We Won't Let This Be the End

Part 1: Chapter 12

After they had finished with their conversation they had continued walking, it didn't take much longer till they came up to an archway that rested in the manor walk. Virgil looked at the others before slowly making his way towards the archway to see what lay beyond it. What he saw made him stop.

"Woah!" Roman had come up behind Virgil and had rested his head on his shoulder to look into the room. Logan stood next to Virgil and Patton was peeking from behind him. What they were looking at was what looked to be a darker version of the Archives of Knowledge. Roman raised an eyebrow, "Everyone else is seeing this too right? This looks almost exactly like the Archives back home, maybe a little darker."

"You're right about that Roman." Eyes turned to Virgil as he continued, "I guess you can call these the Dark Archives, they exist in the Darkscape manor as a counterpart to the Archives of Knowledge that exist in the Mindscape. Out of everywhere in the two mind regions, the two Archives are the most closely related besides the Field for Wandering Thoughts and the Forest for Unwanted Thoughts (that's the name of the forest they entered into). It's even believed that due to the close link between the two, that there might even be an entrance between the two sides here as well."

The others took in this information while they looked around the Dark Archives. Endless, rotting bookshelves lied in rows and lined the walls of the two layered room. Broken and ratty furniture was tossed around and in the center of the room rested a destroyed fireplace. Though the room had some torches lining the wall, there was barely any light emitting through it.

"My guess this is the next room we are supposed to be heading into. Logan... Looks like this is your time to shine." Roman looked over at Logan and patted his shoulder with a goofy smile on his face. Logan gave Roman a bored expression as he stared into the room (though he had a feeling that Roman was probably right).

As the sides entered the room (Nyx once again jumping off to chill out in the hallway) they stared around in wonder. They walked around staring at the various bookcases, they had to be careful where they were walking as there were books and debris everywhere along the floor. As they walked farther into the room they noticed something hanging above the fireplace, a painting hanging over the fireplace.

Walking forward to take a closer look, they noticed that it looked similar to the one in Logan's book, but not quite. The figure in the book wore a navy blue robe and held their book open as glowing words spiralled around them. The figure in this painting wore a greyish robe, they carried a book but it was closed and was tucked under their arm. Both figures had a hood covering their faces.

"Isn't there supposed to be color in this painting? I may not have had a lot of time to look at the picture in the old book Logan found, but I'm pretty sure that the robe is supposed to be navy blue and there are supposed to be blue words floating in the air." As Roman was speaking, Logan had reached into his bag and pulled out said book. Flipping it open to the page that held the story of the guardians (as they now knew them as), they all startled when they saw the page. "What's going on?"

This was the first time that they had opened the book since entering the Darkscape and apparently it affected the book almost as much as it affected them. On the page with the guardians, the only one that now had color was the one they knew to associate with Patton. The other figures had gone black and grey. The navy guardian matched the one in the painting above the ruined fireplace, book closed with hands down. The red guardian's sword was sheathed and the dragon had curled, almost as if it was asleep. The purple guardian's hands were still out but it seemed that the scales they held were tipping in the moon's favor.

Logan looked at the book in curiosity, books don't just change at whim, it wasn't normal. Though, he was aware that nothing was normal about the situation that they were currently in. Studying the picture Logan tried to figure out what they were supposed to be doing here in this dark version of the Archives. What had helped them in the last room that they had entered? Looking around the page, his eyes moved to the pale blue guardian and they locked onto the bracelets. "Of course!"