Chapter 11: The Crumbling Ruin.
"Okay, need to find a way into the place," said Honeydew as the two ran around to the front of the castle, still haunted by the Skull Pass that leered behind them.
Xephos grunted in agreement.
"To rescue Granny Bacon from the Cult of Israphel that's inside castle here."
They came round to the front where Honeydew tried to kick down the two steel doors, to no avail.
"Maybe there's a way in the top?" deduced Xephos, who followed Honeydew on top of the low battlements by climbing the vines that hung from the walls. But the castle had no courtyard, it was more of a heavily walled strong-house, the type that was designed to hide something...
"I cant's see any way in up here, Xephos." sighed Honeydew. The roof of the castle was missing chunks of rocks and had more divots than an old breastplate, but there seemed to be no way in. "I wish Peculier was here to help us, but we're no going out on our own." Xephos walked out over the roof to see if the hard stone had any gaps.
"We're like little babby birds, who've been kicked out of the nest by their mother." Honeydew continued. "And now Xephos, now we have to learn how to fly."
"I think we'll be fine..." replied Xephos as he got to the center of the roof where another battlement was raised out of the castle's sloping roof, here, there may be a way down.
Honeydew obviously had grown weary of this, and was dropping back down to the front doors, probably to attempt to force them open while Xephos searched for a way in.
"Ah!" came his cry. "There's a ladder here!"
"Oh?" answered Honeydew.
"It doesn't seem to go anywhere though... Like it's been boarded up."
Honeydew was tired of this.
"Ah, fuck it, let's do this our way." he shouted out as pulled off his pack and reached in to grab the bandoleer of dynamite that he'd removed after finding the City on fire, because frankly, running through a fire with TNT strapped to you was suicide.
"TNT?" yelled Xephos as Honeydew placed a stick of it at the feet of the two doors and quickly lit it with his fling and steel.
"GET OUTTA THE WAY!" he screamed as he ran back down the path as the dynamite exploded with a huge bang that shook the castle.
Xephos, who has been running down the roof of the castle at the time towards the doors was thrown off his feet by the explosion.
"Ahhhh!" he screamed at the bang, landing arse first on the ivy covered roof, then began to laugh. "Nice!"
"Are you alright?" called Honeydew, who looked up from where he'd ran and hidden behind a fence, to see Xephos jump down in front of the two doors that were now warped and barely hanging from their hinges in the partially destroyed walls.
Honeydew climbed to his feet beaming.
"That was good..." he said breathlessly.
The smell of sulphur hung in the air as they passed through the ruined doorway to a short flight of dark stone stairs, unfortunately ending at another set of equally large iron doors.
"Oh are you kidding me?" yelled Honeydew angrily as he tried to kick down the door, but these held just as fast as the others. "You've got to be kidding me."
"Oh right, another set of doors." said Xephos.
"Another set of bloody doors!" the dwarf began to walk back up the stairs into the night.
"I hope that you didn't use all of the TNT up."
"Oh?" Honeydew said inquisitively. "There's a sheep in here, Xephos."
Xephos ran up the stairs to see his friend looking through a small gap that the explosion had made in the wall of the castle, though which there was, in fact a scrawny emaciated white sheep trapped in a tiny little room on the other side of the wall.
"Here, look. Look at him!" laughed Honeydew. "Do you think it's a Cultist of Israphel?" he laughed again. "Oh my gods it's an evil Cultist! Noooo..."
They both could not help but to laugh at this, even though the sheep's face did look disturbingly human...
"Unbelievable." Xephos sighed.
"Bless him." Honeydew said as he ran back down the stairs to the second set of doors. "So how do we open these...we could find a crow-bar somewhere, I don't really want to waste too much dynamite."
"Well why not? It would be better if we just-"
Honeydew leant against the right-hand wall and there was a soft click, at which, the doors behind him opened with a loud and rusty creak, bathing them in light and a wave of heat.
"Oh?" Honeydew gasped as he stepped back from the wall, where a grey brick had sunk into the wall, the secret button opening the doors.
"That's one way I guess." Xephos followed Honeydew into the next room.
"Now careful now!" Honeydew called as Xephos came up behind him.
There were no more doors in this room, but a stone catwalk extended far down the wide corridor, but was surrounded on either side by glowing magma, the source of both the heat and light. At the end of the catwalk there were another flight of stairs that ascended for a few steps before continuing down a tunnel.
"There are some levers either side of us." Honeydew noticed, and indeed there were levers on either side of the door frame.
"I wonder what they do?" mused Xephos, who was getting very hot underneath his armor, and was keen to get into the very cool looking tunnel ahead. "As a way to open them from the inside. Should we pull one?"
Honeydew, suspecting the room to begin to fill up with lava at the lever's slightest touch, quickly pulled the lever, which resulted in doing no more than indeed triggering the doors.
"Oh." he sighed. "I thought everything would blow up."
"Mine doesn't seem to work. I think you blew it up with your TNT."
"Oh well-"
"Shall we go onwards?"
So the set off single-file down the periously thin catwalk, purposely designed so any intruding force would have to continue slowly an be at risk of falling in, or shot by archers that could easily be hidden behind the walls.
They reached the other side quickly enough, climbed the stairs to the tunnel where they were greeted by a cool breeze and a message that seemed to have been written onto the wall in blood.
""Abandon hope all ye who entere here."." Xephos read word for word. "Lovely."
"That's reassuring." said Honeydew as he stared down the dark tunnel before lighting a new torch.
Honeydew led the way down the corridor, lighting ancient bundles of foul smelling rushes that were clamped into the walls, their acidic smoke making their heads spin. The torch Honeydew carried illuminated the way ahead until the floor began to curve and slope down into a shallow spiral, it's rough walls were dry and jagged.
"Oh gods..." whined Xephos.
"I love going through these horrible dark tunnels in which you don't know what's ahead of you." said Honeydew jovially as he paced down the curved path into the dark.
"We must be nearly there, though," answered Xephos, lowering his voice. "I think we're getting close though, I can hear something."
Honeydew listened, and he could hear soft steps ahead around a sharp corner.
"I think I can hear a spider..." he whispered, unsheathing his sword and stalking ahead.
"Oooooooooooo!" he screamed backtracking back round the corner.
"What?" asked Xephos. "Is there a spider down there?"
"...yeah...yeah..."
Xephos ran around the corner to where a set of steep stone stairs led down into a small unlit chamber where a huge black spider standing in front of a spawner saw him and ran forwards.
