The temptation to break into a run was strong, but he couldn’t see more than a dozen steps ahead, and he wasn’t about to pick up his pace if it meant blundering into the laps of the enemy. A staircase materialized from the murk, but he ignored it. The sounds of battle all came from the lower level. With each step he took, the temperature rose. At times he thought he could hear footsteps tracking his own, yet always when he looked back he saw nothing but darkness. The walls were spattered crimson like someone had gone berserk in a slaughterhouse. There were bloody prints on the ground as well, following the same course he was. Showing him the way to go. Round the next corner, a naked figure awaited him. Senar’s pulse kicked in his neck. Not a stone-skin, but a man covered in weeping cuts and wrapped in coils of knotted wire. The wire opened up more gashes as he parted his arms to draw the Guardian into a prickly embrace. Senar lashed out with his Will, and the apparition fell against a wall with a screech of metal on stone that set the Guardian’s teeth on edge.
