The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 24 - Mission-Still-Slightly-Impossible

By the time I was being winched down into the darkness of the rose scented carriage, the sun had rose just enough so it touched the vast hills with its very bottom tip. Like a pale-yellow plate on a silver sheet like you see in posh/old peoples houses. Why the hell did Scarlett have to go to bed at this time? But the dawn light didn't really matter all things considered because she had some really good curtains down there.

Sheira gave me the thumbs up from her corner as Shadow lowered me down, a black line of darkness looped around my chest rock climber style. He'd clearly done this before as he leaned back against the line, counterweighting my own and gently feeding more rope as I descended into this very hostile place (If the people didn't find me, the smell would knock me out cold). My feet bumped against the soft carpeted ground and I gave the line a light tug, to see Shadow nod and cover the open skylight with a veil of black.

I gingerly pulled the hand of glory from my pocket (a bit of mouldy flesh dropping off in the process) and held it out. The room was instantly flooded with an eerie white light that felt just a wee bit ghostly considering the fact that only I could see it. I scanned the room which was still a dusky pink colour in the low light for anything that could prove to be helpful. Her plush furniture still sat in the places that made it very difficult for me to move around soundlessly, diamonds still flickered out of the walls and most alarmingly her giant king sized did seem to be occupied as I crept forwards to examine the two figures.

Scarlett and Axel seemed to been having a good time as both were completely starkers and Axel was actually handcuffed to the bedpost. To each their own pal. I stepped away again and swept my gaze round the room. If I was hiding an ultra-powerful so-hot-it-will-melt-your-face-off stone of death, I thought to myself, where would I put it? I wandered over to the mantle piece which was dripping with ornate artefacts of gold and emerald but evidently she wasn't the type to keep things on proud display.

What about that table we'd seen earlier? That table did carry the contents to make the crown jewels jealous but after a meticulous rummage nothing turned up. The sheer volume of the pile of stolen valuables made me angry but for now I had a job to do that may very well result in returning these to their rightful owners. But where was it? Clearly she'd thought enough about this to hide it somewhere to make sure that no sticky-fingered little thief came in the night to whisk it away. Like me!

I took a step back and looked around the room and jumped for a moment at the sight of a stuffed eagle perched in the corner of the room. And when I say stuffed I don't mean cute and fluffy stuffed, I mean the thing was taxidermized, it had watched the curtain fall and had gone to join the choir invisible, it was an ex-eagle. I shuddered at her rather grim tastes in décor and went forward to examine the gilded dressing table that Sheira suspected had a hidden doorway behind it.

It was fairly ordinary looking, if you considered a rose quartz topped, gold framed dressing table with crystal movie star light bulbs to be normal. Well in this case it was. Perfumes in intricately glass cut bottles, piles of make-up you couldn't see anywhere else except on Keeping up with the Kardashians (Don't ask how I know that) and a small fortune of priceless jewelry that could have fed my entire tower block for a month spilled off the dresser like a sparkling waterfall. But if this was a door there had to be a key, right?

I examined the thing from top to bottom, well I started with the drag marks that were so obviously carved into the carpet from the bowed white legs of the vanity being pulled along the carpet, so Sheira was right and I wasn't simply down here on a red herring. To further confirm this, I found a note pinned to the mirror that said in Scarlett's neat swooping handwriting;

Get new carpet fitted

So, there was that.

But it still didn't help me unlock it. If I was in movie what would I do? Well it wouldn't be a perfume bottle or something on the actual table, it would be too easy to forget where you put the damn thing and accidently swinging open with the door would probably get tiring very quickly. Channelling my experience, I took a closer look at the frame, specifically the light bulbs which seemed to be the most obvious solution. I examined every detail with my best Sherlock Holmes eye and then bingo! One of them had small faint carvings in the base like it had been installed badly or it had been pushed. Glancing around the room to make sure no one was sneaking up behind me with a blunt object I pressed the light bulb down.