Silver Insanity

Stewart is able to get the door open without triggering an explosion.

The scene on the far side is... Well illuminated, to start with. The spiderwebs are on fire. So is the ceiling.

At the center of the devastation is a withered, dried out husk of a demon, all gangly limbs and claws. It's also dead. It appears to have some minor physical injuries - a few scratch marks, really; the actual cause of death is not readily apparent.

For those with relevent knowledges, this looks like the same type of demon that Arthos last tried to summon - perhaps it's been stuck in the lab since then?

Thirwin walks over and pokes the demon, "Well, that's something you don't see every day. Usually when you have something powerful enough to do this... it's strong enough to choose a smarter way." He makes sure he picked up the amulet and that it's in his bag. "The guardian I met could have done this."

Stewart sighs and reaches out his hand. "Yes, the demon is interesting but..." His bird construct drops a rod into his hand, which he then points down the hallway and activates.

Aurora takes in the appearance of the demon in a quick glance, and then fades back into visibility with an audible snort of exasperation. Far be it for her to stop someone from triggering traps. Stewart has more skill than she'd expected, but she's not met anyone yet who could do more than match her for skill with unknown magical items and even those were incredibly rare. Still standing a few inches above the floor, she noiselessly stalks through the door on the far side of the room.

The rod, after a few applications, is adequate to extinguish the flames.

And with the webbing more or less gone and the spiders injured and demoralized, the rats have chosen this opportunity to launch a strong offensive. Both sides in the conflict ignore the lot of you; you're all clearly too big to matter.

Thirwin smirks, looking at the underground battle, "Do we have a side?" He asks.

As Aurora scans the new room, she calls over her shoulder, "Say Thirwin, you said we'd quite likely face more beings similar to that guardian, any more information you have about it would be useful... Abilities, appearance, so on and so forth."

Thirwin chants a little, perhaps inspired by the summoning circle, and calls forth a handful of dire rats to help cleanse the spiders.

After a short pause he realizes he was asked a question, "Well, it was big, fast, and infused with levels of negative energy I have never seen before. It was like a displacer beast, only... each hit carried with it the force of a vampire. It was like being swamped by a horde of them."

Aurora mutters something under her breath about religion and subtlety. "Appearance, Thirwin, did it have tentacles or was it decomposed past that point? For all we know these things may be proactive."

"Oh, it didn't have tentacles, but it did attack with six legs, and was not where it appeared to be. I doubt they're proactive, the first one had been around since the third age. It was quite insane when I first met it. Incapable of comprehending where it was, what it was guarding. In fact, I don't know why it would have stayed there..." He pauses and looks at the pouch, "They might be drawn to the symbol. Or maybe just the original. After all, the guardian wouldn't like demons, it did serve the sun god."