30 When the coast was clear, the group reassessed their maps, and the halfling disappeared once more to look ahead for them On his journey, he came to the central roadway leading to the city’s center, but it was patrolled by too many constructs to reasonably deal with In addition, several strange, metal carts had been abandoned on the road with cages containing cattlelike creatures the halfling referred to as aurochs The aurochs, from what he could gather, were stuck without help in the cages and might die if left unattended So, the decision was made to use the beasts as a distraction to get past the constructs Loving this plan, the halfling flitted off and proceeded to deftly unlock six cages without being seen Handling the animals as he’d been trained, the halfling was able to rile them into a stampede and directed them at the constructs, who were unprepared for such a force As they ran at the androids, the aurochs battered into other cages, freeing more of their number and building strength before crashing into a line of constructs who began forming when they finally noticed the disturbance Standing for a moment to admire their handiwork, the party almost missed their opening, but finally headed around their preoccupied enemies Unfortunately, one of the constructs did see them and gave chase It was dealt with quickly enough, and Gideon drew its power in quickly to avoid alerting more to their presence Now that he’d absorbed another of the consciousnesses, the android noticed two new entities trying to hide among the blue people in his head They were imps, demons from another plane who were causing all of this trouble Quickly, the battle augur told his friends of this realization as mentally he slammed the imps into poofs of smoke and watched them dissipate Aware now of the threat that Manos faced, the party changed their plans a bit Instead of just getting to the portal to send Gideon home, they would first use it to draw the demons away from the constructs, saving the city and preventing further harm At least, that was the working theory With their new goal in mind, they found the nearest staircase leading down further into the city’s center and beelined for the portal In the underground passageways leading to the city’s core, the group encountered a couple of functioning constructs, who were about to help them when Gideon drew too close and the imps he thought were dead leaped from him into them With the androids now a danger to them, the party was forced to dispatch them, returning the imps to Gideon’s consciousness, where they tried to overtake him, but failed once more Unfortunately, before they could finish the last one off, it set off an alarm that would call the many forces above back to the portal to protect it from intrusion