Yes, barely.

Aliara nodded. "I'm with you. We'll go out swinging, at least."

Teysa held the orb up in her left hand and adjusted her grip on the dagger in her right. She shook it at the mob, which produced a few hisses of anger. They shrank away from the light, but with numbers on their side, they weren't retreating. Teysa lunged at the mob and they scattered backwards, keening. Seems they aren't willing to be the first to get a taste. Well, that suits me fine. Creatures clawed at her from the left and right, but weren't yet willing to get close enough to the light to do real damage.

Teysa swallowed hard. She had to make her move now, before they worked up the courage to mob her. She held the orb behind her back and the creatures pressed in again. One, larger than its neighbors, leapt for her out of the darkness. This thing's fur was filthy and matted, stained a coarse brown by dried blood and other, less identifiable fluids. A knot of scar tissue on its forehead pressed one eye closed but the other burned an insane red. Teysa had been ready for something like this. She swung the orb around and her assailant's headlong **** became a stumbling, cringing fall. Simultaneously she swept her right hand up up. In its haste to avoid the stinging light of the orb the creature was not paying attention to her other arm, and her dagger punched through its chin, up through the roof of its mouth, pinning it closed. The creature's momentum carried it forward and Teysa had to stumble back a pace to keep her feet. It let out a gurgling wail as it died, and a torrent of rank blood spilled out over Teysa's wrist and forearm. Disgusted, she shook it off her dagger, and the pathetic corpse slid to the ground.

As one, the mob of creatures howled with rage. "Now, Li!" Teysa called, and dove forward. Her arms windmilled, striving to keep the creatures away from her at all costs. They pressed in from every side. She jerked back, allowing a pair of fetid claws to cleave the air where she had been a moment before, then arched her back to avoid a set of gnashing teeth. When they threatened to overwhelm her with numbers, she shook the orb in their faces, dispersing knots of attackers with its glow. When they kept their distance to jab at her, she parried their claws with her dagger or aimed it at **** eyes and throats.

Behind her, Aliara was trying to stay in the bubble of light. She wove and dodged the clumsy creatures with an athletic grace that Teysa couldn't hope to match. A burly monster swiped at her, and Aliara tumbled away, turning her flight into a handspring that carried her over the heads of two more of the things. Behind them the women left a trail of the dead and dying, faces slashed or throats laid open.

A claw nicked Teysa in the thigh, turning her pivot into an awkward sprawl. Aliara noticed immediately and leapt to defend her, but the creature she had been fighting took advantage of her distraction to lacerate her back. Aliara screamed in pain and stumbled, barely keeping her feet. There are too many of them. We can't keep this up, Teysa thought. She spared a precious second to look for the exit and was surprised to find that they were almost on top of it. "Li, come on! Almost there! Go, go first!"

Aliara met her gaze for a second, then shook her head sadly and spun to face the swarm. She struck out left then right. They receded briefly, just long enough for Teysa to find her feet, then swept forward again like an unstoppable wave. Aliara was too far out-- they were going to overwhelm her. Unless...

Teysa lobbed the orb in a shallow arc. "Li, catch!" was all she had time to shout, but to her credit the half-elf realized immediately what had happened. She threw her dagger overarm, catching one more of the creatures in the throat, then caught the orb two-handed and swung it left and right just in time to break up the charge. The creatures hissed in rage and moved forward again, but Aliara was already gone, vaulting backwards past Teysa and rolling past a few stragglers to enter the narrow passage they had spotted. "Tey, come on! Hurry!" she pleaded, and Teysa lingered to slash one more beast that had gotten too close before scrambling backward.

With the stone walls of the tunnel on either side of her, Teysa found she finally had some breathing room. She crouched behind a half-shattered stalagmite for cover and swung her dagger in a wide back-and-forth arc to discourage pursuers. Aliara shook the orb in both hands and held it above Teysa's head like a miniature sun.

The swarm of creatures milled around at the tunnel entrance, hissing and yapping, but the hated light filled the tight confines of doorway and they weren't willing to charge into it. Teysa could easily hold off one or two attackers at a time and that was all the tunnel could admit. Slowly, cautiously, the women began to back up the tunnel, but only the bravest of their attackers dared to follow them and only for a step or two. Gradually the yelping faded into the darkness. The creatures took up their bellowing roar again, but it was clearly a sound of frustrated anger, and Teysa listened as it retreated into the distance.

Only then did she realize how heavily her heart was pounding. She slumped against the tunnel wall and her legs turned to jelly below her, sliding her down to the floor. Aliara leaned against her and Teysa was shocked to feel that her friend was weeping. She wrapped an arm around Aliara and held her until both of their heart rates returned to normal. Neither spoke. There seemed to be nothing to say.

After a time, they had recovered enough to carry on. The tunnel sloped upward at a comfortable incline, and very quickly they saw signs of intelligent habitation: areas where the ground had been artificially smoothed, worn iron sconces in the walls, the detritus of construction. Up ahead a rough-cut square portal was unmistakably a doorway, and beyond it a soft, warm glow marked one of the drow's flickering braziers. Teysa had never seen so beautiful a sight.

They exited into a dingy storage room that looked as though it hadn't been used in years. Stone shelves lined the walls, most full of nothing more than shattered glass and bits of rusted iron. The glow was coming from a tunnel that joined the room opposite from their entrance and curved away deeper into the temple. There was no sign of any living thing and they took the opportunity to rest and look over their wounds. Fortunately, the cut on Teysa's thigh was shallow, and had not hit any major arteries-- she feared infection, but not having any means to clean the wound now, bound it with a strip torn from her robe. Aliara's back was badly cut and her robe was shredded, but there was no helping that. Teysa hoped they could find a more recently used storage room and acquire some intact clothes.

We're actually in the Basilica. The thought was odd to Teysa. After everything they had done to get here, everything they had suffered in the City and everything they had been warned about, it seemed almost anticlimactic. She knew better than to relax her guard; they were in every bit as much danger here as they had been in the tunnels, if not more so.