-"Break. You. Stupid. Thing."-Aedion growled as he crashed his fist into the window for the third time. After the windows had also turned out to be locked, the group had tried to break them, with no visible success.
-"Dude, stop it. I already crashed a chair into this thing. The chair broke. Your punching isn't going to do anything."-Fenrys said from the place where he had leaned against the arc of the locked door.
-"Guys, look at this."-Dorian, Aelin and Lysandra had gathered around another door at the other side of the room. The difference was that this door was opened. Aedion left the window alone and joined Fenrys as they made their way across the room, staying a good distance away from the creepy portrait.
Behind the door was a room transformed fully into a library. Shelves and shelves stacked with books covered in dust. Aelin stepped inside first, brushing her hand along the backs of the carefully arranged, dusty books. She had always liked libraries, especially old ones. The smell of ink and paper and wood, enchanting you and taking you into another time and place, as if you were crossing into another era.
-"This is amazing."-Dorian whispered, entering the library after Aelin. He pulled a book from a shelf and read the title and the year carefully written on the leather cover.-"That one is from the eighteenth century."
-"This place doesn't seem so scary anymore."
The group walked around the room, looking at books and passing dusty tables and armchairs. Lysandra found a few candles in the drawer of a small cupboard and everybody took one, lighting them up with Fenrys' lighter. At the light of the five candles the library looked even older, every crack in the wooden shelves and every scratch on the book covers now visible. The whole place seemed to somehow enchant, beckoning whoever had entered to go farther, to uncover whatever secrets were sleeping under the dust.
There was a shout, a loud thump and as everybody turned, they saw Aedion trying to extinguish the fire that a book he was holding had caught from the candle in his hand. And, just as suddenly as it had started, the magical feeling in the library ended. The door slammed shut and the candles blew out. Then a chilling voice, the kind that send shivers down your spine and made you drop whatever you were holding, that sounded as one and many at the same time, boomed through the library.
-"Who dares to enter my domain? Who dares to destroy the books, who dares to shine a light here, where it hasn't shone in two hundred years?"
-"What was that?"-Lysandra asked, stepping back towards the door.
-"I don't know, but we all heard it."-Dorian looked around, trying to find the source of the voice.
-"That isn't supposed to be real. Somebody must be playing tricks on us."-Fenrys said, his voice a little shaky. Aelin grabbed a candlestick from a nearby table and held it as a baseball bat, eyes darting around the room.
-"You have the bravery to call this a trick, boy, after you came into my home uninvited? After you disturbed the eternal calm? This place is not made for human eyes. You entered uninvited, now you must pay the prize."
The whole house started shaking. And then the floor collapsed, sending the group tumbling down into the darkness.
They hit the ground. Hard. The pit below the library must have been around twenty feet deep, or at least that is what it felt like.
-"That hurt."-Aelin growled while getting up.-"Everybody okay?"
There was a group answer of a few "yeahs" accompanied with growling and a few curses.
The little light provided from the opening in the floor above revealed a few dark stone tunnels. There were a few unlighted torches before the entrance of one of them, but otherwise it was just stone, stone and more stone.
-"So what do we do now?"-Aedion looked up at the hole in the floor.-"There is no way we can climb back up there."
-"We try the tunnels?"-Lysandra asked, scanning the arcs and the darkness behind them.-"There must be an exit somewhere."
-"I don't think we have another option."-Dorian picked up a torch.-"Let's light those up, choose a tunnel, and most importantly, not split and go anywhere alone. That kind of idiocy gets people killed in movies."
The group decided to go for the tunnel that was right in front of them. The torches were no exactly easy to light up, especially with a pocket lighter, and it took them a few tries, but they managed to light up three and entered the tunnel. They walked in silence, their echoing steps the only sound in the dark, still tunnel.
-"Do you feel that?"-Aelin asked, stretching her hand above her head.-"There is a cold air flow here. There must be an exit or a shaft it's coming from."
Everybody stopped. There was indeed an air flow, and it felt stronger than it was second ago. Soon enough the torches started flickering, and a disgusting smell of decay filled the air.
-"Ugh, smells like something died ahead."-Aelin covered her nose.
-"Probably a rat…I hope."-Lysandra said, worry creeping in her voice. And she wasn't the only one creeped out. The group shared uneasy glances.
-"Maybe we should go back. That voice up there…I wouldn't be surprised if it was a trick set up by some psychotic serial killer."-Fenrys said, and this time it didn't seem like he was joking.
-"You watch too much crime series, you know. We aren't in Crime Scene Investigation."
-"Gu-guys?"-Aedion's shaky voice came from behind a turn further down the tunnel.-"I-I think I found what died."
The others almost sprinted to him. Aedion was not the type of person to get scared easily. Then they stopped dead in their tracks. Lysandra gasped and pressed her palm against her mouth. Fenrys dropped his torch. Aelin and Dorian stumbled backwards. Before them, in a pool of blood, was laying a dead body.