He took a step forward, eyes adjusting to the dimness just in time to stop him from plunging into the pit that filled the center of the temple.

At first, Krailash assumed the ten-foot-wide hole was part of some dark ceremonial function of the yuan-ti temple, who were said to keep pits of snakes and to hold their venerated monsters underground to receive sacrifices, but a moment of study showed him the chasm in the floor was actually evidence of some catastrophe. The edges were cracked and ragged, stones heaved up and statuary toppled on the edges, with only impenetrable darkness within. Was it a sinkhole, or …?

No. There was a single bright drop of blood on the edge of the pit. The prisoners had been led here and taken down into the dark. Perhaps not yuan-ti slavers at all, then, but something worse: some subterranean dwellers from the Underdark, the vast system of caverns, tunnels, lightless seas, underground rivers, and hidden cities that legend said formed a savage world beneath the world. Yuan-ti certainly weren’t the only creatures with fangs in their mouths. Krailash shivered. Despite his reptilian appearance, he was as warm-blooded as any human, and the thought of innocents dragged into those lightless depths by savage drow, or brutish kuo-toa, or fouler races he’d never heard of, chilled his blood and troubled his heart.

Well. He wouldn’t be going down there. But he could do something about this particular doorway to the depths-

He heard something from outside, a dull thud that could have been a falling stone from the ruins, or something more ominous. “Rainer!” he shouted, and then looked uneasily at the hole in the floor, wondering if his voice would call attention to whatever lived within. The other guard didn’t answer, and Krailash hurried for the entryway, emerging into the light to find Rainer gone, his sword on the ground. A faint shout gave him a direction to follow, and he ran deeper around the side of the temple where he found another crack in the earth, this one smaller, but opening on the same black depths.