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Dietrich
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I can't believe that I almost forgot that this desk was not an ordinary desk. It had secrets. Secrets that the people who had been living here recently might not have known about. If Alaric didn't tell his successor about it, then there might be a chance that they never knew how to get into it. And that was what I was going to hope for.
Shawn sat in the chair that I had been in earlier while I went to sit in the large carved chair that Orson had made for Alaric. He had carved something for all of his friends. Not just this chair for Alaric. For me, there was a large flat carving that depicted the group of us in the woods that were around the mansion and my castle. It had been painted but the colors had faded over time. And I still had it in my castle, hanging in a hall leading to my office.
This desk was what was more important right now though. This desk was where I might find something that would lead me to finding the others. If Alaric put something in here back then, or if one of his successors did. That would be all that I needed to help guide me to the next location. I needed to find something here. I needed to know what was going on. What had happened here in Alaric's former home?
Pulling out the wide but shallow drawer in the middle of the desk, where you might keep pens and other things along those lines, I reached my hand inside and started to feel around for the lever that I was looking for. It was small, but I knew that it was there. It was how you made the bottom of the last drawer on the right open into a secret compartment.
.....
Once I heard it click, I pulled open the drawer that now had a new opening. I lifted off the false bottom and saw another lever. This one was easier to flip than the last one, and I heard that it was opening another secret compartment.
This new compartment was in the top drawer on the left. There in the back of the drawer was a small door that had popped open to reveal yet another lever. Flipping this one made a door under the desk appear.
Getting onto my knees under the desk, I pulled that door open. It was where the desk came down to hide where the feet would be. It was meant to look modest and not show what was happening under the desk, not that Alaric even had a woman, or a man, under there that needed to be hidden, but it would have concealed an adult in that space. However, it also concealed this hidden drawer.
When I pulled that drawer open, I saw that there were only three things that were inside of it. There was a journal that I recognized well, along with the handwriting that it was written in. It was Alaric's. There was another journal as well, this one newer and not one that I recognized. And the third thing was a large roll of parchment. I would look at it later, we needed to finish searching the rest of the house here first.
“Got them.” I stood up and showed Shawn the spoils that I had found in the desk. “I knew that we would find something in here. Two journals and this old parchment.”
“Good.” Shawn took them from me. “We will look at them later. Let's go downstairs. We still have the first floor and basement to search as well.”
“Yeah, I know. Let's go.” I walked around the desk and took his hand. I needed to make sure that I didn't get sucked back into my memories like I had before, but for the time being, I was myself and I was going to help with this search.
I led Shawn down to the main floor of the house. We hadn't searched more than the parlor. There wasn't much to be found there, aside from the invitation to search the house. Whoever left that knew about me and Shawn. And that we would be the ones that would come to this house. That was a little unsettling, but I wasn't going to let it get to me. I was going to make sure that I followed through with my promise to Trinity.
Now, Shawn and I searched the massive kitchen, which had seen a bit of an update. There was a refrigerator, a modern stove, a deep freezer, and some other appliances. I had to wonder how they were getting electricity for all of that, since they were still using gas and oil lamps to light the home. This was the oddest thing about the entire home so far.
After the kitchen came the dining hall. It was a massive room with a lot of cafeteria style tables with built-in benches. There was enough seating like that for at least fifty people. And at the back of the room, like it was a place where the important people sat and watched over the others, there were two long tables with chairs that faced the rest of the room. Who was it that was using this place now? What had they done here?
Next was the training hall. This was the place that Alaric, Orson, Layhan, Dawson, Agatha, James and I used to train for our battles. The others were bear, wolf, witch, feline, and Fae. We were all from different communities, different species, but we were friends. We fought together. We helped each other. And it was the best friendship that I had before I met Reece's family generations ago.
The training room looked similar to my memories, but there was a lot more damage to the room. Also, there were more blood stains and different weapons than the ones that we used to use. There were even bullet holes where they had used a part of the room for target practice. What were they training for now? Were they trying to do the work that we used to do?
The main floor didn't yield much for us. There were no secrets or hidden messages. Nothing aside from what was in that book earlier. Now, it was time to head to the basement. This was where we used to house the prisoners that needed to be dealt with. I knew that toward the end of his life, Alaric dreaded going down there. He felt so bad for what he had done to those people, even though they were evil and needed to be stopped.
The stairs leading into the basement were not as bad as the ones leading upstairs. They were closed off so that there was always a wall blocking off anything you might see, but these ones weren't as narrow, and they didn't spiral so tightly. Instead, they followed the wall and then turned and went down as the stairs bordered the room. That you would come down in.
That room was sort of like a foyer or entry room before you went into the rest of the basement dungeon. It had a table for setting your personal items down on, a chair for rest if you needed it, but that was about all. These all had been here three hundred years ago when I was here last.
Through the door though, there was horror. Both in my memories and in the present. Around that large and cavernous room there were fifteen cells. They were small, and each closed off completely on the sides so that the prisoners in them couldn't see or touch each other. The only openings were the rune covered cage like doors that let the people in and out. That was just how I remembered this place looking, and that was still how it looked.
In the center of the room, there was a large table. In my memories, it was a solid wooden thing with chains and leather straps for holding down the prisoner. Now, it was a metal table that was sitting right above the drain in the floor. The drain had always been there, that was a thing that Alaric insisted on, water might leak into the basement after all. Now though, I could see blood and other bits that clogged that drain. Whatever happened here was not a pleasant experience.
Thankfully, there were no victims, or prisoners, down here at the moment. It was empty, of people that is.
“This place smells like death.” Shawn noted as he looked around the area with disgust on his face.
“Even more than it did three hundred years ago. These people have killed here, but who did they kill? And why?”
Without answering, Shawn went to look into the cells that were all standing open. We needed to find a clue of some sort. We needed to know where to go next.
The cells were filthy. They had obviously been used over the years, but I couldn't tell that they had ever been cleaned. Buckets of waste, piles of filth, dirt, blood, and so much more littered each cell. The whole room stink to high heaven, but we couldn't leave. We needed to find something. We needed to know who had been here.
In the first ten cells that we searched, there was nothing at all. In the eleventh, there was something. A piece of paper. It looked like it was torn from a composition notebook or something. It was written messily, as if the person that had left the message was in a hurry.
They have lost their minds. They are pulling people from the orphanage and accusing them of associating with the enemies. They want us to learn to live among them, to trick them, but then they accuse us of doing wrong. Please, whoever finds this, tell those at Saint Alaric's that they are in danger. Don't let them be the next victims
“What is Saint Alaric's?” Shawn asked as he read over my shoulder.
“That I don't know. I have never heard of a place called Saint Alaric's, but I am assuming that it has to do with my old friend. And this isn't boding well.”
“Well, at the very least, this is another clue for us. We will have somewhere else to search after here.” Shawn was walking away as he spoke, pulling his phone from his pocket and swiping the screen as he went. “Hmm, there is a Saint Alaric's Home for Children in Rorswil.”
“A home for children? Like an orphanage? Well, I guess that could be where they recruit. I am not sure, but I think that we need to head there next.” I felt my heart start to race. They were using children, innocent children, in their game of war. That was bullshit.