"Oh gods..." said Honeydew as he humbled to load his crossbow while Xephos kicked the creature back into the room and drew his sword. "It's okay." he assured as Honeydew fired three arrows at once out of the cross bow, hitting the spider in it's thorax. "It's just a spider."
The spider, still alive began to climb back towards them, right as another spawned.
"Keep shooting it!" Xephos told Honeydew as he reloaded and shot the new spider as Xephos ran down the stairs and killed both of the spiders.
"We should've made some more arrows." he said as Honeydew followed him down the stairs, grabbing some rushes off the walls and lit them before throwing them onto the floor.
"Destroy the spawner, quick!" but then he realised that that would no longer be nessicary. "Oh, or we could just leave these here." he said to Xephos who holding a sheaf of burning rushes nodded and headed to the other side of the room where the tunnel continued.
"Easy-peasy-lemonAHHHH!" he cried out as a green face ran at him out of the dark. "Creeper! There's a creeper down there!" he and Honeydew ran back as the green monster emerged from the tunnel into the spawner room. "Arrows!" yelled Xephos as he reached for his quiver to find his gone.
"I'm all out of arrows!" said Honeydew as well. "This is not good timing!"
The creeper was getting closer, they realised as they backed up the stairs they would need to engage it in melee or at least blow it up.
The creeper was at the foot of the stairs when Xephos ran forward and stabbed it twice in the head with his dirk and kicked it back down the stairway where it began to swell and hiss.
"Not good timing!" voiced Honeydew from the top of the stairs as Xephos leapt back up the stairs right when the creeper exploded.
"Ah!" he yelped as the explosion knocked him into the wall. He stood up and shook himself off. "It's alright. we took it out." he sheathed his dirk. "although, in hindsight I should've used my sword."
"Okay..." said Honeydew as he tried to negotiate what was left of the stairs, which was really no more than a drop after the creeper had had it's way. "I'm a little bit worried that we might not be able to get back up here..." he said as he and Xephos dropped down the slope, which was too high for them to climb back out of.
"It'll be fine, there'll be another way out, surely." condoned Xephos as he headed back into the tunnel, this time only the dim glow of his sword guided him. "Besides, by now it's likely they know we're here." By his sword's light he walked ahead until once again the floor angled gradually down till it flattened out to a corridor again. But at the foot of the stairs, bathed in the glow of some light from behind stood a skeleton clutching a longbow in it's bone hands. Xephos groaned. Skeletons were his least favorite creatures in all of the world, the undead archers always spawned with a poor-quality, but none the less deadly bow or cross-bow, which they were all annoyingly well practised with. They didn't even look human, they stood just under seven-feet tall, and their skulls were different from a human's or dwarf's, their brow ridges were angled downward, making them look like they were constantly glaring at you with their ethereal red pin-pricks of eyes, they had fangs, and small horns on their domed skulls. They also had some very nasty claws.
"Okay, there is a skeleton down there." warned Xephos as Honeydew came up behind him.
"Let's just rush it so it's got no time to react." huffed Honeydew. "It looks like it's standing sentry so we must be getting close."
"Okay, go!"
Xephos ran down the slope towards the skeleton, who noticed him and drew an arrow from it's quiver and aimed at him as he drew closer. At the last second Xephos ducked and side-stepped as the arrow whistled past him and bounced off Honeydew's armor. Xephos ran towards the skeleton and ducked as it slashed at his face with it's claws before Xephos brought his sword around and severed the skeleton at it's spinal cord below it's ribs. The creature fell apart with a terrific noise that could've woken the dead, but to be honest, that wouldn't be much of an improvement. Xephos stooped to pick up two of the arrows that had fallen out of the skeleton's quiver, they never really had much arrows, only four or five, and they tended to use them up.
"Blimey, you took that guy out." grinned Honeydew as he walked ahead to the light source that turned out to be a single, fresh torch on a sconce that was just before the tunnel opened into what seemed to be a very wide but shallow room, the doors to it seemed to have been knocked off of their hinges and into the corridor by something.
Suddenly from the darkness within the room three skeletons emerged. One fired and arrow the hissed past Honeydew's face where it hit the stone wall and rebounded.
"Oohh!" he screamed. "Get back!" He picked up one of the two doors and using it as a shield from the arrows, backed towards Xephos.
"There's, like, five of them!" yelled Xephos as he got behind Honeydew, peeking out from the other side of the door as arrows shot past them. Suddenly, a creeper appeared in the fray, and began to run towards them, cowering behind a door.
"Oh gods, there's a creeper as well!"
While the creeper, whose name was actually Rickard, began to hiss, one of the skeleton's arrows accidentally hit it on the back of it's head, and creeper's, who unlike skeletons, do to appreciate how difficult it is to hit a target whilst a big green phallus is in the way and all of your mates are jostling about trying to get a shot too, stopped hissing, turned around and began hissing again, this time leaping at the group of skeletons. The skeletons had no time to react before the creeper exploded, sending their bones flying across the room and putting out the torch, plunging the room into dark.
"Well I think that they're mostly dead." sighed Xephos as he stepped out from behind the door as Honeydew leant it up against the wall and lit a torch, when another three skeletons stepped out the shadows.
"Yeah, well they don't look mostly dead to me!" Honeydew yelled as he ran forwards and cut down two of them.
Xephos knocked the other's head off with the flat of his blade, which flew to the opposing wall and hit it with a resounding crack.
Xephos took Honeydew's torch and relit the one that had been put out, then stepped into the room. It was long and dark, from what he could see, Xephos thought that the walls were lined with small prison cells he looked to either side of him to the opposite ends of the long room, and swore that in the darkness he could see the small lights of spawners. A second later, several skeletons appeared in a puff of black smoke next to the spawners.
"Oh there's loads in here!" he yelled as he retreated back into the tunnel as they tried to shoot him. "And zombies too." he added when he heard one gurgling, then ran past Honeydew and grabbed the door to use as a barricade. "There's too many monsters in here, friend!"
"Look, just stop whining and bloody kill them, for Craft's sake! Were all tooled up and stuff." Honeydew ran forwards to cut down a skeleton. "Come on, get in there!"
Xephos set his jaw and put on his great-helm, gave Honeydew the thumbs up and ran at a group of skeletons blocking the exit while holding the door in front of him. He collided with the rank of skeleton, knocking them into peices, continuing his momentum he rolled over the door that now had many crushed bones beneath it an leap forward, cutting a skeleton in half before if could even grab an arrow.
