Aside from being dark and narrow, the passageway was nothing remarkable. Guided by Bernard's cawing, the four swordsman walked in a crouched position through the man-made tunnel until light shone down from above, an opening on the other side of the walls. They clambered over the edge and found themselves on the extreme west end of the mining town.

Tom's eyebrows drew together when the four crows sped off over the wall without returning. Confused as to why the birds would abandon them now, he exchanged a glance with his comrades. They shrugged.

He looked up just in time to see an octet of town guards running up with crossbows in their hands. Tom and his friends immediately put their hands behind their heads in a surrendering gesture.

"Identify yourselves!" barked the nearest guard in a harsh Rostacian accent.

"I'm Tom Holt." Tom replied, carefully maintaining a level tone, "And these are my friends, Trevor Martin, Jay Martin, and James Raska."

"Monteraynian knights?"

Tom almost mentioned that they were only knights formerly, but then decided against it, realizing that opened a whole secondary topic of potentially uncomfortable discussion.

"Yes, we are." he replied simply.

The Rostacian guard narrowed his eyes. "And what business do you have here, that you had to sneak in like criminals?"

"We're here to assist Senator Alice Delquez of Alconte. We have reason to believe she's been imprisoned in the Black Tower."

All eight of the guards widened their eyes and exchanged glances. "Bless her soul, then. There's a demon in there!"

Tom frowned. "How do you know?"

"It started a few days ago. Started to notice people going into the tower never coming out. And there's these periodic screams coming from the top, nightmarish ones. You say a senator's in there?"

"Yes, and we're here to save her."

The guards lowered their crossbows. "Well, you can go in, to your own peril. I know I'm not set on stopping you, but just know you're not getting backup."

Tom glanced over his comrades with a wry grin. "We never need any."

After handing over the key to the town's secret entrance, Tom led his friends across the town to the Black Tower in the center. There were definitely interesting sights to be seen, such as the various quarries scattered about, full of workmen, and the abundance of pickaxes and shovels even in places they didn't belong. The architecture appeared charming but simplistic. But Tom and his comrades hardly noticed these things, their attention focused on the dark tower that was their destination.

Finally, they approached the raised brick platform the tower rested on. Heavily armed Rostacian guards with polearms in their hands paced around the Black Tower and eyed the swordsmen skeptically as they calmly strolled toward the door.

"Have fun dying." the nearest guard remarked dryly when Tom's hand rested on the doorknob.

Tom ignored him and swung the door open. A chilly darkness awaited him inside, which he entered cautiously with a hand on the pommel of his sheathed sword. Only after taking a step on the dusty stone floor and hearing its echo did he realize just how deathly silent the interior was. A second step, and something soft squished under his boot. The fumes of a musty stench wafted into his nose.

Upon fully entering the entrance chamber, Tom unsheathed his longsword and held the blade out in front of himself. He stepped farther inside to allow Trevor, Jay, and James some space, and once they had all entered, the door slammed shut behind them. Just like that, the four swordsmen had been fully engulfed in darkness.

The metallic ring of three more swords leaving their scabbards filled the dark, silent void. And after that, the only sounds in the chamber were the men's echoing footsteps and their deep breathing. Tom stepped on something that made a juicy splash, but he had no desire whatsoever to identify it.

Tom winced at the grating sound of metal against stone. His blade's tip had met the wall. He reached out his hand and ran it along to see if a door had been recessed anywhere, but all he felt was cold, dusty stone.

"We're at a dead end over here." he said, quickly realizing even his hushed voice sounded loud in the auditory void they found themselves in, "There must be something on the other side of the entrance."

Jay grumbled something in affirmation, and the scraping sound of boots pivoting to a new direction hit Tom's ear. He carefully followed his three comrades, holding his blade close so as not to inadvertently prick somebody.

Soon, they rounded a corner, and Tom finally saw something. A missing stone block in the upper wall allowed sunlight to trickle through, and at the sun's current angle, it shone directly on a reddish wooden door in a manner as if to highlight it. The L-shaped chamber ended there.

"Alright," Tom said, stepping forward, "James, you open it. I'll go first, and then you two come after, one on each side." he said, glancing back at the Martin brothers.

They all affirmed, and so once Tom positioned himself at the door with his sword poised to defend or attack at a moment's notice, James yanked the door open. Tom took three nimble steps through with his eye darting about for danger. But here, the only lighting was in the back of the room, a rather large opening in the wall that shone a beam of illumination down on a dark-cloaked figure with a curved saber blade in his hand.

Tom's breath caught in his throat, and once Trevor and Jay entered the room on either side of him, he heard them gasp too. This was it. The moment they'd lived and breathed for the last five years had finally come.

James entered the chamber last and added his own gasp to the consensus. Without any communication, the four swordsmen spread out and carefully began closing the distance between themselves and the cloaked saber-wielder, swords ready.

Jay engaged first, a war cry erupting from his lips that startled Tom and the other two, but somehow failed to faze the unmarked swordsman in the slightest. The ring of swords colliding filled the chamber as Jay attempted attack after unsuccessful attack on the figure. With a kick, the hooded warrior knocked Jay to the ground just in time to ward off an incoming slash from James.

The sheer power of the unmarked swordsman's defense caused James to stumble back, but before he could take advantage of that opening, Tom sped in. A wild swipe of Tom's longsword blade nearly took off the figure's hooded head, but he ducked just in time. Tom was forced to leap backward to avoid a stealthy slash from the crouched warrior.

