Liv presses on into the castle's depths

The vast underground hall stretched out before her, as mysterious and obscure as it was vast. Liv assumed this must have been some sort of central crossroads for the series of underground tunnels that ran beneath the castle. She had little doubt that she could make her way to nearly any point in the castle from here. The difficulty was knowing where to go...

A cracking sound from behind her let Liv know there wasn't much time to figure it out. Her pursuers must have broken through her barricade and would no doubt catch up with her within minutes.

She hurried down the hallway, jogging half a dozen paces before jerking open the closest door. It was large, carved of a deep, heavy wood and covered with symbols that felt ancient and arcane, yet at the same time deeply unnerving and unnatural, full of spirals which seemed to cascade in on themselves in endless cannibalistic consumption.

There was no time to think it through, however. Liv pulled the door shut as quickly and quietly as she could manage. She would keep moving, she decided. The more doors she could put between herself and the men chasing her, the better. That plan came to a abrupt halt when she turned around.

She found herself now in another room, a vastly cavernous space whose ceiling she could only just make out the shape of in the dim light. Its contents unnerved her deeply. All around her were cages and contraptions of all sorts, sawhorses, cross braces, many of them looked like bizarre foreign or forbidden **** devices, although only a few were bladed. Some were occupied. At the far corner of the room, Liv noticed the figure of a woman, fully nude, strapped to one of the machines while it hummed in near silence beneath her. Her chest rose and fell with the motion of an exhausted whimper.

Closer, a shape stirred in one of the cages. It was a bulky, inhuman figure, with strange limbs like tentacles that seemed to almost fade into wisps of fog at their tips. Liv regarded it with a grimace. She couldn't make out its face, or even get a good sense of the shape of its body amidst the darkness, but it seemed like a good idea not to get involved with such a strange thing.

This was the sort of place to move through and be done with, Liv decided. Though whether that was an option remained to be seen. And... perhaps it would be good for their mission if she took a quick look around?