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Victi sighs, and says in the general direction of the room, "Lisa, if you could come help me deal with some burns on my a lot of places, that would be great. The trident lady and white-robed warrior guy are friendly, and probably our front line for the next bit. I can smell your fear over the blood, by the way."

Seriously girl. Yeah, pentatheic warpriests are large, deadly warriors strong enough to bust through walls and with centuries of combat training, but..... nope, nevermind, nothing reassuring about that.

“That is quite a title.” And as a matter of fact, she hasn’t yet introduced herself. “Helynah.” She turns to Niskali with her free hand resting on her chest. She briefly wonders if she’s supposed to avert her eyes or bow to him; his title suggests that he’s of a noble rank.

Actually, she has already called him an idiot, so what’s the point of being polite or formal now?

Lisa doesn't believe Victi's promise that these two are friendly even for a second, but the call to action convinces her to crawl out from under the desk, shaking and casting paranoid glances toward Niskali. Helynah kneels to help her up, but Lisa flinches away from her hand and stands alone.

"I-I-yes. Let me take a look." The vixen looks terrible, but she can help with that.

"It's honestly less bad than it looks, most of it is just burnt fur. A shower and a brushing would be great, but not important. Hands and feet got the pads all blistered off, so that sucks, my nose feels like its still on fire, and my ear, finger, and toe tips are also probably slightly burnt, beyond the obvious damage to the claws. They feel like it at least," she listed off. Then she paused for a moment before adding, "Painkillers would be fantastic right about now."

"Bronze. Bronze Nyx." He was about to nod his head when he realized that he's talking to someone he still doubts. The feline backtracked to the alleyway and picked the colorful shooter up. Something about the texture of the thing confuses him. It's completely foreign considering he didn't know what plastic is. He held it with his right paw and followed Raven shortly, his eyes darting around the place.

"Tell me, Raven. Are you a... pardon me for this, a pet?" Bronze inquired with a sheepish grin, unsure if it was rude to ask someone who he believes his ancestor. He never had an interest in history.

Raven’s fur bristles enough to express she finds the question insulting, and her answer comes with bared teeth. “No, I’m not a-“ she pauses, forces herself to relax and returns his smile. “I’m a good deal better than a pet.”

As they draw near the building, Raven notices a few unsettling changes in the ambiance. It’s dead quiet. When she fled she’d heard battle cries alongside screams, but whatever or whoever was fighting had gone. Blood spatters darken sections of the pavement. And even from thier distance, her sharp eyes see that the door has been kicked down.

She stops walking and sits. Her face is blank, unreadable, as she tries to decide how exactly to approach the building.

The victor is unclear, if there was any at all. She pricks up her ears and listens. Beyond some annoying patter, she thinks she catches some voices from inside, but without getting closer, everything is unclear.

“Hey, how good are you at being stealthy?”

Ah, crap. The humanoid flinched when he noticed Raven bristle and bared her teeth, completely stopping in his tracks. Although uncertain as to what she meant, she's pretty sure now that she was what Victi meant in the first place. The Caracal followed closely, recognizing the metallic tang of blood that he noticed to be splattered around.

Bronze hated this ghastly sight. Not only was he accustomed to this kind of chaos and wreckage, it also makes him quite paranoid. For all he know the enemy might be behind the rubble. The feline equipped his rapier, when Raven asked him a question. "Well, you've led me to a battlefield. I am sneaky but I don't like what you're suggesting."

“Yep,” she nods. She hears metal scrape against leather or fabric as Bronze draws his sword. She turns to him and whispers. “And I have no idea who survived or what’s in there, but it’s the last place I saw Victi.”

She stands and lowers herself to a crouch. “Follow my lead.” Her belly nearly brushes the ground as she stalks toward the entrance. A slow sinking feeling accompanies her every step of the way, but she hides it with a few excited-looking tail twitches and an eager smile.

She recognizes the pattering sound as sprinkling water, like rain drumming against the floor and furnishings of an enclosed space. She shivers, remembering the cold dark water lapping at her paws, rising and threatening to pull her under a liquid grave in that disgusting musty basement. How long ago was that, a day? She’s only been here a single day?

The memory and the following revelation is enough to make her stop halfway to her target, suddenly reluctant to take another step closer. A growing part of her really doesn’t want to find out what’s past that doorway.

So she lies on the ground and turns and stares at Bronze, very neutrally cat-like. Her facial expression is totally unreadable. However, an observant individual might note that her hackles are slowly rising and her little body is trembling.

She kneels next to Victi and digs into her satchel. Painkillers. She laser-focuses on that word best she can, trying not to think about the dragon, or the fire, or that emaciated eyeless thing, or Adam’s screams...all the blood.

Well, she tried.

Doesn’t help that “painkillers” must be one of the medicines unique to this place. She pulls out some of the opaque white vials, the ones with small shiny labels that are, at present, a pain to read. Between the several terrifying distractions around her and her own lesser injuries, it takes a little too long to find the right container.

It takes even longer to open the vial. She eventually figures out that she needs to align an arrow on the lid to another arrow on the bottle’s short neck. Through all of this, her hands are sweating and shaking. She fumbles with the container and spills a bunch of pills into her palm then passes them to Victi. Lisa doesn’t know the right dosage for this kind of medicine, but she sincerely hopes that Victi does.

Leaving Victi to the pills, she pulls out more first-aid: soothing balms to further “kill” the pain and prevent infection, bandages, etc. She does all of this silently; her throat is so dry that she knows whatever she tries to say will come out like a frog’s croak.

