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body div#devskin0 hr { }

Theme: 38- Abandoned
World: Opis
Location: Deršu Forest, Degasrozei
---

    The grey afternoon rained down steadily, and Kastle watched from the window the tiny stream that had formed flowing through the garden. It had been nearly a month since the brothers were there alone, and for all that time, it was as if the sky was mourning with them.
    With a sigh, he continued down the main hall of the second floor until he got to the library. It was admirable for a private collection, in his opinion, with shelves of books covering two large walls, top to bottom. There were all sorts of books, organized by genre, from adventure and mystery novels to texts on history and geography. Some recent, some a hundred years old. On the other walls were framed paintings whose artists were certainly long gone. Kastle particularly liked the one of Speylmere Lake in Athal. It looked bright and inviting, or perhaps it was the allure of so far away a place. For such a large room, though, it had a particular coziness in part by the soft cushioned chairs and warm colors, plus the nostalgic redolence of old buildings.
    Lucien was sitting in one of the chairs, hands wrapped around a cup of tea as he stared into nothing. A book sat on the side-table, bookmark placed under the front cover.
    “This rain has to let up eventually.” Said Kastle. “We were suppose to reopen two weeks ago.”
    “I thought you were going out this morning before it started to rain again.” Lucien looked over to see his brother bundled up in a coat, hair damp. “Or did you?”
    “The roads are too flooded, even when it stopped for a while. It’s just not safe yet.”
    “It’s not desperate, is it?” Lucien asked, brows furrowed.
    “Not yet. We are out of milk, eggs, and pork. We’re almost out of bread, but we have plenty of flour in storage, so we’ll be fine. We can stand a little while with plain black coffee and toast for breakfast.”
    “That’s disgusting.”
    “You can put sugar in it?”
    “That’s even worse. I’ll stick with tea for now.”
    “Okay.” Kastle laughed.
    “How are you managing?”
    “Hmm, I’m fine. Just restless. At least I got to leave the house for a little bit. What have you been working on today? Just some reading?”
    “Not yet. I only organized some paperwork and decided to be in here for a break.”
    “So, changed your mind about reading about the history of the country for the hundredth time?” Kastle asked, glancing at the abandoned book. Degasrozei: Forests of Mystery.
    “I haven’t read it that many times. But yes, I guess. I couldn’t get past the first page this time. Not just this one either.”
    “You’ve exhausted all the information from them. We should both go into town sometime. You can buy some new books.”
    “The older ones are more interesting.”
    “A used book store then?” Kastle spotted a pile of what he assumed were the other books that Lucien abandoned. He began to put them back one by one.
    “I was going to put those away. You don’t have to.”
    “I need something to do, it’s fine.”
    “If you say so. Ugh, I’m so tired of this. There’s nothing to do anymore, we’re running out of all the good food, and you pacing around all the time is really starting to make me uncomfortable. Driving me up a wall.” Lucien stood and picked up the book near him to put back in its place with an annoyed exuberance. He paused suddenly, hearing an unusual noise. He took the book back out and knocked on the back of the shelf, hearing a hollow sound.
    “Well it’s not my f-- what is it?”
    “I don’t know.” He went over to the middle of the wall, removed a couple of books, and knocked on the back. Solid. He went back to the other section of shelves and began to examine it. After running his fingers down the shelves, he found a seam.
    “Do you think there’s something behind it?” Kastle asked skeptically. “Come on, the ‘secret door bookcase’ is such a cliche. One would think you would have noticed this ages ago.”
    “I don’t usually push books against the shelf so hard.”
    Lucien held one of the shelves with both hands and pulled carefully. A section of the bookcase pulled out, revealing a small door with a keyhole, but no handle. He looked at his brother expectantly.
    “... To be fair, the bookcase wasn’t the door.” Kastle stared at it, stunned. “Will it open?”
