The team had found the slaver camp blocking the path up to the mouth of the Skedelberg entrance. They had scoped out the fenced in camp and counted about two dozen slavers along with three men who were likely leaders. Under the cover of darkness, the group attempted to breach the wall and sneak through the camp as quietly as possible.

At the fence, Penelope used her bolt cutters to open a small area for the group to crawl through near the camp’s dump site. The entrance was dangerously close to a guard tower, but it was the closest path to the trail. Malcolm went first, carefully picking his way through the camp dump until he could get to a concealed corner behind a shack. As he went belly first through the muck, he felt a slithering creature pass by and heard the snap hiss of a snake, but wasn’t bitten. Before he could warn anyone, Penelope was crawling into the camp.

She also heard the hiss of a snake, but this one latched on to her right forearm, causing an immediate yelp of pain as the snake’s venom pumped into her skin. She screamed as the wound began to blister and swell. The nearby guard turned on his light, shining it down on Penelope’s writhing form. Archie, attempting to be helpful, called out, “look, an escaping slave!” However, his attempt to simultaneously put on a Dutch, German, and British accent at the same time caused his message to be garbled and alert the guard even more. The guard began cranking the siren on the tower, waking up the camp.

As Penelope rolled on the ground holding her arm in pain, Malcolm quickly activated his new Dragon’s breath flamethrower, dousing the guardtower. The guard was injured, but ducked behind the cover of the tower’s wall before being completely engulfed. The tower itself, however, quickly went up in flames. Meanwhile, Eleanor scrambled through the fence to apply some first aid to Penelope’s arm, tourniquetting the arm to try to prevent the venom from spreading. Iris took aim at one of the guard rushing to the tower and winged him with a bullet from her pistol, while Archie also raced to Penelope to examine her wound.

Archie quickly surmised that Penelope had been bitten by a puff adder. He administered the polyvalent antivenom, though it was sheer luck that Penelope drank the two vials of serum in the right order. The pain didn’t subside, but the disgusting taste of the antivenom at least took her mind off of it.

As the camp woke up and began reacting to the fire, the group worked their way along the side of the fence, leaping across the small stream bisecting the camp, with varying degrees of success. They gathered, hidden, under the next guard tower, all except for Iris who was still engaged with the lone guard who she had shot. As the rest of the slavers lined up for a bucket brigade to try to put out the fire, the guard saw Iris climb through the fence and went to attack her, firing his shotgun but fortunately missing. Unfortunately, his attack drew the attention of Arno, one of the slaver leaders, who ran over to Iris and slashed at her with his knife.

Eleanor, seeing her friend in danger, ran back to help, almost stumbling through the creek, but managing to shoot Arno in the leg. A superficial flesh wound, but it did make the man realize he was dealing with more than one intruder. Unfortunately for him, Malcolm also returned to help Iris, and his M1911 put a bullet through Arno’s skull before the other man could do so much as blink. Mal then fired a second shot, taking out the guard who had been harassing Iris. The three then regrouped as Penelope worked to cut open the back of the fence.

With the burning guard tower as a distraction, the team made their way through the fence and up the trail into the mouth of the Skedelberg.

Inside, they discovered a large cavern, about two hundred feet wide and a hundred feet deep, partially collapsed. Iris and Malcolm both discovered worked stone bricks, ancient and weathered, and Archie found a stone floor with a slight breeze coming up from the cracks. After embarrassingly trying to pry up the bricks, Archie let Malcolm try, resulting in an easy opening of a narrow hole leading down into darkness.

Archie quickly tried to climb down with a rope, but fell and hit his head hard on the ground. He found the hole led to a circular chamber about forty feet wide with a strange, bowl shaped floor covered in dust. The others were lowered down by Malcolm, who then climbed down easily. As they took in the room, they saw an opening about fifteen feet above them, a sort of upside down arch, and Malcolm attempted to boost Archie up into it, only for Archie to fall and injure himself even more.

Penelope stepped forward with her Web Caster, using the device to create a ladder up to the opening. Everyone climbed up, finding themselves in a strange, U-shaped corridor. At the other end was another opening, this one high above an inverted vault, like a cathedral, but upside down. The group realized they were, in fact, in an ancient inverted building. At the bottom of the arched “floor” was a square pit, like a reversed church spire. The group climbed down to the floor and Archie volunteered to be lowered into the pit.

After about fifty feet, Archie reached bottom. There he saw a small, slanting passage. He climbed into it, making it about twenty feet before it suddenly pitched downward steeply, sending him sliding through moss and lichen. Malcolm managed to just barely catch the end of the rope, keeping Archie from continuing downward, but not before Archie saw that the passage separated into two. Malcolm hauled Archie back to the bottom of the pit shaft and the team considered how to proceed in the strange ancient ruins…