The byplay between Felicity and Aiyaka is interrupted as Bella passes them by- with a cheerful clap on the catgirl's shoulder, the human says, "Wait until after we've got the money, and if you eat her then you'd be able to afford two ships, lass! Eyes on the prize." Whistling what Felicity recognizes as a very lewd seaman's ditty, she cheerfully lets Vormitraax take the lead, falling in well behind the beefy dragon as he forges forward. The water's not cold, but unpleasantly cool enough to a naga that has to slither through it- as they proceed into the cave, it's only a hundred yards or so before the creek mercifully goes into a crack in the wall too small to pass. Bella sidles past Vormitraax, feeling along the wall- her fingers catch a hidden indentation and with just a whisper, a section of the wall swings slowly open to reveal a dry passage below, with warmer air wafting up in a steady slight breeze. "There we go. Figured this is how it would be," Bella explains, "Dwarves compulsively build secondary hidden exits to their places in case of emergency, and the little buggers adore using caves that are already there as much as they can. Saves on time mining rock when they could be mining gold, y'see? After you, handsome."<br/><br/>Not long after they enter the long sloping passage down, the door swings shut behind them. With that, the only light is the buttery yellow flame from Bella's lantern, the sun having bade this party farewell for a time. The human seems unperturbed, looking around with interest. And well she might- a half mile in and a few hundred feet down, the passage opens into a vast cavern. There's not much in the way of dwarf buildings here- looks like the outskirts of a town- but there was more than enough space for a major city if anyone had been building. As it was, the cavern was deserted, with none of the owners in evidence. "Look up," Bella murmurs- and a few hundred feet high, in the flickering shadows cast by the faint lantern's light into a forest of stalactites, shadows move and leap from spire to spire, eyes glowing maliciously. "They won't come down while we're lit, but if any of you wants a fight badly enough to get mauled by savages, just blow out the lantern and we'll have them trying to bash our heads in with rocks before you can scream, loves. My orc warned me about this. This is the way they came in. They actually found it in that half-finished building to the right, see? I think this was supposed to be a new neighborhood and they wanted the Spear hidden in new construction figuring nobody'd be daft enough to believe it wasn't in the deepest, darkest part of the mine. I didn't think the orcs killed all the dwarves, though..."<br/><br/>With that cheery thought, they make their way observed by the shadows in the ceiling to the building Bella pointed out. It bore the scars of hard fighting recently, but no corpses around, not even bones. Vormitraax soon feels Bella's hand on his shoulder and she whispers urgently, "Best to let me take the lead here, love, I was disarming traps before I was potty trained. Don't want that handsome hide of yours pierced by anything poisonous," she assures the dragon, wriggling past him and inspecting the door carefully for a long few seconds with intense concentration before she pushes it open. "I thought it would be..." she trails off, voice starting to get some confusion in it. "Oh well. I suppose the orcs might have damaged the mechanism." She pushes through the door, and into the nondescript chamber beyond where she stands in the middle of the room looking around for a few seconds. As people join her, the instant they step through the door they feel a tingling jolt up their spines and a sudden wave of dizziness. When their vision clears, they're in an opulent entrance hall that in no way could have fit in the building they were entering.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Entrance Hall</span><br/><div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;"><img alt="Image" src="http://i.imgur.com/ZILHswo.png"/></div></div></div><br/><br/>What's worse, when those who enter look back, the door instead leads outside to a bright, sunny day and a grassy field instead of the dank cavern they'd come from. But what's worst of all is those who haven't gone through yet see and hear no warning, but instead just see those who enter head through the door as normal and stand in the chamber beyond to wait for them. A trap, a one-way teleport; those who know magic can start to imagine the power required to completely conceal it, and the answer isn't small. A very powerful mage, then; what's worse, when those with magic enter, they can practically<span style="font-style: italic">taste</span>the mana in the air soaking through everything. Bella's swearing a streak in hushed, urgent tones when the others come through. "Dammit, dammit, I CHECKED for teleportation spells!" She hisses. "I'm going to skin that orc alive and make a purse out of his testicles for this- fucking hell!" Livid, the thief looks around, and adds, "Where's this? Looks like a gods-be-damned castle, and if so it's not one anywhere nearby or I'd have stolen some things from it already!"<br/><br/>The grand hall has the double doors behind you, leading outside; a pair of single doors to either side between the tall buttressing columns, and a broad staircase past a fountain leading to a second floor with doors visible up there as well. In the middle of the hallway is a statue of an unmistakeably demonic woman, sitting on a plinth with her legs spread and dangling over the side of her pedestal, her back reclined up at an angle from the pedestal with her arms propping herself up behind her. Wings flare out to either side, and a long, sinuous stone tail curls over the side of the pedestal. The statue has a friendly, welcoming smile on it, and on the two foot high pedestal between her dangling legs is a plaque with the words, "WARM ME" engraved in bronze and mounted below. Even though the statue has tight red clothes on top and bottom, it nevertheless has an aura of sexual allure about it that couldn't be greater if it were nude with a hand spreading its lips apart in invitation.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Demoness Statue</span><br/><div style="padding: 3px; background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #d8d8d8; font-size: 1em;"><div style="text-transform: uppercase; border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC; margin-bottom: 3px; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold; display: block;"><span onclick="if (this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display != '') {  this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = ''; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;hide&lt;/a&gt;'; } else { this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('div')[1].getElementsByTagName('div')[0].style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '&lt;b&gt;Spoiler: &lt;/b&gt;&lt;a href=\'#\' onClick=\'return false;\'&gt;show&lt;/a&gt;'; }"><b>Spoiler: </b><a href="#" onclick="return false;">show</a></span></div><div class="quotecontent"><div style="display: none;"><img alt="Image" src="http://i.imgur.com/yNXcuz1.png"/></div></div></div><br/><br/>[[*rolls some dice* Good news! Vormitraax just got the first +4 on 4dF as the second actual roll of the game! (In combat, you all should roll yourselves on orokos so that you have an idea how well things go; for stuff like this where I'm doing rolls to see if people notice details or anything, I'll roll 'em.)]]<br/><br/>Vormitraax and Nanami notice one peculiarity fairly quickly; though the demoness statue is indisputably stone, the clothes its wearing are *not* stone but rather real silk clothing- a waste, not to mention somewhat confusing as to how it was put on in the first place. Vormitraax, as he looks around searching for an ambush or something to nobly fight, also sees something strange. There's dust on the pedestal, but there's areas where there's less dust than there should be without there being any signs of wind or a person brushing it off. Two areas are near the demonesss's legs, just a bit further apart than her legs are now, and another pair are a few inches or so from where her hands are now. The statue seems to have shifted position at some point.