Honeydew ran beside him, smashing in a zombie's head with the pommel of his sword.
"There's too many!" said Xephos as arrows bounced off his armor. The rank of skeletons in front of the spawner far to their left drew another set of arrows ready to fire.
"Come on then!" yelled Honeydew as he ran forward with Xephos beside him. The two jumped into the air as the archers released their arrows, they didn't seem to touch them as Xephos cut an archer in half length-ways. Honeydew was dual weilding with his axe, cutting through the skeletons in a savage ball of fury.
"We need to light this place up!" called Xephos as they approached the spawner.
"Don't go down, we got this!" Honeydew yelled. "This is tense! Tense as hell! It's like were in the Four Towers!"
"Let's clear some of these bastards out!"
Xephos ducked as another skeleton shot at him, the arrow narrowly missing his vision slits. "Come on then!"
Xephos drew his dirk and threw it at the skeleton, hitting it square in the head, killing it outright, the turning and slicing apart another two that attempted to sneak up on him. He looked over and saw Honeydew being forced into the tunnel again by a pair of zombies.
Xephos came at them from behind, slicing off one's head while the other was hacked in the shoulder be Honeydew, it's thick, black blood oozing across the floor as it fell.
They ran out of the tunnel where Honeydew looked to the right, seeing that another group of mobs were mobilizing around a spawner.
"Oh gods, there's more!" yelled Honeydew. "Good thing Peculier gave us this armor."
"Go and take out as many of the skeletons over there as you can." Xephos said, looking left, seeing only two remaining skeletons guarding the left spawner. "I'll take care of this spawner." he produced a torch from his pack, which he lit off of the one on the wall, nodded at Honeydew then ran forwards.
The skeletons saw him coming a long way off, shooting at him, but Xephos nimbly ducked out of their paths, dispatching one then knocking the other's head off with the torch, right as another appeared behind him from the spawner. As it was about to strike Xephos noticed it and spun around, thrusting his word at it's face, which slammed right through it, the rest of the skeleton fell away, leaving the skull hanging from Xephos's blade.
He turned to the spawner and slammed the handle of the torch through the top of the cage, it torch illuminating the area around the spawner, allowing no more skeleton to spawn from it.
"I've lit this one up!" Xephos yelled, turning to see Honeydew retreating from the onslaught of arrows and zombies. "I don't have many torches left though, do you?" he asked as he helped Honeydew to kill a zombie and an archer that had followed him into the tunnel that they used as their safe haven.
"I've got enough to get that one down there." said Honeydew, nodding at the spawner at the right, thoughly guarded by mostly skeletons.
"We've cleared this side out, let's get the other one, and there is a load of skeletons there too."
The two of them rushed out from the tunnel and took cover from the arrows behind a large counter that protruded into the room.
"Can you light that spawner up?" asked Xephos as Honeydew peered over the counter top, ducking down as an arrow shot past.
"I can get there if you can buy me time." he smiled. "Just leave some for me."
They ran out from behind the counter, Honeydew with a torch in hand shouting "Take them out! Take them out!"
Xephos was dimly aware of an arrow in his shoulder as he charged a group of the skeletal archers, slicing up as he did so, thankfully skeletons were not much problem at close range.
"Go go go!" urged Honeydew as he approached the spawner, Xephos cutting a swath for him in the archers until he threw down the torch on the spawner. Honeydew then swung his axe around and threw it at a skeleton that was sneaking up on Xephos, shattering it.
"These are going down easily!" yelled Xephos as he sliced open the last one with a clatter.
He looked back at the hall, which was now so covered in bones it was hard to tell where the floor was.
"Oh, my friend was have totally destroyed these guys." Xephos smiled, taking off his helmet and hanging it from his pack. He now saw that they had not entirely escaped unscathed.
Honeydew had a deep looking scratch across his jaw from a skeleton, and and arrow in his back. Although it did not seem to be bothering him.
"Are you alright, friend?" he asked. "You've got an arrow in your back."
"'S all right." Honeydew grimaced as he reached around and pulled the arrow out of his armor, which seemed to be the only thing that it had penetrated, save a small spit of dwarf blood on the tip. "Only nicked me. But what about you?"
"I think it's fine." said Xephos as he reached and pulled the arrow out of the notch in his armor, then breaking it.
"We are so pro." beamed Honeydew, looking back across the long room littered with bones and arrows as he lit another torch, slightly lightening the room more.
"We should try to salvage some of these arrows." Xephos said. "Then try to find Granny."
As though in response, a low, gutteral growl echoed across the hall from the cell directly next to where the spawner and Xephos stood.
Honeydew turned, unable to see inside of the cell.
"What was that?" he asked.
Xephos took the torch and moved closer to the cell, and through the bars of the iron door on the tiny cell was Granny Bacon, pressed up against the bars.
"My gods, It's Granny." gasped Xephos.
"Granny!" cried Honeydew running up to the cell door. "How are you!"
"Why is she making noises?" asked Xephos warily, backing away as Honeydew got closer.
Granny groaned again, sounding anything but human.
"Open the door." said Xephos, nodding at a lever next to the door. "Let her out."
Honeydew turned.
"I-Should we?" he stammered.
"Yeah."
"But what if she's-"
"It's Granny!" said Xephos is exasperation, stepping frowards and hitting the lever.
"What if she's been afflicted by the taint!" Honeydew finished as the cell door swung open outwards.
Granny Bacon, who'd been leaning hard on the door now teetered on the brink of falling over, Honeydew made no move no catch her, but she did regain he balance, although she was not as she'd been before. She was bent and hunched, he eyes empty and her skin a hue of green. She gurgled at Honeydew.
"She's making weird noises," He said as Granny began to shuffle slowly towards him. "Xephos, I'm freaking out." He began to run backwards.
"I'm freaking out as well." said Xephos, who's voice attracted Granny's attention, and began to stumble towards Xephos, who followed Honeydew in backing towards the other side of the room.
"Look at her! Look at her!" Honeydew cried as the two walked backwards side by side, Granny following. "What's going on?"
"I don't know!" screamed Xephos.
"See I told you!" shouted Honeydew. "I bloody told you: "What if there's something wrong with her?". Look at her!"
"What do we do?" asked Xephos as the two of them ran from Granny to the middle of the hall where the counter made a bottle-neck opposite another tunnel that presumably led out from the hall.
