Since no one else explained this fight in its entirety, here I go.
Walk straight ahead from where the portal deposited you. You'll see a bunch of critter snakes on the ground and a troll on a stone bed on a raised platform. That troll's Venoxis. Zanzil shows up for round 2.
Your job is to kill Venoxis. Zanzil's job is to heal Venoxis to full, while halfheartedly burning you down and occasionally hiding like a chicken to heal. First to achieve objective wins. Venoxis's job is to lie there and be a target.
If you're high level, don't kill Venoxis until Zanzil's had a few seconds to get going, or you'll bug the quest. Lowbies don't need to worry about this.
Zanzil throws potions at the snakes to turn them into bigger snakes that go up to Venoxis, cast heal, and die. If you don't want Venoxis healed, then burning down the snakes is a priority. Burning down Zanzil temporarily removes a damage source and stops the snakes from spawning, but he'll be back. This is a very difficult fight to solo at level, unless you bring a mage, in which case you just sheep Zanzil and burn (freeze?) Venoxis down with impunity. Other classes' cc might also work.
None of this matters.
Hexxar shows up when Venoxis is either at 1 hp or at full. Success or failure means nothing, and you can just hide and twiddle your thumbs while Venoxis gets healed and you'll still be just as good off. Hexxar grabs you in a strangulation plot-spell, does some "kill the hero" bond villain speech, and some questgivers from before whose names we never bothered to memorize show up with an airship and a ladder to pull you to safety before you get killed.
The ONLY THING you have to do is grab the ladder. That's all. That's all it takes to complete the quest.
(Actually, you complete it either way, but grabbing the ladder keeps you from waking up in a 6ft bed with the Angel of Failure wondering how much you had to drink 10 seconds ago.)