"Ah. Hopefully he won't miss it for too long."

"Mm-hm."

Deekin picks up a key, the final item Sodalis dropped, and tries it on the door the vampire's gaseous form slipped through. It opens, revealing an empty shaft.

"Whoa," Deekin says, looking down. "Deekin not seeing bottom of pit. Belmarniss have Fly?"

"Yeah but not four of it."

"I can carry three hundred pounds - Jojo, how much do you weigh?"

"One hundred and twenty, roughly?"

"Deekin weigh thirty," Deekin volunteers.

He turns to Belmarniss. "Then unless you weigh over one-fifty, I can carry Deekin under one arm, Jojo under the other, and you can ride on my back. It'll be awkward, but we can all make it down."

"I shouldn't be over one twenty, plus gear won't put me over one fifty. Do we have a plan for fighting midair if necessary?"

"Head for the ground as fast as we can while you zap it with that arcane ray attack you do?"

"It's not all that good of a ray but okay."

"It doesn't really have to be, just enough to keep something at bay while we head downwards."

He takes Deekin under one arm like an unusually permissive cat, and Jojo under the other like a significantly larger cat, and crouches down for Belmarniss to get on his shoulders.

On she gets. "Fly."

And Garrus begins his somewhat belabored descent.

They're not attacked on their way down, thankfully. There's another vampire waiting at the bottom of the shaft, though. He hisses at them when they're within Darkvision range, and starts throwing shuriken at Garrus, which plink off his armor uselessly. Garrus descends the rest of the way at double speed and drops his arm-passengers from ten feet up, letting Belmarniss off more gently at the end of his descent.

Jojo rolls to his feet and starts trading blows with the vampire.

"Scorching Ray."

After a bit more of this, the vampire evaporates just like the last one. The cloud of mist streaks around the corner, followed by Jojo.

There's a coffin here. Well, a sarcophagus. Unadorned stone, in the shape of a humanoid. Jojo heaves off its lid to reveal the vampire inside, to all appearances sleeping or dead.

"Did anyone bring a stake?"

"...I have arrows? We could take off the tips and sharpen them into, like, mini-stakes."

"I don't have a better idea than that."

Garrus removes an arrow from his quiver and uses a small dagger to chop off its tip and sharpen the wood to a point. Then he pauses. "Mammal hearts: left side or right side?"

Jojo takes the makeshift stake and stabs it into the vampire's chest with appropriate force.

The vampire's eyes open and it screams before collapsing into ash.

"Excellent," Jojo says happily. "One down... however many more to go."

"-is something wrong?"

"I wasn't gonna say anything."

"I- promise I won't be angry? It seems a bit condescending to say that, but I won't, if that's your worry."