I feel like doing a little victory dance but know that this was not over yet. We now knew where to look for the sword, but this would only be over once we actually have the sword in our hands.
“How should we interpret the bit about air meeting earth or something?” I turned to Gustav and Kathy who had been hunched over Gustav’s tablet. “Maybe it is in one of the graves?” Kathy grimaces.
Could be. I look at the heavy door blocking the entrance to the tomb. It looks as if the tomb had not been opened in a very long time. Which would obviously make sense. I put my shoulder against the door and start pushing and pulling but I was unable to get any movement into the wood and steel.
“Here let me try.” Daimon offers. But even he, with his demon strength, could not make the heavy wooden door budge.
Danny, Gustav and Daimon altogether did not make the door as much as sigh. “Are you sure this is the only entrance?” Danny puffs as she wipes the flakes of rust from her hands. “Because I don’t think this beauty is opening up anytime soon”.
“Do you think it is locked?” I say as I look in my bag for a hair pin so I can pick the lock. Not that I think I will be able to do this seen the lock is probably rusted shut. Danny shrugs. “Probably.”
But no matter how much I prodded, how much I tried to turn the pin, I could not get the pin deep enough into the door. I cursed as I try to look through the keyhole into the tomb but was met with absolute darkness. “Can someone shine the bright torch of their phone through one of the windows?” I ask the group while keeping my eye pressed against the keyhole.
I hear some shuffling and then Kathy said she had her phone at the window. Still nothing but absolute darkness. I look through my bag for anything that could help me. I was surprised when I pulled out a triangle ruler. This little bastard had been the bane of my existence. Every single maths lesson with Ser Thripwith I had to come up with some kind of excuse because I lost my triangle ruler or was just unable to find it in the paper jungle that was my bag.
I shove the triangle underneath the door, trying to find any clues as to why the door isn’t opening. To my great surprise I hit something hard almost right away.
I try again a few centimetres further down.
Same.
At the side of the door.
Hard surface again.
The top… couldn’t get it further than a centimetre or 2.
“I do not think it is a door guys!” I exclaim holding up the now dirty triangle.
“What do you mean?” Daimon takes a few steps towards the door and starts touching the sides. “There is something blocking the door. I think it is concrete. A wall.” I say. I knock on the door. “See!” I exclaim when the sound comes back full instead of the hollow echo we would have expected. “It’s a fake door.”
Gustav rubs the stubble on his chin and starts circumventing the tomb slowly. “So how do we get in?” He asks when he completed his little walk.
“We dig.” Kathy says looking at the tablet. “Where earth meets air.” She reads off the brightly lit screen. “That has to be the soil. You know, the surface.”
“Of course it is!” I say running over to my best friend and her tablet. Gustav took a picture of the little note as he was too scared to bring the old tome with him. “Maybe it is buried here at one of the corners of the tomb.” I say quickly. “You know, at the end of the rainbow.”
I am not particularly looking forward to digging into the moist soil with my bare hands but needs must. When Daimon and Danny and Kathy finally understood what I was doing they squat down at the rainbows and started digging their own little holes.
It was not long before Kathy hit gold – or should I say, something hard. “I’ve got something!” She yells out from the opposite side of the tomb. I look up, wiping my dirty hands on my stained trousers and run towards my friend.
Sure, as hell she found something at the bottom of the modest little hole she had made. We all start pulling and tearing on the sides of the little hole, removing the soil and digging to make the hole bigger.
Daimon noticed the ring in the big stone slab first. Then Danny found an outline and with my fingertips I discovered one of the corners of the stone block.
“I think this is a door, a portal to whatever is underneath! This HAS to be the entrance!” She looks at me, beaming with joy and hope. I laugh out loud, knowing that we were so close to the sword, that we would have the darn thing in our hands within the next hour!
“Thank you for showing us the way.” A voice behind us says coldly. “Now step away from the door.” A second, much deeper, voice commands.
