Chapter Text
The sounds of discord raged above him in the castle. He knew this day would come. He also knew these items, the artifacts he’d been sworn to protect, mustn’t be discovered. They were to remain a secret at all costs. If needs must, they’d said, die with the knowledge – it was that important. Better to let their exploits be lost to the ravages of time than to fall into the wrong hands.
What he had not counted on was being the last of this line, for his children were magically inert. He had spent a lifetime acting as steward and guardian for this secret, as had his father before him. But what of it now? He had no viable successor.
Holding fast to a plain, leather-bound journal, he swept the stray dust from its cover. Everything, including his studies and research, was recorded within. He’d written it in their language, of course – a concession, so that it would remain unreadable to all but their kin. For despite their edict, he had no intention of letting his life’s work be lost forever.
Above him, dust trickled from the ceiling as faint tremors shook the walls. He must hurry.
A flick of his wand settled the objects into a hollowed-out section of the castle wall, far below ground, in the depths of its dungeons. Unbeknownst to him, the objects would sit idle for 122 years, sealed behind brick like a makeshift mausoleum. For in some ways it was.
The sounds of running footsteps drew ever closer, perhaps only a floor above him now.
He quickly surveyed the room and set the final details to rights: a fresh layer of dust across the stone floor returned it to its undisturbed state, just as it had been for centuries before him. The walls, mercifully, had long-ago dried, so that only the vestiges of calcified moss would hint that water had ever dared to venture this deep.
Satisfied, he exited and resealed the entrance to the room, but with mortar and not magic. The pulse of spell energy would only serve to alert someone to the fact that this door hid something. And a door could only hide what did not proclaim to exist.
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