As 
the monster soared towards her, Méabh drifted upwards again until she was again touching the ceiling, ready to wield more rock-shifting magic. As she did so, she recast her Greater Mage Armour. Just in time - claws slashed at her, tearing through her light armour and slamming her against the rock roof.
At the entrance to the room, Gorfang, Lynien and Eloy watched as the other vile apparition hurtled through the air towards them. A claw strike drew blood from Eloy, but he ignored it, concerned for Méabh isolated on the other side of the room. He sent three arrows at the back of the undead titan she was fighting. It was a tough shot for a short bow at a moving target, but he sank one shaft into its' back with a satisfying crack of sudden freezing. Gorfang, aware of his blood flowing, also ignored the attack to sieze a bottle of Boom Boom and swig it down. Behind them, Lynien briefly wondered if either of them had vision problems as they ignored nine feet of undead rot monster right in their faces, and pinged the last two of her enchanted hand crossbow bolts into it.
Above, Méabh slashed with Rilliantorin, dealing two deep wounds. The silver blade, untainted by the viscous unpleasantness that made up the Angels of Decay, thrummed with pleasure as it smote them, shearing off great slices. Behind Eloy, Lynien dropped the pistol and grabbed her shortbow, before deftly lifting arrows from Eloy's quiver, strapped to his back and right in front of her. The larger missiles proved more effective and bits of rot spattered as she shot point-blank into their attacker. Eloy loosed once more at Méabh's foe, his arrows blasting frozen chunks of rotten stuff out of the creature; it crumbled to dust which rained down into the pool of rot below.
As this happened, the pounding inside the stone pods intensified, and small holes began to appear under the ferocious assault of the undead Angels within. Méabh saw this, and laid her hand on the ceiling.
The surviving Angel had landed on the steps facing Eloy and Gorfang, and attacked immediately. One claw lashed out towards each warrior; somehow, though, both blows struck home on the orc. Blood flowed, and the edges of the wounds putrefied immediately. As this happened, the wounds the Angel carried all diminished slightly. Many warriors would have been horrified, or nauseated, or discouraged by this - but this was Gorfang Deathdrinker, the Weapons Master. His reaction was all-out attack.
With the Veldrin Sk'aal in one hand and the khopesh of Aklimah in the other he launched himself into the fray. The blades spun, hacked and stabbed, tearing horrific slashes in the unwholesome form before him. Wounds like this would have killed a mortal creature seven times over, but still it raised claws and wings for another attack. Snarling, he struck again and again until it finally disintegrated.
Hovering above, Méabh cast a second Stone Shape, reforming the stone making up the prison pods. This time, the rock flowed around the Angels' bodies, fitting snugly around them. Their immunity to non-magical attack meant they couldn't be crushed, but with their limbs pinioned, they couldn't swing to strike their prisons, and the pounding ceased.
This had been a tough fight, and the companions' relief at victory expressed itself, as so often, in mild bickering as to who had killed what. Méabh drifted elegantly down to land near the others, casting her forgotten Cat's Grace as she did so, and the whole group eyed the pool of decay in the room below. The debate as to whether the death of two of the four Angels would be enough to make it safe to walk through wound down to offering to throw each other into it to find out, and the matter was shelved as they backed up to investigate the door to the north instead.
The door was blackened and eroded by the near passage of the black pudding but still intact. As established before, it wasn't locked, and the others fell to discussing why; but Gorfang's blood was up - he took three quick steps and booted the door as hard as he could. Shards and splinters of wood and hinge exploded out into the room beyond. 
The room itself was a huge circular underground amphitheatre, with a long flight of steps leading down to a flat circular floor 50' below their current level. Tiered stepped circles provided seating around it. The ceiling above was dark and domed. However, all that was only of passing interest; the whole place was crammed with hundreds of dark, humped shapes the size of sheep, scattered around the tiers, and clinging to the ceiling. As the shattering impact of the door's destruction echoed away, these all began to move and to unfold multiple articulated legs. Lynien gasped "Spiders!", but Eloy took a closer look... they were not just spiders, but the same spidershells they'd fought in Hightower. There was no option now to close the door and leave them alone, and dozens were already skittering across the stone towards the party.
Gorfang chuckled nastily. "Daddy's Home," he grated, and stepped into the doorway, blades raised. Méabh tried a shot over his shoulder, and learned - as had Cheiron the centaur back in Hightower - that arrows had almost no effect on skeletal undead.
It 
struck them at this point that this mass of shells might be guarding something... perhaps the lich's phylactery. "Why else put a brand-new door on a room full of dangerous undead?" "To stop them getting out?"
Eloy glanced around, and warned the others that he would use his gods-gifted Nullity to slip down to the bottom and search the amphitheatre while Gorfang kept the spiders busy. Eloy vanished, and slipped past the orc before the spiders reached him. A crashing and splintering of chitin and a ferocious clicking of mandibles announced that the orc had engaged the spidershells as the human sped down the steps.
Broken bits of spider flew in all directions as Gorfang hacked and smashed. In the two months since their first encounter, the orc had learned a fair bit, and his two swords reaped a catastrophic harvest among the undead minions. Black orc blood ran down his green skin in several places from minor wounds, but he wasn't even aware of them, his red eyes blazing as he slew and slew.
