Duty Session 347: Karluin Reclamation - Labyrinth

Gathering in a hidden passage underneath Karluin Keep, the party is thrust into a dank, dark underground. As the stone doors open wide in front of them, the air fills with the damp scent of petrichor, undercut by the reeking stench of old, spilled viscera. The cavernous labyrinth seems to sigh with anticipation, a chill breeze seeping out from the depths. Its ancient masonry has blended seamlessly with the natural caverns underneath Karluin to make a truly nefarious maze. Now all that's left is to take a step forward into unknown terror and brace for the dangers lurking in the oppressive dark.

A flame flickers in the gusts of air; as Uta swings her brass lantern from side to side, patches of light shift on the nearby surfaces, to give a glimpse of the Spriggan's features, along with bricks and stones.

"These are the worst sewers ever," Uta grumbles, as she leads the party onwards. "We've been here for... how long now? And still not one slime in sight."

This is spooky. This firebird probably shouldn't -be- underground, and yet there she be, alongside the others, a little ember in one hand lighting the way for her along with other light sources. "Wait, you're here for - ..." no no, of course she is. Why else would Uta be here? "Well if you don't want any of the loot I'll be happy to sell it off.."

"The loot is secondary to ensuring that eventually this place is cleared of monsters." Tenko had heard the call for assistance and responded to it, having arrived shortly ago. The kitsune was using a fireball held in one hand as a light source, the flames causing the light to dance off of her mask as she looked through the darkness, "That being said, it is an important part of the economy and shouldn't be forgone entirely."

Shiruba rubs a hand over her face, not sure if this is one of those times that Uta doesn't realize she's in a different place, or legit just thinks this is a poor location for the lack of slimes. "It's not a sewer, Uta," she finally replies, "It's an underground maze. We're more likely to run across ghosts. Or a minotaur.... But hopefully not Evil Otto. He's an ass with a face."

Gamer joking aside she nocks an arrow ready in her bow, tail lashing. "Don't let your guard down. I can smell goblin stink from here."

Goldenblade has joined Uta under Karkuin Keep, and is admiring the way the stonework blends with the natural stone. "Looks like they took advantage of the natural passages where they could," she observes as Uta grumbles. As to how long we've been here, she can only shrug. Being a dual-blade user, she typically has no hands free for a torch. But being as highly attuned with fire as she is, that hardly matters. Flames flicker up and down one swordblade, as bright as a torch, though with a slightly blue-tinted flame.

Her features are keen and interested, though more like a craftsman preparing to do a complex job than a warrior about to stab some monsters. But, that's the way she approaches the game, here. Got to do the missions to get done, right?

SpritesHero has assembled. Meaning, he appears to be reasonably decked out in standard Adventurer gear, and is, at the very least, present. As for lighting, he's managed to pick up some sort of glowy rock from somewhere and tucked it into a loop on his clothing just over his left chest.

Aside from that, he remains both silent and still. Silent, that is, save for the universal male response to discussions that aren't quite being listened to. He grunts supportively. Or at least he presumably hopes it sounds supportive. Just nobody ask him a question and everything will be fine.

"I haven't actually seen any slimes down here, and this is my... twelfth trip? Or more? I've lost count," Prophylaxis says, emerging from the darkness of the labyrinth as if he had long since become one with it. Perhaps he has? Perhaps the darkness of this place has been etched into his very soul...?

Or maybe he just made a little camp-out cubbyspace for himself next to the dungeon gate, considering how often he and his compatriots come down this way to waylay some goblins.

"Anyway, that's not to say that there /aren't/ any, just that I haven't seen them. Maybe the goblins have kept their numbers down?" Prophylaxis shrugs!! "Anyway! I've seen evidence of some truly ancient ruins deep in the depths of the dungeon, but we haven't figured out how to get in so far. Too many goblins. Maybe this time though, we'll get lucky?"

"Oh, no, I'm keeping the loot," Uta replies to Tenko, casually. "I like loot. I collect it. Plus, it's interesting to feed to slimes. It can produce interesting results. Of course, I tend not to feed the slimes the /good/ loot. Usually. Definitely not since the accident. Well, accident/s/, plural. I never learn, you know, I- wait, what is it that I never learn?" She stops all of a sudden, the kind of abrupt stopping where people that are walking too close to her might bump into her. She taps her lips, gaze lost in the distance while her raised lantern swings, and then continues, "...I forget. What we were talking about?" She frowns. And immediately sighs. "Ah well, it's probably nothing important." She resumes her smile, and beams, "Oh boy, oh boy! Can't wait until I get home and get to feed the loot to the slimes!"

