82. The Tireless Workshop

* Following three wishes from a genie, the party have found themselves in the very centre of the fifth layer of the Nine Hells, inside the Hall of Contracts that is contained within the esoteric, dreamlike layout of the Spire of Mephistar. Pyt held his old Infernal contract in his hands as the runes burned away from it. Clwyd had been returned to them, devoid of her hellfire magics but now able to serve as their guide in the Hells should they agree on a destination. All of them were a long way from home, and a long way from feeling safe.
	+ Aerendyl and Pyt's magic allowed the group to sneak through the Hall of Contracts, avoiding the notice of the many bone devils and imps that worked as clerks and assistants among the vast shelves.
	+ Before they left, Wilfred grabbed one of the lock boxes off the shelves at random and whisked it away into his wristpocket dimension. The group were unsure if Pyt's wish had inadvertently undone all contracts in the Hells or not, but Wilfred didn't intend to stop and check now; he'd do so later, when they were in at least a marginally safer location.
	+ Beyond the Hall of Contracts, a vast corridor stretched before them for a mile or more. Though they were ostensibly high up in the spire, it featured no stairs or slopes internally. They would walk in a straight line and eventually reach the door on the ground that should be far below them.
	+ As they crept forward in this way, Wilfred spied two hellish knights at their ease in a side room talking to each other. But other than this, the spire seemed weirdly quiet - far less so than they expected. Later, Aerendyl would remark that the process of escape had been a lot easier than he'd anticipated.
	+ The only hitch came at the large doors that served as the entrance to the spire and represented the party's escape. They were being guarded by a number of merregons on both sides of the doors, and the *invisibility* Pyt had put on them all, as well as Aerendyl's *pass without trace* spell, were both coming to an end soon.
* The group were eventually able to get passed the merregon guards without full-blown conflict. They hurried through the rings of obsidian pillars that radiated out from the spire and got to the edge of the milky blue-white waters of the River Styx. The hellish river was wide here, and on its distant far bank infernal factories sprawled out in all directions. And though the noise of their hellish industry filled their ears, and ten thousand tendrils of black smoke rose from the factories to join the roiling, ever-red clouds in the infernal sky above, the river was quiet. Those few vessels they could see bobbing on its surface were distant things. They folded out the Drunken Dragon from its box and set sail, bow pointed up-river, towards their distant escape.
	+ In their first hour of sailing, they crossed paths with only a single ship, a small rowboat empty save for its Boatman pilot. The strange creature spared the group a hooded glance but said no words. And soon enough the two ships had passed one another and the distance between them growing once more.
	+ Eventually, the Drunken Dragon came to a delta where a tributary or bifurcation of the Styx joined with the main body of the river once more. To Clwyd's genie-granted sense of direction, both paths were viable options. One represented a shorter path and the other a longer one, but the echo of the memories of her time as a devil, when she'd apparently travelled up this river herself, told her that she had gone up the long path.
	+ The group quickly decide that less time spent in the Hells was for the better and opted for the short path. 30 minutes or so after that and they realised they were sailing directly towards a hellwasp apiary. The massive, eerie hives hung in the air like sick balloons, only kept in place by the heavy tethering of infernal iron chains. When it was just one or two hives they were sailing towards, the group held fast to their decision, but soon enough Aerendyl, from his perch atop the mast, saw that the hellwasp hives littered the landscape ahead. As one, the group decided it would be best to turn around, head back to the delta, and journey the long path instead.
	+ The industry clogging the riverbanks grew thicker and thicker as they journeyed up the long path. Eventually, they started encountering bubbling, black sludge floating on the river's surface, waste run-off that was being dumped into it. Wilfred and Clwyd worked hard to weave the ship between these hazards, not wanting to risk the Drunken Dragon's hull against the stuff. But the floating waste didn't let up any time soon, and the air grew thick with brown smog, gradually obscuring everyone's vision. It was only then that Clwyd could clutch at those far-away, faded memories of her devil-life and recall that this place was 'Ichor Alley', the zone of infernal factories where Mephistopheles's experiments on captured demons were conducted; he had the creatures killed and processed in numerous inventive ways, seeking purer and more versatile forms of the ichor they left behind when slain outside the Abyss. The bubbling slime on the river and the brown smog they were breathing in were both the waste products of this grim harvest. Soon after Clwyd recalled this, the screams of tortured demons within the factories reached them.
	+ They passed no other ships that they noticed in the smog. And slowly, slowly, what they were breathing in poisoned Wilfred and Pyt, though it affected the gnome far more strongly than the half-elf. Their veins grew prominent against their skin and their eyes turned bright red, their lungs worked hard for every breath.
	+ They were also attacked by the echoes of two demons that formed in the fog. The things were violent and near-mindless, but were dealt with swiftly enough.
	+ Several hours after they first sailed into it, the ship eventually passed beyond the limits of Ichor Alley. The river was free from bubbling slime once more and the air grew clear again, relatively speaking.
	+ Aerendyl was able to curb the demonic infection that was poisoning Wilfred and Pyt with two uses of his *lesser restoration* spell.
	+ And so the group sailed on.
* The heat and oppressive despair of Mephistar weighed on the party with each passing hour. And that came in addition to their own, natural fatigue, for though there was no day-night cycle in the Hells, the party had been up long enough now for it to feel like well after 1am by the weariness in their bodies. Still, they didn't know what the best option for resting would be. They feared the tiny hut could be spotted and *dispelled* with relative ease, or else just be surrounded by a horde of devils hungry for them while they slept. The conclusion they reached was that they'd have to sleep in shifts, perhaps for the foreseeable future.
* And just as they considered this, they heard the roaring of tumbling water in the distance. Up ahead, the Styx misted at the bottom of a modest waterfall flowing through infernal turbines in a structure that spanned the whole width of the river. To one side, a river lock presented the only path for a boat to climb the waterfall. And on the bank beside that was an enormous plant emblazoned with an eye-catching logo on the side: an old, purple-black skinned woman's grinning face stood in its centre, fanged canines and modest horns both slight but prominent in their own way. Her eyes and hair were deep red, identifying her as clearly as the first half of the script that was writ in an arch above the picture, where it spelled out the Infernal for 'Red Rona's;' and then below her picture, bending up like the woman's grin, were the words, 'Styx Juice'. The party could see a number of redcaps rushing about over the river-spanning lock and the outside of the factory, hauling freight, dumping waste into the river, getting into violent scraps with one another, and so forth. A loud factory whistle sounded followed by a recording of an old woman's voice: 'REMINDER! DO NOT FEED THE MADCAPS!'