The right-side corridor was cooler than the rest, a faint breeze blowing through it from top right to bottom left. Thin gaps and cracks farther on let in slivers of silver light, faint but enough to see by in and around the tiny pools they cast. Dust motes drifted in these pale beams, the emptiness eerie.
Now and then there was a soft shuffle sound. It was impossible to tell its source, or its cause; it might have been Lessers living farther down, given that this side headed back toward Cassiopeia proper. Maybe there were other gaps in the rock. Or maybe it was just dust sifting down, the cracks slowly, inevitably giving way over many, many years.
A few huge stone blocks had crashed down and into the tunnel, forming half-blockages. A much larger Gembound would have been unable to pass, but for the jackal it would be easy enough: a scramble here, a crawl there, and--was that spiderweb? A little clung to one side of the tunnel. Spiderweb, or cobweb.
To either side along the entire corridor were more cells. Simple, square rooms hewed from dark stone, void of light or real features. Some had a very plain almost-bed stone shape that rose from the rock at one side of the room but in others this had worn away.
The corridor stretched on for quite some time before, if Anubis followed it to its end, coming to a halt in a smaller, circular room. A deliberate hole in the ceiling here let in light, a cone that plunged straight down to a gemstone grate sunken into the floor. This was likely to avoid the rusting of metal, as the dark stains all around it suggested that blood, or perhaps other wastes (or merely water) had been dumped down frequently enough that mere steel would have been ruined in just a few cycles. The holes were large enough to keep a jackal from falling in, but only barely; the cistern into which the hole plummetted was impossible to gauge in terms of depth.
@Anubis
Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
A sound, from behind Anubis. A shuffle, not unlike those he'd heard, though this one was growing louder.
A dragging.
Another of those non-distinct, hulking shapes was coming down the long, dark corridor; the rubble was no longer there. This one had too many teeth, ripped in a cheshire grin from ear to ear and then again from forehead to chin. These four jaws split and moved idly as it walked, multiple limbs latched with hook-claws into another shape that it dragged, motionless, across the floor.
It would, Anubis might reflect, as the creature hauled the body to drop at the cistern's gemstone grate, have made more logistical sense to eat this one. This creature, with frozen grin and six empty eye sockets. Perhaps there was a reason they did not. Perhaps there was a reason the Valkhound began to methodically rip it limb from limb, as retches and whimpers sounded farther down the corridor. Perhaps there was a reason he fed the pieces down the grate, dropping them to spin away into darkness. Viscera, meat, bone, hair, torn away and discarded to the shadows.
Before long there was nothing left but thick, congealing streaks of blood on the stone. The beast stood, turned--and vanished.
@Anubis
Down it tumbled: to the side, striking the wall and bouncing away. Down again, its dim light barely visible against the black mouth below.
It thudded to a halt some fifteen or twenty feet down, and then... began to slide downward in the direction Anubis had come from. It vanished out of sight beneath his feet.
@Anubis
Back past the room with the black slab table on his left, and forward...
A little bit of rubble was visible in the tunnel ahead. Nothing, at first, like what he'd seen at the cistern, but it gave the place a dangerous, claustrophobic sort of feel, like anything could be lurking just beyond. An opening to a new cell was worn away on his left, and another just beyond--but on the right side of this corridor, opposite the entrance to the third left-hand cell, was another hallway stretching away to his right. To the north. This one was narrower, like the one that had led to the cistern; but without exploration it was hard to see what might be down there.
Anubis could turn right, heading up that tunnel; or he could go forward, exploring what lay ahead.
@Anubis
At first, there were only smooth walls left and right. Undoubtedly, the space behind them held the cells whose openings he had passed, or had yet to pass, on the east-west corridor. Then came four, to either side. One on the left had half-collapsed, a large pile of rubble filling it. And ahead, the hallway plunged into total darkness, without the benefit of the dim fungal light.
This place smelled of dust and stone. There was no sign Bacchus had come this way, no disturbance of the damaged stone underfoot. And ahead was a now-familiar smell, a sort of dank dampness and fresher air. No light, but... another cistern?
@Anubis