She can breathe again, but the sensation is painful – Either the healing is not entirely complete, or something hasn't healed properly. Sadly, singing or making one of those useful anti-Eeee shrieks would likely cause her to double over from the pain, if not to pass out. Also, the air smells strongly of smoke, and after a moment of trying to adjust her vision, it appears that it simply will not.

The light comes not from the candle rack – which is now barren – but from the light of flames visible through the crack that allowed her entrance to the old tomb/shrine. Smoke fills the air above Envoy, though it is thinner closer to the floor, and to the low slab that she lies on. By the crackling and popping of burning wood and chitin – and the foul odor that accompanies the latter – it would seem that there is a major fire blazing outside the tomb.

Envoy can also feel her belongings being tugged and prodded, but then – perhaps in response to her painful gasp of air and her eyes snapping open – the individual responsible lets out a squeak of surprise, and immediately lets go, scrambling out of the crack with a flutter ofwings, as a half-eaten "crawlie" smacks against the floor, chittering and flailing impotently, then freezing up and lying still.

At that moment, there is a loud crack outside, and a rotten wooden support collapses, squelching a brief scream from the fleeing bat, and knocking up a cloud of ash, smoke and sparks. There are shouts and screams, and Envoy can make out sing-song chanting of female Eeee voices, "You have received Gorphat's Gift! Show your gratitude with suitable sacrifice! Cast your wretched husk … upon the flames … and join Gorphat in eternal rest!"

The chant beckons like a siren's call to Envoy, to return to slumber … or perhaps it's the effect of smoke inhalation. Another sharp report of pain from her chest, however, shocks her into wakefulness, and a greater awareness of her surroundings: the priest, the former maid and the child are gone. In his haste, it appears that the priest abandoned his writing materials, though he did not leave behind the weapon that sent Envoy to Sunala's realm.

Envoy still wears the clothes she obtained from the "merchant", though it would seem that the extra rags have been spilled out on the floor, presumably by the bat who was previously helping him- or herself to Envoy's crawlies (of which there only remains the half-eaten remnant). Other than that, Envoy is presently bereft of possessions.

Envoy rolls onto her stomach and painfully tries to cough up any congealed blood clogging her left lung, and goes dizzy from the effort. Gotta get up … gotta get out, she thinks, and climbs down to the floor carefully, not wanting to tear any of the new tissue that's grown to heal her wound.

There is a light crunch as Envoy's hand crushes a roll of parchment lying on the floor, hidden for the moment in the shadows. Her coughing fit is predictably messy, but nothing unexpected happens beyond that.

Blindly, she rummages through the extra rags, trying to find one that she can wear as a filter. Maybe they left candles too, she thinks, deciding to try and salvage the writing supplies if she can. She stuffs the parchment under her hand into another rag that she folds into sling for carrying things.

With a bit more fumbling around, Envoy recovers the rags that had been pulled out – Rags are rags, after all, and the bat who was rummaging through her belongings was more interested in more patently useful things, such as food (and possibly candles). The candles that were on the rack appear to be gone, but Envoy manages to find a single lumpy taper lying on the floor that has been put together from remnant wax from other candles. (How well the wick will work remains to be seen, and she hasn't a tinderbox, though lighting it shouldn't be a trouble, given how much is on fire outside.)

She also manages to find a small inkwell and quill, plus some unused sheets of parchment. The inkwell has a stopper that seals it well enough for storage, and has a thick glass jar. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would survive simply being dropped off as trash from above.

Bundling up the supplies, Envoy heads for the entrance, keeping her head as low as possible to avoid the smoke. She figures the taper may have to serve as emergency rations, if it has any useable fat content after being recycled so often. She peeks outside, looking upwards first in case anything else is likely to fall.

A few pieces of ashen wood fall down, but nothing that would crush Envoy. The bat just seemed to suffer from phenomenally bad timing … though it looks as if, out here, there are hazards aplenty, and plenty of other bats have suffered from "bad timing", judging from a few charred shapes are probably not wood or bugs.

