A Glim-mer of Respite

Gratuitous Fallen London references abound !

There had definitely been something scratching in the walls, and had been doing so for just long enough for it to be of note. Whether it was just one something that decided it was in its best interest to follow the party without popping out and making its presence everyone's problem, or if there were far too many somethings skittering about within the walls, even the more sharp-eared Chilchuck and Izutsumi could not quite tell. Not that anybody happened to actually mention the sounds, even if it did win the walls a range of looks that walls did not typically receive in more normal contexts, namely suspicious distrust and poorly restrained curiosities, alongside those odd little things that tended to come hand in hand with them. 
As long as they didn't suddenly decide to be no longer just inside the walls, they could do whatever they wanted to, Marcille had concluded, just so long as she didn't have to see them doing it. Laios, on the other hand, would have rather liked to see the mysterious skitterers, but he wasn't about to go around knocking holes in the walls just to take a peek. 

More pressing for the party than the present of mysterious critters that lived in the walls, was the very large door that was also in the wall. It was of a heavy, stained wood that seemed to carry the weight of the years that had passed by since the day it was first set in its frame, and managed to not seem the exact opposite of welcoming and reassuring. Admittedly, there was not all that much that was designed to be either welcoming or reassuring, let alone both, given that the Dungeon was designed with the specific intention of keeping outsiders outside, even if this might have been to a debatable level of success. 

The door, while imposing, also  was not actually locked. Somebody had tied it shut with a decently sturdy rope, one that had been there long enough to start to fray a little where it was bent, and that was almost too easy. One could assume that it was there was an assumption that adventurers weren't going to get that far so it didn't need to be safeguarded with any real effort, which was nice as it meant it took precisely one strike with a sword to be thoroughly bested. 

"That was anticlimactic." Laios, Kensuke still in hand, remarked.

"Maybe, but you could have let me check if it was cursed or something before doing things." came the grumble that Marcille artfully grumbled.

"Yeah but it wasn't, so it's fine." the tallman replied nonchalantly.

"You didn't know that before though."

With a shrug, Laios went to push the door open. Or at least he tried to. The lax locking made a little more sense as the door was almost comically heavy, and so he was fighting for his absolute life trying to push it open with his entire body weight, which even with the weight of his armour was not enough to do anything. Even with Senshi's help, the door barely shuffled, which could have been both the credit to whoever designed it or a product of the age of it. Even with their combined effort, and a few well-timed blasts on Marcille's end (Chilchuck and Izutsumi joined in with the tremendous effort of exchanging a glance and not getting in the way when there was nothing they could do to actually make progress) it was altogether far too much effort to get the door open, but they were eventually able to get it wide enough for them all to sneak in. 

It was all too clear that nobody involved had realised just how dark the connecting chamber was until the door, so heavy that it required a group effort to shift, swung shut with a boom that seemed frankly excessive. In the dark, it was difficult to gauge exactly how large the space was, but the resulting echo made it clear that it was far larger than the last few the party had passed through. Surely, in days gone by so long ago that they had been forgotten by those that followed after, the chamber would have had some grand use, but it had fallen to the same state of perpetual not-quite decay that the rest of the Dungeon was trapped in.  

Something unseen in the darkness crunched softly beneath Chilchuck's heel, giving very little resistance as it crumbled. At least if one were to compare it to stepping on a rock, leaves and the like were a little more open to being crushed and crumbled.