If that time in front of the black knight's chamber a deal among the grolls helped Lucius, this time it didn't help him at all. Though the circumstances were similar, they were not exactly the same. Old Nigel's ingenuity saved them from detection that time, but now Lucius was left to his own devices, and he failed to see more than two solutions to the problem consisting of one quickly approaching groll. He could either risk it all and start a fight, counting on the element of surprise and on the fact that he could kill them more quickly than they could manage to ring that bell, or he could retreat back up the staircase, climbing up along the groll while keeping far enough from him not to be discovered by the light of his torch. Not only was he limited to these two solutions, but he had to decide for one of them basically in a matter of seconds because the groll was already approaching him.
When the groll unwillingly approached the dark staircase, a sense of danger could be felt in the air, and fear grasped his heart. He had second thoughts about this idea. He was somewhat of a black sheep among his kind, and he wasn't as brave as all the rest of the grolls, though he was as equally bloodthirsty. Yes, he was quite fond of fighting, but on the other hand, he wasn't fond of stumbling in the dark with a torch at all. He turned around towards his comrades for support, but the support was expectedly nonexistent, and he was just faced with ridicule, laughter, and even an insult that claimed that he might be a coward. He couldn't allow them to think of him like that. He had to prove it to them that he's as brave as they are! So, more unwilling than willing, he started going up the stairs.
At first he was advancing slowly, but he soon started encouraging himself, thinking that even if he actually stumbles upon an intruder (which was highly unlikely, as his comrades themselves said), the intruder couldn't ambush him because he had to appear in front of him, leaving him enough time to bash his skull with his trusty mace he was holding in his right hand. Thinking like that, he became less and less afraid with each step he took until he was walking up the stairs, sure of himself and completely unbothered by the dark. The fear that he felt at the start of his ascent disappeared like it never bothered him in the first place.
He went on going like that for a good ten minutes when he suddenly arrived at the top of the staircase. His arrival was sudden because there was no light from the torch that would signify that he neared the hall in the upper part of the fortress. That was indeed strange to him, and it did startle him a bit and make him grasp his mace more firmly, but when he entered the hall itself, he noticed that only this part of the hall was unlit and that at the rest of the hall the torches were hanging on the wall and burning as they should have. He spent a minute or two thinking about this and scratching his head. Everything seemed normal. There was no noise, and nobody was running around in panic. Maybe he was wrong after all? He certainly wouldn't complain if it were so. He liked the idea of a good fight, but he also valued his life, and it seemed like he could keep it for now. Yes, he will undoubtedly end up looking like a moron in front of his comrades, but he was already used to that, and in time, they would surely forget about this incident.
He turned around and wanted to start his descent back to the guard post, but just before he did, he stopped. Some small part of him, something like intuition, told him to go and check upon the torch, which wasn't burning. He didn't know why he felt the sudden urge to do so, but he decided to do so anyway. He approached the place where the torch hung on the wall. He didn't know what he expected to see if he was quite honest with himself. Thinking nothing of it, he concluded that it simply must have burned out. Unimpressed by his discovery, he turned around and started walking down the staircase.
He was well on his way down to the guard post when the cogwheels in his brain started turning, and he realised that that supposedly burned out torch he examined wasn't burned out at all. In fact, it looked like it could burn a whole lot more. Was it the draft that extinguished it? And if so, why didn't he remember to light it with his own torch? Could it be that something else was afoot? With that last question ended the detective work of this particular groll, because a blade of the particularly black sword pierced his chest through his back, and his brain didn't even manage to comprehend what happened before it shut down.
Lucius grabbed his lifeless body, preventing it from falling down the staircase (although the groll dropped down both the torch and the mace he was carrying), and he leaned it on the wall in a sitting position, putting his mace on his lap but picking his torch for himself. With a sigh of relief, he quickly continued down the staircase. He managed to get out of this inconvenient situation successfully, but he paid a great price in time to be able to do so.
First he had to slowly and silently walk up the staircase in front of the groll not to alert him to his presence. This was slow and hugely time-consuming, and Lucius thought countless times just to ambush him, but the staircase isn't really an ideal place for a fight, and he was afraid that something could go awry. He was equally afraid that, once they reach the top of the stairs, he will be caught by a patrol searching for him or, even if he somehow managed to avoid detection, the groll himself would stumble upon the patrol, who would then tell him what happened, and he would then rush down to the guard post to alert everybody that an intruder could really be coming down their way. And when the bloody fool went to examine the missing torch, it was pure luck that Lucius had enough composure to put the torch back in his place and that the dim-witted troll didn't immediately light it, revealing Lucius crouching in the dark a bit further.
Yes, there were many risks and a lot of time wasted, but luckily the problem was now safely resolved and Lucius was back on track. In a few minutes of silently running down the stairs, he was back at the guard post, but this time, there were no voices to be heard. This worried Lucius, and he feared that might be a sign of danger. He put his torch out, leaving it on the staircase, and came nearer, listening closely, and he soon realised that he could hear something other than voices. It was a weird sound. He never heard it before, and it confused him quite a bit. What did it mean? Well, he already wasted more time than he had wanted to, and he didn't want to waste it anymore, so he decided to again take a peek around the corner. What he saw, wanted it he or not, made him smile.
The three grolls that remained after one left were sleeping as peacefully as babies, almost as if they didn't have a single care in the world. They really weren't kidding around when they said they wanted to sleep until the end of their shift. The unknown sound that bothered Lucius was the sound of them inhaling and exhaling the air out of their mouths while they slept (snoring, if you will). Lucius had to decide what to do with them.
If he found all four of them sleeping like that when he first came here, the situation would be ideal, and he could have sneaked past them, confusing anyone who might come searching for him here.
"What intruder? We haven't seen or heard anybody come down here!" the guards would say, not wanting to reveal that they slept through their whole shift.
But that was now out of the question, and anybody who headed down to the guard post would find the dead groll sitting in the middle of the staircase. Still, there was no reason to wake these grolls if he could sneak past by them. He also didn't want to kill them. If the alarm was raised, the difference of 100 grolls opposed to 103 grolls running after him didn't make much of a difference. Thinking of the potential raising of an alarm reminded him of the alarm bell that was present in this room. He decided to prepare a little surprise for the demons.
He carefully sneaked across the room not to awaken the grolls, and he slowly cut the rope holding the bell, holding the bell itself with the other hand. Once the rope was cut and the bell was safely in his hand, he carried it back to the staircase and put it on one step, which was a bit farther up, right next to the wall.
"There, now this will make the raising of an alarm a bit more complicated." thought Lucius to himself, satisfied with his incidental sabotage.
After that, he went back into the room. There really wasn't any kind of thinking involved concerning where he should go next, because only one door led out of this room. He sneaked to it and slowly opened it. In front of him was a long and narrow hall lit with torches. On both sides there were many doors.
"A dormitory, perhaps? Whatever it may be, it won't hurt for me to remain as quiet as possible." he thought as he closed the door behind himself and started sneaking down the narrow hall.