• Holmes: Chimrea stands at the edge of a huge yawning hole that goes down well beyond sight. There is a goblin contraption next to where the tunnel opens on this well to the underworld. It looks like some sort of lift, but also seems of highly dubious construction. The goblin that is Alquas steps up behind her.
• Holmes: Egani seems to be lagging behind, but in reality he notes that Tez is making her way along the gallery behind them.
• Egani waves to Tez and then back toward Chimrea and Alqualogi.
• C is indeed making her way along in as quite a fashion as she can muster so as not to get in further trouble with the goblins before she feels like it. On spotting Egani, she smiles and waves back and jogs to catch up.
• Chimrea: "Well," Chimrea is saying, "I guess it's not going to look any safer by me staring at it."
• Tez: "What's safe?"
• Chimrea points at the elevator. "Our route down. Where have you been, Tez?" she seems curious, not accusing, but she looks around for Kerem.
• Tez: "Cassio and I rescued Kerem. They were dropping rocks on him. Now they're headed to some kind of safe place. Want to come?"
• Egani: "We're headed to a not particularly safe place far beneath the city. Where's this safe place? And who's idea was that?"
• Tez: "Oh some goblin Cassio met. Looks like you met one too. Nice hair."
• Egani stifles a grin.
• Chimrea: "Is Kerem all right?" Chimrea focuses on the important part.
• Alquas , frowning dubiously at the water and air he is holding in jars, pays only the slightest attention to
• Alquas: Tez's return. He mutters to himself.
• Tez: "I think he'll be fine, but he wasn't very happy. "
• Chimrea: "And some goblin took him off to a safe place? Why would a goblin do that for you?"
• Tez: "oh, we rescued a bunch of his friends," she says airily. "I guess they have an army."
• Holmes: A low, rumbling sound comes from far below, and for a moment a bit of red light escapes upward.
• Alquas: Without a trace of irony: "Indeed, goblins are notoriously untrustworthy."
• Tez looks askance at the goblin. "So are you here so you can betray us or something?"
• Egani fiddles with the elevator contraption, making sure that he understands it.
• Chimrea decides to let Alquas explain this bit.
• Alquas looks at Tez. "You can't tell, can you?"
• Tez: "Tell what?"
• Alquas: "Isn't it obvious?"
• Tez: "That you're really short?"
• Alquas pauses for a moment.
• Alquas: "...yes. Yes. That was what I was referring to. My height."
• Alquas: "I am indeed a short, female goblin who just happens to be accompanying your friends."
• Tez looks at him strangely. "Okay then."
• Chimrea shoots a glance sideways at Alquas; normally he's almost impervious to irony.
• Tez: "Why are you so weird?"
• Tez: "and..clean?"
• Chimrea: "We're going down to talk to a spirit in the deep," Chimrea explains to Tez to avoid further travel down the Alquas/goblin path.
• Tez: "so she's some kind of guide or something?"
• Alquas: "Oh, yes. A guide. Indeed, there is much I know that you do not."
• Alquas: "yes, indeed. Let us venture onward into the deeps, with I, an inexplicably clean and well dressed female goblin, as your guide."
• Tez: "....okay then."
• Tez shoots Chim a look like 'what the hell is with HER?' and shrugs.
• Chimrea: Answering Tez' earlier question, Chimrea says, "I think talking to Salamander is pretty important, so I can't come to the safe place right now. How far away is it?"
• Tez: "Salamander? The safe place is pretty far in... That direction I think. And down." she points.
• Chimrea: "Salamander is one of Old Man Spider's children--it turns out there's a lot of them, around here. I need to..." she trails off a bit, not sure it's enough of a plan to bear scrutiny yet. "Anyway, I need to get down there."
• Tez: "For what?"
• Chimrea: "To talk to the Salamander about the High King and what's happening in Green Lake. I'm sort of starting to think that someone's breaking a deal, and I need to talk to one of the big spirits here to see if I can get some kind of leverage."
• Chimrea: She tries to sound confident about it.
• Tez: "Oh. That sounds like fun."
• Chimrea considers. "Well, I hope so. I'll mostly settle for not fatal, though."
• Egani: "This is a brilliant piece of machinery. I think we're ready to go."
• Tez: "Can I come?"
• Chimrea: She brightens. "Want to come along?"
• Chimrea laughs. "Perfect!"
• Tez grins
• Holmes: As Egani adjusts a control on the cage, it makes an odd grinding sound.
• Chimrea: "I'll feel safer with you along to protect us. Thank you, Tez."
• Tez: "Ok, inexplicably clean and well dressed female goblin guide. Lead the way."
• Alquas: "We're going down." he says, indicating the lift.
