Broccan allows Edrukk to take the lead. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs to capacity as they move down into the room.
He looks around cautiously, trying to get an idea of what is in the room, and if there are any chests, closets or adjoining rooms to be investigated and explored.
Broccan sees two adjoining rooms and what looks like a closet, or perhaps a restroom.
"I... I don't like this," Kata worries, her voice soft, barely a whisper, as she hovers by the water's edge. With a soft chant, the light of her spear glows, warm, yellow, and she takes a tentative step, her boot soaking through, chilling the elegist. "I'll go in a little, and let everyone know if they run into trouble."
"I can't fire an arrow underwater. I could try to use the bow as a club, but I don't know how well that would work." Rosella bites her lip. "But if they run into trouble, I won't be of any help up here." Reluctantly she puts down her bow and clutches a dagger instead. Shrugging off her backpack, she joins Broccan and Eddruk in the water. She peers around Broccan's shoulder as she tries to see what else might be in the water with them.
Alaïs hums a bit in nervous acknowledgement. There are all sorts of bards in the world, and some of those whose magic would be rather useful right now are quite close to her own way of doing things, but in the final analysis the sorts of thing she can inspire are best suited to a gallery, a lecture hall, or – if one is determined to be ostentatious – a spell duel, perhaps, but not feats of strength and physical endurance.
She can’t even drape herself decoratively somewhere while she waits, given that, of the three hanging back, she’s the most heavily armed. Which is hardly the most decisive factor, to be sure, but it does mean that Alaïs is the likeliest first obstacle to anything clawed or fanged and hungry sneaking up from behind while the gents and Rosella explore the flooded chamber. She leans her shield against the wall where she can snatch it up easily if needed, and draws her sword. Edrukk’s suggestion that the dead thing Phasadriel mentioned might not be entirely has got into her head.
She feels ridiculous as she turns to face the passage back to the rest of the complex. She is far too flighty vivacious to be a good guard - or at least she would say so.
"I... I don't like this," Kata worries, her voice soft, barely a whisper, as she hovers by the water's edge. With a soft chant, the light of her spear glows, warm, yellow, and she takes a tentative step, her boot soaking through, chilling the elegist. "I'll go in a little, and let everyone know if they run into trouble."
Broccan taps Edrukk's shoulder, then points the sunrod in the direction of the closet.
Assuming Erukk nods agreement, he follows the dwarf over to it.
The old dwarf peers into the dark water, waving the sunrod away from his face for a moment.
Edrukk comes to a stop at a small chamber--a small room containing five long benches and several niches along the walls. The walls here are covered in scratches, almost like claw marks. Looking closer, the adventurers see that the claw marks have twisted into gnarled, spidery writing. Edrukk glances at the writings on the wall to his left.
the years don't matter and the days are dust. I can feel the worms crawling through time and making this age theirs. if you are reading this, you soon will join Uluvant and his eternal warden. cherish the air in your lungs, my friend, for even while you read this
Edrukk stops reading abruptly, just a moment too late as he hears Rosella and Kata stir behind him, and a shadow in the water, the "sixth bench", springs to life before him. A twisted gangrel form lurches out of the foul murk with a gurgling laugh.
At the same time, there come the sounds of movement from the eastern side of the room, just out of sight.
Alais notices some bubbles coming out of the water.
Submerged and unable to offer a comforting word, Kata pushes forward, kicking herself toward the thing that has lashed out at Edric. The elegist pushes her spear through the water, intent on plunging it into the creature as soon as she can.
Rosella? I'll NPC her in a bit if needed.
Rosella struggles through the water with her dagger. It feels pitifully small in her hands but she's glad she brought it. Trying to use her bow as a club would have been nigh-impossible.
A few bubbles escape from her lips as she stabs forward.
Rosella struggles forward and stabs at the hideous creature with her dagger. The creature, caught off-guard at the speed of her response, is pricked in the shoulder. It feels like cutting through dry crackers, but with a thick oily layer of tar over the surface to slow and gum up her strike.
The creature laughs. Its laugh, too, is oily, slippery, carrying easily through the water and leaving what feels like a slick coating on everyone's eardrums. It sweeps a claw out at her throat, but she manages to draw back just in time.
Broccan moves over behind Rosella, looking for an opportunity to strike the creature.
”Mmph!”
The dwarf shoves forward with his borrowed dagger and tries to maneuver his shield across the opening to block the creature’s retaliation.
Edrukk jabs forward past Rosella and manages to catch the creature across the cheek. It recoils, eyes narrowing.
From around the corners of the main block step two softly-clattering skeletons, heavily-laden with backpacks and bearing rusty spears. They advance slowly through the water toward Broccan and Kata.
As she hums a bit to keep herself entertained, Alaïs notices a few bubbles rise to the surface of the lower chamber’s flooding, and wonders what they could mean. It’s only been a few moments, so she presumes the divers aren’t facing too hard a fight against their automatic instincts to breathe. Righting some container overturned who knows how long ago that had trapped a bit of air underneath? Phasadriel did seem sure there’s nothing else living down there, so probably not some odd fish or reptile.
Belatedly, it occurs to her it might have been an idea to have trailed a rope and arranged for some sort of signals: for trouble, for requesting assistance, for just coming back up… Without a rope, too. She’s not made time yet to learn a sign language, which is rather awkward, come to think of it, but as the baby of her family it’s never come up, when she could just get an appropriate spell from one of her parents or older brothers. She supposes this is what people mean by ‘roughing it.’