It isn't a constant inferno here: It is more a collection of smaller fires that have caused flimsy dwellings to light up quickly. It looks like most of the fires are much further below, where the piles of refuse have built up enough gases to be more flammable and serve as fuel for the "purge".

Envoy makes her way out into the former marketplace, and flexes her wings experimentally. If she can at least launch, there should be plenty of updrafts to ride caused by all the fires.

There is a shot of pain in Envoy's chest as she tries the experimental flex. She might be able to manage it … but the strain may very well do some more damage. But then, so may the fires, if she stays here long enough.

With a grimace, she listens for the chanting of the Yodhgorphat, figuring they'll have some way of staying out of the fire … or at least so she can decide which way not to run if she needs to avoid them.

The chanting of the Yodhgorphat comes from above. As she looks up, she can see that a few stories up, there is another stony terrace where the Yodhgorphat have "set up shop", so to speak. It looks like they have a few mercenaries working defense, against those dwellers of the Streets Below who aren't content to just roll over and die, or flee, but would rather take a Yodhgorphat with them. They fling glowing projectiles down into the darkened depths, followed by bright flashes when the projectiles hit their marks, and occasionally the flashes are followed by a steady blaze, though most of the time they just fizzle out. (That said, they seem to have more than enough of them to keep the fires raging here.)

Envoy runs between the burning hovels, trying to find a way to get out that doesn't involve flying. She also has to check above every so often to see if a firebomb is being lobbed at her.

So far, no firebombs have been lobbed Envoy's way. By the looks of it, the former bazaar has already been thoroughly targeted in the minds of the Yodhgorphat, and so far they don't evidence inclination to so much as look this way … though there's no telling what they might do, should they spot Envoy lurking about.

Envoy checks the surrounding walls for openings, hoping that the dangerous types have already left the area and aren't still hiding in places she's likely to stick her head into.

Envoy manages to find a collapsed section of wall. Inside, she finds something of a cubby-hole with a prone bat in it – apparently someone who crawled in here and passed out from smoke inhalation. It's starting to get to Envoy, too. Hopefully she'll find something more promising if she keeps at it.

Just in case the bat might know of a way out, she prods the prone body. "Hey, wake up," she urges, somewhat hoarsely, though, from a dry throat.

Envoy hears a cry from behind her … or more like a cackle. Out of the corner of her vision, she sees some of the Yodhgorphat pointing this way. Or roughly so. Might they have spotted Envoy? Or might it just be "something in this general direction"? In any case, the bat – a young boy, black-furred or else simply so filthy that it looks black – stirs groggily, then promptly breaks into a coughing fit.

Grabbing onto the smaller bat's arm, Envoy tries to drag him out of the rubble before more bombs rain down. "Come on, come on. You can cough outside."

The bat staggers out, leaning heavily on Envoy. "Uh? I din do nuttin'," he mumbles, blinking his eyes, and squinting them, as they water from the smoke. There's a shrill whistle as a glowing projectile arcs overhead, and smashes against a stone wall. Glowing sparks rain down.

Envoy ducks down and hurries along the wall, hoping to find another route. She holds a rag out to the boy, and says, "Cover your muzzle and breathe through this. Keep your head down; the air is better closer to the ground." Not much better, though, she thinks.

The boy goes through the motions of obeying, if for no other reason than Envoy is bigger than he is. As she and the boy rush along, there is a low rumble and a crack of splitting masonry. Several pieces of brick rain down from an outcropping that has a fire blazing atop it – apparently weakening some of the masonry that has been built out from the central stone cores of the tower supports. (While the stone tower supports haven't much to fear from the fire, the lesser structures built around them are far more vulnerable.)

"Do you know a way out?" Envoy asks the boy while keeping an eye out now for more likely-to-fall structures. There's a lot of things to keep track of in a fire, and that's not even including the Yodhgorphat throwing things at you.

The boy struggles to clear his head. "Unh … Uhm … got to hide … They'll knock you outta the air." He scans about. Just then, there is another rumble, and bricks start collapsing from a nearby wall! Fortunately, neither Envoy nor the boy are underneath the falling debris. A dust cloud is knocked up, making it even more difficult to see clearly … which may account for why the fire bombs being lobbed by the Yodhgorphat are so horribly off mark. Where there was brick wall, there is now a large gap, and shadows within. "Inside!" the bat points, hopefully. There's no indication, however, of whether being inside would be any safer. After all, things are falling apart here.

