Vero drew her weapon and placed her back against a pillar. Would it approach her from above, crawling across the vaulted roof? Or from below, slithering under the cover of fog?

  She felt a small, but sharp bite at her calf. Vero stamped at the pain instinctively and crushed something that felt the size of a rat.

  So, it is rats after all.

  Vero hardly had time to consider the information before she felt something land on her shoulder. She saw black beady eyes and horrible mangy fur for only a moment, before she pulled it off and tossed it away as hard as she could.

  The quiet and stillness were gone. Now it seemed there were hundreds of the evil creatures all around her. Bats swarmed along the roof and the mist swirled with shrieking shapes. Individually they posed no threat to her, but they seemed to be moving as a predatory pack, and she had no notion how to deal with all of them.

  Then, beyond the pestilent swarms, out of the darkness, she saw a larger figure looming. Its features were shadowed and indistinct, but it was almost twice her height. Its limbs were elongated and thin, like those of a praying mantis or stick insect. The head was wide and bulbous out of proportion to its body, so that it resembled an obscene infant of massive size. It had a hunchback’s posture due to its head’s weight, and a lurching gait. She had never seen or heard of anything like it, but the sight filled her with a sense of primal terror.

  Vero turned away from the horrid creature and ran, stopping only to prod each archway with her sword, before continuing her escape. The sounds of squeaking, shuffling, and the flapping of leathery wings followed all around and above her, giving impetus to her flight. Once, she nearly fell down another pitfall, but her prodding warned her in time to reroute herself.

  Her pursuers followed her at a deliberate pace. It suggested they were corralling rather than chasing her, but with no way to know which direction the exit lay, she could only move as quickly as possible and hope that she could lose them.

  Ahead of her, a wall came into view. It was still three quadrants away. The wall was solid stone, and there was no sign of any door or entryway. Getting closer would only make it easier to trap her into a corner.

  She turned right, for no other reason besides that it was one of her two possible options, neither of which was more or less desirable than the other. She was rewarded with safe ground.

  The next quadrant was a pitfall. She moved away from the wall by one space, and tried to return to her original line. Above her, the flitting forms of bats followed, but stayed near the roof.

  After several safe spaces, she saw another stone wall in front of her. She must have been near a corner. There was still no exit to be seen. It might be in the corner, but it would have been much too dangerous to check.

  She followed the new wall, but the swarm now sounded very close to her on her right side, towards the center of the undercroft. There was a pitfall ahead of her, and Vero judged her pursuers were too close to deviate towards the center. She moved to the left, closer to the wall.

  Unfortunately, when she tried to return to her line parallel to the wall, she found another pitfall. She moved left again, and there was now only a single quadrant between her and wall. There she was able to begin moving forwards again, but each time she tried to move back towards the center, she found another pitfall in her way.

  A prevailing sense of doom drifted over her like in a nightmare. Then, only moments later, a sense of relief. A simple entryway on the lefthand wall, with stone steps beyond it, came into sight.

  Vero checked the quadrants closest to the wall, as well as those ahead of her, but the path forward remained safe only until she was directly diagonal to her destination. Then she had a pitfall in front of her, as well as a long line of empty space to her left. As quickly as she could, she checked the space to her right, but found another trap. She was locked into a dead end.

  The swarm must have known her exposure, because she could hear them growing more excited as they drew near. Then the horrible shambling figure could be seen approaching from just beyond the light of her torch.

  Vero was not prepared to surrender yet, and there could be no guarantee that the dreadful creature had either the intelligence or interest to parlay with her. The pillars were massive, but their surfaces were irregular. She found hand and foot holds after search. Vero threw her torch at the monstrosity, which caused it to recoil momentarily, then pushed herself out over open space.

  She climbed across the pillar as quickly as she could, and was half way across when she felt tiny jaws clamp around the fingers of her gloves. Try as they might, the vile rodents could not penetrate them. Vero grabbed the rat and tossed it into the void behind her with a single rapid movement. More rats were scattered into the air by the act, and they all screamed with terror as they fell into the pit.

  The great bulbous head emerged around the pillar. Then a great claw moved past her and tried to sweep back through her chest like a scythe. Vero fell to her side with as much momentum as she could summon, and prayed that there would be ground beneath her.

  She splayed her body out, and her chest and arms came to rest on the ledge. She needed to scramble desperately for a moment to find grip with her hands and feet, but again she had reason to thank Adeana’s gloves. The scraping of the claw sent a shower of dust and smaller rocks cascading down over her.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Vero pulled herself up onto the ledge. At once she rolled to her side, evading a vertical swipe of the claw. On her belly, she crawled forward and lurched down a long hallway. At the end she could see a rope ladder leading to a trapdoor at the top, which she quickly climbed. She opened the door immediately and threw it closed behind her.

  Relief turned to revulsion. She doused a cloth mask in oil and sweet-smelling herbs, then used it to cover her face.

  Vero was standing in the castle larder. The naked bodies of men and women hung from hooks, which impaled them under the collar bone. They were pale and flaccid figures, like horrible grave worms, and their heads lolled to their sides. Dried stains could be seen on the floor, but there was little blood. In the corner were chests containing clothes and personal effects. A massive iron pipe with a small grate like a coal stove, wider around in total circumference than she was, ran from the floor to the ceiling.

