It was dark. Actually, that was a bit of an understatement, in the same way that Grima was a bit of a jerk.

That was to say, he couldn't see anything at all. He stood, taking a cautious step forward, and heard the sound of his footfall echo throughout the room. Wherever he was, it was... huge.

If he'd known he'd be taken to a place like this, he would have brought a torch or something.

Gerome sighed.

That wasn't important. Right now, he needed to find Robin and Minerva. They had to be around here somewhere.

...

If he could move without the threat of hitting his leg on something with every step, that might speed up his pace just a little.

Robin, meanwhile, had been smart enough to provide himself with his own source of light. It had taken him a bit before he managed to find his tome, though, but once he had he used the magic power within it to provide a light source.

The room he was in was huge, easily twice as big as the castle's throne room. And, he realized, this extended to the doorway into the room, which was probably big enough to fit a wyvern through.

...Robin had a sneaking suspicion that that wasn't just a coincidence.

Holding his tome (now doubling as a torch) in front of him, Robin made his way through the doorway to find a long hallway beyond it.

...Yep, definitely not a coincidence.

The hallway stretched out for a while, farther than his light could even reach. He began to adopt a quick pace, jogging down the hallway to see how far it led, but keeping his eye out for potential things of interest. The walls, he noticed were made of a smooth stone in a light shade of brown. They were entirely smooth, as well. Whatever dug these walls out was very precise... or maybe they weren't dug out at all?

The hallway at this point turned a corner, and as Robin went around it he found himself almost tripping down a flight of stairs that ended abruptly into a hole. Although the hallway itself was clean, there were various pieces of debris littering the steps.

"That was close," Robin breathed, stepping back a bit and regaining his bearings.

"Robin? Is that you up there?" Came a voice from the hole, and Robin slowly climbed down the stairs and carefully peered down the hole.

There he saw Gerome, in the middle of a large room, looking up at him.

"That's a huge drop, isn't it?" Robin yelled.

"I would say so," Gerome stated, "How did you get up there?"

"I found myself up here, unfortunately," Robin explained, "I don't suppose you have a way for me to get down there, do you?"

"If Minerva were here, yes, but unfortunately I have yet to find her," Gerome lamented.

"Well unfortunately, I didn't see an alternate route on the way here, so it seems that this hole..." Robin started, turning his head back up the stairs as he did.

There were a few seconds of silence.

"Robin?"

"Hold on... I'll get back to you... you don't have a light down there, do you?" Robin said.

"No," came the terse reply.

"Yeah... alright. How well do you trust my aim?"

"Robin?"

Robin had already started constructing a crude torch, using a dry, thick branch and packing a bunch of dry leaves into a piece of parchment and wrapping that around the branch at one end.

That he threw down the hole, following it with a ball of fire. The fireball impacted the branch, setting it alight.

"Some warning would have been nice," Gerome replied, exasperation in his voice.

"Apologies," Robin replied, "Now... I'm going to see if I can find another way down there."

"But you said there were no alternate routes?" Gerome asked, picking up the torch.

"Yeah... I did," Robin replied. He stared down the hallway, which had at some point changed while he was looking down the hole. Where there was once a corner, the hall was now straight. And rather than being made of smooth stone, the walls were...

"Robin? What's happening?" Gerome called out, only to hear echoing footsteps that slowly faded slowly.

Gerome bit his lip, cursing inwardly. Looks like he was alone again, for now.

With a light source now in his hand, he took the time to look around the room he found himself in. The walls seemed to be made of a smooth stone, but there were strange glyphs on them that didn't match any writing system he was familiar with.

That wasn't important right now, was it? Gerome wasn't going to gain anything from staring at these glyphs. Looking around again, he saw a large doorway and headed through it.

This is... an ossuary?

Robin slowly walked down the hallway (or rather, up the hallway, as the case were right now, because the passage sloped slightly upwards as it went), examining the walls that seemed to now be composed of bones. They were held together with mortar, but Robin could clearly see that they were too large to be human bones.

How many wyverns died to construct this place... he silently lamented, moving forward. His priorities were reuniting with Gerome, finding Minerva, and then finding whatever they needed to accomplish to save...

Cherche...

