Dezil looked up at the man that with blinding speed had taken down the cultist he missed. "Gah, I thank you for the help pal, but that's not as easy as it sounds! These lunatics are filling the passageway. We need to take them down quick, so we can find those magical people."

Dezil leapt back to his feet in one motion, and looked back at the melee. A good number of the cannabilistic cultists had fallen, but there were still a good number left. They needed to bust through quick, so Dezil leapt straight at a pair of them, swinging his wrench with painful precision. He hit anywhere he could as fast as he could, breaking limbs, ribs, and skulls with equal precision, and laying down the cultists quickly. With the numbers thinned, he could see the passageway was clear once this group was down. "Hey, lets take these wackos down and get going! We need to save the others!" Dezil shouted out to the other warriors.

"Well, this is creepy. At least I don't have to worry about my hand getting chopped off."

Alaroth (or his twin, I don't know how simulacra work) walked over to the hole in the wall and, and a few seconds of studying the hole, managed to fit the amulet in.

"There. So, what happens now?"

Ganurath smirked at his adversaries and beckoned them to come at him. Five lunged this time. The first was decapitated by Gan's halberd. The second, out of reach for a followup-strike, was knocked aside by the nearest shoulder shield. The third's chest was severed with a downward slash, wounding the leg of the fourth in the process. Ganurath jabbed his wounded foe with the butt of his halberd, allowing him to stab into the fifth cultist. The surviving pair stagger to their feet and lunged for a flank attack, but Ganurath simply face-smacked them with his shoulder-shields. He would have finished them, but more were coming toward him and he decided not to render himself prone.

Jude yawned and let the boomerangs fall to the ground. He sat against the wall and watched the procedings.

"Ya know, we could just wait. Whatever dropped us in here wanted us to stay put. The girl here obviously has a few friends on the outside who are gunna want her back, so lets just let the inevitable happen. But good luck and all that, wake me up if you make any progress."

Axel was getting pretty angry, which showed with the two inch spikes coming out of his arms and back. After getting his sword stuck in a dead foe's head, a cultist had tried to hack into Axel's back, but his attempt was in vain. Axel had hit his opponent in the neck with his arm, spikes getting embedded and causing the cultist to fall to the ground, choking on his own blood, his makeshift sword clattering to the ground next to him.

After finally getting his sword out of the one cultist's head, Axel thought everything was going kind of smoothly. That was, until a yelling and screaming cultist with smoke coming off of him caused the whole area to become enshrouded. With everything coveered in the foggy substance and the air becoming hard to breath, the fight just got more challenging than he was hoping.

Kal finished off his opponent by beheading him, and glanced around. The smoke was making it hard for them to breathe, and the cultists were confused. "Come on!'

The fighters finished, and ran farther down the hallway. From the drag marks, it was pretty apparent where the mages had been taken. Except for one small problem. The wall gave a gurgling sound and forced that direction closed, nearing squashing Kal while it was at it.

That route was blocked off, but when they turned the walls did the same thing in the opposite direction. However, on their right, they forced opened in a spray of ichor. Ironically enough, Kay got the worst of it.

Esentially, they only had one direction they could take.

Kay lowered his ichor splattered coat. He looked rather put out. He sighed and cleaned his glasses on his sleave.

"I'm going to have some words with our host about this. Getting this coat cleaned is not cheap."

Vindro slowly forced his way back to conciousness, or rather, conciousness forced it's way back to him...whichever of the two, he was waking up. As he looked around, he noticed that he was in a small room, with no doors or windows, but a small group of people standing around an odd shape in the wall. "...hey, what happened? I feel like I've been hit with a ton of bricks."

"Pretty close. We're all in some nigh-unescapable prison cell awaiting our forced sacrifice to a dead goddess, those guys are trying to escape through the living wall, and me and you are chatting." Jude explained.

"...you know, you have such a bright outlook on life."

Ganurath stiffled a laugh when Kal gets splattered. "The one time I'm not in front of the party. Oh, that's rich." He begins to weave through the group and presses ahead down the hall, halberd and shoulder-shields ready.

Talan decided to fall in behind the armored halberdier. No point exposing himself needlessly to injury, and he could at least help provide rear security for the large man.

Not much time had passed since the amulet was put in the little slot when a light shined out from the hole, then formed a ball of light... it looked a lot like the portal that they had been captured through.

Celes looked at the portal with uncertainty, "Do you think that's the way out? It seemed kind of easy if they don't want us to escape..."

"I'll let this guy figure it out." Vin said, as he picked up a corpse and tossed it into the portal.

"Send in the two similacums." Coin said, pointing to the portal. "That's why I summoned them."

Picking up the card from the gound he placed it back in his deck, and shoved the cards back into his coat pocket.

"Alrighty. To the sky with ye!" Al shouted as he laucnhed his Xerox self into the miniportal, and hoped that nothing bad would come of it. Just in case, he drew his sword and assumed a defensive stance, and said "Maybe some of you should stand back a little..."

The body and the similacums disappeared through the portal. The group waited for a few minutes, before long the similacums returned, seemingly unhurt.