    Lucien tried to open it in every possible direction, but it did nothing but slightly wobble. He wasn’t too surprised, though. It was clearly hidden for a reason. That would have been too easy.
    “No. It appears to need a key.”
    “Maybe we could… wait.” Kastle’s eyes lit up. “Remember… I don’t know how long it’s been exactly. But remember a few years ago we were doing that big spring cleaning, and we found that old key in storage? It looked too small for anything.”
    “We didn’t ask Babaj about it. And it was more than a few.”
    “No, we didn’t. You think it could be for this? It hadn’t worked for anything else we tried.”
    “Wouldn’t that be something?” Excitement trickled into Lucien’s voice, his previous annoyance now forgotten. “It’s still where I left it in the chest.”
    “I’ll be right back.” Kastle said breathily, and left the room.
    There was a storage chest they kept where they collected what they found to be interesting or unusual things. Many of these objects were from the house or the grounds in general, others were gifts they had received or of otherwise unknown origin. When they found the key several years earlier, they tried it with everything on the grounds they could find. Lucien was particularly disappointed when they couldn’t find what it belonged to. The key was very old, much older, they assumed, than their late guardian, perhaps just as old as the ancient building.
    Kastle dug through the various items systematically, finding the small velvet pouch the key was kept in. He felt from the weight that it was still in there, and hurried back through the elegant halls. Once he arrived back at the library, his brother held out his hand for the key, insisting on opening it himself.
    “Here.” Kastle removed it from the pouch and handed it to Lucien, who grabbed it impatiently. With it now in his possession, he hesitated, drawing a deep breath before inserting the key and turning it carefully.
    As it opened, the door creaked loudly as though it had not been opened in decades, and the twins figured that was likely the case. Lucien dropped the key as he saw what was inside.
    “I don’t think I need to go into town.”
    “Šuta.” Kastle exclaimed under his breath. Inside was an entire second library, rows of shelves full of books long abandoned. There was a distinct mustiness which contrasted with the rest of the house so taken care of, plus cobwebs reaching across corners of the room and between shelves. It contained no windows, and the twins were located at the only entrance. Kastle went in after Lucien, and flicked on the weak lights.
    “Do you think Babaj knew about this?” Lucien asked, but immediately decided it was probably a silly question. If she knew, why wouldn’t she have told them at some point?
    “Probably not. My question is why it’s hidden like this. What’s in here that someone didn’t want people to see?”
    “What the original builder didn’t want people to see. I’ll find answers here, I know it.”
    “Well.” Kastle smiled. “Let the adventure begin.”
    Lucien spotted an open box with sheets of rolled-up paper sticking out of it. Being one of the few items that wasn’t a book, it drew attention to itself. He took one and unrolled it with utmost care; who knew how fragile it all was.
    “It’s a map.” Kastle said excitedly once it became clear. As he examined it further though, his face fell in disappointment. “It’s just a map of the surrounding area. This section of forest and the river, our house.”
    “Yes.” Lucien tried to find anything special about it, like unknown locations, but it wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. There was something, however, that gave him pause. He continued in a faltering whisper. “It’s just a small area, though. Maybe our property hasn’t changed at all, but there’s a whole box. Surely there are some things different. Besides, this is incredible. See the date?” He pointed to a handwritten date and signature, hands shaking just slightly. Kastle’s voice nearly got caught in his throat.
    “It’s over five hundred years old.”
    “Yes.”
    “That means it’s pre-collapse.”
    “Yes. All of this probably is.”
    Lucien rolled the map back up and returned it to the box. The two sat in silence, the weight of their discovery sinking in.

