When Crawl wants to kill your character, there's nearly nothing you can do.
I had a very promising Deep Elf Wizard.
I finished cleaning Dungeon:8 and decided to go to Dungeon:9
in D:9 the zone i was in was a bit too open for me (no wall providing protection) and there was a few Orcs, an Orc Warrior, an Orc Wizard and an Orc Priest at some distance.
While the first 3 enemies would be no problem for my legions of Imps (killed a few of those Orcs in D:8 and D:7), i remember that Orc Priests always target and smite only my characters and ignore the other enemies around (having lost many characters in the same kind of situation).
So instead of some stupid hubris killing my character again, i moved back to D:8 to find a better stair to D:9, better safe than sorry, especially in Crawl.
Went to another stair and moved to Dungeon:9 again.
And there on the same turn in which i entered this other zone of D:9, Erolcha at some distance just threw a lightning bolt on my character :
The bolt of lightning hits you!
Ouch! That really hurt!
* * * LOW HITPOINT WARNING * * *
As i was on the stairs i pressed the key to move back to D:8, but unfortunately, pressing the go up/go down apparently either make me lose a turn or give a free turn to the monsters, Dowan decided to shoot too (he was the other side of the screen in comparison to Erolcha with me at the screen center) :
There is a stone staircase leading up here.
Dowan gestures at you while chanting.
The puff of frost hits you! You feel a terrible chill!
You die...
8351 | D:9 | Noticed Duvessa
8351 | D:9 | Noticed Dowan
8351 | D:9 | Noticed Erolcha
8352 | D:9 | Killed from afar by Dowan
2252 Guo the Summoner (level 8, -8/35 HPs)
Began as a Deep Elf Wizard on Apr 18, 2011.
Was a Follower of Vehumet.
Killed from afar by Dowan (10 damage)
... with a puff of frost
... on Level 9 of the Dungeon.
The game lasted 00:46:52 (8352 turns).
As my character was at full health and the puff of frost did only 10 damage, Erolcha lighting bolt much have done 33 damage.
Ouch.
I wish i didn't wasted my only Blink scroll in D:2 when i was testing the ones i found, though i'm sure it would have not saved my character with the bad luck i had in this situation.