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Kiven watched as each of the others picked a door.

He debated with himself whether or not he should choose one of them to follow or pick another door. He walked up to the one the fancy French girl went through and peered curiously inside -then quickly decided that he had no interest in following that path.

He peeked in the other man's door, but that one didn't appeal to him either.

So, with a shrug, Kiven crossed the corner to the other two doors. Gripping the knob of the right door he tried to open it. But the door would not budge. He tried again, pulling against the door as hard as he could. That did not work, so he tried pushing on it. Still it would not open.

Ever stubborn, even to a fault, Kiven backed up a few paces and got a running start, ramming his shoulder into the door. But still, it did not budge.

…And all he had to show for his effort was a sore shoulder.

'Well fine then!' He thought. 'I'll just try this door instead. So there.'

Kiven closed his hand around the knob of the left door. This one turned with ease and the door swing open. Smiling in satisfaction, Kiven took one step into what looked like an empty room.

…And plummeted down a dark pit.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- !"

Eva clutched the Iron wrought Key tied loosely to her waist.

It was her only companion in the darkness that surrounded her. A darkness she had known ever since she made the mistake of using the key on the door that led into the pit of cobblestone that was her current domain.

She couldn't quite recall just how long she'd been there. For practicality's sake it couldn't have been more than an hour, for paranoia's sake could it have been a day? two days?

She sobbed lightly, the frustration and dismay getting the best of her at last. She let the falls of her hair droop over eyes as she settled into her tears when suddenly she heard something. A sound for the first time not of her own making!

She panicked at first, scrambling for a grip on the key. It wasn't sharp, but it was large, spanning well over the length of her forearm. It was heavy and blunt. It would make a suitable weapon if needed.

The sound resonated louder and louder. She tried hard to discern its location in the black muck that was the darkness, wincing and whimpering as she scanned through it to try and find anything at all. She listened harder still and she realized it was coming from above her! She turned her face upward and swore for but a second she could see a flash of light, a dark figure stumbling downward in its wake and then darkness above again.

The sounds were screams. She gasped as she heard them drawing nearer and nearer. Who were they? How did they end up here? Just how far up is this bloody pit!?

Of all the questions she had in her head, one screamed the loudest. Would these two survive the landing?

Tristan could see his life flashing before his eyes. To come so far only to have everything end by falling into a bottomless pit! He expected to feel the hard, cold, unforgiving floor at any moment. He knew that he would soon be splatter all over--

"Ouf!"

Well... he thought, that wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

He stood and offered a hand to the body that had broken his fall. "Er...thanks and...sorry."

After helping him up, he began dusting off his robes and searching for his tome, certain that he had dropped it somewhere around here somewhere. And that was when he noticed a girl in the murky blackness. This place was getting very much stranger by the minute.

"Oh...hello."

Tristan squinted, trying to gain better insight to the girls appearance through the darkness, but he could make nothing other than the outline of her figure. He voice seemed amplified in the darkness, and it rebounded frantically to and fro upon distant walls.

"I'm not hurt much at all," he replied, "but I'm not sure about him." He gestured toward the other man, hoping that he hadn't broken anything. If he had, Tristan could fix it, so that wasn't an immediate problem. "I'm Tristan..."

"How did you come to being here?" he asked, breaking his gaze toward her blurred form and scanning the ground for his tome. He could see little of anything. Intending to listen to her while he search, he fell to his knees and began running his fingers across the cold floor.

Her mind set in motion by the questions of the two men, Eva relaxed her grip on the key and took a deep breath in order to think. She had to explain it all as well as she could, so she had to first recall just what she had experienced.

She recalled the shadowy figure, tall and ominously seething with an ebony fog. It was one of the only other beings she had encountered within the halls of the castle. Her curious disposition led her to stir it from its dutiful scratching of the floors and walls as she witnessed.

She recalled how in but a moment after the figure turned its head toward her in one fluid and silent motion, it was but a blink of an eye before it was a hair's breadth in front of her face. Her throat clenched as if to bellow a cry but it was stifled by one long slithering hand. The dark being gazed into her eyes with horrifyingly void sockets... filled only by what looked like a single bead of white deep within. The figure arched over her and with an extension of yet another arm from its limber and tall cloud of a body, it procured a key. One too large to open a lock and with a rustic silvery glow, the kind that an ill tended silver kettle from an era long since past might have.

With her memories once again in line she drew rather close to them so that they might see her better as she realized her dark complexion made it all the more difficult to see her.

Responding to "Tristan" first, she began, "I was wandering about this castle, much like I wager you and he must have been. I recieved this key from this..." Her brow furrowed in thought "...this... being. Of some sort. It was crawling and scratching along the walls of one large room I wandered into and as soon as it caught me staring it latched onto me and showed me this key."

She held it up, and though it was in such darkness beneath the rust the illustrious silver proceeded to glow.

"It handed me the key and vanished. I had no idea what it meant to recieve such a thing, but the key seemed to take on this, influence on me. It would guide me to certain doors over others, and would fling them open upon contact with the handles."

Eva paused to gauge some reaction in the men, and continued.

"I'm... not sure where either of you are from but, where I live, this sort of thing is considered magic. Most definitely not natural." She gazed at the key, a hopeful shine in her eyes as she did. "I saw the shadow figure again soon after, only this time it seemed to want to do me harm, I had only one door to turn to, one that required the key as I found out, and this is where it left me. I've felt all over for it but... its gone." She sighed.

"Oh um... I'm Eva. Forgive me, I got lost in the matters at hand and I'm not the best at introductions...Tristan... And..." Looking towards Kiven. "You are?" She extended her left hand and right foot forward in what appeared to be a gesture of greetings.

Tristan listened to Eva intently, feeling the hairs on the back of his head rise. What she had mentioned concerning magic did not bother him--no. He hailed from a place where magic was celebrated. Universities covered his homeland where people from all over the world came to study. Magic was a natural occurrence where he lived. But what Eva told him scared him. A...being--who wanted to do them harm? That didn't sound good. Not good at all. His heart began racing.

"We have to get out of here," he said, not waiting to see if Kiven replied. "There has to be a way out of--"

A shrill cry reverberated from wall to wall of the room. A single, glowing orb emitted a faint white glow at the top of the ceiling, casting an eery ambiance throughout. Their three shadows stretched from their feet to one of the walls opposite the ominous light.

The shriek came again, and the shadow connected to Tristan gave a violent shake despite that he stood still--petrified. It contorted and morphed and leaped from the floor, taking on the shape of a horrifying spectral creature--four legged, black, and peering at the three with red, glowing eyes. Two wings sprouted from its back, and it shrieked a third time, rearing on its hind legs as if to pounce.

(( Why no one post? emotion_donotwant ))