Round 180

The building's groan shifted timbre, becoming a low rumble that vibrated through the floorboards like a beast settling into final rigor mortis. Water seeped from the ceiling leak in steady streams now, mixing with spilled lubricant to create a treacherous surface that threatened to send them all sliding across the corridor. The wardstone pulsed again—sharp and insistent, fucking thing knew they were trapped in here now.

Jeane grit her teeth, pushing more power through the dildo channel into the wall socket while her wings flexed instinctively behind her. She could feel it trying to pull back, wanting to corrupt the spellwork and flood the corridor with its energy. "Two minutes," she muttered mostly to herself, though her voice carried in the enclosed space. "Maybe three if we're lucky. The pulses are getting stronger—it's counting down." Her crimson eyes flicked toward Silra crouched between joists, then back to the door where Halie was trying to maintain a barricade with a heavy mirror.

Silra pressed her palms flat on the floorboards, felt them settle before breaking—the whole building was a ticking bomb with them trapped inside it. The water seeped around her hands from the shattered shower stall above, mixing with the spilled lubricant to make the floor slick as ice. Every pulse from the wardstone vibrated through her boots like a living thing trying to claw its way out.

Halie's voice cut through the tension in the dark corridor: "We don't have time for panic. Hera—you're closest to the door frame, yes? Press your shoulder against it, brace it with your body weight." Her burned hands gripped the mirror, but the slick floor from spilled lubricant and water made her footing uncertain. The wardstone pulses were accelerating now, each one a spike of corruption that...

Jeane slammed her fist against the wall, leaving a small dent in the plaster. "Enough! Hera's panic is spreading through all of you like a disease. Silra—either tell me where we can go or brace this fucking door properly." Her wings beat once, hard enough to create a gust that stirred everyone's hair and sent a spray of water droplets from the ceiling leak scattering. "And Halie? Use her body to stabilize that frame before she has a complete panic attack and pulls us all down with her."