Enter the Tower.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" Ridley pressed their guide, looking up the dark hallway that was supposed be located beneath Lauthal's tower.
"Oh, believe me," the goblin guide snickered, "Tokius wants to help you into the castle." He ran his fingers through the air wildly as though he were drumming on it, "just follow this corridor up to the end, and go up the flight of stairs. You'll come out in a trapdoor near the main hall."
"You're not coming?" said Marina, as always, without emotion. The guide wiggled his fingers again.
"Oh no," he replied in shock, "I've no disagreement with the Empress, and even if I did, I've not the stupidity to go sneaking about her castle in the hopes of attacking her . No offense intended, of course." He had one of those sly, slippery voices that identified him immediately as untrustworthy.
Jereez managed a false smile, "Of course." The goblin darted back up the corridor, the way they'd come, leaving the group to continue alone. They followed the path on, Ridley in the lead with a torch and, as the guide had said, came to a staircase.
Carefully now, Ridley looked up it before handing the torch to Norda and beginning his ascent. At the top, he searched the ceiling with his fingers until he found the crevice where the edges of the trapdoor was, and pushed forcefully against the door. When nothing happened, Elwood appeared beside him and offered his own strength. There was a creaking sound of cement moving across cement as the dwarf pushed upwards, and then the trapdoor crept slowly upward.
The dwarf peered up through the gap. The trapdoor must have been located in one of the passageways in the castle, as it looked out across a t-junction of corridors ahead. Elwood bobbed back down temporarily as two figures, in monk-like costumes, walked past, down the other corridor then, when all was clear for a few minutes, he pushed the trapdoor lid back and leapt into the corridor, reaching back down to help Ridley and the others up.
"Which way now?" Ridley whispered as they accumulated in the corridor, but no one, even Jereez, seemed to know.
"Split up," the imp suggested. There were only three directions to go, and six of them, so that should make two to each corridor. At the same time, there was a shout from the other end of the corridor, the opposite end to the t-junction, and suddenly that end was filled with angry looking soldiers racing towards the group.
For a moment the adventurers looked indecisive. Run, or stay and fight? Then Damon drew his sword.
"We'll hold them off for as long as we can," he told Ridley and then Jereez, looking them both deep in the eyes, "you must stop Lauthal." They were the two obvious choices. Ridley, who's sword had the power to return the Dragon's breath to its rightful place, and Jereez, who's evil twin sister had been the bane of her existence for so long.
Ridley hesitated again, unwilling to leave Marina to the mercy of the oncoming mob, until Norda put a hand on his shoulder gently.
"She's safer with us than with the Empress," the elf acknowledged, and Ridley was forced to admit she was right. He and Jereez began to hurry towards the t-junction. They looked up and down the corridor unsuccessfully.
"You go left, I'll go right," Jereez told the thief. She was, of course, volunteering herself to go the same way the monks had earlier.
"What if one of us meets Lauthal?" Ridley asked, already half in agreement. Jereez considered it quickly.
"Yell," she replied, "yell very loudly." They both nodded in agreement, and dashed forward in their respective directions. There was no time to waste.
In the corridor, Lauthal's dangerous mob of soldiers finally met, with a clash, the other four, each of whom honestly believed this might be the last fight they would ever see, and only one of whom, understandably, didn't really care.
