Before continuing down into the next level, we decide to backtrack to what appeared to be a summoning circle so that Momen can examine it more thoroughly. Rittlin reminds us of the trinket he has with the soul of the Mind Flayer, which he then crushes and poses it the question of how to operate the summoning circle. It replies to him “telepathically” and then vanishes. Momen steps up and creates a telepathic bond between us and the crystal on the pedestal. All of a sudden, Prince Nicholas appears in the circle, visibly pissed off. Rittlin apparently just thought of him real hard and he appeared! He’s pissed and confused and asks us to send him back to Redlock, which Rittlin manages to do.
Kidnapping through teleportation is a pretty scary power to wield - we decide to rest up briefly as Momen continues examining the markings on the circle, and then attempt to use it to teleport the brain up to us so that we can hopefully gain some sort of advantage. Sure enough, the Elder Brain appears before us. Rittlin attempts to hit it, but his sword goes right through it and it cracks an incredibly unsettling smile before vanishing. We then bring Merric and Goras through the circle, making sure that they are physically present and questioning them for a bit before sending them back. I then suggest we try summoning one of us who is already here such as Rittlin, and he gets a message in his head with an option to accept and decline the summoning. He accepts and then teleports from his current position into the center of the circle. Momen tries the same but declines, and sure enough an illusory duplicate of Momen appears in the center of the circle which we’re unable to touch. He dismisses the duplicate, and Momen performs one last test of teleporting Rittlin from the summoning circle to in front of the minotaur in the other room, which works successfully. With the circle now being well understood, Momen instructs me to smash the crystal to put this thing out of commission. The crystal shatters, and a freaky writhing being falls out of the shards, hissing and steaming before dying. Momen uses the Auspicious Lens to identify it, and we then head back to the hole to continue downwards using the Rope of Climbing.
We drop onto a stone platform in a cavern surrounded by shallow water. A wall of force cuts off our quadrant of the cavern, and the Elder Brain begins bashing us with psionic energy. I seem to take the brunt of it, and gain the all-too-familiar feeling of my muscles freezing up as I get stunned. The brain’s psychic link overwhelms my mind, and I can feel through its senses as well as my own… Try as I might to think my way out of here, its grasp on my apparently feeble mind feels inescapable. Through the mental noise, I register crashes of psychic energy just narrowly missing me as I feel my body getting jerked around by what I assume to be Rittlin or Momen. Rittlin suddenly shakes me awake and I angrily activate the diadem, firing off a couple meteors in its direction. My head is pounding as pulses of energy erupt from me, and I get pinned in place once again momentarily before Momen gets me out this time.
I sprint forward and begin cutting into the brain… but now I’m in a wheat field on a bright sunny day, cutting the wheat with a scythe and getting ready to bail it… I blink and am no longer in the wheat field, once again confronted by the brain. The wall of force facing north has shifted to be facing west, and I skirt around the brain onto another stone platform to get out of the buzzing field of energy forming in the previous quadrant. I attempt to cut into it once again but Shifty seems to bounce off as the brain continues to screech telepathically. Momen does the same and Rittlin floats over to one of the higher platforms behind us just as the Elder Brain obliterates everything in the previous quadrant. Flashing in and out of stuns, Momen abandons the platform for higher ground as I get blasted with more psychic energy, but finally connect some hits with Shifty as well as my Diadem. Numerous arrows protrude from the brain, making it clear that Rittlin as been putting in work as another arrows embeds itself in the flesh.