50

You’ve seen a lot of weird glows in your life and you’re not dead yet.

“Let’s try the lower levels,” you decide, indicating the tunnel that runs off to the left of the entrance chamber.

Neither Ashur nor Tarquin looks particularly enthusiastic, but then, you’re not feeling great about climbing down into the bowels of the earth either. As you move forward, you can feel the ground dropping away beneath you, the strange deadness of the air making it seem as though your ears are popping. You can hear a sound—a sort of growling, roaring, almost musical thing—but the tunnel’s acoustics make it hard to tell whether the source is nearby or miles away.

The latter, you hope. It doesn’t sound pleasant.

The farther you get into the tunnels, the deeper the red of the light gets, until you can barely make out one another’s faces. You feel like your footsteps are keeping rhythm with the growling chant and, although you deliberately try to force yourself to walk faster or slower, to change the rhythm, you find that, no matter what you do, you keep returning to it.

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