For a time Iseldis couldn't comprehend much of anything beyond the pain, lancing white hot through her body and blinding her to all else. She knew nothing of the magic save that she didn't have the faintest idea how to defend against it, and the weightlessness and the fall were afterthoughts until they were almost through. That was when she spilled onto the ground next to Roland, their descent complete and her senses returning.

His quiet words barely reached her through the pounding in her ears. Her heart, she supposed. "I'm--[i]agh[/i]." She'd tried to rise at least to hands and knees, but a sharp pain raced along her right arm and that side of her chest, and when the tears cleared from her eyes she saw blood dripping down from the stab wound she'd suffered. There was another in her right leg, on the outside of her thigh.

She gave up on trying to rise, instead rolling over onto her back and lighting a spell on her palms. They glowed with a soft white light, and she pressed one hand to her shoulder, the other down against her leg, searching until she found the torn hole in her leggings. It was difficult to pinpoint the source while there was still so much reverberating pain. Even with the dark elf's spell passed it was significant.

"I can... slow the bleeding at least," she said between exhausted breaths. She didn't have enough in her to heal the wounds properly, and they had to be able to keep moving. From her back she looked around. "Goddess, where are we?" By the looks of thing they were simply deeper in the darkness.

When she'd effectively slowed her own blood loss she sat up and did the same for Roland, pressing both blood-soaked hands to his shoulder and willing reserves of magic from deep within her. She was a mess, beads of sweat rolling down the sides of her face, her white robes dusted, spattered with her own blood, and clinging uncomfortably to her skin. Despite all that she felt chilled, and cold.

Her hands were shaking from exhaustion before she was satisfied with her work on Roland's injury, and the tremor extended to her legs when she tried to stand. She felt dizzy, sick, weak, and entirely unsteady. She was quite confident she'd never felt worse. She just needed to lean on her--

"My staff," she exclaimed suddenly. "It's..." It didn't need saying: it was back up above where they'd fought, where she had so swiftly lost. She knew she'd be lucky to conjure so much as a dagger in her current state. It took everything in her to keep despair from taking over.

This couldn't be how it ended. This couldn't be how she died.

And then that chilling voice echoed down from somewhere above. "The two of you have the sweetest smelling blood. Fresh and full of life. Run if you wish... but I do hope you're not finished yet. We've only just begun."

Whatever Roland did to her clearly hadn't kept her down long. "We need to move," Iseldis said urgently. "Find... some way out of here. If there is one."