Evil...school...so...tired...must...destroy...college...
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...But, on the OTHER hand, I'm sleepy...time for a nap...
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ZZZZzzzzz...
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Disclaimer: Authoress only owns what she invented, and guess what - Yugioh's not one of those things!
And if this is news to you, that's sweet, but I still pity you.
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The nearest staircase (that Jou remembered the location of) was blocked from sight behind several of the large, three-tailed monsters Jou had said were all over this level. When they caught the scent of living human flesh, they waved their tails and clicked their beaked jaws, eager to feed despite the aura of demon and fire they could also easily detect.
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"Let me take care of these spiky jerks," Jou said, taking a big step towards the stairs and raising his flameblade over his head.
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Seeing one of their potential prey move away from the rest, and especially move closer to them, the beasts couldn't control their raging appetites and charged forward.
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"Eat fire, ya stupid monstas!" Jou yelled, swinging the flameblade at them.
As Jou moved, the orange blade began burning with brightly colored flames, and those flames coalesced into a snake-like dragon's head. The fiery snake-dragon-thing surged out of the flameblade, engulfing the now screaming monsters in a wall of incinerating fire.
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When Jou was finished, there was nothing left but a completely clear stairwell and smoking ashes that used to be bloodthirsty monsters.
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"I'm NEVA gonna get tired of dat!" Jou laughed.
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And so up the smoldering stairs they went. Unfortunately, just like the trench of red water in the poisoned basement, the stairs leading upwards failed to follow any sort of discernable pattern whatsoever.
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Sometimes the stairs would be straight and steep, then they would level out until they were practically flat, bending this way and that as they ascended, then the stairs would curl upwards in maddeningly tight spirals, sometimes going clockwise and sometimes going counterclockwise. And there were landings that lead nowhere. They were placed all at random, and were usually filled with more of the three-tailed beasts they had already encountered.
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"Ah…man…what did…I do…ta deserve dis?" Jou wheezed when they finally reached a landing that wasn't filled with monsters.
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It was, however, the furthest up that one could go on this particular staircase. Yami dispatched the lone three-tailed monster that had been prowling in the hallway just outside the archway by himself - not difficult - and kept an eye out for any other predators while the other two mortals got their breathing back under control.
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"Can I just ask one thing?" Yugi piped up, "Why doesn't this crazy place obey the laws of physics?""It's magic," Yami said without looking over his shoulder, "It has its own laws, and this is actually not that complex a building."
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"Da second floor connects ta da seventy-fifth! Dat seems pretty complex ta me," Jou said as he worked the kinks out of his arms.
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Yami peered over his shoulder at the two mortals, blinking. Yugi must have learned to read his expressions fairly well, because the boy sighed and said "This is the third floor, isn't it."
"All dat runnin' an' fightin' an' ya mean ta say dat we only got one floor higher up!" Jou exclaimed.
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"At least we went up and not down," Yugi said, sighing again.
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"Guys, I'm really startin' ta dislike dis hard-core magic stuff," Jou pouted, "What do we do now?"
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"Keep going, find another staircase going up, find the others, and beat the guy whose fortress we're inside of?" Yugi offered as the three of them (cautiously) headed out into the corridors of the third floor.
"Good plan," Jou said, smirking with renewed optimism, "And hey - s'not like it can get any worse!"
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As soon as Jou finished speaking, a stone slab slid out of the ceiling right by the stairway arch, slipping into place with a ground-shaking THUD and completely cutting Yami, Yugi, and Jou off from the way back downstairs. Unfortunately, there were no witchboil sconces in this part of Hauru's fortress. Yami could see almost nothing, and the mortals were far worse off.
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"…Thank you, Jonouchi," Yami sighed, "Thank you EVER so much."
"Ah, c'mon! S'probably just a coincidence!" Jou protested, "I still say dere's no proof dat saying dat causes bad luck!"
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"We aren't going to get anywhere if we stand in the dark and bicker," Yugi pointed out, sounding irritated, "Does anyone have a flashlight or anything on them?"
"…If we had a torch, I could set it on fire with my sword," Jou offered.
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Thankfully, Yami had actually been in this sort of situation once before and knew just what to do. Jou was confused when Yami instructed him to hold out his flameblade, but managed to follow Yami's unusual-sounding instructions until the gleaming orange metal began shining brightly, lit from within by the glow of its internal flames.
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While Yugi and Jou marveled over this new trick, Yami was thinking very hard very fast. Certainly the flameblade Jou had managed to acquire had looked like Yen's favored weapon, but this proved it…and raised more concerns for the mage-demon. Yen had been a loyal servant, and upon his death his treasured weapon had been interred in a secret vault of the royal line - so this meant that Hauru had raided the vault and brought the spoils back to his fortress.
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Excellent!
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There were a few other things that had been hidden away with Yen's sword, just a couple little golden trinkets Yami had been keeping an eye on…the Hellpit had interrupted things but now…Yami paused in his thoughts to shake his head in personal disgust.
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'Honestly, I sound like that tomb-pillager!' Yami scolded himself, but still resolved to keep an eye out for anything that might have been his.
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"Okay, one extra-dangerous trip through a dark an' spooky castle 'o doom comin' right up!" Jou declared, marching forward, flameblade held aloft like a torch.
"Wait, Jou, you don't even know where you're going!" Yugi exclaimed, heading off after his friend.
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Smirking slightly to himself, although he was uncertain as to why he was feeling amused, Yami brought up their rear.