"What's an Evil Otto? A... literal pair of buttocks with a visage?" Uta seems to take Shiruba very seriously on this.

She does not interfere with Robert's polite grunting. "Goblins. I hate Goblins!", Uta growls at Prophylaxis. Her step picks up speed and determination, and her movements stiffen a little. "I'll be more than glad to help you slay some. And who knows..." She ducks to enter a particularly low passage, "...maybe this time I will finally manage to secure myself a Dungeon Heart piece. I've always wanted one of these..."

Uta's words are interrupted by a burst of arrows, so many that the noise they make on impact is closer to something being dragged on a bumpy surface than a staccato of separate blows.

Uta dodges and rolls to the ground with a scream, as one arrow plants firmly into a shoulder, now glowing red. "ARGHHHHH!", she winces, and the hint of tears form at the edge of her eyes. "/This/ is why I hate goblins!"

The patter of feet can be heard getting closer and closer -- Goblins have night vision after all, and the team will have to find a way to compensate for the enemy's advantage.

Almost as soon as they venture farther inward Shiruba's ears snap to attention, followed by a quick "GET DOWN" barked as she ducks an arrow wizzing by JUST BARELY missing her because a goblin archer mistook her up-tied ponytail as the actual top of her head. Good thing she heard that coming.

From her crouched position she raises her bow and fires back in the direction the shots start coming from. Except her arrow explodes with wind power, knocking several of those arrows out of flight before plunging into the sniper nest the archer are trying to ambush them from.

Goldenblade ducks back behind the curve in the passage from where Uta was just attacked, letting the fusilade of arrows go by. Once the initial rush of arrows fades, she steps out, and in order to shed some light on things, she goes to her old standby, fire. And by fire, she means she holds both swords out like a batter aiming for deep left field, and a spray of flames jets out that would be illegal under the Geneva convention to use on people. But luckily in this case, she's using it to clear out obstacles. Specificlly goblins, but she's been reminded over and over, goblins are not people. So, it's Flame On! and goblin clearing has commenced. It gives the area a nice orange glow, too, as the stonework heats up, and the burning goblins run madly around before collapsing in pixels.

Arrows? Arrows?! She didn't even get to protest for the loot! That sweet, valuable loot. Alas! Distracted as she is, Tenix gets hit a couple times, once in the shoulder, another in the thigh, but thankfully her armor keeps any resulting injuries from being severe. "OW! No, bad labrynth! BAD!" so protests the firebird before backpedaling behind.. someone. Whoever looks like a tank! "Ow ow ow.."

Goblins love their ambushes. One might even say that they live to jump out of the dark and jab their crude little metal shards into sensitive spots. Or in this case, to shoot arrows out of the dark at unsuspecting adventurers!!

Uta is struck, but this is why you bring a medic. "Potion," Prophylaxis calls, jabbing a syringe into Uta's arm before tugging the arrow out of her shoulder. But that still doesn't help much when there are more arrows coming their way.

Fortunately, Prophy has been here before.

"Lights! Give them a great big flash of light and turn that darkvision against them!" Lights, as it happens, much like the ones you get by spamming the electrical fuzz spell ad nauseum. Soon the entire corridor is shining like a Christmas Tree in a particularly competitive neighborhood...!

The grunting long since subsided in favor of a reserved watchfulness, Robert is not taken by surprise by the goblin archers. Although, to be fair, this could also be because team-mates being turned into pincushions is also a rather unambiguous clue. Given the distinct lack of cover (other than aforementioned teammates), he opts for the direct approach. Up goes his hand, his voice an accelerated drone of an incantation, and a sheet of fire pours towards he goblin position. There's no finesse or technique or strategy to the maneuver. It's a magical sledgehammer rapidly brought to bear against a susceptible target.

Goblins, yet again. Tenko is already in her kitsune form, but as such is able to take advantage of the enhanced senses in that form in order to be able to bypass the night vision advantage that the goblins have as she engages them.

She is more than capable of holding her own with her katana in close quarters with the goblins, deflecting and parrying strikes and delivering counter blows each time.

