(It's not ACTUALLY LITERALLY Atlantis, dammit! I'm just trying to relate it to your feeble foxy mind, and then you go and spread that to these other innocents!)
Mike's attempt at escaping his bonds proves to be pretty much worthless - despite being a smaller animal, the skum don't seem to have any issues tightening the brine-hemp to the tiny wrists of the otter. Likewise, Yilin's yelling (did you name him like that on purpose) does absolutely nothing to convince the humanoids to let him go. They don't respond in the slightest, not even bothering to silence the squat mage. Maybe it's because they fear harming those bubbles and suffocating the human through that - or maybe they've completely lost the capability to care about speech that comes from sources that aren't deemed "important" to them by aboleth leaders.
Despite the halls NOT BELONGING TO ATLANTIS, you find yourselves being pulled out to an area that is just a bit brighter than the confined corridors that you were contained in before. You pass under an arch and a gate that drops from it, and the space suddenly becomes much more open. The area is... circular, it seems. It's domed off, too, with a series of blades and sharp instruments from the battlements of stone that rest atop the walls of the circle. There's no way you could escape through that way, barring you all lost ninety percent of your body mass or you became water itself. You'd be hacked to pieces by your own stupidity first.
Above those blades and in the battlements of the spot are numerous undersea races, including some more skum. However, rather than looking super-dull and indoctrinated, these people are alight with excitement and... something else. They almost appear ravenous. They begin to swim around the top of the dome, agitated, and yell down through the blades. What kind of a place is this? Some sort of trial? A stoning held underwater?
It's not long until a gate that is directly across from the one you entered from opens, and out from it comes a group of chained vorzh, though these are not similar to Attor in form. These have long, spindly legs that reach up to the sternum of a normal human, and they lack a real neck. Their heads are swollen and bulging with fins on the top, their eyes glassy. A sort of webbing ties all their legs together like a dress. It's graceful and beautiful, in an underwater creature sort of way. Their genders are almost impossible to determine. These must be related to squid, somehow.
(I'll say now that you're free to roll INT to see if you can discern more about any sort of creature or spot if you're curious. I'll add in bonuses or information if you succeed on these rolls, but I'll only allow ONE from the whole party. Choose your lucky character or your smartest.)
More yelling comes from the creatures above you, and the gates behind your two groups slam shut into stone. An odd, echoing voice from above begins to enter your mind without ever gracing your ears. "Gladiatorial sanctum," it communicates. "One group standing." Far, far above the ravenous crowd, you can see the outline of something big. VERY big, with chitin and tentacles and all number of things scary.
There are four squid-vorzh to match the four of you, it seems. And according to the voice, "Victors survive. Advance."
You don't seem to have much of a choice, and the fewer enemies you have, the better. Best that you stick with your group and fight together.
(So now combat will happen, unless you can somehow all roll miracle rolls in a series of events and weasel your ways out of it. ((Which is rare)) In this case, everyone just rolls a d20, no modifier, to determine when your action takes place. The higher the number, the sooner in the turns you will act. This doesn't mean you have to wait until everyone takes their turn to post! You can, and that would be nice for chronological order and the purpose of determining what action to take, but I understand that people might have things come up or whatever. I'm just going to roll the order of these vorzh because I've got an essay to finish before the day is done and this is already quite a bit for me.)
