They ran for the back corner of the church as Dromm started leaping through the broken windows and clambering down the piles of detritus.  A door led to a hallway with rooms off to the sides.  They limped and sprinted down to the end and found another door, big and solid, at the end.  Isiah yanked on the handle but it refused to open, stuck on rusty hinges.  Marisol had found a small velvet sack, put the Sunfire Gem inside it, and was tying it to her belt as Isiah worked the door.  Kaspar charged past them and pulled the handle.  It started to open and he handed his swords to Isiah, grabbing the edge with both hands.  With a yell he pulled the entire door out of the door jamb and let it slam down on the stone floor. 

Cley came up next and limped through the doorway, sword ready.  Caelian and Miah were coming up behind him casting their cantrips as Dromm ran down the hall at them.  They all filed into the next room with the hallway fully engulfed in fire and Dromm still forcing their way through, only to end up a charred mess at the end of the hall.

The room was twenty feet square, mostly brick and stone, with a rotting wood staircase leading up around the walls.  Above them loomed the belltower, one hundred feet straight up with a few ropes hanging down in the middle.  Spaced evenly along the sides of the tower were small windows letting in barely enough light to see.  Everything had the worn and broken look to it that they’d come to expect.

Isiah and Marisol both leapt for the first step.

Cley stood in the middle of the room, looking up.  “So many stairs,” he muttered.

“Then we’ll get to the top of them,” said Miah, standing close and pushing him gently.

“Get to the top,” he answered, taking the first step.

“Then we get the sloop,” she said.

Cley smiled.  “Get the sloop.”

“Then we look for Tem.”

Cley’s smile faded as he made his best speed up the stairs.  “Miah...”

“Not negotiable,” said Miah, casting her light cantrip on the top of her quarterstaff.  It lit up the area around them bright white.

Smoke was getting drawn into the room and drifting up past them.  Isiah was rounding the second level and paused.  “Marisol and I will get to the top and secure the sloop.  Everyone else make the best speed you can and prepare for something bad to happen.”  He started running up the stairs.

Marisol was just ahead of him.  “What do you mean something bad?”

“Something bad always happens right about now.”

As they reached the third flight everyone heard, and felt, a deep booming like they’d heard back at the farm.  Isiah looked out the next window and stopped.  “Like that!”

Outside, coming from the unseen edge of the island, was another spider-shaped eldritch monstrosity with a mass of tentacles rising up out of its back.  This one was at least a hundred feet tall and it was stomping on buildings and lashing out with tentacles; picking up Dromm, aurochs, and anything else it came across.

Each of them paused slightly at the window in disbelief.  Isiah and Marisol were almost at the fourth level.  Miah and Cley were next on the second level.  Caelian and Kaspar were right behind them.  

They were all so intent on looking out the windows that they did not see a gaseous form seeping through the cracks in the brickwork on the first level and coalescing on one of the landings.

But they all heard the creaking of wood when Shutan assumed his normal form beneath them.  Isiah and Marisol were rounding the stairs up to the fifth level and saw his pasty white, hulking form in the shadows beneath the others.  Isiah shouted a warning but the ogre punched up through the weakened wood and grabbed Caelian by the ankle.  He ripped her back down through the hole in the stairs and slammed her into the landing beside him.

Kaspar shouted and dropped through the hole.  He dug both his swords into Shutan’s back as he landed a stairstep behind him.  The ogre whirled and smashed a backhanded fist into the fighter’s face.  Kaspar tumbled down to the other corner, losing his shortsword onto the floor below.

Marisol raised a fist and fired a radiant blast that hit Shutan in the shoulder.  She could see that he was completely healed from their previous fight, although his clothing was hanging around him like charred rags.  All the rest of them were wounded and tired and just worn down by the damn mists.  This fight wasn’t going to be pretty.

The ogre leapt over Caelian as she swung her mace and missed him.  With another bound he jumped up and grabbed the stairs above him, in front of Miah and Cley.  His massive, muscular arms flexed and he smoothly pulled himself up over the railing and onto the third level.  Miah pointed a ray of frost at him but it barely grazed his arm.  

