“What’s our first stop?” the invader asks Avery, who is obviously the best person to have leading them at this particular moment, by virtue of knowing the town, not having been actively trying to kill it earlier, and having been in technical proximity to it the longest. Granted, the majority of that time had been in less than a conventional manner, but generally speaking things that the experiments ended up being involved in took steps away from convention hurriedly, as though the convention was a massive gathering of people tied together by a shared hobby, and a pandemic was ravaging the land.

“My house, I'm very hungry and haven’t eaten for… a while,” decides the necromancer, unsure about the exact time. She certainly hadn’t eaten while trapped in a gem. Whatever happened during that weird breakage may or may not have counted toward actual time. At least it had severed the spell connection.

“I second food,” chimes in one of the other invaders.

“Uh, we’re still banned,” adds Smashy.

“Go eat at an inn or something then,” retorts Avery.

“I’m not banned!” adds the invader helpfully.

“You should be.“

“Hey, I delivered your message for you!

“And then you tripled somehow.”

“Excuse me, we are far more stable personalities than the one you seem to have had the misfortune of being forced to interact with for any amount of time,” interjects the invader that hadn’t said anything yet.

“I’ve got more than enough personality for the both of you,” complains the original problem.

“That’s the issue, yes.”

“Maybe you two are fine then,” allows Avery.

“Oh good, I’m starving,” mentions the hungry one.

“You don’t need to eat,” states the third, matter of factly.

“Need, no. Want, yes.”

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Ham descends the staircase. They, the cultists, clearly wanted him to do that. It probably wasn’t a good idea to blindly do what cultists wanted, but what else was he going to do? The garden had a waist high fence, and the door was closed. Completely impassible.

There weren’t any torches, yet the passage was well lit regardless. It looked like there were just glowing orbs of magical light imbued into the walls at regular intervals. Ham was very tempted to just start breaking them, but unfortunately he happened to belong to one of the very few races that were actually inconvenienced by regular darkness. Instead, he just kept his pick close in case there looked to be a wall with cracks in it or something. Those were a pretty good indicator of a non-well-maintained secret passage that he would be able to break down.

That did leave well-maintained secret passages though, so after the slightest bit of additional thought he starts tapping on the walls casually with his pick as he walks. If any of them sound different, there would be an empty space behind them.

Once he comes up to the stone double doors blocking a forward progression, moments after the staircase ends at a level ground on smooth stone tiles, the tapping is rewarded. To the left, the wall was hollow. Rather than do something ridiculous, like try the door, Ham immediately resorts to violence, smashing the pick into the wall. That has practically no effect, so he charges the weapon with the raw energy of darkness and tries again, to a far greater effect. Specifically, the effect of having the actual weapon part not penetrate at all despite Ham’s confidence in his course of action, followed by him losing his grip on it and the pick shooting off into the door.

With a snap, the rightward, struck, stone door falls off its hinge and smashes into the ground, raising a cloud of dust.

Figuring he might as well go through the door since he had to go pick up the pick anyway, Ham carries through with hitting the wall with a bit of dark energy, shattering a nearby light source, and continues into the entrance.