“Trouble?” asked Femke Kane.  She and her husband, Croffut, and Werthimer had crossed from the far side of the courtyard.

“You could say,” replied Bratihn.  “Where’s Brown?”

“We didn’t see him come out,” replied Croffut.

“Bugger and Blast!”

“It’s not your fault,” said Senta.  “You told us all how to find our way out.”

“He was frightened out of his wits,” said Vever.  “And I don’t blame him.  I was too.”

“I had better go find him,” said Bratihn.

“I’ll go with you,” said Senta.

“So will I,” added Croffut.

“Good.  That’s enough.  I don’t want to lose anyone else down there.  The rest of you, do what you can for Mr. Vever.  He has a broken arm and I don’t know what else.”

“We’ll take care of him,” said Werthimer, just as a particularly loud cry echoed from the Unterirdisches Esser somewhere below.

The reverberating cries continued as the young sorceress and the two former soldiers went back down into the narrow chamber, following the path the party had taken before.

“There are two possibilities,” said Bratihn, when they had reached the intersecting hallway.  “Either Brown made it all the way to this point and just continued on, in which case I figure he’ll end up somewhere out in front of the fortress, or he got mixed up at the intersection up ahead.  So we’ll try the left branch there first.  If we don’t find anything, we’ll try the center branch.”

The others nodded their agreement.

From the tee junction the left branch of the corridor stretched out into the darkness well over three hundred feet before it ended with stairs dropping down.  The three descended.  Senta counted eighty seven steps before losing her place, but she later thought that this must have only been about halfway to the bottom.

“I hope we don’t have to run back up these,” said Croffut.

As if his words were a signal, the roaring monster in the distance behind them suddenly became quiet.

“I don’t know which is worse,” remarked Bratihn.  “Hearing that abomination, or knowing he’s there and not hearing.”

“The latter,” Senta decided.

At the bottom of the steps, the hallway continued its course for another fifty feet and then ended at another open doorway.  Bratihn leaned in and held up the lantern.

“Can you cast another of those really bright spells?” he asked.

“I need to cast it on something I can see.”

“If you look up there you can see something just sticking down—maybe a stalactite.”

Senta looked up and did see something just reaching down from the very high ceiling above, into the dim light of the lantern.  She aimed her spell at it.

“Regnum uuthanum riyah.”

A ball of light exploded into existence revealing a square fifty by fifty foot room.  The object to which the magic light was attached was not a stalactite, but a tube growing from the ceiling.  It looked as though it had been crafted of mud.  As they examined it, out from the end dropped a spider, its body the size of human head, quickly descending on a thin strand of silk.  Bratihn pulled his rifle to his shoulder and shot it.  A good portion of its guts sprayed out the other side and it curled into a ball.  Then the spider dropped from its webbing and fell to the bottom of the chamber, making a splash in dark water which they could now see reached to all four corners of the room.  It was impossible to tell how deep it was.  Though the dead arachnid sank, it reappeared on the surface a second later.

“I really don’t want to try to wade across,” said Croffut.

“No you don’t,” said Senta.  “There is something down there that isn’t right.  I can feel it.”

“We’re not going to wade across it,” replied Bratihn.  “If Brown did, then he’s a damn fool.  Kafira only knows how deep this is or what it is that’s causing you to feel that way.  I’ve seen enough to take you as an authority.”