Cutting off Andarial's Nose, Rats on a Rail

            Dream images were short and to the point, they had to be, I only slept about 30 to 40 minutes at a time. (Too humid and hot.)
      I was part of an adventuring group, sort of the standard wizard, cleric, fighter, thief pattern. as we approached a certain mountain pass, I indicated that the critters and encounters began to look familiar somehow. Then the six armed spider queen Andarial from Diablo II boiled up out of the Abbey catecombs. "That's it, I'm out of here."
      "But she's wearing the Mask of Harn, the item you swore to recover."
      "That's fine, but I have no armor to speak of, she's got an arm with a big-ass sword for each member of the party, and two to spare. If she's really like the Andarial of 'Legend' she spits poisen and has the killer ring of BO."
      "Fall back and let's make a plan."
      "I will take my little dagger and go far away." I said.
      "That's not a plan. We need you."
      "Right." I mad jabbing motions in the air with my little dagger. By this time the dream game had become fully immersive.
      We made our way back to the Abbey and lured Andarial outside (there were some significant differences from the video game.)
      I managed to sneak around behind her, climbed up a broken statue and, while she was spitting poisen at my companions, I jumped down on her back and managed to remove the mask as well as part of her nose. Racing into the Abbey catacomb hunkered down behind the mask, she didn't dare attack for fear of damaging it, I held my breath until I was out of her cloud of poisen breath. I wriggled around the catacomb finding the smallest crevice that I could squeeze through.
      I stashed the mask under some old funeral wrappings, and made my way deeper into the catecombs, looking for another way out.

      I came across a rail in a low hallway. I couldn't quite sit all the way up, so continued to crawl prone, having switched my dagger for a small two barrelled revolver. I didn't have it when confronting Andarial, too bad. It would certainly have evened up the odds a bit. I heard an odd sparking and whining from down the hallway to my left.
      Sparks approached along the rail embedded in the floor. I leveled the pistol and when I spotted the face of a large rat riding prone on some sort of sled I fired. Like most of my dreams, the shot went off into the darkness, without effect.
      I swore, and fired the second barrel, this time at the juncture of the cart and the rail.
      Much more successful. The cart sparked and rattled and jumped the rail. The rats leapt off the cart before it tumbled into the wall in front of them. I decided that discretion was in order and retreated, unfortunately missing a turn somehow, but ending up in a room with stairs out into the sunlight, and another small corridor leading deeper into the catecombs. I heard the sounds of Andarial fighting and shouting "Die! Maggots!" so started down the other passageway, until I saw several large unlead zombies shuffle past.
      "Time to rejoin the group, I guess."
      I reloaded my pistol and ran up the stairs out into the courtyard. My companions were racing from pillar to pillar, sniping at Andarial every time she would turn to face her most recent attacker. I could see that all three of my colleagues had somehow managed to stay alive, though they all looked much worse for wear. I raised my pistol, and looked down the barrels at the back of the demoness' head. I switched to the large scimitar in her top two arms, discharging both barrels. The sword snapped in half and flew in separate directions from her hands. She now had only four weapons, one for each of us. She spun towards me.
      "Hey, I wanted that sword!" the fighter shouted at me.
      I watched Andarial rear her head back and just before she snapped a potentially lethal loogie at me rolled back down the stairs. The poisen blast went sailing over my head, colliding with the zombies in the room below. They didn't seem to be bothered by it in the least. I heard Andarial shouting behind me, apparently my colleagues used my diversion to mount a rush from behind. I raced away from the zombies, finding myself directly behind Andarial at the top of the stairs. I jumped out with my little dagger and rode he body to the ground 15 feet below.
      The group shouted with joy at their success, until the zombies started falling on us from the platform.
      All the while the cleric and fighter are attacking the zombies they kept yelling at me to get the mask.
      I really didn't want to go into the rat infested darkness, though, until I knew there were no more zombies behind me, I grabbed two of Andarial's "Knives" more like short swords to me, and started helping make zombies into zombie remains.
      They wouldn't believe me when I told them there were rats on rails, and I needed to keep one of the swords at least. Finally I got so ticked that they weren't going to let me have any of the loot except the sword that I "broke" that I just went into the catecomb, made lots of shrieking noises, then took the mask back out behind them while they shouted down after me. I climbed down the far side of the platform and made my way back to the teleport pad without them. Yep.
      I turned the mask in, then spent almost a third of the award money on upgrading my armor and weaponry, and purchasing a little supply of cheap gemstones to give the rest of the group as their share of the reward.

      The dream shifted back to the tabletop, my fellow players were miffed at me, but the GM ruled that they had no way of knowing how much the award actually was, so had no basis for complaining about what they had from me. I hadn't claimed that I had gotten the mask by myself, though the GM pointed out that in fact, I had. So the whole group shared in the camp's festivities, and my companions made far more out of the small gems I'd shared with them than they would have anywhere else.
      I was smart enough to only show up in my new armor after we left for the next town.