With a clunk of heavy metal, the gate to the tomb creaked and groaned as it swung open. A wave of cold, stale air wash up from the darkness below, the smooth stairs descending into an unnatural gloom.

“I like it, very classic.” Sally nodded at the fare presented by the tomb.

Theo rubbed at the side of his head. “Certainly can’t beat a good groan and ominous depth.”

Her red eyes went back to him. “I’m too apprehensive to make a joke about that.”

“Worried about the key being another puzzle?”

The zombie exhaled and looked out into the gloom below. A puzzle would be pretty dire, actually. It was more the fact that she could feel the end coming - although she wasn’t sure whether that was her natural adventuring sense, or the passive abilities of being tied to Life on this world. The System was dying, and it was up to her and this knucklehead to save it.

“You think you could use your Death powers on anything?” She gestured for him to lead the way.

“Probably not. There’s a certain order to things.” He gestured for her to go first. “I could only pop your zombies because you had created them from nothing.”

“Hmm.” She furrowed her brow. Maybe he could only do it on Monsters. It would depend on lots of factors that needed testing. Her eyes went back out to the empty graveyard. Would be nice to stop and practice, but the tomb was right here.

Theo gave up before she did and started out down the steps slowly. Hammer in his right hand, his left up ready to cast instant-death on anything rude enough to give them a jump-scare.

Sally spun her dagger around in her right hand, left up ready to see if she could bring back to life anything amusing enough to give the vampire a fright. It felt weird to her that given the pair of them, all their experience and skill, and now with the addition of being demi-gods - they were still being cautious.

Would be foolish to fall at the last hurdle and have to go home with their tails between their legs. Leaving all these nice people here to suffer the death of their world.

“I prefer it when a tomb already has torches lit waiting for us,” she murmured, wrinkling her nose up at the gloomy stone.

“Think I picked a lantern up when looting earlier.” Theo paused, and she bumped into him gently. “I have darkvision, so-”

“Alright, you don’t have to tell me every time it’s dark.” She put her hand on his shoulder - more for balance than because she couldn’t make out much more than him in the gloom.

She winced as the withdrawn lantern bloomed into a light amber glow, bringing out the details of the surroundings. A simple staircase, plain white-gray, smooth and well-maintained, considering the location. Peering over his shoulder… oh.

“That’s quite the staircase,” Theo confirmed her thoughts. Way beyond the reaches of the held light, the staircase seemed to go on at least another sixty feet into the ground.

“You got like… a bobsled or something?” Sally licked her lips, briefly remembering the pyramid and the fun slide that might have ended with deadly traps.

Theo sighed and turned his head back to her. “Not keen on shattering both my legs today, I’m afraid.”

She rolled her eyes in response and they started to continue down the otherwise featureless passageway leading downward. Back on Sanctuary he would have done it - she was certain. While the vampire was a total dork when it came to power leveling, he wasn’t averse to fun. Especially when she was the one trying to peer pressure him.

He paused again and took out an empty potion bottle, turning and placing it on one of the stairs. “Just to make sure this doesn’t turn into a loop.”

“Smart thinking, man-bat.” She looked behind to see the small rectangle of daylight quite a distance up in the background. If it got to a point that she couldn't see that, then she might worry a little more. No doubt this wasn’t just an ordinary tomb - given that they were so deep underground already.

“Maybe it’s like a metaphor,” Theo mused as he continued, slowing slightly so she could catch up. “Whatever this key is… being this far from the surface, it sounds like it wants to be hidden.”

“Curious enough that I wanted to find a graveyard and went in a random direction and we found one.” She shrugged to herself. The narrative often liked to grease the wheels of her odd machinations, but this was just a little too convenient.

There was clearly an element of intent here. Just being the Aspects… they should clearly have some influence over matters of the System. Nothing wide-reaching, she was sure, otherwise the siblings could have fixed the world themselves… but they had wanted her and the vampire to take over, so they could live on in a way, even after the System was erased.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Whatever happens,” she concluded out loud, “our priority is saving the Players here.”

“Agreed. I’m sure Chuck would accept giving up the land if he could only protect the people here and bring them across.”

For all that you could say about the Architect, he had certainly filled the role well enough. She smiled, knowing what Theo said was quite likely. Might just be her taking a leap of faith, but she assumed that once Sanctuary was big enough, Player-only grabs would be what they’d aim for.

A world could only get so big after all.

Her brow furrowed as she tried to consider how the Aspect Class would affect their work going forward. The staircase continued. Given that they didn’t really know what anything did just yet, it might be too early to start speculating.

“I’m wondering if walking is the answer here.” Theo stopped and rolled his neck out.

Looked as they had traveled no further, but a glance back up to the exit had it smaller now. Barely a speck.