The unmarked swordsman backflipped into the wall behind himself, and once his feet hit it, he leapt off of that. With unbelievable speed and power, he hurtled into Trevor, saber blade aimed at his throat. Trevor's strong defense saved him, but his cloaked opponent kept the momentum going. Constantly stepping backward into the shadowy half of the room, Trevor blocked each one of the swift blows, but only with extreme concentration, drawing on years of practice.

Jay leapt in from behind to assist his brother. He swung a high blow at the unmarked swordsman's neck, but raising his freed wrist, the cloaked figure blocked with a vambrace hidden beneath the folds of his flowing garments. A quick slice forced Jay to back off long enough for the cloaked swordsman to knock Trevor down with a kick to the head.

Tom frowned and squinted into the darkness from where he stood in the light with James. The unmarked swordsman had vanished into the veil of black. Trevor and Jay hurried back into visibility, and the four swordsmen stood at the ready. Tom's heartbeat pounded in his ears.

He cried out in terror when the unmarked swordsman lunged out of the darkness with a stab aimed at his heart. He managed to bat the blow away, but his stealthy opponent wouldn't end the attack there. Two more swift slashes nearly hit their marks, but Tom managed to ward them off too. The saber blade whizzed by his ear. Then a boot hit him in the gut, and Tom doubled over.

While he tried to regain his strength, he looked up and witnessed an intense engagement between the unmarked swordsman and Trevor, Jay, and James. Forming an ever-moving triangle around the cloaked fighter, they rained attacks down on him, which he blocked with sword and vambrace, acrobatic moves making up for any deficiencies.

One of the cloaked figure's swipes succeeded in ripping into James' sleeve, and he gasped. No harm had been done, but the move had still clearly terrified him. With a masterful spinning kick, the unmarked swordsman knocked both Jay and Trevor aside. They dropped to the ground clutching their jaws. Then the hooded fighter backflipped into the darkness again. The thud of a door closing drew a confused frown to Tom's face.

He rose to his feet again with a grunt and led the charge toward one of the darkened corners. The door that had just shut sounded nothing like the one they'd entered from, and the echoes also bounced off the walls differently. A little groping around, and they found a knob. After turning it, they cautiously rounded the corner into another room.

Tom crept forward in a slightly crouched stance to make himself a smaller target. The hallway they'd entered had more than a few missing bricks in the wall, giving the roof above an overall eerie glow that barely descended to the floor. And if the chambers they'd already entered hadn't been silent enough, this corridor somehow seemed to absorb what little sound there was, an audio sponge.

Tom squinted his one eye at the path ahead. Nothing. He strained his ear. Nothing. The only sense giving him any useful information was his nose. This corridor reeked of something that had either died or surely wished it had.

When he heard his footsteps echo differently, he realized they'd reached a corner. He pivoted that way slowly and continued. There was a faint light in the distance. Without realizing it, he hurried his pace.

A couple minutes more took Tom and his comrades to an open doorway giving access to the illuminated chamber beyond. Tom stepped through swiftly, casting quick glances to either side before ascending three wide steps to the flat platform forming the majority of the room. The back wall was incomplete, but it appeared it been designed that way. All but the very edges of the room basked in the sunlight.

Tom heard the blade whistling for his head just in time. He dropped to the ground and rolled before standing back up to block a second strike from the unmarked swordsman who had so suddenly shown himself. They exchanged several swift blows, with quick reversals giving the roles of attacker and defender back and forth multiple times.

The cloaked figure leapt up, clearly for a signature kick, but Tom had an idea. He also jumped up and kicked right into his opponent's boot. His stronger attack sent the unmarked swordsman sprawling out on the floor right at Jay's feet.

Jay swung down, but a swift roll saved the cloaked fighter's life. Leaping to his feet, he engaged Jay once more, both men exchanging blows so fast they became a blur. When James rushed in to intervene, he received a punch to the jaw that sent him stumbling into Tom.

Jay knocked the unmarked swordsman's saber aside long enough to land his own punch on the masked face beneath the hood. With a mid-ranged grunt, he dropped to the floor, sword clattering on the stone. Trevor rushed in to kick the saber farther out of reach and also made a second kick at the fallen fighter's head.

Before Jay could swing a downward killing blow again, the unmarked swordsman backflipped over Trevor and onto his shoulders, using the remaining momentum to lean him back. Caught off balance, Trevor fell. His cloaked opponent leapt off into the shadows before he could also hit the floor.

Tom and Jay gritted their teeth and raced together into the shadowy edge of the room in pursuit of the disarmed swordsman. A boot emerged from the darkness to buckle Tom's knee, and with a cry, he did collapse. Jay engaged the figure before he could do more to his friend.

Jay drove the disarmed figure back constantly with a string of rapid attacks. He blocked each one with his cloth-covered vambraces, but he had nothing to fight back with. Jay's eventual victory appeared certain.

But then the ground itself gave way in a small square around Jay. Crying out in terror, he plummeted out of view, and the trapdoor sprang shut behind him. Tom put a hand to his mouth.

The cloaked figure raced forward, punched Trevor in the face, and snatched up his saber again. With incredible speed, he disappeared into the shadows again, and another door thudded shut. Tom eyed James and Trevor with disbelief and rose to his feet with a grunt.

Trevor crawled over to the trapdoor, and while keeping himself supported on solid ground, he pressed down with a hand. The thing wouldn't budge in the slightest.

"It's single-use." Trevor reported grimly, "There's no telling what happened to him."

Tom pointed at the shadowy door in the corner. "Well, there'll be no telling what happened to that bastard either, then. Let's move it."