Like gandalf and the balrog we fall, down and down into the darkness, or at least that’s what it feels like to me. I’m enmeshed in spider legs and blood. Frantically, I stab at the beast, trying to find its eyes, and desperate to stay away from the beast’s sharp fangs. Over and over we spin until the ground is nearly upon us. With a desperate motion I flips on top of the spider and the beast is the first to strike the dirt.

Its body cushions the impact but I’m jolted as we crash into the ground. I tumble off the creature and am momentarily gasping for breadth as the wind is knocked out of me. I know I’m vulnerable but I just can’t help it.

Hopefully old shelob is dead by now anyway.

I start breathing again normally and manage to get to my feet. I walk over to the spider and she is indeed motionless. She’s also covered in blood from my sword wounds. So that’s something. But just to be sure….

I raise my sword high and plunge it into the abdomen. There is a final spasm and then I’m sure of it.

She’s dead.

I move away and collapse against the rock. The whole room is dark around me. I take a breath and search for my light inside. It’s faint, like it’s still recharging, but I extend my hand and a few little rays shoot out. Enough for me to see - and what I see is not good.

The space is huge and barren, other than a few other bodies that have tumbled down with me: corpses in a mountain grave.

Not how I anticipate my own burial.

Yet it may come to that. If I can’t find a way out of here. I shine my rays around the space, looking for an exit. But there doesn’t seem to be anything. My heart starts to thump.

Am I really trapped down here?

I try to remain calm and perform a more systematic search. I find the wall and just follow it around the area, searching for exits. I find none. My heart beats faster. I circle the room again. Still nothing.

Now my heart is really thumping.

I think I preferred tussling with the spider to this.

There’s something eerie about being trapped and alone. About wandering around a big, empty, rock-laden, dust-covered room at the bottom of a freaking mountain. Every step I take echoes in the stillness – even the crunch of my boots against dust is likely thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years old – is a reminder of that loneliness as the sounds reverberate endlessly in the wide-open space.

The worst thing about it is that it’s not designed to be a torture chamber or a prison or even a cell. It’s just a random abyss that I seem to have fallen into, accidentally, and may have once been a ball room or some extravagant dining area. Maybe this was the best room in the world; the place that everyone wanted to be. But that’s not what it is to me now. As I sit here, stuck in this hellhole.

“Maker have mercy,” I mumble.

“Oh, he rarely has that,” comes the response, and it’s not from the Maker.

I spin around and my rays catch her on a stone. One of many that litter the floor down here. But only this one has a demon sitting upon it.

I stand for a minute, not saying anything, just looking at her.

She grins. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me to go away. Tell me how much you hate me and wish to never see me again.”

“Did I ever say that I hate you?” I ask, quietly, more to myself than to her.

“Or maybe we should wait for your precious Angel to show-up. I mean she clearly cares for you so I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.” The demon stands. “Or better yet, you can wait.”

Then she’s gone, just like that. I always expect a puff of smoke, but she never leaves one.

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I’m all alone again.

“Wait,” I say meekly.

“Wait for what?” comes the voice. No body, just a voice. “For you to yell at me, tell me off again? No thanks.”

I sigh and sit down on a rock myself. Maybe I should have just bagged this whole adventuring business and seen about taking a job at an inn. Maybe could’ve even found a ‘Wandering Inn’.

I wonder if those exist in this world.

“I think you’re being a little melodramatic,” I say into the darkness.

“Maybe,” she’s back again, in fleshly form, setting next to me. “But you have to admit, you have been pretty mean to me.”

She’s cold. She always feels this way. For being such a blindly hot elf her aura is just so chilly. A lot better than nothingness though.

“With good reason,” I respond.

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” she responds crisply. “Once you hear my side of the story.”

I sigh. “Alright. Fine.”

“I was forced to help the sorceress,” the demon says. “Forced by the dark lord who I used to serve.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh really.”

“Yes,” the demon insists. “Really. All demons are controlled by the dark one.”

“But you’re still a demon,” I say, feeling exasperated.

Maybe it was better just being by myself.

The demon holds-up a finger. “No, I used to be. Not anymore. I was thrown out. Dismissed. Given the boot.”

“I don’t believe it,” I mutter.

But she’s not looking at me. Her eyes are distant, and they are so red they could be on fire. “After all they years of service, and the promises. Just given the boot after one failure. After one lucky sword strike.”

Lucky sword strike? She’s talking about mine.

“So when I destroyed the onyx…”

“Yes,” says the demon. “You destroyed me too. Or might as well have anyway. I was banished after that. Cursed to walk this world forever. Never to return to the underworld and stripped of rank, title, and all my privileges. Doomed, forever, to stalk among the mortals.”

There is such hate, such anger in her voice, that I pull away.

She notices my reaction. “Oh yes, I could hate you, Ethan Gambrils. I could but I don’t. Instead, you are the one who hates me apparently. You hate me even though I have done nothing but help you.”

My head spins and I look away, unable to hold her eyes any longer.

“And now here I am again,” says the demon. “Trying to help you. Putting-up with all your accusations when no one else will. Even when your precious angel and her Maker have left you I’m still here.”

“Why are you here then?” I ask, still unable to hold her gaze. “If you think I’ve treated you so unfairly and even the cause of your…dismissal then why come to me?”

The demon appears before me. Her eyes are right at my level. “Because I understand something, Ethan. We are both victims here. I was used by the Dark Lord and cast aside. You are being used by the Maker and will be cast away when He is done with you. We’re like ping-pong balls being batted back and forth across a table. Well, I am done being treated like somebody’s toy.”

She spits the words out like they’re hatchets, each syllable a dagger that can wound and poison. Even though his anger isn’t directed at me I still feel scalded, like I’m collateral damage. Maybe she senses I’m uncomfortable because her tone shifts again: it becomes softer, almost pleading.

“We can beat them both. If we work together we can go our own way. Destroy the sorceress, free Astria just as you want, or don’t if you like. I’ll help you with, or get, whoever you want. But we do it as a team and we do it without them. We do it ourselves. For our own glory and power.”

Glory and power. Is that what’s this is really about?

“And what about Angel,” I ask. “Why do you hate her so much?”

The mere mention of her adversary throws the demon – or former demon, or whatever – into a tizzy. She hops to her feet and starts stomping around the room.

“Angel this, Angel that. Why? Must you keep taunting me with that name? She’s not even here. She’s nowhere, alright. Probably off on some damn crusade for her blessed Maker.

I’m not sure that made complete sense but am willing to let things slide.

The demon calms down again. “Look, you don’t need Angel. We don’t need Angel. I know the way out.”

“You do?” that piques my interest regardless of any concerns I have. “How?”

The demon smiles and spins in her skimpy skirt. Her playfulness is clearly returning. “Well, you know I don’t want to brag or anything, and I should tell you it was a lot of work finding it as I don’t know that I’ve spent any time here. But…”

I sigh. “Yes?”

“But I may have seen a tunnel entrance over yonder.” She points up the wall and I shine my light to get a better look. Sure enough it is a tunnel. It’s also twenty feet up the wall.

So how can I get to it?