Thankfully for Prophylaxis, Uta is also trained in proper medical practices, and knows exactly how to behave when someone else extracts an arrow from you. A thing that Prophylaxis might not be able to say of /all/ patients...

"Thanks, Doctor...", Uta replies. She's still wincing a little, but it's clear that the bulk of the pain is gone. "Good thing this party is not short on healer. Now, I think it's time we both check on Tenix," she says, as she navigates through her menu and materializes her caduceus-shaped staff in a shimmer of colors and light. She approaches the avian Adventurer...

...oly to be interrupted by more arrows coming. "Oh, no! This time I'm prepared!" She spins her staff, and a blast of air deflects the arrows, right into half of a party of goblins that happen to have just rushed in. The other half... well, Robert seems pretty good at squishing them.

The party proceeds deeper into the labyrinth, when all of a sudden, Uta raises her hand to stop and silence the party. She hurries to duck into a dark side passage, motions for the others to do likewise, flattens her back against a wall, and peeks around the corner.

The clattering of chains becomes louder and louder, mixed with disgusting jeering. It's a train of prisoners, both Landers and Adventurers, being pushed around with whips and poked at with spikes by an escort of Goblins.

She nudges her head in the direction of the train. The team will know what to do now.

"I'm alright! Just a little dinged up! No worries!" Tenix insists as Uta suggests the firebird get checked on. She's still in good spirits, so the arrows didn't do -too- much. She moves along with everyone once things get going, only to realize there's a whole lot of prisoners getting moved ahead. "Oh no. No no no this won't do at all!" Ever the brash and free spirit she is, the firebird darts ahead with a flurry of smaller fireballs getting sent out at the jailers. "Let those people go!"

Shiruba makes a face of utter disgust when they come across the goblin chaingang. Adventurer AND Lander prisoners, damn every one of the little green skinned bastards.

The arcane archer draws her bow... but has to hold her fire when she sees several others sneaking forward to break the prisoners free. And then the fire from the phoenix. In the end she ends up having to drop her initial plan to cluster shoot the guards to avoid friendly fire, and pop off shots one by one to try and give the other's some coverfire instead.

Goldenblade hrms as Uta points out the train of prisoners, and does indeed know what to do. Without the time to apply the pigments to her face for a proper ninja attempt, she none the less slips into the shadows as she approaches the coffle. Slipping into places they don't expect is part of her job description, she's found, and she has come to see that as a relevant part of her character, if unplanned and not fully supported by her RL experience the way construction is.

So, Goldenblade ninjas up to the group of prisoners and guards and suddenly, goblins have blades sticking out of them and do not know why.

Tenko is primarily focused on melee, but that doesn't mean she isn't skilled with a bow. After all, Samurai must be masters of all their weapons. She stops as they near the prisoner chain, and she puts her katana away, drawing her bow from her inventory. It's one of the large traditional Japanese style bows, lots of range and power, but a bit unwieldy to use in close quarters.

Still now that they have the drop on the goblins, Tenko should be able to put an arrow straight in between a few of their eyes before they even realize that the adventurers are there. In coordination with the rest of the team, it should be quick and ruthless.

Sneaking is good. Sneaking is Robert's thing. He is, in point of fact, elegantly making his stealthy way towards the train of prisoners, when he manages to locate the one stick (miraculously still dry) in the entire labyrinth....and step on it. At which point assassination turns into distraction. There's a moment's hesitation as he freezes, as eyes turn towards him. "Ehehe," he manages.

What happens next is lost amidst a cloud of smoke and screams and flames, which...mysteriously manages to keep going once a rather sooty Robert stumbles out of the middle of it. He watches it, warily, even as he steps back to take a swig from his potion flask. Yes, that's really healing potion in there, and not something else. Promise.

Hey now, Prophylaxis doesn't have to deal with /that/ many patients who don't know how to behave like patients.

And if he does, he has actual paralytic poisons now. So that's good.

But then, there is a sound that Prophylaxis recognizes almost instantly. The clattering of chains, the quiet, resigned sobs of captured landers and adventurers... More goblin captors, more captives in irons.

But this time, the party has the drop on them.

Prophylaxis hangs back, his staff reaching into a particularly deep shadow. Tendrils of tenebrous black squirm outward, concealing the party's presence as they move to do some right proper liberation...!

