With a crunch and a sizzle, Jørmund strikes the cultist in the back of the head, shattering the skull and frying the brain. The cultist falls to the floor and the strange magic surrounding him rises to the ceiling as it fades away.

Rala stood up above the fight watching and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Her keen eyes watched the elven 'leader' with scrutiny, she seemed to be using her status and vile charm to encourage these henchmen to their demise. So badly did she want to go for that smug elf here and now, take her out like the guard she had dealt with before. Unfortunately, Rala's thought process was cut off as suddenly her anchor, Flicker, plummeted into the melee. Admittedly they did a good job, she had known they were tough but such a pummeling was no easy feat. Readying her weapons as she dropped onto a foe of her own, she decided that it may be best to join her friends at the front lines. They where taking a beating and this had been her back-up plan to begin with should the forces inside prove to be too dangerous.

Dropping down with her sword held forward like a lance, but as she landed by flicker a flurry of thrust and parries would quickly over power one of the cultist she swung at, and her dagger would slice and poke at his belly until at last he fell to the ground. Using her fancy footwork she had already darted to the other side of her latest prey, and was currently straying off from the larger crowd of cultist she had chipped away at.
"Come on boys, you aren't going to be outclassed by an old woman, are you?" She teased towards the remaining group of cultist. It was a small jab, but hopefully enough to evoke their fury. She was hoping to let Flicker and Arkisz a small respite from the fray.

Although the rogue's landing was not nearly as graceful as the monk's, it certainly hit a lot harder. Both Rala an her target go sprawling to the floor. But while Rala only sustained a pair of bruises from the fall, the cultist had been impaled through the heart by Rala's rapier. As she rose from her less than graceful landing and delivered her taunt, Rala would also throw a dagger at the only other cultist near Flicker. The dagger struck the cultist in the eye and pierced his brain, killing him instantly.

Only one cultist remained now. But before anyone could act a new voice speaks up from behind the last cultist. "You think yourself old, do you?" The voice asked. Suddenly, the final cultist jolted and let out a pained gasp as something stabbed him in the back. After a moment, the man fell to the floor and the old tiefling woman Aura had found on the upper level of the tower while investigating with her hawk was revealed to be standing behind him, his still beating heart clutched in her hand. "Oh dearie... You have no idea what old is." Having said that, the new arrival grinned at the party with sharpened iron teeth before biting into the heart as if it were an apple.

With the senses granted to him by detect magic, Arkisz would come to realize that she was the source of the strange and powerful magic he'd felt in the tower. Also, Arkisz, Flicker, and Plasm would come to realize through their respective knowledge in either arcane or religious matters that the old tiefling woman standing before them was not in fact a tiefling. Though they would be unable to determine what she really was without dedicated thought.

Once she had chewed and swallowed the chunk of heart she had bitten off, she spoke again. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nanna May Midnight, and I owe the six of you my most sincere gratitude."

After the pretty nasty beating they had taken from the cultists, Flicker was looking a little less steady on their feet, and the glow of their hair and eyes had dimmed to show their diminishing strength. Thankfully, the rest of their party took out the other cultists before they could wound the fire genasi any further. Flicker gave a weak nod towards their friends, Rala and Jormund in particular, before turning to face the remaining cultist...

... then Nanna May struck, stabbing the man in the back and feasting on his heart the same way a normal person might eat a piece of fruit. Flicker stumbled back slightly, looking a little pale. "I think I'm gonna be sick," they said. They then glanced over at the cultist they had taken down moments ago, as well as the cultist Arkisz's metal companion had attacked. They both were still alive, yet in no real condition to fight. Considering how ruthlessly Nanna May had dispatched one of her own minions just now, Flicker got the feeling it wouldn't take much for her to deal with these last two.

Still swaying a little, Flicker got between the downed cultist and the not-tiefling, getting into a defensive stance and even casting Produce Flame to form a small, weak flame in the palm of their hand, ready to defend the remaining cultists should this woman try anything. "Just what in the hells is going on here?!" the genasi shouted, trying their best to sound as angry and as threatening as they could manage, given their current condition.

Nanna May didn't answer Flicker's question straight away. Instead, she took a second bite out of the heart and began slowly making her way across the room towards the fire genasi as she savored the blood soaked flesh she was chewing on, utterly unconcerned by the flame in Flicker's hand. As she walked, each member of the party would notice two strange adornments hanging from Nanna May's belt. The larger of the two was a wood carving of a broad shouldered and exceptionally ugly hunchbacked old woman with arms like tree trunks and claws like scimitars. The smaller of the two was an ice sculpture - in perfect condition despite the warm weather - which looked like an emaciated, spindly limbed old woman holding a strange staff in one hand.

