The DOOM Chronicles

Chapter 38: The Citadel

"Well...I sure don't like the look of that," Jack muttered as he stared up the flickering stairwell at the wreath of interdimensional skulls (because they sure as shit weren't human) hanging on the big slab of wood at the top. It was a door, he knew that much, but it seemed oddly large. Like it was heralding 'something big and wicked lays beyond here'.

"Same," Diaz grunted.

They'd been wandering through a maze of dark, flickering corridors and rooms that all looked irritatingly the same, shooting it out with a random assortment of zombie, Imps, and the occasional Chaingunner. Nothing exactly newsworthy. So far, they'd managed to shave another hundred and fifty or so meters off their trip.

And there was still nothing coming from the radio.

But they had to be getting close now. If he had to guess, (because he was having to guess with all this strange, new architecture), he'd say they were down to within a quarter mile of the portal, possibly even an eighth of a mile.

Jack looked at the steps, wary of tricks and traps. Besides the bizarre texture of the walls, and the oddly symmetrical grid cut of the smooth gray stone of the stairs, he didn't really see anything. The flickering was getting to him. Their flashlights weren't quite as bright as they once were, but he couldn't tell if that was just his imagination or not.

"Everyone good?" he asked finally, glancing back briefly over his armored shoulder. The rest of the Marines he was leading into this wretched breach were in a strung out line behind him. They all reported back that they were good.

Which really just meant they were combat ready.

Fucking nobody was good in this nightmare.

Jack headed up the stairs. He reached the top without running into anything, and even managed to get the big wooden door open without a problem. It opened up into, surprise surprise, something strange. The room beyond was tall and cavernous, but not as big as it immediately seemed. It was much taller than it was wide or long. There was a space to step beyond the door, a platform that continued along to the left like a walkway.

Studying it all carefully, Jack looked over the edge of the platform and saw a good forty or fifty foot drop down into what had to be more acid. Up above, it disappeared into the darkness, even with the help of the lights. The pathway terminated immediately to his right, but to his left, it continued, wrapping around the oval-shaped room, raising as it went, until it got about three-quarters of the way shy of making a complete circuit. He saw another door all the way over there. In the center of the room was a big, broad pillar of some kind.

Right now, all he could see of it was one wooden side.

He waited and listened. Up above, out of reach, were shallow segments cut into the walls, which were made of bumpy green-tan stone, and each segment contained flickering metal torch-holders. It cast an eerie, gloomy red-orange light across the area.

"Looks clear," Jack said after a moment of hearing nothing.

It was as silent as a tomb in there.

"Nice and easy," he said as he began making his way around the curved path, looking out for things hiding in the shadows or unknown niches, or whatever that central pillar was, "gonna make our way around and up."

He made it maybe a quarter of the way before he got a better look at the pillar. It was hollow, broad, maybe six feet wide, and this side of it was made of rusted old iron bars.

Almost like a prison cell.

Almost like it was holding something inside of its shadowy depths-

A pair of terrifyingly familiar, glowing red eyes snapped into being within those shadows and suddenly Jack realized he could see the figure of a-