Bogdan Lusk heard this too from the West stairs, halfway between the third and fourth floor. He paused—the lights remained off for minutes, before some great finger finally lifted itself from the candle, and illumination began to rise again.

Lusk started at this. Before him the red bust of the emperor sat on the stairs. Staring at his ankles and skirted by marble pebbles of some broken statuary.

Forehead still coated in blood. Lusk cursed and struck at it with his dirt-caked foot, but the thing did not move. Could only stare at it—it stared back. He began down the stairs once again.

Maybe the medallions really did work.

He was about to reach the door to the third floor when a problem sprung out at him and brought his escape to a halt.

Godric Durst faced him with a snub-nosed pistol almost surely lifted off Sonny. And all Bogdan could face him with in return was the bone valise and a giant, stupid fucking black box. With a sinking thought he realized he didn't even have a knife.

"It was you!" came the shout from behind the gun.

The lad saying it looked beat to shit. Lusk eyed him carefully while the face writhed with uncertain anger.

Lusk smiled instead, it was haggard he knew, but he did so anyway.

"Say, look..." Bogdan began.

"Shut up!" roared Godric. This dork wouldn't shoot. Bogdan could tell already.

"Fuck you," said Lusk. "I'm tired. I've been running it haggard all goddamned week. Let's just call it here. Ok?"

"Godric..." the other problem was there too! A little ugly girl with short chestnut red hair. Sweaty and stinking and dirt-caked like an urchin with wrinkled ruffled clothes.

"Hey," interrupted Lusk. "I'm leaving. You won't kill me. I won't come after you."

"D-drop it!" the words came out of Godric's after deliberation.

"Drop fucking what?" spat Bogdan.

"All of it! Everything your holding! Empty your pockets too!" a breath, "And then you can leave." The voice was as unsure at it had ever been—almost cracked too from the force of it.

"Fuck off," Bogdan responded with the hiss.

The lad stepped closer to Lusk and the barrel of the gun nearly tapped his head. A deranged sort of confidence had sprung up there.

"Ada..." began Godric.

"S-si," the answer came in a cute hiss.

"Check his pockets since he won't," said Durst.

She didn't move.

"Ada?" the voice came a little more insistently. Her nervous eyes were sliding to the floor. Go on and slide with them lad.

"Ad..." he began and glanced reflexively.

Bogdan dropped everything and threw himself to the side.

The gun went off, slashed though Lusk's hair and bit into his scalp—but Lusk's fist launched out and smashed into the big lad's slashed chest, as he pulled back a blood-smeared fist.

His whole big dumb body flinched with the pain and Bogdan followed it up with an immediate second thump on the same spot before planting another in the face that dropped him on his side. The gun wrenched from his hands when his back arched after a hard kick.

The girl looked like she going to do something, but then her eyes widened. She turned and sprinted.

Bogdan followed, but the floor for the rest of the hall beyond was covered in a vast sea of broken stone slowly surrounding the French doors. Ants around a window-struck bird. The bust of the emperor sat among them.

Lusk ripped out the medallion and held it before him like the mark of Caesar before sprinting. Paused before the static sea of broken stone—to see if it reacted—it did not. Dashed through French the doors and found the girl. Sonny too. A statue had toppled across his prostrate, bleeding body. Another corpse sat next to him.

"Deserved that," murmured Bogdan.

He snatched the dagger and tucked it into his belt before stepping toward the girl.

She stood against the railing of the balcony overlooking the museum's Grand Hall. Didn't hear him speak or step closer—remained terror-stricken; staring into that vast cavern of history.

Below them all the cases were cracking—three stories below—all the objects within pressed against the glass ceilings as though each was upside down. None of these things moved as they gazed, sitting perfectly static. All drawn to unknown center by occult currents, even dragging souls from the grave.

Something clanged from far below, the front door flying open. Wind followed. Carrot's prostrate body drifted slowly across the floor through this, only to stop after meeting a case, headfirst. Another corpse from the smashed stairs drifted in. Then another. Merely sliding across the floor.

There was a crash behind him. Another corpse drawn to the unseen centre where Sotor II loomed, but life yet remained in the mass of flesh.

Something slammed into his back with a human grunt and he fell to his knees. Muscular hands and a wet warm chest grabbed his back and tried to find a purchase on him—perhaps to break his neck or only subdue—but Lusk emptied his hands, tilted and threw the assailant in a rote motion learned years before. With the whipping heave of his arm and correct tilt of the body he saw the frame of Godric tumble forward as smaller hand grabbed at his jacket, ripping and digging to join in with this attack.

Durst hit the railing and began to go over when Lusk saw the glint of a snatched medallion, the one he'd held before him, as the legs went up and the torso went down and Durst vanished from view over the edge.

The girl still clawed at his clothes and in another rote, practiced motion of the hands and shoulders he writhed out of the jacket in an instant and she fell back at the sudden release of pressure. Bogdan turned and punched her as she stumbled.

Went down with a scream from that misshapen mouth. Snatched back his jacket and wretched the medallion from its pocket, turned and nearly tripped over what Durst slammed him with as the tossed the jacket back at the girl.

The valise of bones.

He ignored it as the girl, still half-covered with his dirty jacket, began to claw desperately at the thing herself, crying out for Godric as she ripped the zipper open and began to rustle through the contents. Lusk looked askance at this over his shoulder—the fuck is she doing?—thought about shooting right then, but the gun was gone again. Left in the floor feet away and decided not to try the patience of the museum. Fuck it. Sprinted for all his worth with only one medallion left and grabbed the black box before slamming down the steps, floor after floor to ground level.

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1100 words.

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