Brofiction: SLIPPING ON STONE - Toy Soldiers 5

As he closed the door, he didn't notice the pewter statue shift from one room of the map to the next.

Drawn to the door on the right like a hound on the scent, taking his key from its cubby, down the flight of stairs he descended, deeper into the depths of that dank and dreary citadel he plunged, heart plummeting in his chest. Those vocalized fears rung in his mind like a tolling church bell rung over its choir of terror and mirrored hung his own turmoil, Felix's fast-acting heart the theme to which it called. These steps drove on forever, his feet just...couldn't keep up.

A half-bitten curse and he was tumbling, lantern clinking, clanging, calling its fall, free of fearful grip, Felix tumbling after as Jack did upon the rhyme. Around and again, never to end until the solid thud upon flagstone floor, he'd arrived at his final destination, the dripping drowned corridor he'd so longed to find.

The lantern had shattered, shards of glass trailing behind, and it fell dark in the waters.

Picking himself up out of the muck, Felix shivered in the eerie chill that captivated the hall from each living mirror to the dripping walls. He was breathless a moment, taken for a toll in his tumble and trying to pull himself back together in haste. A light, a light, he needed a light...

To his hands and knees he fell, groping the filthy stew and finding only glass and twisted metal, product of his fall. Felix was now left with nothing, no sight upon him but what bare eye would allow and to his chest he pulled his single tenderbox, snatched from its proper place in the inventory for there was no better investment than the moment now.

Off kilter, he swayed and trembled, shin deep in a soiled leak sprung from God knows where on the floor. The candelabra, braced against upended shelving and dresser sans drawers, served as a place of gathering for poor Felix's waning sanity, his wet fingers piling the tender and striking it fast, hoping beyond all that the spark would light and give him good welcome for once in this forsaken castle.

Take it did, a new life in the void floor Felix was left to wander, this flickering flame his only companion in the night. A crooning carried across the canal, some misjudged merfolk of maidenly nature, snatching souls poor enough to search for stolen maidenhood. But Felix had none of it. Eerie as it was, he twisted lowly, spine giving a sharp audible pop that echoed back to whomever sung in the gloom.

And there the flame whispered, beware.

For all turned dark at the edge of vision, Felix took refuge atop a pile of crates, where a length-wise cabinet lied like a drunken man, its door the arm a tramp throws out in sleep. Clambering in, vague and shaken, our poor hero slips up not once but twice, and is nearly beaten as he curls upon himself in the flickering light below, doubly sure his progress was saved before laying off to sleep that held no dreams.