I look up, sheer panic rushing through my veins. A red glow emanates from my necklace. The two voices belong to two men standing just a bit further down the makeshift path. One of them, the smaller one of the duo, was leaning on one of the more ancient gravestones. He looks at me with his red glowing eyes and bared a set of sharp pointy teeth. Geez. He needs to go and see a dentist pronto!
Mr Piranha snaps something I could not understand at his partner and the muscular hulk starts making his way to our little group. With a flash – I did not even see him do it, Daimon stands in front of us. His wings were spread out wide, I can hear him growl deeply.
“Oh, how cute. Mister traitor here is trying to protect his dirty human friends.” The little man brings a hand to his heart. “It almost brings a tear to my eye.” He says in a mocking voice. “If only I could cry.” He laughs loudly.
“Anyway…” He starts as he strolls towards us in a nonchalant manner. “The thing is.” He looks from me to Kathy to Daimon. “I need what is in there.” He says as he pointed towards the hole we just dug. “I need that sword.”
A little smile appears on his face. “Because we do not want to repeat what happened in Woolwich last night, do we? Especially with Isabelle and Kathryne here.” He looks Daimon square in the eye when our names cross his lips.
That is when Daimon flips. I have never seen anything like it. It even looks like Daimon doubled in size. His massive wings take him up into the air and before I knew what was happening, he had thrown himself onto the little guy.
I feel a hard tug on my sleeve. Danny. She and Gustav are holding up the stone slab and almost threw us down into the pitch-black hole.
“No! I need to be here!” I protest in a loud whisper. I look over my shoulder and see the big one land a massive punch on Daimon’s face. “I need to help him!” I protest again.
Danny shakes her head. “We will help him. You two need to get out of here and get the sword.” She takes my phone out of my pocket and shoves it into my hand. “Use the flashlight on your phone to find the way down there. We will try and fight them off.” She says. “you do not have much time, love. Go now and take this in case you need more light!” Before I knew it, my feet were looking for the dark stone steps as I feel her hand close my fist around a hard-plastic tube. A heartbeat later I hear the hard stone clank as the slab closes behind us. We were locked in. Enveloped by pitch black cold. The only way was down.
Chapter 21
My heart was beating in my chest and I had no idea what was happening. I knew Kathryn was right behind me, but I had no clue as to what we would have to do down here, how we would find that stupid sword, and how we would let them know that we were fine, that everything was all right.
I stumble forward when the stairs come to an unforeseen end. “Are you okay?” I ask. I turn towards Kathryn. I take some time to let my eyes adjust to the sudden pitch-black. “What do w-we d-do now?” She stutters.
“I don’t know.” I say deflated. “Let’s find a way out of here. Just use your flashlight and look for any kind of crevasse, door, hole or whatever else might lead us into another room.” I say as I try to get both my heartbeat and breathing under control.
I open my hand and shine the flashlight of my phone onto the little plastic tube Danny had shoved into my fist. A lighter. My head was spinning, and I could not think straight thanks to the pure adrenalin
e coursing through my veins.
The air is thick with moisture and dust. Nobody has been here for at least a few centuries. I let my flashlight shine over the walls, uncovering dusty frescos of werewolves and hunters, vampires and demons… There is something incredibly familiar about the scene on the wall.
I look at the way the werewolf stands next to the hunter, how it almost looks as if they are fighting side by side. That is when it hit me! This is the scene from the little box my grandmother had Daimon make for me.
“Any luck?” Kathy asks from the other side of the sizable room. I hmmhmm an answer while exploring the shapes on the wall. “You found a door?” I ask absentmindedly. “No.” Her voice croaks.
I close my eyes as I try to remember the way the box felt in my hand, the little wooden figures protruding from the box, the way they would click when turned and pushed. I exhaled as in my head the last pieces of the box’s puzzle fell on their place.
