The pipes ended at the wall.
I'd been following them long enough that reaching the end felt less like running out of pipe and more like arriving somewhere. Which, in my experience, is the better sort of ending for both plumbing and conversations.
The wall itself looked old. Not unusually old for down here, just the same old stonework as everything else. Same general sense that it had been exactly what it was for longer than most things were expected to remain anything.
But the door set into it was different.
Not newer, exactly. Just made by different hands. The kind of difference you notice when two very old things simply didn't come from the same maker.
I stood there a moment and looked at it.
The entity had stopped back at the corridor entrance behind me. Several of its eyes were pointed toward the door. Several more were pointed elsewhere, which was its way to look at things. But the ones aimed at the door had a certain glimpse the others didn't.
