Thank goodness for the old tombs! Using every ounce of strength she possessed, Silver pushed the stone door shut behind her. A crack up high allowed in just enough light for her to locate something to bar the door with, but she knew it wouldn't hold them off for long. Indeed, it was only a matter of heartbeats before the pounding started.
She cast around, squinting against the gloom for something, anything, that might help. A deeper patch of darkness suggested a tunnel or at least another room further ahead. It was the stench that gave her pause, however. She had long since become used to the smell of dried and dusty catacombs and the desiccated corpses held therein. She was even quite at home with the less pleasant scent of the walking dead with whom she had battled for the majority of her career. This wasn't that. This was something fresher, more cloying, dank and wretched. She knew it. She remembered it from somewhere, she just couldn't quite put her finger on it right now...
Carefully making her way forward, the beam of light from above was kind enough to just about reveal the edges of a bloody pool. No, not a pool. A pile of mush. Silver covered her mouth with one hand, forcing back the urge to gag. She never had been enamoured of the freshly deceased and this was a particularly vomit-inducing specimen. Useful, however. It took but a matter of moments to strip off her robes and veil. Using the small knife she had kept hidden in her sleeve, she ripped the fabric into sizable shreds. Some she threw atop the remains of the battered and half-consumed corpse. Some she dared push within the disgusting pile. It was all she could do to keep her lunch down.
The pounding behind her grew louder. Had they found something to use as a ram? Shit! Time to move. Placing her fingertips to the wall for guidance, she moved deeper into the darkness.
There was no light here. No handy cracks in the celiling above to show her the way, and nothing she could use to illuminate the tunnels ahead. Rather than peer uselessly into the black, Silver closed her eyes, putting her concentration into her other senses. The walls were smooth, polished by design and time. She could feel faint decreases within the stonework as if carvings had once been a prominent feature. She could also feel slime, muck and moss. The smell became gradually stronger. The sound of the pounding upon the doors was slowly replaced with the grunting and growling of...
Kergrim!
It just had to be bloody kergrim, didn't it? And she with no light to blind them. Bastards! Big tough bastards, specifically.
Gritting her teeth, she shuffled slowly forward. Best not to alert them to her presence. Just keep going. Careful. Careful now. Keep quiet. Don't even breathe too loudly. Silent, slow, onwards, downwards. Further into the black.
She had no way to be sure that there was another way out. She had no way to be certain that she could escape this place. But she had to try. And even if she didn't, even if she died here, at least the Angmarim would still be missing eight silver death masks and the precious book they had looked to for guidance in their wretched ceremonies, so it wasn't all for naught.
She almost swore aloud when her fingertips met empty air. A side corridor then. Pausing, she tilted her head to listen. Sounds of snoring came from that direction. Edge on, then. Keep going down and hope that, eventually, the path would lead back up.
