Warlock! Something is Rotten in Grim Biskerstaf...

Wolke is brave's going at the thing with his knife, but another slash bloodies the man, reminding him of just how dangerous the thing is...

Banio tumbles to the floor, but somehow the creature is still able to reach down and gouge furrows of flesh and fabric out of his back. He yowls and spits like a kicked alley cat, and scuttles like one too, belly-low across the ground to put as much distance as he can between himself and the dangerous recess above them.

Trusova lines up her shot with the monster's center and let's her bolt fly.

"Don't worry Lambert, I won't let it take you alive!"

Trusova lines up the shot, and empties herself of all the fear gnawing at her. Fear of monsters in the dark, fear of her friend being dragged into its lair to be devoured, fear of Whiskeyjack dying alone in a stable. At the very core of it lies the fear of her own limitations, that she's not good enough. She exhales, her heart slows. When her lungs are empty, so is her mind. Only one thought remains:

In this world of magic and demons, I am the one to be feared.

She pulls her trigger, and the creature falls limp instantly.

Banio and Lambert scramble back from the wall as the now nerveless abomination comes tumbling after them, seeming to slither the rest of the way out of its dark hiding place. The trio sees that the quarrel-slain thing is much bigger than it first appeared, and that it has not four limbs but perhaps six or even eight — it’s difficult to tell as it falls into a gray, disintegrating slop on the stone floor. Bubbling and liquifying, the spider-wraith decomposes in front of them, leaving behind an oily stain, bits of bone and a mound of pale, thin, writhing grave-worms.

And this is when both Phelbt and Wolke realize those same worms currently crawl though their hair, on their skin, in their garments.

"Gods," Banio groans, struggling to his feet. He crooks an arm behind his back to prod gingerly at his torn doublet and cape, and the bloody gashes beneath them. When that cherubic hand comes back both slick with blood and wriggling with vermin, the man's curse tails into a whine-- of exasperation more than disgust, for Banio's life heretofore has not always been of the cleanliest.

"Just what this city needed," Banio mutters, shaking little worms from his little fingers. "Old filth to go with the new filth." He unstoppers his water skin, bends over, and pours water over his head and shoulders and his stringy hair; it gurgles and splashes the floor. "You want some of this, Nine Fingers?"

Still bent over and dripping, he jabs the water skin out to one side. An offering, if a testy one.

"Piss." Lambert says, brushing himself off as he watches the thing disintegrate.

"Bet what’s-his-face would have paid good coin to have that thing gone."

Taking the water, and baptizing himself, Lambert remarks:

"Reckon I’ve got nine lives and all. Bloody close thing, Trusova! Thanks for that!"

"Just returning the favour," Trusova replies with a heartfelt grin. She retrieves her spear and slings her bow over her back. She keeps her distance as they clean out the black worms from their hair, offering her waterskin if they run out of water.

Once they are done, she urges haste. "Let's find the amulet and leave this cursed place."

"We're still going in there?" Banio scratches his head, chasing an ominous itch. "With the 'Spawn of the Wyrm'? That--" he jabs a finger at the ooze into which the elven... spider-zombie thing has decomposed-- "was not the Spawn of the Wyrm."

Phelbt has no idea what the hell it was, but wyrm-like it was not.

"But it did look Spawn-y, didn’t it?" Lambert says, with a shrug. He had the foggiest notion.

"You think we should go back?" he follows up, aiming the question at the duo.

After a few moments of brushing, wiping, spitting, and rinsing, Lambert and Banio feel like they are worm-free, though masses of tiny, thin worms still writhe on the ground around them, and where the monster Trusova killed collapsed. All is quiet at the bottom of the stairs in the chamber blocked by the door — quiet except for the trio themselves, and the awful, faint sound the pale invertebrates make as they crawl and inch along, blindly.

Now that the shock of the attack is receding, Banio bethinks him of the phantom scene they witnessed in the chamber above.

"That elf was willing to die to keep this amulet out of enemy hands," Phelbt muses. He tries rolling one shoulder and winces; the scores in his back still throb, and his fancy cape is in tatters. Damn the thing. "I'll bet it's worth a fair sight more than the ten pieces of gold your benefactor's agreed to pay. To the right buyer."

Banio sidles back up to the stone door. He eyes the seal, trying to determine whether there's anything more dangerous than wax filling the groove.

"Maybe we just have a peek..."

While her team rests, Trusova goes about stomping the life out of as many of those disgusting worms as she can.

Trusova likes the math that Banio describes. "Banio, you've got a point. How much blow back would that cause you, Lambert?"

The pale, brittle wax filling the deep grooves that the door is set into appears to be just that -- though ancient and crumbling, as it long ago dried out.

"The way tonight’s going, I’ll be keeping it for myself. Sentimental value, and all that. Lost a finger, had a ghost tickle my goolies, and whatever that was try to make me it’s supper."

He gathers himself up.

"Let’s just get this thing and see what it’s worth. One of you two can go first."

"Let's just get this over with," Trusova says as she wipes her boots off. She borrows a knife from one of her companions and starts to work on cutting away the seal. If all goes well, she'll pry off or open the hatch and shine her lantern into the opening.