The adventuring party crept slowly down the ancient hallway. This section of the Lich-Pharaoh's Tomb Palace had likely not been used for decades, maybe centuries. The door to it had been sealed shut and partly buried behind dusty pots and jars. The ancient sandstone walls, floor and ceiling were thick with dust and cobwebs, but that didn’t mean they were safe here, far from it.

Aethaline, at the forefront of the party, held up a slender hand. Her other held the meager flickering torch, raised high to try and cast back the shadows of the hall as far as possible. Behind her, the remaining members of the party: Dwellin the dwarf warrior, Heka, a human wizard and Gumash the half orc barbarian, came to a halt. All of them strained their ears, listening but to their relief, there was no sound of the pursuit, whether from the Lich-Pharaoh's guard monsters or his mortal minions.

“I think we gave them the slip…” Heka ventured hopefully.

“For now…” Aethaline replied, uncertainly. “But it won’t take them long to figure out which way we went. “The guards would, sooner or later, spot the door they’d been forced to smash open and the monsters would pick up the scent even faster. They needed to keep moving, but in a place like this, too much haste could also be deadly.

Aethaline reached up and brushed a few strands of raven black hair which had escaped the long, narrow braid hanging down her back out of her face. She placed the hand on one slender hip, clad in supple leather armor, as she regarded the patch of ground before her warily.

It wasn’t surprising to see sand down here in the lower levels. Many of the doors and chambers they’d passed had been filled up with it, but this patch, a section of hallway some fifteen feet long, looked odd. Aethaline bent and carefully brushed across the top layer of sand, looking to see if it concealed a tripwire or pressure place connected to a mechanical trap.

Unfortunately, the half-elf was a ranger by trade, not a rogue. Kieran had been the party’s rogue, but she had fallen prey to a trap two levels back. The door she had been trying to unlock had suddenly folded over into a cage, engulfing the halfling. Before the rest of the party could try and free her, a chain had whisked it up a dark shaft to some place deeper within the complex.

“Do you detect any magic here?” Aethaline asked the wizard. She was, mostly, certain there were no mundane traps here.

Heka shook her head. “I’ve exhausted all uses of that spell I prepared today…I could prepare another but…” Aethaline knew doing so would take at least ten or fifteen minutes, which was time they didn’t have. “I can still dispel magic.” She added helpfully.

“Alright.” Aethaline said. “Be ready to cast it.” She waited a moment for the other woman to draw her wand and recall the right incantation. Then, with a breath to steady herself, the half-elf ranger took a step forward onto the sand, ready to spring back at the first sign of danger. Nothing happened.

Aethaline, along with the rest of her group, let out a long sigh of relief. Aethaline took another step. Then another. On the fourth step, everything changed. The sand, which had felt fairly compact and solid, suddenly began to shift and flow like water. The half-elf’s foot was suddenly swallowed up to the knee. Before she, or anyone else could react, the quicksand spread, swallowing her other leg.

“Hold on!” Heka called and started to chant the words to dispel the sand trap. Aethaline was already up to her waist. By the time the other woman had cast, she was up to her shoulders, her arms submerged in the churning sand, trying frantically to tread water, or sand in this case.

With the last syllable of the spell spoken, Heka released it at the sand trap. Instantly, Aethaline could feel the difference as the magic was dissipated, turning the magical quicksand back into ordinary, mundane sand. She stopped sinking and in fact, save for her head which was all that remained exposed, the half elf stopped moving altogether, restrained on all sides by the solid mass pressing against her body.

“Oh uh…” Heka said, seeing what her spell had done. “Sorry…”

“It’d be a lot worse if you’d been a second slower. Dig me out, quick!” But as her comrades hurried to draw tools and scrabble at the sand burying Aethaline, they suddenly heard the noise they’d been dreading: echoes from back down the hallway. Someone, or something, had found where the adventurers had gone and was now coming after them and quickly.

“Hurry!” Dwellin said, making sand fly with his spade. The half elf was still only excavated to her shoulders.

“There’s no time.” Aethaline said, grimly. Little she cared to admit it, but the facts were stark and clear. There was no way they could dig her out and make good their escape before whatever was coming up the hallway arrived. If they tried, there would be battle. The others were exhausted, injured and the wizard nearly out of spells. If they stood and fought, they would all be killed or captured. The others knew it too. After only brief arguments, they turned and, with one final look back at their comrade, fled up the hallway as quickly as they could.

Aethaline turned her attention back to the sounds of those coming towards her now. She wondered if they were humanoid minions or one of the monstrous guard beasts. With all the echoing in the hallway it was difficult to tell whether the sounds were the tread of boots or the scratch of claws. There was no possibility of her fighting them, whoever they were. Given another half hour or so, she might worm one arm free of the sand, but from the sound of things she had mere minutes.

What happened to her then depended entirely on what came out of the darkness. Monsters would simply kill her, horrid, but with only her head exposed at least it would be over quickly. If it were mortal minions on the other hand…

The Lich-Pharaoh had, during his mortal reign, been infamous for his love of beautiful slave girls, and for the cruelties he inflicted on any of them who displeased him. Becoming an undead immortal hadn’t cooled that passion one bit. Aethaline knew if she fell into the clutches of his mortal servants, there was a decent chance she would be spared death in order to be presented as a prize before their master. The half-elf had no doubts poor Kieran was, at the moment, being measured for a slave collar and skimpy dancer’s garb. Soon, the elf might be joining her.

“Still, it beats ending up monster chow…” She thought with a rueful chuckle. So long as they were alive, there was always the hope, slim though it may be, of escape or that the rest of the party might escape, recuperate and recruit new members and then return to defeat the Lich-Pharoah and rescue their captive comrades.

Still, all that would depend on what sort of guard found her first: man or beast. The sounds were closer now, but still no clearer. She thought she saw the glow of flame coming around the bend and hoped it came from a torch. Still, some of the guard beasts had breathed fire. Aethaline waited…