Althos was quietly contemplating how to proceed. The deity was being unusually contemplative in considering how to best leverage his potentially incredible healing power. He had actually been thinking about that for the last minute, a minute during which the passageway the trio of adventurers and the soul orbs lurked in had been silent.

I want to secure Salifinos's servitude. I quite enjoy his company, and in securing his allegiance I could gain an intelligent, albeit biased, advisor in Infernius that I might be able to trust more than Tristan. At least a little bit more than Tristan.

His thoughts were pragmatic, and because of them, he was taking his time in deciding how to most easily secure the servitude of the imp.

This feels like something significant for the imp. If I'm too casual with how I proceed it might lose some of its weight in his mind.

Within a few moments, Althos began to develop the loosest version of a strategy that he could come up with when given such short notice. When he first moved to enact it he put as much gravitas into his voice as he could.

"Salifinos, as a suitable reward for your aid in escaping the lair of Paimon I shall render onto you something of equal value: the long lost poison of your species. Poison which was taken from your kind, unjustly and in an act that doesn't honor the values of Infernius."

Althos knew that he was speaking out of ignorance, but he hoped that the gravitas in his voice coupled with the power of saying what he suspected the imp wanted to hear would give him the needed persuasive power to persuade the imp to trust him.

The plan he hastily cobbled together came mostly from remembering the emphasis on order, hierarchy, and tradition that he vaguely recalled hearing Tristan speak about during her retelling of the legend of the first dark saint.

At that moment he wished he had paid more attention to the story. He would have to remember not to repeat that mistake in the future.

Althos noticed at that moment that Tristan appeared to be mildly entertained by his declaration. The fanatical half-devil had begun acting much more subdued since they entered the dungeon, and Althos knew that such a transformation felt dramatic and unnatural, but he'd had time to question her at a later date.

Althos stepped away from the imp and looked at the creature. He appraised Salifinos openly and opened his mouth to speak again.

"I am going to offer you one chance to say no to this gift. I will not judge your reasons for denying this gift, nor will I ask for them, but if you don't say no explicitly then I intend to recover and give to you what is rightfully yours."

His voice was majestic, accentuated by a potent mix of illusion and mind magic that he was mixing for no specific purpose but to aid in his overall persuasiveness. The imp didn't really stand a chance against Althos's voice, his feigned regalness, and his magic, and his agreement came swiftly.

"Althos... Please restore what was taken from my kind. If you can and you do, you will have performed an act of great kindness for me and demonstrating an ability to perform great things for all imps."

Salifinos's voice was filled with a quiet note of hope. It was an odd thing to hear in the quiet tremble of an imp's voice. His eyes were wide and he had clearly begun to fall for hope's allure.

Tristan watched this with a look of amusement on her face. Depending on how this went the young half-devil could predict her neutral but hopeful feelings with respect to the deity whose mysterious powers seemed to continue growing, might eventually become an open obsession.

Can he actually do it? If he can... honestly even if he can't he's acting intelligently in this situation. It might be worth eventually tutoring him in the ways of the perfected approach to evil.

Her own thoughts were a callback to an ancient text her father was once obsessed with. A book that significantly influenced her own life.

Althos, after hearing the subtle creep of hope in Salifinos's voice, wanted what happened next to be dramatic, so he spent a few moments pretending to gather energy. He took deep breaths and looked like he was concentrating on compressing the appropriate energy.

When he felt that he had done enough acting the deity outstretched his hands towards the imp, and targeted the creature in his mind. Then he wordlessly activated the spell. He felt the 10,000 points of energy rush out of him and towards the imp he was targetting.

When the spell took effect the power of the spell overwhelmed Althos's field of view and massive notifications became all he could see.

Salifinos felt the spell's power spring up not from the godling but from deep inside of a long-forgotten part of him. A part of him that contained the powers of the first imps.

Within seconds Salifinos was overwhelmed by the feelings the spell invoked in him, feelings of dark solidarity and a corrupted version of hope that hoped that he might be able to exact revenge against the most ancient enemy of the imps: verminlords.

The feeling was powerful and it overwhelmed the tiny extraplanar's senses. He went from seeing Althos and the passageway they were in, to seeing nothing but bright redness. The redness was the same shade of red as Salifinos himself. And it was growing in intensity with every passing moment.

Eventually, the color became so intense that Salifinos had no choice but to shut his own eyes or else risk impairing his vision and seeing everything through a red filter forever.

