As the light fades, a baleful orange glow emanates from the doorway. Fire roars. Smoke, black and red and flickering unnaturally, begins to fill the bedroom.

Mika stumbles backward, clutching his head and screaming. Soot covers his face.

"Healing! Now! And cast your Armors, we don't want to bet nothing heard that!"

('Do you see anything in the smoke? Is the smoke just normal smoke? One hop if it's clear, two for something there, three if the smoke is doing something.')

And she'll throw up a Detect Magic herself, pointed smoke-wards.

Her familiar rings once. The smoke is not magical, strange as it looks.

Julio casts infernal healing on Mika using his wand. "You okay?"

Mika's wounds begin closing. He doesn't respond to Julio's question.

"Tencednil's right, we need to get moving! I've got all the loot packed up in my bag." He quickly packs his spellbook into his backpack and runs for the door.

Mika looks around, confused. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"There might have been something in the dresser, but if so it's gone now. Let's go!"

She knows how to handle hearing loss. Sign is a brilliant invention. <Come! You're deaf. We go out now.>

And she nods to the door.

Mika looks at her incomprehensible hand waving and is still confused.

...Humans!

Fine. She... taps her ear, points to Mika, and shakes her head. Then she beckons him towards the door they came in through.

Mika seems to understand and follows her through the door.

Julio and Anton finish casting mage armor on themselves.

That gives them an hour to get out, this time with valuables. Time to get moving.

Wait, they're better off following the person with the map. Time to wait for the idiots students to get going and then follow them.

Anton leads them through the caves at a brisk pace. They travel back through the winding caves the way the came, and across the rivers in the large cavern, and into the oddly-shaped tunnels. They reach the first ladder within twenty minutes, a much faster pace then last time.

Time stretches long, but Anton and Julio's mage armor is still up. They're almost through the old stone maze, in a particularly tangled bit, when Tencednil's familiar becomes alarmed.

Quick glance around. "Ware! Point me to it."

Is Mika hearing any better than he was when they set out? Hopefully he'll at least see her raising her hand.

Her familiar vibrates but doesn't point in any particular direction. The ground rumbles softly.

Mika does not hear her.

"Everywhere, then? Creature? Trap? Hazard?"

There is only one, at first.

They come from the cracks in walls. They come from the holes in the ceiling. In seconds, a drizzle become a storm. Rats. Rats.

Swarms, and no field-wide strikes between them. Delightful. Color Spray should at least delay it, and maybe they can escape? They might have to turn off the light to lose them, though. ...Mika can't hear, and rat noses might be good enough to catch them anyway. Just flee.

"I can stun them, but there are too many to hurt! Unless you have something clever, best we run! Rats aren't fast!"

On second thought, she should have focused on getting the Color Spray cast before giving instructions!

The rats pour over the party like a wave. They take chunks of flesh with them.

"RUN! FOLLOW ME!" Anton sprints sixty feet down to the end of the hallway.

Julio follows. "I knew I should've prepared sleep, damn it!"

Mika runs, slower than the others. He looks nauseous.