Wellynd stood up and made his way towards the door, Slim closely in tow.

“Slim!” shouted Grug, as they neared the door “Bossman wants to chat.”

“Tell him I’ll be right there.” called Slim before shoving Wellynd out onto the landing.

They made their way back down the winding staircase and into the main hall.

“You’re pretty scared of Tanner eh?” said Wellynd, as Slim nearly forced him to trip on a broken chair.

Slim grabbed the back of his cloak behind his neck and pulled him back.

“As soon as the boss is done with you I’m gonna love tearing you open with my blade.” he growled in Wellynd’s ear before shoving him forward again.

Wellynd turned back to look at the spindly thug. “Hey you’re the one who’s always rude to me. I’m just saying. I don’t blame you or anything...That guy is creepy.”

“Hah! Trying to cosy up to me now? Every runt like you thinks you’re better than everyone else.”

Wellynd frowned. Normally he wouldn’t bother with this conversation, but Tanner’s threat had him wondering and worried about Slim. What if he somehow did find out about Kellek’s Watch?

“What did I do to you?”

Slim scoffed again. “Why don’t you stop worrying about me and get a move on. I have my reasons runt.”

Echoing through the hall, Tanner’s voice rumbled like an avalanche.

“SLIM. NOW.”

A chair leg in a rubble pile beside them rattled, tumbling down the wreckage and clattering to the floor.

Slim let go of Wellynd’s shirt.

“Uh. J...just continue down the main hall until you see an arched door on your left. Go through it and walk till you get to an unlit sconce. Turn it sideways. You’ll have half a minute or so before the door shuts. So don’t get squashed, idiot. Or do, I don’t care.” Slim stuttered before turning and almost jogging back to the stairwell.

Wellynd started to look around when Slim’s voice echoed out through the hall.

“Don’t bother trying to look for a way back in. You’ll never find it.”

Wellynd swallowed.

He stood there, listening as Slim’s footsteps pattered up the staircase and out of earshot. Turning, he eyed the curtained off section of the hall and briefly watched the two men patrolling back and forth in front of them.

One of the guards looked at Wellynd, who, uncertain of what to do, gave an awkward wave before locating the stone archway on the far side of the hall.

The archway led to a narrower corridor dotted with lit sconces, as well as the occasional wooden door on both sides of the hallway.

The distant hum of the tavern, and even the soft tap of guards’ feet against the main hall’s stone had faded, and an eerie silence loomed between each of Wellynd’s solitary steps.

Or...it wasn’t quite silence.

He stopped and strained his ears. Very, very faintly, he could just make out something. At first, he thought it was the distant trickle of water.

Not quite.

It sounded almost like a whisper.

He couldn’t locate where it was coming from, and every time he turned his head the whisper’s origin seemed to switch directions. After looking around to find no one else in the long corridor, Wellynd walked over to the closest door. Maybe it was coming from one of these rooms.

Wellynd pulled on the large iron ring in the centre of the door, and, being caught off guard by how tightly locked it was, he let go. The ring slammed back against the door, causing the metal to ring out.

Heart beating, Wellynd paced quickly down the hallway.

Not a good idea.

As he walked, he put his hands on the other doors he passed. Each seemed as firmly shut as the first.

Eventually, he spotted an unlit sconce on the right side. The hallway continued on but he stopped and examined the ornament.

It looked just like the others.

Reaching up, he grabbed onto it and tugged sideways.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Immediately, the absonsant grating he’d heard on the way in started up, and the hallway itself seemed to shake.

This obviously wasn’t the same door he and Slim had come through. They had come right into the main hall. Wellynd couldn’t help but be impressed with the amount of work that must have gone into building entrances like this.

He watched on as the stone wall on the right side of the hallway receded into the ceiling, revealing a stone staircase leading downwards into the darkness.

The grating eventually subsided as the door came to rest.

He looked up and down the corridor. As he was about to step down into the darkness, the wooden door closest to the stone gateway caught his eye.

It had opened just a crack.

Wellynd took another look around. No one was in sight. He eyed the stone gateway. He knew how to get out now.

Maybe he could just take a quick look around.

Walking over to the wooden door, he pushed it open. It was dark inside.

Taking one last look at the stone gate, Wellynd slipped through the wooden door and into the dark room.