"The Hells you say?" Nanna May said after swallowing the heart flesh in her mouth and licking her lips clean as she stopped about ten feet away from Flicker. "It's funny you should mention them, my little firecracker. You see, the Nine Hells have a lot to do with what's going on in this tower... So does Gehenna... And the Abyss too... Perhaps showing you would be easier." With that said, Nanna May brought two fingers to her lips and whistled. In response, the sounds of frantic footfalls could be heard from the floor above. A moment later, the ten black leather bags that had been sitting on the table on the tower's upper level came sprinting down the stairs, each carried on a pair of stubby legs as they rushed to form a circle around Nanna May. Eight of the bags were shut tight, something thrashing and struggling violently within their confines. The other two were still open and empty.

"I'm something of a merchant." Nanna May continued. "My two eladrin servants, Emmyth and Elnaril bring together ten evil souls. Then I gather up those evil souls and I bring them down to the Lower Planes. Three go to Baator, three go to the Bleak Eternity, three go to the Infinite Layers, and I keep the last soul for my own works in the Grey Wastes of Hades."

"Wait... What?" The cultist that Flicker had beaten within an inch of his life rasped upon realizing what Nanna May had just said.

"You...! Gah...! You BITCH!" The cultist who had lost an arm to Arkisz's Steel Defender growled, furious at this revelation.

"Of course at my age, roughhousing just doesn't come to me as easily as it once did. So when the evil souls predictably put up a fight as I try to collect them, I tend to find the struggle a tad tiring." Nanna May went on, paying no mind to the words of her cultists. "So imagine my surprise when my familiar spotted six strong adventurers departing from Ennton to do the job for me. Oh you darlings have really done me a service today. And for that I believe you deserve a reward!" Nanna May snapped her fingers, causing Emmyth to walk over to the far right corner of the first floor and open a trap door that was blending in most effectively with the floorboards. "That door leads down to the tower's basement. I know how much you adventurous types enjoy taking everything that isn't nailed down, so what better way to reward your kindness than by showing you where the best loot is, eh? You'll find all sorts of lovely goodies down there. And don't worry about offending me by taking the wrong thing. I have no further use for this tower, nor for anything I do not intend to take with me. Feel free to take whatever you want. Nanna's treat!"

---

While all seemed distracted, Plasm had cast Detect Thoughts on Emmyth. It was curious how with all the chaos and death, the words of a song was all this woman seems to be worried about. Using a telepathic connection, plasm would ask, "what's down there, and what evil does this demon have planned?"

Once they had opened the trap door, Emmyth moved to rejoin Elnaril. However, the sudden interjection of a second voice in their mind that was most certainly not their own caused the androgynous elf to pause. Their surface thoughts shifted from attempting to remember a song to surprise and confusion regarding the sudden appearance of the new voice. After a moment annoyance seeped into both their surface thoughts and their facial expression as Emmyth realized that this was the doing of someone in the party.

Emmyth proceeded to flood their surface thoughts with nightmarish visions of eldritch abominations in an effort to clear their mind. But since Plasm already had her fair share of experience with eldritch abominations, she was undeterred. After a moment, Emmyth stopped thinking about otherworldly horrors and eyed the party warily as they searched for any trace of an unwelcome visitor in their mind. When they could detect nothing else out of place, Emmyth started moving again. 'Bothersome pests.' Emmyth thought to themself as they rejoined Elnaril. 'What Nanna May sees in them I cannot fathom. I could think of far better uses for the treasures down below than as gifts to win the affections of these fools.'

Aura stood in the doorway observing the "woman" known as Nanna May. The two elves were of no concern to her. She scrutinized every facial expression made by the woman as she spoke in an effort to gain any insight as the the true nature of her plan. After some thought Aura realized that Nanna May's offer was not a farce to trap them in the basement. Though she still squinted her eyes in an untrusting manor as she spoke from the doorway.

"What makes these souls so evil, what have they done to deserve death?" Aura spoke up not fully trusting the operation, after all she could simply be saying they are evil to appease the party. What did a woman who consumed hearts, and gathered souls consider evil? "And since you said you were a merchant of sorts, what do you get in return for providing these souls? Eternal life, more goons?" She gestured to the two elves standing off to the side. "You have to do more than tempt use with shiny things, to convince us not to complete the job we are being paid to do."

---

The gelatinous being smirked under their mask at the attempt of unsettling them with Eldrich imagery. Knowing she'd been spotted, Plasm shut out all around them as they attempted to push on further, to force their way deeper into the elf's mind and force whatever they're hiding out.

---

Emmyth needs a wisdom save with a DC 14. Plasm will use their inspiration to attempt to break their way in.