I beckoned Kathy to come closer and the shine the light onto the wolf. I needed to press the wolf, but how? How was I… but when my hand hit the cold damp stone, I noticed a small fine line running in a circle along the animal. You would not have noticed the little dent unless you were looking for it. Now I was certain that I knew the way to solve this puzzle and open the door.
I put my hand on the painted wolf. I was shaking. I still could not shake the possibility that Kathy and I would be trapped here for eternity. I knew we had to find a way out, a way through, any ‘way’ we could find. But it was still scared as hell.
I press my hand against the wall and give it a good push. The wall behind the painting groans and moans. I take a few steps back but that is when Kathy’s hand on my shoulder reminds me that everything is going to be okay, that it means that we are one step closer to getting out of here, and more importantly: to the sword.
Slowly but certainly the Demon is lifted a few centimetres out of the wall. “Help me” I ask as I try to push it back in. Kathryne puts her shoulder against the stone and together we manage to push it back to its original position. Now, where is the bear?
I step towards the large bear in the right and push his paw which made the wall rumble. A sharp click echoed through the space and I could see that the hand of the vampire had moved. I move it back to its original position as I would have done on the box after which I would normally be able to take out a panel of the top of the box, showing a hunter and a demon. As a kid I always assumed they were fighting each other, but now, in a new light, I noticed that they were not fighting each other as much as fighting side by side.
I could hear a low rumble after which a part of the wall next to us collapsed, uncovering the pristine paintings of a demon and a hunter fighting side by side. Thanks to the protection of the stone wall, the paint of the fresco was untouched. For the first time ever, I could make out that the hunter in the painting was in fact female.
“Wow.” Kathy sighs as she stands next to me. “This…” she stumbles over her words. “who is she?” her fingers slightly caress the scarlet leather armour of the woman in the painting. Her blonde hair curls in the wind as the demon next to her lifts his sword to slay down an invisible enemy. I let my hand slide over his beautifully painted black wings as my attention gets pulled to his bright red eyes.
“This is Arabel Pruitt.” I say. Don’t ask me how I knew, but I did. I knew this was my great great great great (and so on) grandmother. I sigh and take in the powerful painting one last time. “We need to push the dagger in her hand and the sword in his at the same time.” I say, my eyes not leaving hers.
Kathy nods and put her hand onto the large carved stone in the Demon’s hand. “On three?” she asked. “On three!”. I take a deep breath and I count down, not sure what will happen next. Maybe we will be covered under a massive avalanche of tumbling rocks.
I feel the wall vibrate under my hand and the Demon and the Hunter start sliding apart revealing a large drafty hole in the middle of the wall. The cold damp air of the passage hits me in the face. I suppress a cough when the musty smell makes me gasp for breath. The last thing I want to do is walk into that passage, but I feel like I have no choice. Especially as the loud voices and screams above us only seem to grow louder.
We had no idea who was winning and how long it would take for those demons to lift the stone and come after us. “Let’s go.” I said as I gathered every little snippet of courage I could find in my body. Kathy and I took our first few steps into the dark passage, our phones’ flashlights shining softly on the rough stone walls.
With an ancient stone roar the walls behind us started to move again, closing us in, locking us in this drafty, mouldy little passage. I took a few deep breaths to shake the sudden claustrophobia that held a firm grip on my stomach. No other way to go than through…
Chapter 22
“Oh, not again!” I cursed under my breath as I stepped in another deep puddle. Water soaked into my boot as I stood more than ankle deep in an ice-cold pool.
We had hoped Danny’s lighter would come in handy when we noticed torches along the wall. But when we touched the wood and the cloth, it was pretty much clear that they had been there for absolute ages. The wood had crumbled away in my hand and when I tried to light the damp fabric it would not catch the flame.
I had moaned, I had groaned, and I had cursed. We had been walking for at least 20 minutes. We decided to save the batteries on our phones by only using one phone at a time- - but even then, the battery of the phone was running out fast.
Mice and rats squeaked in surprise as we are probably the very first human beings down here in hundreds of rat generations. “This one is not working either.” I say as I drop the torch on the floor.
