Up to Floor 2

You carefully navigate the stairway up to the next floor. It's tight, the spiral stairs are just slightly wider than your shoulders and you often brush against the walls on the way up. After several minutes of climbing, the environment begins to change. The herald of such a change is a grate on the floor that's built into the stone structure. A small trickle of water drips lazily into the floor as the roughly hewn stone converts to damp, musty wood. The wood itself is slightly pliable when you push against it, but sturdy enough that you can't push through it. It must be reinforced with something a bit more sturdy, or more structurally sound wood. An earthy smell assaults your senses. It smells like a compost pile that had been recently disturbed. It lingers in the air but isn't overpowering. Perhaps it is simply the smell of rotted wood, or maybe something more foul awaits. Either way, you push on.

Finally, you reach the top of the stairs and into what you assume is Floor 2. It appears you are in a long corridor and you can't clearly see either end of it. The hallway is made of the same kind of wood that the stairs were made of and the seeping wetness has migrated about halfway up the walls. The upper half of the walls is dry along with the ceiling and the hallway is devoid of torchlight. Its place is a strange blue fungus that radiates a fell blue light. It isn't quite as bright as a flame, but it's enough to see where you're going...barely. The damn floor sinks slightly under your feet and you really hope that it's structurally sound. You hear a faint scratching sound coming from your left, but the eerie light gives you no hints as to what it may be.

As you take note of your surrounding, Circe materializes next to you. At first, you're surprised to find that she would enter such a dank, disgusting place. However, then you realize that she's floating inches above the floor instead of standing on it. "Welcome to Floor 2." she spreads her arms slightly in welcome, "As you can see, it's not a particularly pleasant floor to be on. "

"Where is all this water coming from? I wouldn't think that you would be getting rain here..."

The fiend shrugs idly, "There are dozens of floors above you and some of them have almost exclusively water on them. Much of it gets recycled back into the system, but some of it gets through and ends up here in the superstructure along with much of the filth and garbage from the rest of the Tower." Circe's face contorts into a scowl, "There are all sorts of unpleasant creatures in the depths of this floor. They are hunted by exterminators in my employ. They will know how you can get to Floor 3. I recommend you rendezvous with some of them quickly before you run into anything unpleasant."

The faint scratching sounds have increased dramatically as Circe spoke and the noise has finally caught the demon's attention. She turns to look down the hall and you see a nefarious grin cross the side of her face. "....like them." The fiend then fades from view.

You hear voices coming down the corridor long before you see what's creating them. Chittering sounds and declarations of intentions. "Yes-Yes!"

Another voice declared, "We need-need to search for Food-Food!"

Yet another shouted, "Feed-Feed, Drink-Drink, Breed-Breed!"

You don't know how many there are until you see them enter the fading light. It is less a number and more a running mass of bodies. They are hunched over and at first, you think they are strange hunch-backed humans, but then they pass the first visible light and your stomach sinks. Strange, hunched-over rat creatures swarm towards you. Some of them approach on two legs, others are crawling on four. Many are even climbing on the wooden walls and floors to create a mass of bodies storming down the corridor. They appear to be about the same height as the Mouse Girl from the previous floor, but they're much broader, muscular, and a few glimpses of even larger ones can be seen through the masses. They are also far more bestial with hardly any human-like features. Their long, rat-noses arch over their mouths that appear to be filled with a pair of sharp incisors that stick out over their lips. Their color forms vary from black to brown and while many of them have roughshod clothing and armor; some of them don't appear to be wearing anything...Although you don't see any indicators of the various creatures' sexes.

You do see the glints of various weapons. Mostly knives and half-swords. Some of them have blades strapped to their tails that they swing around without any care of their companions.

All in all, a small army approaches you down the corridor. However, they don't appear to notice or care about you. You could try to make a run for it, or duck down back into the stairwell and hope they don't notice you. Conversely, you could try and cut a path through them. An attempt not to kill all of them, but simply to survive the tide of rat-creatures barreling down the hallway toward you.