Uta, like Goldenblade, applies her sneaking techniques, and Goblin find themselves choked by headlocks, or karate-jabbed into the throat, and shatter into polygons without knowing why.

The team eventually succeeds in freeing the prisoners who, after thanking the party, flee to safety. The party, conversely, pushes on, and soon, they find themselves into a tangle of corridors, which branch off in strange and winding directions, passages which loop back upon themselves in a seemingly intentional attempt to confuse your sense of direction, and people can't shake the feeling that something is watching them.

"These doorways... they've been used recently," Uta comments, kneeling down to inspect the footsteps. She levels one cheek to the ground, turns her head left and right, and even tastes a sample of terrain. She finally declares, "Two Were Fangs, two Cait Siths, one Human, and two Spriggans." She frowns. "This... this is a starnge party of Goblins. I wonder how..."

Oh look, in fleeing from the goblin slavers they've found the actual labyrinth of the labyrinth.

And why is Shiruba's tail actually wagging a bit at this?

"Finally a challenge more up my alley!" The wolven cait sith examines one the walls for a moment, then another, then motions to the others to follow her. "Com'n, I'll find a way. This maze also has to support the floors above us so there is only so many formations the wall structures can be laid out in, that can be used to plot possible pathes and hope we can get the better odds on the right one!" She points at Goldenblade. "You know construction, help me keep track of which walls are load bearing or not."

    The prisoners are free. WOO! The maze continues. AUGH. As the hours draw on, the bird-trapped-underground is trudging along with the others, thinking about open spaces and any kind of sky, rather than the cold, dank, stone walls leading them around in a wibbley-wobley space-wacey kind of way. IT IS AWFUL. "Ugh.. when are we getting out of here..?"

SpritesHero's expression is bleak. Which is to say, his lips have managed to curve downwards by a hair, and his thumb occasionally taps against his belt. He's also of no help whatsoever at present, the rapidity with which his gaze skates between passageways offering no insight whatsoever into which passage might posibly be the right one. Or even the less bad one. At least he'll provide early warning of any surprises?

Getting out of this maze will take navigation and luck, it is said, but Goldenblade makes her own luck. As well as most of her gear, and items for others, by arrangement. So, manufacturing a bit of routefinding mojo is fairly straightforward for her, and she points out, "The correct paths are more heavily travelled, so ..." She will lay a bar down across the floor and see where there are tiny paths of wear in the stone. Less than a centimeter, but noticable as a gap under the bar, and when she rolls it around the floor, she gets a fairly good idea of which way most people go down here. Sadly, her technique is time consuming, and the party has moved on without her unconvincing scrying technique, so she sighs and follows them. She'd wanted to go a different way, but she is not going off on her own, thank you very much.

When Shiruba calls out for her assistance at identifying load-bearing walls, she explains, "In a mostly closed layout like this, pretty much all the walls are load-bearing. It's only in open designs where the load-bearing is an issue..."

Oh hey, /there's/ that entrance to the ruins that Prophylaxis was talking about looking for! Too bad there's a... complication.

In that, by entering said ruin, they've found the labyrinth that the Karluin Labyrinth is actually named for. How about that?

"I'm pretty sure..." Uta has found footprints. But they are, notably, /not/ the kind of footprints that one would be excited to find.

Because they are the /party's/ footprints. Prophylaxis sighs. This... is probably the exact sort of circumstances that would merit certain extreme measures. "Uta," he says, carefully, "We need you to keep a clear head while we're down here. I haven't explored this part of the dungeon at /all/. Gotta keep everyone in the game, so."

He produces a familiar crystal.

...And gently boops Uta's forehead with it. Boop!

Tenko is not exactly able to predict the future. She's able to infer things based on evidence, but as far as actual future predictions, she's not there.

None the less, she does what she can in order to help the group out. At the very least she's doing her best to not make things worse.

Uta's pupils widen the way water sloshes when a pebble is tossed into a fountain, then-

Narrow all of a sudden.

Uta blinks twice, stands up, and shakes here head. Her vacant expression is gone, replaced by an uncharacteristically focused one.

