Cassie (Cortland)

Slowly her senses awaken to sounds of steel on steel. Shouting in the distance and spells being cast. She feels stone upon her hand as she flees through the tunnel using the cave wall to help guide her. Slowly it shifts from natural born stone to dwarven shaped brick. *Clang* *Clan* *Cla* “F-fuck… Did they see me? I have to hurry…” *schhing* *chhc* *Chcch* *Chhc* *cchh* Her trembling hands fumble with the clasp of her travel-worn pack, blindly searching for her flint, tinder and torches. She retrieves them and begins to desperately strike the cold metal and stone sending too-bright flickering sparks out into the dark… The Dark the Dark! It presses in on her from all sides threatening to drown, to suffocate, to snuff out her life like the torch that just can’t SEEM to LIGHT!!! In frustration she gives one final bone-jarring strike and the light, ohhhh the blessed light! She clings desperately to the torch like a half-drowned cast-away for, without it, she would surely drown in an ocean of darkness… Beneath her, ancient stones shaped by the long dead. On the edges of her vision flicker walls of worn but unbroken brick… And stretching into the dark behind her… Certain death. And ahead? Uncertainty… Likely certain death as well… She has to make it out, she has to seek aid! The tunnel is likely filled with more horrors but something pricks on the edge of her senses… Her hands reach for the nearby wall and, brushing over the stone ever so gently… The wall as if waiting for her touch alone seems to glide inwards as the intricately made mechanisms that make up the door lend weightlessness to the heavy stone… She slips inside as the wall swings shut… *...* *...* Silence… When did it get so quiet? Is the fighting over? Are they coming for her and if so…Which side? Before her stretches a new passage… A short ceiling and narrow walls makes it feel cramped even for a dwarf as small as her, the stones seeming to press in on all sides as if waiting to collapse and entomb her in this place of nightmares and stone. She presses on. The light from her torches barely seems to hold back the dark… It flickers at the edge of her light, tendrils of shadow and dark searching for any give in her sphere of light she clothes herself in… *...* She comes to the end of the tunnel.. Touching her hand to the stone, the door begins to swing open… Something inside her screams WAIT!!! She quickly grabs the edge and, holding it open just a crack peers around the edge… *Thud* *Thud* *Thud* *Thud* *Thud* Her heat begins to pound as the what is beyond the door comes into focus. Monstrosities stitched out of flesh with long rotten strips sloughing off, humanoids with too long limbs and jaws too wide, teeth as long as daggers tearing into the flesh of… Is… Is that Hrutr? She tries to cry out but her body suddenly twists her tendons stretching almost past the limit by forces unseen. Slowly… her head is made to turn and a terrible visage is brought into view… Her torch snuffs out… The darkness, hungry, begins to lash at her cutting as deep as a blade, feeding off the life that pours from her wounds. It begins to open up a great shadowy maw as she begins to sink into the it’s depths… It closes at the edges of her vision as if going underwater… The last thing she sees…