    ---

    “Imagine how much all of that is worth.” Said Kastle, moving food around with his fork. Once the initial shock had subsided, they decided to have some lunch and discuss how to proceed.
    “Don’t even think about it. At least not yet. We don’t know everything in there, just a map. What if there’s something incriminating, considering how closed up it is? We need to look through all of it.”
    “I know you’re right. But tell me it didn’t cross your mind at all how much money would could get for some of that stuff.”
    Lucien gave him an unamused look, but after being stared at in expectation, he sighed.
    “Okay, fine. Just for a moment. No doubt it would be worth a fortune. Maybe there will be something we can get rid of, but more importantly, we might be able to find out what this place actually was. Even more, what it was like in the Old Times.”
    Kastle opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped.
    “What?” Asked Lucien.
    “Nothing.”
    “No, what?”
    “It’s just… what if that’s why it was all hidden? Maybe it sounds stupid, but what if it does contain that kind of information and was hidden for that reason? So people can’t find out?”
    “That does sound a bit far-fetched.” Lucien said dryly.
    “Yeah.”
    “But then again, finding a secret room also sounds far-fetched.” He shrugged. “Let’s see what we can find.

    ---

    The first thing they decided to do once coming back to the hidden room was to take note of how it was organized. They already knew where the maps were kept, so they each took a side of the room and tried to figure out which rows were novels, which were history, which were science, and so forth. Sometimes it was difficult to tell by the title, as none were familiar in the slightest, and they had to look at the back or inner cover of the book. Kastle figured out a particular row must be fiction, as a few books said they were a collection of short stories. He noted some odd names, such as Bradbury and Grimm. He picked one up that didn’t seem as though it would fall apart as soon as he opened it, and turned to a random page, reading to himself silently. “There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been the first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we're got on damn thing the phoenix never had.” Kastle stared at the page, thinking how he had no idea what a phoenix bird was, or what was Christ.
    Lucien, on the other side of the room, found the non-fiction half. At the sight of a book on gardening, he let out a quiet sort of half-chuckle. Ah yes, the mysterious secret gardening techniques that mortal man cannot fathom. He continued on, noting physics and chemistry books that seemed as though they would be interesting to read. He had studied those subjects of course, but maybe these would be at a higher level than his initial education. Soon, he moved on to another shelf. He looked with a confused grimace at what seemed to be geographical texts, as none of these names meant anything to him. Many of them were also quite faded, or the title wasn’t located on the spine of the book, missing its sleeve. Then one caught his eye: a title he understood. Generically titled, but not too surprisingly as it looked like it might be some sort of school book, World History. He opened to the beginning, finding an unfamiliar map. A large, complex map with a lot of labels. In his perplexity, he read the name of the map out loud.
    “Planet Earth.”

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Theme: 38- Abandoned
World: Opis
Location: Deršu Forest, Degasrozei
---

