Warlock! Something is Rotten in Grim Biskerstaf...

Banio is happy to lend his dagger to Trusova's efforts. He hands it over, then steps back a few paces from the stone portal with its graven, mystic symbols. In order to give the warden room to work, of course.

The pair makes quick work of the the old seal, discarding the dried wax down onto the ground with the black smears and dead worms Trusova so intently stomped to oblivion. Parts of the floor are damp and slick from the water trickling in from the exterior wall that keeps the river at bay, so they test their footing and make sure it's secure before backs are bent against the stone portal, trying to open it.

And Into the Very Bowels of the Spire
A heavy grinding sound reverberates as the rune-covered door slides inward and to the side on some unseen hinge. Cold, rank air surges out of the blackness beyond, chilling exposed skin and wrinkling nostrils. It's a pungent, terrible smell. And while it does not smell fresh, it is strong -- strong enough to taste and to draw stinging tears from eyes.

The inside is revealed when a lantern is held aloft in the now open doorway, and the trio sees that the chamber is a match for the one above, with the hole. It is circular in shape, slightly larger due to being at or near the base of the tower, and the ceiling is not visible -- presumably stretching all the way to the room above. It is also absolutely filled with bones. Hundreds, nay, thousands of bones. White bones that have been gnawed on, splintered, cracked, and sucked dry. There are the bones of birds, fish, rodents and many other animals... and definitely those of humans, and maybe elves. It's difficult to make sense of the scene with the remains carpeting the ground, but one this is clear: the floor slopes, sharper this time, towards a much larger hole in the center of the room. That orifice is yawning and black, unknowable from his distance and vantage.

The putrid air in the room is dank and still, lending an eerie quality to the scene, but gradually the eye is able to pick out a few interesting odds and ends here and there -- likely the possessions of those thrown into or left in this place. Coins, jewelry, weapons and trinkets are littered all over, faintly glimmering amongst the field of bones.

And there, near the edge of the chasm, lies an ornate strongbox, a small chest of shining metals, perhaps silver and gold.

"Right…" Lambert whispers, pulling his heavy cloak up around himself. He covers his mouth and nose, but also his arms and body to keep the cold out.

"… I’ll get that, and you lot grab what you can here. Quietly!"

He steps into the room, using ever thief sense he possesses. Watching for danger, and trying to make his way about the brittler looking bones, he heads for the box.

As the ancient door gives way, Banio is about to say something witty, or offensive, or wittily offensive, and so the rank air catches him full in his open mouth. Instantly his gorge rises; he turns his back on the chamber of bones and staggers away, bent over. Mindful of Wolke's warning, Banio claps a pudgy hand over his mouth to keep from retching aloud.

Dear gods, what's in that room? It smells like something died, then shat, and then its shit died.

The little man sways over to the place where he's left his lantern and fumbles for the handle. There's no way he's going into that foul nest, but perhaps he can raise a light by the entrance and so make himself useful.

Trusova gags as she enters the ancient, putrid air of this vile cavity. She fights off the wave of sickness, and presses forward. When Lambert outlines a two-pronged attack on the treasure, she acknowledges his plan. "Right, let's get this done."

While Lambert moves on the main prize, Trusova will move into the boneyard, using her spear to check for unstable ground. She'll try to recover some choice loot as Lambert completes his mission for the amulet.

With Banio's light held high at the entrance, Wolke makes his way into the funnel-like room with the floor that slopes down towards its center. He's creeping as quietly and carefully as he can as he makes his way towards the strongbox, but just as Trusova decides to come in herself and do a little old-fashion looting, the man steps on the rounded pommel of a bladeless dirk he didn't see. It rolls downhill, taking his foot with it, and the man makes an uncomfortable noise as he nearly does the splits, then falls into the bonepile, crushing limbs and ribs and vertebrae with his body as he's suddenly rolling and sliding through the loathsome detritus.

Dust from the pulverized, ancient remains fills the air as Lambert tumbles on past the box, towards the hole in the middle of the room that he now clearly sees is much larger than the one above. He sees it, of course, because he's about to careen over the edge and plunge into it...

