“At the threshold of darkness, my love.  And of regret.  Where you left me.”

To Morte’s senses, there is the sound of footfalls approaching from above.  

He rams his skull's body lightly into The Nameless One, hard enough that a smaller man would likely lose his balance, were he not expecting the blow.

“Hey!”  He whispers.

He regards Morte for a moment and raises an eyebrow.

“Do you not see her?”

Then he turns back to Deionarra. He absorbs the gist of Morte's urgency.

“Please, Deionarra. Name to me the place you are in right now. If you can do so I will take what action I can to ease your suffering. The consequences of this moment to both of us may be very grave. Speak now!” He puts as much command into his voice as he can.

The sound of footfalls quiets, then continues, proceeding with more stealth.

Morte quickly moves against the wall, a few paces back and in position to ambush anyone who crosses the doorway into the room.

Her vision snaps to look him in the eyes upon hearing his last sentence.  “A doorway,” she says quickly and softly.  “Lost, and surrounded by machines. Doors that open and close without reason, with the blind archer and the-”

And the spell is broken. 

The woman vanishes, and there is a robed man standing before him, three stairs up from the base of the arched doorway, holding a truncheon in one hand and a lantern in the other.

“Hold still and draw no arms,” he says.  “Who are you and why have you come here?”

The man raises his lantern to cast light upon The Nameless One's face.  Upon seeing the bandana obscuring the face, he calls out loudly, "Eckhert!"

Not a good sign if he intends to escape with Morte. He should act.

The dustman has about two feet of elevation on him, standing on the stairs. But taking a blow from a cudgel is unlikely to incapacitate him so long as he protects his head.

He leaps into the dustman's waist in a tackle. He positions his own head to the right, underneath the lantern hand. He prepares mentally for a blow to his backside.

The two men fall into the staircase,  with the Dustman landing a hit on The Nameless One's shoulder. 

It strikes with all the force of what a middle-aged man might dish out, caught off guard and in an awkward position.

He feels the blow but is not slowed by it. Upon hitting the stairs he'll push off the man to get leverage and bring his own right arm up to deliver a hook to the chin.

The action feels obvious and intuitive. It is accompanied by an expectation that his blow will incapacitate his adversary, or worse.

The dustman tries to push The Nameless One down with his left arm, but he is not able to stop the blow.  His head slumps against the stone stair and does not move.

“Morte! Come!” he says loudly. He gets to his feet.

He’ll stop long enough to deliver a hard kick to the man’s crotch before running up the stairs. What does he see?

A landing and more stairs leading upwards.

How many flights of stairs did he climb to get here?

One-and-a-half or two, by his reckoning.

He steps lightly into the landing.

Is there light? Is there any daylight?

He sees a hallway.  There is one hanging lantern maybe a dozen paces away.  He can hear the sound of voices above.

Then he'll run down the hallway. He wants to get as far from the basement as possible, keeping his eyes peeled for daylight in the form of windows or doors.

He will see many doors.  At the end of the hallway is a half flight of descending stairs leading to a large wooden double door.

He looks backwards over his shoulder.  Is Morte there?

Yes, visible in the dark by his skull's luminosity.  There is also the sound of a man's shout further up the hall.

He'll try the double doors.  Hopefully they are exterior doors.

As he begins to push them, gray morning light and a damp chill greet him.  The doors open into a walled courtyard.

The external walls are around fifty paces away, rising up ten feet or so, and made of stone.  There is a visibly closed iron gate.

He moves in the direction of the gate. He'll transition from running to striding briskly, now that he is in the open and still wearing a stolen robe.

What manner of gate is it? A portcullis descending from above? Or like an iron fence secured by a chain and lock? Is there a gatehouse door nearby?  Can he see a locking mechanism?

It appears to be a sideways swinging hinge door, set in an iron frame.  There is a thick chain currently securing one end of the door to the frame.

A small stone building abuts the courtyard wall beside the gate.  It's darkened open doorway reveals a thick inner wall, and when The Nameless One is within fifteen paces of it, a dustman comes running out, a look of alarm on his face.