Poor Eckbert was squatting all alone in the darkness. His last torch had gone out. He was completely lost and although he felt he had made some progress upward he now regretted leaving the group behind. He shouted out for them many times but heard only echoes in reply. “Surely I will die here all alone and a coward,” he said to himself.
It was then that he saw a strange thing far ahead in the labyrinth. It was a light, or a sort of glow not unlike that green glow of the witches house. It came from a figure hovering in the passageway. Eckbert was afraid but also curious and having no other light he followed the figure. As he got closer he saw that it was a man, but not a solid flesh-and-blood man but a transparent man, made of pale light. The man was apparently a knight and he wore chainmail and a sword on his side. Eckbert followed the knight at a distance trying not to be detected. Soon other figures appeared from corridors to the left and the right and began walking alongside the knight. Lords and ladies and many armed men all glowing with spectral light joined in the procession and walked slowly through the corridors apparently knowing which way to go.
Suddenly a figure joined from right beside Eckbert startling him badly. The figure seemed not to notice him and simply walked onward beside him not looking to the right or the left. More figures joined and Eckbert found himself in the midst of the procession, with unearthly people walking along all sides of him. Eckbert imitated them, afraid that any deviation on his part would attract their attention.
He walked on for several miles this way until the whole group came to a carved archway that Eckbert could see illuminated from the glow of the crowd of ghosts. The front of the procession passed under the archway and Eckbert followed. As he walked toward the arch he looked up at it trying to decipher the markings on it. When he stepped through it his foot fell not on the hard path but instead on nothingness. Eckbert fell. The crowd of glowing figures passed on ahead walking as if still on a path but Eckbert tumbled down into darkness. Falling, falling, Falling.
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