Envoy doesn't hesitate, and runs into the opening with the boy.

Inside, it's dusty, smoky, and dark, and Envoy's head impacts against a hard outcropping as she fumbles about. This hurts, but it's only a bump. Her eyes adjust to the ambient light, and she can see that there is a large tumble of broken bricks leading up to an upper floor that is broken here and there – as it is very old woodwork. The boy bat flutters his wings, leading Envoy over to the tumble of blocks leading up to the next floor. "Watch out!" he says. There are plenty of things to watch out for, of course.

Keeping her head low – or at least at the level she thinks her guide's head is at – Envoy follows along. "Do you know where this leads?"

The boy says, "Leads to the Tongue-Cutters' hideout. But I'll bet they're not there right now."

There's a crack, and a section of burning ceiling falls down past Envoy and the boy, and through a hole in the floor. "Or if they are," he adds as an afterthought, "they're dead."

Envoy doubts the name refers to a book club. "There's another way out from there?" she asks while looking nervously upwards.

"Uhm," the boy says, "not sure, exactly, but they do runs on the upper levels sometimes, and you can't really do that without a sneaky way up there. I mean, if you just fly up and cause trouble, they can follow you right back down again."

"Good," Envoy says. "I'd rather not have to fly," she adds, not mentioning the fact that she can't fly at the moment.

The boy leads Envoy down a corridor, over some broken woodwork, and up to a door that looks to be securely bolted … except that the wall next to it has a hole in it that is easily enough crawled through at this point. Several holes here and there let in enough fire light so that Envoy can still make her way around, and the occasional sound of a fire-burst indicates that for all their running around, they've not put that much distance between themselves and the Yodhgorphat.

"What's your name?" the Aeolun ask as she's led around. "I'm Envoy."

"I'm Grokglekht," the boy says, and at first it sounds to Envoy as if he's just used a foul word. But apparently that's his name. Cruel parents or peers, no doubt.

"Sounds … very strong," Envoy says, trying to be diplomatic.

Inside the room the boy has just led Envoy into, some lanterns are hanging on the walls, still flickering. A male bat, in his teens, lies on the floor, lost to the world, apparently in a drugged stupor, while various toxic fluids and fungus and powders are scattered on a table and about the room, abandoned in a mad dash to escape. For what it's worth, there are several knives and other simple weapons of chitin and bone lying about, many of them stuck into walls or the battered furnishings. This may have once been a more distinguished dwelling place, but it has obviously been taken over by hoodlums. Even though spray paint doesn't exist as such on Sinai, evidently the Babelites have their own means of spraying graffiti – After all, various bugs have all sorts of interesting colors for their innards.

Envoy hmms. Where there are drugs, there should be … munchies! "I'm getting one of the lanterns, do you think they have any food here?" She waves a hand in front of the dazed looking adolescent to see if he reacts.

The adolescent punk is off in a world of his own. He doesn't evidence any reaction to Envoy's presence. Grokglekht rummages around, pausing on occasion to cough, as the air isn't necessarily much clearer in here. Hemoves an upturned stool and finds a multi-legged bug hiding underneath, about as large as Envoy's forearm. It snaps its pincers at the boy, who leaps back. "Yi!"

Envoy blinks at the critter. "Is that thing safe to eat?" she asks, and tries to pry one of the knives loose from a crack in the wall near where she's unhooking one of the lanterns.

Grokglekht says, "Not when it's big and you're not!" He flutters up onto a battered lounge to keep his distance from the bug, though the bug shows no intention of pursuing. Meanwhile, Envoy has herself a knife and a lantern.

The lantern, incidentally, has a shutter on it, though it's presently open. It looks like the chitin casing is cracked, and the lantern leaks oil if tipped too far to the side or if the reservoir is filled all the way.

