D1 Green Room
"So what's the problem with little dust?" Mira said with shrug as she walked inside the Green Room.
She started to pull back the blanket on the bed, and the movement stirred up a cloud of dust that was visible in the air. Mira coughed and waved her hands to fling the dust away from her face.
"Or a lot of dust," Mira said in disgust.
The best solution just seemed to entirely get rid of the whole blanket covering the bed and hope that the sheets below it were in better shape. So with some sneezing and sputtering, she threw the blanket off, but as she did so, she heard a metallic clink as something more solid hit the floor.
Kicking the blanket aside, Mira leaned down and saw something shiny just under one corner of the bed. The numerous dust bunnies that had collected under the bed were a bit deterring, but she finally forced herself to reach in and draw the objects out. Her hands touched paper underneath the solid items, so when she was done brushing away the dust, she had two individual keys and a few pieces of old parchment paper.
One of the keys was silver, and the other was gold. Mira thought of the two rooms that had been left open, and she quickly walked back to the hall. The doors must have been left open because someone had lost these keys, but as she tried to stick the gold one into the lock on the first door, she realized that it was too big.
"It is an odd shape," she mumbled as she turned it over in her hand. "But maybe the other door…"
She turned to the silver door, but neither key fit there either.
"Well, so much for solving that mystery," Mira huffed as she walked back into the green room as she put the two keys in her pocket. She closed the door behind her and sat down upon the bed, which was much improved with the dusty blanket removed.
The parchment pages caught her attention, and she brushed the rest of the dust off as she settled into the bed to read them. They contained the story of an alchemist. The first few pages contained a mostly uninteresting history, but Mira read on as she tried to figure out why someone would keep them and what the story had to do with this castle.
And then she reached the bottom of the third page, which told of the alchemist's work with a woman, whom he never named, but referred to as a witch of great power. And this is what it said…
And she taught him many dark secrets, but above all things he loved the metals of the earth and the plants from which he gained much knowledge. And if he made anything for his dark mistress, she asked only for silver, for it was cold like her heart. But the alchemist always loved gold best, and he believed it held the greater power.
(You've just found part of a code that will allow to unlock a certain ending later in the story. Please record the letter G somewhere. This is how you'll know which option to select near the end of the story.)
Mira read on for a few more moments, but even as her mind tried to raise questions about the story, she began to grow tired, and finally she fell asleep surrounded by the pages.
The night drifted on peacefully for Mira at first, but in the midst of a deep slumber, a nightmarish cry of desperate and eager rage filled the darkness. Mira awoke with a gasp as she sat up amidst the pages. Without even feeling fully awake, she stumbled off of the bed and crept to the window.
She could see the waning moon shining in a gloomy sky, but its dim light did not reveal the source of that awful noise. Suddenly, another howl arose, and Mira ducked down beside her window in terror for the sound was paralyzing.
"I've never heard an animal or anyone make a sound like that," she said in a whisper.
Mira cast a glance back at the bedroom door. This monster sounded like it was wandering around outside, but she remembered Duke's suggestion that she should "lock" herself in. She crawled to the door and turned the lock, but as she glanced back at the bed, she didn't feel very sleepy any more.
I don't really want to know what that was, she thought. And yet, I feel like I need to know what it was. But would I really dare to leave this room?
If you think Mira should crawl back in bed and wait out the night in the bedroom, select D1 Go Back to Sleep.
If you think, Mira should find out what is going on, then select D1 Investigate.