Daniel Corvus
Stonvar Castle Dungeon

The author's word

This work is done in the style of "a story with a choice of actions". Although there are "blocks" of text in it, you are free to choose your path according to the choices provided and go to the chapters that are named accordingly.

The author sincerely hopes that you will not neglect this advice and will not read the text completely and immediately – because then the whole essence of the uniqueness of this work will be lost.

-in the dungeons of Stonvar Castle, the beginning of the journey-

Leaning on the door with force, you open it. Before even have time to take a step, you slip on the stone steps, but you manage to press yourself against the wall at the last moment and keep your balance. An excruciatingly long moment passes when you catch your breath and try to see the way ahead through the blackness. You are still unable to get out of your head everything that happened to you and your group before.

Quite recently, there were several brave souls who went to the gloomy castle on the hill. You and your team tried to finish off an evil ghoul who recently returned to his non-life…Now, of the eight brave men, only you are left, and your goal is the almost killed undead. You, still remembering the death of each of your comrades, as if it all happened again right in front of your eyes, just can't give up. You have to finish the task started. After all, if it's not you, then no one will do it. However, one more important obstacle remains between you and your enemy – the darkest and darkest part of the castle is its dungeon.

Picking up an antique oil lamp from the floor, you hold out your hand with it forward. You see, how the steps are drawn out of the darkness, leading down. You feel a slight dampness in the air touching your face. How the cold penetrates your feet in heavy boots. Unnatural, creepy, sneaking even through fabric and skin.

Moving away from the stone wall, you more conveniently intercept your grandfather's hunting shotgun. The last two special bullets covered with silver remained in it. You feel the shirt and black trousers with suspenders soaked in the blood of the unholy creature and your comrades sticking to your body.

There is nowhere to go back and there is no time. Supplies are scarce. You only have one chance to succeed.

Understanding all this, you take the first decisive step into the unknown. A dull echo bounces off the walls, slipping far down. You can hear your heart pounding. This sound presses on the temples, and it seems that it is reflected from the walls as well as the noise of your footsteps. Soon you feel a barely discernible hum coming from the bowels of the dungeons. At some point, it seems to you that they are as if alive, and you shrink for a moment. And yet you take a few more steps down. The cold covers you from all sides. Strange moist air settles on the skin. Nasty as a graveyard, it fills your lungs. A narrow, oppressive corridor leads you somewhere ahead. Dim light helps to see only a small piece of the way out of the general darkness.

Holding your finger near the trigger of the shotgun, you go down a few steps. One more step, and you feel like you stepped on a flat floor. The narrow corridor still leads only forward, where there is darkness. Or back to where the stairs are. Here it is hardly possible to spread your arms to the sides, so with a shotgun it is unlikely that you will be able to turn back quickly. In your decision to reach the end, you are heading further, forward, into the darkness of an unpleasant and smooth stone corridor. Each step is accompanied by a nasty sound of crunching of small crumbs under boots, a rumble and an echo. First, second, here's the third step. With caution, you move on, discerning only a faint echo of drops falling from above.

The ninth, tenth step. At this moment you notice a sharp change near the walls of the passage. You stop abruptly, raise the lamp up, ready to grab the shotgun. However, very soon your fear dissipates. It is replaced by the understanding that you did not see an enemy. It turned out to be just a game of shadows: the corridor, smooth up to this point, was divided into two branches. One led to the right, the other to the left. Nothing but darkness could be seen in these passages. Here even the usual things took the form of a black, ugly mass. And it seemed simply impossible to determine what was hiding in one side or the other by eye. However, you need to make a choice – where to go next. You understand that this choice will be made blindly – until the last moment you will not be sure that you have gone the right way until you reach the end of each of them. Unless they intersect somewhere in the middle. Who can know what is hidden in the dungeons of this castle? What exactly do the dungeons themselves look like?