"Okay, okay, that's it.", she states, and begins to pace around. "Goldenblade, I have to commend you for that technique. A simple yet clever way to determine contour lines, if one wants. But why restrict oneself to sweeping a segment when we can approach the isoline issue from a planar, or even volumetric, angle? We could exploit the principle of potential energy, and spray the ground with a thin layer of water. Due to the liquid tending to pool into sacs of minimal potential energy, the countours so described would be a visible representation of isolines!", and after saying this, she proceeds to do exactly that. Constrained martial arts gestures, reduced to only her fingers, materialize a reduced amount of water, just enough to show pools in the ground, and allow the party to see exactly where they've been, where the /Goblins/ gave been, where they're going, and which paths are more or less travelled, allowing the team to quickly find their way into the deeper recesses of the Labyrinth, where the maze thickens and deepens. A tangle of non-Euclidean springs, wire, and spaghetti, a maddending writhing of wormlike tunnels, an insane system of viscera designed to make even the most seasoned Adventurer seasick.

"And this is very interesting, the prints are starting to show a minimal, yet perceptible, amount of divergence here. It would appear that the Goblins are preaparing to split, and-" She spins to look at the walls. "Notches. Oh no, this can mean only one thing, get down!"

All of a sudden, she jumps abruptly, to push as many members of the party she manages to to the ground.

Which turns out to be a good choice, since one-foot-tall shurinken fly in a second later, planting themselves into the wall right next to the notches Uta identified. And just then, black smoke starts filling the air...

"Oh... well, I will keep that in mind next time," Shiruba replies to Goldenblade, she did honestly not know there's a difference and that is why she asked the present expert on the matter.

And then her reflexes are put to the test as Uta starts to notice something. As she had been using the walls to navigate she too notices the notches, and dive-rolls in the opposite direction as Uta so to not get in the Spriggan's way.

Immeadiately she rolls back up into a crouch, conjuring a projectile of storm energy in her bow. "BRAKE WIND!" She fires it down the corridor, both to deflect projectiles and blow that dark fog in the opposite direction so they won't be overwhelmed by it.

The look Robert gives Prophylaxis is a rather odd one. Part suspicion, part doubt, part reproach. That's right, boss, you are being -judged-. Judged for editing Uta's -soul- with your....crystal boops and...

Oh hey, flying shuriken. Robert leans to the side just enough for the shuriken to whistle past, nearly taking off his nose en route. He rips his sword rfom his belt and, as soon as Shiruba fires off her spell, he's zipping after it. There's a blindingly fast surge of movement that, as he nears his target, begins to leave greasy flames in his wake. It would seem that his solution to this problem, as with many others, is to set the adversary on fire and stab it. Standard operating procedure, really. Less standard would be the bit about clearing smoke with one's butt.

    Trudge, scrape, sigh loudly, "This maze suuuuuuuuucks," Tenix groans before things change rather suddenly. For some reason her personal fire-light seems dimmer.. "Er..?" Then windmill ninja stars EVERYWHERE. "AWK!" She dives for cover, not wanting a repeat of the arrows earlier. She STILL gets pinged, barely, in the back for her trouble though. "THIS LOOT BETTER BE REALLY GOOD!"

Goldenblade boggles as Uta takes her construction-site level-determining technique and applies advanced calculus. This takes it way past her depth, as may be surmised by the puzzled expression she wears. She nods to Shiruba, saying, "It's a good plan. Just, it only works in open spaces. Large, cavernous caves would have fewer load-bearing walls. Houses and buildings of course do, and architectural engineers get paid big bucks to know that sort of thing. Bricklayers just have to guess," she smirks. "Unless it's marked on the drawing."

When the shuriken hit the fan, so to speak, she pretty much just vanishes, poof. The advantage of being a ninja. You vanish from over here, appear behind an enemy, and the first thing he knows, his head has fallen off, and he's looking upwards wondering why.

Prophylaxis nods the moment his medicine takes effect. A mind unencumbered by sickness is an Utaful thing to behold, indeed. "Good, still working just as expected," he says, heedless of Robert's terrible judgemental gaze. HEEDLESS, I SAY. After all, this treatment is entirely voluntary and consensual, there's nothing underhanded about it at all.

Unlike, perhaps, the one deploying these throwing daggers embedded in the wall.

