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[Jon Potter]

Noxin slammed his shoulder against the door and heard it crunch under the onslaught. He was surprised that it held, but he gave it another try and it slammed open, the lock holding it closed shooting off into the darkness beyond. There was a little more light here, he was happy to note. But there was not much of it and it had a strange flickering quality that made everything stutter and jump in a way that Noxin didn't care for.

He spared a glance behind him. The snakes were slowly converging on his location, but they seemed unable to climb the step up to the door, That was something, at least.

He was in a hallway, he saw at once. There was another door almost opposite the one in which he now stood. The light was coming from his left, however, and as he turned in that direction there was a brilliant flash and three shrill cries of pain.

Noxin looked and saw two of those dwarves he'd been jumped by earlier. They were clutching their huge, pale eyes and writhing in pain, probably blinded by that flash.

Good, he thought.

And then he noticed that the light was growing dimmer or moving farther away. Soon, when that light faded entirely, he reckoned that he'd be as blind as the dwarves.

Grinning like a madman, Noxin charged down the hallway, silent apart from the thud of his huge feet hitting the floor. The nearer of the two robed dwarves looked up, its face wide with shock and horror as 350 lbs of naked half-giant bore down on it. It brought up a shortsword that it held in one hand , but failed to do much more than show it to Noxin before his mighty hands closed around the dwarf's arms, swallowing each from elbow to armpit.

The dwarf let out a pathetic mewling sound that Noxin liked just fine.

There was another of the dwarves in a room off the hall, he could just see in the fast-fading light, but he was more immediately concerned with the nearer creature. It cast a spell, which normally would have earned it a boot to the head, but Noxin had his hands full at the moment, twisting the arms off its compatriot. The best he could do was to turn and keep the blade out of his face. He felt it draw a line of blood from his shoulder, but the wound was trivial, and it didn't keep him from completing his turn.

As he turned he hurled the dwarf in his arms into the one who'd stabbed him. Or at least that was the idea. What ended up happening was that he threw the dwarf at its fellow and it dodged out of the way. The flying dwarf went hurtling ten feet into the other room, landing in a heap.

The dwarf nearest him maneuvered itself to his flank and took a stab at him that really wasn't much of a stab at all. Noxin punched him in the gut, putting his weight behind it and knocking him back into the wall. He rebounded just in time to catch the half-giant's other fist in the face. The dwarf collapsed without a sound, bleeding profusely from its ruined nose.

The light was almost gone now, and Noxin could only barely discern the shapes of at least two of the dwarves coming at him from inside the room.