The ever-thickening smoke was more oppressive even than the weight of stone looming above. Black and oily, coughed up by sickly, sputtering torches, it swirled and gathered until it threatened to blot out what little light the flames produced, to transform the passage-ways once more into a kingdom of the blind.

The stones were old: Dark and made darker by the smoke, they were joined by mortar so ancient it was little more than powder. The corridor, a winding artery of grimy brick, smelled of neglect-or would have, were the air not choked by that selfsame smoke. All along those walls, clad in the sundry hues and tabards and ensigns of half a dozen Guilds and at least as many noble Houses, soldiers stood rigidly at attention, fists wrapped around hafts and hilts, and did their best to glare menacingly at one another. It was an effect somewhat ruined by the constant blinking of reddened eyes and the occasional racking cough.

At the corridor's far end, an ancient wooden door stooped in its frame like a tired old man. Cracks in the wood and gaps where the portal no longer sat flush allowed sounds to pass unimpeded. Yet something within that room seemed to hold most of the thick haze at bay.

It might have been the press of bodies, so tightly crammed together that they had long since transformed this normally chilly chamber into something resembling a baker's oven. It might have been the hot breath of so many mouths jabbering at once, speaking not so much to as at one another in diatribes laden with accusation and acrimony.

Or it might have been the tension that weighed upon the room more heavily than smoke and stone combined. Perhaps one could, as the aphorism suggests, have cut that tension with a knife, but it wouldn't have been a wise idea. The tension here might very well have fought right back.