    The grey afternoon rained down steadily, and Kastle watched from the window the tiny stream that had formed flowing through the garden. It had been nearly a month since the brothers were there alone, and for all that time, it was as if the sky was mourning with them.
    With a sigh, he continued down the main hall of the second floor until he got to the library. It was admirable for a private collection, in his opinion, with shelves of books covering two large walls, top to bottom. There were all sorts of books, organized by genre, from adventure and mystery novels to texts on history and geography. Some recent, some a hundred years old. On the other walls were framed paintings whose artists were certainly long gone. Kastle particularly liked the one of Speylmere Lake in Athal. It looked bright and inviting, or perhaps it was the allure of so far away a place. For such a large room, though, it had a particular coziness in part by the soft cushioned chairs and warm colors, plus the nostalgic redolence of old buildings.
    Lucien was sitting in one of the chairs, hands wrapped around a cup of tea as he stared into nothing. A book sat on the side-table, bookmark placed under the front cover.
    “This rain has to let up eventually.” Said Kastle. “We were suppose to reopen two weeks ago.”
    “I thought you were going out this morning before it started to rain again.” Lucien looked over to see his brother bundled up in a coat, hair damp. “Or did you?”
    “The roads are too flooded, even when it stopped for a while. It’s just not safe yet.”
    “It’s not desperate, is it?” Lucien asked, brows furrowed.
    “Not yet. We are out of milk, eggs, and pork. We’re almost out of bread, but we have plenty of flour in storage, so we’ll be fine. We can stand a little while with plain black coffee and toast for breakfast.”
    “That’s disgusting.”
    “You can put sugar in it?”
    “That’s even worse. I’ll stick with tea for now.”
    “Okay.” Kastle laughed.
    “How are you managing?”
    “Hmm, I’m fine. Just restless. At least I got to leave the house for a little bit. What have you been working on today? Just some reading?”
    “Not yet. I only organized some paperwork and decided to be in here for a break.”
    “So, changed your mind about reading about the history of the country for the hundredth time?” Kastle asked, glancing at the abandoned book. Degasrozei: Forests of Mystery.
    “I haven’t read it that many times. But yes, I guess. I couldn’t get past the first page this time. Not just this one either.”
    “You’ve exhausted all the information from them. We should both go into town sometime. You can buy some new books.”
    “The older ones are more interesting.”
    “A used book store then?” Kastle spotted a pile of what he assumed were the other books that Lucien abandoned. He began to put them back one by one.
    “I was going to put those away. You don’t have to.”
    “I need something to do, it’s fine.”
    “If you say so. Ugh, I’m so tired of this. There’s nothing to do anymore, we’re running out of all the good food, and you pacing around all the time is really starting to make me uncomfortable. Driving me up a wall.” Lucien stood and picked up the book near him to put back in its place with an annoyed exuberance. He paused suddenly, hearing an unusual noise. He took the book back out and knocked on the back of the shelf, hearing a hollow sound.
    “Well it’s not my f-- what is it?”
    “I don’t know.” He went over to the middle of the wall, removed a couple of books, and knocked on the back. Solid. He went back to the other section of shelves and began to examine it. After running his fingers down the shelves, he found a seam.
    “Do you think there’s something behind it?” Kastle asked skeptically. “Come on, the ‘secret door bookcase’ is such a cliche. One would think you would have noticed this ages ago.”
    “I don’t usually push books against the shelf so hard.”
    Lucien held one of the shelves with both hands and pulled carefully. A section of the bookcase pulled out, revealing a small door with a keyhole, but no handle. He looked at his brother expectantly.
    “... To be fair, the bookcase wasn’t the door.” Kastle stared at it, stunned. “Will it open?”
    Lucien tried to open it in every possible direction, but it did nothing but slightly wobble. He wasn’t too surprised, though. It was clearly hidden for a reason. That would have been too easy.
    “No. It appears to need a key.”
    “Maybe we could… wait.” Kastle’s eyes lit up. “Remember… I don’t know how long it’s been exactly. But remember a few years ago we were doing that big spring cleaning, and we found that old key in storage? It looked too small for anything.”
    “We didn’t ask Babaj about it. And it was more than a few.”
    “No, we didn’t. You think it could be for this? It hadn’t worked for anything else we tried.”
    “Wouldn’t that be something?” Excitement trickled into Lucien’s voice, his previous annoyance now forgotten. “It’s still where I left it in the chest.”
    “I’ll be right back.” Kastle said breathily, and left the room.
    There was a storage chest they kept where they collected what they found to be interesting or unusual things. Many of these objects were from the house or the grounds in general, others were gifts they had received or of otherwise unknown origin. When they found the key several years earlier, they tried it with everything on the grounds they could find. Lucien was particularly disappointed when they couldn’t find what it belonged to. The key was very old, much older, they assumed, than their late guardian, perhaps just as old as the ancient building.
    Kastle dug through the various items systematically, finding the small velvet pouch the key was kept in. He felt from the weight that it was still in there, and hurried back through the elegant halls. Once he arrived back at the library, his brother held out his hand for the key, insisting on opening it himself.
    “Here.” Kastle removed it from the pouch and handed it to Lucien, who grabbed it impatiently. With it now in his possession, he hesitated, drawing a deep breath before inserting the key and turning it carefully.
    As it opened, the door creaked loudly as though it had not been opened in decades, and the twins figured that was likely the case. Lucien dropped the key as he saw what was inside.
    “I don’t think I need to go into town.”
    “Šuta.” Kastle exclaimed under his breath. Inside was an entire second library, rows of shelves full of books long abandoned. There was a distinct mustiness which contrasted with the rest of the house so taken care of, plus cobwebs reaching across corners of the room and between shelves. It contained no windows, and the twins were located at the only entrance. Kastle went in after Lucien, and flicked on the weak lights.
    “Do you think Babaj knew about this?” Lucien asked, but immediately decided it was probably a silly question. If she knew, why wouldn’t she have told them at some point?
    “Probably not. My question is why it’s hidden like this. What’s in here that someone didn’t want people to see?”
    “What the original builder didn’t want people to see. I’ll find answers here, I know it.”
    “Well.” Kastle smiled. “Let the adventure begin.”
    Lucien spotted an open box with sheets of rolled-up paper sticking out of it. Being one of the few items that wasn’t a book, it drew attention to itself. He took one and unrolled it with utmost care; who knew how fragile it all was.
    “It’s a map.” Kastle said excitedly once it became clear. As he examined it further though, his face fell in disappointment. “It’s just a map of the surrounding area. This section of forest and the river, our house.”
    “Yes.” Lucien tried to find anything special about it, like unknown locations, but it wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. There was something, however, that gave him pause. He continued in a faltering whisper. “It’s just a small area, though. Maybe our property hasn’t changed at all, but there’s a whole box. Surely there are some things different. Besides, this is incredible. See the date?” He pointed to a handwritten date and signature, hands shaking just slightly. Kastle’s voice nearly got caught in his throat.
    “It’s over five hundred years old.”
    “Yes.”
    “That means it’s pre-collapse.”
    “Yes. All of this probably is.”
    Lucien rolled the map back up and returned it to the box. The two sat in silence, the weight of their discovery sinking in.

