Blinking awake, there was a heavy weight in my chest and my headache like it had been slammed into a concrete wall repeatedly.

Exhaling, I stood and picked the broken sword up from the ground and found myself in the room I’d fallen into, looking up revealed the ceiling where I ought to have fallen in from was now repaired with the pile of tiles that had collapsed into the room with me were gone. The only things in the room that even still said it was the same room were the remnants of the skeletons I fought still where I left them.

Silence deafened my mind as I looked at the half open door that had led me to the room with the monster, fear gripped my heart for a moment before I chased it away with thoughts of it being too large to traverse the halls as they were.

“Why do I feel so much stronger?” I questioned out loud after a moment of flexing my fingers into a fist, a bulging tension in my muscles flaring with each flex before I did a handful of movements to test the odd feeling.

It was as though I’d become stronger through my deaths or something else I wasn’t quite seeing.

My body felt more limber and fresh as well after a brief spout of stretching.

“Alright, let's try another door.” I said before taking to the north-eastern door of the room.

The short winding halls continued to head the opposite direction of the wolf monster and the voice that had drawn me to it, the walls weren’t like those large arched ones of the first floor where columns had to support them but were a little over two metres tall and a metre and a half wide making their cramped enough that I didn’t want to be forced into fighting while in them.

As well the walls were fairly featureless with only the exposed binding gaps between bricks that made up the walls being the only texture I was able to look at, no murals or anything similar. This was far more boring but it also made the moment when I was about to step onto a large raised tile on the ground all the more obvious.

Thanking whatever god would accept it, I took a deep breath as I looked along the walls and roof wondering if I could see what the plate would activate. After a minute or so I gave up finding nothing discernibly different and made an effort to leap over it to continue forward.

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“Shit!” A curse fled me as I tripped over a wire running along the ground at ankle height.

My stumbling wasn’t the only sound that echoed off the walls, a loud stone shifting in the walls preempted a Ka-chunk before the thwip and clatter of several bolts shot out from one side of the wall into the other falling to the ground as splintered shards of wood and metal tips.

Stolen novel; please report.

Heart pounding in my chest I stared up at the blue glowing gem-sconce nearby as I exhaled before brushing the remains of the bolts from my surroundings and stood back up carefully keeping my eyes on every inch of the floor as I continued walking.

Scratch scrape scratch

Gnawing scrapes echoed from ahead, my footsteps slowed and my grip tightened around the sword's hilt, holding it at the ready.

Beady red eyes peered out from behind the dark of a corner at the end of the hall from where I stood, the ill blue light of the gem sconce between myself and the dark corner the only light. The longer I stared the more the eyes began to seem frightened- terrified of my presence as opposed to me being scared of it.

A trembling shake of the terrified tiny being was all the warning I had before it turned and ran, the distant rushed and frantic sound of it trying to get away as fast as it could.

Something nascent and incorporeal fletching of my brain told me to lurch toward it, to chase it.

Disadent thoughts of ghoulish sights and images faded to the back of mind as I realised a dark part of my mind wanted to dart forward, to wring the head from the shoulders of the pointy eared creature.

Swallowing a lump of saliva a breath left me gaping at the dark spot where the creature had been and I rubbed my eyes, I dragged my hand down my chin before shaking my head and continuing.

I wanted out, I wanted to leave this place.

I needed to leave.

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I found at the end of the tunnel a featureless room, void of life like so many others, the truth of its being and construction known only to the gods.

In the centre was a throne of wood, haunches tall and gilded, seated on which was the armoured figure of a knight. He stood some seven feet, he wore green distorted plate armour with a rounded helm that had pointed ears and a long nose.

Red soaked his side and the ground around the chair, a stiletto buried deep into its collar and another in the small gap between the vambrace and gauntlet. Still clutched in either hand a pair of heavy iron bearded axes that sunk into the stone.

It was lifeless.

I didn’t want to be near it, and I didn’t want to find out it was actually alive so I skirted around it and found a doorway that led to stairs.

The stairs descended to the next floor of this dungeon.