#bdubs

When the rogue stepped from the antechamber into the space beyond, he found nothing like the burial sites he'd seen before. 

At first, it seemed the space he’d entered was empty. It was vast and unlit, save for a distant corner where low, colorful lights glowed on walls and cast shadows across objects and surfaces Etho couldn't yet discern. 

As his sight adjusted, he could see that the room was actually full of stone coffins, all laid out in precise rows and columns, numbers and symbols painted on top with stencils. Tiny channels had been carved into the floor around them, and something dark seemed to move through them. As if something was being brought to, or carried away from the coffins. 

Etho decided he did not want to know anything else about that.

He stayed as silent as the very dead he suspected lay dormant beneath the many, many stones. Each step was careful, deliberate. He looked for traps, listened for signs of danger, but he only heard the soft swish of the liquid moving underfoot, and a hum which was growing the closer he got to the lit area in the back.

It looked like a laboratory set-up, a workbench, cabinets, loads of flasks under magic-powered lanterns. Similar to what he had seen in Doc’s place, but much more sinister. Perhaps that was only due to all the corpses, though.

As he drew nearer, he began to doubt what his eyes were telling him. 

He was well-guarded against illusion, but no one was totally immune. Perhaps a strong piece of spellwork was to blame – surely, he did not really see a head floating in a tube of grayish liquid. Surely, the tube was not surrounded by other glass apparatus, where he saw a hand, a foot, half of a leg – all suspended in the same murky fluid.

Etho stopped a few feet short of the table that housed the macabre display, sighing at the mess he’d gotten himself into. 

"Just going to come in without introducing yourself? Bit rude.”