Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sniktch" data-source="post: 420671" data-attributes="member: 7704">The story continues...They halted thirty feet down the hallway at a four way intersection.  Directly ahead of them the passage was blocked by another stout door, barred shut on their side.  The right tunnel had collapsed long ago and was choked with rubble, and the left continued past the range of their vision.  Jack regarded the closed door.“Reckon we should take a look inside?”Welby shook his head.  “Door shut for reason,” he managed around a mouthful of rodent.Jack started to argue but the Crow interrupted him.  “The little guy’s got a point.  They might be trying to keep something in there.”Jack persisted, “I don’ like leavin rooms behind me unexplored.  Might be leavin an enemy at our backs; might be leavin some poor prisoner in chains unaided.”“You have a valid argument,” Eli spoke next.  “However, I’m inclined to side with the others at this time.  We can be reasonably certain that no threat is going to come at us from this direction, and the distinct possibility exists that the orcs were trying to keep something out.  Let us secure the rest of the complex; we can always return and examine this passage again when the orcs and their masters have been dealt with.”Outnumbered, Jack was forced to agree.  They started down the left-passageway and moved forward about twenty feet before Ike called for a halt.  When they quit moving everyone could hear it, the sound of metal rattling against metal.  The sound seemed to emanate from just around a bend in the corridor.  Cautiously, they moved up to the corner and peered around it.  Here the tunnel ended, opening into a large square room contaning a large hole in the center of it’s floor.  An ingenious tangle of pulleys, catches, and gears hung suspended from the ceiling, all slowly spinning in place.  This had the result of pulling at a chain that rose from the hole, gradually winding it around a straight bar.  Welby moved up to the lip of the opening and looked down, then jumped back and readied his axe.  “More orcs,” he warned.  “Coming up in metal box.”Ike dropped to his belly and readied his crossbow, aiming it towards the hole.  The Crow moved around to the other side of the chamber, also readying his crossbow.  Jack, Welby, and Eli followed suit, readying their bows and slowly fanning out around the room.Ike saw the orcs’ heads begin to appear above the floorline and pulled the trigger, his bolt taking an orc through the eye and causing it to slump silently to the floor.  Another orc started to yell a warning but it turned into a scream as an arrow and a bolt thunked into it’s chest and back.  Two more orcs remained on the lift, but they were cut down by steady fire before it finished rising.Jack examined the lift mechanism while the others labored to clear it of bodies.  Ike once again noted that the monsters all had full purses.  Jack declared the lift to be obviously of dwarven manufacture.  “We got nearly the same things back home, though quite a few upgrades ha’ been made to the design since this’n were built,” he explained, showing them how to operate the device.  When he was satisfied that all of them now knew how to use the lift, they climbed into the metal basket and they started their descent into the shaft.They came to a stop again one level below, in an identical square room empty except for a few support beams and part of the lift system.  A single exit led out of the room, and they cautiously filed out of the basket and into the hall.  They came to another four way intersection, but both the south and eastern passage were collapsed, leaving north as the only option.  A room opened to the north, the door smashed from its hinges and laying in the hall.  Old, dry patches of blood stained the floor, and it appeared that two bodies had been dragged into the room.  Indicating that the others should wait in the hall, Ike and Welby moved into the chamber and searched it.  It contained the decaying remnants of old splintered furnishings in addition to the two corpses, but nothing else of interst or value.  The corpses were those of orcs.  They had been dead for some time but not so long that Ike could not tell they had died of strangulation, awful bruised circles ringing both orcs’ necks.  Something had fed upon the bodies afterwards, and large amounts of flesh had been gnawed away.Ike shuddered.  The smell from the corpses nauseated him, and he and Welby hustled from the room to join the others.  “Nothing in there,” he sputtered, trying to contain his rising gorge.  “Just a couple of rotting corpses.”“How did they die?”  Eli wanted to know.“Strangled.  Their necks were bruised up pretty bad.  Something’s been eating at the bodies, though, so it’s hard to say more than that.”“Why would they have been killed and left here?” Royston wondered.“Who knows?  Could’ve just been infighting - it’s pretty common for my people to kill each other over petty disagreements.”“Bah,” grumbled Jack.  “At any rate, there’s nothin here and no ways to continue.  Let’s get back on the lift and go down further.”As they made their way back to the lift room, Ike lingered behind momentarily.  Something about the whole scene bothered him, something he couldn’t put his finger on.  It was like some sixth sense was screaming ‘Danger!’ at him.  Finally he shrugged and started to follow the others.  He did not see the tentacle that shot out of a loose pile of rubble behind him, but he soon felt it as it wrapped around his throat and yanked him off his feet.</blockquote>

Verification