Salifinos's connection to the powers once possessed by his ancestor manifested in a peculiar way.

When Althos targeted the creature and activated the spell Althos's eyes changed. They went from their heterochromatic state to an odd state of milky white orbs like the deity was suddenly struck blind.

And in front of Althos, Salifinos himself was suddenly surrounded by a thick column of red light, that rendered the creature nearly invisible. But all Althos could see was a vast notification about the mighty spell Althos had just used.

[LEGENDARY SPELL CAST: VESTIGAL RESURRECTION.

TARGETED CREATURE: SALIFINOS THE IMP.

VESTIGAL TRAITS: COMPOUND EYES, VENOMOUS TAIL, SHAPESHIFTING, TELEKINESIS.

PLEASE SELECT WHICH TRAIT(S) YOU'D LIKE TO RESURRECT.]

Althos was intrigued by all of the options. There was a part of him that was tempted to select each of the options in front of him, but he knew better than to do that.

When Salifinos is mine... I may experiment more with these options. Though after seeing the surprising diversity present here I'd love to see what a creature like Tristan's vestigial traits might be given her status as half-devil and half-something-else.

After allowing his mind to wander for a moment Althos snapped back to the present and made his selection.

[VENOMOUS TAIL SELECTED. INITIATING RESURRECTION.

THE PROCESS WILL BE COMPLETED IN

TEN...

NINE...

EIGHT...

SEVEN...

SIX...]

After a few moments, the process was complete. The column of bright red light that surrounded Salifinos began to vanish, centimeter by centimeter.

While in the column of light Salifinos felt his ancestors' might flowing through his veins. He could feel their power and the diversity of their talents present deep inside of him. He could even hear the faintest echoes of their whispers.

The light that surrounded him and forced him to keep his eyes shut seemed to whisper to his mind, filling him with a faint awareness that he had other vestigial traits. He wasn't told what those traits were, but the knowledge that they existed was now seared into his brain.

Once Althos made his choice to resurrect Salifinos's venomous tail, the imp felt the light's heat intensify.

Seconds ago the light had been the same temperature as the rest of the passageway, but now in the time it took for the magic to resurrect the selected trait, the light warmed significantly. The area the effect was the most pronounced was Salifinos's tail.

Salifinos hissed in pain as he felt his tail heat up as if the extremity was on fire. He couldn't see it, but the heat of the magic light was actually physically modifying the tail, causing parts of it to melt away entirely.

The tail was being restored to the state such tails were in during the age of Salifinos's ancient ancestors. Entire chunks of it fell to the ground behind the imp, and after Salifinos endured a minute of the invasive heat, the imp's tail was transformed.

Salifinos didn't realize at that moment, but his tail was now lighter and instead of ending in an awkward hammer-like nub, it ended in a stinger that was thoroughly filled with a newly revived and active venom gland located near the tip of the tiny menace's tail.

When the heat began to fade, so too did the light that surrounded Salifinos. But not before he received an amazing notification.

[ALERT: YOU'VE GAINED A NEW SKILL: VENOMOUS STRIKE.

SKILL DESCRIPTION: LASHES OUT AT A NEARBY OPPONENT USING YOUR VENOMOUS TAIL.

COST: 15 STAMINA POINTS.

COOLDOWN: CAN ONLY USE THIS ATTACK EVERY 10 SECONDS.

NOTE: THIS IS AN UPGRADABLE SKILL WHERE EVERY LEVEL-UP BRINGS WITH IT A LOWER COST AND COOLDOWN TIME AS WELL AS STRONGER VENOM.

FOR IMPS THIS IS ALSO A LEGENDARY SKILL. ONCE IT'S FINISHED BEING CONSTRUCTED BY THE SYSTEM YOU WILL GAIN AN ADEQUATE FEAT FOR IT. CONGRATULATIONS!]

Salifinos mentally read the notification and clicked it away. He only just began the task of processing the weight of what had just happened, as at last the imp opened his eyes and found himself face to face with the godling.

Althos waited for the light to fade from around the imp. As it began to dissipate he kept his eyes where he suspected the imp's tail would first appear.

Within a matter of moments, the light faded enough to allow Althos to peer at the tail of his imp. What he saw wasn't a hammer-like ending to the tail of the tiny devil, but rather a wicked syringe-like extremity.

