It must have taken them a while, running and hacking and slashing and shooting their way through the mass of monsters, but the time passed in a mania of battle for Horatio.

Eventually they reached the cage built into the other side of the chamber. Thank Qind, the Cultists in the centre of the chamber did not break from their circle once, nor did they seem to have yet completed their ritual. There was still time left—they might just be able to free these people and prevent Brax from being summoned.

‘Please!’ a woman called out from inside the cage as they approached it, dressed in torn and tattered rags, reaching through the bars towards them with trembling hands. ‘You’ve got to help us! They’ve done horrible things to us! You’ve got to get us out of here!’

She’d been the first to notice the party’s arrival but now the rest of the caged people noticed them too, and joined her in reaching out towards them and pleading desperately.

‘Let us out!’

‘Quickly! They said they’re going to kill us!’

‘Help! Help!’

Some of them had already been wailing or sobbing before the party got there, and they just carried on. There were children standing or sitting in the cage crying openly—and Horatio couldn’t always see any adults nearby comforting them.

Between the wailing and sobbing and the noise of the monsters grunting and barking and screeching, it was no wonder that the Cultists hadn’t noticed the party infiltrating the chamber or been distracted by the sounds of the battles. They must be tuning out all the other noise and concentrating on their ritual.

Either that, or they had noticed the party, and were simply choosing to ignore them.

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‘It’s alright!’ said Horatio when he arrived in front of the cage. He put out his free hand in a gesture of reassurance, and the woman who had first called to them reached out and grabbed it so tight it hurt.

‘Get them out!’ called Ursula. ‘Get them out!’ Her face had gone white as snow and she was shaking all over as she spoke. ‘We’ve got to get them out!’

‘Stay calm, mother,’ said Tyler, ‘we will find a way. Look, there’s a door here!’

There was indeed a door built into the middle of the cage, with shining gold hinges and a gold square at about waist-height with a hole cut into it that was definitely a lock. The caged people nearest to it were holding on the bars around it, desperately trying to force it open; some were even repeatedly hitting the lock with bleeding fists.

‘Hey, magic users!’ called Horatio. ‘Offensive magic users, get over there and try to open that lock!’

Primus, Olivia, Ursula and Ross ran over to the lock and yelled at the people nearby to stand back from the bars. Then they began to pelt it with spells in a frantic effort to break it, while the rest of the party held off the monsters. The magic users tried heating it with bright fire, but it wouldn’t melt. They froze it and Horatio hit it with his sword, but only the ice that had built up around it broke. Olivia attacked it with a burst of whatever strange light-magic she was able to wield, and nothing happened. Ross tried every combination of elemental binding to his spellblade that he knew on it.

The lock remained intact, its gold glinting in mockery of them.

‘It’s no use!’ said Olivia. ‘It seems to be made of some sort of magical metal, or it has demonic enchantments on it that repel our magic!’

‘Let me have a go!’ said Silvia, pushing her way to the front of the group.

‘What are you going to do to it?’ said Horatio.

‘Pick it, stupid! Did you forget that I’m a master thief?’

Before she had a chance to, a particularly vicious group of monsters crashed into them, driving them back from the door to the cage, and they had to fight them before they could carry on attempting to open it.

Battle3