Upstairs, Shannow was trying not to watch the silk clad swaying roundness of the hips of a passing serving maid, trying to also ignore the ribald jesting of a rough looking bunch that smelled and looked liked they'd just come off a ship. Mereka was discreetly invoking a prayer to detect magic on the statues. Marlee suddenly stopped being bored, sitting upright. Before she could even reach her companions though at some unseen signal the seemingly harmless serving maids whirled on them, their eyes cold and determined.
Shadows somehow filled the room with ominous darkness, the women smiling chilling smiles as they vanished from view. The other guests were dropping goblets and shouting in alarm. Mereka found herself under immediate attack even as she was calling out an invocation to dispel the darkness. To her dismay she saw armoured guards like the ones outside hurrying down the stairs. She wanted to go to her companions but they still had darkness around them--except Marlee, who with blazing electricity sparking around her, blue scales glowing in her own light, came blazing out of it with a roar.
Marlee could hear instructions to flee, to regroup. That had been the plan. Without hesitation, expecting the others to follow, the young dragon rushed at the doors, blasting them apart with a flash of her lighting breath, swooping out into the streets and flapping to reach the air above them.
Shannow was surrounded by darkness. He instinctively knew where the plants of the garden were though and ran there, feeling and hearing the curses of another guest as he stumbled over him, leaping over another, and plunging among the plants. Where was Mereka? He had out his dagger, not wanting to seriously wound a companion in the shadows, but then he felt a vicious stab in the leg. Yelling in pain he stabbed downward, feeling a muscular coiling body moving between his feet...he warned his animals to stay close, but heard the agonized yelp of his wolf...cursing and desperate, he tried to get to him but was lashed at again by the serpent.
Mereka had no time to pray...she was under attack! Furious at the dragon for abandoning them she cursed Marlee under her breath. By sheer warrior-priestess training she managed to invoke the power of a spiritual weapon over a throwing hammer and sent it flying at the reinforcements, forcing them to momentarily defend themselves. Out of the shadows hurtled a dagger aimed by one of the maids. Mereka shouted a war cry and went for her with a vengeance, aiming to get past her to the doors. The maid unhesitatingly retretated past a group of now furious and bewildered guests. To her astonishment Mereka found them attacking her.
"What the..." she had time for before she grimly set to defending herself, hurling furniture to keep them away. They were cutting her off from the door. Worse still at a command from one of the other maids the statues...yes she had feared so. The statues, elegant, beautiful, soulless, were stepping down from their pedestals and purposefully moving towards her.
Two can play at that game, she thought...if only she could get some space around herself.
Shannow was feeling feverish and weak...he managed to fumble for his belt pouch where he knew a potion was...it might not heal him...what was he thinking? What was he doing? He remembered the little vial in his hands and reached with enormous difficulty, feeling in the dark for the stopper. He heard sounds of fighting, some explosive sound. He managed to swallow and just in time whipped out his sword to slash at the serpent that was still stalking him. Missed! Confounded bad luck, he couldn't believe it, where were the gods of his ancestry? Then a blow out of the darkness took him down. He fell.
* * *
Upstairs, Kallyn and Dassah suddenly were plunged into darkness. There was a cry of alarm from one of the other bathers. Dassah was terrified, clinging to Kallyn. "What happened?" she asked.
"Stay close to me." Kallyn said quietly. She was afraid too but she was on the move, leading Dassah to the pool's edge. Somehow the water didn't seem comforting anymore. She just wanted to be out. She cursed herself for laying weapons and armour aside in this place. As they moved to the edge something muscular, long and smooth brushed past her bare thighs. Suppressing a scream, she moved out and began to haul Dassah out of the pool. Dassah was pulled from her arms!
"No!" cried Kallyn, and remembering where one of the stools was grabbed for it, at least it could bludgeon...
And the lights came on. She found herself face to face with the elegant lady who had interviewed her...who was watching benignly as an awful creature, half muscular human body in armor and half serpent, earless head glistening from the water, pulled a struggling Dassah, clutched helplessly in his arms, out of the pool.
"Let her go!" cried Kallyn.
"Drop the stool." instructed the lady calmly. "Or my friend will crush your pretty lover."
Kallyn hesitated, only long enough to see Dassah's face turning dark and her hands helplessly clawing at the fearsome strength of the creature holding her. His tail coiled around Dassah's bare legs and middle, gripping tightly.
"No..." Kallyn dropped the stool, holding up her hands.
The lady smiled coldly and drew a cord from the folds of her gown. "Now...sit down, face away from me and cross your wrists at the small of your back."
Captured! Kallyn's face was hot with shame. And yet the shame could have been faced more easily had it not been for Dassah's helpless struggles nearby, and herself helpless to help....
* * *
Down below, the arachnid horror reared above Aevar again, this time coming in for the kill. Summoning his inner strength he managed to fade into the stone floor itself.
It was a horrible experience. Strange evils had been wrought here, and to one of psychic sensitivity it was awful. But he had the horrible cold feeling that he would die if he faced the thing above him. Even now it was searching for him...aware of him. He had the dread that it would not be alone long, and expended enough effort to move himself away into the slightly narrower stairway. It would probably not stop the creature for long but it would give him moments...
Re-materializing he managed to suck back a potion of cure serious wounds. Moaning he felt his leg knit, just in time for him to start to run. He reactivated his invisibility just before he came round the first bend, the horrible metallic clicking rattling behind him. Above him on the stair was a coiling, powerful man-serpent, holding a gleaming falchion, a shield strapped to a muscular arm. It looked with staring, unblinking slitted eyes down where he would come from. Aevar trembled. Could he sneak past this thing? And with the demon-spider below, coming on fast...
With a leap he rushed past the snake man. There was an instinctive blurring motion of blade that nearly touched him but missed, and he was moving, fast, up out of the underworld and into the brothel above...