The door unlocks for you, Kossk, but as you open it, the hinges of the door creak loudly, and it seems that the creak reverberates throughout the tower. You notice a handle on the inside of the door that drives the locking mechanism.
The room beyond the alley doors is about 40 feet square, with a 15-foot ceiling. This chamber was obviously once a stable for mules; it still smells faintly of their dung, and has rusty, crumbling tether-rings set into the walls on the left and right. The room is dark, illuminated only by the light through the open doors. A closed stone door with a metal pull-ring handle stands at the west end of the room’s back wall, and there is a trapdoor in the floor near the middle of the back wall.
Along all four walls are heaped large, dusty barrels and crates that look as if they’ve been sitting undisturbed for some time; there are dozens of them, and they’ve been stacked rather untidily in groups that form walls about five feet high, a little way out from the stone walls behind them.
Standing in the center of the room is a ten-foot-tall metal statue of an armored minotaur with a trident in its hand. Its free hand is open and raised in a "stop" gesture as it faces you. Around its neck on a fine chain hangs a wooden sign that reads: "Go back or perish."
Beyond the statue, six human skulls with glowing eyesockets hover in the air about five feet off the ground and ten feet or so in front of the far wall. They gaze intently at you.