• Chimrea: "It's supposed to make that noise, right?" Chimrea asks Egani, approaching the cage.
• Tez smiles at Chimrea, pleased, then follows her over to the contraption.
• Egani: "Uh, well, there's no user-manual. I think it was caused by gears slipping a bit when I was applying lateral pressure to the primary spindle. Probably it doesn't do that all the time."
• Tez pokes at it
• Egani: "So, uh, 'all-aboard!' -- that's what they call out at the sky-ship docks." Egani grins like a child.
• Chimrea: "Right," Chimrea says, stepping in and looking over the side gamely.
• Alquas shuffles aboard, jars tucked under each arm.
• Alquas places the jars on the floor, and adjusts his dress around his goblin-cleavage.
• Tez slides in place where she can get a good view of the trip down
• Egani: As the last of the party climbs into the basket, Egani throws the brake lever to begin the descent."
• Egani: The basket begins with a lurch but soon smooths the rid. "See!" Egani loves this stuff. After a looong time -- perhaps an hour, a wide ledge comes into view beneath the travellers. There is a scaffold built up on it but the car descends past the platform and all the way to the ledge.
• Egani: At the last of the trip, the basket drops a few feet, jarring the passengers. The real problem is that the cable goes slack and it takes a few seconds for anyone to notice. This means the the entire cable is coming down and will certainly be quite dangerous.
• Alquas: The rough landing causes one of Alquas' jars, containing the purified aqua, to shatter.
• Tez: "Oh good, we're finally he... hey, is it supposed to do that?" She points up.
• Egani looks up. "Uh!"
• Alquas: "Curses and damnation!"
• Egani: After a few thought cycles, "Into the passage everyone...get away from the ledge!" Egani gestures and moves briskly toward the passage leading away.
• Egani: The temperature down here is considerably warmer than that above.
• Tez climbs out of the cage thing and sidles away
• Holmes: The cavern that stretches out beyond the ledge seems impossibly large, and is lit intermittently by bursts of red light here and there from gouts of red glowing rock that bubble up from places below.
• Holmes: The air is oppressive as it is filled with particles of burnt matter that are heavy and rise only because of their abundance and the heat.
• Chimrea: Curious, Chimrea looks to see what kind of spirits inhabit a place like this.
• Alquas hustles swiftly away from the ledge.
• Egani ties a wide rag around his face, covering nose and mouth and then offers rags around to anyone who wants one.
• Alquas: He observes the magma for a few moments, head cocked to one side.
• Tez takes one
• Holmes: As everyone takes in the landscape, only Tez is not caught unawares as the cable finally crashes down en masse into the lift, smashing it with tremendous force, and scattering bits of it flying in all directions.
• Tez ducks behind her shield, having quietly positioned herself between the lift and Chimrea. Protection is serious business.
• Alquas goes as if to dive to the ground, but considers the dress and thinks better of it.
• Egani: As the cable's bulk smashes down into the carts, metal and wood bits fly in all directions. A stone that had been a keel-weight flys into Egani's back, knocking him to the ground and close to one of the hot-spots. In the end, he's OK -- bruised and dirty, but OK.
• Alquas ducks a bit to avoid a pinwheeling bit of metal, half-stumbles but manages to turn it into a kind of skipping motion.
• Tez is like a rock in the storm, her shield deflecting the debris neatly with seemingly no effort at all, and not even getting dented to boot.
• Alquas: With some difficulty, he manages to stay on his feet despite having to dance away from several items as they thud into the ground around him.
• Alquas brushes a bit of dirt of his dress, distastefully. "Well, it's fortunate we came with a local expert to help us get here safely." he says, eyeing the prone Egani.
• Chimrea: Chimrea, who slipped a bit of leaf into her cheek during the ride down, is reacting a half-second behind everyone else. Only Tez' shield stops her from being clipped by several elevator shards before she manages to duck down.
• Holmes: Chimrea notes a look of pain on Tez's face and almost misses the oncoming ash spirits. The clouds of dust have something in them, and it clearly is bent on harm.
• Chimrea stands for a moment transfixed, watching the still-falling cable whip through the dust cloud, vortices whirling into angry mouths and then dissolving back into the swarm. Then she grabs Tez' arm and pulls. "Everyone, get away from that ash cloud!"
• Holmes: Alquas imagines for a moment that he can almost see what Chimrea is speaking about, and though he can't really see the spirits well, he's not entirely caught unable to defend himself when they attack.
• Tez stumbles for a second then follows Chimrea, looking back over her shoulder to see what's wrong with the ash cloud."
• Egani: Gazing into the cloud and recognizing the danger, Egani begins to bind the spirits. He realizes that this is what Chimrea is doing also and turns his efforts to support of her approach.