“Maybe it’s a secret we have to unlock using our powers together again?” Sally sat down on her step, feeling rather tired at having to use her brain more than twice today.

Theo turned and set the lantern down beside her. “Two similar tests in a row, though? Assuming we did the first part correctly, anyway.”

“We could try smooching?” She gave him a sad pout.

He ignored her and rubbed at his chin. “Perhaps it’s like a riddle?”

“Oh.” The zombie sunk and deflated against the steps. They were nice and cool, even if not as nice as some smooches. “Like… what goes into a tomb?”

“The dead go down, the living dead go back up…” the vampire raised an eyebrow at her.

Splitting up was usually a terrible idea in situations like this. That said… it was a simple staircase, so it wouldn’t be hard to find each other if something went wrong. Or it just didn’t work.

“Let me go up, then. Can you message me through the Sanctuary STAR?”

[Theo: Test?]

[Sally: Seems good.]

The zombie stood back up and stretched her arms out. “Right then. I’ll go all the way to the top to be sure, and then I’ll message you so you can tell me if anything changes?”

He nodded. “I’ll continue downward and let you know if anything changes. Once you message me that nothing happened, I’ll stop so you can catch up.”

Sally grinned and leaned forward to kiss the vampire on the forehead. “Gross. Alright, let’s get our cardio in.”

With a nod, they parted. Sally took the lantern with her and stomped back up toward the small mote of light at the top of the near endless staircase. Took her a good thirty steps before she realized she had the short end of the stick here, where it came to how much effort they needed to put in. Once she saw that there was nothing different up here, she’d have to catch the vampire back up again - and he could be twice as far away.

She continued to grumble to herself as her pace slowed slightly. There was no immediate signal that they had gotten the right end of the stick - or that there was even a stick at all.

What would the rest of the Outsiders have done? Probably argued for a good ten minutes before they either made this very same decision, or they’d have fallen into some manner of violence that would have led to success somehow. Maybe she should have challenged Theo to a duel…

Although, being Life and Death, there might be repercussions for any injury or worse that they suffered.

She’d just have to keep going up these stairs then.

Light up ahead was getting closer. Maybe she could use one of the gravestones from outside to surf back down… although, again - that sounded like imminent violence for one of both of them.

[Sally: How stressed is Chuck right now?]

[Dent: …]

[Dent: He might actually start losing his hair.]

[Sally: That dire?]

[Dent: All new ground. How are you both doing?]

[Sally: Traversing a potentially infinitely deep staircase.]

[Dent: Oh.]

[Dent: You haven’t surfed down it, I hope.]

[Sally: Never considered it. I’m actually going the opposite way to Theo.]

[Dent: I see. How are you feeling with your new… Aspect?]

[Sally: Haven’t had a chance to really do much with it.]

[Sally: Getting to this key to save the world or something.]

[Dent: Alright, well keep me updated.]

She closed down the chat window and pulled a face. Although the former druid had a tendency to over worry about these things, the attempted rescue of Thrimble had a lot more issues than anyone had perhaps imagined. What had started as a simple power grind was now… all this. Tiring, to some degree.

Maybe chilling out in Sanctuary wasn’t the worst thing.

Still, all this griping was keeping her mind from getting bored with ascending the stairs. Almost able to ignore the hunger in her stomach for fresh brains. Doorway was close now, so at least she’d be able to go back and annoy the vampire again soon.

Oh, speaking of which…

[Theo: There’s a doorway here.]

[Theo: A lit room, slight blue tone to it - almost there.]

[Theo: Shall I wait?]

Sally rolled her eyes. Typical that going down was the right option, and she was now too far away. She was about to confirm and turn around when the doorway up ahead of her caught her attention.

Her eyes narrowed… the hue of the outside world was remarkably blue.

[Sally: No, go ahead. Let me know what’s inside.]

[Theo: At your command.]

She grinned and continued upwards. While she wasn’t much of a completionist, sometimes it was good to check all available paths just in case there were secret goodies hidden away or a nugget of lore to ignore.

No - the light coming down from above was definitely blue. Not the bright daylight that was expected.

Increasing her speed, she practically ran up the last fifty or so steps. Eager to see what she supposed had happened.

At last, she reached the cusp of the staircase and stepped through the doorway into a room. Opposite her, emerging from another doorway, was Theo.

“Oh.” He tilted his head. “You found a shortcut.”

“Or perhaps…” she spun her dagger around, “I found a…” She turned to the room they had found themselves in.

While their two entrances were opposite on one far end of the room, the rest of the chamber extended to her left. A peaked ceiling with simple engravings, the brickwork otherwise the same as the staircase. Candles wavered slightly, their light a bright blue instead of the usual tones expected.

More interesting, was the plinth in the middle of the tomb.

And the body laying atop it.