The inner sanctum of the castle offered a very strange image to behold. Just at the main entrance, it was something of a massive circular room with doors to the east, west, and north wings. A set of stairs began on both the left and right sides of the room and wound around until meeting at an internal balcony and another set of tall double doors. These doors, too, were open, unlike the three at base level, all closed shut and covered in dust. Likely, they hadn't been used in a long, long time.

Notably, the only color the world offered Dagan, the red splotches in the main doorway, did not stop there. They progressed onward and scattered about the floor in a collected and mostly forward battered, until meeting the left staircase and progressing up them, too, and through the set of doors at the top.

In here, Dagan would still hear nothing, just the continued noise of dead silence.

Following a trail of suspect crimson had a way of playing with one’s nerves, but Dagan stayed pretty calm; as a matter of fact, he was more put off by the overwhelming silence (now that he was aware of it) than he was of the trial, itself. At the very least, the trail offered something for one of his senses to be focused on - in contrast, the silence played havoc with his sense of hearing and concentration.

Dagan, stuffing his hands in his pockets, looked around the circular room with interest, but kept himself reigned in enough not to run off and forget what he was doing or why he had come this far in the first place. For a brief moment, he thought of exploring every instance of stairway, passage way, entryway, closed and open door, but chose, instead, to focus his attention back onto the splotches of red. Although the doors and stairs and so forth were attention grabbing, they red trail was much more so . . . In fact, it was almost like he was being lead. He had to investigate this trail, didn’t he? Speaking of, where was Nike? Nike was supposed to be here.

His tongue glided across his teeth in thought.

It looked like the blood dispersed a bit, but then, looking around, Dagan noticed that the blood actually continued up a set of stairs; he was glad, because without it, he’d probably be hopelessly lost. Whoever had left him this trail was a life saver!

Climbing the stairs, Dagan reached the doors and entered.

The pair of doors lead straight into a long corridor. The lighting here was horrible, neither a flame nor a wisp stood to illuminate it. There was merely a light at the end of the corridor, but it was much too far away to illuminate the corridor's walls, let alone the floor or the ceiling. At the far end, though, the light appeared to be static and verily so; the light danced across a half shut doorway, but continued to illuminate nothing.

Nothing useful, at least ...

There was sound, though. Something past the doorway, something moving. Slowly, yet casually. It sounded like the subtle movement of robes or cloth.

A linear path was greatly preferred at this point. Truthfully, Dagan enjoyed adventure! Choice was wonderful! But not when you were looking for your friend in an abandoned, decrepit castle full of stairs and doors and gates and other such things. No, a linear path was for the best . . . Never deviating, never altering. A bit more light and it would have been perfect.

And then there was a sound.

Interrupting the dead silence that had previously been all Dagan knew, aside from his own footsteps, at least, the sound could just as well have been a knife in the back and he wouldn't have been anymore surprised ; although, Dagan was pretty sure a real knife in the back would have been much more painful than what sounded like . . . Someone moving? Was someone else here? Well Nike was supposed to be here, wasn’t he? Right.

Dagan felt his heartbeat quicken the closer he got to the door and to the light. He was experiencing the oddest sensation, he realized; he wanted to call out, but he just couldn’t seem to find his voice. It felt almost like his heart had jumped to the back of his throat, in fact.

But weird feelings aside, this did not stop him from walking down the corridor or even putting his hand - -

Dagan, however, didn't get as far as to reach the door. It was only a few dozen feet from him when he'd feel his actual feet hit up against something he could barely see, something down on the floor, like a raised step--except raised steps didn't audibly slump over and hit the concrete with a hollow thud. In fact, there was only one thing that made that noise, and it would most certainly be clear to Dagan once another noise escaped the thing he'd tripped over in one way or another.

"Ngh ..." a groan came from the thing behind him.

Any sort of investigation would prove that this thing, which sounded definitively male, was about the size and shape of a man, and was until recently sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall. With Dagan tripping over him, he knocked him down to helplessly lay upon his side. By the sound of him, he was probably barely conscious.