"Get the doors and barricade her over there!" said Honeydew, sprinting over to the tunnel they had entered through, grabbing the door Xephos used as a barricade while Xephos picked up the other one.
They raced back to the bottle-neck where Granny was approaching slowly but steadily, groaning again.
"Oh gods!" yelled Honeydew as he and Xephos laid the doors down length-ways, using some nearby bones to prop them up.
"There we go, there we go!" said Honeydew, standing back to look at the frankly pathetic barricade as Granny approached.
"So what do we do, are we supposed to lock her in or something?" asked Xephos as Granny approached, he stepped back hurridly.
"We can figure that out now, don't worry though," assured Honeydew. "she'll never be able to get through the barricade-"
Granny walked right up to the barricade and deftly knocked it over.
"Oh no she's breaking through, she's breaking through!" wailed Honeydew sprinting to the back of the room.
"Oh Jebus!" Xephos yelled as he followed, Granny began drooling.
Honeydew and Xephos were at the back of the room and Granny was approaching, backed up against the cell door of a cage.
"Oh gods, were' backed up!" yelled Xephos, looking for a way out as Granny drew closer. "We're up against a wall!"
Honeydew turned and pulled on the cell door's lever, opening it and running into the small room that was "standing room only".
"Get in the cell!" he yelled to Xephos. "Quick!"
Xephos looked back and saw Granny edging closer.
"No, we can't! We can't!" he yelled as he ran to the opposite corner of the room, but granny kept going for Honeydew, inside the cell. "It locks from the outside!"
Granny was only a few feet from the cell now.
"Oh, god's she's coming for you..."
"Shhh..." whispered Honeydew as he backed as far as he could into the tiny cell, Granny was close enough that he could reach out and touch her, and he could smell her rancid breath. She raised her hand and pulled down on the lever, shutting him in.
"Ahhhhhhhh!" Honeydew wailed, as Granny turned to Xephos. "I'm in the dark, Xephos!"
"And now she's coming for me!" Xephos squealed, running back towards the other side of the room.
"What's goin' on?" Honeydew asked.
"Are we just going to kite her around, or can we actually try to get her in a cell?" Xephos asked, and then did a u-turn and ran a wide turn around Granny, whose loose skin was mottled grey in the torchlight. "I'm terrified."
"I'm locked in Xephos!" Honeydew called as Xephos ran up to his cell.
"I'll get you out, she locked you up." Xephos pulled the lever and stepped out of the way as the door swung open. "Come out here."
"Ah, okay." Honeydew got out of the cell, but as he looked over Xephos's shoulder, he could see Granny was sneaking up. "Maybe we should talk to her?" He pushed Xephos aside as Granny came towards him again.
"Granny?" he asked.
Granny groaned.
"She's just moaning and groaning." stammered Xephos as she got closer to Honeydew.
"Is everything okay?" he asked as she got closer, then she lashed out and struck Honeydew across the face with surprising speed and strength.
"Ow!" yelled Honeydew, ducking out of the way of another punch and running over to Xephos. "She's hitting me! She's hitting me!"
"I think we might just have to fight back." said Xephos as Granny continued to follow them.
"What's she got?" asked Honeydew, seeing something in Granny Bacon's hand.
"Is that bacon?" said Honeydew as Xephos circled around behind her. "She's hitting me with bacon, Xephos."
"Hit her, see if you can knock her out of her trance." said Xephos, who was getting sick of this.
"Okay, okay. Oh gods, forgive me for doing this." Honeydew said as She started to follow Xephos.
"Do it!" Xephos yelled.
Honeydew ran up behind he and punched her in the back out the head with a reasonable amount of force. All of a sudden, as though Honeydew's punch had been the only thing holding her back, Granny Bacon's face fell onto the ground with a meaty splat, leaving only the flesh beneath her skin, turned strangely green, intact.
"Uhh!" Xephos recoiled. "Oh my gods!"
"AAAAHHHHHH!" screamed Honeydew. "OH MY GODS!" he calmed down slightly. "That, that is not good..."
Granny rounded on Honeydew, her bottom jaw agape, blood trickling from it.
"That is very bad news indeed." agreed Xephos as Zombie Granny turned to him, her red eyes lidless and glaring, the muscles on her face clearly working as she screamed at him.
"Uhhh..." stammered Xephos.
"Oh my gods!" yelled Honeydew as he ran for the other side of the barricade followed by Xephos. After a few seconds of bewilderment, Granny seemed to realise that her quarry were trying to escape her, she turned much more quickly that before and ran at Honeydew, who was feebly trying to re-erect the pitiful barricade.
"Should we leave her?" said Xephos as they ran backwards, followed by the undead Granny Bacon, who jumped and cleared the barricade. "Is there any chance of her turning back? She's mad now!"
Honeydew was in hysterics as they ran from Granny, who was roaring after them, running up and jumping at Honeydew, pinning him down.
"Ahhh! She's gone mad! She's gone mad! She's gonna kill me!" Granny was poised to bite at her former lover, but Xephos drew his sword and slashed at her side, knocking her off of Honeydew long enough for him to rise, and spilling her entrails across the her front, but it could take more than that to kill the undead. More of her skin was beginning to slid off her, making her less and less recognisable
"Oh gods kill her! Kill her!" squealed Honeydew as she got back to her feet and ran at Xephos, Honeydew circling round behind. "Oh gods I'm sorry!" Honeydew ran behind her and impaled her on his sword. "Oh gods!" he said as she moaned a few time before sighing in an almost human manner, then she crumbled into a pile of dust at Honeydew's feet, all save her torn clothes that fell to the floor, spilling many foodstuffs from the pockets onto the ground, the only thing that disturbed the small pile of ash were small tear drops that fell from Honeydew's eyes as he looked at where Granny had once been.
"There we go." sighed Xephos, taking off his helmet and sheathing his sword. "She's dead."
"Oh gods!" cried Honeydew, collapsing to his knees in front of the remains of Granny. "Oh..." he whispered, picking up some meat that had fallen out of one of Granny's pockets. "...bacon."
Xephos left Honeydew for a few minutes to gather his thoughts. He wandered the room picking up dropped arrows wherever they littered the floor, by the time he'd finished salvaging as mush arrows and quarrels as he could he had a good two stacks of each. He returned to Honeydew, who seemed to be gently placing Granny's dust into a small bag.
