One cultist gets away.
The party explores back in the direction of the most recent attack. A sluggish, murky, twenty foot wide canal flows through the room. Movement in the canal precedes a sudden obscuring fog and a solid clubbing of Lefty and Haerelben standing at the edge. Bromsby wards the fog with a deafening wind that reveals seven lizardfolk armed with clubs. Meega charges in. Haerelben charges out, his mirror shield heated to a painful temperature. The fog is withdrawn. Theren and Meega pick off the lizard club members. Theridan summons an ironic tidal wave that knocks over Theren along with the lizards. A few lizardfolk succumb to the wave. Four crocodiles appear, and one locks on to Theren who fires from his prone position slaying a lizardfolk shaman and his conjured crocodiles. Meega delivers two perfectly calibrated killing blows on the remaining lizardfolk. Theren helps himself to the shaman’s seaweed quarterstaff which is magical only in the satisfying sense that it belonged to Theren’s vanquished foe.
The party decides a short rest would be ideal just as the one cultist who got away leads a few of his friends back for a flanking attack. Meega and Lefty charge in, bottling in the reavers as Theridan turns them advantageously blue. Bromsby rays frost and Theren rays crossbow bolts. Theridan entangles the crowded hallway with vines. Someone momentarily paralyzes Meega, but she snaps out of it. Meega and Lefty stand on growing piles of corpses to continue their reaver rampage. Having worn out another bowstring, Theren charges through with his shortsword. The commanding priest, Frost, yields.
Lefty interrogates Frost. Gar Shatterkeel is the boss and Frost is merely defending his home from invaders. Frost declines to voluntarily demonstrate the cult recognition sign so Haerelben suggests it spell-wise. Frost, his hands bound behind his back where no one can see, happily accommodates.
The party, the still-playing-dead prisoner, and Frost the priest all take a short rest in the locked bunk room. Theren busies himself breaking the jaws of the deceased cultists so they can’t be spoken with. He uses their spreading pools of blood to write, Air Cult Rulez, on the walls. He fashions a mask from the flayed face of one of the more intact lizardfolk. A secret vote condemns Frost to a quick death, but no one executes on that plan so Frost remains tied up in bed for now. The party ventures further into the ruins.
Wending through the hallway the party discovers adjacent rooms that contain identical smelly, dusty pits surrounded by a walk. Lefty offers Theren a couple of shaped sticks to improve his lizard “disguise”. Theren accepts the sticks and experimentally tosses them into the pit. Nothing happens.
Theren finds a simple sleeping quarters devoid of any treasure. A nearby bridge, engraved with dwarven battle scenes, spans the canal. Theren finds a door secured by a hasp on the outside, his favorite kind of room. Inside are straw pallets and some water apparently intended for prisoners but now empty. A vertical slit looks out upon the canal.
Meega explores ahead. She peeks around a corner in the hallway into the waiting face of an aquatic troll. Meega reflexively smacks the troll with her axe. Lefty pounces in and discovers a second troll behind the first plus a few cultists. The trolls bulldoze through the hallway collecting party members. Haerelben banishes both trolls leaving just the priests and reavers to deal with for now. Theridan charges full-boar at the cultists. Theren marks a reaver. Lefty sprints to the rear of the party to engage a snake-shaped water elemental sneaking up from behind. She punches the snake until it reverts into a blue man. Bromsby erupts a mighty earth and kills him. At the other end of the battle, Lance, the officer in charge, lances Boar Theridan. Boar Theridan circles around and charges the reavers, knocking one prone. Theren slays the other reaver so that Meega can stand on it to attack Lance. Boar Theridan and Meega keep Lance knocked prone while Theren punctures him with point blank bolts. Boar Theridan slays Lance and an alarming splash is heard from the canal. Alarm turns to empathy when the party realizes the splash was caused by Lance’s bonded hunter shark mount lamenting the death of his master. Then empathy turns to glee when Theridan realizes he has just seen a hunter shark.
The banished trolls return to a prepared welcome, well-lit by Theridan’s faerie fire and then Theren’s actual fire. Meega’s axe trips the front troll so that Lefty can attack its face. Bromsby’s erupted earth smashes them into the ceiling. The first troll regains his stance and bites into Meega. Theridan produces some Haerelben-blessed flame and Theren slays the first troll so that Meega has something to stand on to slay the second troll.
The first troll, under Meega, stays dead but the second troll pops back up. It fumbles a counter attack on Meega and is slain a second time. Theren, acting on a hunch, shoves Meega onto the second troll. Neither troll seems to revive.