A Tale of Shadows - THE OUTDATED VERSION

Chapter 13 - The Old Dungeon

As she had predicted, Melinda had a lot of work that day, even more than she had expected. The dark blue book that gave her immortality - The Spells from Shadows - had to be protected at all costs, for along with the spell of immortality, there was a spell that could undo it rather easily, as well as people who would want nothing more to end her life. Still, she smirked, believing that she had crafted a perfect plan.

She would create an elaborate labyrinth full of traps that would kill all those who entered that weren't her as soon as possible. A part of her wished to tell Malcolm about everything, but she was aware of the fact that someone could get the information from him, and then all the schemes she had crafted would burn in a moment, all her efforts negated, and all that after having started much recently. No one could see her commit an act of incompetence, no one.

Luckily for her, there was an old dungeon near the castle that had been closed for centuries. She had read about that dungeon in books for research, due to which she knew that it was three kilometres in length and one in width on the inside, its outside looking much smaller thanks to the shrinking spell its former owner cast, that it had four entrances for the north, south, east and west, that it was full of paintings referencing important historical events she could hide many spells and objects behind inconspicuously and without difficulty, and that the item the person who previously possessed it was guarding was kept in the middle.

The night before, she had engaged in forgery to produce a copy of the book that had the exact same appearance as the real one. She knew that when her citizens found out the truth about her, there would be numerous attempts to assassinate her, and it could last for centuries. Plenty of people would die by having failed at trying to achieve a falsely formed goal, which filled her heart with excitement.

When the sun was about to reach the middle of the sky, she grasped that she needed to hurry up. By grabbing the doorknob with a firm grip, she got dust on her right hand. She felt as though she had been holding the bones of a dead person that turned to ash, as though they had spread a horrible itch onto her skin, and more importantly, her brain.

For seconds, she saw nothing but the vague vision of herself as a little girl swinging in the mist. She was swinging in complete silence, surrounded by nothing but thick layers of clouds and trees, yet she could muster the strength to smile like the universe was completely incapable of bothering her.

The power of the forces beyond was terrible and mysterious enough for her to be estimating its worth even after all the years that had passed. Afterwards, she pinched herself just hard enough to wake herself from the trance, telling herself that she could not fall for those daily nightmares again.

The second she entered the dungeon, she was showered with cobwebs, as was to be anticipated. She showed no reaction out of the ordinary, merely closing the door behind her. With a lantern that was shining bright as a star in her right hand, she slowly walked through the first hallway, sensing the touch of the material she viewed as having a similar texture to lace against her gentle skin.

The first thing she noticed was that there were many torches on the walls, which she did not view as peculiar at all. Dungeons always tended to be confusing at times, even for their owners. The wood the torches were made off had started to rot, telling Melinda that she should get new ones as soon as possible.

The floor was full of ants that had tried to inhabit the holes in the brick walls of the building, as seen from the large number of them that lay dead near breadcrumbs and infinitesimal bits of spoiled fruit.

She assumed the owner must have eaten there from time to time while checking his dungeon in utter paranoia, the same one that had begun to blossom within her heart, the one that kept her wide awake during the majority of every night, and the uninvited guests waited for him to leave so they could feast on the remains.

Some time after he passed away at last, they must have as well, for there were no people who visited the dungeon in between him and her. What a pity, she thought, that which had happened to those innocent creatures.

Since nothing else outside the rooms interested her, she went to the one closest to her. Rather unsurprisingly, there was no source of light, other than the burnt-out candle on the floor. After she had gotten rid of it, she used her lantern to observe the rest of the room.

On the right wall, there was a picture of a sea in the sunset, above which a dove was flying. As seas were far away from Obscuria, and not that important to her as well, this was the closest she had come to seeing one. Perhaps she would go there someday to swim in the beautiful water whose gleam in that imaginary sun reminded her of glass, to let its salt engulf her nose like the scent of a flower and to feel the golden sand beneath her feet. It would truly be an otherworldly experience, but that was the least of her priorities.

She recalled all the deceptive, protective and trap-related spells she had learned, opened drawers, moved the carpet, made holes in the walls and repaired them, removed and returned the picture, touched the walls and floor with her hands to make her presence felt even when she was not there, cast more spells than she could count and walked around the room at an abnormal speed to ensure that none of her spells broke.

She did the same thing for all the other rooms, with differences in trap designs each time that the unwanted guests could experience firsthand. After that, she did the second last thing she had to do in repairing the dungeon, as she had already done everything else, even replacing the torches with the rotten wood. She went outside with a ginormous bag of rocks, building four sculptures that all looked completely the same, that all had faces and gazes as cold and unwelcoming as hers was. Through the gemstones in their eyes, she could record everything, and even bring them to life in case of intruders. As long as no one found out about her plan, everything was going to be perfect. But her life was full of surprises, and so Malcolm walked over to her as she was leaving the dungeon after she had left the false book in the middle of it.