• Chimrea grabs the wire web that hangs from a loop on her belt and pulls it loose, baring her teeth at the oncoming cloud. "You want to eat me, Spider's child? MY friends?" Her voice is cold, angry, as she reaches out a binding hand.
• Alquas watches the scene, eyes the magama in the background, and a thought forms...
• Holmes: Tez feels two things simultaneously as she notes what Chimrea is doing. First, her child is becoming excited by something. Second, there's a tunnel opening up to a familiar feeling place off to one side. Its hard to note, and she's pretty sure she's the only one who's aware that it's there as something other than one of the many other tunnels that lead off in myriad directions here.
• Tez rubs her stomach soothingly, wincing as she is kicked right in the ribs. She keeps an eye on Chim and moves towards the new tunnel...
• Chimrea takes three long steps forward and pivots, going up on her toes and lifting her arm in an arc that carves the web right through the thickest part of the ash cloud as it swirls her. The ash that flies through the web begins to clump together, spinning out as several long threads that hang in the air for a moment.
• Chimrea: As the threads begin to drift to earth, Chimrea kneels, whipping her knife from her belt and grabbing a palm-sized stone. She slashes at the rock, scoring its surface, then cuts her own palm and slams it down against the marked stone. Finally she thrusts the stone at the still-falling threads, which are drawn to the rock and adhere to it as if glued by some invisible force.
• Chimrea spits on the stone, saliva hissing as it meets flecks of ember trapped in the spirit-web. "You're not the only taker down here in the dark," she says flatly.
• Alquas: Alquas watches this open mouthed for a moment...
• Alquas: "YES!" Alquas shouts, suddenly, his eyes wide. "The perfect moment..." Swiftly, he dashes over to Chimrea as she holds her new ash-spirit charm, and kisses her. "Fire is love, it embraces!" he rants, squeezing her with suprising force.
• Alquas: More quietly, he whispers in her ear: "Fire is joy, it warms."
• Tez is completely distracted by the lesbian goblin.
• Alquas: Springing away, he produces a bottle of phosphor from earlier. Opening the top produces a bright flame. "Fire is a signal, it warns!"
• Alquas: He then rolls the bottle with force toward the magma. It trails sparks and fire in a line toward it. "Fire is inspiration! It guides our way!"
• Egani steps back from Chimrea, glad that it all worked out and surprised by Alquas' odd behavior.
• Alquas: He positively sprints along the flaming line, eyes wild.
• Chimrea was about to ask Egani what he did to help--she's not sure she could have held the web without him, and (more disconcertingly) from Tez. Then Alquas leaps into action and she's too surprised to do anything.
• Tez: "Uh." she says intelligently.
• Alquas: He reaches the magma, and holds his hand above it. "Fire... is vengeful. It burns."
• Egani raises one hand, finger extended as if he has something to say, but closes his mouth after a moment or two.
• Alquas: Certain he now has the complete attention of the room, his voice drops to almost a whisper.
• Alquas: "Fire is passion."
• Alquas: He plunges his arm up to the elbow into the magma.
• Alquas: "It consumes!"
• Egani blinks in surprise.
• Chimrea gasps, taking an involuntary step toward Alquas.
• Alquas: There is a dramatic pause, and then Alquas begins screaming in agony.
• Tez: "Your guide seems to have gone a little crazy" she notes.
• Chimrea: "ALQUAS!" Chimrea sprints for him and tries to pull him back from the magma.

(possible missing post?)

• Alquas: Alquas continues screaming, but he manages to get out a few words before passing out:
• Alquas: "I don't... have it..."
• Alquas: He falls limply, his goblinoid form now entirely missing an arm, consciousness having quite left him for the moment.
• Egani begins bandaging the horrible burn.
• Tez: "Wait. So that's ALQUAS?"
• Egani: "Uh, just part of him."
• Holmes: Alquas starts to evoke the symbols of flame... Egani can tell what he's doing now. But before Egani can even consider whether or not to help or how, Alquas is already obviously trying to push his mind to that place where the essential is more real than what everyone thinks of as the real world.
• Holmes: The pain of the incinerated arm seems to be helping tremendously in this mental shift, as Alquas' eyes seem to almost glaze over for a bit.
• Holmes: Chimrea's talisman... her very presence, seem to be helping as well. Egani realizes that there's more to Alquas, possibly, than had previously been seen. This was a very quick shift... all keeping, apparently, with Alquas' claim that the element of fire was about passion.
• Chimrea cradles Alquas' unconscious body as Egani goes to work on the arm. "Come back to us," she murmurs to him, hoping his spirit is finding something besides pain out in the dark.