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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GodOfCheese" data-source="post: 1588545" data-attributes="member: 19170">Beyond the Door...Andrew listens carefully at the door, before nodding around at the others.  Davron steps in carefully next to him, blades in hand, and prepares himself to meet whatever is on the other side.  The two men watch each other carefully, neither entirely trusting the other.  Behind Davron, Chloe reviews what remain of her granted powers for the day again, still not confident that she’s got anything useful prepared for this.Davron nods to Andrew.Andrew promptly nods back.Davron squints, the skin between his eyebrows wrinkling unpleasantly.  His lips part slightly in an ugly expression of exasperation. Andrew holds out his arms and shrugs, shaking his head in apparent confusion.  “What?” he whispers.Davron gestures violently to the doors with his shortsword.  “You’re not expecting me to open those, are you?” Andrew whispers hastily, one eye staying on the left door.  Chloe exhales a gasp of affrontery.  Davron glares and waves one blade menacingly at the criminal.  His thin lips sputter incoherently, too flabbergasted for words.“Open the door, you buffoon,” Chloe hisses icily, mystic syllables flowing into her mind as she prepares to cast.Davron grits his teeth and Andrew, with some hesitation, reaches for the rusted iron handle, which is warped and worn by time.  The frayed wood beneath the handle is stained grey-brown with minerals long since leeched from the metal above it.  Andrew’s bare digits close over the handle, his palm slightly cushioned by fingerless gloves.  He looks to Davron.Davron nods exaggeratedly, and this time Andrew throws the door open violently, jumping away from it with great haste.  In his (and the door’s) wake, a dozen slugs stand poised with weapons raised: morningstars, hammers, and various polearms.  Davron shrieks an unintelligible battlecry and sets upon them.  Behind him, Chloe waves her hands and palms the sun-symbol at her belt.  Raising it before her, she chants a few rapid syllables, gathering energy to herself.  The symbol glows dimly, then flares brightly before focusing into a pale orange beam that stabs over Davron’s shoulder and into the dark room beyond him.  Several of the slugs duck, but most are caught unaware as Chloe waves the short-lived beam around their number*.  Several slugs are burnt, though none of them badly.  Most noticeably, though, she does manage to set several of the slugs’ clothes and hair aflame.  Davron’s swords strike out immediately against the slugs, and within moments produce a multitude of deafening clangs that are followed by ringing song as the blades echo off parrying weapons and occasionally bite into soft flesh.   The ranger presses into the clot of enemies, slicing viciously and mercilessly into them.  Chunky black fluid sprays out onto the street, mixed with no small amount of Davron’s own blood, for he is not alone in his skill with a blade.Davron crouches under a slug’s outward swing, stabbing upward with his shortsword without looking.  The blade hesitates a moment, then sinks in and is just as quickly withdrawn, producing a sluice of warm dampness along the warrior’s arm.  Davron whirls around, the longsword in his other hand held high to deflect an overhead slash by the next-nearest slug.  To his surprise, though, his adversary’s body falls back and away from him, an arrow protruding from its head.A fading green aura around the body announces to Davron and Chloe that Effrem’s firing position on the roof is as good as they’d hoped.  * Searing Light, instance best described by Paranoia's Firing into a Crowd rule: "if a shot misses, it had to have hit somebody."    </blockquote>

Verification