| 223 As you approach the door your disquiet grows. Not only is the door falling to pieces but it is weighed down by at least a dozen chains and locks. None of the locks are of Dwarvendim origin and each link of each chain has unusual runes and hieroglyphs scratched upon them. Something has been placed behind this door, and nobody seems to have been willing to come back and check on it. As you have nowhere to go but onward you will soon find out what lays beyond. Testing the soundness of the door and finding it rotten and insect ridden you strike out with your foot. The timber of the door shatters in a flurry of wood and dust, the chains and locks land in a heap of tangled rusting metal on the floor at your feet. The room beyond the splintered door is dark, quiet and reeking of evil. Lighting another torch you throw it into the blackness and, at least in the circle of torchhlight, you see nothing. Stepping over the remains of the door you make your way into a room as forbidding as the decrepit door you have just destroyed. A quick look around shows the room to be circular, about 30 metres in diameter with one door in its western wall. This room is very different from any you have previously encountered in Stoneholme. The walls curve inwards to a high arched point some 40 metres above you and are completely covered in a seamless metal of a kind you do not recognise. You have the distinct impression that it was made to keep something in. Walking across the wide open floor the room appears deserted. When you reach the door in the western wall it turns out to be locked, there is a handle but no visible keyhole or other mechanism. Grumbling a few words about why life should be this hard you begin a search of the edges of the door and the near walls for any hidden locking devices. Intent on your search you work quietly in the silence until suddenly the ground about you erupts as the loose earthen floor seems to come to life, rippling and heaving like a stormy sea. Steam hisses shrilly from the quaking earth and a low groaning vibration builds quickly from somewhere beneath your feet. Keeping your balance is difficult but you grab for the wall as your eyes search the floor looking for danger. It is from the centre of the room that a great mound of earth rises, forming quickly into a huge hideous beast.
| Turn to section 33.
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