by Sophia Sharp
“It’s where it was last time I was here,” Alexander said. “It’s where it’s always been.”
“No,” Laura said, shaking her head. “It’s not a library. Is that what you think it is?”
“Of course. Unless you know something I do not…?”
“I think found the real archive,” Laura said slowly. “It’s underground, in the mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
~An Unknown Box~
“Wow,” Alexander breathed as looked upon the doors of the vault for the first time. Laura hurried down the pile of rocks, and stood next to him. The stone vault was as imposing – and as impressive – as ever. The intricately carved patterns of the inside rings looked even more spectacular the second time. And the lettering along the outer edge still glowed in that pale fluorescent blue.
“This is as far as I got,” Laura said. “I think – no, I’m sure – that we can get past it, but I don’t know how to open it.”
“I’ve read about this,” Alexander said. He sounded absolutely awestruck. “In the library, there were manuscripts that mentioned ‘The Glowing Doors’. I had no idea they would be so close…” He walked up to the circular stone and brushed his fingers over the surface. “You were right. This must be the real archive. The one Rafael spoke of.” His hand continued along the stone, tracing the delicate patterns inside. “Do you feel that, too? A sort of pulsating… resonance?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “I felt it the first time as well.”
“It’s coming from behind the doors, I think.” He took a few steps back to take in the entire stone.
“There’s a crack along the middle,” Laura offered. “It’s difficult to pick up unless you’re looking for it, but I think that’s where the stone doors can open.”
“A crack? Hmm…” Alexander stepped close again, right to the middle of the vault, and brought his eye close. “Yes… right here, right?” His hand stopped along the thin crack that ran vertically along the stone face.
“Yes. I think the doors are made of two perfect semicircles.”
“I believe you’re right.”
“Do you recognize any of the lettering? Or the symbols, maybe?”
“Oh?” Alexander seemed surprised at the question. He nodded. “Yes, I think I do. But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen them…” he stepped back again, and took in the whole stone. “Courir maltarra souinte.”
“What?”
“Courir maltarra souinte,” he repeated, “…necrolla courir avi’anhd.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The outer rim,” he explained. “That’s what it says.”
“You can read it?” Laura was shocked.
“Only some. And it’s not reading, per se. Rather, I remember seeing a translation of these symbols, once.” He pointed to a small selection to the right.
“So,” Laura said, “what do they mean?”
“I think it’s a riddle.”
“A riddle?”
“Yes. A puzzle, to open the doors. Courira maltarra souinte. ‘The Glowing Doors will come open.’ Necrolla courir avi’anhd. ‘By that which is the same.’”
“By that which is the same? What does that mean?”
“I think… it speaks of the resonance.” He motioned idly to a symbol caved near the middle of the stone. “There’s another item, a key of sorts, that counters the resonance and… forces it aside. Then, maybe the doors will come open.”
“Like pushing the same ends of a magnet together?”
“Exactly. But the trouble is, I don’t know what the item might be, or where we might find it.”
“Hmm,” Laura said thoughtfully. She stepped closer to look again at that crack in the middle – and was surprised to realize that the box she carried – the one from Selaine – had started vibrating, ever so slightly. She brought it out in front of her, and took another step to the door. The vibrations increased.
“Hey, look at this,” she exclaimed excitedly, holding the box out in front of her. Alexander turned and looked. She took another step forward, and the vibrations grew much stronger. And their rhythm felt like it was opposite of the resonance she felt.
“That box,” Alexander said wonderingly. “Something must be inside!” By now, Laura had to grip the edges tightly to prevent the box from falling out of her hands. Alexander rushed to her. “What do you feel?”
“I feel like I can barely hold it,” Laura said through gritted teeth. She took another step forward, and the box burst out of her hands. She had to step aside quickly to avoid being hit as flew backwards and slammed against the rocks.
Alexander ran up to it and grabbed it off the ground. He held it gingerly, as if half-expecting it to explode. And he stepped forward, slowly.
“Nothing’s happening,” he said.
“It only started when I came closer,” Laura explained. “Come halfway to me and you should feel it.” Alexander walked forward, step by step, looking as if he were holding a live rattlesnake. And when he crossed the point Laura mentioned, he nodded. “I can feel it now.”
“What do you think it is?”
“That note Selaine left – what did it say again?”
“Uh… that the box could help. In a time of need.”
“And what need is greater than getting through that door?”
Laura rose an eyebrow. “Are you saying…”
“Yes. I think the key to opening the door lies inside this box.”
“That,” Laura breathed, “would be pretty amazing.”
“Yes,” Alexander nodded. “I would very much like to meet this Selaine, if that turns out to be the case.”
“But how do we use it?”
“First,” Alexander said, “we need to open it.” He motioned Laura back to him. “We should do it as far away from the doors as we can.”
“Good point.” Laura walked back to Alexander as he sat down on the rocks. He handed her the wooden box to look at first.
Laura flipped it over in her hands, looking at it again. It was unmarred, despite flying from her hands and hitting the angled rocks. And it still looked like a seamless piece of wood. She brought it up to one ear, and gently shook it. As before, she could make out the muffled sounds of something tumbling against the inside walls. Which meant it was hollow. But try as she could, no matter how many times she flipped it over, or tried pulling it open, or twisting its sides, it wouldn’t budge.
