Ellathane Cathedral, Part 2

Enna, Aura, and I managed to exit the cathedral with only minor encounters that I was able to navigate with little problem. Once outside, we quickly found our other two companions, Willow and Vater. Since it was nearing midnight, we found our way to the Silvermoon Inn and rented two rooms for the night, the men in one room and the women in the other. After a night’s sleep, the five of us convened in one room and the three of us recounted what had happened both outside the cathedral, inside the cathedral, and beneath the cathedral after the other two had gone on their own errand. The women also told us of a strange occurrence during the night with the book and the bowl that we had brought back from the Fey Realm. It seems that Enna was able to use a spell out of the book to destroy the bowl.
 
It was decided to purchase some cloaks to conceal out identities while we moved throughout city as we waited for the king to give his speech. The king gave his speech outside of the cathedral. We were not surprised in what he had to say, Yaseen and Voltura were evil and he would do everything in his power to eradicate the network of churches dedicated to Voltura. He even went as far as to publicly execute Asmar the high priest of the church. I was hoping to sense corruption in the king, but sadly I did not.
 
The five of us reconvened to determine what our next move should be. I wanted to leave the city while we could and possibly check out what we could find north in the ruins of Elendon even though we no longer had Andar to be the go between with the person he was communicating with while in the possession of the red sphere. Willow insisted that we should find the staff, Amare. This meant that we would need to reenter the cathedral even though it was now heavily guarded and patrolled by the city guards and the silver cloaks. We needed a rather large distraction to do so and we decided to revisit two previous allies, one that Vater knew and our new friend Sir Desman Mantel. Vater, Willow, and Aura headed to Vater's contact and Enna and I went to talk to Sir Mantel. Vater and company struck out with his contact, but Enna and I had better luck. After explaining to him about the All-Mother and all that transpired with her at Highfield, he agreed to aid us in reentering the cathedral. He told us that he would create a distraction to draw the guards away from the cathedral so that we could enter and continue with our holy quest. He told us that on the eve of the next evening that we would have our distraction and that it would be noticeably big.
 
After joining back up with our other three companions, disappointed in what they learned in their endeavor, we spent the rest of the night and the next day resting and preparing for the next leg of our journey. We would soon learn that our preparations were extremely inadequate to what we found and to what actually happened.
 
We waited outside of the cathedral in anticipation of the upcoming event at the scheduled time. We did not have to wait long. We heard explosions and fighting not far from the other side of the cathedral. Willow was able to write a poignant message about the king in the sky above Malletford. Soon enough of the guards went to join in the hullabaloo that we could enter the cathedral without incident. Once inside we immediately went into the grand hall and started inspecting the statue of the First-Mother. At first, we found nothing out of the ordinary, until we looked at the crown on the head of the statue. The crown held what appeared to be precious stones, which I found as rather odd considering the rampant looting that had taken happened in this place.
 
 
Willow climbed up to the top of the statue and pressed the large center stone. This caused a beam of light to emanate from the statue, shining down to a spot on the floor. Enna place The Book on the floor at the end of the light. The book opened and another page of light was created at one of the torn sections. All light was extinguished in the room and the page projected an image of a large field as if we were looking out through a window. It all seemed very real with a breeze blowing, night sound , and all. In the center of the field we could see a black heart that was emitting smoke. At this point, the image expanded so that we were in the field with the heart.
 
I reached out to touch the black heart fully expecting my hand to pass right through it like it did when I tried to touch the image of the snow-haired child in the field we encountered in the underground temple. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Instead, the heart was solid and as I touched it, black smoke poured out of it enveloping my hands and arms. I have not experienced pain of such magnitude ever. My whole body was wracked with pain and damage. I was also deathly afraid, of what I could not say. It was a soul wrenching fear that I never want to experience again (note to self; never touch the cosmic widget). We also heard a deep male voice say, "I'm coming". Then the image was gone, and we were back in the grand hall of the cathedral once again.
 
We went up to the All-Mother's room to enter into the catacombs once again below the cathedral. Enna, Aura, and I showed Willow and Vater what we had found before. Nothing was out of the ordinary out in the fountain chamber, but things went very strange when we went through the waterfall and entered the Hall of Voltura. Willow and Vater were the first to go through and see the wonder that Enna and I experienced a couple of days ago. When Enna went through this time, things took a turn for the very worst. All of the light in the hall went out and total darkness prevailed. As Aura and I moved through the waterfall, the pure water turned foul and corrupt. We both felt the wracking pain and damage that I had felt earlier when I touched the black heart.
 
Once we were all in the hall, the light returned but it was dim and dismal as if the light itself was corrupted. A giant eye was peering in at us from the stained glass window at the other end of the hall behind the chair and we heard that same deep male voice say, "Thank you for freeing me". The glass then shattered, and some sort of multi-limbed creature started climbing through. The shit has definitely hit the fan.