I do not think I have ever been this frustrated. Trust me – stumbling and fumbling half blind through a massive damp corridor filled with rats and mice and other scary animals is not really my idea of ‘fun’.
I put the lighter back into my pocket. This had been the thirteenth or fourteenth torch we came across.
“Do you think it is much longer?” Kathy asks. “Last time I was here I had a tour guide.” I joke. But from the silence behind me I perceived that my little joke was not very welcome. Kathy is not a massive fan of the dark and is known to have fits and bouts of claustrophobia.
She was doing great and I had told her many times during the past 20 minutes. But as we kept walking, as we kept going straight without passing any side tunnels… a slight panic had started to rise in my own stomach. A little voice in my head told me that we were never getting out alive and that we were trapped in here for ever and all eternity.
It wasn’t until the draft of air grew stronger that I knew we were actually getting somewhere; I knew that there really was a way out of this maze.
The tunnel suddenly opens up into a small room with three doors. “A way out!” Kathy yells. I was just in time to stop her from pulling one of the doors open.
“It is a trap.” I say, thinking back at the almost impossible puzzle I had to solve to even get into the damn tunnel. No way that they would just have the tunnel end in three doors leading to the Sword and the exit.
“Let me have a look.” Kathy takes the flashlight out of my hand and inspects the doors. One is made from a beautiful dark red wood. Kathy lets the light shine over the fine nerves and natural patterns in the timber.
“Cardinal wood.” She says. “Named after the red cardinals wear.” Her light flashes over the door again. “Also known as bloodwood.”
I chuckle softly at the name. “What about those symbols?” I ask, pointing at the vague outlines on top of the door. They look ancient, demonic even. In school I opted for Weapon Crafting rather than Infernal. I speak a bit of Infernal – don’t get me wrong, but these letters, these words, are written in such an old script that I can make heads nor tails of it.
“Hydd.” Kathy reads. “Hell.” I translate. I can see her nod in the shadows behind the phone’s little light. “What about that one?” I point at t
he door next to the red one.
The second door is made of a much more common wood. Oak or walnut maybe. I am not a wood connoisseur and never will be, but to me the door looks pretty much like a normal old door. “Eirzm” Kathy reads as she traces the old letters carved into the brown wood. “Earth.”
“Let me guess…” I turn to the third and lightest door. “Heaven?” Kathy took a few steps towards the door and nods as she shines her light onto the letters. “Hyjiyl or Heaven.”
“Great.” I say as I take a few steps back. “What about those words and letters?” big red letters were painted above the three doors. “Cmaawy alty. Cmaawy wuwydh. Or pyyz hafr picyr flzupydh” Kathy spoke the words aloud.
“Sounds like Welsh to me.” I leaned against the wall facing the three doors. My feet hurt, my legs hurt, and I was in desperate need of a good back rub. Kathy laughed for the first time we had been down here, but I noticed something was off, something was wrong. She sounds nervous, on the verge of breaking point.
“What does it say?” I turn towards her, suddenly understanding that the words in red might have spooked her. I hear Kathy sigh. “Choose once. Choose wisely. Or meet your maker untimely”
“Oh shit.”
“Yep.”
I had not banked on the fact that this stupid puzzle would possibly mean the end of us. “Can’t we just open the door to see what’s behind it and then close it again really quick without going through?” I suggest. I already knew that was a bloody stupid idea. This site was probably guarded with ancient magic and I knew that if we opened a door, we had to be pretty damn certain it was the right one.
“Okay so…” I start pacing the round room. The room was not very big but at least it was paved. My feet welcome the feeling of stones under my soles and I am happy there are no puddles or mud pools to get stuck in.
“We have three doors. One for heaven. One for hell. One fore earth.” I try to recap. “We need to choose one, and one only. Kathy nods. “Why should we choose hell?” I start going through the possibilities.
The Aberrant Sword Page 10