Her face flashed in his mind for a second... he shook his head to clear his head. He had a feeling that if he kept on that train of thought his thoughts would start getting unpleasant.

His thoughts returned to the current situation just in time for him to run into a tall cylindrical room. As well as the doorway he came in from, there were three more doorways in each of the other relative cardinal directions. Above each of those, there were more doorways stacked on top of each other. Each doorway was blocked by a large stone door that had strange glyphs on it. This room, illuminated by torches on the walls, was bright enough for Robin to extinguish the flames from his tome.

So many doors... wouldn't it be really easy to get lost in here? ...Wait, what's that?

Robin moved toward the middle of the room, where a small book lay covered in dust. He picked it up, examining its contents.

1N - Entrance

1E - Wyvern Dogs (Deceased)

1S - Spinal Lotus (Non-Functional)

1W - Autonomous Flame Glands (Further Experimentation Required)

It was... Robin looked up from the book to the room he was in... was this book a reference of what was behind the doors?

Robin decided to skim a bit further through the book.

Gerome moved through a series of rooms with the same glyphs on them, although as he progressed through them he noticed the writing on the wall become more and more crude and crooked. He could also swear he started to see spatters of blood on the floor.

He eventually came to a flight of stairs that led downward. Uncertainty crossed his face, and he looked back at where he'd come from. Robin was above him... why were there only stairs leading downward?

He fought back his uneasy feelings and carefully headed down the stairs. As he did, he noticed his surroundings getting brighter. He quickened his pace down the stairs until he came to a large room, lit by a multitude of torches. In the middle, the floor sloped steeply downward toward the center of the room, where...

"Minerva!" he yelled, and the wyvern lifted her head in response, listening for the source. A large muzzle had been fit over her mouth, a large blindfold covered her eyes, and she was chained by the neck to the floor. She was surrounded by bones that lay in large heaps on the floor around her.

Gerome jumped into the pit, sliding down the slope to save his companion.

"Minerva, are you alright?" he asked, examining the wyvern's restraints. He looked for anything to hack at to destroy them, and while the muzzle and blindfold were easily dispatched with a well placed hack at a bolt or two, the chain was slightly harder to destroy. It took a cycle of examining the chain for weaknesses and repeatedly hacking at individual chain links before one of the links finally gave way and the chain snapped.

Minerva nuzzled against Gerome for a few seconds before she let loose a mighty shriek. That was Gerome's cue to mount her, and she lifted herself off the ground. Gerome directed her to the other doorway in the room, and they flew off.

"Who's... oh, Gerome... and Minerva, huh?" Robin said, looking up from the book. Gerome had flown through a long, winding corridor before arriving in the room Robin was in... through the same entrance that Robin had come through.

"Robin? How did you..." Gerome asked.

"I think there's some weird dark magic in use here... I noticed it when the hallway I had come throught in the beginning changed while I wasn't looking," Robin mused, before walking toward Minerva.

"But... more importantly..." Robin continued, "Look at this... this might be important."

Robin handed the book up to Gerome, who took at and read the page that Robin had stopped at. And one particular entry stood out to him.

2W - Minerva

And below it, scrawled messily in red ink,

Eyes not powerful enough. Further experimentation with other body parts considered.

Even with the presence of extra troops, the battle outside was not going smoother than the last time. They were coming out of the coffin faster than they came from the crystal.

"Noire! Focus fire to the left! Laurent, assist the right unit! Cynthia! How are you doing up there?" Morgan asked.

"These things are tougher than the last bunch we fought! I need more javelins to kill them!" Cynthia yelled back.

The battle raged on, but the participants were unaware that there was a third party watching them from afar.

"Found you..." the mysterious onlooker whispered, staring at Morgan, before turning and disappearing into the forest.

A/N: Who is our mysterious stranger at the end there? I'm not telling.

Updates will definitely be slower than my old pace, a.k.a. my pace when I was writing the first six chapters. Writing up a chapter every day seems ridiculous now, but then again, those first few chapters weren't at all as long as these ones.

The next chapter is forthcoming, so stay tuned until then. As always, reviews are always appreciated.

(Also, guess what time it is as I write this. Go on, guess. Why do I do this to myself?)