If Lucius knew about the human's fairytale called "The Sleeping Beauty", he would have probably thought he somehow became a part of it, for he soon learned that everybody here was sleeping. He could tell that it's so because of the loud snoring that was coming out of many of these rooms with closed doors that he was passing by. He was right in his presumption that this was a dormitory. Some inhabitants of the rooms slept peacefully and quietly (or they weren't, but Lucius couldn't know it because the doors were closed), and others left nothing to Lucius's imagination with their loud snoring.
This seemed quite strange to Lucius. Were they all so sure of the fact that danger of any kind is not a possibility that they decided to shorten their time by unnecessary sleeping (demons, like angels, didn't have to sleep)? It would seem so. Lucius also noticed that this is one really long corridor! There were so many rooms that he, at one point, started counting the rooms, fascinated by their quantity. He managed to count one hundred rooms before he reached the end of the corridor, and that was without counting from the start. Without knowing how many grolls were in each room, Lucius presumed that there's at least a few hundred of them here.
In a way, Lucius pitied them all. Imagine waiting for a chance to fight for centuries (which was sad by itself, from a groll's point of view, of course), and then when there's finally something happening, you sleep it over. That was some really bad luck, but on the other hand, it was good for Lucius, because if those few hundred grolls were awake, there was no way he would ever get through here in time or maybe at all. After all, a few hundred opponents were still a few hundred opponents, no matter if they were grolls. Also, that one at Morning Star fortress was not to be played with; that was for certain, and Lucius didn't doubt for a second that there were others as strong as him among the grolls.
Be as it may, he had to hurry. A lot of time had already passed from the moment when the alarm was raised, and Lucius knew that the demons were soon going to start searching the other part of the fortress. He finally reached the end of this long hall, and now he was presented with two options. He could go left or right. Naturally, there were no signs of any kind, so he had to guess which would be the right way.
Being right-handed, Lucius was always more fond of the right side. But there was always a bit of reverse psychology at play in these situations. Or at least that was what Lucius thought. Most of the humans and likewise angels and demons were right-handed, so someone could very well expect of most to decide to go right instead of left. This meant that the person designing such dangerous places like this could take advantage of that knowledge and make the right path more dangerous than the left one. But he could also know that you know that he knows, so he could make the left path more dangerous instead of the right one. As you can probably agree, Lucius was overthinking the whole thing. He remembered that his time is beyond limited, and he decided to take his chances with the left path.
It was not long before he realised that his analysis was even more pointless because both paths led to the same room. It was a very big room with many long tables and chairs. Just a few torches were burning in here and most of the room was in complete darkness. It was completely empty (or at least it looked completely empty at first glance). This was, undoubtedly, a dining hall for all of the grolls. If they engaged in sleeping, it made sense that the grolls did other pointless things, such as eating and drinking, just for the fun of it. That meant that there had to be a kitchen or a storage of some kind, or probably even both.
Lucius grabbed one of the torches that hung on the walls and carefully started snooping around in hopes of finding a way forward (or downward, to be more precise). He quickly found two doors that were not that far from each other, and upon opening them and inspecting the rooms behind them, Lucius confirmed his doubts. A big kitchen and a an equally big storage room. He continued onwards and arrived at the other side of the dining hall. There, following the wall, he finally found what he was actually looking for. Right in the middle of the wall was another staircase, of course, leading downwards.
This all seemed so easy that Lucius couldn't help but to have that uneasy feeling that something is not right and that he's being led into a trap. Even if that were true, grolls certainly weren't the ones responsible, because all of them slept like logs. So, Lucius expected that the real challenge lies ahead, and whatever it was, he knew that there was no turning back now, for what was behind him surely wasn't that much better than what was ahead of him.
He carefully started descending the staircase, straining his ears and eyes to be ready for whatever awaits for him in the darkness, but this kind of precaution didn't yield any result. What he did notice was that the brick wall simply stopped at one point of the staircase, being replaced by a rough wall of a cave. He was going deeper and deeper into the heart of the demon's fortress, deeper and deeper into a trap carefully laid out for those foolish enough to come here, and he couldn't do anything about it.
He descended the staircase for a few minutes until he could see its end and the light that followed. The light was not the reddish light of the flame, but rather, it looked more like the moonlight. He knew that was absurd. He was who knows how deep underground. There could be no moonlight here. Still, that's how it looked to him. He put out his torch and then slowly and extremely carefully approached the end of the staircase while his heart beat like it was going to burst out of his chest. This was it. His first real challenge on his way to the dark crystal. Keeping to the darkness of the staircase as best and as much as he could, Lucius looked at what lay ahead in front of his eyes, and what he saw made him want to turn around immediately.
In front of him, a path continued from the staircase. It was long, and it led across the water, all the way up to what could only be described as a small fortress. Yes, it was a fortress built inside of a fortress (or under it, to be more precise), and Lucius had to admit that that isn't that bad of an idea. The fortress itself, while obviously big enough to be considered one, really wasn't that big. Its walls were pretty low, and in general it looked more like a giant mock-up than a real fortress (this was probably both due to the limitations of the place where it was located and its function). Naturally, the fortress is useless without guards, and this one didn't lack them. But this time the guards were not grolls. Instead, they were minotaurs. Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of minotaurs. It was a natural upgrade over grolls because the minotaurs were both stronger and more focused on the task at hand. Their stronger focus was immediately evident by the fact that they were all awake patrolling the fortress's walls and watching the entrance to the cave like watchdogs.
Yes, this was a big cave. The whole fortress was surrounded by water, and the only way to reach it on foot was using the path that led to its small gates. On the edges of the cave there were a few really big stalactites and stalagmites and a lot of smaller ones. The source of light for the whole cave, as already mentioned, weren't torches, but instead, in the middle of the ceiling there was a big crystal that shone with white light, like a natural chandelier, giving the impression that one was under a clear sky on a night of the full moon.
Lucius retreated back into the darkness of the staircase and sat, putting the black sword on his lap.
"Simple… but clever…" he whispered as a comment to what he saw.
It wouldn't be an overstatement if it were said that Lucius lost heart. Unfortunately, it was very clear what he had to do. Behind that small fortress (or even inside it) there lied a way forward, leading to the dark crystal, and he had to get there as soon as possible, preferably alive, unharmed, and undetected. The question was, how exactly did he plan to accomplish that?