Amidst the rubble strewn about the ruined castle’s courtyard, the party searched for a secret door. The castle, having belonged to some centuries-old royal someone-or-other, was said to be practically infested with hidden doors and secret passageways. At the center, large slabs of stone trespassed on the decaying remains of a circular garden.

  Merijest and Thesa kept eyes toward the skies in case any airborne creatures took interest in the group.

  Yabba inhaled rocks both small and medium while the Foxtapus psychically lifted larger hunks of brick and boulder.

  The Bronze Motif conjured oversized illusory coins and hurled them at the walls along the edge of the yard. Meanwhile Durn and Witmie followed along and listened for an echo or other unexpected sounds.

  For the first hour, Thesa listened too. Although her half-elf ears were well equipped for good hearing, Witmie's rabbit ears and Durn's half-dwarf tremor sense were better suited to the task. Again and again Thesa's half-elf ears picked up only metal clinking against brick.

  Witmie was halfway around the courtyard when she heard the faintest echo behind the wall.

  “Got it,” she called out. With a few more illusory coin bounces, she and Durn located what they expected should be the thinnest portion of wall. The seam of the hidden door wrapped unevenly around the offset bricks.

  “Now we just need to find a mechanism for the door,” Durn said, cutting off Witmie who was winding up to punch the brick. “Don’t hurt yourself, sweetie.”

  Similar to the strategy they had used back in the Blinny [Dungeon], Yabba unleashed a swarm of flies to scour the crevices and the Foxtapus psychically activated something.

  The brick door receded and then began to slide out of the way, only revealing two-or-three hand-lengths of space before grinding to a rusted halt.

  “Well that’s troublesome…” Thesa said. It was hardly enough for Witmie, the thinnest humanoid among them, to squeeze through. Not to mention Yabba’s wooden body could hardly be squished.

  Witmie shimmied into the opening. She pushed her hands forward and her torso backwards, but something in the mechanism was pretty firmly stuck in place.

  “Thesa, try wedging your halberd in here,” Witmie suggested. “Like a lever.”

  Thesa followed the suggestion only for her summoned halberd to snap in half and dissolve. As always, she was able to re-summon it, but it wouldn’t be useful here.

  Merijest shrugged. “Step aside, ladies.” With a sharp tooth she bit hard on her tongue until she tasted blood. She spit into her hand. Holding her hand against the stuck door, a crystal of ice rushed from her palm, unbinding the bricks with explosive force.

  ***

  Daylight infringed shallowly on the musty, hidden chamber. White marble tiled the floor, scuffed and tarnished with all manner of time and decay. The walls were adorned with a yellow paper which was patterned both by design as well as by stains and tatters.

  Thesa lead the party inside one step at a time.

  Two half-pieces of furniture adorned the room: a wooden chair and a vanity positioned against the right wall, neither ostentatiously dressed. The wood on the left sides of the chair and the vanity were both in impressive condition given their age, however the right sides were completely missing and the cuts were impressively clean. The vanity mirror alone rested unmarred and whole in its place. It reflected the wooden door on the other side of the room. Resting on the vanity was a leather-bound diary, similarly missing one half, leaving the book’s spine with a bevy of thin sheets.

  The strange room disturbed Witmie, so she held tight to Durn. Thesa continued to lead, lifting the diary and thumbing through it. Only the first few pages had been written in. The last page to be used had half a diagram drawn on it.

  “I don't know this script,” Thesa shrugged, displaying a spread for all to see.

  Durn took the diary and looked at it for a moment. “Considering this is a secret room, it’s possible this is just written in code.”

  “Oh I love those,” Witmie beamed and the two busied themselves over the pages while Thesa continued to search the room.

  Assuming it was originally symmetrical, the vanity would have had a drawer on either side of wide-but-shallow central drawer. Having been bisected it only had a drawer and a half.

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  In the central half-drawer, Thesa found pens, ink, and one-and-a-half empty diaries. The left-side drawer had a handful of long-decayed cosmetics.

  “Not much to go on,” Merijest whispered over Thesa’s shoulder. The tickle of the demoness’s warm breath sent a chill down Thesa’s spine.

  “What do you think happened?” Thesa asked.

  “Not sure. My best guess is ‘magic gone awry’ but that’s hardly specific,” Merijest shrugged. At once, Thesa and Merijest stepped closer to one another.

  “I guess for us it doesn’t necessarily matter what happened,” Thesa said.

  “Yes and no,” Merijest said. She scrunched her face just above her nose. “This room reeks of death in a way that would suggest a haunting, but I’m not picking up any spirits.”

  Piping up from the diary, Witmie said, “I think we’ve got some of it.”

  Text from the first spread.

  Text from the second spread.

  “How odd,” Merijest said. She rested a hand on Thesa's shoulder.

  “Star-crossed lovers,” Witmie sighed. “I hope she found her lost love.” She tugged on her bunny ears to cover her wet eyes and turned to Durn.

  Thesa nodded. She was having trouble piecing the fragmented passages into any meaning.

  “I have a bad feeling,” Durn said. “This story doesn’t sound like it had a happy ending.”

  “Still,” Merijest replied. “some of these details make me wonder… Look at the drawing on this page. I’ve seen most of this before.” Borrowing a page from Witmie’s notebook she sketched a more complete version of the diagram.

  “The symbols come from early Chymistry. They represent the three basic elements. The square is earth, the circle is sea, and the zigzag is Sky. This layout with the symbols at three corners with the combined glyph in the center forms the basis for some powerful conjurations.

  “What I don’t recognize is the bottom half. Assuming it's symmetrical, what does the X indicate?”

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