At the top of the Stairs

My armor clanked against the stone under my feet, and echoed down the dark, brick corridor, lit by the small torch in my hand. I had to make a choice; left, or right. I swore quietly at the silence around me. He couldn’t have disappeared so suddenly.

I brought the torch low and moved it across the ground. The floor here didn’t have that much dirt or dust on it, but if I could only find it… there, a footprint, or half a footprint really, in just a small amount of dirt leading left.

I’ve got you, I thought satisfactorily to myself, a small smile forming under my helmet. My sword was out, and I was ready to kill.

The air in the corridor was stale and unmoving as I moved down it, not trying to be quiet, as my armor made that all but impossible. Hopefully, it didn’t double back or go around in a big loop, and I had my quarry trapped.

I slowed my pace a bit. It wouldn’t do to be caught in a trap down here, far from any healers or mages, and be left injured or at the mercy of whatever else may be down here.

As I turned a corner my vigilance paid off. I noticed a small hole in the floor and stopping to examine it, another hole a few feet past that, but anything more was difficult to make out past the circle of light cast by the torch. Why did there always have to be traps? It was like nobody wanted their private sanctums, catacombs, or tombs raided by some treasure hunter.

Getting down and looking, I noticed the corridor had a few tiles that were raised slightly above the others and pulled out my dust pouch to sprinkle a bit on the tiles. They didn’t trigger under the light dusting, and I had a clear path of which tiles not to step on and continued on my way.

There were two other traps I found, one, a wire that would cause a pot of acid to fall on the passerby that I cut, and a rune inscribed on the ground that I made sure to take big steps around to avoid completely. Never knew what crazy effect a rune would have, could be something to harm or kill, but it could just as easily be made to turn me into a cockroach or transported into the middle of the ocean.

Turning the last corner I found myself in front of a stone archway built into the wall, and after examining it, determined it was just an archway. I stepped through, sword raised and lifting my torch to see the empty room I had just entered. 

It wasnt completely empty, about 10 feet on each side there was a small wooden table with a few half-melted unlit candles on it that looked like it would fall apart under a stiff breeze. No teleportation circle on the floor, so maybe… oh, please let it be a secret passage.

I pried one of the candled off the table and lit it with the torch before slowly walking around the room with it. There! As I passed a section of the left wall the candle started to flicker under the smallest flow of air coming from a seam in the wall.

I put the candle down, and put my shoulder to the wall, the section swinging in under the weight and revealing a staircase, leading up in a tight spiral. That caught me off guard a bit. Usually, passages like this went down, those who built catacombs like this preferring to dig deeper underground, not back up toward the surface. I started to get a bad feeling and, like it could sense the moment, cold air hit my eyes through the slits in my helmet as a cold breeze came flowing down the stairs. I tightened my grip on the hilt of my sword, and on the torch, and began to climb.

One foot after another the stairs wound around, leaving me with a sense of eternity. They just kept going, higher, and higher, could they go all the way to the heavens? Maybe at some point the stone would drop away and I would be climbing up clouds. The slow burn in my legs built, a cinder developing into a bonfire that caused me to stop and rest for a few minutes. Whoever built these was a real sadist.

It was almost a shock when I finally reached the top. There was a small landing with a stone door embedded into the wall around it. And on the door, in a circle, were eight pentagrams inside their own circles. It wasn’t a pattern I was familiar with, but then again, there were so many gods, demons, fey, etc that each had to have their own mark, who could really keep track of which being a cult of crazy people prayed to? Besides, what really mattered were the crimes they committed during that worship.

I pushed the door opened and found blackness on the other side. Brandishing my torch I realized that it mush be some vast cavern, the floor made of polished obsidian because even as I stepped into it, I couldn’t see any ceiling or walls, only the dark floor. But I was able to see my quarry, kneeling on the floor about twenty feet in front of me, the bottom of his robes pooled on the ground around him, head bowed low.

I couldn’t give him any time to react, I rushed forward, sword pointing forward, preparing for the thrust to end his life, when the man lifted his head, his arms coming up above him, and in his hands was the infant I had been tasked to save, raised above the crazy man’s head. He screamed a word in a language I didn’t know, the darkness around us swallowing it up. Then, there was an answer.

A deep rumble filled the chamber, and as I continued forward, a red circle appeared, blazing in the darkness, the middle a pentagram somehow darker, a void that seemed to eat the light. A second one appeared to the right of us as I bore down on the man, and as the third appeared above us, I realized they weren’t just circles; they were eyes.

Something was looking at us, something was looking at the infant in the man’s arms, raised before it, offered to it, and as a fourth eye opened, I knew that it liked what it saw.

I finally made it to the man and he turned in time to see the flash of the blade as it plunged into the back. He gurgled, and the baby slipped from his hands as he toppled to the side, but I managed to catch it, the torch falling to the ground, and it started crying, the wail drawing the attention of a fifth eye.

I tried to pull my sword from the man’s body with one hand, but he clung to it.

“No,” he screamed. “It must have the lamb!” he collapsed, his weight pulling the hilt from my hand and I abandoned the sword, scooping up my torch and sprinting back toward the door, crying infant in my arms. In front of me and to the side I saw the sixth eye open, its attention focused on me, and I could feel it like a physical weight, heat like a furnace coming from six different directions, trying to crush and incinerate me at the same time.

My legs were heavy, my armor pushing me into the ground, but I took step after heaving step, sweat pouring down my face under the helmet. Ten feet, eight, six, four. Then the seventh eye opened.

I felt the pressure hit me like a boulder, and I fell, just barely keeping myself on my knees, one hand keeping me up the other cradling the infant under me. I couldn’t think, the pressure seemed to be in my head wanting to flatten my brain into a pancake. I kept crawling, there was a loud boom, and my vision went black.

I must not have been out for very long as the infants crying greeted me on my way back to consciousness. I was lying on the stone floor on the landing at the top of the stairs. The door was closed, and I seemed to be steaming slightly. I sat up and pulled my helmet off and immediately felt the relief as cooler air met my cooked head.

I looked down at the infant on the ground next to me, still crying.

“Alright buddy,” I said wearily, “time to get you home, and no more adventures for you. Can we agree on that?”