Zeno’s bad dreams continued. He dreamed he was performing for Apollo, playing beautifully. Slowly his performance twisted, he kept making mistakes and the only way to recover would be to do things that were… outside of his character.

Despite Zeno’s exhaustion, we headed back to the cove to find out if the Kraken Cult was still operating there. After a bit of making fun of my enjoyment of Kraken Tracks cereal (seriously, it turned the milk blue! so cool!) we began to explore the place. A new growth of coral had gathered around the base of the obelisk. I was trying to get a closer look at it, when it rudely tried to club me to death.

Zeno leapt to action, bashing the coral to bits as I zipped out of range of the creature. And good thing I did. That thing hit HARD!

We took the passage behind the obelisk to find the room beyond filled with the corpses of the missing people from The Cross. Across the water, next to the horrible altar stood a man in robes, his skin pale blue and tentacle whiskers down his chin. A shorter human was with him, holding a quarterstaff.

The villains began to monologue, and that is when we took off running to jump across the water. Behind us, seven seaspawn rose from the corpses, reaching for us. The fight was pitched, but I knew we had the upper hand when the catfish man escaped down the path hidden behind the altar. Jade ran after him, zooming through the room beyond and back to us to say that he had taken the teleportation circle.

Zeno took off after him. The rest of us were a little slow in following him due to some seaspawn shenanigans, but we made it eventually. Of course, that is when we discovered that the catfish man had filled the landing circle with darkness and tentacles. It was hard work just to get out of the tentacles and find the catfish standing on a small island over 30 feet away within the watery cavern.

Ever the hero, Zeno leapt to the island to fight the horrible catfish man kraken cultist. Za’lynn misty stepped into place, the two of them battling the horrible thing. Lightning filled the cavern, and horrible magics glowed around the cultist. With a single, horrible, touch, the cultist took Zeno down. His body crumpled and fell from the small island, sinking into the surrounding water.

It was a horrible moment, worrying if we had just lost Zeno forever. But just then, the beautiful and talented Jade jumped into action. With the grace of a furry angel, she moved across the divide to scoop Zeno’s corpse from the water. Gathering him to her on the shore, she carefully poured a healing potion between his lips and brought him back to life!

Even in the midst of combat, this touching and heroic moment brought tears to all of our eyes. With a renewed vigor, we went after the cultist, bringing him down at last.

In the aftermath, we were able to establish that the cavern was somewhere out in the open ocean. We took a robe and an ebon key from the fallen. The robe is interesting and I have claimed it. The key opened a hidden compartment on the altar and held a considerable amount of coin. With that, we were able to fund the work on the theater and commission two sets of full plate for the boys.

We took the robe to Rennan, who pointed was able to identify what should go in the openings along the collar of the robe: 2 star rubies, 2 star sapphires, 2 star emeralds.

With Zeno’s nightmares worsening, we sought out advice. Mad Felicia explained that her grandmother is turning Zeno. She said if we killed her grandmother, then we’d need to provide a replacement in the coven. (re: baby)

The Sage’s advice was to kill all three and free The Cross of their influence. First order of business though, was to help Zeno. After some experimentation with magic and the advice of the sage, we think that consecrated ground would help Zeno to sleep well. Tomorrow, we plan to sail to the meeting place of a local Olympian council. Perhaps the priest of Apollo can be convinced to come here and consecrate the theater. It will give us a staging ground to take down this evil.

I mean, since I guess that’s what we’re doing now. I just hope one of them likes to write down all their secrets. I really hope.