By the time Rygdea reached the torch he had seen from the hole behind the lobby desk, the tunnel had widened enough that he could walk normally. The flame cast a pale orange glow across the slick cobbled walls, revealing two pathways the captain couldn’t see from further away, one leading each left and right. Rygdea shifted his gait as he processed his surroundings, the stone floor cold against the bottoms of his bare feet, the heat from the fire barely warming his goose-pimpled skin. He was seriously regretting leaving his shirt back in the hotel. He grabbed the torch from its wrought-iron sconce and headed right, hoping the way toward outside would lead to a quick exit.
It didn’t. Instead, as Rygdea took a step forward, a stone shifted underfoot, sinking into the floor, which gave way with a loud grinding sound. There were no abutments in the walls or floor to grab hold of as the tunnel fell downward and became a slippery chute into the darkness. The torch fell from the captain’s grip and tumbled down into the abyss. He yelped as he slid into the shadows.
He landed a few seconds later in a pile of sticks, one jutting painfully into his side as he rolled over off his back with a cough. His fall kicked up a cloud of dust, which he then exacerbated by groping around in the pile for the torch. He found it close at hand and hoped to Etro that it wasn’t extinguished in the fall. To his relief, although the fire was out, the end remained aglow with embers. Rygdea cupped his hand around the end of the torch and blew gently, and small flames once again licked the air, growing slowly before reigniting the oiled wood.
He immediately dropped it again when he looked down with a gasp, and the torch rolled down to the floor, revealing the pile of sticks that had broken the captain’s fall was actually a heap of bones, dry and mottled brown things, skulls and ulnae and ribs reaching upward into the stale air. “Son of a bitch!” Rygdea yelled, jumping to the floor after his light source. “I am seriously tired of this place.” He picked up the flame and waved it around, spinning in a circle, fully expecting a zombie or vampire–or cie’th, he shuddered at the thought–to be hiding in the corner, waiting to ambush him when he got close. Luckily, he seemed to be alone in the room. The walls here no longer looked like a tunnel built by human hands, but were rough and erosion-hewn, shadows of stalactites dancing huge like demons across their faces.
There was a break in the wall, a pathway leading further into the cave, but as Rygdea prepared to wander down it, he realized with trepidation that he could hear the faint echo of footsteps further down the cavern. He instinctively reached for his sidearm, only to realize that it wasn’t there. He switched hands to hold the torch in his left and bent down to pick up a long femur, adjusting his grip so he could use the large bone as a weapon if need be, and slowly and silently walked into the passage.
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