The adventure

The friends offloaded their valuable haul to Antone, and mixed up a few more potions from what they'd managed to find. Salva took some time to tinker with his gun once again, as he had been doing whenever they had free time, but this time his tinkering impinged onto the others because he announced that he'd like now to use arrows or quarrels, rather than the spiked stones that he shared with Margreet and Quentin for their slings.
They hunted some of the Savant's orbs in the spaceport and met some new types of androids outside again; android beserkers and gunners. They were quickly demolished by two Higardi patrols, Myles and the friends. They picked up the giant silver nugget from their room in He'Li's inn, and Quentin teleported them back to Rapax Rift, annoying Vi.
"I told you that I don't like being here!" she barked at them
"I'm sorry," admitted Quentin. "I just feel some sort of deep bond between us and I don't want to cut it."
The comment induced choking sounds from beside them.
They realised that there were parts of the rift that they hadn't explored, so they found their way over, and there, having killed two undead rapax corpses, they met the last prisoner in a separate cell, called Rafe. Rafe was much more sane than the others that they had freed. He explained that he was marked for sacrifice to the lava lord and that only the staff of ash could remove the mark; until then he could not leave the rift safely. Al-Sedexus holds all prisoner. It was his opinion that her cult had taken over the Rapax, and that from worshipping her they were now ruled by her. He didn't believe, or comprehend, when they told him that the Lava Lord was dead, but when Quentin produced the staff of ash he was overjoyed.
"Now unlock my cage," he asked, eagerly. "These bars are all that stand between me and my freedom."
His cage was controlled by a combination lock of three dials. Thankfully, each dial only had three options. They unlocked it on the 24th attempt.
Rafe was overjoyed, but stayed to teach them about the rift for a few minutes. He explained that the beckoning stone summoned Al-Sedexus' creature, and that only in his presence would the door to her chamber open. He explained that the Templar Rapax had managed to get the Rapax to march on the rest of Dominus, led by Al-Sedexus' desires and against sensible judgement.
He finally, however, grew too fearful of being caught by Rapax patrols or the lava lord himself, and fled, never to be seen again.

Salva's scanner allowed them to ambush 4 samurais and 8 veterans just coming out of one of the roughly-hewn corridors that led to the prisoners' area. Shu Ting placed a perfect blow through the head of the lead samurai, and in the tight corridor Quentin's magical ego whip caused bubbling blood to stream out of a number of muzzles. Margreet cast her quicksand spell, but it failed.
The samurais were too tough to be scared by a clean kill and a bit of magic, and magically webbed Karen and Quentin. 6 of the veterans, on the other hand, retreated towards the other end of the corridor. RFS and Shu Ting did a double-team move on one of the remaining veterans, and the combined effects of the samurais' magic missiles and whirlwinds killed RFS. Karen had quickly broken free of her webbing, and the chums were finishing off the samurais when the veterans returned. Quentin finished the last samurai off, and turned to reboot RFS leaving the others in a slog-fest of crunching blows, out of which there could only be one winner: Karen. Salva's regenerating stone was necessary twice, to heal their wounds from the samurais' magic, and during the fighting, and Quentin aided them with another spell from his expanding magical arsenal, this time leaching away their exhaustion, which was a concern for the energetic Shu Ting and RFS, and for Salva, whose stone sapped a lot of his stamina.
One of the veterans trapped Salva against the wall of the corridor and sliced him up. Moments before he expired Margreet healed him to new, but he fainted with the amazing changes he was undergoing, and the rapax killed him with two more blows. By this time only one other veteran was alive, and the juggernaught of the friends mowed it down, Vi caught Salva's mortal enemy with her mystic spear before anyone had a chance to close with it, and Quentin raised Salva from the dead once more.

They made their way back through the rift, encountering plenty more rapax. At first three veterans on their own provided mere practice at finding soft spots for Shu Ting, but then they ambushed a troop of 7 patrols and three initiates. The group gradually surrounded the friends, but died too quickly for it to be worrying. Further along they met another such patrol, and they were seen before they had managed to completely spring their ambush. Perhaps simply attacking the lead enemy, or perhaps showing unusual acumen, but probably from the acute mental haemorrhaging Quentin caused in them, they focussed their efforts on Shu Ting, but failed to hit the whirling bundle of death except on her swords or armour. The end of the fight consisted of inventing new ways to chop up rapax, their unconscious bodies lying in the corridor where they had fallen, helped by the mental blasting and the toxic cloud Margreet cast over them. Despite their attacks, Shu Ting even found time to aim the siege arbalest she carried in place of a crossbow well enough to rip a throat out of one of the initiates from a distance.

Once again burdened by looted metalwork they decided not to bother returning to Antone to sell it on, and entered the Rapax Courtyard.