[alternate title: Stop the Count!]
Ghalwin invited Strahd to "dance" and surged forward to meet him, but was pulled down by the emerging arm of Volenta Popofsky; she had been hiding under the loose earth, assigned to guard his parent's tomb. He responded by striking her with a critical smite, and the rest of the party turned to aim at the vampire's wife. As their attention split, the two bronze guardians came to life behind them, exhaling a slowing gas that numbed Izek, Ezmerelda, and Ajuni.
The crypt filled with the noise of clashing metal and echoing spells as Volenta, Strahd, and the constructs pressed the party on four fronts. The Count focused in on Geronimo, crushing Tobias’s Steel Defender with a flurry of blows and reclaiming his stolen sword from its wreckage. The vampire lord failed to cut the shadows of his foes or charm them against the party, so retreated into the tunnels, his guardians shielding his escape. Volenta fell soon after to Ghalwin’s sword, and Izek cleared a path through one of the statues. When the last guardian was destroyed, the party advanced cautiously through the smoke and still air, the effects of the slowing gas fading.
Tobias illuminated the crypts with an opal’s light, disturbing colonies of bats and throwing long shadows across the walls. The light revealed Gertruda, newly released by Strahd, who lunged at Izek in a frenzy and bit him repeatedly. The giant hurled the teenager to the ground and Ghalwin smote her down, only grateful that Lancelot was not here to see his former owner's final moment. Ajuni and Tobias sealed off passages with walls of fire, seeking to corner Strahd in the maze of tombs. Instead, the nightmare Beucephalus burst through the flames. The Wonder Horse charged at Tobias and Izek as Ajuni found Strahd, flanked by mirror images deeper in the catacombs.
Ghalwin knocked down the infernal steed and finished it, while Ajuni and Strahd danced in battle of sunlight and spellwork. Izek grabbed Strahd before he could flee upward through the stairwell, but the Count slashed through the giant and battered Ajuni as he ascended. Ezmerelda and Kiril, too wounded to chase, held the rear against a wight that emerged from the dark, which Tobias defeated before rejoining the pursuit by granting himself flight. He reached Strahd ahead of the others, holding him in combat at the chapel until his allies arrived. Escher descended into the chaos, having hid as a vampire bat, intending to slay Ajuni; however, he was interrupted by Izek, who properly finished the job by splitting him with a flaming sword.
Strahd spider-climbed to the balcony, animating pews and tiles that encircled Ghalwin. Fireballs forced the vampire to withdraw beyond to his trap hall, where he sealed the doors to gain a moment’s rest with the Heralds in hot pursuit. Tobias flew up and unlatched them almost instantly, shrugging off a final attempt of Polymorph as the Heralds poured through. The flying gnome chased the scrambling and overwhelmed Count down the hall and through a hidden door, and overheard him screaming to alert Vasilka.
Tobias realized his path, and relayed it to Ajuni, who acted quickly. Grasping Ghalwin, she opened a dimension door and arrived in Strahd’s bedchamber before him, setting Vasilka on fire as the flesh golem rose from her resting place. Strahd burst through a secret bedroom door only to reveal a critical mistake; his foes, though heavily injured, had beaten him to his own sanctuary.