(OOC: I'm not sure how these clone-things work, it the owner of the similacums can see what the similacums see, they came out of the portal into a big shadow-y room, littered with more dead bodies and a giant pit in the center.)

Dezil was more unsure of where he was, and what was going on by the second, but he shrugged. He was stuck here, and there were safty in numbers. He followed the others down the passageway that had opened.

(OOC: I guess since you told us what was "out" there already, Jess, that you would be okay with the proceedings.)

Coin stared at the portal and then back at Al and Lucian.

"So, then ... what did you see out ... erm, in there ..."

"Well, not much. Just a room like this. Little bigger, more dead people, and what I'm guessing was a sacrificial pit of some kind." He shrugged his shoulders, and continued. "I didn't see anything lethal looking, so I assume that we should go on through. Better than just sitting here and waiting for doom."

If I'm dead meat, then I'd like to hurry it up.

Pulling his deck of cards out of his jacket, Coin thumbed through a couple before he found the one he wanted.

"You first, then." He nodded to Al.

Lucian walked through without bothering to wait any longer and immediately made his way to the lip of the pit and looked down, but could see only the dark extending off into what seemed to be an eternity. Not even his fae senses could pierce the veil to the bottom of the well, and so, as he stared, his simulacrum began to move, following him through the portal and walking to his side. The copy stopped for just a moment before taking one last step and tumbling down ward into the darkness. After a few seconds Lucian arched an eyebrow, and then he turned back a few moments later.

"It appears to lead out of this place," he said calmly.

(OOC: I assume at least Zweihander would have followed Lucian through. If not, then changed turned back, to turned and walked back into the other room, and change it to 'the pit'.

Edit: Also, I asked Celes about the pit... so no one thinks I'm just making thins up.)

"Great." Said Coin as he walked through the portal. Throwing the card he had selected on the ground, he spoke a series of incantations. When he was finished, he took two steps back just intime to avoid the giant spider that dropped from the ceiling next to him.

"Now," He said picking up the card and replacing it in his deck. "Who want's teh first ride down?"

(OOC: Yeah, I went through too. With the Stoneskin and my fighter skillz, we're basically the meat shields. For the moment.)

Al was a little surprised at the giant spider that just appeared, but he'd seen weirder magics. "I'll head down first. If I meet anything, the two of us (me and Spidey) can take it."

He turned to his clone and said in an authoritative voice, "Stay...Here."

The carbon copy gave no visible sign of acknowledgment.

"Good boy." Turning to the spider, he said "So, how do I get on this thing?"

"Just grab on and ride him all the way down." Coin said petting the back of the spider.

Celes stepped through the portal as well to see them discussing going through the pit. "Are you sure it's safe?" She asked, glancing down into the pit wearily, then glancing at the spirder that was appearantly going to carry them down, "But I guess any way is better than just being stuck in this room..."

Meanwhile (OOC: sorry fighters, didn't mean to neglect you or anything)

The fighting group continued down a hall until they reached a large door... or at least it looked like a blood-covered door. Opening the door, the group came upon a large room with a single, slightly familiar looking, body sprawled out in the center of the room. It didn't appear hurt, just immoble.

Talan looked around the room. There didn't seem to be any guards around, nor any obvious threats, and he had a bevy of dangerous fighters behind him in case of trouble.

"I'll check it out. No sense you guys get taken out if it's a trap - we'll need all the fighting power we can get."

Talan inched closer to the body and looked at the face.

"Well, shit. It's one of the kidnapped mages."

His pulse quickened somewhat as he considered the thought that they might be sacrificing her even now.

Ganurath looked over the rogue's shoulder and whistled. "Seems like the others are safe though. Otherwise their bodies would be here, too, right?"

Kay looked about the room. (ooc: Pm me if I notice anything important like a trap, or monster on the ceiling.)

"Good point. The last evil temple I went to, they weren't too particular about body disposal."

He looked to the ceiling.

"It seems that if we're going to go on any further, we'll have to go up."

He felt his back for his rope and grapnel, then cursed as he remembered he was in formal wear. Of all the times not to have it with me...

Fredan steped forward "well there's always one way to see if it's safe, HELLO, ANYBODY THERE!" he shouted leaning over the pit, then he stood up and drew his swords.

"Wow, good call. I'll just float down, see you at the bottom and all that, maybe leave. Uhm...nice meeting you all, hope you have better luck in future endeavors, call me, all that good stuff." Jude said as he hopped into the pit.

"Alrighty... nice spider... easy...."

Al climbed onto the spiders back. It was surprisingly soft, if not weird.

"Okay, begin lowering me down."

Lucian watched as Al climbed onto the spider and the creature moved over to the hole and began spinning a strand of silk to lower itself down with, but, before the red mage began his decent Lucian remembered something. "When you reach the bottom, pull the strand three times, assuming that it is safe for the rest of us to come down, and that we will not be noticed. Then move away from the bottom of the hole."

As the spider began to lower itself, Vindro hopped onto it's back, pulled out his flute, and started playing a soft tune. The spider, the red mage, and Vindro all disappeared from sight.
(OOC: if the spider is not large enough, then disregard that.)