After Dave the Average's mother danid runs out to greet Dave, she asks to be introduced to his friends. They all introduce themselves, and she expresses her approval that he's not hanging out with those two necromancers anymore.
She then leads the way down the tunnel she came out of. It is dark, with no torches to light it, and it slopes slowly downwards. Eventually, the party arrives at a great stone gate. Dave recognizes the writing on it. It's a collection of poetry in orcish, each poem in a small, artistic unit, like in Arabic calligraphy. The poems lower down on the gate appear older, more worn. They all follow related themes of war, conquest, and power. However, as Dave's eyes move up the wall, he sees that the poems slowly change topic as they grow more recent. The ones at the top of the gate center around peace, and love, and community. Dave knows this is the civilization of Folendemkar.
Guards at the gate ask the party to leave their weapons safely with them during their visit. Most members of the party hand over their weapons. Lord Cornelius convinces the guards that he's an old man and Professor Quigley is his grandson, so they don't take his staff. Dave manages to conceal one dagger on his person.
Things don't go so well for Halt, however. He is mistaken for ken, apparently a criminal wanted by the authorities of Folendemkar for killing their leader. Halt in a panic looks towards the real Ken, but sees her face has changed in some sort of disguise attempt. He shoots an arrow at her and kills her.
At this point, guards quickly grab Halt, shackle his arms behind his back, and drag him down a side tunnel. Everyone else is ushered down a different tunnel to a small, cell-like room for questioning. Halt is thrown into a dark cell. He manages to get his shackled arms out in front of him, but at the cost of breaking his right wrist.
In the interrogation room, a guard asks the party how they came to ally themselves with Ken. Confused, Dave tries to explain that they just met Ken on the surface a short time ago, and that she was killed by Halt just moments earlier. The guard chalks up the name "Halt" to just more of Ken's trickery, but decides that the party was not aware of her identity and didn't wittingly help her get into Folendemkar. They are free to go.
Fluffy Fluffy and Corny, however, decide to go searching for Halt. Corny attempts to turn Fluffy invisible, and succeeds, but he is immediately identified by the guards as a "magician", and falls unconscious as a side effect of the spell, turning Fluffy visible again.
While the guards are distracted with Corny, however, Fluffy manages to follow them unnoticed as they drag him down various tunnels towards his cell. But then the guards turn and notice her, yelling something about it being the tree rat they saw with the party earlier. She dodges around the one nearest to her as he slashes his sword down into the ground all around her, and she leaps onto the shoulder of the one by the door, hoping to springboard from there through the small barred window into Corny's cell.
However, she is too slow. The guard slams his hand down on top of her as if he were swatting a fly, and she is plunged into darkness.
She sees, in the distance, a faint light. Nothing else is around her. No ground, so sky, no air. She walks towards the light. As she approaches, it begins to take the form of a huge orc, sitting in a massive throne. (what actually happens here?????).
Corny, despite being unconscious, had been hard at work, however. From his cell, he dreams of his father, standing with him on a balcony, (details????). But then, in his slumber, he senses that Fluffy is about to pass into the world of the dead. He reaches back in time and opens up a portal by the orc guard's head, right before he squashes Fluffy on his shoulder. He shoots his hand out and pushes Fluffy into his cell, confusing the guard and landing her right next to Corny's past, unconscious body.
The guards are confused, but decide to keep them both in that cell as they round up the rest of the party and drag them into their own cells.
Everyone sits in darkness now, alone with their own thoughts. Fluffy is alive, but each person present in the dungeons cannot shake the feeling that she is dead, and that they distinctly remember exactly how it happened.