The Destroyer

16

Chapter 16

As soon as I left the bedroom I talked to Dice. I told him everything aunt Cora told me and added some details of my own past to help him understand.

"Why didn't I know about this before?" He asked more to himself than me.

"I don't know, but they should have a lot of power if they were able to pull off such a trick."

"We need to find them," he said.

"There's no need in searching," said a voice from behind us. Aunt Cora was standing in the doorframe. "I will take you there."

It took a while to make parents believe aunt was alright and able to leave the house on her own. Eventually we did.

"Bill, I'll take your car if it's alright," said Cora to my father.

"No, it's not, you're unable to drive."

Aunt chuckled. "Thanks, Bill," she said and took the car keys from the table, leading Dice and I out.

We drove for five minutes or even less and parked in front of a flower shop. I used to buy flowers here to bring to aunt.

"What are we doing here?" Dice asked. He didn't trust aunt much. I wasn't surprised - I'd be if he did trust her.

Aunt didn't answer, instead she lifted a sewer head and gestured to climb down.

I scrunched my face up in disgust. "Ew, no!"

Aunt rolled her eyes. "It's not a real sewer, just jump down."

Dice looked at her reluctantly and went down first. He sat at the edge and jumped down. I heard no water splash, just a sound of banging on a metal. I went there second and saw aunt jump down after me and close the top. Now we were in pitch blackness.

"Lumos," said aunt to no one in particular and all of a sudden the lights around us switched on.

"Lumos, aunt?" I asked with raised eyebrows. "A spell from Harry Potter? Seriously?"

Aunt shrugged. "No one would ever guess."

Well, it was true.

We were in a grey tunnel that was splitting on every step. We went past four turns and five crosses (are those called crosstunnels? Because we're not on the road) and turned to the right. We passed two more crosstunnels, a turn and then turned right. Then left. Then right three times and left again. I would never remember the patters. Nothing around could hint you were walking on circles. Everything everywhere was the same. Except for one broken lightbulb. I forgot where it was.

Eventually we came to a wall.

"What now?" I asked. I prayed to God we weren't lost.

Aunt raised her hand and knocked on the wall once, then twice, then three times, then four, five, one, two, two and three.

At first nothing happened, but after barely 30 seconds the wall shifted and made noise of metals working, twisting and turning. I saw the wall slowly lift. It went all the way up to the ceiling and we saw a woman with black skin staring at us from the other side.

"Penny, hello," aunt greeted and Penny's eyes widened in realization.

"Cora... oh my God, it's you. You're back."

"Who's back?" Said a young male voice and a tall, blond man came into view. "Cora..." he froze.

Cora smiled at them and stepped inside, us following her steps. We saw around fourty people and all of them came to hug aunt at the same time. I let myself look around. We were in a white office the size of three tennis courts. Computers and different devices were everywhere like huge screens, maps and papers and I saw a few doors.