Banny nods at Vhailor's statement that the troll doesn't have a lot going on upstairs. "Yeah, she ain't winnin' scholar's ribbon anytime soon, but..." she grunts in when the troll points out the door in question, "least we might save ourselves a little time."
Alicia glances over her shoulder at the door in the hallway . After a second's thought, she lights a second torch and goes to open that door.
Banny walks the she-troll forward, keeping a hand on the knotted ropes at the small of the beast's back. "C'mon, you," she says, regardless of the creature's inability to understand her words. "Gonna just stay nice an' close together, in case you get the urge to do somethin' fool..."
Ali opens the door, and light spills into the narrow hallway: not a bright light, but real, natural light that is filtering down through a wide hole in the northwestern edge of the ceiling . It illuminates a flagstone-paved room with statues set around its walls. In the middle of the room are the scattered remains of an old campfire, charred bits of wood in a sooty stain across the floor. A few moth-eaten bedrolls further demonstrate that someone was once camping here; shovels, picks, and other digging equipment lie strewn about. There is another closed door in the southeastern wall.
Glancing up through the hole in the ceiling reveals the underneath of a collapsed staircase, the broken edge of a roof, and, beyond that, the sky. It is clear that this room lies underneath the ruined hall on the ground floor.
Alicia heaves a sigh at the irony of lighting a second torch just in time for the room she enters to be well-lit. "Looks like someone--or a small group of someones--have been using the place as a camp," she notes. Scowling, she wonders aloud, "I wonder for how long." Long enough to be the source of my encounter with the ghosts upstairs? Who in their right mind would stay here otherwise?
She carefully looks the room over for anything out of the ordinary.
Marikel picks up the sack Alicia tossed aside, examines it, then shoulders it with his accumulating gear.
"Better bring it. It may be the murder weapon," he mutters.
"Did this thing say where she killed Kerst? Is this where she's taking us now?" he asks following the others.
As Marikel looks up through the open ceiling a thought strikes him.
"You know, this is almost visible from Trunau. A fire in here wouldn't be directly seen from the town, but its light probably would."
He frowns at Alicia. "When were you or the kids last here," he asks. "You may have been in more danger than you think."
Furrowed brows showing over the rims of his glasses Vhailor ponders "Whatever it is... we should tell them upstairs sooner rather than later. These guys have been at it a while and that map thing with the dots and the digging and the..." frowning with some worry and casting a glance at the troll "We need more boots... as in more people than us looking into this. The guard, this Daktani guy needs to be found..."
"It killed Kerst back by the cliff, it's showing us now which way it came in to this bit. The hole it went down after going around the cliff." shrugging at the confusion involved.
Alicia takes a closer look around the room. The statues are carved of stone, like the one of Iomedae from which Marikel got his sword, and depict noble-looking soldiers and knights, their dignity somewhat impaired by thick mustaches, goatees, unibrows, freckles, and spectacles scrawled on their faces in charcoal.
Banny stays back in the door-region, keeping a hand in contact with their prisoner in case the troll gets feisty. She peers in through the doorway after the others.
"Sounds like Vhailor has the right of it," Banny says. "I say we open any more doors we ain't done yet, get through that, then get back into town."
Alicia turns around after inspecting the room and slips past the loiterers in the hallway. "Couldn't have said it better myself, Banny," she says as she makes for one of those unopened doors, her second torch in hand. Once there, she cautiously opens the door ()and peeks inside.
Leaving the graffitied statuary, Alicia returns down the corridor to the central room with the mosaic and opens the iron door in the southwestern wall to reveal a dark chamber, its stone walls lined with cubbies containing brass or clay urns, clearly some sort of columbarium. Another statue of pale stone is distinct from the surrounding gloom in her torchlight, an unusual piece depicting what looks like a chariot wheel veiled in flame.
As soon as Alicia opens the door, an acrid smell wafts out to compete with the stench of flood troll: a vinegar-like pungency which is strong enough to sting the nostrils.
Marikel steps up behind Alicia, sword at the ready, then grimaces.
"Maybe we should leave the doors. We don't want to meet something while we've got the troll..."
Taken aback by Carbonel's reaction again to a scent, the gnome turns to regard his feline companion... their eyes locking. Tilting his head to one side Vhailor furrows his brow... pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and... meows at the cat in a lilting and uneven tone?
"What's gotten into you then Carb?"
The cat worraworras back.
"I got her locked down," Banny says, while Vhailor and his cat meow at each other. "We run into trouble, I'll clock her on the back of the head and put her back down again. I say we check there's nothin' lurking here first."
Absentmindedly as an aside before he returns to the meowing "Carb thinks it smells a bit like Uncle Horaldio's back porch... after he was finishing mixing and brewing up alchemicals."
The cat sneezes delicately and licks its front paw.
"Very well then." Marikel makes his way forwards into the room, sword at the ready, and peers around the gloom.
Marikel looks at the torch in his hand then passes it to Vhailor."Sorry, you asked me for this. I didn't mean to ignore you. We've all got a lot on our minds right now."
Refocusing, he readies sword and shield and heads inside.
