"...and then the wight grabbed her and we managed to run away." Aldor had just finished telling a story about a strange encounter with an ancient ancestor of his, from who he had gotten his strange new sword.
With that and several other stories, laughing, and joking among the party, half an hour's walk had passed like nothing. Falin was getting concerned, however. He thought that they would have reached the door by now, and an alarming thought crossed his mind. What if we have gotten lost?
As soon as he thought that, however, the light from his lantern illuminated a sharp turn, then a sudden widening of the passage. Before long, he stood with a huge room ahead of him, its ceiling low, with natural columns here and there.
But in a far corner of the room, huge and plain, stood a door. A few cries of alarm came up from the men behind him- a skeleton, armored in plate and carrying a broken sword, lay below the featureless door.
Falin ignored the skeleton; dead bones, unlike dead spirits, couldn't harm him. He returned his attention to the door. It had no hinges, no keyhole, and a nearly imperceptibly tiny crack seperating its two sections. They had no hope of opening it.
Falin now realized why he had been chosen to lead this expedition. He put down his pack, opened it, and took out his stone-working tools...
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