Page 25 of Darkening Truth
It occurs to me that I probably shouldn’t be as excited as I am about exploring this mysterious and potentially dangerous castle.
I really am though. This is awesome.
Zev carefully opens the door, and we both peer inside. It seems to be some kind of sitting area, and of course, as soon as we step inside, the fireplace blazes to life.
“Thank you,” I mutter to the magic or the castle, or whatever is providing us with light and heat. I’m becoming less certain that it is, in fact, sentient. I think it may just be its magic.
The fireplace is massive, Zev could easily stand up inside it, and most likely still have headroom. Not only that, but you could fit five of him, standing side by side in it, and Zev is not a small supernatural.
“Well, there’s nothing in here,” he says as we wander further into the room.
I gently pick up a teacup that’s been knocked over at some point and place it right side up on its saucer.
“This place is stuck in time,” I mutter. As I study the table in front of me, with its teacups and plates that have dust on them that must have once been food, I add, “It’s like everyone just suddenly got up and left.”
“They probably did,” Zev says. “The question is, where are they? Are they the fallen outside? Did some of them escape? Did they all escape? Is that why there aren’t any bodies in here? There are so many unanswered questions.”
I nod, “I mean, it’s possible that they are the ones outside. They obviously had guards here, who would have been their first line of defence, but if they were struggling, I doubt that the people in the castle would have just let them perish. So if they were under attack, then they might have gone out to help aswell. Especially since it’s pretty obvious that the guards got overwhelmed at some point.”
“That’s true, but a castle doesn’t usually have only strong supernaturals within its walls. There are usually weaker ones and children as well, especially in a castle as big as this. They wouldn’t have gone out to fight.”
I nod, “They could have been evacuated first, but there wasn’t enough time to evacuate anyone else, so they all went out to help instead?”
Zev frowns, “That’s a really good point. We didn’t see any bodies on the way up here, did we? The only ones are in the guard houses and within the castle’s walls. Why?”
“Good question, and I have no idea. Is it possible that we just missed them?”
“That would mean that none of them ever died on that specific pathway though,” Zev frowns. “It would be practically impossible for someone not to have fallen and died on that pathway, leaving their bones behind. It was overgrown, but it wasn’t that overgrown. We would have still seen them.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t seem likely,” I admit. My eyes still scanning the room. “There weren’t any on the road that I arrived on either, and it was quite a wide one, which means it was once used for a lot of traffic, so there should have been bodies there too.”
“Unless the attack was only on the castle?”
I frown, “This place is big enough that I would assume that whoever lived here was in charge. Why would they only attack the castle?”
Zev shrugs, “I have no idea.”
“It still wouldn’t really explain the lack of bodies outside the castle walls. Surely, those within the castle wouldn’t have waited until the people attacking breached the gates to fight back? That’s not a good strategy at all,” I reply. “You want the fight as far away from what you’re protecting as possible.”
“Maybe someone dealt with them? They could have cleared the dead that were outside the castle walls?”
“It’s possible, but why wouldn’t they clear them from inside the castle grounds?” I ask. “Unless they couldn’t get in? But that wouldn’t make sense either because we got in with no problems?”
“That’s true, but we’ve arrived possibly hundreds of years after the battle happened. Maybe the spells have dulled enough that we can now get in? Maybe they were too strong to get through when it all first happened?”
“But if that was the case, how did the attacking people get in? Unless they were either already in here, or the lockdown happened after the battle started or after everyone was dead?” I ask, with a frown. That doesn’t really feel right either.
Zev starts to nod in agreement and then stops, his eyes widening with a realisation, “What if there was something that was in this castle, or on the grounds that they were more afraid of? I mean, we don’t know who is on the right side here, we don’t know what happened.”
My instincts stir, “You have a point, but this doesn’t feel like an evil place. Usually, when you step into somewhere like this, when it’s been the base of control for someone truly evil, then you feel it. It seeps into the walls and permeates everything. I don’t feel that here.”
Zev shakes his head, “No, I don’t either. It’s frustrating that we may never know what really happened.”
“Yeah, it is. Hopefully, we can find something that will tell us what realm we’re in. If we can find out that, we should be able to look it up, or even ask Xerxes about it when we wake up,” I suggest.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea actually. Well, there isn’t anything in here that is going to help us do that, and the kid isn’t in here either, so we may as well check another room,” Zev suggests.
I nod, and we head back out of the room. We go straight across the wide hallway and open another door. This room is much like the first, and although it looks like people got up and left things in a hurry, there isn’t anything in here that will be able to tell us where we are or what really happened here. We go into a few more rooms like that, and the more that we end up exploring, the more familiar the place starts to become.
