Even if her conversation with Zoe wasn’t finished, Eva headed back to the rest of the group. No time to delay if the door really was unlocked.
“Finished so soon?” Eva asked.
She only received a grunt in response.
“It took for-ev-er,” Serena said, pronouncing each syllable distinctly on their own. “Seriously, you used to be so much better. Getting old? You know that there is a cure for that, right?”
“I’m rusty,” Wayne said, voice firm, “not old.”
“Uh huh.”
“Anyway,” Eva said before their charades could continue any longer, “the door is unlocked now?” She took a step towards it only to be interrupted by a cough from Zoe. “Oh, whatever.”
Sister Abbey looked almost sickly green. Whether that was thanks to her impending doom or the proximity with which Serena had decided to keep an eye on her, Eva couldn’t say. But she could say something to remove one of those two options.
“In the event that alarms go off through our own actions, I
Sister Abbey swallowed once. “How gracious of you.”
“Too gracious, if you ask me,” Serena said. Her voice lacked the frivolous tone that she had spoken every other word in.
It surprised Eva for just a moment, but deciding that the vampire probably had more reasons to hate the Elysium Order than most, she let it go with a light shrug of her shoulders. She turned back to the door, but caught sight of a thin-lipped Zoe in the corner of her eye. Zoe stared for a second or two before giving a reluctant nod.
“Well,” Eva said to Wayne, “that’s done. Going to open the door? Or shall I?”
“I was waiting for us to be ready. Everything on the door is disabled, but if there is anything beyond that I couldn’t reach then we may not have much time.”
“Alright. S and Z keep an eye on the hallway. Sister Abbey will accompany W and I to help spot and disarm any traps that may be lying about. Sound good? Anyone not ready?”
“Oh good,” Serena said, eying the doors, “I was going to stay here anyway.”
Shrugging at the quip, Eva glanced around the group. From the ill-looking Sister Abbey and Arachne hanging off of her back, Serena prodding at Arachne’s limbs, to the professors–one of whom looked far more confident than the other–no one objected.
“Let’s do this,” Eva said as she pulled open the door.
The heavy stone slabs making up the doors slammed into the walls with a resounding thunder. Parts of them chipped and fell away while cracks formed in the brick walls.
Eva kept very still as she watched for any sign that the doors would fall off. It was a good thing that no one had been standing near the walls. They would have been crushed.
She might have used just a little too much force. In her defense, they were stone slabs; she figured that they would need a little force to get moving. Clearly, something had been done to them.
Ignoring the snort of a giggle from Serena, Eva pulled out her map. “It’s not far.”
Inside was a much shorter hallway containing three far more mundane doors. From Nel’s brief description from scrying inside, she knew that they were essentially storage rooms. Shelves full of dangerous objects or equipment that the rank and file weren’t supposed to handle. The idol-like devices that the Elysium Order used were in the third room.
And in there should be the obelisk.
Eva took a single step forward, only to be bathed in blinding white light.
The walls, the floor, the ceiling, it all turned white. For a moment, she thought that she was being teleported by Wayne or Zoe. The cold chill settling in didn’t help dissuade her thoughts.
The doors still standing before her were her first clue that she was not being teleported. As was the fact that, while chilly, the cold was more like a winter’s day than the debilitating freeze of their teleport.
“You’re not undead?” Sister Abbey said, genuine surprise in her voice.
“Oh? You knew this would happen? Thought you’d lead us–”
“I didn’t know!” She jumped in place as Arachne’s legs pressed inwards. Her voice raised pitch a few notches as she spoke with haste. “It is a common trap used to immobilize undead. I didn’t know that it would be here.”
“An alarm too, I’d bet,” Wayne said as he brushed past the two. He reached the correct door only to find it locked. Rather than pull out his toolkit, he opened his tome.
One page burst into flames. The flames went out and nothing but ash remained. It dusted off into the air, dispersing and disappearing as it went.
Just as the page burst into flames, the wooden door was quick to follow suit.
He stepped over the threshold before the flames had even died down.
Eva charged in after him. Arachne could handle the augur on her own.
“Back left shelf?” he asked.
“That’s what Nel said,” rushing to the place herself.
There were so many