"What makes you think I'm trying to dissuade you, sweetie?" Nanna May asked Aura with a curious arch of her eyebrow. "You were sent here to see us off, yes? Well with our work here done, the time has come for us to leave. The goodies I'm leaving behind are merely a token of my appreciation for making things easier on little old me. As for what made these souls evil enough to be worthy of death, did you see what they did to that hunter? All he did was come asking who they were and what they were doing here. By the time the poor man made it back to his horse, they'd carved him up so much that it astounded me to hear that he survived. And that hunter was just the latest in their long line of victims. Most folk weren't fortunate enough to survive their encounters. And believe me when I say they've done much worse than kill the innocent."

As Nanna may spoke, Plasm pushed deeper into Emmyth's mind. As the elf's eyes widened with the realization that an intruder was still present in their head, Plasm began plundering insights. Her first discovery was that Emmyth's reasoning was guided by selfishness, hedonism, and paranoia. Next, Plasm learned that Emmyth's current emotional state was a mix of anger towards whoever was probing into their mind and fear that the intruder might discover the secrets that Nanna May had entrusted to them. And finally, Plasm learned that a constant and all consuming dread of outliving their usefulness to Nanna May and ending up like the cultists loomed large in Emmyth's mind. This was all Plasm had time to learn before Emmyth spoke up.

"Nanna May, one of the adventurers is snooping." Emmyth said.

"Oh they are, are they?" Nanna May said as she fished a small cylindrical vial out of a satchel that hung off the opposite side of her belt from the wood carving and ice sculpture. "Well we can't have that now, can we?" With that said, Nanna May unscrewed the vial's lid, revealing a small wand with a looped head attached to the underside of the lid. Nanna May then blew into the wand's head, causing a large bubble to emerge from the wand, float over to Emmyth, and envelope their head, cutting off all mental connections between Plasm and Emmyth and preventing any contact from being re-established. Once that was done, Nanna May slipped the vial back into her satchel and looked back at Aura. "As for what I trade these souls for, I don't really trade them for anything in particular." Nanna May finished. "I just pick out whatever they have on offer that catches my eye, and then I trade for that."

"It would indeed be possible for me to do such a thing." Nanna May readily admitted with a nod as she idly watched the Steel Defender pass by and head into the basement, an amused expression on her face as the construct descended the stairs to begin its investigation. "But it wasn't the case this time. Make no mistake, poppet, the sway I held over them was entirely mundane and the evil they committed was entirely their own. When the hunter came to ask their business, I merely instructed them to deal with the man as they saw fit... which they did."

"Don't listen to that bitch!" The one-armed cultist exclaimed angrily. "She's lying! She had us all under her spell!"

"It's... true..." The severely beaten cultist chimed in with pained desperation. "Never... would've... done those things... willingly... The hag... The hag made us do it..."

However, Arkisz's insight would inform him that Nanna May spoke the truth and the cultists were lying to live.

Before anymore could be said, several loud clangs could be heard from the basement. Nanna May then let out a wicked cackle, her face now adorned with an expression of sublime schadenfreude. "Oh yes, send your big clumsy contraption that clearly isn't built for investigation to go investigate something. What could possibly go wrong?" Nanna May jeered before letting loose another mocking cackle as more clangs echoed up from the basement. "I suggest you call off that bumbling brute of yours before it breaks something. Some of the more valuable goodies are also quite fragile."

Aura remained near the door and put her hand on the shoulder of her closest ally. Transferring her perception to that of her hawk's. "I'll look. Just cover me, shout or something if shit happens." She muttered though her voice came not from her mouth but from that of the hawk's. The bird then took off from Aura's shoulder and flew down the trap door after the Steel Defender. At least with the bird down there none of her party had to risk being trapped in the basement. Nanna May seemed to be honest with them but Aura still wasn't going to test it, not with her own body at least.

The hawk flew down into the basement in search of traps as well as to simply examine what was in the basement, if anything in particular peeked her interest of that of her party.

---

Perception from the Hawk= 10/21

Hawk has Keen sight, advantage on perception checks that rely on sight. If it's dark in the basement it's a straight roll for the lack of dark vision. So 10 if it's a straight roll 21 if there is light down there.

The abrupt end to the fight caught Jørmund off guard. Nanna May's display of killing one of her followers and eating their heart was certainly an off-putting sight as well. He could feel his stomach roiling at the sight. Fortunately the others in the group had taken to talking with Nanna May giving Jørmund enough time to collect himself.

When Aura stated she was going to take a look in the basement through her hawk, he moved into a position to best protect her incase Nanna May or her companions decided that the deal was off. While guarding Aura he took a few more seconds for contemplation. Internally he was conflicted with how the events had unfolded. The fact that the souls of these people were being collected by this Nanna May for the lower planes wasn't unusual he supposed. Being an unknowning pawn in the process of collection didn't sit right with him though.

"From what you have displayed so far you didn't need us to do your dirty work. I don't like that we were unknowingly participating in what ever contract you have. How are we to know that taking this reward of yours doesn't bind us to some other deal with you?"

