Big City Darkened Nights

Chapter #16

Fully dressed Carr takes the mace outside of the room. The top landing of the staircase being the largest unobstructed space for Carr to practice swinging the mace, trying to find his range of motion.

Finding the desired spell in the tomb Cornelious memorizes it.

Seeing torchlight rounding the corner of the tower's spiraled stairs Carr stops. Resting the mace on shoulder he waits to see whom it is. Junior and Dell, I bet.

Moving the swiftest up the stairs Junior reaches the top, in half plate and a leather tunic with a burning torch in hand.

"Hey." Panting Junior leans on Carr's shoulder handing over the lit torch.

"Hello." Carr adjusts his weight for balance.

Half a minute behind Paul comes into view red faced and mouth open. He drops to all fours to crawl up the last few steps.

Still hearing someone on the stairs Carr guesses, "I take it Dell wasn't into a race?"

"Childish he says." Junior catches a breath, "Avilo's right behind him, he says he's getting too old."

Paul rolls over on the cold stone floor, "Me too."

Junior laughs and helps Paul up.

The trio of youthful males enter the wizard's chambers.

Carr and Paul take a seat on the bed. Junior checks things out, causing Cornelious to keep an eye on him. Spotting an engraved silver handle of a covered mirror, Junior pulls it from a shelf and starts to remove its cover.

"Hey!" The old mage, still swift, snags the mirror from Junior's hand before he looks into it, "Fool." He recovers it, "This isn't the kind of mirror you go looking into."

"Oh sorry." Junior inquires, "Why keep it in the open if it's dangerous?"

"Burglar trap." Cornelious grins at Carr. "Guess you'll think twice?" Putting it back he informs them, "Those people that go missing around the castle. They end up here going through my stuff."

Noticing it is the most valuable looking thing Carr surmises, "I see leave something attractive enough to appeal to any eye and turn them to stone - or something."

"Stone?" The wizard likes the idea being easy to revert, "It catches them and traps them in a dimension behind the mirror."

They look at the wizard with confusion mainly about what a dimension is.

Reaching the top Avilo and Dell see the group being lectured by the mage.

Explaining it to them as best as possible Cornelious tries to inform them. "The space we stand in could be seen from different times. Where we're traveling to a plane in Hell, a different dimension. As the Heavens would be. A being's spirit will naturally find their way in death." Pointing to the marked wall, "This will become a dimension door. Allowing us a place to step into the next dimension. Like walking into a room across the hall. Or in our case we'll be opening a door into the Hag's home." He looks at the men and sees Junior was lost along time ago.

Avilo jests with the mage, "Is this how you plan to put our rogue to sleep?"

A little confused too, Dell inquires, "I thought we were teleporting there?"

"Well its' like that." Cornelious explains a bit further, "Teleporting is okay for about twenty leagues. I have no idea how far this plane actually is. But if it makes you feel any better this is how you get demons and devils out."

"It doesn't, now." Avilo attempts to memorize the markings on the wall. "Even if I could summon arch angles, I'd still find it dangerous." He queries aloud, "This has been here as long as I've known you. And not once has something evil come through?"