Hoom… Exams coming, going to be busy… *sigh* am tired.
~*~
"How many rooms are there in this place?" Kylie asked, staring about her in awe, looking as though she had stepped into the Buckingham Palace or something.
The bedraggled group of humans trooped in a group down the candle-lit corridor. They had no guide, since none of the Redwallers had been willing to risk their lives taking their visitors to their rooms. And besides, as Ambrose had so cynically mentioned (Diana had sworn to kill him sometime in the near future) there were only so many places one could get lost in, considering the size of the abbey.
The Abbot had failed to noticed the sarcasm dripping off the celler-keeper's voice like melted ice-cream, and agreed. Hence they were stuck in the corridor, lost in the abbey, and stranded in a place undoubtedly out of their own world. And what was worse to the majority of the non-Redwall reading population was that there was no apparent way to get out of the place, and Martin did not seem inclined to give them any clues either, him being the one who dropped them there in the first place.
The only help they had was extremely vague directions given by a certain abbot, a whole ring of keys to their rooms (considering how Redwall housed the hares, they should have enough to house twenty-nine people) and an extremely irritating ghost hanging behind and terrifying the life out of Nicolette.
"Are you sure you would like to go left? It might be the wrong way, you know." Martin sing-sang mockingly as they came to a junction in the corridor.
Diana sighed, rolled her eyes, and turned right instead.
"But then again, going to the right isn't such a good idea, m'dear," came the aggravating voice from the back of the group, causing Nicolette to jump and run behind Owl.
"You know, if you weren't already dead I would have killed you by now," Diana replied grouchily but not without a touch of wry humour in her tone.
Ghost-Martin did an exaggerated mock-bow from where he floated, "I thank you for the compliment. It takes a lot of skill to be a ghost, you know."
Sara sniggered and shot back, "well, then why isn't *Rose* a ghost?" The question seemed innocent enough, considering the fact that Sara had not intended t do anything but aggravate Martin.
However, it seemed to spark a strange reaction as the ghost suddenly lost his smirk and disappeared. Sara raised an eyebrow, "what did I do?"
"Bad mistake, Sara, you know how he reacted, well, in the book, after Rose was killed."
Diana's voice floated to them from down one of the many adjoining corridors. "Hey, people! I've found our rooms."
"Finally!" Eve shouted and led the rest of the group in the dash to find their lodgings.
When they came to the row of numbered doors Yen Lin raised an eyebrow in fascination. "I didn't know that the rooms were like hotel rooms. I mean, look at the numbers."
True enough there was an engraved number next to each door.
"Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place…" Shu and Nez promptly started singing.
"Shut up, you two." Diana snapped. She looked peeved about something.
"What is it, Diana?" Someone asked.
"This," Diana raised the ring of keys and jingled them, "try to find the keys to each room, and you will see what I mean. The keys aren't numbered."
Martin, who had reappeared at the back of the group again, smirked.
Fo swore. Sara swore. Shu swore. A lot of people swore. And Miss Tan told them to mind their language.
Diana, ever the practical one, had already roped together some people to unlock the doors.
Damn, they hated keys. They *really* hated keys.