The toys stepped into the courtyard, staring around at the weathered and crumbling stones. The entirety of the space was covered with fallen roof tiles, fragments of the walls, and mortar that had been eroded of otherwise gouged from its seams.

There was nothing living in this space. No grass grew between the cracked remnants of flagstones. There were no signs that anything had ever lived here, not even bones.

“It's going to wait until we get further in, then jump us,” Glub said, speaking the obvious. “You all can feel it too, yeah? Like something's deep deep down in the ocean, waiting for juuuuuuuust the right time.”

“No splitting up,” Threadbare decided. “Not even for a second. Oh, and invite me back in to the party, please. All my mice are gone.”

And that told him something. They hadn't gone all at once. It had taken them out over the course of the approach. Either this thing wasn't very smart, or it couldn't entirely see what it was attacking, and was just striking at the motion or vibrations or whatever sense it was using to track the intruders.

“All right,” Apollyon breathed. “Do we take the front door, or do we check out the towers? Or maybe those rubble piles? What are those anyway?” He was talking faster. Threadbare knew this meant the adrenaline was kicking in.

“It looks like those are what's left of the outbuildings,” Fluffbear said. “I picked up the mason job a year back and those sure look like the foundations I made when I was starting out and didn't know how to properly use supports.”

“I can see dirt between the stones,” Threadbare said, quietly.

The group fell silent.

“There's exposed dirt here. And many marks of water,” Threadbare pondered, using words to sort his thoughts. “There is grass right outside the gate, and the courtyard is large enough that the sun should be able to reach every part of it over the course of a day. But there isn't a single weed growing from between the cobblestones.”

They stared at the ground.

“It's down there, isn't it?” Fluffbear squeaked. “Plants can't grow from there because it's hiding right under there.”

“So if we go down under the ground we'll be like walking right into its mouth,” Glub said.

There was a pause while the group considered the idea.

“One thing's for certain,” Apollyon muttered. “This isn't a dragon. Or if it is, then dragons are far stranger than I've been taught.”

“Let's explore the towers first,” Fluffbear decided. “Up is good. Up is better than walking into its mouth.”

Nothing attacked them when they entered the towers, walking over the rusty scraps that had been metal doors, and ascending crumbling staircases. There had been wooden floors here at one point, but it was gone, not even splinters remaining. Only metal fixtures at the bottom of each tower and the latticework of metal rods that had supported each floor showed that each tower had once had interior rooms.

“Did it eat the wood?” Buttons asked. “Seems weird. We walked past plenty of trees to get here.”

“It, mmm... probably has to wait a while between visitors,” Dracosnack pondered. “It might get a little... munchy. While wood has less nutritional value than meat to most predators, it might, hmmmm... just be happy to get something on its belly now and again.”

Scritching noises drew Threadbare's gaze over to Glub. He was looking upward, holding a map with one hand while a free-floating quill drew with another.

“What is that you're doing?” Threadbare asked.

“Explorers get a skill called magical mapping,” Glub said absently. “I get like this little circular view of stuff around me. Now that I'm a high enough level I can have it draw out onto a real map, too.”

Threadbare nodded and went back to searching.

The metal supports in the center were still relatively solid, which was why the towers remained standing even after being hollowed of their interiors. They lined up to struts in the walls, acting almost like a skeleton for each tower. Curiously, too, the architecture seemed to continue out from each tower into the walls that bounded the structure. Someone had spent a fortune in metal on the place. They'd obviously wanted it to stand the test of time.

“It hasn't touched the metal,” Threadbare said. “I wonder if whoever made this kept the same design underground, too.”

“We may have to find out,” Fluffbear said, nervously. “There's no sign of any survivors or soulstones. So if they're not in the main keep, then we'll have to explore everywhere we can get to.”

“Why doesn't it just attack?” Apollyon muttered. He was sweating now, his face slick in the late afternoon sun as they exited the last tower. “Why doesn't it just come for us? We're right here.”

“Oh, it'll come for us,” Glub said. “Like you said, we're right here. It's got all the time in the world to come and eat us.”

“Glub,” Threadbare said gently, as Apollyon's arms shook a bit. “It will TRY to eat us. But it will fail. We're going to win this one.”

CHA+1

That helped the young man a bit, Threadbare could tell. He patted Apollyon's greave and took the lead, marching up to the front door and using his rod to slowly push it inward.

It was wood, he noticed, wood banded with twisted metal strips that had been half destroyed, and he wondered how the wood on this one had survived.

“The hinges don't have any rust on them,” Buttons muttered from not far behind him, and he realized she was right. They hadn't squealed even a bit, though the door was heavy and thick.

More wood inside, too. They were looking at a great hall, with broken and dusty tiled floors, a long wooden table surrounded by thronelike chairs, four fireplaces between closed doors heading deeper into the structure, and vaulted support beams with unlit braziers hanging lamplike from ropes that swayed in the sudden draft from the now-open door.

“Now why is the wood in here intact?” Dracosnack asked.

“I don't trust it,” Fluffbear said. “Especially those ropes. They should have rotted away by now.”

