[Presumably also a place-holder, but mostly posting character info<img alt=":P" src="./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif" title="Razz"/>]<br/><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;">Prepared Spells:<br/>Orisons<br/>* Create Water<br/>* Read Magic<br/>* Detect Magic<br/>* Light<br/>* Purify Food/Drink<br/><br/>1st Level<br/>* Protection From Evil<br/>* Shield of Faith<br/>* x2 Cure Light Wounds<br/><br/>2nd Level<br/>* x2 Hold Person<br/>* Bull's Strength<br/><br/>Domain Spell:<br/>Hunger Pains</div></div></div><br/><br/>With every corner, ever revisit of the same damned hallways again and again, Asulf hated the bright spark who'd come up with the brillant notion to just keep splitting up a little more. He could already imagine him and his partner - for the moment, anyways - finally getting through only to find an army waiting for them. Of course, maybe that wasn't realistic. They'd not have gone through all this trouble to have a whole army sitting on it's ass. But they certainly could have more than two people waiting at the end, and Asulf wasn't too keen on picking fights where they were outnumbered. For all he knew the rest of the company had already been slaughtered piecemeal like that.<br/><br/>As he passed the same pile of barrels for the ..he didn't even remember how many times, he wondered if maybe that wasn't preferable to walking the same hallways again and again. They couldn't even change them! Trying to mark the passageways so that they knew which ones they'd been down before had been one of his first suggestions and it turned out to be a miserable failure pretty quickly. He had to give some credit to it's designer in making it so effective, as well as boring and frustrating so it that both slowed down attackers<span style="font-style: italic">and</span>tormented them.<br/><br/>The boredom was the worse of the two, however. It let the adrenaline surge from the earlier raid drain from Asulf's body, and left his mind to wander. He'd worked with Teran before, made smalltalk, but never really had been alone with him for an extended period, and particularly not without something to fill the awkward silence unlike now, where neither had much to offer but the occasional suggestion on how to beat the maze and cursing it when that inevitably failed. Alone with a naga and too much time to think, his thought inevitably drifted down a darker path, imagining what it might like in those coils, how many they'd held before-<br/><br/>Oh.<br/><br/>This was new.<br/><br/>And it<span style="font-style: italic">stank.</span><br/><br/>Asulf wrinkled his nose at the smell, but he was willing to put up with it on the basis that it was at least a new scent, from a new room, which had to mean progress. Even if it was progress into a room that looked positively ancient and was filled with bones. He wasn't even sure what the room was<span style="font-style: italic">for</span>, but that didn't stop him from eagerly hurrying forward into the room, eager to get a move o-<br/><br/>And then the floor was gone. Asulf yelped in surprise, staring down into the black below, at first thinking it was some sort of<span style="font-style: italic">very</span>deep pit before realizing the blackness wasn't just the torches not reaching the bottom - it was some sort of ooze. And dotted through the ooze-floor were old, wooden spikes. Asulf twisted mid-air, already trying to angle himself so that hopefully he could minimize any impalement to parts of his body he wouldn't need to survive or cast. That might save him from the fall, he was still thinking of how to deal with the ooze problem after that when the whole pit-problem solved itself neatly.<br/><br/>Not that Asulf would use 'neat' to describe the disgusting feeling falling through what feel so much like stagnant swamp water, or the following vertigo, but watching the trap below dissipate was a relief. He'd have sighed in relief if the air wasn't swiftly and forcibly forced from his lungs by the sudden, fifteen-foot drop onto a pile of mats, the cushioning of the impact somewhat lessened by partly landing on Teran. Or having Teran partly land on him. He wasn't quite sure which, and was reasonably sure it might have been both as either way he found himself tangled in the naga's coils. He lays there a moment, catching his breath, before slipping free and tumbling off the mats, managing a successful if entirely ungraceful roll onto his feet and casts a glance around their new surroundings.<br/><br/>The statue at the center of the room that all the mats faced gave him pause, his mind already working, trying to recall if any of this was as familiar to him as it seemed.<br/><br/><blockquote class="uncited"><div><span style="font-weight: bold">*RAAAAAAAWR!!!* </span></div></blockquote><br/><br/>Bestial roars and the sounds of battle quickly derailed Asulf's train of thought. While normally he'd have stuck around to investigate, any fight inside this place had to be between Brightblades and the cultists unless some third party had jumped in and that struck him as unlucky.<br/><br/>"Someone else made it through!" he called back to Teran. "And it sounds like they're in a fight! C'mon, we have to go support 'em!"<br/><br/>Asulf isn't even done speaking before he starts running, and tears down the hallway, his adrenaline already surging back. Action! It seemed like it'd been an eternity since the earlier raid, and he was eager to get a piece of it.<br/><br/>What he sees when he arrives is.. not quite what he expected however, skidding to a stop in the doorway and staring out over the large room. There were what had to be cultists in an entrenched position, and several others that he recognized as fellow Bright-Blades scattered about. He noticed the massive ursine in the room first, then the smaller, more reptilian looking woman using him as a cover, and finally the giant of a woman who'd struck in deep. Judging from her stomach, she'd been successful, but was in a rather vulnerable position. His eyes lingered on that bulge a bit before he snapped himself out of it, returning to devising a plan of action, and fast.<br/><br/>He'd certainly got the fight he'd been asking for. What a mess.<br/><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://sadpanda.us/images/1531493-VFC0EE8.png"/></div></div></div>