The stairs seemed interminable. Morgan and Issa had to stop and rest after climbing for a couple of hours. There were no lanterns, and the stone steps and wall seemed the same, no matter how high they climbed. After the first twenty minutes or so, the light down the middle of the stairwell from the burning oil faded into darkness, and then it truly became impossible to mark their progress. Morgan started to wonder if they were in some kind of evil loop created by the System. As Issa sat on a step, resting her legs, he walked toward the edge and reached into his dimensional pouch, pulling out a cracked wooden mug. He dropped it, and the darkness quickly swallowed it. He strained his ears but never heard it hit bottom.

Another hour of climbing brought a change to the stairwell: the stone blocks gradually became smaller, and rather than being fit together with neat, straight angles, they were less regularly shaped and mortared together. The change in scenery renewed the duo’s vigor, and they climbed more rapidly for a few minutes and soon noticed that a dim flickering light came from up ahead. Issa pulled the hood on her cloak up, and the two of them slowed their pace, creeping up the stairs with as little noise as possible. As they rounded the final turn, they became aware of a haze of smoke in the air, and then they saw the source - a large, crackling torch was mounted in the wall next to a sturdy-looking door. The door was built from wide, well-worn wooden planks and had iron fittings. Morgan continued up to the door and planted his eye against it, peering through one of the wider gaps in the wooden boards.

Morgan could make out a square room through the crack, perhaps twenty feet on a side. The floor of the room was made up of rough wooden slats, and the walls were paneled in similar-looking wood. Light filled the room from an iron fixture holding five big candles that hung in the middle of the ceiling. A heavy-looking, maroon drape obscured the only exit from the room in the opposite wall. Morgan looked down at Issa and whispered, “Looks empty.” Issa shrugged, and Morgan carefully opened the door. He immediately noticed that the air was warmer on this level. He stepped onto the wooden slats carefully, but they creaked nonetheless. He froze for a few seconds, but nothing seemed to have been alerted. He and Issa carefully moved into the room, and Morgan advanced toward the curtained doorway on the opposite side. He pulled one edge aside, just a bit, and looked through. What he saw caused him to drop the curtain immediately. He leaned close to Issa’s ear and whispered, “There’s a body in the hallway.”

“Well, we can’t stay here,” Issa whispered back. Morgan nodded and pulled the curtain aside again. A long, wood-paneled hallway stretched into the distance, and, about ten paces from the room, a humanoid corpse lay spread eagle on the floor. Morgan knew it was a corpse because the head was about three feet separate from the rest of the body. Morgan slowly approached the body, and, at first, he thought it was a human. On closer inspection, though, he saw some differences: this man was ebony-skinned with a long white beard, but his nails were also black and pointed, not like the flat nails of a human. The most striking difference, though, was that the man had hooves rather than feet, and his exposed legs were hirsute. “He’s a Cadwali,” Issa whispered.

“Huh, he looks almost like a mythological being from my world. A Satyr.” Morgan walked closer to the body and saw that it was nearly bereft of belongings, other than a pair of short, knee-length pants and a ripped and bloody tunic. Morgan thought the pants looked like they’d cover him better than the little shorts the System gave him, but he couldn’t bring himself to strip them off the corpse. He was still contemplating the body, noticing how cleanly the head had been removed, and how it seemed to be wet, a thick gobbet of some sort of clear liquid coating one side of the bearded face, when he heard a sound, like wood clicking against the wood of the hallway. He looked up, down the direction they’d yet to explore. The clicking grew louder and more rapid, and a horror appeared out of the shadows.

The monster resembled a grey-skinned man, but instead of legs, his lower abdomen ended in a writhing mass of long, thin tentacles. The clicking sound came from his arms and legs. They were long, thin, and multi-jointed like a huge spider’s legs. It had two sets coming out of its back and a set coming out of its shoulders where a person’s arms would be. As he laid eyes on its face, Morgan felt transfixed by the horrific creature. Its lower jaw hung down to make room for teeth that resembled butcher’s knives, and its eyes were large, black ovals that seemed to exude darkness. With its long legs and writhing tentacles, it filled the entirety of the corridor, and it was approaching fast. “Yovashi! RUN!” Issa shouted, turning and running back the way they had come without a backward glance.

Morgan broke from his trance in time to turn and start running, but the monster was just too fast. He’d only taken two steps when he felt a crushing blow on his shoulder and stumbled forward. The Yovashi had driven one of its hard, chitin-covered leg tips into him, and it felt like getting hit by a missile. Morgan scrambled onto his hands and knees, gripping his knife in one fist. He could feel the creature looming over him, so he turned and stabbed in an upward motion. His knife and hand drove into the mass of writhing tentacles. He thought he could feel the blade pierce something. Before he could savor that small victory, several of the tentacles wrapped around his forearm with a vise-like grip, and he suddenly found himself being flung back and forth in the hallway, smashing into one wall and then another. He barely had time to think about trying to use Energy Drain on the creature before he felt his shoulder joint give way and his arm dislocate. He screamed in agony, but then the back of his head made contact with the wall, and things went dark.

