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Silently and carefully, Ellie picked her way through the space, following in Adam’s track. He muttered a curse as he adjusted his grip on the torch to avoid getting burned. The flame was inching lower. She wondered what they were going to do when it ran out.
There were piles of guano on the floor. Ellie pressed her remaining sleeve to her nose against the smell and glanced up.
“Bates,” Ellie whispered. She caught Adam’s arm and pointed through the sleeping bodies. “Are those ropes?”
Adam looked up with a frown.
Thick, dark cords wove through the roost. They disappeared behind the remaining columns of stone, slipping out of the torchlight.
“Looks like it,” Adam agreed.
“But what on earth are they for?” Ellie pressed.
“Why don’t we hope we don’t have to find out?” he countered and led them carefully onward.
A ripple of lightning flashed above, sending an eerie purple light through the cavern. Ellie spotted something in the brief flicker of illumination.
She gently tugged Adam toward it, and then bit back a curse as her boots slipped once more against the slick floor.
As they moved closer, the object she sought shifted into the range of the torchlight.
It was a column that rose from the floor of the chamber to the ceiling. It would have been of roughly the same thickness from top to bottom—if a chunk hadn’t been neatly cut out of the center of it.
The lower portion was roughly the height of Ellie’s waist. It ended in a flat, round platform. Three feet above it, the pillar continued to the ceiling.
The platform was more or less free of guano—one of the only surfaces in the cave that could boast as much. In the center of it sat a knife. The weapon was made of metal that had oxidized to a pale green.
Another flicker of lightning revealed that the pillar had been positioned to aptly catch the light through the opening in the ceiling.
Thunder rumbled distantly through the cavern. The bats above her stirred.
Ellie’s nerves jangled.
“What do you think it’s for?” she said, dropping her voice to the lowest whisper.
“I’d guess it’s for fighting them,” Adam whispered back as his gaze flashed to the dark shapes that hung overhead.
Ellie considered the blade. Its shape was odd. The artifact was roughly the size of Adam’s machete, but the metal jigged and jagged in a way that was oddly familiar to her.
“It looks like a key,” she blurted under her breath as the realization clicked into place.
Adam frowned, and then looked past the pillar to the far wall of the cavern. He moved toward it, with Ellie following.
The light bloomed over the stones and revealed the distinct shape of another carved doorway. This one was blocked by a wooden door.
A ring hung from the center. Adam gave it a tug.
“Locked,” he announced.
The wall of the cave was angled rather than strictly vertical. It made the door seem more like a cellar hatch.
The ring was bolted into a metal disk embedded in the old, thick boards. There was a narrow slot cut into the center of it.
“Keyhole,” Ellie declared.
They glanced back toward the cut pillar together.
“And that’s the key?” Adam suggested.
