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part eight.
IP: 2.27.240.21
Posted on June 3, 2014 at 10:00:02 PM by georgia

PART EIGHT Sebauza Ruins ‘I’m not sure about this,’ Leto muttered into Alethea’s mind. ‘Hush, Leto,’ the young lady’s eyes sparked with adventure. ‘Our kingdom needs us.’ Leto remained unconvinced. Where the fate of a kingdom rested on the shoulders of two teenagers, the situation was indeed dire. She and Torram had taken care to avoid being seen as they had quietly made their way to the royal stables, taken a horse each and rode as fast as they could to Sebauza Ruins. What they hoped to find there, neither of them knew… but if Aura had left behind magical enchantments and protective barriers, perhaps Gwythr had left something too. It stood to reason. Both knew, from their reading, that the ruins was an inactive fairy fort: an area of land infused with magic and once called ‘home’ to a divine being. Active fairy forts, places where deities called ‘home’, were powerful magical hotspots. Even an inactive fort, a place which was previously called ‘home’ by a deity but no longer was, had strong magical residue. Years and years ago, during the civil war, the active fairy fort in what was once known as Epitome Jungle had been used to resurrect Aura. Sort of. Gwythr’s abandoned palace loomed all too soon on the horizon, causing the pair to slow their steeds to a trot. Torram’s, a fat bay mare who had complained about the formerly fast pace, wasn’t happy until he let her use a dull plod. He didn’t mind much. Now that they were here, he wasn’t in such a hurry to get inside. The ruined manor had a distinctly haunted air to it, and the very air felt thick, as if it knew that great evils had been committed here. It was eerily quiet; the dry, brown grass crunching underneath the horses’ hooves was the only sound to be heard. Parts of the palace looked as though it had crumbled naturally, by attack or over time, while in other wall sections there were distinct gaping holes where bricks had been stolen to reuse on other sites. Alethea had heard once that houses which were built from the stone of Sebauza Ruins always caused great sorrow to those who lived within their walls. She reined in her horse and dismounted; Torram swiftly followed suit. They tied the reins to a bare tree which stood mournfully over a shallow pond, so that the horses could drink, and walked in silence towards the ruins. The whole building seemed to leer towards them the closer they got. Torram privately wished that Birch was with them. “Um, onwards?” He suggested, a little timidly. Alethea nodded and tried to smile, but the atmosphere was affecting her too. She pushed the heavy wooden door open with a creeeaak of the hinges and a hisss of stale, cold air, and together they stepped into what was left of the throne room. At least, they assumed it was a throne room. The wide open space and raised dais were very similar to the throne room in Arthur’s castle, but the throne itself was missing. Stolen, probably, by opportunists after Gwythr had been cast from Shaman. Why on earth would anyone want the throne of an old tyrant? The idea that there were still Gwythrian supporters out there made the hairs on the back of Alethea's neck stand on end. She moved quickly to the only other available exit - a stone archway leading to a dark corridor behind the dais - with Torram close on her heels. Neither were keen to stay in this bare, cold room for long, stripped of everything except its evil. The corridor sank swiftly into solid blackness. Neither Torram nor Alethea had brought a torch or had any kind of light manipulating powers, so they had to hope that whatever they were looking for wasn't down there. A door opposite led to a promising room lit with natural light through naked, glassless windows and containing a lot of broken furniture, but a quick search proved fruitless. The next two rooms they entered were completely empty. The fourth room had a couple of tapestries on the walls, but neither revealed a hidden trapdoor when Torram poked his nose hopefully behind them. The floor of the fifth room was so unstable that they wisely chose not to venture any further than doorway. As Alethea pushed open the door to the sixth room and found it bare, she began to wonder if they would find anything at all and, if they did, whether they would recognise it as valuable. Neither really knew what they were looking for. The ground floor contained nothing interesting, which led the pair to a dilemma. Should they try to get up to the first floor, given the unstable state the building was in? A quick, shared glance was all it took to understand their mutual determination. They doubled back to a room where they had found a staircase, and made the careful climb upstairs. There was more stuff on the first floor, presumably because fewer people had been willing to risk life or limb to carry heavy furniture down the crumbling staircases. It took longer to search the rooms because of the extra material to cover, and because they had to be careful where they stepped. After about an hour, Torram pushed open the door to a room bone-chillingly familiar room which had remained largely untouched. It was relatively small - about the size of his bedroom at home - and had an even more claustrophobic effect because the walls were lined with tall bookshelves. At the far end, in front of the sole window, was a wooden desk with a rigid, straight-backed chair behind it. Firmly bound scrolls and thick files filled the shelves, their colours greyed under the thick layer of dust. Torram glanced at Alethea, who nodded. Jackpot. He pushed the complaining door open further and crept inside, peering excitedly at the documents on the shelves. This had to be Gwythr's old office, which meant one of these files had to be useful. Torram pulled one off at random, blew the dust off and promptly had a sneezing fit. Alethea smiled prettily to him and moved towards the desk, which had a few files still scattered on top as if the