At the last Vhailor shrugs towards Carb, and accepts the torch thrust towards him by Marikel. He helpfully follows just behind the martial priest as he seeks to gain entry.
Marikel strides into the narrow band of light cast by Alicia's torch, and Vhailor follows, widening the strip of light as he carries his torch into the entryway.
Turning his attention to the southeast, Marikel finds that things look blurry and distorted. Vhailor realizes why: his torchlight is filtering through some sort of large ooze which blocks the way!
Before he can even shout a warning, the ooze quivers, and an amorphous tendril obtrudes from its side, taking a lazy swipe at the priest.
Carbonel looks up from a well licked paw with a practiced air of diffidence and snark.
Vhailor responds with a start "Aaah! Big oozy thing!" before realizing that if he withdraws he'll take Marikel's eyes with him... so he gulps and steps gamely behind the armored cleric...
After shouting a warning, the gnome ducks around the corner, behind Marikel, and takes cover behind the statue of the burning wheel. The torchlight now illuminates to the far wall of the room, though what can be seen through the ooze is indistinct. Apart from the ooze itself and the urns in their niches, the chamber appears to be empty. The floor is both meticulously clean and slightly sticky where the passage of the ooze has scoured it.
Instinctively taking a step forward, Ali takes a jab at the ooze-cube with her rapier. "Get out of there, you two--it's too big to follow!"
It's an awkward angle for Ali to jab around the corner, but the ooze makes no effort to avoid her rapier. It slides in as easily as it would puncture a waterskin, and like a punctured waterskin, the ooze bleeds out its liquid contents, which run down her blade and drip with a sizzle onto the stone floor. Given the size of this waterskin, however, it will take a great many punctures to drain it.
"A big oozy thing? What's that?" Banny calls in perplexity, unable to see the fight from her current position. She glowers at her prisoner, then reaches up with the heel of one hand and smacks the troll sharply at the base of her thick, heavy skull.
It's not Banny's most studied and powerful blow, but against the woozy and hogtied flood troll, it's all that's needed. The troll crumples to the ground, while Banny rushes back into the central room to peer through the doorway, just in time to see the ooze calmly slide forward to engulf Marikel and Vhailor.
Ali takes another jab as the ooze surges forth. Desna's stars, am I even hurting this thing?!
Reflex:
"Watch out." Marikel darts to the side and brings his sword up to attack.
Vhailor responds to Marikel's timely warning in the only way that he can manage "Mmmph, mmmph mph mmmpph!"
Alicia has only to extend her blade, and the movement of the ooze tears open a weeping line in its side.
Reacting without conscious thought, Marikel manages to flatten himself against the wall as the ooze slides by and avoids being sucked in. The gnome, on the other hand, is hemmed in behind the statue of the burning wheel. He dithers a moment too long over which way to dart and is engulfed in the ooze. The torch in his hand sizzles a moment in the viscous fluid before going out.
Spinning around, Marikel slashes at the slimy thing that just slid past him, tearing open a gash that bleeds fluid without the mindless object even seeming to notice. He can see Vhailor only as a dark gnome-shaped blur inside it.
Marikel steps back away from the giant ooze.
"Alicia," he barks, "get back into that corridor behind Vhailor. See if you can find a door he can squeeze out through."
Fort Save:
Having slashed open the far side of the ooze, Marikel steps back into the darkness outside the torchlight filtering sickly through the murky phlegm.
Carbonel lets out a plaintive Rwaorr but doesn't have the ill logic to proceed into the room where actions are unfolding.
Vhailor seems to be performing a near flawless imitation of a statue suspended within the amorphous goop.
"I've got the only light, Marikel," Ali says calmly between stabs at the ooze.
Alicia adds another puncture to the dripping side of the ooze.
Banny can only partially see the conflict-- she can see Vhailor suspended in the quivering goop, at least-- but there's no way she can get in there and try and help, to her frustration. Marikel's words seem a thin possibility to her, but it's better than standing useless.
"I'll go look," she shouts.
Unhindered by the darkness, Banny finds the secret tunnel and heads for the far end.
Though it clearly has neither sensory organs nor a brain with which to process the input, the ooze seems somehow to sense that there is another moving thing in its room. Reversing course, it slinks out of the end of the chamber with an audible squelch in slow-motion pursuit of Marikel. Vhailor and the burning chariot wheel pass through the liquid membrane and are left damp and still in the shadowy corner.
Once again, Alicia attempts to poke the ooze.
Marikel takes another step back, trying to keep the thing away from Vhailor.
Alicia once again extends her blade and lets the movement of the ooze open another slit in its membrane. It seems to be slowly deflating as its inner fluid seeps out from the multiple lacerations, but it also seems not to notice or care.
In the dark end of the room unlit by Alicia's torch, it seems a simple thing to Marikel to evade such a slow an ungainly thing, but without visual cues, he misjudges the distance. He shifts away from the approaching ooze but not far enough. As he realizes his error, the membrane opens and reseals around him, leaving him engulfed in the clammy, acidic interior of the ooze.
".."
Another poke around the corner of the doorway at the ooze is followed by another line of ooze running down Alicia's blade. "Banny! See if you can't find a door there, and pull Vhailor out!" she yells.