The imp's tail had tremendously changed in the wake of the spell. The tail of the imp used to be the same shade of red as the creature's skin, but now the flesh of the tail was a dark blue that contrasted sharply with the shade of red of the imp. The new coloration went from the base of the imp's back to the syringe-like tip of the tail.

The tail now no longer ended in a neat looking but obviously weak hammer-like tip, but rather ended in a cruel-looking imitation of a proboscis. Much like a proboscis of a mosquito, this appendage promised to penetrate the skin of any opponent of the imp in the future.

Towards the beginning of the thin needle that promised to wickedly pump venom into any victims of the imp's wraith, there was a part of the imp's tail that visibly pumped blood and dark blue venom through the rest of the tail. Each beat of the odd organ sent pulses of venom and blood towards the rest of the organ.

Althos was satisfied with this, and when the final bits of red light dissipated Salifinos found himself face to face with a smug-looking deity. Althos was grinning at the creature and opened his mouth to speak. His voice was still empowered by gravitas and by a combination of magical energies.

"Well hello there Salifinos. Are you pleased with what you've received?"

The imp smiled at the deity but was silent. The grin was filled with pride and joy, an unusual emotion on a lawful evil creature, but one that Althos didn't hate. He could feel that the creature's respect for him had significantly increased due to his actions.

What Althos himself felt wasn't bad either. He quite liked seeing the expression of joy on the imp's face.

Within a few moments, the trio of adventurers was walking again, heading deeper and deeper into the tomb. Althos was processing the underwhelming but still positive response he had received from Salifinos in response to his actions.

The imp hadn't responded with words. Instead of responding with words, the imp sent out a clear mental message to both of his allies.

[I am... still processing that my tail is venomous. Allow me a bit of time before I am to speak again. I am filled with an almost otherworldly amount of joy at knowing that my tail is like that of my ancestors and I don't believe I could properly express my feelings if I am made to speak as I am at the moment.]

Althos had respected that and urged his companions forward. Now a few minutes had passed and with each passing step, they strode deeper and deeper into the tomb.

After 20 minutes of marching and exploration passed in relative silence, the trio of adventurers reached a new area.

When the trio drew nearer to the depths of the tomb the path before them changed. Instead of coming across a metal door that'd require soul-orb intervention, this time they came across a flight of stairs that descended into darkness after about twenty-five steps.

The very top of the flight of stairs was illuminated for them by a sourceless light that seemed to emit from the very walls themselves. It was a colorless light that didn't filter what laid out before them in any singular shade but rather revealed it plainly.

Althos didn't hesitate, nor did the deity ask for insights from his companions, he just took a single step onto the flight of stairs, tested its sturdiness and when satisfied he continued descending down the stairs. His companions followed him, and they all plunged into the darkness as a unit.

Althos's decision to continue moving was influenced by the fact that he could see in the darkness and had seen that what was waiting for them was merely more steps, not any devious traps or monstrous foes.

When Althos took his second step his tremor-sense power activated and gave him a clearer understanding of what laid out in the direction he was traveling in. At the bottom of the flight of stairs, a few dozen yards ahead of the trio lurked nothing.

Like much of the dungeon, the path before them seemed to contain no monsters. It was the same smooth sailing they had experienced for most of the dungeon.

Behind them the floating skull that had been tracking their progress for its master, the true lord of the dungeon, grinned slightly. It and its master were the only ones who knew about the creature that waited for them in the deepest depths of the dungeon itself.

It knew they were getting closer and closer to the depths of the tomb and to the creature that would be quite pleased to see them.

The first time Althos ever encountered a trap intended to be used against him what ended up saving both him and his ally's time was his supernatural ability to peer through darkness.

At the bottom of the stairwell Althos and his allies walked down there was a panel that was built into the floor. This panel was a specially designed panel that would sink into the floor if stepped on. Althos noticed it as the adventuring party drew nearer to the bottom of the stairwell. Althos made the wise choice to warn his allies about the trap.

"There's a weird panel in front of us. At the bottom of the stairwell, just beyond the last step. Instead of stepping on it just hop over it."

When the deity himself reached the final step of the long stairwell he leaped past the panel. He was followed by Salifinos who merely floated over the panel. The last person to join the duo was Tristan, who like Althos deftly leaped over the panel.

The trio was approaching the dungeon-heart. And in doing so approaching the master of the tomb.