We point out that we actually *want* to see the Winter king, so yes please take us to him, we’ll give him this Scepter and nobody needs to get Axed any unnecessary questions as it were.  For the tiniest of moments this seems possible but then we hit the wrinkly bit where they want us to give up our weapons.   Appropriate snorts, curses and maybe even a little spittle are sent back by way of answer.  I’m pretty sure I’m still in the middle of something like “Well damn you all for a pack of…”  when I notice that Beulah had already started filling them full of arrows.   The human guards also hadn’t wasted any time and Fitz and Klajdu get quickly bedazzled with crossbow bolts. Relief from our overpowering feelings of rage comes quickly in the form of an 8 foot tall goliath charging into one of the tieflings. This is when I remember I have some actual (and far more effective) curses at my disposal.   I run up a few steps, teleport into the middle of the fray and cast the otherwind curse in their midst.  A brief gale ripples the boundaries between us and the Fey, shredding and cutting the enemies as they cross the edges.  I step into one of the rifts and teleport back behind the line (this time I learned not to stay out there like a big dire-wolf chew-toy).  Tungsten, never to be outdone in the reckless-endangerment column, charges into the mess head down, ready to dodge and baring those huge orc teeth in an unsettling grin.   He misses his target at first but Carni’bald had seen some weakness in the tiefling’s guard and he calls it out across the room.  Tungsten sees it too and the next second the orc’s huge axe finds its mark.
Marco then surprises us by signalling to the gnome behind the skeleton.  Oh wait.  I forgot to mention the gnome.  OK there was a gnome back there.   I sort of edited him out cause he wouldn’t stop yapping later.  Anyway, Marco makes some sly signal to the gnome as though the gnome is on our side.  The gnome only looks confused but that wasn’t the point. The point was for the huge fiery skeleton to intercept this signal, which he does perfectly.   So at the cost of only a wink and hand gesture from Marco, the huge fiery skeleton turns slowly and sinks his huge fiery axe into the tiny shrieking gnome. It was beautiful.  We have to do that again.  Anyway, the gnome disappears somehow (despite his tunic now being on fire), and as he disappears he calls out “I can take you to the King’s wife!”.

OK?  Is that good?   Seriously, we brought the Ice Scepter for the winter king and that’s it. If we were supposed to also bring a Tiara for his wife, it ain’t happening.

At some point around now Klajdu gets badly indented by one of the guard’s halberds.  (Turns out the big poles sticking up behind their backs were halberd handles. oh joy).   Indentation Not Faze Klajdu, who becomes that roaring spinning axe-nightmare we call the Great Cleave.  He maybe hits the human but he definitely misses the big skeleton, and there’s an odd moment as he roars “Poopies!” in disgust.
(It’s possible someone may have started telling him fake “vocabulary”. This is intriguing. I need to ask around.)
Around then I set a very surprised human on fire and while he’s frantically trying to extinguish the white flames, Fitz steals my thunder completely by sinking his axe into the guy like it was nothing.
It’s really all about the axes on this trip, which is fine.
The sequence is never easy to remember but I think around then Carn’ibald calls out to the gnome “Take us to the winter king” and some other subtleties that I cant recall.  The skeleton and his friends snarl at Carn’s diplomatic intervention and they like it even less when the gnome answers back “Defeat the skeleton and I will do it”.  (Come to think of it, the gnome totally reneged on us here. He’s going down).  Anyway, Carn’ibald is on a roll so he signals to Klajdu to exploit an opening in the skeleton’s defenses right then. Klajdu exploits it and indeed lands a great blow on the skeleton but for his efforts he takes a halberd in the back from the guard he had to turn away from.  Klajdu Not Amused but he spins right back and drives his axe through that very halberd and into the halberd-wielder. While that was going on the skeleton tried to show off a bit by throwing a fireball at Fitz and although it completely hit him it didn’t seem to have any effect.  Beulah through all this is just filling people full of arrows   (I swear it’s like she gets twice the attacks as everyone else).  The last tiefling took a particularly gruesome arrow to the face and down he went.

After the battle I went back to look at the mage’s stuff since there hadn’t been any time before.  As I’m walking over there I hear the topic come up of Carn’ibald’s invoices. If we’re clearly going to share the loot and the reward, why is he so quick to write things down on his invoices?  Is it just a habit he cant break like we’ve been assuming?   Is he actually going to bill someone else in *addition* to splitting our loot?  If the latter then I don’t see why we don’t get a share of that too.   We’ll have to get an answer from him at some point.   They see me finding 50 gold pieces and a couple nice rubies on the mage, which I think is the first loot we’ve found that will require dividing. I hope it doesn’t get complicated although hell, everything else has.

Through all this yappy gnome is yapping. Rather than fulfill his promise to take us to the Winter King the gnome is now all worried about the Queen, who’s apparently locked up and in need of healing and/or rescuing. Fitz votes in favor of ignoring him.  This is totally the right call but the vote goes the other way so for a while we talk to the gnome. Beulah checks for traps down the hall the gnome went down,  we try and get him to come back to talk, all to no avail. Then we change tack and while Klajdu entreats the gnome loudly to come back, Tungsten uses the noise as camouflage to sneak down the hall to try and maybe kidnap the gnome.  It was worth a shot but Tungsten comes back emptyhanded after a while saying that the gnome just walked away almost out of earshot and went through a door.

We heal up a bit, we catch our breath, we enjoy the relatively fresh air, but we still need a rest.  Everyone who slept in those beds is still wincing now and then from thoughts of being impaled by falling stalactites and whatnot.   And it doesn’t exactly get better when we go through a little anteroom to find the Winter King’s throne room. It’s huge and deathly cold.  And oh look there are huge ice stalactites up in the ceiling, stalagmites coming up from the floor. There are chandelier’s made of ice whose candles burn with a pale magical light. In front of us is an ice bridge over a frozen lake. Faint shapes move under the surface and faint voices whisper “Do not anger the Winter King”.   Everyone who slept in the beds seems very unsettled.  Me, I don’t think anyone noticed but I’m a wreck. Obviously the last time I had to deal with an underground river it didn’t work out super well for me and I ended up becoming a warlock.

So we back away with a new and vigorous consensus to definitely get some rest, which means it’s time to find a quiet place out of the way. “Rest in Hallway Not the Best” says Tungsten and we agree. Way too many doors.  We pick one and go into a room that somehow has even more doors.  Nobody has a rhyme about the dangers of sleeping near doors but we don’t need one. We pick another door and find a cozy little room with two couches, and two tables.  The smaller table is up against the wall and I get all hopeful when I see it has some bottles on it.  Except that the bottles are all empty.  Well at least someone had the right idea.  I wish they hadn’t though because my head is a loud place right now and I’m getting low on wine.   Carn’ibald and Fitz are talking about healing lore because I gather they noticed Klajdu had picked up some disease, probably from the  “other other white meat” pork rib he ate earlier.  They give him something which seems like it might be working and we bed down for the night.