Lambert begins to curse, but the over-exertion drives the words out of his mind. He starts to spill forward, the bones making him slither down all the quicker.

He fumbles for his knife, and starts to stab the blade into the pile. He stabs, and stabs, desperate for the blade to find purchase on something; to snag, and stop his sliding.

Trusova doesn't see anything worth losing her stable footing to retrieve from the bone slurry beneath her boots. A few tarnished silvers are the exception, as they are right by her foot,l. When Lambert falls, her heart skips a beat. "You okay, Lambert?"

The sloping floor of the grisly, musty chamber is stone, so the screeching, sparking point of Lambert Wolke's dagger doesn't slow him much as he slides towards the precipice. There is, however, a lip around the orifice itself, and that is where his blade pays for itself tenfold. His tumble is arrested by his partly wedging the weapon beneath the lip, and then he's dangling over the edge, his feet hanging free.

A quick glance into the yawning black beneath him shows that Banio's lantern is doing a poor job from the door, and that the well below seems to plunge way down into the earth... and also that in the inky black there is a shape. A huge shape, almost something he can feel rather than see. It's like the thing is radiating its presence, like a heat source... but rather than warmth, it exudes some kind of timeworn, primeval dread. Ancientness. Evil.

Lambert winces when Trusova calls out. He feels something beneath him. And becomes intensely committed to not rousing whatever that thing might be.

Hanging from the ledge, he wheezes as he tries to kick his foot back up on to the lip to hoist himself out of the hole!

Lambert kicks up, and manages to hit the edge, but not find purchase. His arms ache as he swings back down.

He kicks again, but can’t get a good swing at it. He looks down at the arsehole-tightening blackness below.

He kicks again, and wraps a toe on the ledge, and then shimmies that toe into a heel. But the bones screw with his purchase and he comes swinging back again, clattering loudly against the side of the hole.

"Shit!" he shout-whispers!

Seeing and hearing Lambert stumble, she'll make her way to the edge and lower her spear down for Lambert to grab hold of. Then she'll set her lantern down on the bones and use both hands to haul him back up.

"Mind your hands on the blade!"

Banio does his level best to supervise and act as a lookout as the road warden carefully makes her way down towards Lambert, who is already beginning to tire. As the woman puts her light down, then tries to set her feet before before extending her spear towards the desperate man, Wolke notes that the darkness in the hole recedes a bit. As the haft of the long weapon nears the man's hands, he gets a look at what must be the 'spawn of the wyrm' mentioned on the door leading to the chamber.

The coiled creature is massive. A long, serpentine neck terminates in a ferocious, many-fanged skull with a maw large enough to bite a thief like Lambert in half. But -- the thing is dead. Long dead. Just a skeleton now, a winding pile of bones that had their death throes an eon ago. It's difficult to make out details in the gloom, but this monster is no more.

It's a flicker at the edge of his vision at first. A bit of motion, a shifting of something moving in the dark. Something descending, Banio sees. Phelbt has seen his share of strange sights over the years, creatures and creations most vile, but never anything quite like... this.

There's a dark, undulating mass lowering itself from above like a spider on a thread, or perhaps on wispy limbs extending to the sides of the tower that are difficult to see in the dim light. Curling, writhing tendrils drip from the mass as it heads for Trusova and Wolke, and then Banio sees the center of the thing for it for what it really is: a twisted amalgam of dead flesh, hair, rotted tendons, and... heads. The blackened, withered, decapitated heads of the elves above, the ones they witnessed the deaths of in that strange, silent theater. They leer now, envious of the living, outraged that their lair is being defiled.

Cripes, it's the heads!

Banio means to hiss this warning to the others. Really he does.

But when he opens his mouth, what emerges instead is a sustained and high-pitched screech, not unlike the sound a toddler makes when a favorite toy is yanked from its grasp. An animal urge to live seizes Phelbt's bowels. He turns and flees back to the stairs, his lantern rattling, its light swerving madly over walls and roof until it vanishes from view.

Trusova helps Lambert from the pit as there's a shriek and the room gets significantly darker...