The entrance gapes open like a bear trap, all ragged stone and wet echoes of water drip drip dripping in the darkness. The rocks inside are slick with lichen and moss, the green carpet like a trillion tiny tentacles, reaching up for your boots. The walls are the gray of a dreary February, and the brown of a dry December.

 

You slip, stumble, stagger, and slink down, past the crumbling entrance and into the massive antechamber a couple hundred yards in. You rustle your lantern out of your pack, and scrape a match across its box to light it. The lantern flares, revealing the stone cathedral in its full majesty, Stalactites hanging like chandeliers, pools of water like glimmering portals into another world. On the far wall, you can see the disco ball spatter of formica and granite, winking back at you with your lantern’s light.

 

A chill wind blows. Your lantern snuffs out.

 

It is dark.

 

You are likely to be eaten by a grue.