“According to our agreement, you can take away half,” Tilly non-committally stated as if this was none of her concern. Now that she had sufficient light, she began exploring the hall even more carefully. Unable bear seeing Tilly tear at the seaweed with her own hands, Ashes bluntly lifted her huge sword and swung it, sweeping away the seaweed on the wall as if she was simply mowing grass. A second stone embedded within the wall was quickly uncovered.
In accordance with the previous method, Tilly once more poured her magic into it. Along with a sharp and clear sound of metal clashing, everyone was amazed to see, how a huge stone slab tilted down above Tilly’s head. It was connected with taut copper ropes on both sides and in between them there were unexpectedly a neatly chiseled out flight of steps. One side of the stone slab finally stopped on the ground, while the other end led to the ceiling, looking upwards Ashes saw a saw a horizontal metal door blocking the end of the passage.
“Tilly,” Seeing that the 5th Princess didn’t hesitate to climb the stone steps, Ashes couldn’t help and shout out loud, “Let me go first.”
“It does not matter, this time it isn’t the… treasure chamber,” she quickly climbed to the top of the stone staircase, placed her hand on a magic stone beside the door, and as if was answering her, the metal door quickly opened.
Seeing Tilly climbing through the door, disappearing in the ceiling, Ashes had no alternative other than to follow closely while keeping her sword at hand.
The moment Ashes went through a hole in the roof, her eyes went wide, above the ceiling was another room, which was much smaller than the hall below, while the walls were also embedded with illumination stones — but what surprised her the most, was that there were nearly no traces of water here.
Wooden tables, chairs, shelves, cabinets… all the furnishings were still intact, they were only covered with a thick layer of dust, and she could even see some broken spider webs. The shelves were all filled with rows of books that were dyed gray from the dust. In addition to the spread-out book on the table, a cup was also placed together with a kettle, and a pen-holder. From the quill, only a lone pole was remaining and the ink had long since dried up. But even then, this room full with filled with shelves and the hall below was covered with algae seemed to be two completely different worlds.
Thunder, who was the third one to climb the stairs, sucked in a mouth of cold air when he looked around in wonder, “This is…”
“An abandoned dwelling place,” Tilly answered and took up the unfolded book on the table. She gently removed the dust from it and afterward began to look through the pages, “It seems that somebody had lived here for a very long time.”
“What is written in the book?”
“I’m unable to read it,” She shook her head and showed the book to the other two, “The text is written in symbols I have never seen before.”
“It seems that the books on the shelves are the same,” Ashes said, while removing the dust on the spines, revealing a text written in strange wavy lines, leaving her unable for her to grasp its meaning.
“We can take them back with us and study them slowly,” Tilly laughed. “By agreement, all the books and magic stones we discovered belong to us.”
“Of course,” Thunder touched his beard, “But when you have grasped their meaning, I hope you will share their ancient story with me.”
“No problem.”
…
The three people slowly circled the room, carefully searching and touching everything with their hands, this way they quickly came to understand the general situation of this place.
They were unable to find any other stones, but on one side of the room they found a strange device — at first glance, it looked like a thick metal pipe. One end of which was embedded into the stone wall, while the other side constantly became narrower until it was only had the thickness of a wrist, and in its tip was a glass lens embedded.
“What is this?” Ashes knocked against its body, creating a series of clear echoes inside — indicating that the middle of the tube was hollow.
“It resembled a bit the observation mirrors we are using for sailing, maybe the people who previously lived here have used it to observe the outside world,” Then Thunder placed his eye in front of the lens, trying to look through it, but after a moment he said, “Everything is black… I can’t see anything; it seems to be broken.
“Not necessarily,” Tilly pointed at the wall behind the metal tube, “Look here.”
Following the direction of her finger, Ashes merely saw a copper plate with a handled on top of it embedded into the wall and at the bottom of the handle was a small hole, which seemed to be the place to insert a key. The 5th Princes walked over and tried to pull the handle, but the but the copper plate didn’t move a single jot. “It seems to be locked.”
“I will try it,” Ashes grasped the handle, gathered her power and pulled, the entire copper plate immediately came off the wall.
