AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Micah
I don’t thinkI’m the only one holding my breath as Cam pulls the handle down. There’s a very audible click.
And then nothing.
“Is it rusted closed?” Jesse asks behind me. “The hinges probably aren’t in good shape.”
“The preservation spell should have maintained them in the same state as the rest of the door,” Brandt says, but there’s a note of worry in his voice.
“It’s fine,” Cam assures them calmly. “I haven’t pulled yet.”
The sigh of relief that goes through the group is quite gusty. Cam adjusts his grip on the handle, and I see his knuckles tighten as he pulls. The door moves fractionally… I think. It’s hard to tell.
Bracing himself, Cam glances at me. “Lend me some muscle?”
I put both hands over his and brace as well. “On three?”
“One. Two. Three.”
We pull.
The door slowly, ponderously swings toward us. It’s heavy, and I think the hinges might need some love too—which, after so long, is to be expected—but it’s moving. Cam and I scramble back out of the way.
The door turns out to be six inches thick. I don’t knowthatmuch about history, but I’m pretty sure nobody on Earth was forging metal when the dragons were last here. It was definitely created by dragon magic.
As it swings past us, I look over to the cave wall opposite. “Should we try to catch it?” If it hits the wall, the puzzle might be damaged.
Even as Asher and Gideon spring forward, the door’s momentum slows. It comes to a stop just as it kisses the wall.
We turn our attention to what was behind it.
“Wow,” someone breathes, and I want to echo it.
The cave extends for perhaps another fifty feet. It’s twenty feet wide and twenty feet high, and the walls are lined with neatly constructed wood shelves stacked to the brim with… things. Down the middle, there’s a wide ten-foot-long table, and beyond that, more shelves, dividing the room into two sections. Everything looks to be in good condition.
“We should go in,” Grandmother says, but for once she doesn’t sound certain.
“Brandt?” Garrett suggests. “Would you do the honors?”
I take Cam’s hand and we stand at the threshold as Brandt steps forward and crosses into the… cave. Hm. The cave-within-the-cave? This could get confusing. He walks into the hoard, breathes deeply, and then goes to the table.
“There’s a message,” he says, his voice cracking a little.
“What does it say?” Garrett’s holding up his phone, recording everything, and tears are streaming down his cheeks. He’s such a good teacher that I forget sometimes he’s also a social anthropologist, and this must be a dream come true for him.
“Hoarded here be the treasures of all, kept for some whim yet unknown.” He looks over at us and shrugs. “It’s not signed, but I recognize the magical residue.”
We crowd forward to see for ourselves. The message is burned into the tabletop, symbols I don’t recognize. I know that while humans believe the earliest signs of written language date back around six thousand years, we in the community were using it before then, but not as far back as we suspect this cave was set up.
“Some whim yet unknown,” Jesse muses. “I wonder if she could have been feeling the influence of the magic? There are times I do things I don’t fully understand because I feel it guiding me.”
“Highly possible,” Brandt agrees. “Though we’ll likely never know or understand why it wanted a collection of objects that would be lost for millennia.”
“They’re found now,” Gideon says in hushed tones as he gazes around at the shelves. “Sam isn’t going to believe this. He’s so mad he couldn’t be here.”
“Can we…” I give Cam’s hand a little squeeze as he pauses. “Could we look at something? I know we need to be careful and everything needs to be documented, but could we look at just one thing?”