During this back and forth, Flicker had remained in a defensive stance, their eyes darting between Nanna May, her two elven lackeys and occasionally, whoever else in the group was speaking at that moment. They were very relieved that their party were here to ask the questions, they certainly wouldn't have the patience for it. However, when Nanna May brought up what the cultists had done to the hunter, Flicker couldn't help but speak up. "I mean, that doesn't even really prove anything. In the heat of battle, you can end up doing a lot more harm than you intended to." With the hand that wasn't holding the flame in front of them, Flicker pointed with a thumb towards the door of the tower. "For example, those two poor bastards outside? We wanted to take one alive." Anyone who was looking at Flicker at that moment would have noticed their eyes dart briefly in the direction of Aura, not sure if she even caught or heard that comment given her current state. "Things can get real screwy in battle real fast, is what I'm saying. You're gonna need more proof than just that to convince us that these idiots needed to die." They paused before glancing over at the two injured cultists. "No offense," they added quickly.

Rala, however, seemed to mean to offend. She had grown a reasonable ire and skepticism for the woman before them, her eating a heart was all the stoic spy needed to decide Nanny May was someone she didn't want around in this world. More stressing, though, was that her team was injured and haggard. They had the numbers, but these last few seemed much more tricky to her than those goons.

Biding her time, she bit her lip in an attempt to hide her growing anger with the situation, weapons at the ready. She wasn't sure they had much leverage in this situation. Their enemy seemed to know them and had the home field advantage. Still, as questioning went on and drew to a standstill, she felt it was time to make a move.
"enough pleasantries people. Take the Hag's trinkets or take her head. Either way we've cleared out the tower, the gold is ours. No use dying when the jobs done" She said harshly.

As Jørmund and Flicker spoke, Nanna May took a third bite out of the cultist heart as she listened to them. When Rala called for an end to the conversation, Nanna May swallowed her third mouthful of heart flesh and nodded in agreement. "Yes, I think there's been enough rambling for now." Nanna May said as she pulled a forked metal rod out of her satchel. "You have a tower to loot, I have souls to sell, and I see no reason to prolong this meeting. Emmyth, Elnaril, come along."

The two androgynous elves moved to stand behind Nanna May at her call and each placed a hand on one of her shoulders.

"Until next we meet, adventurers." Nanna May said as she began to make Arcane gestures with the rod, causing the rod and the floor beneath Nanna May, Emmyth, Elnaril, and the black bags to start glowing. "Toodle Pip!" With those words, the world around the party was briefly consumed by a bright flash of light. When the party regained their vision a moment later, all who had been standing on the glowing floor were gone and the two surviving cultists were no longer as surviving as they had previously been. Each of them now had a dagger sticking out the tops of their skulls, the points of the blades sticking out from the bottoms of their chins.

While all this was happening, Aura watched through the eyes of her hawk as the familiar flew down into the basement. The basement was illuminated by torches on each of the walls, so aura would have a good view of Arkisz's Steel Defender clumsily fumbling its way through a task it had not been designed for. In its search for danger, the Steel Defender knocked over pots and pans and upturned every table it came across. It hadn't broken anything yet, but Aura would notice some interesting things standing in its imminent path of destruction. These things were a wooden chest, a mirror polished glass case, a ceramic ball on a velvet pedestal, a small painting of a placid field in the rain, and a sealed yet seemingly empty jar.

Most of these items didn't look particularly sturdy. If something wasn't done to stop the Steel Defender, the items would most likely be broken.

Once the light cleared and their sight returned, Flicker immediately extinquished the flame they had in their hand and ran to the spot where Nanna May and the two elves had been. They looked around, quickly spotting the two now deceased cultists. They rushed over to and kneeled over the bodies, taking a moment to ascertain that they were well and truly beyond saving before muttering a curse in elvish under their breath and pushing themselves back up onto their feet. "I'm gonna take a look around, make sure they're really gone," they said quickly, and without waiting for a response from their comrades, exited the tower.

In truth, they weren't really confident they'd find anything and even if they did, had no idea what they'd did. It didn't really matter. They just needed to get out of that tower before they did something they'd regret. Once they were out the door, they began to make a half-hearted attempt to check around the surrounding forest.

Hawk got in the way of the defender and Aura spoke through the bird "Go, shoo, go back to your master." Hawk remained in the defender's way for only a moment before flying toward the jar that it had been spotted Aura figure Hawk could at least be able to carry that out and also see what happened if one of the items was removed from it's spot.

Aura pulled from her familiar's senses when she was sure Hawk had a good grip on the jar, returning to her own. "Looks like some interesting things down there. No traps from what I could tell but Hawk is bringing one of the items up here just to see if something happens if something is moved. Arkizs you might wanna call back you defender it's gunna break something down there." She would then go on to explain the items she saw in the basement including the jar that Hawk had grabbed for her.