The humanoid skeletons begin marching up the stairs, scimitars drawn and ready to fight.
The owlbear skeleton compresses itself up the stairs, and slinks up to Cecil and Majenko, large foot talons clicking and clacking as it advances.
The skeletons raise their scimitars almost in sync and slash, looking to hurt Aloysia and Gamon.
Cecil backs away from the Owlbear Skeleton and decides that this is, in fact, worth a full spell use.
"Stay over there! Thank you!" he shouts at the thing.
After successfully taking two of the skeletons down upon their approach, Gamon attempts to replicate his success with a sweeping blow, hoping to cleave through both.
Aloysia watches skeletons explode left and right resulting in enough bone fragments flying to cut her cheek . She moves to see what she can do to help with the larger beast.
Cecil's missiles begin shattering the bones that make up the owlbear and send it clattering to the ground. Gamon takes the opportunity to begin crushing the skeletons again, destroying the first without issue, but just missing the second skeleton.
Aloysia takes the opportunity to try to end the skeleton focused on Gamon...
After dealing with the skeleton she heads over to help with the owlbear.
Aloysia takes the opportunity provided to shatter multiple bones in the skeleton causing it to fall to the floor.
Jolon closes his eyes, and when he re-opens them, the blue flame is back. He holds out his symbol, and it begins glowing with the same fire as he fixes the skeleton with a stern stare.
"Burn, and return to the embrace of your ancestors!"
There's a brief flash as the blue fire bursts from around Jolon in a circle. The rest of the group merely feels a soothing cool from its touch, while the skeleton is set alight with purifying radiance.
Aloysia shrieks in pain followed by a turn to Jolon, "What the hell man?!"
The owlbear's bones clack together as more of its hide sloughs off of it. The necromantic force holding it together weakens leaving large gaps between its joints, but they snap back together quickly. It postures as though it is screeching and stomps forward, claws reaching for Jolon and beak snapping at Cecil.
Seeing the owlbear wreak havoc upon Jolon, Gamon runs around the column with a fierce blow to attract its attention.
Gamon's swinging around the column adds momentum to his blow, shattering the majority of the skeleton and dropping the bits and pieces to the ground.
Cecil turns to the rest of the group. "Okay, necromancy confirmed." he says somewhat shakily. "Everyone okay?"
Gamon looks around warily, I am, but Jolon took quite the beating from that thing.
The chamber is empty near as you can figure. The only things around are the shattered bones of the skeletons you've destroyed.
Aloysia looks around the room before smiling slightly. "Well, that was far less painful than I would have expected with 5 of them closing in on us. Well done everyone," then more quietly, "But mostly Gamon and Cecil".
Jolon bows his head as the monsters are beaten, and when Gamon mentions his injuries, he smiles.
"I will not die this year, friend, not yet."
He traces the spiral on his chest and chants again, the blue fire suffusing his form and healing his injuries.
As Jolon heals himself, Cecil will look around the area. "Hey wait." he says, looking into the Owlbear pit. "There's a little door down here."
The bones in the pit click and crack under your feet depending on how old they are. The door in the pit is well concealed, but opens easily under your touch. Looking down into the darkness it reveals a tunnel set no more than three feet high, possibly some type of crawlspace or ventilation tunnel.
After healing himself, Jolon turns to the others.
"Does anyone else require healing?"
Aloysia says, "I have some bumps and bruises, but I should be okay for now. I say we see where that tunnel goes! It's been my experience that things that are hard to find are meant to be used if found."
Cecil glances into the badly lit tunnel. "Majenko? Do you see anything?" he asks the little house dragon.
Jolon peers down the tunnel too, his orcish eyes seeing quite well in the darkness.
Aloysia takes a peek too...
Majenko snorts some more silver dust, but flaps over to the tunnels. "Looks like its just a crawlspace, but there are other areas that lead out from here by the look of things."
Aloysia and Jolon both concur as there appears to be some light sources in the distance in the crawlspace.
"I'll scout out ahead a bit and see what I come up with."
Heading down the crawl space she tries to discern anything of note, particularly traps...
Aloysia ghosts down the tunnel making nary a sound. She spots no traps or hidden items and comes to a crossroads. To the east lie two tunnels, one leading deeper into the earth and the second heading south through a narrow choke point. To the west is another tunnel leading down, though it too curves to the south.
Aloysia heads to the choke point to see if there's anything of note there...
Cecil will wait to hear back from Aloysia, taking the time to jot a few notes down in his notebook about the atmosphere of this place so he can better describe a similar locale in his books.
Heading west Aloysia is able to peer down the tunnel and sees that after it drops it levels out then rises again. The choke point to the south quickly ends at another door. It will be a tight fit, but everyone should probably be able to squeeze through.
She heads to the choke point and looks for a keyhole to peer through or something of the sorts. If there isn't anything she'll listen at the door for anything on the other side.
Jolon follows after Aloysia, trying to keep far enough back that his tromping around didn't draw attention to her sneaking around ahead of them.
Aloysia doesn't see any type of peephole or way to see what is on the other side of the door. She does hear someone humming and saying something in undercommon on the other side of the door.
"Time to feed my little babies. Be sure to drink up every drop, wouldn't want Vreeg to get bad ingredients now, would we?" The voice is very high pitched and sounds feminine in nature.
Aloysia heads back to the group to relay what she heard. "Sounds to me like potential trouble on the otherside of the door down that way," indicating the choke point. "I think we could all get through, but it would be a hard squeeze, and my guess would be that it would most certainly let the things in there get some pot shots at minimum before we could really get into attack. We could try to go around and see if there's a better way to sneak up on them. Thoughts?"
"Hmm... That's a difficult proposition." Cecil says. "We should stick together and trying to enter one by one through a tiny hatch will be a problem, do the tunnels go anywhere else?"
He finishes writing a paragraph before closing his notebook. "Do you want me to look around too?" he asks.
Jolon thinks.
"I could go in first. I'm the biggest, and I've got enough staying power that something hitting me isn't likely to drop me right away, giving you time to come in after me."
"There is another pathway that appears to be the main purpose of this tunnel, but I haven't explored that yet. I'll go take a look and report back on that one too. We can make our decision based on what I find."
She goes back to her sneaking, and when getting to the next tunnel area, she takes a look down the path...
"Be careful, Aloysia," Jolon replies with a nod.
Aloysia doesn't hear anything from this side of the tunnel, and the door again does not have a spyhole. Listening intently there is nothing discernable heard on the other side of the door.
She returns to the group, "Well, it's another door, but I can't tell if there's something on the other side. We have our pick, the area we have to squeeze through uncomfortably one at a time with known enemies on the other side, or probably enemies anyway, or another door we can comfortably squeeze through one at a time with unknown on the other side. Votes?"
"The quiet option seems better to me." Cecil votes.