The back door shut behind Seamus, sealing him off from the warmth and noise of the bar. He found himself in a narrow corridor. Cold, damp and with the scent of stale alcohol. Crates and barrels were stacked high on either side, filled with bottles of spirits, sacks of grain, and various other supplies for the blind pig. Even through his thick boots, he noticed how uneven the floor was. The place was a smuggler’s dream, a perfect cover for someone trying to disappear. But Seamus wasn’t going to let her slip away that easily. A dwarf had the advantage of terrain over an elf here.
Seamus took out his pocket watch but didn’t open the hinge that revealed the arrows. Instead, he turned it around and opened a smaller hinge in the back, revealing a small pincer-like mechanism. He firmly pressed his thumb against it. He grimaced in pain as blood began to trickle, the familiar sting of the old magic. In a well-practised motion, he closed the watch and used his bloody thumb to paint two small runes on his temples. His vision blurred for a second, but then the room lit up as if bathing in broth daylight. Tomorrow morning he would have a terrible headache, but right now he needed to see.
He followed the main corridor, his eyes darting left and right. The tunnels branched off into different directions, each one leading deeper into the underground storage areas. He had no idea where any of them led, but turning back wasn’t an option. Seamus guessed the elf would have to rely on sight in these tunnels, and he doubted she’d risk the narrower paths. The further he went, the quieter it became. The faint clink of glass from the bar above was gone now, replaced by the oppressive silence of the storage tunnels.
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He saw a faint light coming from around a corner. He decided to follow it and entered a wider portion of the labyrinth. A recently snuffed-out lantern barely glowed. The elf would have been here minutes ago, but it seemed the room was a dead end. It was filled to the brim with tall, new-looking crates, some labelled with strange symbols that made him raise an eyebrow. Contraband, no doubt. He tried to find a way past them, careful not to disturb anything, though the longer it took, the greater the urge to break something out of sheer irritation became. As he squeezed between two crates, he found a wooden gate, barely visible and made from the same material as the crates.
He pushed the gate open with a creak, the sound startling in the stillness. Beyond the gate, the tunnel stretched on, darker and more foreboding. Seamus cautiously moved forward, his senses on high alert. Then, a sound, a soft scuffle echoed behind him. He froze. His muscles tensed as his hand instinctively reached for his axe, but wedged between the crates and the gate, he found his movements clumsy, restricted.