In the last moments of its life, gripping at its throat to stop bleeding that was too profuse to be stanched, the beast stumbled and slammed its great bulk into the already sundered pillar.  There was a great groan as the pillar broke, the cracks giving way to the force of the ceiling they held, and a thunderous crash as it crumbled.  The ceiling came down like rain and hail, pouring onto the heroes below even as it buried the bull-man and Ninsunu.<br/><br/>Queluna and Amelia braved the fall, escaping through the door by which they'd come in, outpacing the cracks that grew through the ceiling above and were followed quickly by falling blocks like boulders from a bleak sky.  Past the door, they were unscathed, and seemed to have escaped the worst of it; the hall outside seemed untouched by the damage, maintained its integrity even as the throne disappeared under rubble.  Glancing back, they could see Hedenabi still at the far side of the room -- just for a moment longer, before her needling arrowhead broke away some lock or barrier, opened some unseen exit and she slipped out of sight, barely avoiding meeting a fate like Ninsunu's.<br/><br/>...<br/><br/><strong>QUELUNA &amp; AMELIA</strong><br/>The collapse -- the cave-in -- continued to roar on for many moments longer, and the sound of it was thunderous.  Whatever that throne room had been in the past, now it was an unpassable mess of broken stone.  Getting back in there would take a lot of work, might even be impossible at the moment.  Hedenabi's missing; it looked like she escaped the danger, but where did she escape to?  Clearly there's more to this underground palace than you've discovered thus far; hidden tunnels, secret chambers... did the explorers, the ones who had fled or died, have anything to say about those things?<br/><br/>The sputtering torches that Ninsunu had left behind every so often sputtered in the hallway, gave them some means of tracking their way.  Still, so far underground, light is scarce; the daylight that had filtered into the throne room (and how, exactly, had it managed that, wit no real skylight above?) had no reach here, especially since the collapse.<br/><br/><strong>Queluna, Amelia</strong>, what are your plans?  Amelia knows there's something significant down here, Queluna still has riches to dig up, and Hedenabi is alive but missing.  What do you do?<br/><br/><strong>HEDENABI</strong><br/>The panel took some working, but eventually it gave way, and the push-trigger behind it gave way to a hidden door; it slipped open and peeked into a tunnel that gave way quickly to darkness.  Perhaps imposing, but the alternative was worse; staying still meant being crushed, and so Hedenabi stepped through that open portal just in time to escape being crushed by the falling ceiling.  As the exit was buried behind more and more rubble, the darkness became stronger and stronger, until there was no light at all; only a long dark tunnel ahead and a wall of debris behind.  There's little choice now but to march ahead...<strong>Hedenabi</strong>, what do you do, what's going through your head right now?