The other six companions, now carrying torches, had stepped into the priest’s quarters with the trap door Kage and Greegan had fallen through just moments beforehand, but now it was empty. The two natives had seen the party coming and had retreated deeper into the temple. Marina asked if anyone had seen where Denier had gone but no one had seen what happened to him.

Not seeing the trap door, they walked past it into the passage, past the the overturned cauldron, and down a set of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs they came to a brick wall that had been laid to prevent any passage, but had then been broken through. The hole was just small enough for a skinny man to get through, so the party had to tear some more bricks out of it to fit their armored bodies through. The passage on the other side had a wooden floor that had been waterlogged in a previous flood. Viper’s eye had become swollen to the point where he couldn’t see out of it. A soaked rug lay in the middle of the hall, apparently for no reason. But when Everett, Stalfor and Marina put their full armored weight on it, the floor beneath them gave and the three of them fell, along with the rug, into a flooded torture chamber. A few minutes earlier, the two natives had ran through here, but knowing that the floor was weak here, and stepped lightly and one at a time to get past.

“You all right down there?”, asked Billard.

All three were soaked, but Stalfor had to stand on his tip-toes just to keep the water below mouth level.

“Yeah, we’re all right. You have a rope?”, asked Everett.

“Kage had it.”, said Billard.

“Great.”, said Everett, “You three keep going and see if you can find Kage and Greegan. We’ll try and climb out.”

Viper, Billard and Gandalph continued down the hall, where they came to a private altar room where the two natives were hiding. They dropped their weapons and tried to talk to them in their own language. Viper walked up to one and sliced open his neck. The other tried to run past Viper, but the barbarian tripped him and then stabbed his saber into the native’s back. They began searching the room. Inside an intricately carved box, Viper found an expensive looking statuette of what appeared to be a humanoid with a squid head. On top of a stone pedestal Gandalph found some jeweled bowls, some rhythm sticks and bamboo flute.

Every time Everett thought he had a grip on the floor above him, the weak wood splintered and he fell back into the torture chamber. When Viper and the others came back, they told them that Kage and Greegan couldn’t have come that way because it was a dead end.

“They must be here somewhere!”, said Marina.

The others made another run back to the temple’s entrance, but they still couldn’t find them, and since they didn’t want to split up further, Viper and the others decided to jump down into the torture chamber. The party moved slowly through the foul waters, past some old cells, and then through a door into a perpendicular hall. The party decided to go right rather than left, but had they searched the walls, they would have found a secret door leading into the same statue room Kage and Greegan had fallen into minutes earlier.

Instead, they came to another door. It took a lot of effort to push it through five feet of water, but when they did, they entered into a giant chamber, heavily flooded. On the other side of the room, half underwater, was a gigantic oyster, with its huge mouth gaping open. In its mouth was something large, round, and black. Everett stepped towards it to get a closer look, but although the room appeared to be a ground level, both he and oyster were on raised daises, 15 feet above the chamber’s floor. Both he and Stalfor stumbled into the dark waters below. Neither of them could see, but both of them felt great pinchers close around their arms and legs. Giant crabs were attacking them.