Down Comes the Rain, Part 4 (Thursday-Friday, Kuthona (XII) 5th-6th, 4707 AR

The heroes continued their exploration of the dam's interior.

Flood Chamber Access. This narrow chamber was empty save for a long, ten-foot-wide pool.

The pool in this room was 15 feet deep. A tunnel connected it to the observation pool and from there to the floodgate controls. In the bottom of the pool was a secret door that the heroes located.

The heroes used a magic wand to determine that the scale model of the dam was used to control the dam's floodgates, and that the source of its power seemed to have waned to the point where the device no longer functioned. Once the infernal engines that powered the dam were recharged, the levers in the skulls automatically triggered and opened the dam's floodgates.

Avaxial extracted promises of release from the heroes in exchange for what he knew. Bruthien failed to dispel the magic circle that imprisoned Avaxial. Destroying the circle was difficult for the runes themselves were set in a ring of magical stone that had to be physically destroyed by weapons and magic to render the circle inert.

Avaxial knew he'd been used for the past age as an engine to power the floodgates - he could sense the shape of the dam around him and could feel the gates open. He knew that the gates opened automatically when the waters rose high enough, and could even feel those waters rising. He's felt the circle tugging at the last shards of his spirit for days, if not weeks now, but knew that since his onetime companion succumbed decades ago, there was simply not enough life force left to activate the floodgates.

Both magic circles functioned as cages only for those they were designed to constrain - anyone else could step into and out of either circle with ease. As soon as Bruthien and Shalelu were within each circle, the dam awakened with a rumble. The floodgates in the dam ground open, releasing waters from the Storval Deep in a constrained torrent into the valley below. Back at Turtleback Ferry, the waters rose again, but this time the rise was more controlled and less destructive - the peril of the storms was averted.

The devil was in no condition to fight or defend himself. Avaxial fled.

Once the floodgates opened, they closed automatically once the water level was no longer a danger - this meant that at some point in the future, further volunteers to fuel the floodgates during new storms will eventually be needed, but such a requirement is unlikely to be necessary any time soon.

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