Nadia's Journal - Pushing Up Daise III

**Nadia’s Journal**

Three months travel and I’ve finally arrived at Hope. My local contact has informed me that my father, Drago, has indeed been living in this town and that I have just missed him. He has travelled west to a place called the Font of Pestilence with a party of adventurers. If I’m quick, maybe I can get there in time to help them out...

It appears that my information was bad. I’ve arrived at my destination to find that my father isn’t here at all and that he’s gone north to clear out a Mine instead. No matter, I’ll meet up with him when he returns to Hope.
In the meantime I have agreed to help Seth and Seonbi complete their task. They tell me they have been placed under a geas to obtain 3 ancient books from the ruins of this temple.

As we moved into the darkness of the temple I offered to scout ahead for the party and soon came across a couple of plague zombies. We dispatched them with little difficulty but unfortunately disturbed a horde of rats led by a particularly nasty Dire Rat. Although the creatures weren’t particularly strong their numbers nearly overwhelmed us with Mardani, Seth and Frank all falling to the swarm. Patching up our wounds we made our way deeper into the temple.
We eventually came to another room with more plague zombies and a pool of foul green liquid in the corner. Poor brave Mardani charged ahead of the group and was quickly taken down by the zombies. We managed to drag her to safety, dispatch the zombies and revive Mardani. She seemed ok but asked us to continue on without her.

Moving on we discovered some old ruined bookshelves which held one of the volumes we’ve been looking for. There was also a desecrated statue in the room which, according to Seth, acts as a teleportation device within the temple. They can only be activated by spellcasters so Seonbi and I held the other’s hands and we passed though the statue.

We found ourselves transported in to a room without doors, a kind of library or study. There were two statues in the room – one to the west (which we had entered through) and another to the north. Here we managed to find the other books we needed along with a journal containing some sort of cipher. While we all attempted to crack the code, I managed to come up with a single strange word – Azirax.
This word meant nothing to me, but Seonbi and Seth had previously explored other sections of the temple, so I asked them if it held any meaning to them. No sooner had the word left my lips I realised my mistake – Azirax was the name of a Demon and speaking his name aloud summoned him into the centre of the room. The fiend immediately attacked and I realised we were up against a foe we had no hope of defeating. I grabbed a hold of my two closest companions, Frank and Zallin, and quickly transported us out through the statue we had used to enter. Appearing back in the desecrated room, we anxiously waited for our remaining companions to arrive behind us, but they failed to appear. Had the demon killed them? Were they still trapped in the study with it? Clenching my jaw, I prepared to dive back through the statue to aid them when a breathless Seonbi appeared in the doorway.
The others had escaped through the other statue but Seth was in dire need of healing! Seonbi lead as on a roundabout route through the temple back to Seth and I was able to heal him. With the tree books safely in our possession we agreed to head back to hope.