When the elemental disappeared, the party quickly regrouped. After binding their wounds, they decided to tackle the last floor of the tower immediately. Once again, Oleg led the way downstairs. At the base of the staircase, the party immediately noticed another of the wererats in front of them, and battle was joined! Oleg, moving back to cast safely, noticed a second sneaking up on the group. Oleg and West engaged this sneaky wererat, who looked oddly unlike the others. Gronk charged the first, only to be paralyzed by a spell it cast. Fortunately, West noticed and immediately went to Gronk's aid, preventing him from being slain out of hand. Oleg, with the assistance of one of West's summoned apes, was eventually able to dispatch the one wererat. After what seemed like an eternity, but was really only a few seconds, Gronk shook off the fell magic and helped West to slay the other wererat.
The battle over, the party split to explore the laboratory. A stream of running water went down a tunnel, only to pour down a sinkhole. More interesting was the library desk, which had a book and notes discussing the curing of some blood-borne disease. The group speculated that it would deal with Lycanthropy, but further study did not bear out that hypothesis. They also found Durzh's bedroom, which was extremely messy. They found a few more notes there, but nothing there gave them any more idea as to what he had been working on.
Once they had satisfied themselves that no more foes were in the tower, the party searched it up and down for anything of value. Meanwhile, they noticed that the wererats had shifted back to their humanoid forms once slain. This solved the mystery of the odd-looking wererat -- he was not a dwarf, but a gonme. As part of his exploration, West wound up on the rooftop turret. Looking around, his sharp eyes noticed,a faraway group moving under cover of darkness towards the tower. The group looked to be about fifty humanoids, with a few somewhat larger.
On hearing this news, the party resolved to defend the tower rather than abandon it. Once they reassured themselves their foes were more than a day away, they slept. The next morning, West flew out to scout. On his return, he informed the party that the force appeared to be almost fifty orcs, two handfulls of skeletons, a pair of trolls, and a huge wolf. The party busied themselves readying the tower for the upcoming battle.