Finally, out of frustration, she said, “Why don’t we just smash it open?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Alexander answered slowly. “I have a feeling… that the outside container may function as a type of buffer against whatever is inside. Smashing it open – if that would even work – would allow it to break free of the buffer almost instantaneously. And we don’t know if it’s volatile, or not. Besides, we don’t know how fragile the item inside is. We might break it inadvertently.”
“Right,” Laura admitted. “But I can’t open it. You want to try?”
Without a word, Alexander extended his hand out. Laura placed the box in his palm, and watched as he inspected it. He looked carefully at every single edge and corner, every plane and vertex. Eventually, he sat back, stumped. “It’s one piece,” he said glumly.
“Wait a minute,” Laura exclaimed, noticing something for the first time. The vague pattern she noticed before on the symbols on the outer rim of the vault… there seemed to be something to them, and it tickled the back of her mind. What if…?
She cleared the dirt beneath her feet, and used the edge of a small rock to draw the symbols out. When they were twisting around the edge of the circular stone, it was hard to recognize the pattern, but what if they were all laid out straight…? Her hand was good – she always had a bit of an artistic flair – and soon she had replicated the symbols perfectly on the ground. Alexander watched it all without saying a word.
Laura looked the drawn symbols over thoughtfully. The pattern was still there, and
it still seemed to… call to her. But she couldn’t identify it immediately. Thinking, she closed her eyes, and let the fluorescent glow of the symbols imprint itself into her mind. In a moment of surprising clarity and inspiration, she began rearranging the shapes in her mind, so that the pattern became… even more apparent.
The symbols divided into two categories, she realized: one with smooth, flowing edges, and the others with hard, angular lines. And only the straight symbols contributed to the pattern. What if she got rid of the flowing ones…? She opened her eyes, and scrubbed out the smooth symbols with one foot. And was only left with the ones with a hard edge.
Immediately, the pattern became much clearer. Oh! She realized that the symbols formed a series, but it didn’t flow left to right, as she had been looking at it before. But there was a progression there. Picking up the rock again, she traced the symbols out beneath the top row, but laid them out backwards. She frowned thoughtfully. It was coming together. She scrubbed a few of them out, redrawing them at different angles. It looked more and more coherent. She did it some more, scrubbing, redrawing, changing the size of some of the lines, adjusting the lengths, until… they became legible hieroglyphs. And all of a sudden, they all made sense to Laura. They were instructions. Directions.
“Give me the box,” she said to Alexander. He handed it to her. Without looking, she started to feel the edges. Her fingers ran over the entire face of the box, sensitive to every tiny imperfection, every microscopic dent and flaw. And if she held it a certain way… there. Her fingers found miniscule dents, and… locked into them. Her fingers fit into a series of small, nearly imperceptible gouges along the sides. She applied pressure against them – and a mechanism shift inside. She looked at the symbols in front of her, at the directions at her feet. Down, left, then up. She pushed down, feeling another shift, pulled left, felt a second shift, and pulled back up. Immediately, the box expanded slightly outward, as if a spring mechanism had been let loose inside.
She looked down at the box, and saw that a new edge had appeared, slashed diagonally across the long side. Gripping her fingers against it, she pulled slightly. Nothing happened. She frowned. Again, she tried pulling it open, and again nothing happened. Feeling it in her hands, she closed her eyes, and imagined the symbols again – and let them guide her. She realized then she wasn’t supposed to pull – she had to push. She pushed down, twisting at the same time, and heard a distinctive clicking noise. She looked down – and saw that she was now holding two halves of the wooden box.
“That was… unbelievable,” Alexander said.
Without answering, Laura carefully laid the box down, and pulled aside the two halves. They slid open easily, and inside… was something wrapped in a dark velvet cloth. She reached down to pick it up, carefully unwrapping the cloth. It felt like a metal figure, and it was unusually heavy. More heavy than the box had been with it inside, if that were possible. When the final edge of cloth came off, she gasped, shocked to realize that she had seen the item before.
It was the lion that Selaine once pushed into Laura’s hands, when she first met her. But its eyes were now aglow with a fierce intensity that was… the same fluorescent color as the script on the outside of the vault.
“I’ve seen this before,” Laura said. “In Selaine’s shop. She – gave it to me, when I first met her. Placed it in my hands. Offered to sell it to me.”
Alexander whistled. “Whoever she is, I would very much like to meet her one of these days.” He got up. “Come on, I think I know the rest.”
He walked up to the stone vault, and traced his fingers over a shape near the middle. “There’s a small gap here,” he explained, “where, I think, the head of that figure can fit. It’s the same dimensions. It is where it has to go.”
Laura got up, and took a step forward. Immediately, the lion in her hands began vibrating with an urgency never felt before. As she stepped closer, the vibrations grew exponentially stronger. Before she was even halfway to the door – around the same distance as she had felt the vibrations start for the first time when the lion was in the box – the vibrations became so strong she had to fight against them with all her strength. She knew if she stepped closer, she wouldn’t be able to hold on anymore.