After hesitating, you take a step in the right direction…

>you decided to turn right

>you decided to turn left

-you decided to turn right-

The corridor is filled with the echo of your footsteps again. The light of the lamp gradually draws out of the darkness the outlines of the right arch and the corridor beyond it. All the same stone walls, barely covered with ripples of drops, guide forward. The opening seemed a little wider, but in fact it is still difficult to turn around with a shotgun in your hands. You tried not to lower your weapon too low, so that in case of anything, you could use the last cartridges on the enemy who jumped out of the darkness.

However, as luck would have it, the moment of your meeting with him dragged on and on. The empty corridor only echoed your footsteps, pressed on the mind. You feel the fear growing in you. From the unknown, from this deceptive emptiness and from the fear that the unclean beast will show itself again. But you don't know where he is.

A few more steps in this stone void. It seemed that it would never end, and it would lead you directly into the unknown for eternity. But you notice another archway, as before, without a door that led into the room. Taking another wide step, you direct your hand with the lamp to the side, then up, trying to snatch as much as possible from the darkness. Involuntarily, you barely shuddered noticeably, considering more and more new details.

This room is like a passage. The way out of it led only to another room. Even from here you can see how huge it is, compared to her and even more so the corridor. The heavy door that led there was open, you partially caught the outlines of everything that was inside. From strange wooden devices, to no less strange metal structures. In the form of a wheel, boards that intersected with each other in the middle, but hardly these boards resembled a cross. Unless it's turned on its side. Unfortunately, everything that could be on the tables is hidden in the dark, but you are haunted by a feeling of some kind of abomination that emanated from that room. You couldn't figure out what it was from yet, but vague suspicions crept into your head. After all, the walls of the room in which you were were smeared with dark, dried stains. In the corner there was a piece of bone and a small skull of a certain creature. You didn't look closely, hoping that it was still an animal's skull, although common sense suggested otherwise. This skull is too characteristic for a person.

For a moment you freeze when you see a huge, iron-bound door. It seemed to be closed on the other side, although you could only tell for sure if you tried to open it. You didn't see any lock or bolt from this side. You could try to open it and pass on. Maybe to some other room or find another corridor.

You turn your gaze towards the room with the door open. Although you don't really want to go there, you could still inspect it. You turn your gaze towards the room with the door open. Although you don't really want to go there, you could still inspect it.

>explore a strange room

>open the heavy door and pass on

-you decided to explore a strange room-

Your curiosity overcame the feeling of fear and apprehension. After taking a few steps towards the room with strange structures, you stopped near the threshold. First, you stretched out a hand with a lamp there. After waiting a couple of moments, you stepped forward and quickly looked around. However, you didn't notice anything that looked like the unholy creature that you tried to kill earlier. This room, like the previous one, greeted you with silence and emptiness. In any case, definitely not something alive that could jump out of the darkness.

Hesitantly pulling away from the threshold, you headed to the center of the room. The strange constructions slowly acquired more and more frightening features. They did not look like the creation of a brilliant idea. If only the brilliant thought of some perverted mind. Their appearance, and the essence of their purpose, caused disgust and horror. You didn't even notice right away that you stepped on something. You recoiled sharply only when you heard a crunch under the boot.

It turned out to be a bone. Or a fragment of it. But after you stepped on it, now it resembled only a crumb of small and large fragments.

You raised the lamp higher to the ceiling, trying to examine as much as possible at a time.

There were strange dark streaks everywhere. They outlined lines, streaks of spray, strange-looking blots, in the essence of which you could see both the faces of people and animals. Fragments of bones, skulls, small pieces of something stinking and rotting. There were not only smaller metal structures on the tables, there were also tools. Frightening with their ugliness and the most incredible appearance. You understand that these things are created for anything but peaceful purposes. You would like to believe that this is just a surgeon's room, but the iron grate covered with smoke caused the opposite impression.

At that moment, the whole picture took shape at once – it's not a scientist's or a doctor's room, it's a real torture chamber. Perhaps created by those who now could not rest. The one you tried to kill.

