Not really specifically, no!! The guard of the spear flares out to block the venom from hitting Ky and she spears them.

Camellia will stab one of the others, and then the last two die to Anevia's arrows.

"Are there a lot of those? What the fuck do they eat?"

"I'm not sure! You see a few of them in the city sometimes, but not often enough they could be taking it back down or anything."

She pauses, considering.

"Well, it's not the way up we were hoping for, but there's probably a way out through that cave; the bugs do have to get food from somewhere, and in a way their size is encouraging since it means there's better odds we can fit."

"There are some fortresses from the first crusade that extend underground, from back when they were fighting demons in the tunnels. They're mostly abandoned now, but probably one of them is the exit in question."

"What, and go tromping through a cave just to maybe get back to the surface later? I can't say I'm a fan of this plan."

"We could see if the centipedes will burn, if anyone's got a firestarter - Iskander?"

He pulls out his flint and attempts to ignite the dead scorpions.

There's too much water in the insides for that to get a good flame, and the chitin in the exoskeleton doesn't burn. They can get some wispy smoke if they work at it, but it's not really a roaring fire.

"Yeah, I don't think this will catch even if we sacrifice some clothes and paper."

"Spooky cave it is, I guess."

Once they commit to the plan to traverse the cave, Camellia admits that she can cast light as many times as they need. It's not the most amazing buff imaginable, since the light coming from right by their heads ruins their ability to see too far in the distance and alerts anything that somehow failed to hear them, but that beats the heck out of not being able to see anything in the pitch dark. The cave system is pretty sizable, but inside the hour they start to hear echoes from some people talking a corner or two away.

Oh, and what are those people saying?

"I'm telling you, it's got to be around here somewhere. We just need to figure out where it got buried in the quake."

"And I'm telling you, you're wasting your time. Even if you could find it, it's not like an angel's sword would respond to you."

Well, better not to startle them when they come around the bend. "Hello?"

"Hello! Woah, are you guys from the surface?"

"We fell down when the crevasse back there opened up. You live down here?"

"I've lived down here my whole life. All us neathers have. There's another way up to the surface now?"

"If you can fly."

She grins, sharply.

"Unfortunately, I'm not exactly swimming in wings. I might give it a look to see if I can climb it at some point, but even if I can it's going to be beyond most of us."

"Should we conclude that this direction is not necessarily an easier way up?"

"The shield maze isn't normally safe, but if we can find the angel's sword here it'll be a lot easier than normal. With that, we can rally all the tribes to go with their best warriors at once instead of individual hunters trying their own luck - and we need to anyway, some kids decided to explore it and went missing there yesterday."

Wenduag doesn't say anything, but she sure looks doubtful.

Do Seelah and Anevia and Camellia seem to think this is a reasonable thing to spend time on?

"Well, an angel's sword would be pretty cool. Maybe it'd even respond to me; I know some paladins get a celestial spirit to empower their sword, even if I can't do that yet. And I don't want to let kids get hurt if I could help save them."