Ash awoke once more and almost wept when he could no longer see the beam of sunlight.

It took him longer than it should have to realise that he could still see, that the sunlight had simply been replaced by ambient moonlight.

Dragging himself unsteadily to his feet he headed down the stone corridor into the room.

The room was small, it had nothing in it but a few loose rocks on the flat floor.

In fact the only purpose the room seem to have was the almost completely covered opening which must to have been some kind of lookout point.

Besides that and the opening he had come from there was nothing else here.

He placed his hands on the rocks that were covering the opening and was about to try to move them but he paused.

If he shifted the rocks covering the opening, there was a good chance that they would all start to fall inwards onto him.

He didn't know how many rocks were on top of the ones he could touch exactly but from the small gap that let the pale moonlight in, there looked to be at least five feet of them.

Almost wanting to do it in spite of himself, he turned around frustrated and headed back into the corridor.

As he expected, he came to the hole he had crawled out of.

Clearly the passage of time must have eventually caught up with this place and this part of the floor had fallen through.

Above the hole now though he could easily move around the edge of it and continue down the as yet unexplored side of the corridor.

The thought of more of the floor being able to fall out from under him filled him with dull sense of unease, he moved on cautiously.

The corridor was dark but after having spent who knows how long under the mountain, he couldn't bring himself to care too much about it.

Trying to rely on his ears and sense of touch, he listened out for any sounds that would indicate the floor might give way.

Using his hands to feel along the smooth stone walls, he followed the corridor, he came to a what seemed like a junction and decided to turn right.

The rooms that he found as he travelled through the seemingly endless dark corridors contained nothing but debris and what he thought might have once been parts of furniture, long since rotted away.

He spent what must have been hours exploring this place and wondered what it was.

This place buried under the mountain, he had never heard of anyone having lived in the mountains before.

Sure, there were peoples who liked to live in mountains or underground, like the dwarves or dark elves but he had never heard of any peoples living in the Coldwater Ridges specifically.

To think that long ago someone had lived here so close to his home city of Coldwater and seemingly no one had known.

There seemed to be so many pointless corridors, many of them were just dead ends. No doors or openings to rooms, just corridors that branched off then stopped.

He came across two more rooms that seemed the same as the original lookout point he had first found but only one of them had moonlight coming in through the mounds of rocks covering the opening.

He found himself turning another corner and finding a set of stone stairs.

Excited that he might have found the beginnings of a way out of this maze, he hurried up them.

The corridors on this floor were wider, he could feel strange carvings in the stone walls as he moved through these grander seeming halls.

Exploring more of the rooms he found that less of the halls on this floor were dead ends and that the rooms he found contained a lot more rotten furnishings.

Not for the first time he wished for a light of some kind just so he could examine the things he could only find by touch.

If only to give him a clue as to what this place had been or who had lived here.

His stomach ached it was so empty and knowing that he was no stranger to being forced not to eat, he knew that he must have gone way too long without food.

Savagely cutting off the thought of food before it did more harm than good, he forced himself onwards and eventually found more stairs.

When he had walked down several of the halls he entered one of the rooms, he was feeling what felt like more remains of furniture when he heard a sharp crack.

Before he even had a chance to register what was happening, he was falling through the floor.

He landed hard and rolled onto onto his side coughing up dust and gagging at the renewed throbbing from the back of his head.

It took him a moment to realise that he could see light through the backs of his closed eyelids and as soon as the thought registered his eyes snapped open.

He had fallen into a room on the floor below, one he didn't remember exploring.

This room was different.

Firstly, it was large.

Much larger than the others he had been in, the fact he could see just how large it was was also a huge difference.

At one end of the room, through the floating motes of dust he could see something on a stone table that glowed an unearthly purple.

Looking around he could see that for some reason, the furnishings in this room were in much better condition than anything else he had come across.

They were still clearly on the very verge of being rotted away but it was a stark contrast to everything else in this place.

One thing he also noticed with a rising sense of alarm was that there didn't seem to be any doors in this room, no entrances at all.

Besides the hole he had fallen through, it was completely sealed away.

Getting up and moving forwards he glanced around briefly noting that there were still some books on the stone bookshelves in this room, somehow having survived all this time but his main focus was on the glowing purple light.

As he approached it he realised that there source was an old shabby looking book, the light seemed to be coming from within the old dusty leather coverings, from between each page that it contained.

His heart was pounding as he stood before the book, clearly it was magical in nature but beyond that he didn't know what else to do.

If he touched it would what would happen?

Would it crumble away into dust?

Would it put some kind of curse on him?

Would he be able to pick it up and use it as a source of light?

Knowing that there was little else for him to do, a small feeling of defiance seemed to rise from within him making him feel slightly reckless.

It was especially noticeable because it was such a change from the internal numbness he had felt since falling into that damned pit.

Why shouldn't he touch it?

Whatever happened would happen.

He reached out to the book and his sore fingers ran over the cracked old leather.

His palm came to rest on it and nothing happened.

Almost laughing out loud at his own foolishness at the massively anticlimactic act of touching the book he released the breath he didn't realise he was holding.

Then suddenly book flashed blindingly bright and it felt as though his mind exploded.