Chapter Seven: The Stalemate At Loton's Cove

Four flames spark to life above each of the posts' heads. The platform begins to rise, smoothly and swiftly, up toward the tunnel in the ceiling.

All aboard?

The platform is very stable; you don't feel like you could rock or tip it if you tried.

Okay, you know what? I'm not giving any of you the chance to overthink this, You're all on the damn elevator.

The platform accelerates as it rises up through the stone veins of the mountain, through widening caverns and secret hollows where phosphorescent lights pass by in the blink of an eye. You all wrap your cloaks tightly against yourselves as the ascent grows chillier.

The platform begins to slow, and soon comes to a stop at the bottom of some deep cleft high up on the mountain. A jagged opening exposes the sky high above you, and about forty feet ahead there are thick iron-bound doors set into a wall of dark stone blocks. Although you can't see the rest of the fortress, you surmise that you have arrived at an entrance to one of its lowest levels.

Two long-fingered, outstretched iron hands serve as door handles. The doors do not appear to be locked.

Definitely didn't just spend 3 weeks trying to figure out how to press the UP button on an elevator

Always a good idea to Detect Magic and check for traps, but I'm disinclined to throw any more Tomb Raider puzzles at you for the time being.

It's the dead of night.

It's just the lift and the doors. You could theoretically climb up the walls and emerge on the mountainside somewhere near the base of the fortress, but that would be quite a project.