Gavner was excited at this point. He smiled as he began charging through the tunnel at an accelerated pace, when he ran directly into a pile of stone, barricading the tunnel. He fell back on his heels and rocked further onto his back with a grunt.

“Xzcunge!” The creature of the night cursed, “Cave ins.” He looked at the barricading stone with fury. How was he to escape now? Suddenly he became aware of the sound of running water below his feet. “The royal hot springs,” Gavner muttered to himself. He pressed his ear to the ground. The floor of the tunnel he was in only seemed to be several inches thick. Something he could easily break through. Stepping back, the vampire took out the hammer that he had stored on his belt, and he prepared a blow.

“One, two… three!” Gavner brought the warhammer down onto the floor of the tunnel. He saw a dent in the stone and cracks that spider webbed to the walls of the tunnel.

“One, two, three!” Gavner said again as he smashed an even bigger dent with more cracks into the tunnel floor. “Come on,” he said, “just one more time!” He panted and raised his hammer before drawing in another big breath. “Three!”

One moment Gavner was swinging the Warhammer with all his might, and the next, he was freefalling- plummeting- in a long unsettling drop in the dark. He did not scream, he did not think, he simply fell for several seconds before he was plunged into the blood warm pool of hot water which he had just bathed in previously that day. He was in the royal hot springs of King Hronzak.

Popping his head out of the water, he took a deep breath in before looking around. The high cavern ceiling sounded out an insidious cracking sound which spread throughout the entire cave. Gavner looked up and noticed the admonishing stalagmites sticking directly down in a daunting manner. The ceiling of the cave must have been eroded throughout the years in the history of the mountain and worn down the escape tunnel’s floor so that it was nearly a few inches thick. Looking around, Gavner saw no inlet for the water, but the soothing trickle of running water he could hear echoed throughout the cavern.

He saw a medium sized tunnel with an overflow level which must have been the outlet, and he began to swim for it when he heard footsteps in the entrance to the cavern.

“Xzcunge.”