Soul Labyrinth

"Try to pry it off!"
If Kiran can get the bat off of his arm for even a second, finish it off with another Mystic Bolt. It may be a single target spell but I'm still not sure I want to risk electrocuting something which has currently attached itself to his arm with its fangs.

Leia, Vincent

Leia and Vincent decide to trail the others for a bit.  Surely the more experienced adventurers know what they're doing, right?

They two pause to sit on a bench for just a moment.  You can see quite a bit of blood on the girl's shirt.  You didn't hit her with any bladed weapons or anything that could have caused that...

The guy shines his light on the girl.  "Better?"

"...Better," she says.  "The wound's closed again, anyway...  But I feel a little lightheaded."

"Yeah.  Losing this much blood'll do that to a person.  We should fall back.  If you open this up again, you'll pass out."

The girl shakes her head.  She's pretty clearly dazed.  "We've gotta hurry and save them.  Besides, we'd have to get through those two to get out."  She glances back towards the two of you.  If she saw you, she's pretending she didn't.

The guy folds his arms.  "Ugh.  We've never had such a short time limit.  Vitcorp bastards.  Did we walk into a trap...?"

"Doesn't matter.  We've got no other option than to do this."  The girl hops up.  "Ready to go?"

The guy cracks his neck.  "Alright.  Let's break straight through...!"  The pair take off.  The guy takes the lead, and the girl stays tight at his back.  They looks like they know what they're doing.

As you follow them, the two get attacked by a swam of horrific human-faced bats.  "Sorry, we don't have time for diplomacy today...!"  They charge through, taking out enough to send the rest scattering as they pass.

You have a hard time keeping up without making it painfully obvious you're following them.  Several times, you come around corners just in time to see them disappearing around the next turn.  Eventually, you lose them as you take a wrong turn.  You backtrack a bit, unsure which way to go.  Then you hear a loud, furious bellowing sound coming from a different path.

"Gah...!  Dammit, dammit, dammit!"  You recognize the guy's voice by now.  "Can't anything go right with this damned rescue mission!?"

You don't hear whether the girl answers.

As you come around the corner, you find the two of them staring down a giant monster in a four-way intersection.  It's got the body of a human, though easily twice the height of a person and covered in muscles.  The head is that of a bull.  It throws its head back and bellows again, then leaps at the guy with a punch.  The force of the blow sends him skidding back.

"We're so close.  I can feel it.  Do you... think you could slip past if I distract him?" the girl asks.  She's struggling to get up from her knees.

"We're not doing any kind of self-sacrificing crap!  We just need to drive him back - keep fighting!"

"But... if we both fall, then who's going to save the others...?"

"Tch..."

The pair seems to be losing against the giant bull-person.  Badly.  Whatever they're after has to be nearby.  You could probably run past easily enough.


Levi, Morgan

Morgan asks Alice if there's anything she can do to help with the bite.

Alice snaps out of staring at her mapping tool.  "Hm?  Oh.  Don't worry about that."  She pulls her collar enough to show her wounded shoulder.  The puncture marks are still faintly visible from where the fangs sunk in, now just small pricks, but the skin is no longer discolored.  "Soul keys carry tremendous regenerative power.  So long as you take time to rest between fights, you shouldn't need to worry.  Hm.  Well, no.  Multiple tough fights in a row can put too much stress on it.  You've noticed things don't hurt as much as you'd expect, right?  The key itself absorbs some of it.  Theoretically, it can be broken if you take too much damage."

"Worst case, the key shatters.  That, uh...  We're not really sure what would happen, but I doubt it's anything good," Tom says.  He adds a shrug.  "Just try to not take too many hits, OK?  Kinda obvious advice."

Morgan summons a ferret of light and sends it scampering to check the source of the crying.  She finds an open storefront.  The crying seems to be coming from in there.  It's very dark inside, unlike the rest of the "mall," with its fluorescent lighting.  It looks like a clothing store, with several mannequins dressed in various outfits lining the aisles.  The ferret pokes its head inside and the crying abruptly stops with a gasp.

"Who's there?" a voice demands.  Something's moving, but it's nearly impossible to see in the darkness.  Suddenly, a light blue light appears in the dark and shoots through the ferret like an arrow.

Meanwhile, Levi successfully observes his hands.  They're very handy to have.


Karl

continues to be useless.


Tai, Dewey

Tai takes a shot at the bat latched to Kiran's arm.  The force of the wind grazing by blows it off.  Dewey quickly follows up with a bolt of magic.

"Little jerk..."  Kiran points his wand at the last surviving bat and fires a beam of blue.  The bat collapses to the ground with a shriek.

Tai, Dewey, and Kiran all receive Leathery Wing x2

Kiran looks around awkwardly.  "Well.  Lesson learned, I guess.  Nice shots.  So...  Everyone ready to head onward?  I have a feeling Somnis is pretty close."

"Fuck... Leia!"

They weren't supposed to get spotted, but Vince figured it didn't matter at this point. Humanity... Have a little humanity.

"Stand back." Vince says, as he walks up beside Leia. "We won't let you die."

"Right."

(Psssst, Kitty. All that was Morgan's magical ferret. The rest of you are still a ways back.)

...Now that I think of it, you're free to just run up and yell that...