[RPG] [WI][OT] Alanna Anaris ~ Escape from the Twisted Tower

[Timothy Collett]

Angrist opens the door through which Alanna had entered, revealing a  
staircase, leading down.

Alanna looks at the staircase in utter confoundment. She splutters a  
little, takes her head in her hands, and shakes it briefly.

"Right...Outer Tilog," she murmurs, "and this must be that  
mad...warlock? alchemist? no, that's Pharmakeus...scientist? yeah,  
that's it, the mad scientist I've heard a bit about. Naturally, his  
tower doesn't follow normal rules..."

She glances back over her shoulder, sees Angrist muttering to himself  
(probably) about the flux and walls and anchors, and descends the  
stairs, shutting the door behind her.

For an instant, she is in pitch-darkness. Then a pallid blue-green  
light starts shining, seemingly from everywhere at once. As her eyes  
become accustomed to the odd light, she continues down the stairs,  
which twist and turn and spiral this way and that, until she has no  
idea just where she might be--she might even be underground again. At  
last, she comes to a landing. There is a tiny slit window, which she  
peers out.

The landscape below resembles nothing so much as a writhing mass of  
insects. Fortunately, it's a very long way below. Alanna backs away  
from the window, and turns to face the five doors that confront her.  
"Don't pick the third door to the right, did he say? No, it was the  
second...very well; I'll take the leftmost door. That can't possibly  
be a second door to the right."

She opens the leftmost door, and steps through into a white marble  
corridor. "What in..." she murmurs, looking around. The door slams  
itself shut behind her, and vanishes. "Oh, brilliant," she growls,  
seeing that she is now in a corridor that seems to go on endlessly  
without break or curve in both directions.

"Well, nothing for it," she says to herself. "Better start walking..."

****

After running along the endless marble corridor for what could be  
minutes or days, Alanna hears a noise behind her, turns around--and  
finds herself in a closet.

The shock of this causes her to fall over backwards, ending up  
sitting in a bucket with a mop draped on her head.  Swearing  
profusely, she staggers to her feet and tries the door.  It opens  
easily, and she sees a room full of steam, the floor slick with  
condensed water.  Carefully, she edges along the wall, opening the  
first door she comes to and going through it.

This leads to a perfectly normal-looking stone corridor, with torches  
in sconces at regular intervals.  She takes the first torch and moves  
down the corridor.  Keeping Angrist's advice in mind, she takes the  
left fork every time there is a choice to be made.  At last, she sees  
a door on the right.  She opens it--and stops short, her torch  
falling through the door....and into empty air.  Peering over the  
doorsill, Alanna can just make out what looks awfully like the towers  
and filth of Outer Tilog city, far, far below.

"Right...this must be a 'second door to the right'...gotta find one  
on the left side, don't I?" she growls to herself, closing the door.   
Then she chuckles  "Mortimer will never know what hit him..."

She continues on, the path dimmer now without her torch.  At last,  
there is a door on the left, which she opens.  "Looks safe enough..."

She proceeds through into a room filled with bookshelves--all of them  
incredibly dusty.  Within seconds, she has stirred up enough dust  
simply by walking into the room to cause an explosion of sneezes-- 
which, of course, stirred up more dust, provoking more sneezing...

Alanna hurries forward blindly, desperate to escape the cloud of  
choking dust, and runs into several bookshelves on her way, causing  
further dust cascades.  Eventually, her lungs nearly bursting, she  
finds herself up against a wall, and follows it to the left until she  
reaches an archway.  Passing through it, she clears the dust field,  
and staggers several steps before collapsing to the ground, wheezing,  
coughing, gasping, and generally attempting to remove the remaining  
dust from her lungs and restore oxygen to her poor deprived body.

Some minutes later, when she is able to breath steadily again, she  
opens her eyes and looks up at the archway.

Outer Tilog Archives

reads a plaque above it.

"Well, I suppose with literacy being illegal," Alanna snarls, "no  
one's been in there in centuries.  Bloody brilliant...hey, wait a  
minute!"

She looks around, but sees no windows.  "A few minutes ago, I was  
looking down on Outer Tilog from a thousand feet up...and now I'm  
underneath it?"

Her eyes flash with an inspiration.  She rips a piece off her tunic  
and ties it snugly across her face, to protect her from the dust.   
Cautiously, she re-enters the Archives, following her very obvious  
(and surprisingly haphazard) trail through the stacks back to the  
door by which she had entered.  Or, at least, to the bookcase that  
occupied the space it had once claimed.

Alanna swears loudly, cursing Alexei, Angrist, and the fools who  
built the Archives until she is almost literally blue in the face.   
The trail leads directly here...and yet there is nothing here but a  
bookcase, covered in undisturbed dust.  Savagely, Alanna kicks at a  
book on the bottom shelf, which protrudes slightly from its brethren.

There is a horrendous noise of groaning and screeching, the room  
shakes, dust flies everywhere--completely obliterating her tracks-- 
and Alanna falls flat on her back.  Then, silence.

"What in the name of--" she groans, and just then, smoothly and  
silently, the bookshelf slides sideways, revealing an irregular  
opening, beyond which are, unmistakably, the catacombs of Outer  
Tilog.  (It's made relatively obvious, if a little lacking in the  
spelling department, by the sign nailed to one rock wall, reading,  
"Katacuums of Owtr Tilg.")

Beneath her makeshift mask, Alanna smiles with satisfaction.  "Yes!   
Now I can actually start helping Sadi find that stupid spellcaster he  
wants so much!"

Now able to see her way clearly, Alanna carefully finds the quickest  
route back to the archway.  Once there, she pulls off her mask and  
sprints toward the exit.

--

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."
  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

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