Fight the Real Enemy!
  A Guest in the Hole!
 
Just after the group moves onward, Matteo hears something down the tunnel. As Ullar is debating moving about the gnomes, Matteo motions for silence. He hears the noise again, something moving about down the tunnel that the grey men led you all from. Briefly thinking it must be Silus, he looks down the tunnel, but sees nothing in the dark. Thinking better safe than sorry, he has Ullar extinguish his lantern. The sounds stop and Matteo clearly hears a man speaking fluent Italian, definitely not Silus, "Shit, they've heard us! Get up here! There's about ten of those bastards, and they'll put up one hell of a fight", Matteo can barely make out the response, a smooth and silky voice, with an undetermined accent, "Properly cooked, they won't resist, I think." A brief chuckle, and the previous voice speaks again, "Back, then, men, we don't want any of the backwash to this. Just picking up the pieces."

Ullar whispers silently: "SHIT!"

"Ok, we'll have to barricade this side of the tunnel. What can we use for that?" he says with a questioning look upon his face.

As Matteo first hears the voices he motions for Ullar to help him with Kenshiro's body. Then as the silky voice begins talking about, 'Properly Cooked', Matteo rantically motions for speed. ""Ullar... They've a spellcaster. We've got to run!", he whispered.

"Really?" The ex-gladiator doesn't stand still but throws his lantern into the tunnel where Matteo heard the talking. Hopefully it will break, and the warrior is assuming that the oil inside could start burning just as well as anything else, if they are using fire on them.

Matteo gets himself under one shoulder of the big Kenshiro and begins scrambling towards the direction the rest of the group went, hoping that Ullar will join him. Not knowing exactly what spell is being cast, Matteo has no way of judging how soon it will go off, so he just keeps running, dragging Kenshiro behind him and silently counting the seconds till the fiery explosion. Matteo hoped the little Gnomes lived, and silently prayed that they'd be more than a tad upset at the new bunch after the spell hit, but the caster seemed sure of himself, which didn't bode well for the Gnomes or themselves!

Ullar, trusting Matteo on this one completly runs over to Kenishiro and drags him along, holding his sack in his outermost hand.

Seeing that he will be unable to stuff the tunnel with the resources at hand, and Matteo's urgency, Ullar lends his big body to the task of hauling Kenishiro's extra large ass out of there. Together they hoist him up and make off at a stumbling run, leaving the tied up gnomes, who do not protest or even speak.

Since both Ullar and Matteo continue running, there is not anything they can do in the meantime but pray that this will end the right way for them.
 
 
 
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This page was last updated on 20 January 2001