Reaching the bottom, Eloy drew Bereloth and began to search, sure there must be a secret door or panel at the bottom somewhere. Despite his best efforts, however, he didn't find anything, and his time was running out. Turning, he retraced his steps, reaching the doorway to discover it completely blocked by a wall of scrabbling spidershells. Gritting his teeth, he pushed his way into the mass, aware that were his Nullity to expire now, he'd be surrounded on all six sides... Urgently, he shoved forwards, and broke through the mass into the clear arc beyond. This was hardly less hazardous, as the reason this area was clear was that it was raked by Gorfang's flying blades... and the orc not only couldn't see Eloy to avoid him, he didn't even know he existed to be there.
Desperately ducking and weaving, Eloy danced across the gap, trying to evade the blades and the mandibles, calling on Sabath for luck as he did so. The bronze khopesh skated across his shoulder and a spider exploded beside him, spattering chitin splinters into his face; the Veldrin missed his waist by a whisker and sheared all the legs off one side of another shell and then he was through, panting and shuddering. A moment later, the Nullity wore off, and he was there again, to report that there was no treasure at the bottom. Gorfang didn't seem to care; he appeared to be enjoying himself.
Finally it was over. The orc stood, breathing hard, and sheathed in sweat and black blood from dozens of small wounds. Around him, scattered down the tiers of the amphitheatre, was a veritable mound of smashed spidershells, bits slipping slowly down towards the bottom here and there.
Reluctantly, they returned their attention to the room of rot. Concluding that it wasn't going to be safe to walk through it, they went back to the graveyard room and ripped up most of the remaining gravestones. These were laid into the rot - which turned out to be no more than four inches deep - to form the craziest of paving across the slime to the two exits.
Taking the right-most steps, they found themselves in a short corridor with a door on the left. Gorfang was going to treat this door with the same cavalier attitude as the last one, but Lynien stopped him. She'd spotted a trap, a pressure plate in front of the door. With enormous care, she dismantled it and disabled the mechanism, then waved the orc forward.
Gorfang opened the door, and paused for a second, surprised by what he saw. The room was grandly appointed as a throne-room; slightly mouldy carpets covered the floors, and tapestries in similar shape hung from the walls. Two massive jeweled brass candelabra lit the far end of the room, standing either side of a heavy throne of carved wood. Against the walls left and right stood four suits of plate armour and four heavy wooden chests, the latter thrown open to reveal heaps of softly glinting gold coin.
Four 
wraith-like incorporeal forms stood around the throne like guardians, moving slightly as if in a breeze. In the throne sat a gaunt, skeletal figure. Shreds of decayed flesh and skin (probably once black) hung on the bones, and a dull red glow smouldered in the eyesockets. The figure was dressed in magnificent but rotted clerical robes with Lolth’s symbols visible, a golden crown, rings and bracelets.
As he stepped into the room, the skeletal form lifted its right hand in an arcane gesture and pointed it at Gorfang. A tiny bead of red flame appeared at the fingertip, and Gorfang braced himself for a Fireball.
Suddenly, from behind he heard Méabh also casting. counterspelling the Fireball, which stuttered and vanished. Grinning, the orc sprinted up the hall, between the surprised wraiths before the latter could react, and leaped onto the throne, his booted feet crashing down onto the legs of the skeletal form, which broke as he landed. He launched a mighty swipe with the khopesh, and the heavy bronze blade smashed through the skeleton's body, shattering it and scattering broken bones around the throne. The skull bounced into a corner and rolled to a halt, the red glow in its' eyes fading. Gorfang blinked; he'd never fought a lich before, but he'd expected them to be tougher than that...
The four wraiths reacted rather belatedly and attacked the orc from all four sides, insubstantial arms reaching through his armour to chill his flesh with unnatural energies. Weakness threatened, but he threw it off again. Three of Eloy's dwindling stock of ghost touch arrows ripped into one of the wraiths, causing it to rear backwards and emit a faint, faraway scream. Gorgfang suddenly realized that Lynien was just outside the circle of wraiths, attacking them with her rapier. "Unusual to see you charging into combat first," he yelled. "Didn't want anyone else to be first to the treasure!" she called back. Her sword tore through the insubstantial wraiths, inflicting wounds.
Eloy shot again, and this time the wraith he hit vanished into a curl of vapour. Gorfang and Lynien accounted for the others, and quiet fell. The companions looked at each other, and each was thinking the same thing - that was never a lich! With great care they searched the 'throne room'.
The suits of armour were thin shells, held together by spidersilk ropes, worthless. The alluring chests of gold - chests of sand with barely a skim of coins on top. The candelabras were brass, studded with dress gems of little value, but they attracted the most attention because one radiated magic.
A little examination identified the specific gem from which the magic radiated. It was slightly larger and thicker than the others, appeared to have obscure runes carved into its' back face, and had a tiny moving twist of smoke faintly visible inside. The adventurers looked at each other. Could this be the phylactery? Unhidden, unguarded, concealed in plain sight? Cautiously, Méabh Identified it, and discovered that it was a phylactery. Carefully, Lynien prised the gem from its' brazen claws. She knew the feel of jewels - none better - this one felt cold, and heavier than it should.
"Smash it," suggested Eloy, "then when we kill her, that's it." Gorfang shook his head. "If she's in there now," he warned, "she'll try to take a new body... which means one of us." Méabh shelved the problem for later. She unpacked a small iron box that she carried, and packed the gem into it with some cloth padding.
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