“They were supposed to make camp a mile back from here…” Jim threw a puzzled look at Thomas. “What are they doing here already?”

“Who cares?” Kate was ready to burst out the door. He glared at them, shaking with energy. “Maybe the rain, maybe something else. Are you coming or not?”

Jim looked at Thomas, who had bunched up his face in thought.

“I got a bad feelin’ about this, Kate.”

Kate snorted. “I don’t care. You want to tell Mugs we missed our mark because of your feelings?”

Thomas clenched his jaw. He stared at him for a moment, tense, before kicking open a crate against the wall and picking up his weapons. He nodded at Jim. “Okay. Let’s go.”

*  *  *  *  *

Mugs’ back ached. His head was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer against the back of his eyes. Blinking, he sat up cautiously and groaned againste the pain that shot through his spine. That wasn’t necessarily a good sign.

“You okay?”

Shin was standing over him. The fall into the depths of the ominous cave was not an eternal death plunge after all, but rather a three-foot drop that landed Mugs on his back, slamming his head against the hard earth not too gracefully. He felt as though he had been unconscious for two hours, not two minutes, as Shin mentioned after he climbed down without his own personal incident. I should have sent that man down first, Mugs thought with a grimace.

“I’ll be okay, I think,” Mugs said as he stood up. He put a hand against the wall for support but recoiled: the rock was warm.

“This place is something sinister,” Shin said. His eyes twitched. “There is an unpleasantness to it.”

“I know.”

“Do you see the light?”

It was at that very moment when Mugs noticed it: far in the distance, down an inexplicably long and lightless tunnel was the faint flow of firelight.

“Well, that’s somethin’…”

“Let us go. But be wary…”

They walked toward the light as soundlessly as they could. Mugs used the unnaturally hot walls to balance himself, brushing them with his fingertips. A few moments after being back on his feet seemed to replenish some of the sense that had been knocked out of him, and again pulled the pistol from his boot. The tunnel seemed to stretch on endlessly but after awhile Mugs could make out the detail from what he inferred was candlelight, a small flame flickering on a half-rotten wood board that had been stuck into the wall. It danced erratically, giving the eerie impression of a creature’s movement.

When they reached the light Mugs peeked around the corner. It was a fairly large room, enough space to accommodate two carriages side-to-side, and it was entirely covered in a collection of colorful trinkets. An old, beautifully carved bookcase filled one complete wall, full of loosely rolled and yellowed manuscripts and scrolls, some of their unfamiliar and foreign words peeking out from open edges, and with other shelves stacked all manner of ways with thick, musty books bound with leather and metals, jewel-studded spines glinting in the light of a candelabra stood next to a well-used velvet chair. The floor was layered with several overlapping rugs, an amalgam of designs and colors. The rest of the room was stacked with little statues, vases of exotic feathers and droopy flowers, corked bottles and flasks with strange labels and wax seals. Mugs registered it all in an instant, but the lack of human presence unnerved him.