The group decides to make camp inside of the cave system in hopes that they can recover after the battles with the spiders. Juno offers to take the first watch since she doesn’t need to rest to get any magic back. Slender makes a fire and rests next to it, and Mole curls up across from him into a lizard ball. Jadeth leans up against the caves next to the tunnels and falls asleep with her musket of warning, Thunderstick, in her arms. While Thunderstick will warn the group about danger, it makes no promises to warn them about other issues.
Juno sees Jadeth’s bag open, and she walks over to investigate when the coin purse begins to drag across the cave floor. A squeak and some frantic footsteps away are all she sees of the invisible creature, but since it doesn’t come back, she turns watch over to Mole. Mole sees something during their shift as well, and puts a foot down on the moving coin purse to hear yet another scared squeak. They warn Jadeth about the creatures as she gets up to take the final shift, but she fails to notice the creatures making off with Slender and Juno’s coin purses.
When Juno wakes up and sees her coin purse is missing, she hastily rushes down one of the tunnels. Mole, Slender, and Jadeth chase after her until Mole stops and checks for tracks. They follow the small lizard tracks up a ledge to find their coin purses up against some mine carts full of mythril. Slender casts his detect magic spell and sees the blurry outline of a creature. He fires his crossbow and hits it, and it shrieks that it was attacked in the Draconic language.
The cavern quickly fills with more invisible creatures that surround the group while they mutter back and forth in Draconic. Mole and Slender can understand them, and tell Juno not to attack. She’s frustrated, but ultimately listens and instead just notches a bolt in her crossbow.
The invisible creatures accuse the group of stealing from Ashokka, but Mole and Slender tell them it’s a misunderstanding. They try to make peace with the creatures, but they refuse to talk peace since Slender shot an arrow into one of them. Slender plays a song on his lute to demonstrate his healing magic, and offers to help the injured one. A small and badly injured lizard appears next to him, so he uses his healing spell to revitalize the kobold back to full health. After seeing that the group can be friendly, the remaining kobolds reveal themselves and begin to approach.
Juno calls Spike and huddles closer to Jadeth, still seeming wary of the kobolds. Mole wags their tail back and forth, and the kobolds all seem thoroughly fascinated by it. They all look at Mole with awe, and a few of them begin to wag their tails in a similar fashion. Juno calls out to Slender that they still need to deal with the kobolds since they are chasing the miners out of the cave. When Slender begins absentmindedly translating it, she yells at him.
Slender asks the kobolds why they are scaring the miners away, and the kobolds let them know that they’re afraid the risky mining practices of the dwarves will collapse the caverns. The leader of the kobolds steps forward to introduce himself as Richard. He gestures to the minecarts full of mythril ore, and lets them know of his intention to deliver it to the dwarves outside the cavern. Mole immediately lets them know they can’t leave the cave or risk getting vaporized. The kobolds don’t understand, stating that, while painful, the sunlight wouldn’t kill them. Mole informs them that it isn’t the sun, but rather a magical ward. They ask if the kobolds can talk to the dwarves to let them know about the dangers of their mining, and the kobolds agree to it.
One of the kobolds leads them back through the shifting tunnels and lets the group know he will wait for them to come back with the dwarf. When they come back, the kobold leads them to their village through a heavily booby trapped hallway. Upon entering the kobold village, the dwarf is able to perfectly understand the draconic the kobolds speak. This frees up the group, and some of the other kobolds offer a meal. Mole accepts, and they all wag their tails on the way towards the food storage.
Mole compliments their architecture, making all the kobolds bashfully thank them. They all stare at Mole’s powerful muscles and cool armor and daydream about someday being as powerful as them. Juno looks at Jadeth and asks if she’s as confused as Juno is. Jadeth admits that she’s usually confused.
At the food storage, Mole and Slender dig into a feast of salted fish. Jadeth leans up against one of the barrels, and she’s repulsed when the kobolds let her know it’s full of fermented dragon urine. Juno thinks for a moment before filling her flask with it, and Jadeth exclaims her disgust. Juno lets the group know consuming any part of a dragon may give you some of its power, so Mole pours themself some. They relay that it tastes like a sweet bread mead and is a bit fizzy. Jadeth finally gives in and fills a flask with it as well.
