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DM

Cass’s short sword skitters across the first soot snail’s black shell without biting through.

Cass Dolby

Cass had the sword out and low before the others had stopped arguing about torch placement. She put the point on the lead snail's shell and the thrust skated — like knifing a brick. "Soot snails," she said, short. "Fat on whatever runs out of this place. Don't let them get on your boots — the slime takes the stitching out. And they're slow, so nobody stand still." She shifted her weight, half-turned so the wall was behind her shoulders. Five of them, spread across the tunnel floor. Bigger than any she'd seen under Gald, and wrong somehow — the shells had a wet sheen on them that wasn't water. "Watch the walls too. Where there's five, there's eggs."

DM

Cass’s warning comes after her missed thrust. Ruta still has the floor; the soot snails creep closer across the tunnel.

Ruta Pell

Ruta sets her feet and swings the drag hook low at the first snail — the beak skips off the black shell without leaving a mark, same as Cass's sword did. "Shell grades sound," she says, hauling it back. "Don't waste a swing on the backs. They're slow — hit them when they're moving, head out. Wen, count them and keep the numbers coming."

DM

Ruta’s drag hook clangs off the lead snail’s shell, throwing a spark into the soot.

DM

The lead snail surges beneath Ruta’s guard and clamps onto her boot and ankle. Its rasping mouth tears through leather for 3 damage.

DM

A second snail lunges at Cass, but its teeth snap shut on empty air as she shifts against the wall.

DM

A third snail piles in beside the first. Its mouth rasps across Ruta’s shin for 2 damage, leaving her bloodied at 3 hit points.

DM

A fourth snail catches Cass despite her footing. Its bite punches through her leather for 2 damage, leaving her at 3 hit points.

DM

The fifth snail rears toward Ruta, but her shield knocks its gnashing mouth aside.

Tobias Enk

Tobias does not comment on the blood. Cage in the off hand, mace in the other; he does not swing at the shell. He waits until the first snail's head is out, working at Ruta's boot, and brings the mace down on the mouth. "That's a four," he says, as if filling a form. "Don't let them get a second grip."

Tobias Enk

The head is gone by the time the mace arrives. It rings on shell instead, same as the others, and Tobias does not swing again. He keeps the cage up off the floor.

DM

The snail jerks back beneath its shell. Tobias’s mace strikes soot-black stone where its mouth had been.

Wen Harrick

Wen does not step in. He has the dagger because that is what one does when the others have already drawn, but he keeps a full pace of chain-length between himself and the nearest shell. "Five," he says, because she told him to count. "One and three on Ruta. Four on Cass. Two and five still in the floor." The first snail's head is out, working the boot. He does not ask this time. He puts the Light on its eyes.

DM

Wen’s Light takes hold. The lead snail rolls a 4 and fails its save versus spells; white fire clings to its eye-stalks. Soot snail 1 is blinded and cannot attack for 7 turns. Wen’s memorised Light is spent.

DM

Cass thrusts at the third snail as its head emerges, but the point bites only stone beside it.

Cass Dolby

The head on Ruta's shin is the shot — out and busy, exactly what she told the others to wait for — and Cass puts the point on it and the snail pulls. Draws back into the shell with the speed of a dropped stitch, and her thrust goes where its neck was, close enough to Ruma's shin to count. She drags it short, swears once, low. "Pull your leg," she says, flat. "Or don't. But it's got a schedule — it comes out to feed and it goes in when it's hit. Watch the mouth, not the shell. The mouth is the door." She keeps her back to the wall, weight up. Three hit points and she knows it to the digit. The blinded one off to the left she marks by ear and ignores — it can't find her and she's not going looking.

Ruta Pell

Ruta does not swing again. She has cleared fat blockages for nine years and the Office rule for one is older than she is: you don't reach in while it's live. You burn it. Black shells with a wet sheen that isn't water — that's grease, that's the outflow — and grease takes flame and holds it. She hauls her leg back out of the rasping, shield up across where the fifth one reared, one pace, two — the blinded one scrabbling at the air where her boot was. "Cass, off the wall, back two paces — get four off you." She takes the walls in one pass first — no clutches, nothing hanging in the throw-line — and glances at the cage. "Flame's been steady since the hatch. Air grades sound. Tobias, cage high." Then the flask is out of the satchel, rag touched to the lantern, and she puts it underhand into the floor of the run between her and the shells coming on — three's head, the blind one, the two still creeping — where it breaks and spreads fire across the wet. "Nobody stands in it. Wen — count them through the flame. Numbers coming." The entry-book line is already half-written in her head, the way she always does it before anything's over: chamber five, five obstructions, shells grade sound, method — burn.

DM

Ruta’s flask breaks across the black runoff. It is grease: flame races through the wet trails beneath soot snails 1, 2, 3, and 5, leaving snail 4 clear beside Cass. The burning grease lasts through rounds 2 and 3; each snail in it takes 1d6 damage at the start of its turn. Ruta has 3 oil flasks left.

DM

At the start of its turn, the blinded lead snail takes 5 fire damage. Its shell pops in the grease fire, and it dies without attacking.

DM

The surviving soot snails roll 7 on their first-death morale check and hold.

DM

Soot snail 2 takes 2 fire damage but keeps coming, scorched and half-dead.

DM

Soot snail 2 bursts through the flames and bites Cass for 3 damage. Its teeth close on her throat; Cass Dolby falls dead at 0 hit points.

DM

Soot snail 3 takes 6 fire damage. Its body curls out of the shell and chars motionless in the burning runoff.

DM

Soot snail 4 leaves Cass’s fallen body and snaps at Tobias, but his raised cage and mace keep it from finding flesh.

DM

Soot snail 5 takes 5 fire damage and dies in the burning grease. Three of the five snails are dead.

DM

At half strength, the soot snails roll 10 and fail morale. The scorched second snail and untouched fourth recoil from the flames and drag themselves into the narrow exhaust cracks. The fight is over. Cass lies dead; Ruta stands at 3 hit points.