#chapter

The room spun three more times to the sound of rattling gears before a way out opened up. It wasn’t the spiral staircase. That stayed a spring-loaded, hungry meat grinder. Instead, the way out was a dark, dusty door hidden behind one of the medical cabinets. There was another spiral staircase behind it, only without the spring blades ready to snap out at us from all directions.

All told, it was a good sign they were on the right path. Ruins were often thick with locks and inventive ways to get killed. Those were always far less complicated than a room-sized combination lock. Still, it made my head throb.

But the floor below was well worth the headache.

I left the stairwell, took two steps into the new room, then froze. This room was round, similar to the one above, but lacked the engraved wall panels. Instead, there were wide, broken bay windows, some the size of a small carriage, that had a breathtaking view outside. Not that there was much to see. It was just giant, glowing blue mushrooms on the cavern ceiling and the massive underground lake with its dark water splashing in the distance, far below.

Everything else in the room? It looked like a carpenter’s shop thew up. The chaos was so much. I had a hard time taking it all in. So I focused on the view, and a set of tall, aged cabinets made of a dark wood that stood between the broken windows.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what the room looked like centuries ago. The place was fascinating. I flexed my hands, as I had an itch to sketch the room. Common sense tackled that urge and shoved it into a closet. We didn’t have time for that.