"I'll bury her on the surface." he said, his voice as fragile as the dust he was gathering. "Someplace nice and peaceful."
"She'd have like that."
"Yeah..."
"I've found us some more arrows and bolts." Xephos said, dropping the latter next to Honeydew, thew were poorly made, but bad arrows are better than no arrows.
"Oh my goodness." Xephos breathed in. "That was...epic."
"Oh god's..." Honeydew tied up the bag and dropped it into his own one. "What have we done?"
"I'm not sure what we've done, but I feel guilty for doing it."
"We murdered her. In cold blood."
"I don't know," Xephos looked at the ceiling. "she was a zombie. We sort of had to kill her, but she was your lover. I'm sorry friend."
"Oh well, life goes on." said Honeydew, getting to his feet. Xephos saw what he was doing. He was using his "Hide-our-emotions-inside-of-ourselves" tactic. Xephos had learnt from experience not to disturb him when he was like this, else he would just get angry.
"Oh my gods that was horrifying!" Honeydew sighed in exasperation as he got up.
"Where did we come in here, anyway?" asked Xephos. "I've completely lost track of what we were doing."
"Well we came here to save Granny, and instead we killed her... so what we do next is anybody's guess."
"There's still a portal to destroy." said Xephos standing and walking to the middle of the hall where the stone counter jutted out, across from which was a wide tunnel that appeared to slope upwards into dark.
"There's something up here... I think." said Honeydew as he started past Xephos up into the narrowing passage. He stopped and turned to Xephos as it started to press into single file-only room. "Do you-do you want to go ahead, friend?" he stuttered.
"Well I don't have any torches left." Xephos said as he began to ascend anyway past Honeydew when the stairs began to double back, heading upwards. "We should probably go and pick up those ones we were throwing down to de-activate the spawners."
"I think that I also saw some coal down there..." agreed Honeydew, turning and leading the way back to the hall, leaving Xephos behind. "Back in the big room."
"Oh right?" said Xephos as he heard Honeydew enter the room and began to follow. He suddenlt heard Honeydew's footsteps rapidly approaching as he was just about to head into the hall.
"Okay never mind!" Honeydew said. "Never mind! Let's go-No, no, no, no, no, this way!" he told Xephos, leading him back up to the narrow stairway.
"What's down there?" asked Xephos suspiciously.
"Let's go up here?" Honeydew was trying to move Xephos along as quickly as possible. "There may've been two creepers down there." the dwarf admitted.
"I don't have any torches, you're going to have to lead the way." said Xephos quickly, suddenly very eager to be off.
"Oh, okay!" Honeydew quickly lit a torch and set off up the switch-back stairs.
"Two creepers?" asked Xephos as he looked back.
The two of them followed the stairs till they stopped and the tunnel led right. They followed this path for a while until the reached a closed door. Honeydew tested the handle to find that it wasn't locked, and led into a small room with a large hole in one corner that was fenced off and had a waterfall running into it, and in the other corner another wooden door stood.
"What the-" started Honeydew before Xephos pushed past him to the hole in the opposite right corner, where a sign hung from the fence.
Xephos read the sign as the water that fell from the ceiling splashed droplets into his face.
"Danger, deep mine excavation, long drops." The sign looked ancient, as did the drop that the water fell into, it was long, and Xephos couldn't see the bottom.
"Oh gods." said Honeydew, looking over to the door. "There's a door over here, though." he headed over and opened it, Xephos following him into the pre-lit room on the other side, where Honeydew was staring at something to his left.
Xephos entered the room to see what appeared to be a small office or study, the desk where Honeydew was staring was lit by one candle and sitting there, quill in hand was, undoubtably, Reverend John from Terrorvale.
"Uhh..." said Xephos.
"Err..." mumbled Honeydew.
"Ah!" Xephos yelped as he and Honeydew pushed back through the door, where they started to laugh hysterically.
"Umm?" said Honeydew without a clue what their next course of action should be.
Xephos walked back towards the door and pushed it open to poke his head through. John was on his feet, and reaching for his golden cerimonial sword, the same one by the look of it that he'd attacked Xephos with in his Terrorvale crypt.
"Hello?" he asked to the reverend.
"The master promises an eternity." he mumbled at Xephos.
"He doesn't look as well as he did the last time we saw him." Xephos said back to Honeydew. And indeed, Reverend John looked a mess. His black priest robes were torn and faded, a massive rip was through the center where Honeydew had stabbed him months ago, running through to the other side. His skin was also a greener tinge and his eyes squinty, Also half of his jaw was missing, his blood black and thick was slowly weeping from it, accompanied by his tongue lolling out of the side, giving him a strange lisp.
"No, he doesn't look as good." said Honeydew. "Well, we did kill him. Um..."
John drew his sword and began to walk towards Xephos.
"He's looking at me, Honeydew." Xephos warned as he backed into the room, John stepping into the doorway. Honeydew raised the torch.
"You still live?" John asked, cocking his head.
"Yep!" yipped Xephos as John stepped closer, visibly salivating.
"What are we going to..." said Honeydew. "...we're just going to have to kill him aren't we?"
John seemed to hear this, and did not seem to like it either.
"Embrace the dark!" John yelled as he ran at Xephos and slashed at him with his sword. Xephos blocked it with ease as Reverend John stepped back.
"Oh gods!" he yelled as Johns blade slid off his. "Yeah, he's attacking me."
John ran, albeit with a slight limp, back through the door.
"He's saying "Embrace the dark."." Xephos started after John and Honeydew followed.
The entered the room just in time to see the corner of John's robe disappear down a tunnel to the right.
"After him!" Honeydew bellowed, loading his crossbow as they ran to the tunnel, where John was crouching in wait. He leapt out at them and gave two wild slashes, one nicking Xephos on his jaw, giving him a shallow cut, the other one he ducked under as Honeydew shot a bolt that thudded into John's arm, pinning it to his torso. John decided that maybe it was a good time to run, and
"We're killing everyone, Xephos." Honeydew sighed as he pushed past him to take point, reloading and pulling out his blade. "He's off!" he yelled as they followed John down the lit tunnel. "He's off! Come back! Come back, you!"
John had disappeared from sight, but still they followed the tunnel as it turned and twisted, when suddenly Honeydew collapsed.
"Woah!" he moaned from the tunnel floor.
"What's wrong friend?" asked Xephos as Honeydew covered his ears and screwed his eyes shut.
