"Whoa... what happened in there?" Leona asks, eyes wide as you walk up to her. Holding out your free hand, she takes it and gets to her paws. You briefly explain what happened, and the properties of the sword. "Hey, cool..." Leona says, grabbing the sword herself and admiring it. "You wanna change forms with that minotaur? It'd made getting around here easier." You tell her. She looks over herself and runs her hands along her body, face, and through her hair. "No, thanks. I still look like myself. I want to keep it that way." You nod, understanding her reasoning. "As for me, I think wings are a little more important than a thousand extra pounds, a huge bull head, and three feet of extra height." You say, looking back at your huge bat-like wings, smiling. You're actually getting used to and liking them now.
"I'm sorry, I was so wrapped up in watching you I didn't see where the griffin went." Leona says. "Hold on, let me check and see if we're actually going to need them." You say. You walk across the hall, grab the huge iron ring in the front door, and pull with all your might. It doesn't budge a millimeter. You pull harder, flapping your wings and lifting off the ground to pull back. Sweat runs down you face in streams. After two minutes of pulling, tugging, and cursing, it still hasn't moved, and you collapse to the floor, panting. "Yeah, not even me or you in minotaur form could break through that. It's solid wood." You call to Leona from the dusty red carpet.
Suddenly, a loud screech echoes through the great hall. It reverberates of the stone walls, bounces off the decaying furniture, and into you and Leona's eardrums. It stops after a few moments. "OW! That was loud!" Leona cries, removing her hands from her ears. You get to your feet and point to the staircase across the room. "Look!" you say. A trail of brown and white feathers leads from where you saw the griffin last, up first staircase, then up the left staircase. "I'll bet you $100 the cry came from there!" Leona says. Grinning, you two laugh at the joke. "Well, let's go after it." She says. Nodding, you two walk across the dusty great hall, heading up the stairs. "Creepy..." Leona whispers as she eyes the naga-carved banister as you climb. You reach the landing and you both turn left, climbing up until you're in another brightly-lit hallway.
This one simply goes straight like the one behind the painting, but at the end the hallway turns right out of sight and about halfway down the hallway another arch is present, signaling that it breaks off into another hallway there as well. "End or middle?" Leona asks you. "Uhhh.... middle." You say. Nodding, Leona pushes pass you and starts padding down the hallway towards the end. You walk halfway down and look into the hallway you'll be going in and are relieved to see only two doors and a large array of brightly-burning torches on the walls. It goes out for about 500 feet before hitting a corner and going to the left.
Before you begin walking, you step out of it just so and look at Leona; about to enter her hallway. "Hey, do you have a weapon or something? Can you defend yourself?" you call to her. She retreats back a few steps and looks at you, smiling. "Are you kidding? With these huge paws and my snake, that griffin better watch out!" she says. Laughing, you wave at her and she waves back as you both step into your hallways.
Your bare feet thump on the stone floor, making a hollow sound. The two doors in your hallway are different: the one on the left wall is dark and closed, the one on the right is open and has bright light streaming out of it. You decide to check out the lighted one, having had enough of the dark from your last episode with the trap door.
You walk up to it, enter the room, and see nothing it but four lit torches on the four walls and a round table with four chairs around it. Two of the chairs have been knocked over and lay on their sides on the floor. The third chair is pushed out away from the table. The fourth has a skeleton in it. Puzzled, you walk over, pluck a torch from the wall (you left your other in the entrance hall), and examine the skeleton closer. It is slumped in the hair, head hanging over the back of the headrest. Spiderwebs streak across the table, attaching to the skull and it's other bones, making a beautiful mosaic of silk. Yo even see a few spider crawling all over the skeleton, table, and chair. The skull doesn't look human, it's face just out about six inches and has long, sharp fangs pushing out of the grinning gum lines. It's huge skeleton has a few tatters of rotten cloth hanging to it, the remains of it's clothes. A sword that looks almost identical to the form changing one you hold in your hand juts from it's ribs. Given the huge amount of dust and spiderwebs in this room, plus the condition of the skeleton, this murder happened a long, long time ago, perhaps even before your great-grandparents were born. On the table is a yellowing, moldering pack of cards (spread all around the tabletop) and a huge stack of bronze coins that you don't recognize as a currency that anybody uses these days, most of them piled in front of the creature. So this creature was killed in a quarrel over a game of cards. The similarities between olden times and newer never fails to amaze you.
Getting a little creeped put by the murder scene, you leave the room and continue down the passage. Soon, you reach the end and turn to look down the other hallway at the left. Much to your relief, the griffin is lying down about a quarter of the way up the passage with it's back to you, it's huge back paws and tail stretched out lazily in front. It's wings are folded back and resting on it's back. The keys lie on the right side of the creature, but it's not touching them. It's head is constantly going down and coming back up, and you hear slurping and gnawing noises. You think for one horrified second that it has caught Leona, but you see her further up the passage, right on her corner, watching the griffin.
You wave your arms, and she sees you, smiling, she waves back. It appears your two hallways connect. But you need those keys to get out of here. And since you're closest, it looks like you'll be the one grabbing them. You point to the keys and Leona sees, them, nodding. You'd just walk up and grab them, but given the griffin's heightened sense of hearing, it's very likely it'll hear you, turn around, and attack... or worse. You could always just switch forms with the griffin temporarily, but the griffin with your transformation might fly away, leaving you in a very inconvenient situation. For the umpteenth time tonight, you are faced with a tough decision.