"Shuriken...?" Prophylaxis asks, a chill running down his spine. One such throwing star neatly embeds itself in the masonry just left of the doctor's head, causing him to flinch reflexively away... But not before staring at Shiruba, "We do not need to know when you are feeling /gassy!/" He shouts, then turns and hurls a mighty gale of his own in the direction that the the deadly shuriken are coming from. If nothing else, it should knock them off-course...!

Tenko thinks, as she works her way through the hall of giant deadly shuriken, that perhaps she should practice more on deflecting range attacks. She takes a few hits as she works her way through, but she's not dead. Which is always a positive! Now she just really needs to get more practice in when she can. No time to worry about it at the moment.,

"I'll show you, VERMIN! Vermin, I say!", Uta scoffs.

She casts a quick glance around, and in a fraction of a second, she hatches a plan, which is immediately put into motion. She begins singing an aria, which activates her staff, as evidenced by tendrils of lights dancing all over it. Given the sheer size, and deep embedding, of those shurinken, she places the large, flat, gem-bearing side of her staff against each one of them, in turn -- which means that the pointy end is pointing /exactly/ towards where they came from. With flawless timing, or should one say, tempo, the staff is in position just as the accented notes in the melody are hit, and a blast of lightning departs at each go, frying a Goblin shurinken launcher, without fail.

As the smokescreen clears, the party finds itself into a chamber filled with an unnecessary number of platforms, thin stone pillars and chest-high walls. Just then, a series of figures drop from the ceiling to try and drive narrow blades into people's backs each one every bit like a classic ninja... except that they're mechanical.

These are not merely ninjas, but ninja ROBOTS! Just as quickly as they appeared, the mechanical assassins duck back into cover, hurling more of those shuriken as parting shots. They're not gone, though, merely waiting for people to drop their guard before striking again.

    Tonight is just NOT Tenix's night. The maze was dreary, the dank was supreme, and now at the end, these Nin-nin bots are just brutal! While she can see them with the fog lifting, she's barely able to get away from the DOWNSTAB only to find herself hitting the deck AGAIN when MORE WINDMILLS start rolling out. At this point she just throws up a desperate barrier, throws another hand out to throw a fireball, only for it to sputter, flicker, and hit the ground a foot or so away from her. "This is madness!"

Goldenblade looks around as the world ligts up, and the platforms and robot ninjas. "Well..." and that's all she has time to say as she evades a ninja attack, leaving it on fire as she vanishes quickly enough to ignite the air and ground behind her. It turns out to be true, ninjas do not ninja nearly as well when they're on fire, something Goldenblade takes full advantage of, setting them on fire, stabbing them, avoiding their attacks, and generally counter-ninjaing them with extreme prejudice.

Look, ninjas. Robot Ninjas. Too bad they don't have any Pirate Monkeys to entirely counteract them.

However they do have platforms, and Shiruba is an experience console gamer from her days before VR. "I was wondering if we'd run into some other elemental machine the Goblins accidentally uncovered. Seems to be a theme." The wolfgirl whips up another cyclonic wind around herself, using it to launch upward onto one of the platforms, and then jump to another. This is one time when the high ground would indeed be an advantage. Though she doesn't pull out her bow this time.

She pulls the throwing glaive off her belt instead, the sharp blades of the curved arms gleaming despite the lack of lighting in the chamber. "Didn't anyone ever tell you..."

Shiruba throws the Glaive of the Fallen spinning through the air with the same precise hunter's aim as she shoots her bow with, just as several of the ninja robots launch several of their shurikens. The Relic weapon knocks every one of them it collides with aside, and slices across several of the robots as well before boomeranging back to Shiruba's hand. "Quality over quanity!"

Vermin or not, there's a certain something to the thrill of the chase, whether that's /being/ chased or /doing/ the chasing. In this case, it might just be both! But in either case, the party seems to have survived the worst of the deadly projectile ambush, which just leaves...

...Some kind of... ninja... robots.

Huh. Well, that's certainly something Prophylaxis hadn't expected. /Some/ kind of robots, yes-- this is Karluin, after all. Elemental Machines just have a way of turning up around here for some reason. But ninjas? What are ninjas doing in a labyrinth? It should have at least been a minotaur or something...!

(Sadly, Uranus is in a different dungeon)

Regardless, they are moving far too quickly for any of them to catch up to. Troubling, considering how ninjas tend to specialize in skirmish tactics. Worse still, it seems to be growing... cold. Terribly cold. Bone-chillingly, spine-tinglingly cold.