  She grabbed the chests and used them to block the trap door she had just come through. Besides the hatch, the only other exit was a heavy wooden door up a small set of stairs. Vero re-drew her sword, positioned herself to watch both entrances at once, and waited to see what might emerge.

  There was nothing.

  She waited for a long time, straining her ears for any sound of movement, but there was none. Finally, with no other option, Vero climbed the stairs towards the door. She caught her breath completely and no one had come for her, so she presumed she must press on.

  The door was fitted with a key lock, but it was for prohibiting entry. The mechanics of the lock were exposed on the side of the door Vero was on, and could be operated manually without difficulty. She did so, and the door swung open.

  Beyond it was a straight and narrow hallway with slat wooden floors and stone walls. Besides the door Vero opened, the hall had only one other exit, located at the opposite end. There was no furniture or decoration.

  It all appeared very innocuous in comparison to the charnel house behind her, but that only increased her suspicions. First, Vero looked for signs of alarum wards carved into the doorway itself, but found none. Then she knelt and pressed down hard on the wooden floor with her hand.

  It began to sink. She pushed further, and she could see the floor on the opposite side of the room rise. The entire hallway floor was designed to tilt on an axis in the middle, and drop any intruders down into whatever lay below.

  Vero thought it might well prove a fine trap to get caught in, but when she braced herself on the door and pushed far enough to see the dark chasm beneath, there was no bottom in view. Perhaps the landing was soft, but she was not eager to make the discovery.

  She let up her pressure, and the floor rebalanced itself almost perfectly. Only slight marks could be seen on the walls near the corners. The craftsmanship was to be admired, Vero thought, if not the craft itself. She was certain there was a safety mechanism somewhere to brace the floor from underneath and disable the trap, but even after several minutes searching, she could not locate it. Eventually, she decided that it must only be accessible from the other side. The lock suggested they did not think anyone would be traveling from this direction.

  Unfortunately, that would make further exploration along this path very difficult. She could use magic to lighten her steps, but that would require spilling blood, a dangerous step in her current circumstance. There was also no guarantee that she could reduce her weight sufficiently to pass. Or that the door on the other end would be unbarred and unguarded. On its farthest ends the floor would tilt fastest, she might easily doom herself if the door did not open when she reached it.

  No, that was not the way.

  Vero returned to the ‘larder’ and approached the iron pipe again. She started to pull open the grate. It was well rusted, but after enough force was applied, she eventually worked it free. It was just large enough for her to crawl through, but she poked her head in first.

  Beneath her, the pipe led straight down, certainly to tap the great heat in the heart of the mountain. If the Black Palatine kept a wizard, or if he studied any of the occult sciences himself, such a channel could be a font of tremendous power. A source of elemental heat and fire would be particularly valuable to one who could not call on the sun for strength.

  Above her, the pipe led directly upwards, Vero could not see the top. However, if she was right, there must be another outlet. Reagents were harvested from the bodies, but there were none of the paraphernalia of a real occult laboratory here. A vampyre would not want to waste blood through shoddy spells. There must be something above her, a simple ritual room with a permanent magic circle, at least.

  She examined the pipe interior. The joints between each segment protruded inwards as well as outwards, and there was just about enough space for half her foot to rest. She estimated the length of each pipe segment at four feet. As far as she could tell they had all been well standardized. Vero was only a few inches shy of six feet herself, so she was sure she could climb them, even if it would be difficult.

  Vero felt along the interior of the pipe and tried to judge if the joints would hold her weight. Then, after assuring herself this was the only way forwards, Vero squeezed herself inside.

  The pipe was hardly as wide as her shoulders, but that also made it rather simple to climb. She avoided looking downwards. Once, she caught an accidental glimpse of the yawning dark below her, which filled her with another profound bout of vertigo. Her boots, gloves, and cloak protected her, but the metal was burning hot.

  It was not direct burns, but rather the oppressive ambient heat which proved the greatest danger. At first it was a welcome relief from the bone chilling cold, but soon sweat poured down her arms and chest with each agonized exertion to propel herself further.

  Even having adjusted to the altitude, Vero feared her lungs may burst at any moment. Her arms and legs were trembling under the strain, but she saw another grate above her and knew her guess must have been right.

  Filled with elation, she tried to increase her pace, only to misplace her foot.

  She only fell one segment of pipe before she had caught herself, but she was sure her stomach had fallen farther. At a more deliberate pace, she made back the progress she had lost, and eventually hauled herself up to the grate itself with great relief.

  There was no rust on this grate, which appeared to have seen greater use than the one below. Beyond it was what looked like the laboratory Vero had expected. It was dark and unoccupied at the moment. A stroke of fortune.

  She tried to open the grate, and found it barred on the other side. A stroke of misfortune.

  The closing mechanism looked simple, a bar and latch. Vero drew her knife and used it to lift the bar through the grate, it opened easily. She put herself through as quickly as she could, but the opening was smaller than the one below. She could just barely squirm her whole body out.

  She doubted any of her companions could have made it up that way. If she were any less flat-chested, Vero would have certainly become stuck herself.

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