That well was one angry old tree.
Leila carried on walking, among the group, in the Forest of the Ancients, their pace slowed down significantly by the raging rainstorm that hit them. Leila struggled to keep her eyes open in the heavy rain and as droplets accumulated and dripped down from the strands of soaked hair that stuck to her forehead. Her hands, aside from trying desperately from shielding her eyes from the pouring rain, were also busy scratching bits of moss and leaves and twigs out of her head and clothes.
Hardly being able to see made it much harder to maintain her pace. Already having trouble keeping up without the distractions, Leila fell back a bit in the group, now walking along the group of guides at the rear of their march.
“The greatest witch hunter alive eventually died here.” The tree had said.
So is the Midnight Man dead or alive?
It was of Leila’s knowledge, of course, that it is a perfectly valid state for one to be in dead and alive simultaneously; and in the absence of sufficiently detailed information Leila later abandoned thinking on about that question.
* * * *The lights in the mansion weren’t switched on, if there were any. All the illumination in the scene, in fact, was only provided by the faint fluorescence of the magical amulets, the lights emitted by whatever light-emitting critters in the area, and the occasional, frighteningly bright flashes of lightning, which provided glimpses of the entirety of the scene from time to time. Aside from that, most of the time, the place was nearly entirely dark.
Leila, along with Songbird, Brandy, and the continuously gleeful Martini blowing heart-shaped bubbles that contradict many principles of fluid mechanics, were some of the last to enter the mansion in the woods. Leila did not like the darkness. Subconsciously, she clutched onto the edge of Songbird’s baggy sleeve - as it that would make her feel any more secure - and she struggled to decide between the darkness outside in the forest, and the darkness inside the house. The rain was unpleasant, yet shelter lay across the door through which she cannot see, so she hesitated.
Brandy tugged Songbird forward into the mansion. The idea of staying outside along coupled with the discomfort caused by the rain eventually prevailed, and Leila followed.
* * * *The glass jar of fluorescent plankton was absolutely fascinating to watch.
She had read about things like these back at home, though she had never actually seen them. Groups of microscopic creatures, hovering around in the water, concentrating their excess energy into the generation of various light-emitting pigments for whatever reason - seen in the scale of a human being who is incapable of distinguishing individual sources of faint glowing, streams of light, swirling in mesmerizing patterns inside the translucent fluid - like stars and galaxies, a universe in a glass jar.
The jar was also quite heavy.
Leila held the one Avian handed her close to her chest, with both arms wrapped around it, one hand supporting the bottom, and the lid just high touching her chin.
Having the jar of light did make Leila feel much more comfortable being around the place. The disturbed population of critters in that particular bottle glowed a blueish-green hue, much like that of her amulet. The light was actually much brighter than she expected, providing a quite decent range of sight, and the soft, hued lighting that fluctuated slightly as the creatures twirled around inside projected an atmosphere that was somewhere between somehow soothing and borderline eerie. Leila decided she liked the feeling, though..
The mansion was more spacious than it looked like from the outside. Snippets of chat and discussions rang repeatedly beneath the high ceiling in a mixture of distant voices and faint echoes.
Leila carried the jar carefully as she inched upwards on the grand staircase that curved to one side of the entrance hall, following Riley. The staircase led upwards to what seemed to be the second floor, where there was a gate still too far away to see beyond.
* * * *At the gates of the second floor, Leila held the glowing jar high and gazed into the space in front of her. The green glow illuminated rows of old, decorated wooden shelves, in series with corridors between them that extended beyond sight and into the distant darkness. Between the shelves there were places where oil lamps can be hung, but she couldn’t find the lamps nor an available fire source. Numbers and text were inscribed into each shelf in an ordered manner, although only traces remained of the golden paint. On the shelves were books - a very, very large collection of books.
The second floor of the mansion was an enormous library.
Before she realized it, Leila was wandering through one of the corridors, the jar creating a circle of illumination around her position, fading out into the distance. She didn’t go too deep in, yet the entrance was already some distance away, and she didn’t see Riley or anyone else anywhere. She didn’t notice that, though - she had the light, and that alone made her feel secure enough.
The shelves were rather tall. Tiptoed, she could reach the sixth row counting from the ground, but the shelves seemed to reach all the way up to the ceiling - she couldn’t be sure for the tops were too far away for the light from her jar to reach already.
She placed the glowing jar on the ground, and with her fingertips she drew out a book from the sixth row of shelves.
Traces of cobweb still attached to the edges of the cracked leather cover. The title was mostly worn away as well, and the thick layer of dust that accumulated on the top side of the stacked pages was nearly the only way to tell the correct direction of the piece of scripture was to be read. The binding, which almost fell apart as Leila flipped the book open, was in the same direction as one would expect for a regular English book, but whatever the pages were written in wasn’t decipherable.
She always liked libraries. Mainly because books provided a great source of information, but she felt like it was more than that. What more, though, she couldn’t tell.
Carefully, Leila closed the cover and put the book back.
The scent of dust, aged wood, and old scripture filled the air. The shelves were like walls of a labyrinth, although it was one that Leila wouldn’t mind getting lost in. It felt almost like back at home - the library, on the top floor of the complex. The place where she read, and where she looked out of the window panes into the city below when she wasn’t reading. The place where she saw the fireworks, the night she was led here.
glowing jar in hand, Leila continued to stroll along the shelves.