Eyeing the bug's pincers, and then the relative size of her knife, Envoy decides to leave it alone. She slips the knife into her sash, and says, "Let's move on, then. No telling what will happen when the fire reaches these concoctions."

The boy nods, and flaps across the room. The crawling bug lacks wings, fortunately. "Yah. Chuggers are hard to de-shell anyway," he says, in a bit of sour grapes. There are various passages leading off to rooms in various state of disrepair, with dirty clothes and other detritus scattered about, and the boy scans about, then looks more confident and determined as he squeaks, "This way!" He leads the way toward one of the more remote doors.

Envoy follows along on his heels, making sure the lantern doesn't swing too much and lose more oil.

The boy struggles with the door, fails to open it … then squeezes through a gap made by the fact that the door (a Nordikan style of construction, actually) is missing the lower wooden panel. Envoy, however, is unlikely to be able to fit through as well.

Setting down the lantern, Envoy tries to force the upper door open before resorting to squeezing through.

Well! That wasn't nearly as difficult as it could have been. The door pops open. It would have been far more exciting if Envoy would have tried to squeeze her way through, as just then, there's another whistle and a bang, and then the ceiling of the "drug den" starts caving in. The dazed adolescent is still oblivious to his surroundings, even as wood splinters start landing on him.

Envoy frowns, not liking having to leave the zoned-out bat behind. She picks up the lantern and hurries through the door to catch up with Grokglekht.

As Envoy dashes through, into the smoky and dark area beyond, she is struck by a sense that this next chamber is a great deal larger than the previous one. She gets an even better sense of this when the floor cracks and gives way beneath her, and she abruptly drops. The floor ends out here, and was not properly supported, such that her weight was sufficient to break off the edge. The building … stops here … and, indeed, so does the whole city. She has reached the "Great Pit of Babel".

"Look out!" Grokglekht helpfully calls out.

Despite the pain, Envoy spreads her wings in an attempt to glide away from the wall, before she hits the curve of the bowl.

Of course, pain shoots through Envoy's body, but this is not unexpected, and she manages to keep level and conscious. Her glide path takes her out of the thickest part of the smoke, whereupon she hears a shout, "Intruder! Intruder in the Pit!" followed by several other shouts.

For what it's worth, Envoy is now able to determine that it is, in fact, night time in the world beyond the Streets Below.

Oh great, Envoy thinks, figuring the ones shouting the alarm are not going to just give her a ticket. And there's no way for her to gain any altitude either, unless there is an updraft or thermal close by. She searches the darkness for the glow of Sifran crystal, figuring that will let her know where she is in relation to the Tower of Babel.

If Envoy is at the 12 o' clock position, the Tower of Babel – plain enough for the watch-lights positioned all along the spiraling road leading up its exterior, though she doesn't see any veins of Sifran crystal running along the outside – is at the 8 o' clock position.

Since the Tower of Babel is, for what she knows, roughly on the eastern side of the Pit, that would mean that she's roughly on the southern side of it now.

Envoy banks to the west, figuring the guards will be less alarmed if she's flying away from them. "Grokglekht, are you still there?" she calls. "Do you know where the Mage's Guild Hall is from here?"

Grokglekht, bless his little Babelite heart, has fled. Meanwhile, Envoy hears the sounds of ptera cries, and a patrol-sized airship passes over the edge of the bowl.

The High Princess is dead, but that doesn't mean I don't still have a bounty on my head, Envoy realizes, and starts looking for a landing spot amidst the ruins of the buildings along the rim.

It looks as if there is a suitable balcony that Envoy might be able to land on. It remains to be seen whether that will afford her any sort of shelter.

Envoy turns and heads for the balcony. The building isn't on fire, after all, and she can't afford to lose more altitude searching.

"The Wound is sacred ground!" a voice booms from the direction of the airship, amplified and distorted. "Rephath shall shed the blood of any who defile this place!"

The Exile alights upon the balcony of a cleft building. Once, it must have continued upward, forming a support for yet higher structures, but now it is pretty much a balcony leading in to a structure missing several floors above, cut off at a roughly forty-five degree angle.

Envoy blinks at the announcement. Would the Yodhrephath have a patrol ship? She turns on the balcony to try and get a better look at the craft.