owner still expected to return. His eyes watering, Torram peered eagerly at the papers in his hand, but his shoulders sagged almost immediately. "Can you read Italian?" He asked Alethea hopefully, but she shook her head slowly. Torram flipped his fingers through some more of the papers on the shelves and peered inside the scrolls, feeling his heart sink with every look. "There's nothing in English. We could be looking right at a spell which would defeat the creature, and we'd never know." "Keep looking," Alethea suggested hopefully, but her ambitions dipped a bit as she glanced at the documents on the desk. There was one in Spanish, a couple she judged to probably be Latin, and the rest were Italian. Undeterred, she started opening the drawers under the desk, searching for anything in English. Most of the drawers contained stationary of some kind, a few had some more papers in Italian, and one just contained a sharp-edged ivory letter-opener. The very last drawer was stiff, as if it wasn't opened much, and Alethea had to really tug it before it eventually shuddered open to reveal... a stone. She picked it up, curious. It took two hands to lift and looked to be made of some kind of hard rock, which was a beautiful purple-pink colour. Most interestingly, scratched into the surface of the stone was some kind of man-made symbol. Alethea weighed it in her hands before calling to Torram, who was still searching the bookcases. "Look at this. Is that the ancient language?" Torram hurried towards her and frowned over her shoulder. "I'm not sure. It's not a glyph I recognise." "It was hidden in the desk. Do you think it means something?" He reached out and took it gently from her, turning it over in his hands. It was just an ordinary rock with a mark scratched into it. Why would Gwythr go to the trouble of hiding it in his private office? "I don't know," he cautioned. "Maybe." Before they had the chance to discuss it further, an ominous rumble made Torram's adrenaline spike. He and Alethea made brief eye contact before turning and beating a hasty retreat from the dictator's office. The door led to a corridor at the end of which contained a different staircase fromt the one they had ascended, and Torram made a snap decision that they should use it to get to the ground floor as quickly as possible. It was the worst choice he could have made. The old, wooden staircase was rotten and flimsy, and his foot went right through the first step. Torram yelled and flailed wildly as he fell through the fragile floor, air rushing past his face, heart pounding in his chest. With his fingers he managed to hook onto something solid, but almost immediately a harsh gust of cool wind threatened to loosen his grip. He clung on as tightly as possible and stared down in horror at the gaping chasm beneath his feet. The side of the building was clearly more unstable than the part he and Alethea had entered through: half of the wall had long since fallen away, leaving a sizeable hole open to the elements in which Torram was now hanging. The ceilings in the palace were tall, so even though he was only one floor up, it was stomach-clenchingly high - especially as he was only hanging on by the fingertips of one hand. A pair of warm hands grabbed hold of his wrist and he looked up to see Alethea's white face staring down at him. Beside her, Leto peered down with a look of helpless agitation. The wooden post Torram was clinging on to - part of the old railing for the staircase - creaked. He reached up with his other hand to try and grab onto something sturdier, but another burst of wind loosened the grip he already had. He fell a few inches and jolted to an abrupt halt as Alethea took his full weight. She was kneeling at the edge of the hole, her cheeks flushing prettily from the strain of trying to hold him. Torram grabbed her nearest wrist instinctively, his nails digging in to the base of her hand. It was only then, when he saw both of his hands together, that he realised he was no longer holding the mysterious stone. He looked down wildly, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw someone else staring back up at him. "Stay calm!" The man shouted reassuringly. His words were nearly whipped away in the wind, but Torram could just make them out of he strained. Only two things mattered to him, anyway: the man was wearing the uniform of the royal guard, and he was holding the precious purple stone. "She's coming to get you." Huh? Torram looked questioningly up at Alethea, but it looked like from her extra height she hadn't heard the guard. She was straining to try and pull him up, but it was all she could do just to stop the both of them from falling. He glanced to the side and started for the second time in as many minutes when he saw an enormous, black, feline predator clinging to the walls and staring at him. A second later he recognised Birch in her fyren form, and felt a surge of relief, guilt and anxiety. If it was possible for a big cat-wolf to look cross, this one did. Birch scaled the wall nimbly, using bits of the broken staircase to aid her ascent, and finally leapt onto the floor next to Alethea. There she shifted back into her fairy form, reached down, grasped Torram's arm and hefted him easily up onto the floor. Once his torso was up Torram managed to wriggle and pull himself forward, gasping, while Alethea sat back on the floor and rubbed her arms. "So the king did think to send someone here," she murmured, a little bit sheepishly. Torram looked up at Birch but almost immediately ducked his gaze. She sighed. A moment later the ringing sound of footsteps on stone echoed through the corridor, and the royal guard holding the stone appeared. "They're alright, Flynn," Birch informed him, getting to her feet. "Let's get them back."

Written by Georgia

Replies:

• part nine. - By georgia June 3, 2014 at 09:59:55 PM
• part ten. - By georgia June 3, 2014 at 09:59:47 PM
• epilogue. - By georgia June 3, 2014 at 09:59:27 PM

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