The mansion was locked up. A grim atmosphere was gathering over it. The Cursed and the warriors scaled the stone fence and then climbed through one of the windows.
The interior was deserted. Years of dust lay upon the furniture, while wooden debris and stone fragments littered the floor. They were moving toward the light breaking through ahead.
In the great hall, a lady with dark hair sat upon the throne, dressed in a dark gown adorned with golden threads. In the center of the hall was an empty stone well. Its shaft descended into impenetrable darkness. Beside the well on the floor lay the dead body of the stranger in the hat who had been killed in the forest. His throat had been ripped apart by the blades of the castle warriors.
When the Cursed and the warriors entered, a terrible force lifted them into the air and hurled them straight against the stone walls of the hall. Then it left them hanging there several feet above the floor.
The sorceress rose from the throne and stepped onto the edge of the well. She cast a murderous glance at those hanging against the walls, then jumped into the well.
The Cursed and the warriors crashed down and sprawled across the floor. The Cursed rose to his feet, gradually regaining his senses. But the lord of the castle and his warriors did not rise again. They did not even move. He approached them and discovered that their rib cages had been broken and crushed by an alien magical force.
The Cursed approached the well. Its impenetrable darkness called him to follow the sorceress, because somewhere there, at the end of the path, lay the answer to the horror that had taken place here in the Ancient Lands.
The Cursed jumped into the darkness.
He was falling through the shaft of the well, and the air howled in his ears. A white sticky mass suddenly stopped his fall. He found himself sprawled at the center of a massive web stretched across the shaft of the well. Its thick strands seized him and would not let him go. And the harder he struggled to break free, the more entangled he became.
The sword appeared in his hand. He tried to cut through the web's cords with it, but the sword could not sever them. Then it slipped from his hand entirely and fell deeper down the well.
The Cursed was about to use magic, but at that moment a large black spider appeared, seized him, and dragged him somewhere to the side. A dark tunnel was set into the wall of the well. The spider dragged the Cursed through it and threw him into a large hall. Crystals on the walls glowed with a dim light.
At the far end stood a warrior in armor. He held a long spear in his hand.
The black spider became covered in white smoke and transformed into another armored warrior. He too drew a long spear and aimed it at the Cursed.
"The curse has caught up with you," he said, and the tip of the spear fired a blast of energy.
The Cursed dodged. The second spearman fired at him. He dodged again. They began firing at him simultaneously. The Cursed kept dodging, leaping, and running along the walls.
"You will not be able to dodge forever," the first spearman said again.
"It will not last forever," the Cursed replied and hurled his sword at the spearman. The sword pierced his skull like a ripe fruit and burst out through the back of his head.
The first spearman collapsed to the floor. Lightning crackled along his spear. He sat up, pulled the sword from his head, and charged at the Cursed again.
The Cursed pushed through the heavy barrage and struck at the shafts of the spears with his blade, but nothing happened. The spears remained intact. Several more strikes achieved nothing.
He used spatial magic and trapped the spears between force fields. They continued firing, accumulating energy inside the invisible barrier. The spearmen were caught and could not pull their spears free from the unseen trap that held them. They spat curses. And they kept firing.
The Cursed turned and ran toward the tunnel leading back into the well. Behind him, the force field was compressing the charged blasts more and more tightly.
He had not yet reached the end of the tunnel when a massive explosion thundered behind him, and the shockwave caught him and hurled him forward.
He was thrown back into the shaft of the well and went hurtling downward through the torn web.