A Crown of Gold

Silver and Bones

Page after page, and still nothing. I'd been combing through every piece of paper I could find in the Fort for hours and still could find nothing about Hychorra. Not a map, a page of history, anything at all. 

"I just wish the last person who lived here left a guide or something to help me find where they kept all their Sunforsaken documents," I said, dropping what papers I had gathered in my hands down on the table in the great room with a frustrated huff. Faye was hardly helping. Instead, she sat across from me, her feet tucked under her as she made a small, yellow flower bloom from a crack in the table's wood. 

"Have you looked down in the cellar?" she asked casually, her eyes trained on the flower as it slowly sprouted up. My eyebrows furrowed as I looked over to her, "The what?"

She smiled at the flower she'd made, looking over to me with a satisfied smile on her face. It fell when she realized I wasn't interested in her flower. She rolled her eyes, "The cellar. Have you checked down there?"

I stared at her incredulously, "What cellar?"

She scoffed, "You're joking."

I shook my head, lips parted and eyebrows so closely bunched together I'm sure it looked as though I only had one. 

"You've lived her for how long now?" She asked. "And I've been here, what, a few weeks?" I glared at her, showing her I wasn't amused. She laughed, pushing herself up from the table. "Come on, then."

I followed her down the corridor, past my room and even the set of smaller rooms I'd determined to be the servant's chambers. I will admit, I hadn't explored the rooms past that very far. When I was first becoming acquainted with Liptomal, the dark and cold halls had given me a chill I didn't like. Then again, that was before I had much more to fear than an empty hallway. Faye turned at the one and only bend in the corridor and stopped at the first door. I'd been here. It was nothing more than a pantry filled with some molded bread and stale biscuits. 

"This is a food cellar," I pointed out. "And I've been in here. You aren't going to find any documents next to some rotten food."

Faye glared at me down her nose, "Well then, you weren't paying very close attention."

She pushed the wooden door open with a creak and stepped inside. She paused, "Hold on." Before I could protest, she was out the door and disappeared around the corner, leaving me alone to stand in the closet that smelled like mold. I wrinkled my nose, beginning to look around for what I could've missed. I clicked my tongue, gazing around the room and noticing nothing particularly special. Faye reappeared in the doorway with a lit candle in her hands.

"So, where is this secret cellar I'm blatantly unaware of?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

Faye smirked at me, leaning in close. I hesitated, taken off guard by our sudden proximity to each other. When our faces were so close that I could hardly focus on her features, she moved past to whisper in my ear, "You're standing on it."

She pulled away grinning like an idiot. I looked down to see that I was in fact standing on something. I took a step backward, making out that I'd been posted atop a set little doors. The handles laid down into the wood, preventing me from noticing anything was there at all. Faye held the candle out for me to take, our fingers brushing lightly when I took it from her fingers. She crouched down, pulling both of the circular, iron handles from their spot in the door. She gave them a yank. They didn't budge. She took a deep breath before pulling on them again, this time harder. The doors pulled away from each other with a tired groan. Faye let each door fall gently to the side, thudding on the stone floor. A hole with a dark staircase was revealed underneath. Faye stood again, brushing her hands together.