Recudor: Repaying the debt

Sharpe just stands, utterly bemused as the man just completely runs off. Not to mention just standing there, which he kind of expected him to. He can't help but starts to snigger, and then fully start to laugh, a cackle resonating throughout the corridor. He slides his pistol back into it's holster and his knife back into it's very-easily-no-noticeable-at-all-like-it-was-never-there sheath, and picks up the box the man left behind. He shakes it carefully, and then chooses to open it.

When Sharpe shakes the box a little he can hear the scraping and rattling of something metallic inside. He decides to open it and begins to untie the strings around the cloth wrapped around the box. He now holds a plain wooden box in his hand, though a faint green glow is emitting from it.

A faint yet tangy smell creeps up on Sharpe but passes just as quickly as it had come.
Sharpe examines the outside of the box before opening it. Gliding his hand over it he feels a soft pulsating force. He can't exactly say he's ever felt anything like it, but it doesn't feel immediately threatening.

He slowly opens the box.


The lid, secured only by its own weight and some poor quality hinges, opens easily and reveals a small necklace or amulet of sorts. It's rather ornate with a golden emblem in the back flowing with complex patterns weaved all around and four beautiful emeralds inlaid into each corner of the emblem. The main piece has the appearance of a silver sword pointing down. It's guard are a pair of silver wings.
The main attraction of the piece is a thumb-sized dark green emerald, swirling with some unknown shadows constantly changing and moving about inside of it creating imagery of skulls and visages.
The jewelry gives off a rather creepy aura which is underlined only by the strange green glow emitting from the center gem.

Sharpe takes in the intricacies of the piece of jewelry. He's not sure, but if his suspicions are correct, this could be another soul trap... which he knows that Doc had intended to procure another for Clarent. Whether they had done any process to move the soul from gem to gem, he cannot determine, since he doesn't really know much about protraction-related topics.

He looks around and closes the box and wraps it as best he can again, and he opens his coat, fitting the box inside one of his larger pockets inside of his coat. Even if it's not the soul trap meant for her, he doesn't want to take the chance. If she's still roaming about, then she may possible end up being attracted to the amulet, provided as well that her soul is encased within this particular trap - also reliant on if it is even a trap in the first place. That does leave the other half of the equation however - Clarent is still missing. He leans around the corner to see if there's anyone there still.

Sharpe looks around the corner, though there is no one to be seen down the rather long and claustrophobia inducing corridor. The man who ran earlier has likely taken a corner further up ahead, leaving Sharpe with two options: To continue, or to double back and try another route.

Sharpe figures that Clarent might probably still be wandering the catacombs, or is somewhere else. He will check on these boneheads later. He takes a final peek around the corner to make sure nobody is going to be following him and he darts off at a stride down the corridor, retracing his steps until he gets to the spiral staircase, then to the room that forks into the two stairwells. Upon reaching that room, he goes back the way he came until he comes back to the room with the three pathways. This time, he takes the middle one and sees where it leads.

Sharpe follows the middle pathway which soon leads him into a wider room. He finds himself on a small bridge with no railings hovering at the top of the room. It's pretty deep but not so much that Sharpe would hurt himself jumping or even falling down. However the chances of climbing back up are nil.
The room is mostly featureless but has a single door on the far side and a few barrels and boxes, likely used for storage of some kind. For being deserted this place sure is lively. Torches light the room and there is barely any dust, which isn't to speak of the slowly rising pungent smell of sewer and the grime that is filling the room.

"Well, the never said it would be glamorous" He says to himself and jumps down into the room. He's sure he could figure out some way to get back up if need be, though honestly there should be an exit somewhere down the way.

He lands on his feet, the jump not really being any menace at all, and he opens one of the crates to see what might be stored here.

Sharpe attempts to open one of the crates. The first one is nailed shut so he moves on to the next. As it turns out most of the crates are either shut tightly or locked with chains and iron locks. The few that are unsealed and easy to open contain various goods from animal furs, some finer cloths and jewelry to stacks of alcohol, some unknown medicine and some dirty silverware. Judging by the contents this stuff is worth some money, and clearly someone is collecting it or hiding it away. But the contents of the other crates remain a mystery till opened somehow.

Sharpe decides against opening the rest of the crates and closes up the ones he opened. He figures he can just revisit them later if he wants to see what the other ones may be hiding. He turns around and takes a torch off the wall, having lost the candle from earlier. He tries the knob on the door, twisting it to see if it's locked.

Sharpe tries to exit the room. The door, which is in fact operated by door lever, does not budge. Try as he may, he doesn't seem to be able to press the lever down all the way without hearing the vexing sound of metal pins clicking into place suggesting the door is locked.

Sharpe sneers, there's either something much more valuable in the crates than he perceived or something just has common security sense. He grunts and backs away from the door, looking around the room. He notes the sizes of the crates, and starts stacking them, building a staircase with which he can use to escape the room. He manages to get up to the small ceiling bridge and exits the room, going back to the three paths. He walks down the corridor leading to where he encountered the two men, still carrying the torch from the other room.