"World hole Xephos! World hole!" he screamed, his deep voice echoing back through the tunnel.
"It's alright!" Xephos said, stepping over Honeydew, holding aloft his sword to come between him and John. "Israphel does those."
Honeydew suddenly went silent.
"Friend?" asked Xephos looking back.
Honeydew suddenly came to consiusness, opening his eyes and looking up at his friend.
"How long?" he asked.
"Seconds."
"Really?"
"I think we're getting better at keeping them at bay now."
"Or he's getting weaker."
"Maybe both." said Xephos handing back Honeydew his crossbow, thankfully still loaded. "We should hurry though, we don't want John to get away, the way I see it, Israphel's magic is weakened by something nearby, he must want for John to get away quite a lot if he's going to use a world hole on only one of us. So I suggest we start running."
"Good idea." agreed Honeydew, standing. "Here we go."
Xephos turned to follow after the Reverend, but the hallway ahead was as dark as a whale's belly.
"I don't have torches..."
Honeydew turned around and ran a few steps, wrenching a torch off of the wall and pushing past Xephos. "I'm back, I'm back!"
Honeydew led the way down the tunnel until it suddenly dropped into a stairway, they began to descend, but John had not run far during their set back, he'd been skulking in the shadows beyond their sight, and was now waiting at the bottom of the stairs. As Honeydew came down he jumped forwards, holding his sword awkwardly, jabbing Honeydew, but his sword, clearly not made for real warfare, bounced off the plate beneath the green surcoat, but not after leaving a tear in it.
"Ooh!" screamed Honeydew as he stepped back in surprise, John running back into the dark. "Oh wait, I think he's only got a crappy sword, so we might be all right."
"Gods what is he doing with these hit-and-run tactics?" asked Xephos.
They followed after John and began gaining on him, Honeydew shot a bolt after him which hit the Reverend in the back, but seeing as he was undead it would take more than that to stop him.
Suddenly John disappeared around a corner, Honeydew sped up and raced around it, when John, who was waiting by in front of a door that exited the tunnel, threw his sword at him. It spun through the air and hit Honeydew right between the eyes. But thankfully, John wasn't good with swords, and it hit Honeydew butt first, knocking him back around the corner looking dazed.
"Woah! Oh, ya bugger!" he swore as they heard the door slam shut. "Come 'ere! Come 'ere!" Honeydew got to his feet and headed back towards the wooden door.
"He ambushed you!" stated Xephos, looking at the sword. "But he threw his sword on the ground, so he's unarmed."
"This'll be easy!" said Honeydew, sheathing his blade and putting away his crossbow haughtily before approaching the door. "I'll make short work of him."
As Honeydew reached for the door, it opened very quickly and before Honeydew could react John lashed out at him from the other side, he appeared to be holding a piece of paper in his long dirty nails, the latter scratched across Honeydew's forearm when he held it up to block. John then quickly shut the door again.
"He doesn't have a sword, but he does have a very nasty piece of paper, and he's giving me paper cuts with it." Honeydew grimaced. "Which is probably more dangerous than that sword."
"Go and take him out then." urged Xephos. "Also, what is in that room?"
"Right, ya bastard, come 'ere!" growled Honeydew, kicking the door open with so much force that it sent John sprawling across the ground. "Gimme that piece o' paper! Come on!"
As John went to stand up Honeydew grabbed his head with both hands and twisted, breaking his neck. Reverend John fell to the floor dead for the second and hopefully last time. Honeydew bent and picked up the small piece of paper crumpled in John's hand.
"I've got it!" he yelled. "He's dead."
"Uhh..." Xephos groaned as he entered the room. "Honeydew, have you even bothered to look around yet?"
As Honeydew looked up he realised where they were.
They were in a small rectangular room, on the left side of the room there were the ruins of a long dead portal frame similar to the one they found in the mine shaft, but at the other end, there was a huge grotesquely carved new frame, it's purple light illuminating the room in a sickly hue. But the strange thing was the entire room was sand, the walls, the floor, sand like in the Cave Of Terror all of those days ago, banked up against the walls like it was thrown forth by the portals, there were also strange twisted cacti growing in the portal light, dark green and with more spikes than a battalion of pikemen.
"We are in a horrible room, here." said Xephos.
"There's a portal there." Honeydew walked towards it, stuffing the now forgotten piece of paper in his pocket. "That one isn't working. But the other one is working!"
"Aah yeah... that one might be the one that Peculier's Father destroyed." Xephos glanced back at the broken frame as he walked towards the throbbing light within the other. "So what do we do with this one?"
"I think that we've got to destroy it, don't we?" said Honeydew as he followed his friend towards the portal, drawing his diamond pick. "Not try to go through it."
"Not try go through it? Okay: destroy it."
"This is what Knight Peculier taught us, Xephos." Honeydew began to slowly hack away at the side of the portal frame, which was stylized similarly to Lysander's Altar, chipping off flakes of obsidian from the twisting heads slowly.
"Can I see that piece of paper you found, friend?" asked Xephos after a while.
Honeydew reached into his pocket and fished out the paper, handing it to Xephos. "I didn't even have a look yet."
Xephos took the paper and unfolded the sad crumpled thing, the size of Xephos's hand. It seemed to only be a fragment of a much larger piece of paper, it's edges were harshly ripped. But it seemed to be a piece of a map or something similar, it was mostly unmarked, portraying a large flat land, only marked by the occasional hill, and a small river that snaked cross one of the ripped corners.
"I think it's a map..." Xephos said.
"A map? A map of what?" asked Honeydew, still hammering at the frame, about halfway through one of the arms.
"I'm not even sure if it's a map, let alone where it leads."
"It's useless then, get rid of it."
"No...I think it may be important."
Honeydew looked up. "How?"
"Well, John didn't have anything other than this on him, did he?" Xephos looked over at the Reverend's body.
"I don't think so."
"And if Israphel wanted to try and stop us so John could get away, it's either because he had something important, or knew something, which is unlikely, seeing as he stayed behind when he should have run away."
"I suppose you are right there." agreed Honeydew. "But how important could an old map be?"
"We should ask Peculier if he knows when we see him next."
"So long as we can sleep first, shit I'm tired."
"I think we deserve a rest soon." Xephos nodded.
After a moment of silence that was broken by Honeydew's cracking of the pickaxe on the obsidian portal frame.
