As I caught my breath on the stairs, Nero scrambled back up the stairs and into the room, so I followed him. I saw him drag Kiya toward the hatch and Wolfy, so I quickly searched the (now much clearer) room for other survivors. The flames had been quenched somehow, but the bags of grain, wooden support beams, and rafters were still smoldering -- so there was more smoke coming soon.

Sounds of battle rang in the hallway outside the door. Nero leaped over the grain bags, one hand grabbing at his sword. I followed.

The hallway was as smoky as the room, but I could see well enough to count four largish humanoids (three with axes, and one waving his arms mystically), DQ trading blows with a sword, JVB wielded a short sword in one hand and punched faces with his other hand, VIper was flying interference over the enemies, and Nero had drawn his sword and was yelling "GO!" and "RUN!". In short, it was mass confusion.

I could not find an opening in the foray to use my dagger, and no safe passage to circle around behind the enemy, so I watched helplessly for almost two minutes as the battle raged on. No one seemed to be winning or losing, but everyone did seem to be tiring.

A sudden sense of fear crept up my back and lodged between my ears in the back of my head. All this time I had been ignoring the one weakness of our group: an attack from the rear. I whirled around fully expecting to see a dozen monsters charging toward me. No one was there; the coast was clear. I turned the fear on its ear, and decided to try to discover if the hallway circled back around behind our enemies.

[Linked Image]

I followed the hallway around two corners to a set of double doors. Peeking through them, I saw no threat, so I [color:"yellow"]Poof![/color]-ed and floated in the direction of the double doors behind the enemies.

[color:"pink"]Foop![/color] I jabbed my dagger into one of the waving hands of the fireball-casting monster, and said [color:"orange"]"Hi, Viper! Need a hand?"[/color] as he flew toward me.

-- BG