Oh.

Wait. No. That's--

The air around Prophylaxis is frigid. So cold, in fact, that frost has begun to creep across the doctor's skin. So cold that his breath is fogging around nearly frost-bitten lips as he whispers an incantation under his breath. Waves of killing cold sweep outward, wrapping around each of the ninja-machines, freezing them where they stand.

The others should be able to take it from here, at least...!

Clang!!! Robert's stab lands with the jarring sound of steel on robot, the impact setting his teeth on edge, sending a painful vibration up his arm, and causing his sword to skitter off into a dark corner somewhere. Leaving Robert alone and unarmed, facing down a ninja robot.

Which is dealt with according to protocol by....yup, setting it on fire. Slowly, and taking advantage of Prophylaxis's control. Robert chips away at its health-bar to the best of his ability, taking a few more hits in return than he's comfortable with, before it decides it really has other things to do and vanishes. Leaving Robert, hands on hips, staring at the bit of space it used to occupy. "Huh," he states, uneloquently, his tones bordering on miffed. With a crinkling of his nose, he toes his loot, sending it into his inventory.

This is definitely not Tenko's best night either when it comes to the battle. The kitsune is hit repeatedly from several directions as the ninja robots come in from every way it seems. She strikes down several, but has to retreat briefly in order to re-coordinate herself. Otherwise she's going to wind up getting herself killed in a death by a thousand cuts.

Thankfully it seems the rest of the team is more than capable of making up for her having to fall back and helping to keep her alive.

"What?", Uta yells towards Tenix, as she kicks a ninja bot off a platform, sending it to plummet into darkness. The ninja attempts to get her from behind, but she appears to sense it. "Oh, no you don't," she says, and her eyes narrow. She leaps backwards, and the stabbing that was meant to pierce her back merely grazes her sides. As she lands on the tallest platform in the room and spins in place to assume a fighting stance, a shadow blinks next to her and kicks her off, to plunge to what, given the expected HP loss at this height, amounts to certain death.

Except-

Uta spreads her wings which, with a satisfying *whomp*, slow her nosedive down to a feather fall. "Trying to push a /Spriggan/ off a chasm? /Really/?", she mocks the ninjabot, and begins to vocalize a melody which keep swinging, oppressing calls with breezy responses; her magical musical staff activates, tendrils of colorful light and pitch dark helixes and intertwine around it, and soon two beams of energy depart: a red one sucks globs of HP off the ninjabot, passes through the gem, and becomes a green beam which delivers the stolen HP to Uta. "Follow the red beam! It might hide, but as long as the link of the beam persists, we have a way to..." she blinks. "...to..." Another blink. She rubs her eyes. "...what...how..."

That vacant look resumes when she looks around. Multiple times. "...SERIOUSLY!", she exclaims. "Not only there were no slimes, there also was no sewage. Or water, for that matter. What kind of crummy sewer was this?"

The tips of her boots touch the ground first, followed by her heels. She stands there, staring ahead, and then looks up at the red and green beams. "Oh, hey. Seems like I'm draining energy off something." She looks at where the beam ends- but the beam just disappears in darkness, merely pointing at the /direction/ where the ninja bot went. "...anyone can remind me what we're fighting, again?"

The link is broken just after Uta says that. The bot got away. But somehow, it left a few crystals behind, and access to a secret room with a teleporter. The Adventurers have a way out, it seems.

Shiruba picks up a couple of the crystals. "Elemental crystals are always useful. And we did rescue those slaves, so job well done I'd say." She glances over her shoulder a moment, just to make sure there aren't any more robot ninjas lurking about. "Let's get out of here and report the run to the Hunter's Guild."

Victory! No quantity of ninjas could ever hope to overcome the power of a bunch of pyromaniacs! Or something! Everyone knows fire makes you immune to ninja, it's just science.

Not that Prophylaxis had conjured even so much as a spark of flame this entire time, or anything. In fact, he's been hurling around quite a bit of cold today. Maybe he's just looking for a change of pace?

The doctor quietly pockets one of those mysterious new elemental gems for future consideration. They've accomplished pretty much all that he could hope to expect from a day's excursion into the depths of Karluin, and with Uta's medicine wearing off...

"Come on," he says, gently nudging the party towards the teleporter. "It looks like our way out is over here."