He strained his eyes but couldn’t make out anything in the thick darkness.

Taking careful steps, he shuffled along the wall, guiding his hand against the cold stone as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark.

Blinking, the room barely came into view. It wasn’t much. A sparse bookshelf lined one wall and a tipped-over desk lay in the middle of the room.

Retreating to the hall, he borrowed one of the torches off the wall.

He returned to the desk and through the scattered papers and empty drawers, he looked around the room again.

There, barely noticeable even in the light of the torch, tucked into the corner of the room was a small opening carved into the stone wall.

Curious, Wellynd walked over to find a wooden stairwell that descended into darkness.

Holding his torch forward, he couldn’t see the end of the steps. The darkness seemed to swallow the light.

He slowly stepped down the stairs, squinting into the dark as each board groaned under his feet, his free hand occasionally brushing against wooden scaffolding as he descended into the darkness.

Another ten steps of deafening silence, save for his echoing steps, and the air began to grow wet and cold, and he noticed something odd about his torch.

Its flickering glow, previously dancing between bright oranges and yellows, had turned a bitter red.

The wooden steps stopped and the ground levelled out into what appeared to be another corridor. This one smaller than the one above, and in the deep red torchlight, he passed under a narrow archway.

His heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears.

Waving his torch in front of him, he marvelled at the strange light, and just barely caught something else in the periphery of his vision.

Something faint had been carved into the ceiling.

A series of gloomy red marks wound around each other, clumping at the base with multiple strands sprawling off into errant tendrils. It was like an overgrown tumble of weeds connected at the root with each stem trying to grow apart.

He blinked at the symbol, only a foot or so in width, and counted the stems.

Twelve in all.

As he continued down the hallway, he spotted the symbol six more times.

The only difference between them was that the symbols seemed to get progressively larger and rougher. The sixth instance of the symbol was two, maybe three feet wide in all, its lines more tremulously etched into the stone than the previous ones.

Passing under another stone arch, his head craned upwards as he scanned the ceiling for any more of the markings, Wellynd was caught off guard when his foot suddenly struck dirt.

Extending the torch outward he tried to see the chamber he had entered. It was big. He walked forward.

No, it was enormous.

It must have been a circular room, because he could make out a slight curve in the wall to his right. The rest of the chamber seemed to stretch out into oblivion. Even the ceiling was out of sight.

Something else was different too.

The whisper he had heard back above. The one in the hallway. It had intensified. It was still, silent. But somehow, more pervasive. Like it was rattling around in his head.

Wellynd got the strong sense that he wasn’t supposed to be here. Like something very bad was going to happen if he didn’t leave.

He was about to turn heel and run back towards the hallway when he saw a flash of torchlight from far above him.

He took a few steps closer. The dim glow from the other torch revealed a dome-like structure in the ceiling, and, at its centre, a small hole from where the light emanated.

Wellynd walked towards the centre of the room. Maybe he could see more through the hole if he got right under it.

He stopped. Something shuffled in the dirt in front of him.

Slowly, Wellynd lowered his torch in front of him.

On the ground, fifteen paces in front of him, lay a person.

Or at least, something that looked liked a person. It was hard to tell in the strange hue of the torchlight.

Its skin was scraped and torn, with chunks of flesh missing from its back.

It kicked its leg.

Wellynd took a step backwards and nearly tripped over his feet. Unconsciously he let out a faint yelp.

The creature rolled over onto its back, its head snapping up to look at him.

Two, magma orange eyes threatened to still Wellynd’s fleeing legs, but he shrugged off the spike of fear, his heartbeat drowning out all sounds as he pelted away from the creature.

Kicking up dirt, he ran faster than he’d ever run until he found stone beneath his feet once more. Steps echoing, he raced forward, passing all of the strange markings above him.

He nearly ran into the scaffolding at the bottom of the stairwell. Rounding behind the first post of scaffolding, he braved a glance back down the corridor, whipping his torch in front of him as if it were a sword.

Nothing.

Whatever it was hadn’t given chase. Steeling himself, he took shallow breaths as he waited for any sign of movement in the darkness.

Still nothing.

He turned to begin his ascent up the stairs, when, suddenly, the whispers coalesced into coherent words:

Xandu-El is dead. Torix is here.