    ---

    “Imagine how much all of that is worth.” Said Kastle, moving food around with his fork. Once the initial shock had subsided, they decided to have some lunch and discuss how to proceed.
    “Don’t even think about it. At least not yet. We don’t know everything in there, just a map. What if there’s something incriminating, considering how closed up it is? We need to look through all of it.”
    “I know you’re right. But tell me it didn’t cross your mind at all how much money would could get for some of that stuff.”
    Lucien gave him an unamused look, but after being stared at in expectation, he sighed.
    “Okay, fine. Just for a moment. No doubt it would be worth a fortune. Maybe there will be something we can get rid of, but more importantly, we might be able to find out what this place actually was. Even more, what it was like in the Old Times.”
    Kastle opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped.
    “What?” Asked Lucien.
    “Nothing.”
    “No, what?”
    “It’s just… what if that’s why it was all hidden? Maybe it sounds stupid, but what if it does contain that kind of information and was hidden for that reason? So people can’t find out?”
    “That does sound a bit far-fetched.” Lucien said dryly.
    “Yeah.”
    “But then again, finding a secret room also sounds far-fetched.” He shrugged. “Let’s see what we can find.

    ---

    The first thing they decided to do once coming back to the hidden room was to take note of how it was organized. They already knew where the maps were kept, so they each took a side of the room and tried to figure out which rows were novels, which were history, which were science, and so forth. Sometimes it was difficult to tell by the title, as none were familiar in the slightest, and they had to look at the back or inner cover of the book. Kastle figured out a particular row must be fiction, as a few books said they were a collection of short stories. He noted some odd names, such as Bradbury and Grimm. He picked one up that didn’t seem as though it would fall apart as soon as he opened it, and turned to a random page, reading to himself silently. “There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been the first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we're got on damn thing the phoenix never had.” Kastle stared at the page, thinking how he had no idea what a phoenix bird was, or what was Christ.
    Lucien, on the other side of the room, found the non-fiction half. At the sight of a book on gardening, he let out a quiet sort of half-chuckle. Ah yes, the mysterious secret gardening techniques that mortal man cannot fathom. He continued on, noting physics and chemistry books that seemed as though they would be interesting to read. He had studied those subjects of course, but maybe these would be at a higher level than his initial education. Soon, he moved on to another shelf. He looked with a confused grimace at what seemed to be geographical texts, as none of these names meant anything to him. Many of them were also quite faded, or the title wasn’t located on the spine of the book, missing its sleeve. Then one caught his eye: a title he understood. Generically titled, but not too surprisingly as it looked like it might be some sort of school book, World History. He opened to the beginning, finding an unfamiliar map. A large, complex map with a lot of labels. In his perplexity, he read the name of the map out loud.
    “Planet Earth.”