She doesn't wait to find out.

Cecilia waited impatiently. It galled her to wait while a companion needed rescuing, but she hoped Myria could handle herself. She leaned against a wall, her armour a pool of sweat from heat and tension.

Then, her straining ears caught a sound, echoing up from shaft that her friends had vanished down. In the nunnery where she had trained, she had occasionally caught one of her fellow novices masturbating. She’d always restrained from such behaviour herself, and reported the offenders, but she’d still heard that sound enough times: a feminine moan of lust.

By now, Myria should have rescued Dew. If one of them was still being ****, that meant she’d failed. And that meant that Cecilia was their last hope.

She glanced urgently at the rope, but experience had taught her that trying to climb in her plate-mail would leave her a mass of bruised. Anyway, the noise she’d make in the climb and the approach would be sure to alert the Toad. In a stroke of inspiration, she took it off – leaving her wearing the padded cloth that protected her milky skin from the metal – and wrapped the plates in one of their cloaks. It wasn’t ideal, but it would muffle them a bit.

She lowered the bundle down on the rope, checked that the line was secured firmly to a rock, and then began to climb down into the darkness to rescue her friends.