“You apparently made her angry.” Violette gazed at him intently. “Did you hurt her?”
“If I hurt her, it was absolutely her fault. I didn't do anything to be a villain in her story.” Dante worked his jaw and stalked to the farthest corner, with barely lightened walls.
A stone tablet, shrouded in dust, was adorning the wall. Despite the carved words, the darkness made it absolutely impossible to read. Violette’s eyes flashed at Dante as he
shone the lantern on the stone floor. Something glimmered in his hand – a gold pendant with a round, light blue gemstone. A harsh rumble rang out in the crypt, as if stones were falling from their places or…something was opening. And as soon as Violette thought about it, the floor in front of them began to move apart, laying steps leading into the depths of the unknown.
“I can't go any further,” Dante said.
She gave him a curious look, on the other hand, lacking trust. It might be the blood spell he was talking about earlier. A long time ago, blood spells were quite popular and used to protect places from uninvited guests. It mostly was common between old wizard families who were too afraid for their treasures and secrets, so it wasn't really surprising, and yet Violette decided to remain wary.
Dante pointed the lantern light at the passage. “There should be some information about the mask. I presume her spellbook.”
“Was she a sorceress?” Violette’s lashes clapped.
“Not really,” he answered vaguely. “Go.”
“How do I understand what I'm looking for?”
“I wasn't there, I don't know. You're a witch, you should know where and what is magicked. Don't you?”
Violette looked down the aisle and took a deep breath, preparing for the worst.
“Take the lantern,” Dante aired, his voice lacking any emotions, so impartial and much colder than the blue light brightening the room.
Violette put the wand behind her belt and took the lantern, her eyes raised to Dante’s face. His facial features seemed as sharp as a dagger, and instead of any words of encouragement or wishes for good luck, only silence accompanied her down. Not to say that she expected that there would be something dangerous below, but the darkness and the unknown nevertheless had made her heart pound faster.
She went deeper and deeper down and only the echo of her boots reflected from the walls, perhaps it was even for the better – it was unlikely that any other sounds would have made this situation less tense.
She walked downstairs, holding the lantern just above her gaze. After a couple of steps, her eyes found a stone archway. An old tangledpiece of cobweb hanging above made her grimace, muttering something under her breath. She stopped for a beat to look back where the dim light was still shining. And as she turned her head – a loud, piercing sound echoed throughout the room.
“What happened?” She heard from above.
A small black spider was descending on its web in front of Violette's face, her body froze, dread raced through her veins. Maybe going back and running away, forgetting about everything, wasn't such a bad idea? At least there were no spiders outside.
“Little Witch?” Dante called and it seemed as if his voice had acquired new colors. She swallowed and squeezed to the nearest wall, making her way around the spider.
“What happened?” Dante called again.
“Everything is fine!” The loud words came out of her mouth as she walked into the passage.Everything was not fine,but she had no desire to explain. In textbooks about magical animals, Violette once read about huge hairy spiders that had disappeared a long time ago, but this thought sometimes had haunted her in terrible nightmares and being reminded of it now only made the situation worse. She shuddered, as if that spider could now crawl over her body.
The small room looked like a witch's sanctum, except not an old hag who lived in the middle of the forest, but a skilled sorceress. Thoughthe crown on the woman’s head on the portrait and the beautiful painted boxes made Violette wonder if she was something more than that. Could she have been a countess or even a queen?
A wooden sorcery table with crystal flasks and glass bottles filled with sparkle powder, some of them empty, was centered in the room. A beautiful magic wand resembling intertwined branches laid upon its surface – a magnificent thing to have but utterly useless in the hands of none-owner.
Violette ran her eyes over the old incised candelabras as she passed the table. Her attention was caught by a beautiful silky cloak in a shade of royal blue, embroidered with silver threads which were making a slender tracery of the moon and heavenly constellations. A sapphire of a deep color on a collar flickered beneath the lantern light. Another beautiful cape of dark cherry red color traced with gold flashed before her eyes.
She came to a little bookshelf with a few old sorcery books. Her fingers glided down the spines and then she picked one in a burgundy cover. The spine was so shabby that it almost let the book fall to the floor as it opened. Specks of dust rose into the air causing Violette to sneeze. She wrinkled her nose and almost sneezed again but it didn't come out. Dispelling the dust haze with her hand, she finally looked inside. Pages of the book were covered with different descriptions of flowers and their meanings in the sorcery world. Violette read a book like this before, as much as it was interesting it wasn't valued in her current situation. She leanedto the shelf again. One of the books was dedicated to rituals, another had strange symbols she hadn't seen before. It made her curious and she reached her hand out, placing the flower book back on the shelf. It was covered with writing in a foreign language and inked pictures of different monsters and demons that hid in the darkness. Whatever it said – it wasn't a book about good magic for sure. She placed it back and suddenly felt some strange pull, a thread that connected her to something that was not here before.
She spun her head in the way her heart suggested and it led her to a little table near the wall.
There were two little jewelry boxes brimming with herbs and dried flowers – lavender, blue lupine and purple anemone. Another thing on the table she observed was a little dark velvet bust with a ruby necklace upon its neck, though it also was not the thing that led her here. She pressed her hands on the dusty table in search of a thing that called her. Magic objects very rarely radiated an energy other wizards could feel but when the feeling was there it meant something. In that case, Violette felt whatever the old witch left here, it could be enchanted to be found one day. She leaned over to look under the table to find out it actually had a dilapidated ledge.
“Huh,” she exhaled.
A secret drawer?With that thought she pressed on the table's inner surface.
A brisk snap rang out, waking up the silence as the drawer rolled forward. Violette's eyes witnessed a thick book in a shabby leather cover. A little magenta gem in the center between twirls glimmered in a cold light. The cracks on the leather hinted the book was extremely old, outliving at least a century. Violette carefully studied the parchment pages. She had no idea what it was about – the pages scrawled with little pictures and recipes followed by the text written in language she'd never seen before. She glanced at the cover again – nothing except dancing oblong squiggly tracery. No words, no name.