- - Okay, he thought to himself . . . As it turned out, he was actually very ignorant in the ways of feelings. They could stop him, quite easily, in fact, and this was something worth noting in case it ever happened again.

Dagan caught himself alongside the nearby wall in an effort to prevent himself from falling completely over and, straightening up after looking down, inched back from the wall with slow, weary steps. Good news first, Dagan was now reassured that feelings could not actually stop him from continuing forwards. The bad news, however, was that injured men could stop him and, to his embarrassment, actually posed a fall hazard.

“Oi . . .” Dagan shook his thoughts away, “H-hey, can you hear me?”

Now that he was sure he wasn’t going to fall on or trample the injured man, Dagan knelt down and tried to rouse him, shaking him by the shoulder just a little.

There were probably a lot of questions he could have and probably should have asked, but he couldn’t think of a single one of them at the moment. This was the first time Dagan had ever found himself in this kind of situation and although it was only natural that he attempted to wake the man from his slumber, he had no idea what to do or say afterwards.

"Ngh ..."

A groan, or maybe even a sigh. When Dagan touched the man, tried to rouse him from his sleep, he'd find that quite impossible. He'd also find, upon touching the man's shoulder, that there was some manner of moisture on Dagan's hand. A lot of it, actually. The man didn't respond, though, despite that.

It was impossible to see, though, at least enough to get a proper look at this person. This left Dagan options. He could leave the person, take him back to the entry hall, which was much better lit, or take him ahead into the lit room up there ... which also seemed to be populated, at least to some extent.

“Huh?” Dagan removed his hands from the man on the ground, pressed his forefinger and thumb together, spread them apart, and then back again. Quizzically, he placed the tip of his tongue on his index finger and then removed it with a face.

Blood? He didn’t quite recongize it so much as the concept of it; after all, how often had he seen it - once or twice? It was definitely not often enough to associate the substance with anything more than curiosity.

The lack of light was infuriating, to be sure, and Dagan wanted to check if this guy was alright, he was quite obviously hurt, yes, but more than that, he could have been in some serious pain. Of course, there was also the off chance that it could have been Nike, Dagan realized a bit too late. Right, he wasn’t particularly keen on going forwards just yet, with or without the person crumpled on the ground.

Dagan bent down, hefted the guy up carefully, put him over his shoulder, and made to backtrack out of the corridor. He needed light to see and he didn’t know what was up ahead, but, in contrast, he knew exactly what was behind him.

Back at the entrance, Dagan would find that nothing had changed. No one had followed him in or even shut the half closed doors he left behind. There were no footprints in the dirt other than his own and the one he had followed, and still the only blood trail led to the upper corridor. Out here, it was just him and ...

It was at that moment, in the light again, that Dagan would find he'd been carrying his friend over his shoulder. It was Nike, clad in a leather jacket and slacks, the former of which was tattered around the middle. Cut, even. His face was expressionless and his body was limp. He no longer uttered even the smallest of moans or the slightest indication of conscious presence. His chest, however, still moved with the rhythm of slow breathing and weak heart beats. He was alive, but hurt. Badly. His lip was split, his left cheek was little else but a purple welt, and his chest was still bleeding from a deep open cut from one side of his chest to the other. By the look of it, how clean it was, he was likely lucky to not have had his ribs split and organs damaged within.

Indeed, he was hurt. Hurt worse than Dagan had ever seen from a person. He'd seen blood before, but it was all tangental. Menial. Cuts from paper or glass. But this? A plethora of injuries and a life threatening state? This was the first he'd ever see it, yet he'd likely have a feeling what it meant ...

Dagan had sat the injured man - Nike, as he would soon discover - onto the ground carefully and gave him a look over. To say the least, Dagan was a bit under qualified in the 'taking care of your severely hurt friend' department, but what with the Seeker still not being here, it seemed that he had made the right choice when he decided to leave the city in search of his friend.

Right. Yes, this was good - not really, it was pretty bad, actually, but it was good that he was here and that he found Nike, his condition aside, and he could totally figure out what to do next. All he really needed was a second to think.

“No way,” he uttered. “I can’t take you back to the city like this.”

