The two descend the stairs

Robin turned to keep marching on forward, as Becky looked after her. Becky's hand reached up as she unconsciously reached through the spell to brush her lips, her face flushing red now that she could think clearly again.

"W-wait!" Becky shuffled forward after Robin. "Someone knows we're here! We have to get back to the rest of the team!"

"Aaand whoever that is was right behind us in that room, throwing little balls of gas at us." Robin countered without turning her head. "It might have been a trap, too. Just with the little trap bits pretending to look like hands to confuse us."

Becky frowned as Robin turned, a broad smile on the girl's face matching the discomfort on Becky's. Robin took off her jacket, pulling a thin bit of metal from it and waving her hands over it, whispering some sort of enchantment. As Becky looked on, the metal stretched, then twisted in on itself, flattening out part of a blade, while the rest of it wrapped into a handle. Robin caught the rapier from mid-air with a flourish and pointed it down the stairway. "We might not know what lays ahead, but behind us there's only locked doors, traps, and dusty old books!"

"And fortune favors the bold, right?" Robin smiled, taking Becky's nervous silence as agreements she turned. "So I say onward!"

Becky sighed, following Robin's lead, and trying to take at least a tiny bit of comfort in the fact that Robin had managed to smuggle a sword in here. As silly as she seemed, between the water breathing spell and extendo-sword, Becky was increasingly confident that the girl was far more dangerous and clever than she seemed.

The gas continued to flow down the stairs around them as they descended, though with Robin's waterbreathing spell in place, the threat was moot, and it did little more than catch and reflect the dim purple lighting that seemed to emanate from the walls. That and swirl up dramatically whenever one of them took to large of a step, which--by Robin's elongated stride, she seemed to be fully aware of.

The two continued downward as the stairs continued, seemingly without end. After a while, Becky noticed that Robin had begun to hum a tune, syncing up the tempo with the rhythmic constant of their footsteps. If there was an exit to this stairwell at all, Becky suspected it would be into some sort of underground secret base, or perhaps a dungeon. Maybe even ancient ruins--none of which sounded like the place she wanted to wind up unarmed and alone save for a relative stranger with a hyperactive sense of the dramatic.

"Do you think that at the end of this, there's like an ancient dungeon or something?" Robin spoke out loud, catching Becky's surprise at how whimsical her own thinking had become. "Or maybe a dragon's lair, or like--"

Robin stopped. Just up ahead, the stairs finally came to a halt, in a black iron door. Rust free and with bars across the little window at the top. "Guess we're about to find out." Becky said.

***

This chapter was co-authored by Shandy (https://chyoa.com/user/Shandy)--please check out his stuff! :)