Rosella stabs forward again with a sense of desperation. They can't fight long like this: underwater and surrounded by enemies. She uses her other hand to gesture towards the stairs, hoping people understand her meaning.
Rosella jabs and narrowly misses as the creature draws back, grinning broadly.
Kata looks at the skeletons approaching, nods at Rosella, and steps back, readying to strike the first creature that moves into uncovered reach of her longspear. She gestures for the others to back away.
The creature in the archway has taken some nasty injuries, but it just grins as it lashes out at Rosella, gurgling laughs echoing in the dark waters.
It scores a shallow rake across Rosella's cheek with its long, sharp fingernails. Rosella feels a stinging pain that goes beyond the minor injury. Suddenly her neck feels horribly stiff, painfully so, and her shoulders, too, and then her arms, every joint in her body rejecting her commands as if her body belongs to another.
Alaïs watches for more bubbles, in case she’s wrong about how quiet things are below, and looks to how far she can she see through the inconvenient angle and the distortion of the water. All the while, she keeps an ear open in case something creeps up behind, or the cairn decides to live up to its name and oblige by whispering something useful.
Her free hand half-reaches out in readiness to help pull one of the others out of the water, or her shield to her.
[spoiler=Alais]Alais sees the lights in the water moving frantically, and sees shadows in the murk. More than the four shadows of her companions.[/ooc]
Broccan turns to see the skeleton coming up behind him. He instinctively reacts, turning and bringing his foot up into a forceful front kick to the midsection of the shambling horror.
Briar tries to listen and watch for any movement or signs of trouble in the water, but she keeps second-guessing herself on how much movement is normal. Maybe there are just underwater currents? Or just the expected water displacement of a group of people on the move?
Hell’s whiskers, Alaïs curses in the privacy of her own thoughts, her subconscious trying to pick up what Phasadriel’s words actually sounded like again for future reference, in case she ever needs to try speaking Aquan in a similar situation.
Her eyes glance alarmedly towards Briar as she passes on what she thinks she’s seeing to the other young woman.
“It’s too fast and awkward for me to get a sure count, but I think whatever’s down there isn’t properly dead,” she reports grimly. She hesitates, not wanting to hover or to assume that the others down below can’t handle themselves, but also not wanting to leave them unsupported, or Briar alone with only Seeker for company. So far Seeker hasn’t seemed to be actively malicious, but an impossibly vigorous bird surviving to an uncertain age with eyes dangling out from sinew and nerve strains even Alaïs’ sometimes overly generous belief.
“If I’m right, I’m sure they’ll try to draw it to us, so we might wait for another second to see if they need us to wade in, or to drag them out?”
Her intonation lilts upward questioningly at the end. Back home, she’d probably be around people she could be much more decisive with, but even in the heat of the moment, knowing that she doesn’t know the Diamond Lakers all that well yet, to say nothing of fitting in in town, she tries not to sound like a bossy, interfering merveilleuse.
Rosella manages to force her limbs to keep moving, fighting off the effect.
The dwarf is in complete agreement that everyone else needs to get out and tries to shove his friend aside to put his shield between the creature and them.
With one carefully-placed kick, Broccan smashes the nearest skeleton into pieces. Edrukk shoves Rosella away to block Uluvant's passage.
The remaining skeleton advances forward, and Kata jabs outward. Her spearhead smashes straight through the creature's pelvic bone, nearly breaking it in two. It collapses, bones slowly drifting down to the floor and lying in a pile before her.
Briar and Alais see more air bubbles rising to the surface.
Rosella swims up to avoid the creature's claws, preparing to swim away from the combat.
The injured undead horrror lashes out at its new Edrukk with a wild grin. "An old dwarf is tougher meat," it gurgles, "but let it not be said Uluvant rejects a gift so graciously offered."
It feints with its claws before knocking Edrukk's helmet askew, just long enough to lunge and sink its teeth into the dwarf's exposed head. It's only a graze, and Edrukk, like many dwarves, is blessed with a thick skull. But he feels the same creeping stiffness that Rosella only just shrugged off.
Seeker flutters uneasily, but keeps her mouth shut.
“Give me a moment,” Alaïs murmurs, reaching down quickly to grab her shield and strap it to her arm as she continues to keep an eye on the water. It will be awkward, but if she needs to fight in a medium that will slow her and her attacks as much as immersion does, she’ll need all the protection she can get, for staying power.
With that, she takes a couple of breaths to get ready to fill her lungs properly and see how she can help down there.
Briar gives Alaïs a thumbs-up and dives into the water.
Broccan taps Edrukk's shoulder and nods for him to pull back.
Edrukk nods. Stabbing at the creature, he takes a five-foot step back to let the miner in.
Broccan steps forward and stabs at the creature with his shortsword.
The nimble dead thing twists around Broccan and Edrukk's attacks with a feral grin.
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Mute. It was terrifying, struggling under the water, without her most important thing, her voice. Kata swam forward and did the only thing she thought she could do - push her longspear with as much force as she could muster towards the thing in the dark waters. Sound drifted, as if through walls towards her, muffled and warped. She prayed - silently of course - to Pharasma that her strike would ring true and pushed her spear towards the beast's chest...
Kata drifts forward and lunges, and the spear slams through the undead creature's chest, through old cracked leather armor, and through its ribcage.
Uluvant shudders once, staring down at the spear. His body goes limp, and he hangs dead in the water, impaled on Kata's weapon.
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Broccan points to himself, and makes a circular motion with his hand, signaling to the others that he will continue to look around the area until he needs to resurface.
They are free to return to the stairs, or search with him as they wish.