"Okay, nearly there, nearly there." sighed Honeydew as his muscles began to grow weary, but there was only a few inches of obsidian left. "Watch my back incase anyone else we've previously met before is turned undead and is gonna attack us." he said to Xephos, who drew his sword and faced the door.
"Oh god's what if Daisy's turned!" yelled Honeydew as he came to the realisation that she just might well be. He gave the portal one last whack and the side he was hacking at ruptured and like before the light within the portal retreated with what seemed to be a woeful sigh, and suddenly leaving the room in darkness.
"Don't think about that." advised Xephos as Honeydew lit a torch that gave the room a much more natural lighting.
"Oh gods, oh gods..." Honeydew moaned as he looked about for an exit.
"What'd be the best thing to do now, in order to get out?" asked Xephos. "We're at the bottom of this bloody castle in the middle of nowhere. How deep do you reckon we are? Do you think we could just dig up?" Xephos though that they must be close to the surface, because they hadn't really gone very deep, and going back through the castle wasn't a very ideal route.
Xephos thought on it. "Also, sand. I don't know if you've noticed this, but why is this room made of sand, the walls are sand, the floor is sand, the roof is sandstone..."
"And there was sand..." said Honeydew as Xephos pulled the Dwarf's shovel out of his pack and began to dig out one of the walls by the portal frame. "By the Yogcave. R.I.P, never forget. It will live on in my heart. There was sand there, and there's sand here..."
Xephos grunted in approval as he struck the wall with is shovel and dug out a chunk of sand, causing part of the wall to become unstable. A waterfall of sand flooded into the room, raising the floor to ankle height where Xephos stood.
"I think we might be able to dig up to the surface." Thankfully, though this made the digging easier, and soon the ceiling ended and as the last of the sand fell past Xephos moonlight fell through the little rabbit hole that he'd dug out of the portal room. "Oh yeah it's right there, gods loom how close we are! We're nearly right at the surface already, hopefully there are no creepers up there." said Xephos pointing out of the small hole to the outside.
"Well, you've just jinxed yourself now, haven't you?" said Honeydew looking at their way out.
The sand tunnel was steeply angled and the exit was about ten yards away from Xephos, he reached out and began to climb out of the miserably small hole, eventually reaching the surface and looking about.
"Here we are!" he said with satisfaction.
"You're doomed." yelled Honeydew said he began to follow.
Xephos helped him out of the hole and Honeydew saw that they were right outside of Mistral City by the moat, specifically near the whirlpool by Jasper's House, that was now no more than smoldering embers. The hole had come up by the riverbank, where they could see the city was still burning, the ash had settled and covered Mistral in a blanket for it's last sleep.
"Oh right, look where we are!" exclaimed Xephos as he and Honeydew swept the sand off of themselves.
"The bright lights of Mistral City." said Honeydew sarcastically.
"Oh man, poor old Mistral." Xephos followed Honeydew towards the moat there part of the City Wall had fallen into the shallows, making a convenient bridge up to the outskirts.
"By the way, Xephos," Honeydew spoke up as they walked into the shallow water before the fallen wall. "I don't know if you've noticed, but Fumblemore's Tower, it's gone. It's gone, I can't see it." He looked up at the place where it had once been, pointing for Xephos. "Not like, fallen gone, but vanished gone. Unless I'm blind, or just stupid."
This was true, Xephos hadn't seen any wreckage of the Tower at all, not in the City or in the sky. It was just...gone.
"Oh, right?" Xephos looked at the island that used to have the tree-bridge connecting it, but now the tree had fallen to land atop Snozzi's House Of Adult Entertainment And Pleasure.
"So either he's blown himself up, or it's disappeared like Dalaran." said Honeydew in a mysterious tone. He referred to Dalaran, the lost city of the Elves, the elves had once been a race of spell-casters and arches like no others, but they were snooty and arrogant, and didn't enjoy the company of other races, neither did any of the others. Especially the dwarves. So one day the elves decided to all head back to their home land; the huge City-Nation of Dalaran. No one is quite certain what happened next, but nobody saw any more elves. People were sent to Dalaran to see what had become of them, but all that they found was a huge crater in the earth, Some theorised that the elves had teleported themselves to some distant land, others that they had accidentally (or purposefully) blown themselves to dust, but no one tried to find out because nobody really cared.
"Yeah, it's weird." agreed Xephos as he started up the sloping wall. "But where was it that Old-I mean Knight Peculier said we were supposed to go?"
"Verigan's...Fist?" queried Honeydew as he began to follow Xephos, but a zombie leapt at him from behind him. Honeydew punched it aside as though it were only a minor inconvenience before drawing his sword.
"No, no, remember he said; "Take the back road out of town."?" corrected Xephos as he waited for Honeydew to kill the zombie.
"The back road..." mused Honeydew, becoming distracted and allowing the zombie to thrash him across the chest, doing no damage except annoying Honeydew.
"Ow! You little shit, come 'ere!" he growled, swinging at the zombie, but it continually ducked out of his attacks. Xephos eventually got tired of this and drew an arrow from his recently refilled quiver and nocking it into his bow, taking a moment to aim before letting it loose, striking the zombie in behind the ear, sinking deep into it's brain.
"Ah! That one counts as mine!" shouted Honeydew. "Sometimes I swear that you have Elf blood in you."
"You didn't do a very good job, did you?" said Xephos, eminating smugness.
"No, I suppose not." answered Honeydew glumly.
Xephos began laughing as he walked backwards up the wall, but he slipped and ended up sliding back down the wall.
"Oh, well good effort there, mate. Good effort." laughed Honeydew, happy that the universe had balanced itself out again. "Well done."
"I was looking around to see where we were." protested Xephos as he struggled in the shallows like a turtle on it's back.
"You've outdone yourself." Honeydew chuckled as he reached out and gave Xephos an arm up.
They reached the top of the wall and stood once again within the ruins of the City, leaving a trail of footprints in the ashes as they walked forwards.
"Why is there water here?" asked Xephos, staring at a large puddle of grey water that surrounded a house that appeared to be what was once Jasper's house, but was now a frame of charcoal, what appeared to be Jasper's day-old bath water had splashed down through the house and now formed a small lake in the otherwise desolate landscape of grey. "What was this area here?"
"Spider." informed Honeydew, loading his crossbow as Xephos ran towards the black arachnid that had emerged from one of the fountains near Jasper's house, with his in hand sword. He stabbed it twice before jumping aside to let Honeydew finish it with a bolt to the head.