*****

Morgan woke to darkness and agony. He couldn’t take a full breath, and he came to realize that he was somewhat upside down, his head and shoulders bearing the brunt of his weight. He tried to flail his arms about to right himself, but his right arm flared with searing pain, and his left arm was pinned beneath him. He began to panic and jerk his body around, but then he heard a moaning sound, and he froze. His eyes darted around, looking for any kind of clue, but it was pitch black. He listened, taking shallow, painful breaths. Another moan came from what sounded like above and behind him. It was a male voice. Morgan couldn’t help himself, and he hoarsely whispered, “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Help!” The voice said, followed by another long, pained moan.

Suddenly another voice, this one feminine, came from below and from the opposite direction of the moaning man, “Quiet, fools! Unless you want to be eaten alive.” Morgan was about to ignore her advice and ask for help when he heard a wet thunking sound, and the original voice screamed in a blood-curdling cry, “My foot! My foot!” Then there was a crunching sound, and he fell silent. Morgan grew very still, cold sweat sheathing his exposed body parts.

After nothing came for him for several minutes, he started to breathe more deeply and then concentrated on freeing himself. He realized he could move both his legs, and so Morgan began to swing them, building momentum until he threw them in front of him, forcing his top half to roll out of its cramped position. Blood rushed back into his left arm and neck as his body’s weight was removed from them. Morgan rolled to his back. The ground felt lumpy and covered with hard and soft objects. The air was frigid, to the extent that it felt like it burned his lungs as he took his first full breath since waking. Despite the cold, there was a tinge of rot in the air, and Morgan’s stomach threatened to revolt. Luckily, it was pretty much empty. He gingerly pulled his right arm up to his chest in an attempt to keep from jostling it while he sat up.

The room was still pitch black, but he could now make out a very faint, orange glow perhaps twenty feet above and slightly to his left. He patted around with his left hand, trying to get an idea of where he was, and that’s when he felt the unmistakable squish of cold, torn flesh. He froze for a second, but then he let his hand explore some more, feeling various shapes that made him think of different body parts, body parts of people, maybe not human, but definitely arms and hands with fingers and faces that felt somewhat familiar. Morgan had a thought and felt around his waist. Sure enough, he still had the girdle on, and the dimensional pouch was still attached to it. He grimly smiled and reached his hand into the pouch, calling forth the pouch of fire attuned Energy beads. As gently and quietly as he could, he set the pouch in his lap and fumbled open the drawstring with his good hand. Red light, once a dull luster, flared out like a search beacon to his deprived eyes, and he slapped his hand over the top of the pouch, holding his breath. He heard something big stirring a ways off behind him, and he hunched over and froze.

The thing rustled around a bit more, but eventually, it stopped, and Morgan slowly started to breathe again. Keeping his body hunched over the pouch of beads, he wormed two fingers into it and pulled one out, clenched tightly in his fist. He concentrated and pulled the Energy out of the bead, and he felt it flow into him and down into his Core. From there, he felt warmth and relief flood outward. Minor injuries he hadn’t seen or realized he had, felt better, and the tendons and muscles around his right shoulder contracted. With an audible pop, his shoulder reset. Morgan clenched his teeth and stifled a howl of agony; instead, he gripped his fists and very slowly breathed out through the pain. Careful to stay hunched over the pouch of beads, he pulled the drawstrings tight and put it back into his dimensional container.

Morgan carefully stretched out both his hands, now that his arm was mobile and gently felt around with his fingertips. He was sitting among the bodies and pieces of bodies of other people. In the pitch black, it wasn’t as horrific as it could be, partly because it was so cold. There were some sticky, thick pools of liquid, but the flesh he felt was stiff and rigid, and the smell of rot wasn’t as pervasive as it would have been had the area been warm. Still, he felt weak with fear, stress, and disgust as he, ever so slowly, expanded his search area, patting around himself in a circle, all the while trying to silently scoot in the direction away from where he’d heard whatever creature had been moving behind him. He’d traveled about a foot and a half when he heard an almost silent, “Shhhh,” come from, what seemed like, a short distance to his left. Morgan looked in the direction from where he’d heard the sound, then opened his mouth to ask something. Before he could speak, the whisper came again, “Shhhh.” Morgan nodded and very carefully lay back and waited.