Sylas immediately grasped the metal ring and was about to yank on it when Layla squeaked and jumped back a bit.
"Woah! Wait a minute! You're actually going to open that thing?" She asked.
Sylas raised an eyebrow and the rest of the party looked at her as the King was the first to respond.
"Well yea… Aren't you curious what's down there?" Barric asked.
"Could be more liquor!" Quinn chimed in.
"Aw, hell no! That shit's creepy as fuck! I'm not going down there!" Layla was quick to declare.
"More for us then!" Quinn started. "Go ahead Sy, open it up!" The catboy said excitedly.
Sure enough, Sylas would haul open the heavy wooden door, only to reveal the darkness below. The party stared into the abyss for a moment before looking about for any source of light they could bring down with them.
"Layla, can you cast a few of those light balls?" Barric asked, poking his two pointer fingers together.
The elf sighed.
"Alright, but I'm not going down there!" She assured them.
Layla grabbed her staff to hold it up for a moment. It produced a few blue balls that glowed nice and bright and floated right in the air. She pushed them towards the party, but they still hung in the air as they floated towards them.
"Here, take these. You can touch them, and they'll stay wherever you leave them." She explained as each party member took a blue ball of their own. They all stood there awkwardly for a moment before Quinn finally spoke up.
"So uhh... Who's going first?" He asked, seeming hesitant now.
Sylas sighed.
"There is nothing down there that could be more scary than a demon." He said before taking the first steps down the wooden stairs into the mysterious basement. Akahana soon followed, nodding in agreement.
"Good point, nothing I can't handle." She said, having to stoop and work her body at awkward angles to fit in the hole clearly not made for such huge beings.
Quinn looked to Barric now with a sort of pleading face. The King pat his shoulder and went before him, knowing he was still scared.
"Come on ya scaredy cat!" Barric encouraged, pausing a few stairs down and offering the cat boy his hand. Finally he would join him, carefully making his way down the steps as the entire party except for Layla had now descended into the darkness.
Layla stayed on the couch, peeking over it at the hole and listening as they fumbled about. She figured someone had to stay behind in case everything went wrong!
Once the rest of the party was in the crudely dug out basement their curiosity only intensified as the lights now illuminated the once dark and mysterious.
The dank basement had a crude cobblestone wall and a dirt floor. It was only deep enough for Quinn and Sylas to stand normally while Barric and Aki had to stoop, the demon far more than the King.
The most interesting part of the odd basement was what it contained. The room seemed to be some sort of crude laboratory. Shelves lined the walls filled with all sorts of glass measurement containers. Some had old residue still in them from experiments long done. Other shelves were lined with vials and bottles full of liquids of all colors. There were of course also desks where all sorts of glassware was set up in intricate manners for whatever experiment they served. It seemed the party had stumbled upon a secret alchemical lab, but why was it a secret in the first place and settled in the woods?
The catboy and demon General stuck close to Barric, usually following him about wherever he was, while Sylas wandered about the other half of the room.
Sylas paused at a bookshelf nearly full with notebooks and scanned them. They were each labeled by date so he plucked the most recent one from the shelf and quickly flipped through it to find that it was only about halfway full. He backtracked to the most recent date in the book, being only a week prior. He began to read the entry.
"Every week I grow closer and closer to my ultimate climax, yet it still eludes me. My potions grow stronger with every iteration, nearly perfect, but not yet ready for the world. The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that once my work is complete I will be reunited with my Goddess in the most carnal way. My work must spread the lust that will give her the power to return to the mortal realm so the world will know eternal pleasure..."
"What the fuuuuck..." Sylas whispered to himself as he read.