“It’s too strong,” she said. “I can’t – I can’t get any closer.”
Alexander immediately came over, putting his hands over hers. With him there, the vibrations… didn’t subside, exactly, but they were constrained a bit more. Then he moved beside her, keeping his hands over hers in front of them. Together, they started to inch forward, bit by bit. As they moved closer, the vibrations only continued increasing. Laura felt the strain in Alexander’s hands, and knew he was trying just as hard as she was. The lion figurine seemed to take on a life of its own, wildly shaking and gyrating, desperately resisting their efforts to get it closer to the vault. Laura gritted her teeth and kept her hands out in front of her, holding the lion for all she was worth. They moved closer, inch by inch, and after every step, the next one seemed to be an order of magnitude more difficult. They pushed against the metal shape, fighting the resistance. They were getting closer. Step by step, inch by agonizing inch, they made their way forward, until they were mere centimeters away from the vault doors.
“I… I can’t hold on,” Laura said through gritted teeth. “It’s going to break free!”
“No,” Alexander said coldly. “We’ve come this close… we just need to push… a little bit more…” with an enormous grunt, Alexander heaved himself forward, breaking the lion out of Laura’s hands and falling against the chamber doors. But he had forced the lion head into its opening. Immediately, the vibrations stopped. And the resonance from within the chamber ended.
Laura looked at the doors warily. Aside from her labored breathing, a silence draped over the chamber. “Is that it?” she asked. Nothing was happening. Laura realized that the lights from the outside letters had drained out.
“Back away,” Alexander said uncertainly.
“What?”
“Back away!” Laura started to turn, but just then, a ray of blazing light exploded from the middle of the stone, overtaking everything around her. It was a pure white, whiter than white, yet hued with blues and greens all at once. It blinded her. It swept across the tunnel, leaving nothing untouched, and Laura staggered back. The light lasted for an eternity, and Laura was lost in a sea of white. Direction became meaningless, all her senses became dull, and her mind began to wander. The moment lasted forever, and Laura was bathed in light brighter than the thousand brightest stars in the galaxy. It lasted forever, stretching on and on and on…
And just as quickly as it began, it stopped. Laura wavered for a second, struggling to find her balance. When she looked up, she saw that the two halves of the vault doors had come open. And inside was a scene she could never have expected.
Chapter Twenty-Six
~Faces~
Looking across the now-open vault doors was like looking through a window to another world. Not one hint of the mines extended over to the other side. Instead, there stood a long white corridor, pristine and glistening. Clean white arches stretched high to support a vaulted ceiling, and the walls of the corridor were shining marble. There was no light source there that Laura could make out, but there was definitely light, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was not the same as seeing in the dark, but also quite unlike being out in the day. It was a sort of… calming luminance.
It also looked to be completely untouched by the passage of time. The marble of the walls was cleanly polished. And there were columns, pure and white, that stood every ten paces on either wall in perfect symmetry with one another. As Laura looked further down, she saw that the hallway gently sloped downwards, and also curved in the distance.
“What is it?” Laura breathed.
“A passageway, it seems,” Alexander answered.
“But where does it lead?”
“I’m not sure. But we won’t find out standi
ng here. Come. By the looks of it, we’ll be the first to enter in years.”
Alexander started into the corridor, and Laura went after him. As soon as she stepped across the open entrance, goosebumps ran down the back of her spine. Taking another step forward, she turned to look back – and gasped. The entrance she had walked through shimmered with a silvery-white gleam, and she couldn’t see through to the other side. It was as if she were looking into a mercury mirror. Quickly, she picked up her pace, trailing after Alexander.
The floor was smooth, and of a slightly darker white than the walls and ceiling. From the corner of her eye, Laura could see the large pieces of diamond tiles that joined together to make it one, but every time she looked straight down the separations were not there – making the floor seem like a single smooth, continuous surface. A trick of the light, perhaps, but it did not feel quite right.
She walked after Alexander, her steps echoing unnervingly against the hard floor. Just as she had seen from the distance, the hallway soon started to tilt downwards, as well as slightly curve to the left. It was a gentle slope, and a gentle curve, but together they formed a spiral that led Laura and Alexander lower and lower into the earth.
Down and down they went. The spacing of the corridor neither increased nor decreased in any direction as far as Laura could tell. There had been an expert craftsmanship with which the entire hall was built.
At last, after an hour or more, the corridor straightened and flattened. In the distance, Laura could see an opening to some grand chamber. From afar, there seemed to be a… glow… coming from the opening. It stood out despite the light that came from everywhere and nowhere all around her. As they got closer, she realized where the glow came from. The ceiling of the chamber was overgrown with pulsing crystals, of exactly the same type she had seen in the sanctuary before. They shone brilliantly, giving off a strident blue hue that actually reflected the light that came from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
A set of wide marble stairs descended to the floor of the chamber. Laura started down them slowly, together with Alexander. The chamber itself was built in the purest white marble, cleaner even than the corridor they had just walked through. The walls glistened with reflections of the crystals, and extended far to the other side. There, at the very end, the light seemed to simply fade into shadow, and not even Laura could see what was past.
