"It'd be trading off the strength, but yes. It would still buy us at least a moment."

"Alright, then. We should be able to get close enough before however it senses us goes off."

Elana readies her spell, visualizing the course of it in her mind. Wall of ice, strong and firm, thick at the base and bending across the face of the vent.

It seems to work.

Good.

The pistons are a bit of a pain to get past, and when they slip past the ice wall there's a muffled thump, and the wall shakes but holds.

Nothing else jumps out at them. Past the door is a hallway with rooms branching off, all but one sealed off by rubble. Ena glides past them, then through another door, and freezes once she passes the corner, before knocking her bow and carefully sighting along it, taking out what's apparently a mechanical spider with its back to them. She holds still for a few beats, but nothing else seems to have heard.

Looking around the room, there's a gap in some pipes to the left, what looks like an abandoned camp nestled in it, and a ramp up to the right. The spider was in an alcove to the far right. There's an almost slithery, skittering sound that can be barely heard over the pipes and steam.

Sounds like trouble. She'd best be ready.

"Left or right?" Ena asks. "I'd somewhat like to investigate that camp more, might be clues as to what the danger is..."

"You go left. I'll keep watch."

"Alright."

And she slips past the grate-thing and into the gap. There's a good bit of blood splattered over the camp, with a trail leading forward into the tangle of pipes. She proceeds cautiously, daggers out (her bow won't help her much in tight quarters like this), but nothing attacks her. Eventually, she's out of sight of Elana, and she's about to turn back, before she spots a body out of the corner of her eye, slumped against the wall. There's a journal next to the corpse, which she picks up, and cautiously flips through as she returns.

"Just a body," she says. "Though I found his journal, and he describes 'eyeless creatures' capturing the rest of the team and keeping them in cells. Apparently they escaped, and most of the rest went further into the ruins."

"'Creatures' as opposed to machines?"

"Yeah."

"Wonderful."

"Pretty sure they're intelligent-ish too - the corpse had an arrow in its shoulder. Looked primitive, but not like any I've seen in my travels."

"I wonder where they got the materials, this far down. And how the shooter managed to hit a target, if it was indeed eyeless."

"No clue, and could be some kind of enhanced senses deal. It's technically possible to hit a target in the dark if it's making enough noise."

"I suppose you'd be likely to know."

"I've only ever tried it once, it's not particularly accurate, but if that's the only way you hunt, and you're not worried about wasting arrows..."

"Any other details?"

"On the arrow? It's head was odd, somewhat hooked. Probably a pain to remove, but I can't imagine it being stable. Probably won't go far once fired."

"Of the creatures. Beyond their eyeless nature."

"Not really. They attack in groups, seem fairly cruel given their actions towards the archaeologists, have some kind of organization..."

"Hopefully they burn more easily than the constructs."

"I'd assume so. C'mon, let's get going."

Up the ramp.