You continue to traverse the Hellwasp Desert towards the volcano known as The Ruins of Embrassil, to steal back a painting of Pyria, the Queen of Ashes from her brother Othimarun, the Red Vulture.
On your way, you cross paths with poisonous geysers and two friendly fire-fey creatures on their way to Mount Ashcloud. Coming closer to the volcano, you encounter a group of magma-dwarfes on a cart, pulled by some fire drakes. The bandits demand you to hand over your valuables, but you decline and are able to make them retreat after the dragon roar is being heard from Embrassil.
As the enormous red dragon circles around the smoking caldera, you argue a bit what to do now and then decide to hurry towards the big staircase at the foot of the volcano. Unfortunately, the dragon sees you and descends towards the entrance. You run inside and notice that the hallway beyond the giant-sized entry-pillars is collapsed. Trapped, you turn around as the light vanishes and the big toothy maw of Othimarun peeks inside, unleashing a wave of fire breath.
While all of your mounts instantly die, some of you are able to somewhat shield yourself, lowering the impact of the burning wrath. Drem rolls into a small halfling-sized tunnel while the rest of you, led by Egbert attempt to calm down the hungry beast. You explain that you have been sent by the Queen of Ashes to retrieve a certain painting, but that you are otherwise not aligned with her. With some good twisting of words, Egbert convinces Othimarun to listen to his performance. The skilled bard plays a wonderful death metal song with screams of terror and panic, which the dragon seems to enjoy quite a bit.
Happy is able to deceive the dragon into letting the rest of the group live as well, since you are a group and necessary to inspire the bard. The dragon adopts you all as his eternal servants and invites you into his lair where you all shall play songs until it gets boring - which is when you are probably being eaten or roasted. Meanwhile, Drem explores a smaller corridor only he could fit through and finds a strange halfling skeleton, which he ignores. Instead, he finds a way across the magma pit in the caldera towards the rest of you, where he remains hidden.
Egbert performs a couple more songs, until Othimarun becomes annoyed. You can convince the dragon a final time to not eat you and instead sleep over it and listen to another performance for breakfast. The dragon carves out a section of the walls and traps you inside after melting the exit shut, which is no challenge for your magical abilities.
As the lord of embrassil takes his leave towards what you assume to be his hoard, you meet up with Drem - who in the meantime has found a lonely magical ring - and further inspect the great, walled hall that you are in. You see a fire giant skeleton hanging from the ceiling in a beautiful ornate armor and a giant, enchanted hammer below it. Happy is able to pull free the hammer and considers keeping it.
And now you make plans for how to get the painting and escape this place without ending up as breakfast...