Even Dagan could tell that it was too risky to try to carry Nike back to the city while he was in this bad of shape. The Seeker? Yeah, he could probably do it, and with ease, too, probably. Dagan, though? No way! He would cause more harm than good.

He was at a lost for what to do.

"Another wayward spirit."

The voice came from the top of the stairs, back by the hallway that Dagan had long since abandoned. At the bottom of the stairs, standing above Nike, he'd be directly below the figure -- the masculine sounding figure, though not much "older" than Dagan himself.

All Dagan would have to do was look up to see him. He stood at the top of the staircases, just stepped out of the hallways and into the light. He was a young man of average height and though his clothes, what looked like loose black wraps interwoven and strung around every inch of his body below his neck, were noticeably loose, he had the appearance of someone with a fairly muscular build. His hair was a shaggy dark color and the creases in his face were drawn like hard lines -- a humorless visage.

He did not appear to be armed, though.

The figure looked down upon Dagan with a pair of hazy violet eyes, though he seemed to look less at Dagan and more through Dagan.

"I suggest you leave, Spirit," said the man, "I've no intentions of sending more than one of you today."

Dagan visibly froze and then slowly loosened up; he continued staring at Nike, but he had to fight against the urge to look up and moreover, he had to force his surprise deep down into the pit of his being.

Sending. This abrupt stranger had ‘sent’ Nike? That made no sense because Nike was right here, although reduced to a bloody, crumpled figure at Dagan’s feet - or, maybe he was going to send Nike? Wait, no, that wasn't what was important here, either, had this man been the one to hurt Nike?

With a fierce look about his face, Dagan looked up at the man and resolved to staring him down.

“No,” he stated, “this is my friend and he’s hurt badly.”

He stood but did not look away.

"I'm not leaving him," he declared.

The man looked down on Dagan, though his express did not appear to present any indication of scrutiny or disdain. He was mostly stoic, it seemed.

"He's passing on," said the man at the top of the stairs.

The man dropped his right arm to his side and moved his fingers as if to grasp something. A pole or a hilt or something akin to that, it seemed, though there was nothing there. He clung only to the air. Despite how it looked, Dagan would feel a weight on his shoulders. The weight of the expanse, it would feel like -- the only world Dagan knew. If the weight was more than he could handle, there'd be an inescapable feeling of a need to retreat. If, however, he could remain standing in this man's presence, it could very well inspire the very opposite need.

"As you will, too, if you do not vacate the premises."

Instinctively, Dagan felt around him, without looking, for a weapon, but realized it was in vain; he had not seen anything when he walked in, either.

"Che," Dagan let out a sharp exhale of breath and furrowed his brow.

This guy seriously hurt Nike - a crime, if ever there was one, Dagan felt, and he was positive that it was something he could not accept, something that this man in front of him, despite his fierce presence, definitely needed to be punished for. Dagan, however, was uncertain if he could do anything about the situation; he could not leave Nike here, though, and, at the same time, he was worried about taking Nike with him, too. This was quite the predicament.

The Seeker’s appearance was unlikely, too . . .

“Why?” Dagan walked around Nike’s limp body and placed himself before it, mostly non-threateningly, but as an obvious aegis - a shield, to act as a deterrent for any further injury to his friend.

“Another one is coming, too, are you going to ‘send’ him, as well? And the one after him . . . ?”

Dagan's spilled information caused the man to visibly falter, lift a brow and purse his lips. So that was it, then? There were going to be more spirits . . .

Without a word, at first, he began to descend the stairs on Dagan's left. It was a methodical descent, initially, but sped up progressively by the middle of it. And it was at that point that Dagan would catch a glimpse of something, something in his hand--around his hand, actually. It looked like a flicker of some sort, a dynamic thing that was there one millisecond and gone the next, there long enough to suggest the existence of something, but not long enough to indicate what it was.

At the bottom of the stairs, he took several more steps, until he ultimately stood between Dagan and the doorway, the only exit from the castle.

"Then I'll have to dispose of you quickly, Spirit," he replied under his breath, spoken with grave apprehension, yet with a tone that befit the concept of having no other choice, "Before your reinforcements arrive."