The stairs seemed to last for an eternity, and after several minutes of walking, Apple began to wonder just how far down she was. She couldn't see the door, and she certainly couldn't see the bottom of the staircase, though neither served as much of a surprise, as everything three feet away dissolved into darkness anyway. She could barely make out her own two feet or the next step. Still, her mind played through a million terrible possibilities. What the hell did the Marques need this place for anyway? What if she fell? There didn't seem to be any walls. She'd have just fallen who knows how many floors! And if she didn't outright die, how would she find her way out again?

She shuddered. The cold hadn't gotten anything but worse since she'd begun her descent, and now she wasn't sure whether it would be smarter to turn around and go back or keep going. How much longer could the damn staircase be?

Quite a bit longer, as it turned out. It was still several more minutes before she reached the bottom, and at that point, she could see her breath in front of her as a mist. She drew her arms up to her body to try to keep warm, all the while holding her candle away from her flammable bits. The ground, wherever it was, felt like hard earth, like thick wet clay. She took a shallow breath before reaching out blindly for a wall and found nothing for a while, but eventually, her hands landed on something which felt wall-like, wet and smooth, and covered in moss.

To her relief, there seemed to be gas lamps lining the wall spaced some few yards apart. She lit the first and looked about herself. She appeared to be in some kind of catacomb or oubliette. The room she was in currently was essentially bare, except for the lamps, and she could only guess at the function of it. The stairs were nowhere to be seen. This was a bad sign.

She began to panic. She was trapped. She was trapped and there was no way out! This was insane! This was so utterly insane! Wait a minute... that's right. It WAS insane! This was really insane! She tried to collect her scattered thoughts and then began to suspect that this was all just a really bad trip. The stairs were probably right where they'd been, and probably not even as long as they'd appeared. She just had to wait this out... yeah, that had to be it. Just wait it out.



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Merrick roused a little, hearing a voice nearby, and opened his eyes. Actually, he opened and closed his eyes several times, because he wasn't quite certain that he had opened them. It wasn't until he put his hand to his eyelid and felt it open that he was certain that any sort of change had taken place. Was he blind? Where was he? And who was that voice?

"He-hello", he said into the darkness, pushing himself to a sitting position. His body ached. Had there been an accident?

"There seems to be something wrong with my eyes. I can't see a thing", he said and groped around a bit. After a few minutes, his eyes, sharp as they were, adjusted to the near complete lack of light, and he could just barely make out the silhouette of someone very near to him. He turned to face this mystery person, "Is it... where are we?"