bethen avilla ; the circle mage (bethe) wrote in thedas,
The human crutch that slipped its way under her arm and around her waist caught Bethen by surprise, enough to make her nearly squeak -- even if he didn't make light of it, the contact was certainly setting off some alarms in the back of her mind. She wasn't a very tactile person (not with other people, at least), and were she not under duress and her body very grateful for the support, the feel of his arm just above her hip would have made her highly uncomfortable. But the necessity for both of them to get out of here alive was at the forefront of her mind, so she said nothing, pulling away only once they were at the doors so he could open them. Beth slumped her back against the closest wall, and craned her neck toward the illuminated tunnel to keep an eye on the raging fire that was surely crawling for them in the place of a horde of spiders.
"They're what?" Beth asked breathlessly as soon as her partner uttered the word 'locked', head whipping around and eyes narrowing in a mixture of irritation and confusion. He returned her staff to her and she gripped it with both hands, leaning heavily on it to ease the pain in her leg. Perhaps she should have been furious as well, but she wasn't nearly as expressive in her dismay as he was. There was some irony in Constans' shouting about the fire when it had only sparked at his hands. The aforementioned flames had yet to catch up to them, though there was likely plenty of fuel in the cavern for it to consume in the process. And what of the jars filled with assorted liquids, likely several of them highly flammable? There was a spell she had never used before that could possibly put out their problem, but the idea of creating a small-scale blizzard inside of a narrow cave seemed like a terrible idea. Furthermore, she didn't think she had the strength or the mana left to complete it. Her head was already swimming.
Luckily they didn't have to hold on to hope that someone was out there for too long; though it sounded like Constans had been pounding on the sturdy metal for at least a minute, there were tinny, muffled voices coming through. The doors rattled as someone attempted to budge them from the other side, but to no avail without the keys. Feet shuffled, probably running for the Enchanter. Distantly, though they were hardly more than a few feet apart, the person who had tried to open the entryway was shouting back, but she could barely hear what was being said. Not that it mattered, even the most reassuring words couldn't change the fact that there was a high risk of suffocating before someone could get to Alden and the keys. What was worse than fighting and running was being forced to stop and wait for someone else to be their rescuers. Their survival was now out of their hands.