Isiah ran down some steps and grabbed the railing by his side.  With one hand he swung himself out into the open and back towards Shutan beneath him.  He whirled his shortsword and scored a hit in the ogre’s side, landing on the stairs just ahead of him.  At the same time, Cley pushed himself up and forward.  His longsword flashed in the light of Miah’s quarterstaff and stabbed Shutan’s leg.  From below them, they heard Kaspar helping Caelian get to her feet.

Shutan’s fist began to glow with green eldritch energy and he swung a quick uppercut that caught Isiah in the midsection and blasted him back against the bricks.  The thief dropped his sword and crumpled over in a daze.

Marisol leapt out into the open space and grabbed one of the ropes.  She swung out and around, behind Shutan and right over Cley’s head.  Her foot lashed out and smashed into the ogre’s face.  As she let go of the rope, the bells above them started clanging.  The monk landed on the railing and immediately jumped up out of the ogre’s reach.  She landed next to Isiah and reached down to help him.

Outside, several blocks away, the giant eldritch horror stopped and slowly turned towards the sound of the bells.

Cley stretched out and stabbed Shutan in the back.  He could see the twin slashes Kaspar had given him starting to heal over.  Behind him, dart shaped sigils on Miah’s quarterstaff glowed and she fired four magic missiles into the ogre’s back.  Kaspar and Caelian, a level below, ran up and around to come in behind Miah.

Shutan seemed to ignore the damage from behind him.  He pounded up four steps at a time to close in on Marisol and Isiah.  “I’m going to break you open and gargle with your blood!”  He swung a mailed fist and Marisol jumped straight up and kicked him in the face.  She landed, dodged another fist, and punched the side of the ogre’s knee.  Shutan grunted and growled, “Say good bye to the bright, Sparkler!”

The entire stairwell plunged into pitch black darkness.  Miah’s light was gone, the daylight from the windows was gone, the glow from the fire in the lower hall was gone.  Everyone started shouting for someone to do something else. The bells above them kept clanging. 

Marisol was hit by a giant fist and then again.  Isiah heard her cry out and felt her stumble into him as he stood.  The stairs creaked loudly as something moved past them.  “He’s going up!” shouted Isiah.

It took a moment for them to realize that Shutan had cast a magical darkness inside the tower.  Isiah steadied Marisol and reached out to make sure the stone wall was on his right.  Then he started up the stairs with the monk right behind him.  Below them he heard Cley’s voice casting a spell.  

The paladin turned his longsword point downwards, using the crest on the hilt as his arcane focus to call up Dispel Magic.  When he released it, the lights from before came back suddenly.

Cley, Miah, Caelian, and Kaspar were bunched together on the third level.  Isiah and Marisol were up on the fifth level, on the other side of the stairwell from them.  Shutan loomed directly in front of them, already swinging his fists.

Isiah took a punch in the face and almost fell over the railing.  Marisol was hit in the side and pushed up against the wall.

Miah shot a ray of frost, but not at Shutan.  She froze the stairs beneath his feet.

The old wood splintered and cracked apart under the ogre’s weight.  Shutan reached for the railing but it shattered like ice and he fell out into the middle of the belltower.  A flailing hand grabbed both ropes and used them to steady himself.  The bells clanged louder.  Then the ropes ripped free from their attachments above.

Shutan fell head over heels through the air all the way to the bottom.  

Isiah and Marisol were already running up to the sixth level.  The thief shouted to his sister, “Hit the bells!”

The rest of them were moving up, slowly but surely.  Miah cast another ray of frost straight up into the smoky haze where she could just see the huge bells and the structure that moved them.  All the wood shattered and the giant brass bells came tumbling down.  “Get back!” was all Miah had time to shout.

The bells and their metal housings fell and smashed and tumbled and ripped their way down the center of the belltower.  The railings were torn away on almost every level and a thunderous, discordant clonging of metal and stone signaled they’d hit bottom.  

They had no time to think.  A heavy pounding step and the breaking of brick and wood came from just outside.  “It’s here!” shouted Cley.  “Move, move, move!”