"I think this was Jasper's House, wasn't it?" asked Xephos as he walked towards the husk.
"This must be Jasper's bath water that's flooded out of his hot-tub."
"And then there's his airship!" remembered Honeydew running towards the broken airship that lay between Duke Smithy and the Sports Field.
"Do you reckon that that was the airship that was over at Jasper's house?" asked Xephos, now confused. "So is Jasper good or bad? Was Lysander actually the bad one? I don't know."
"Oh gods..." sighed Honeydew sadly, looking up at the night sky, probably the same night sky as the one they saw before entering the Castle. "...I don't know anymore!"
"Were we tricked by Israphel?" asked Xephos as he began to walk towards Granny Bacon's Tea Shoppe. The flames that had covered the buildings were now signifigantly lower, most of the houses and shops were enterable, but there would be nothing in them, not now.
"Granny was captured and turned into a zombie," Honeydew began to list.
"Fumblemore and Father Braeburn are missing."
"Turns out Lysander was plotting all along, and was a cultist. And Reverend John was undead, well, he never died, but we gave him a second death."
"Maybe we have to get into the habit of burning and salting the bodies supernatural like." mused Xephos as they began to walk down the side street towards Granny's old shop.
"Look." he said as they stood before where the door would once have been, but now all of the walls where gone, and the only thing in the shoppe that had survived was the counter and part of the back room, the wall hiding which had caved in since they last visited. ""Granny Bacon's Greasy Spoon Tea Shoppe."." Xephos read as he walked into the ruins, looking for anything in the back room that might be of value.
"Oh gods Xephos! Granny Bacon!" Honeydew suddenly cried out as he followed Xephos into the the back room where there turned out to be nothing other than some unspoiled cake under a steel lid on a cake-stand.
"She's never coming back, Honeydew..." whispered Xephos, taking a handful of his cake and eating it too.
"Buahaha-omnomnom-buahaha-omnomnom- buahaha..." Honeydew cried inbetween absolutely stuffing himself with cake, finishing the whole thing.
While he was at that, Xephos walked around to the back of the tea shoppe where water was streaming across the floor and he could hear water gurgling. He rounded the corner to see it was from a burst pipe coming out of a small unspecified cubical-like structure.
"Why is this water here?" he wondered aloud, noticing the door of the small room was still intact, Honeydew, out of curiosity came after him as Xephos opened the door, where a tone plaque was hanging from the door.
"Oh." he said.
"What?" asked Honeydew who couldn't see the sign, Xephos suddenly walked back into the tea shoppe and out of the water very quickly.
""Outhouse, please wash your hands and flush."." recited Xephos, not having to turn to see the look on Honeydew's face.
"Oh gods!" cried Honeydew running after Xephos. "I'm swimming in other people's feculence, Xephos." Even though the water seemed pretty damned clean.
"Uhg, yuck." mumble Xephos as he began to walk towards the lumber works, where he assumed the back-road would be."
"Which way was the back road out of town?" he asked as they exited Victoria Street began through the grave yard. "This way?"
"Yeah, I think so." said Honeydew, confirming Xephos's first thoughts.
"Yeah because we came in through the north side, and west is this way, so this must be the way surely."
"Though the graveyard." agreed Xephos as a cow, probably the one that Honeydew hit off of the sports court, ran past on fire, mooing madly.
"Oh gods! The cow's on fire." cried Honeydew as the cow disappeared around the side of The Church Of The Holy Apple.
They continued to the lumber works, where Xephos showed Honeydew the sign on the notice board about how Mrs Miggles had found her cat and gone to Icaria.
"Icaria? What is Icaria?" asked Honeydew.
"I don't know, I think that was where Father Braeburn said that he was going, though. Maybe it's our next destination."
"Maybe..." wondered Honeydew a he ran underneath the archway on the lumber yard. "Ah! Here it is! Here we go over here!" he shouted, spotting the back road.
"Oh right." said Xephos as he followed to where the back road, a bridge, arched over a canal or something and out towards where the giant rock skull was.
"Look at this, this looks like the back road." Honeydew led the way up the bridge and through a large tunnel out to the Skull Pass. "Oh, and there's the skull." said Honeydew as the exited the tunnel and walked along the path that led to the viewing platform where they stopped for a moment.
"There's the skull..." breathed Xephos, staring at the Skull intenetly.
"Yes... the skull." puffed Honeydew. "Did I mention that it looks like a Skeletal Arches skull and not a regular skull, i realised down in the castle-"
"The skull...with Israphel inside it."
"Wha-Woah, woah woah..." yelled Honeydew looking over at the skull.
Standing in the mouth of the horrible effigy was and even more terrible creature. While it was to dark to make out his face, it was most deffinitely Israphel. His face, pale and white as a cold winter's snow peered back at them, his eyes red and burning like angry coals behind slits glowed with nothing but hate. In his hand he seemed to hold a bow, but as Xephos reached for his, he did not draw, instead he disappeared into the mouth of the beats in a whirl of his black cloak.
"What..." stammered Honeydew.
"Do we chase?" asked Xephos.
"Of course we chase, Xephos, of course we chase!" Honeydew yelled we must saaaaaave Daaaaisy!" Honeydew chortled as he ran forwards.
"Wait, friend!" yelled Xephos, grabbing his friend by the arm, the strong, tall dwarf pushed to get past. "No! It's just what he wants!" Xephos strained but managed to push his friend back.
"We've got to get after him!" protested Honeydew. "He could have Daisy and Peculier."
"It's obviously a trap." Xephos gestured to the cave. "Peculier is a day gone, he would have been long gone by now, Israphel is trying to lure us in."
"But we can kill him!"
"Not like this! our aromor ins riddled with holes now, we're tired, it's dark, and he has whatever allies he can conjour. We should wait until morning."
"What, sleep?"
"We should take turns while the other keeps watch."
Honeydew finally began to see the sense in the idea.
"Right." he said, beginning to walk towards some trees that would hide them well. "I'll take first watch, I'm not tired."
"My thanks, friend." yawned Xephos, sitting down with his back to the tree. "I'll keep my gear on incase we need to get out quickly." He shut his eyes and after a few seconds he stared to snore quietly.
"You sleep friend." Honeydew then began to yawn too. "I'll just sit down too...to give my legs a rest." Honeydew sat down on the other side of the tree and leant his head against it. After only a few short seconds though, he too was snoring, snoring loud enough that it echoed out into the night.
