off. As soon as all three are looking beat down I decide to do my own version of metallurgy and force the golems to all occupy the same space. The room seems to fold in upon itself and the beams of light appear to move slower. At least from my perspective I saw all three golems standing just where they were but they kept changing from silver to iron to black in rapid succession. As the changing of their positions sped up the colors began to blur into one solid color with streaks of each marbled in and I could feel the energy building up in the room. Then without a sound the golems stopped switching positions and their forms shuddered with ripples of energy and they all fell to the ground with pieces of them missing. The room returned to its normal shape. One of the golems was still twitching and attempted to gesture at the others but it was stunned from the fall. Danno quickly dispatched it and then all three golems crumbled into pieces. As the golems crumbled a pedestal raised in the center of the room and we had our second piece of the nexus.
Ohm investigated the dark death metal. The stench of death was now gone but he identified the metal as adamantite. He recalled that this metal was extremely resistant to direct magical attacks and was quite sturdy. This was a rare alloy and woulds make for some nice weapons. Luckily we knew a master weaponsmith. I enlarged the area of our bags and we took all the shards of the adamantite golem with us.
The others were ready to leave but Ohm and I had already warned them that we intended to stay here for a few days and study the runes.
Cygin