Luzai stares blankly at the remnants of campfire for a moment, as though if she looked at them longer they would explain to her why anyone had been making campfires down here. 

"--Well. We're probably on the right track." 

The tunnel slowly widens and the ground slopes gradually upward as they travel, culminating in their arrival at another chamber. A low stone wall, now long collapsed, attempts to bar the entrances to the room; beyond it are a handful of huts that look to be at least partly made of chitin. One of the buildings near the center is in significantly better repair than the others.

"--There are people living underground here? Did anybody know about this?" Luzai hisses under her breath. 

"There are stories, but I've always thought they were only that. The details change with every telling; mole people, lizard people, tieflings, whatever strikes the teller's fancy, living underground ever since the days of the first crusade. Some of the more lurid tales claim they regularly go the surface to abduct women and children, but that one at least I know is false."

"Wow. Okay." 

She peers out, seeing what can be seen of the village before they approach. Because they're definitely going to have to approach, and it would be good to get whatever bits of context they can first. Specifically do the people seem particularly agitated such that they might be inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. 

Calling it a village would be a bit of an exaggeration; even were it full, the place in front of them couldn't have had more than a twenty people. The only person visible is a middle aged dwarf with incredibly unkempt hair and beard who watches their arrival warily.

"...Hi," Luzai says awkwardly. "We're lost." 

"Lost, are you? That's a likely story. It's not often people from the surface travel down here to get lost in the first place, but you just happened to find your way to my cave?"

"Well, you see, Deskari attacked the city up above, and carved a chasm into the earth, and we fell down it. Now we're trying to find our way back to the surface." 

"I wasn't born yesterday - everyone knows the demon lords don't show up in person. No, I know your type, and don't think I don't see that magic light of yours. You're a wizard, aren't you? Let me guess, a few of your experiments ended up more public than you'd hoped and now you're down here until the heat dies down."

"No--I mean, yes, I am a wizard, but the light is hers, actually," she gestures to Camellia, "and I can't cast anything higher than first circle anyway. Whoever heard of a first-circle wizard managing anything dumb enough to be run out of town for?"

"That's because he's doing some projection."

At some point during the conversation, Anevia drew her bow. Now she stands with an arrow knocked, aimed at the dwarf.

"I knew I recognized your face from somewhere, Millorn. I don't want to see any sudden movements from you."

"Ah. That does explain a lot. Uh, just curious, what'd he do?" 

"Nothing! Nothing any other self respecting wizard wouldn't do, if they had the chance - they weren't anyone important."

As the dwarf speaks, his hands suddenly lurch into motion, and a cone of vivid color emerges from his hand and engulfs them. Anevia's arrow slams into him before he finishes casting, but the pain isn't enough to disrupt his focus.

Oh yeah that puts her right out. 

Flop. 

Seelah joins her a moment later in a loud clatter of metal on stone.

Camellia, on the other hand, has no such difficulties. Her rapier flashes out as she chants in Old Hallit, piercing straight though his ribcage.

And Anevia finishes him off with another arrow.

When Luzai awakens said woman looks down at her apologetically.

"I'm sorry about that, this is my fault. I should have shot him the moment I realized who he was instead of giving him a chance to cast; I underestimated how desperate he'd be."

Luzai glances around. 

"Well, it'd be presumptuous of me to speak on behalf of Seelah, and I realize things could've gone worse, but I'm alright with being knocked out for a little while to give someone a chance to be a better person than they used to be." 

"I'll keep that in mind for any more color sprays, but if that had been a burning arc instead I could have gotten you killed; we're not exactly swimming in negative energy here."

She shakers her head.

"Sorry, I do think that's admirable of you, I'm just kicking myself for the risk. Do you think you need a look at his spellbook? Normally I'd want to put the works of anyone doing human experimentation to flame, but under the circumstances I don't think I have room to forbid something that might help all of us get back to Kenabres alive."

"--How about, I flip through it to see what I can identify, i rip out any pages containing spells that shouldn't ought to exist, and hang onto the rest." 

"I don't know nearly enough to check, so I'll have to trust you on that."

Millorn's research-and-spells book is a real piece of work, and a number of the pages are dedicated to figuring out ways to extract vitality from human sacrifice. The returns he got weren't great, but throughout the writing he seems convinced a big breakthrough was just around the corner. In between the grisly details, though, there are a number of useful spells recorded.

Luzai makes a face at the grisly stuff, and uses her dagger to carefully cut them out of the book, then drops them on the ground, grinding them under her heel. 

"I can make a list of everything that's still in here," she offers. "You could have someone check it against the contents of the book later."

"There'd be nothing stopping you from cutting more pages out later, so it doesn't seem worth extra effort on your part. I might ask you to take Abadar's truth later, but if you were motivated by this kind of thing you probably wouldn't have left Geb."