Not wanting to stay in this place any longer, you decided to turn back. Turning around, it was as if you saw a shadow in the doorway where you were standing not so long ago. The huge door of an unknown corridor is now open, while someone was standing not far from the passage to this room. And already grabbed the ring of the door to the torture chamber.

You abruptly raise the shotgun, throw the lamp aside, intercept the weapon with both hands and manage to pull the trigger. The shot was not very accurate – the shadow easily pulled away and laughed nastily. A hideous inhuman sound echoed through the rooms. It was him – your enemy. The one whom you and all your comrades did not finish off. He was right there, right in front of you. The shadow abruptly pulled the door towards itself, you manage to shoot again. There was a crash that stunned you for a moment. The door was forcefully closed. The shotgun went off noisily, twitching in his hands. The bullet shot through the door, but you couldn't say for sure if you hit.

There was a moment of tense silence. Out of the corner of your eye, you noticed how the light from the abandoned lamp slowly fades. With regret, you begin to realize that it looks like it was smashed when it was thrown aside in a hurry. Perhaps, very soon, the remnants of oil will flow out of it, and then it will finally go out.

You were still holding the shotgun in your hands, even though there were no bullets left in it. You were still looking at the door waiting for your enemy.

Suddenly you hear a grinding sound, a sound as if something was being broken off, and a few more alarming sounds. You slowly approached the door, still holding the shotgun in your hands. You may not have been sure that you would defeat the creature, but you were heading to meet it, being ready to fight for your life to the very end. Whatever happens next. And you definitely have enough strength to hit this creature with the butt of a shotgun. You abruptly grab the ring on the door, pull it in your direction. But the door won't budge.

At this moment, fear takes hold of you.

You're locked up.

You were locked up by that thing. In this torture chamber. In this cold dungeon. And you don't even know if you have finished off this unholy creature. Or not.

The light behind your back dimmed at that moment.

>end of the road

-you have decided to open the heavy door and pass on-

You decided that it would be better to go on without feeling the desire to inspect the strange room. Listened and turned once more to an unlocked room with strange devices. Still, something bothered you when you looked in her direction. Putting the lamp on the floor, you took a few steps towards the heavy door, enough to take it by the ring and slam it with a sharp movement.

Now you have focused your attention on the door. As you approached, you examined it carefully. It was obviously old, the boards used to make it looked heavy. This door even looks a bit like a gate leading to the inner part of the Stonvar Castle. You took hold of the ring on the door with your free hand and pulled on yourself. The door didn't even creak, remaining still closed. Before you left her, you decided to push her forward. And at that moment the door moved. Noticing this change, you enthusiastically began to push her in that direction. The huge door opened without a sound, slowly, as if it had been fitted closely to the opening. Only at the last moment, it opened abruptly and you almost fell down. However, you held on by hanging on to the ring.

After a moment of shock, you straightened up. Stepped back, then picked up the lamp from the floor. Once again approaching the shackled door, you lowered your gaze down. If you had fallen, you wouldn't have had to fly far. But it would be unpleasant – this is a fact. The usual stone floor and walls of the dungeon here were abruptly replaced by ordinary earth. This path was more like a dug tunnel. It looked so ugly in comparison with the old corridors of the dungeon. The ceiling here was held only by supports. And not everywhere. Sometimes the wooden beams supported only one part, alternating, as if in a checkerboard pattern. You even thought that at the end of this tunnel, you noticed a shadow. However, in this dark part of the dungeon, moreover, executed so carelessly, a creepy creature could appear in any ripple of light. You step forward, stepping on uneven ground. Having already become familiar, the echo is not heard. Only a dull, barely discernible knock.

Careful, you're moving on. To your surprise, you notice that this part of the castle seems even warmer. The hum, which seemed to come from the depths of the dungeons, then took shape and shape, becoming louder and clearer than before. However, the source of such a strong noise was still not obvious to you. In the meantime, the light picked out only the arch of the tunnel and the supports from the darkness.

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