The Exile is struck with a strange sense of deja-vu as she looks up at the patrol ship, and for a moment, her senses seem to swim. It is flanked by two Eeee riders on pteras.

For what it's worth, it looks as if the pteras are flying back and forth, searching, rather than zeroing in on Envoy's position.

Closing her eyes, Envoy tries not lose her balance on the balcony, until the disphoria passes.

It looks like … the ship that Saraizadze was on? That was real?

"But the Princess is gone. Who would be flying that ship now?" Envoy wonders out loud, trying to decide if she should hide until daylight, or take her chances that the patrol would be friendly. She moves back into the doorway to keep out of sight, and watches the patrol for any other indications of their attitude.

Alas, Envoy's powers of perception don't seem to give her any general clues beyond what she's gotten already. They aren't cackling to themselves, "Kill Envoy! KILL ENVOY!" at the very least. The pteras soar overhead, and the airship glides along at a much slower pace.

As Envoy gets a chance to check herself out, she verifies that nothing spilled out of her pockets, and she still has a firm grip on the lantern and the knife. However, her fall prompted a great deal more of the oil to spill out, and the flame to extinguish.

The oil might burn for, oh, an hour perhaps, with what's left.

"At least I don't have to worry about shuttering it," she mutters, and tries to make out what lies beyond the balcony entrance in the darkness.

The room here may have once been a bedroom, though it has likely not been used as such for a very long time. Although it may be close to the open air, before the "boomer" was dropped, it was down at an even lower level than the Bazaar, and accordingly shows signs of inhabitation by vermin, and vandalism by those few who might pay it a visit. It is devoid of any furniture, unless fragments of the furnishings are to be found in the debris collected in the corners.

Envoy watches her steps, in case the floor is likely to give out on her, while she searches for stairs leading up to the next level.

This house is built in the traditional Babelite style, without doors dividing most of the rooms, and, indeed, with wide open spaces that make the divisions between rooms vaguely defined. She passes through an open doorway into a corridor, which in turn leads to a central flier's shaft – a wide open area convenient for those more inclined to simply fly between floors – with a narrow walkway winding along the perimeter of the vertical chamber, until it terminates at open sky above.

Envoy tests the stability of the walkway before starting up it, planning on staying on the uppermost intact floor until morning.

Unlike most of her adventures in the Undercity, Envoy actually makes it up to the highest level without incident. She doesn't encounter any lurkers, nor any signs of recent inhabitants, save for small scurrying creatures, and a roosting chibix that shrieks and flaps away when Envoy happens upon it. The uppermost landing opens out to another chamber devoid of furnishings, which offers a ceiling with some protection against the elements, though part of the ceiling is missing in the corner, where the "cut" of the bowl of the pit has taken a slash out of the room.

Sitting down near the open section, Envoy looks out to see if the patrol is moving her way yet.

The pteras have flown past, but their circuitous flight path makes it difficult to predict where they'll head next (which could very well be intentional), and with the amount of looping back they do, they may very well come back this way soon … or not at all. The airship appears to be holding to the rim of the "bowl" for now.

Envoy focuses her ears on the airship, trying to pick up any hint of chanting that might carry this far and indicate that the ship has an air mage on it.

Alas, Envoy does not have the ears of an Eeee, so while she does not hear chanting aboard the airship, neither does she definitively hear the absence of chanting, any more than she can hear the sound of one hand clapping.

Envoy considers the announcement she heard. It probably was just done with a cone amplifier instead of a spell. She looks out towards the ship again, trying to see if she can get closer by gliding across to the next building.

As Envoy looks out, she can see the outlines of tworakhtors pulling the ship, limned by the Procession-light. A large stylized eye looks down from the hull of the craft, as if spying her, even though the pteras may have not done so yet.

Deciding that a rakhtor-pulled patrol ship isn't likely to have an Air Mage, and not liking the look of the traditional Sabaoth's Eye on it, Envoy decides to lay low and hope they won't go as far as searching the buildings. She rests her back against the wall, pulls up her knees, and wraps her wings around her to keep warm and get some rest.