Look for a better option

"Stay here," you whisper softly as the chanting in the bottom of the circular room continues it's slow build towards something bad. You cannot understand any of the words used, the language is not just different, the sounds coming from the mouths of these angular demons don't even sound human. "I'm going to look for a better way." Lykiaos nods slowly and takes the trembling Iola's hand drawing her to his broad chest. "If something happens, and you can get the girl," you tell him, "don't wait for me, I'll find my own way out."

"Be careful," he whispers and then mouths silently, "don't take too long." Like you, the grizzly veteran senses the growing tenor of the ritual sacrifice. You move along the top of the circular room looking for anything that you can use to even the odds. It's actually not as much of a risk as it might seem. The robed figures positioned around the altar were focused on the slender figure in white lying on her back. With the glowing orbs hanging over their heads, they had almost no chance to look up into the rafters of the room to see you in your black clothing.

You're not sure what you are looking for, but you hope you'll recognize it when you see what you need. As you circle along where the domed ceiling reaches down to the ribbed walls you start to sense the purpose of the ritual. A glimmer of glowing yellowgreen sparkles, not unlike what you imagine you might find inside flue of a bronze smelter's chimney, swirls up from the altar and whirls about the center of the dome well above your head. A web of tiny blue filaments just visible along the stonework of the seams appears to be the target of this ritual. The sizzle of power where these sparkles interact with tendrils of cool blue feels a little like the prickling you've felt before a thunderstorm rocks the rooftops of the city.

Now moving with even greater urgency, you crawl lower into the bowl trying to get to a place where you might be able to take out at least one of the four demons to make the odds a little better. A grating set into the sloping floor makes you pause, perhaps a place to hide? It smells like a sewer, a foul, rotten-meat filled sewer not unlike the waste that pours from the tanner's quarter. Movement behind the thick bars catches your eye, and as you watch more carefully you see a scaled claw reach through the bars.

Careful to keep well above the bars you look down into the pit below and see not one creature, or even a handful, but as many as two score of monsters that are like nothing you've ever seen before. These beings are neither man nor beast, but maybe something out of a child's nightmare.