Sharpe makes his way down the corridor and the spiral staircase. Just like earlier, it rattles and feels unsafe to descend. He makes his way across the antechamber and arrives back in the little corridor he got the box from. Peeking down the hallway Sharpe can't see anything suspicious let alone the man.

Sharpe strides over to the spot where he saw the two men converse, and he peers down that hallway. He continues down, watching for signs of hostiles or habitation in general. The smell that he had detected earlier in the bridge room has left his nose. He hangs the torch from one of the braziers in the previous room, so as not to attract attention while he moves forward.

Sharpe eventually comes to a wider room with two large stone coffins inside of it. There are piles of ash and bones littered all throughout the room. The most notable feature though is the broken wall where some bricks have been torn out, leaving a hole about the size of a man and a dirty tunnel behind it. The tunnel itself is dug straight through the ground. It's not very deep, though poorly made and supported by rotting wooden beams. It connects into a bigger room just on the other side, though the pedestal of a rather large stone coffin is blocking the way, making for a tight exit.

Sharpe walks over to the tunnel entrance and puts his hand on one of the support frames. His hand goes to his chin for his usual postulation.

"And so the holiness ended.. and the shadiness began."

Sharpe attempts to move the pedestal to continue down the tunnel to find out where it leads.

The pedestal being clearly much to heavy and much to large to be moved stays still where it is. However Sharpe does manage to squeeze by, as there is just sufficient enough space between the large grave and the wall. Wiping some of the dust off his coat he takes a look around the room. It seems to have been designed specifically for someone important. The room would have once been something to marvel at, though any specialties and even parts of the walls have been stripped down or salvaged. The massive stone coffin seems to have taken a lot of abuse in attempts to opening it, but aside from a few missing corners and chunks of stone there doesn't seem to be any major breakthrough. Adjacent from the grave is another door made of metal bars. It's awkwardly bent out of shape, making enough of an opening to climb through.

Looking around the room, he spies fallen and decrepit glory it seems. Fleeting, as all is. He turns his head forward, spying the bent bars, and climbs through. Whoever operates these tunnels must be rather lanky or small, or is very good at placing obstacles.

Sharpe climbs past the door and into the next room, where a lot of the walls seem to be torn out, revealing more dirt and half finished tunnels on all 3 sides leading to no where. There are some broken wood boxes and yet more bones scattered across the floor. But more importantly is the rather large hole in one of the corners. The stone tile floor has been violently torn out and all the outside of the hole is charred, as if a fire or the likes had happened. There are some tiles and rocks and stone creating a rather steep climb down into what seems to be a well lit sewer system of sorts. Just from looking in Sharpe can see the dried up gunk and filth, lit brightly by plenty of torches lined along the walls. It's not very wet, but the lingering smell is noticeable, albeit not too bad.

Perhaps this leads back to that bridge room. Sharpe walks towards the entrance to the sewers, taking a knee. It indeed isn't too bad, filth-wise, despite how sewers are typically depicted. He shrugs and climbs down into the sewer tunnel, albeit carefully.

The sewer is equally as claustrophobia inducing as the catacombs above, however much more lit. They are a lot wider, with a shallow dried out channel between walkways on each side, and the ceiling hangs pretty low. There are torches on every corner, making it pleasantly bright in contrast to the previous environment. Sharpe finds himself on the corner with a path leading in one direction and another in the other.

Sharpe shakes his head between both ways, trying to decide which way he should go. He ultimately decides to go in the direction that the storage room from earlier is.

Sharpe heads off towards where he believes the storage room to be. After a bit of walking he ends up at an intersection with three passage ways. One is the direction Sharpe initially came from. The other, to his left, goes down yet another corridor which seems to open up into a bigger room. And the final path infront of Sharpe has a little gate for water to run through, with two small stairs on each side leading up to some metal bars and door-less frames. Wherever the doors for those frames are they don't seem to be here anymore, leaving him to venture forth undisturbed.

Sharpe takes the path to his left, proceeding down towards the bigger room. The natural tension he feels seems to lessen.

Sharpe enters the large room. There is no door or anything that encloses this area to each side. The room is quite large, and round. But it's ceiling seems to hang somewhat shallow. There is a metal catwalk going along the side of the circular room, and opposite of Sharpe is yet another exit to the room leading to what seems to be yet another hallway. The sewers both seem to empty out in this room, and halfway down each side of the catwalk are some rusty metal ladders descending down all of the four floors this room seems to go down. Sharpe can see the fourth floors entrance barely, but it seems that that part of this strange sewer system has been taken over by the filth and sludge that has been gathering down here over the years. The smell isn't all too bad, though it's definitely a sewer, even after years of absence. It's quite amazing to Sharpe what kind of architecture is under this old city.

Sharpe takes a quick peek down the ladder, and shakes his head.

"Well at least it's not completely overtaken with grime." He mutters to himself, and he walks to the opposite side of the room to enter the next hallway. It is at this point that the thought enters his mind, how long exactly has he been in this labyrinth for?