Kitana was relieved to find that the rope had been just long enough to reach all the way down, as she after having of climbed down along the rugged cliff-side felt solid ground beneath her feet.
Letting go of the rope, Kitana took a step out from the wall while she grabbed her lantern, lighting it and then unsheathing her sword, viewing her surroundings.
She was at least a good 50 fifty feet below the surface, and little daylight reached down to where she stood, on what appeared to be a quadratic, evenly surfaced ledge.
On the right side of the ledge, Kitana could make out stair steps leading downwards, and soon she was moving even further away from the surface, her senses keenly searching after potential threats.
The flight of stairs turned out to be quite long, and it took her several minutes of walking before she reached a new ledge, this one slightly bigger than the one before.
Again, at the right edge of the ledge there was a set of stairs that led further downwards.
Readjusting her grip of her sword, Kitana moved on down the stairs, descending further into the dark underworld.
These stairs stretched for a shorter distance than the ones before, and Kitana soon stepped out onto a large hexagonal plateau, surrounded by rocks and boulders.
At the other end of the plateau, Kitana thought that she could make out a large entrance, and so she began to cross the hexagonal area, glancing to her left and right as she moved.
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, four thin silhouettes appeared up ahead, moving towards Kitana!
Putting the lantern down on the ground, Kitana grabbed her sword with both hands and readied herself for combat.
As the silhouettes came nearer, they came within range of Kitana’s lantern, and she could now see that their thinness was caused by the fact that they were skeletons, all of them dressed in rusty chain-mails and armed with equally rust-bitten swords.
Now within twenty feet of Kitana, the four skeletons suddenly rushed towards her, waving their swords in the air.
Kitana deftly dodged the first skeletons swing, and as it charged past her, she thrust out her sword, crushing the skeleton’s hip, causing it to crash into the ground a few feet away.
The next skeleton soon lost its head, as a forceful swing from Kitana sent it flying through the air.
The last two attacked in unison, one coming from the right whilst the other charged Kitana from the left. When they came within a few feet from her, Kitana leapt backwards, and watched the two unintelligent constructs charge into one another.
Two quick blows finished of the last skeletons, and Kitana was moving towards the entrance was again.
“I believe that the wizard’s precious scrolls were incorrect, for I can’t see how only a woman could be able to defeat those pathetic guardians!” Kitana said to herself, feeling self-assured after her quick disposal of the four skeletons.
But for all her martial prowess, Kitana was no thief or scout, which soon became all too apparent as she reached the entrance.
Looking ahead, Kitana stepped onto the last tile of stone before the entrance, and then heard a clicking noise below her.
Turning her head forwards, Kitana could see that the tile was gone, replaced by black nothingness.
The next moment, she was falling, dropping her lantern and sword so that she could grab hold of the edges of the hole, but her reaction was to slow, and she fell rapidly down the hole. |