“I can barely see,” Apollyon said, holding his fiery sword aloft.

That helped a bit, but the young man was clearly having problems, so Threadbare headed over to the nearest fireplace. “You've got the right idea. We just need a bigger fire. Firestarter.”

The spark flickered from his paw and landed on the pile of logs...

...and Threadbare was surprised, as words rose up in front of him.

Firestarter failed!

You need a higher skill to ignite ???

Threadbare stared at them for a full second, as the implications sunk in. “Nobody move,” he said, turning to check his group.

He noted, without much surprise, that the door had shut behind them.

“Glub, please try a firestarter on the door. Keep calm if it doesn't work and tell me what you see.”

Glub nodded, and pointed. “Firestarter.”

The spark flicked out, and Glub's eyes opened wide. “Three question marks, boss.”

“It's in the wood, and the ropes, and everything organic,” Threadbare said. “That's what I think.”

“It's all around us?” Apollyon said, then he swallowed hard. “Okay. Okay, we knew we'd be walking into a trap. This is it. Now what do we do?”

Threadbare walked back, pausing to check the nearest chair with Firestarter. Again, a failure. Again, the three question marks.

“It hasn't attacked us yet,” Fluffbear said. “I'm thinking... I'm thinking maybe it has trouble seeing us.”

“I was thinking the same thing, earlier,” Threadbare said, reaching his friends and feeling a small twitch of relief that he'd made it in one piece. This was nerve-wracking, and he didn't even have nerves. “I believe that it works through a sense of touch. The tendrils that attacked us out in the forest may have been on the surface, and stepped on by the mice or perhaps we walked on them ourselves.”

“Either that or, mmmm... it gains some advantage from us touching it,” Dracosnack said. “It IS an ambush predator. That seems fairly obvious.”

“So how do we get out of the kill zone?” Apollyon asked, looking around. “The doors are all shut. And all wood.”

“I maybe have a way to help with that,” Buttons said, slinging her gun. “If we're lucky. And you promise not to give me shit about it.”

“Believe me, taunting you is the last thing on my mind,” Apollyon muttered.

“All right. Then I'm breaking out the Burglar Skills. Case the Joint. Stealthy Step. Find Trap.”

“You know, I was wondering why Garon didn't send a rogue type with us,” Glub said.

“Shh!” Fluffbear hopped up and batted his lips.

“Sorry, sorry.”

The two of them that could breathe held their breath as Buttons glided across the floor, using all the tricks she'd learned from her boring garrison posting and education under a less-than-lawful quartermaster.

Nothing stirred as she moved. With the door shut the braziers had stilled above them. She gave them a wide berth anyway, and picked around the table, then stopped, foot raised, and backed away before she could step on a small throw rug.

And then, as she picked her way around that she paused, and pointed at a section of the wall, where three candelabra stood next to the bare stone. “Ah-ha!”

Her voice echoed and the group tensed, waiting for the thing to strike...

...but the moment passed.

“What did you find?” Threadbare called out, keeping his voice low and calm.

“Secret door, sir. Right Candelabra's got a wire that goes between the floor tiles. Pretty sure that's the trigger. And that section of the wall will swing out, or I'm no Tinker.”

“Okay,” Fluffbear squeaked. “Let's come around to you. When we get there, we'll trigger the secret door together and see if it leads to someplace that has less wood.”

They took it slow. They took it steady. And Fluffbear used every bit of her ride skill to keep an increasingly nervous and growling Mopsy walking carefully around the furniture. At one point Threadbare put his rod up to keep her tail from smacking into a chair leg.

Your Stealth skill is now level 35!

It had been a while since that had happened. But Threadbare didn't need to see those words to feel the danger.

“Okay, stop,” Buttons whispered as they crept up past the table. “Pretty sure this wall swings out. Any closer and you'll risk it running into you.”

“Is there enough clearance?” Fluffbear said anxiously. “If it pushes the table, the monster will probably notice.”

“It should miss the table and the chairs,” Buttons said. “I got an intelligence point when I mathed it out. And here I was thinking I'd never need geometry again. I owe Mrs. Morgenboffer an apology. And maybe her ring back. Anyway, are you ready?”

“Do it,” Fluffbear squeaked, hauling out her sword and shield and taking the left flank. Without a word Apollyon slid to the right flank, and Threadbare squared up the rear.

The candelabra creaked as Buttons tipped it.

The wire pulled taut and something clicked beneath the stones.

And with a rumbling of dust and cobwebs, a seam appeared in the stone, and a ten foot-tall and ten foot-wide slab of stone swung free, mechanisms groaning as old gears labored to push the secret passage open. It went slowly, trailing cobwebs like a bride's dress on the ground, revealing a room beyond.

The rest of the group peered in, trying to see what they could in the gloom and dust and mess.

But Threadbare, used as he was to looking up, found his gaze tracking up above.

Up to where the edge of the secret door was heading straight on a collision course to one of the hanging braziers.

“Look out!” he said, in the second before the wall hit the brazier...

...and the entire room burst into a flurry of monstrous action.