The stairs were getting in the way of my brilliant plan.  Not that I really had a plan, but they at least got in the way of a quick getaway.  Not that we had done more than climb down about three of them, but I couldn’t reconcile the idea of getting back up them with the action movie that played in the back of my head.  Nikolai took them as small jumps, but was not comfortable with them at all.  I was surprised as he was kind of built like a goat.  Artur had shorter legs than me, well, he had had shorter legs but after the second step he got mad and Hulk’d out.  If the Hulk was green because of chlorophyll.

“You know, if I were some kind of sadist, I’d bring these stairs to a physical therapy facility and just laugh and laugh.”

Artur just grunted.  He may have had huge strides, but they still took all of his attention.

“Think of it this way, we probably won’t survive to climb back up.”

“Always an optimist?” he huffed.

“If it keeps me from having to reverse this trip, yeah, sign me on for sunshine and puppies, baby.”

I managed to get Artur to pause long enough to consider this.  Or give me another dirty look, although I couldn’t tell as I was busy with scooting down another “step.”

We continued in silence.  I gave up on maintaining the torch after step seven.  What good were wizards if they couldn’t create fire, anyway?  I stuck it kind of in the belt loop of my pants.  My eyes had mostly adjusted to the dim lighting from above anyway.

After four more steps I decided to count the ones I could guess at.  Who put twenty-something steps like these anywhere?  Jack’s Giant’s castle?  That’s time to install an elevator.  A beanstalk.  Something.  I didn’t know what the mystical equivalent was, but this was ridiculous.

“What was your plan?” I asked in the quiet.

“What do you mean?”

“You want a piece of her hide pretty badly.  Some ancient wrong to right or something.  What were you going to do?”

He sighed.  “You had flushed her out before I was ready.”

“Guess I just needed to get off the pot,” I grinned.

“I suppose that means something funny where you come from,” he grumbled.

“Us juveniles have to laugh at something when it isn’t your shorts or the sex lives of fire-breathing lizards.”

“I had to jump at the opportunity.  I’ll lure her aside by offering your head as a treat, and then bring on what I’ve got.”

“Why my head and not my liver and lights?”

“Yummy, yummy proto-sapience.”

“Ha-ha.”  I missed the edge and rolled down faster than I planned.  It knocked the air out of me for a moment.  “Anyway, what have you got?”

“Hopefully your serpent’s daughter will be so tearful at your demise she’ll throw me a bone or two.  Sorcerously speaking,” he waggled his dark eyebrows.

“Hey, hands off my fairy!” I protested, faintly.  I coughed, sitting back up.

Nikolai shivered, another little whine.  I held in another cough, listening.

Artur changed his stance, one foot to a stair, arms pulled in to his body.  There was tension there, although tree trunks don’t normally have knees.

We didn’t move for a long time.  I finally had to start breathing again.  “Did you hear anything?”

“Yes.”  He didn’t say anything else, just went down a few more steps.  “There’s light down this corridor.”

I kind of hopped down the few last steps.  There was an archway into more darkness with some light at the end of the tunnel.  Needless to say, the obvious metaphor did not thrill me.

“Hey,” I said.  The light flickered – probably a torch, I figured.  “Let’s get this straight.  Are you really going to feed me to the Dragon in more than a `You only have to run faster than the halfling’ kind of way?”  I looked up at the half-Lesiye.  “Because I don’t have a chance if you are.  You might as well put me out of my misery now.”

He looked down at me for a long minute, and I kind of wanted to close my eyes and not see it happen.

“Nah, you’re vaguely amusing.  Whose side do you think I’m on, anyway?”

I tried to smile.  “Come on, let’s show this mythical beast how we do things downtown.”  Yeah, I misquoted “Ghostbusters,” but the mythical beast on my side wasn’t going to kill me outright.  So sue me.