Victi tosses back two of the pills, and returns the rest to the bottle, hoping that they used rational dosage standards, or at the very worst she was underdosing.

"Lisa," she says, reaching across slowly, keeping her arm in Lisa's sight to gently touch her arm, "You're doing a good job. Just stay focused on the actions. If you can, try talking out or at least mouthing what your steps are. Needing to think about those steps in verbal form will help you concentrate."

The feline nodded at Raven's words, his silence only meant contemplation. The chilling scream he heard earlier may have originated from where he stood, and that thought gave him anxiousness. The empty hallway behind the doorframe in front of him may be the welcoming darkness that would embrace him before his doom and he doesn't know how to proceed. Bronze really want to run right now— it doesn't look like its worth it.

The humanoid glanced at the she-cat for reassurance only to notice her own nervousness as she stares at him. Something in there must be truly frightening. "Raven, right?" He whispered, surprised as his voice slightly trembled. "You should probably stay here. I'll take a quick peek inside and sneak out."

The mere suggestion that she shouldn’t or- God forbid - can’t go inside is enough to draw Raven back into the present moment. She scoff and stands, flashing Bronze a cocky grin. “Nah, we can go in together. I can handle whatever’s in there.” If she is honest with herself, she can’t. If they walk into another water-based trap, meet Vincent, or find Lisa dead...she can’t let herself to think about such horrible scenarios.

“Come on.” And don’t think I can’t tell you’re as scared as I am. She takes a few slow, quiet steps forward.

Lisa flinches at Victi’s gentle touch, much less afraid of Victi hurting her than she is of Victi further hurting herself. “Hold still,” she mouths, following the fox’s advice. As she takes Victi’s hand, she continues. “Rubbing...rubbing a salve on your arm. To further help pain and stop infection.” And as she works, she continues this way. She eventually finds her voice, but it is hoarse from screaming. She continues casting paranoid glances toward Niskali. Doesn’t matter what Victi says about him; she can’t yet bring herself to trust a dragon not to lash out in rage or decide someone here would make a good meal. Where...where did he get that leg, anyways? She’s afraid to ask and part of her doesn’t want to know.

"There we go," She encourages tentatively, "and thanks. Also, hopefully means that if something happens to you I'll remember what at least some of your kit does if we need to patch you up, sound good? Keep teaching me. And someone get her some water, too."

A minute or so in, she looks at the dragon and says, "break the door in the room that's on fire, and maybe there will be enough burning still for you to roast that." Lisa seems to be afraid of the Pentatheic, which is honestly fair if she hadn't met one before. Getting him out of sight and hopefully out of mind seemed like a good idea for the moment.

The warrior shrugged at the suggestion, and went off to do so. He suspected it was more to do with the young healer's paranoia than his, or even the sorceress's own, nutritional needs, but went to do so anyway. A shame, really, that healer seemed like a charming and sweet young woman with whome he felt interesting conversation may be had. Perhaps later.

He entered the evidence room, which was.... mostly producing embers now, but still hot enough, closed the door behind himself, seized the bloodied chunk of concrete, and brought it down hard upon the door, letting the latch brace it to be broken more easily, as per the vixen's instructions. It would take a few strikes at least, but most likely time well spent.

"There, hopefully one less distraction for you. He'll go cook his..... leg for a while, and be out of the way. Something about him seems to be setting you on edge, so hopefully that helps. Speaking of which," she mused curiously, "What is it about him that freaks you that much?"

As much as he wanted to take the lead, he knew that he can't since he don't know the way inside. He took note on every action that the she-cat took and speculated that there's something inside that she hated and is probably frightened off to the point where she don't want to go near it. The only question that he wanted answered now is 'what is it?'

"After you." Bronze watched stalk forward and followed suit, ignoring his own '15 paces forward' condition. If something bad happens, he felt obligated on the black cat's safety. He cannot determine why, but he felt some sort of kinship towards his 'ancestor'.

He broke his own rule. Good. Maybe he almost trusts me. She peers into the doorway.

The inside is just as terrible as what’s outside. More dark blood stains, the door lying dented on the ground kicked off its hinges. The only person in her line of sight is Helynah, whose back is turned to them. I could totally ambush her- no, focus.

The source of the pattering that left her frozen in terror minutes ago turns out to be harmless, if annoying, water sprinkling from mechanical devices on the ceiling. As she watches, they sputter and die, maybe running out of water. Now she can clearly hear snippets of conversation around the corner.

Victi she recognizes immediately. She’s talking to at least two people, Raven thinks.

There’s footsteps- heavy footsteps, and Raven silently slinks inside, pressing herself against the wall and carefully approaching the corner. Curiosity swallows all that’s left of her fear. She also seems to have forgotten about Bronze, now more interested in whoever those footsteps belong to. Something about the claws scraping against a hard floor makes her think dragon. She’d love to see a dragon.

Helynah shrugs and starts looking for water, figuring she might as well make herself useful.

She finds a backpack, probably one belonging to this group, and finds a transparent bottle that crinkles under the pressure of her grip. It’s filled with a liquid that she thinks is water (the label says so) but when she tests it herself, it tastes suspiciously...sterile. She pulls a face.

“Well,” she holds the bottle out to Lisa and Victi. “This claims to be water.”

Victi sniffs in its general direction, then blinks a couple times while thinking.

"Yeah, it is. Smells pretty heavily treated and purified, though, but not distilled.... weird. At a guess, meant to be very safe at the cost of tasting weird," she says, hoping that she sounds reassuring, "All your's, Lisa."