While Slender and Mole share tales of their thrilling victories with the excited kobolds, Juno walks down one of the corridors to find a small tunnel. She looks over her shoulder before crawling through it and finding herself face to face with an old and haggard looking Argos clone on the other side. He’s rocking on the ground and keeps muttering a single word: “Amare.”
Juno reaches out to try and help him, but he looks up at her and flinches away. He says: “she wouldn’t come back, i kept trying but i couldn’t bring her back!” before retreating further away into the cave to hide among some more kobolds. Juno waves at them and runs back to the group to bring Mole and Jadeth with her. She asks Mole to talk to the kobolds about what had happened to this Argos clone.
Richard tells them that the Argos clone had been down in the caverns since the time of his great-great-grand-brood, but he hardly ever speaks. He said that the clone is named Seven, and that he showed Richard’s family the ways of magic and invention. Jadeth approaches Seven, but again, Seven runs off and tries to hide down one of the tunnels. She asks Juno if the name “Amare” is familiar from her snooping in the tower, but Juno can’t recall. Jadeth makes a note to ask Argos about it.
The group heads back to the main part of the village to find Slenderbard sitting on a throne made of leather and bone. All the kobolds around him seem to be worshiping him. Juno lets him know they’re planning to head back to Argos’ tower and he laments that his time as the Kobold King is going to be so short lived. He gives one of the kobolds that was praising him a pat on the head, and follows the group out of the cave.
Back in Argosia, they exit the cave to find that the mining town seems deserted. All the dwarves are nowhere in sight, but the elf clones are still mulling around the market. Back at the tower, it seems as though the chambers that had been empty are now full of dwarven clones transition into elves.
They reach the top of the tower, and Argos thanks them for dealing with the danger in Mount Mythrin. Juno looks around the room to see that all the windows are now locked, and she hides further back in the group. Argos informs the group that resolving the issues in the mountains was the first step the group must take in assisting him, and lets them know that the true adventure and more difficult stage will be collecting supplies that he needs for a powerful spell. He mentions a number of rare items such as tears from a god, a horn from a devil, and the heart of a pure woman, and items from each of the elemental planes.
Slenderbard eyes where Jadeth’s horns are, and she snaps at him to forget about it. Juno has a stray thought about a pure woman and looks at Jadeth, and Argos shakes his head to let her know it’s nothing like what she was thinking of. Jadeth looks down at her chest, then over at Juno’s. She mutters her worry about one of them needing to be a virgin. Argos dismisses her with a scowl.
Argos lets them know they can find the tear of a god in the ruins near the great creator on the southern continent, and the heart of a pure woman under the temple of Thaldra. But they would have to find the horn of a devil and the elemental shards and medusa’s head on their own.
Mole lets them know that the closest place that they can find some help in learning about the elemental planes is their city: Yama’s Light. They inform the group that it’s a city full of magically powered automatons they call magicanicals. They also think back about their favorite gnome run bakery, and their tail wags as they daydream about the delicious sweets.
Before the group can leave, Juno mentions seeing Seven in the caves, and Argos tells them that the earliest clones tended to not function entirely as intended. He lets them know that if they were to bring Seven back to Argosia, he could repurpose him. Jadeth asks Argos about the name Seven mentioned: Amare. He goes from slightly smiling to looking infuriated within a moment. He growls: “What about her?” Jadeth backs away and holds her hands up, her eyes darting between him and the picture in the corner of the room. The group leaves before anything else can go wrong, but on their way down the elevator, Jadeth sees the room with the woman clone and tries to jump out to go talk to her.
She misses the jump and plummets down several stories before Juno uses her flying cloak to soar down and catch her a few feet from the bottom of the tower. Jadeth apologizes for being foolish. When she looks at Juno’s cloak, she remembers the one she stuffed in her bag. She lets the group know she plans to catch up and heads back up the lift to talk to Argos once more.
He doesn’t seem to notice her at first, with his eyes fixed on the picture of his former group. She approaches the picture less than stealthily. Without even looking at her, he asks, “what do you want now?” in an annoyed and slightly defeated tone. She winces and holds out the cloak for him to identify it. He does so, clearly annoyed at her for returning, and throws her back into the elevator beam with a spell.
At the bottom of the tower, the clone hands each of the adventurers the deed to their house and lets them know they can summon a door that will lead into the homes once a day at will. With that, they begin on the trek towards Port Darwin.