“I bet you are going to end up like swindlers,” her uncle had told them in the first few days he had taken her brother and herself in after their parents died.
She remembered it clearly- how he flapped the newspaper and then muttered.
“Just like your father.”
Reina Aurwood had a dream the night after the encounter with Sir Clement. Why was she dreaming of her past life even after she was dead, she would have thought, but now the seed of doubt had been planted. Sir Clement had left without saying anything - in fact, she was unable to reply to him. Dead men have no duties- what was she supposed to say?!
A part of her itched with curiosity and the other stayed frozen in fear even though there shouldn’t have been anything left to fear after her death.
Perhaps this was just Purgatory-yes...her soul is just hesitating to move on...she tossed and turned in her comfy bed- in fact it was too comfortable.
She couldn’t sleep…
Snow kept piling up outside, while the windows rattled in the wind. She stood up and looked at her hands for no apparent reason. Then she felt her chest- her heart beat; it throbbed. And her skin felt cold from the sweat.
Suddenly she could not stay collected anymore.
Vaguely in her memories she remembered a door. A grim entrance to a grim place. Reina Aurwood took a lamp in her room and made her way. Even the underworld should have a place to store information, she thought – some kind of record at least- of those who had died and those who hadn’t. If ignorance was the root of her current problems, there was but one way to go about it.
At that moment, everyone and everything in that world felt as foreign to her as did the entrance to the library that did not have a single light on. She was not expecting that the entrance would lead to narrow stairs that were curved downwards and sandwiched between the tall castle walls. Nor was she expecting that when she followed the stairs, she would came across a large hallway that had nothing but dark plain walls. They were eerily quiet, a fitting image for the world after death. She would have been afraid of ghosts, but she very well remembered that she was one herself.
In the memories that had possessed her, she had been there when she was very young, but she didn’t remember much else about it. Maybe it was some sort of a hint. Where was this hallway supposed to lead anyway, she thought until she saw a peculiar wall. A large image of a fox was carved on it such that Reina could not help but stop and look at it for a while. Was there a hidden code to this or something, she thought, but she didn’t have to. The wall lifted up on its own, and inside she saw a room that looked like it had no ceiling at all. In the dark where the only source of light was the little lamp she had with her, the only thing she saw were tall book shelves, and plenty of staircases. In fact, she had herself appeared onto a staircase. And whether she looked ahead or downwards she saw stairs.
It was almost scary. Not a single source of light came from anywhere else, and it felt like an apparently bottomless space was ready to engulf her beyond the banisters. She took every step very carefully. Certainly, she thought, this was what an underworld library should look like: dark and bottomless. Not to mention, there was not a single soul around. But given the hustle in this castle in day time, she had expected the library to at least have an attendant at night as well. Was she even allowed to sneak around like this? She did not know. It was not her fault that the door opened on its own. The only thing she had to do though was decide whether she was going up or down the staircase.
So she skimmed through the book titles on either side.
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“The Magical Hierarchy of Gladios.,” was one very thick book, and then there were thinner, almost like a series, books like “The Magical Hierarchy of the North, the Northwest, The Southern Plains and so on.” as she went downwards. Hmm...fantasy books... Maybe it was for the appeasement of some of the deceased, she thought; after all, there were considerable amount of people in the living world, who liked these things, her brother being one of them, but since the fantasy section was not really a good place to collect information, she decided that she had to move upwards. It was quite strange actually. Looking at the books that were in this place, one would think that she was living in a bustling human society with structures and orders.
“The Economy of the North, North West, Southern Plains and so on…”
This was another book that came in a series. Why was the Underworld so obsessed with directions?
“The Transaction of blue stones in Gladios.”
“A brief history of the Twinspeak Castle…”
But there was one that seemed particularly interesting. It lay at the front of a balcony that extended out of a small floor which itself looked like a small extension of the larger library. It was not a book per se but a large chart that had been compressed into a book.
“The Family tree of the Aurwoods.,” it was titled, and was engraved with a large image of a fox on the red cover.
Now that looked like a book that the Underworld should have, for they definitely needed to keep records, Reina thought. Its pages looked old and worn out but they looked thick enough to hold through the tides of time. It started with the first Lord of the North, and then moved on to list the descendants of every other lord who had followed. At the most recently filled page though there was one lord, his three wives, and then his four children.
Reina Aurwood lost all interest immediately after she saw her name there alongside Victor and Vernoica Aurwood. It just confirmed her unconventional memories, nothing else. A book should of the Underworld should at least tell who was dead and who was not. If it couldn’t do that at least it shouldn’t lie! Reina Aurwood was angry. The book didn’t get her mother’s name right, nor her father’s and claimed that she only had half-brothers.
In a fit of anger she turned around and made her way into the small extended compartment in the library. What could they possibly be hiding from her? What did they know that she didn’t? Hell, why couldn’t they even let her die properly? Shelves after shelves, books after books. Why had she even come here-
Suddenly her ears perked up. All this while the library was totally silent, but now she heard some some sound. It was close...maybe at a staircase. The library was completely dark, so she had thought she was all alone. But that was a flawed assumption. Wouldn’t it actually be strange if she was all alone in that huge place? Surely there were more people – at least those who attended to the library. But then...this place was so dark...
Out of instinct, Reina Aurwood hid behind the farthest book shelf, and then blew off the little lamp she had. Her heart beat, as the sound of the footsteps got closer and closer. She was right. It was definitely a person. She closed her mouth and did not move an inch, but that person stopped right in front of the compartment, and then looked around.
He was wearing a cloak, but his blue eyes glowed in the dark. He looked quite young, but he had the eyes of a man who knew exactly what he wanted. Even right now, it seemed like he was looking for something, and everything had gone just as he had predicted; the sleeping spell he had activated had taken effect, but suddenly a whiff of burnt carbon was brought to his nose.
His eyes widened, and his gaze immediately fell towards the direction where the smell was coming from. Even in the dark he could make out forms. A person hid behind the farthest book shelf, he knew, but what did they want? Was that an ambush? Did they recognize him? If they caught him, he would have no means to defend himself.
“Shit…”
He took a few steps as lightly as possible, and then threw himself over the banisters before be got into the attacking range of that person. Thus, Reina Aurwood could now neither see nor hear him. Was the person still standing there? She could not tell. Did he move? But she didn’t hear a thing.
Every now and then she imagined that he had come over to her from behind, placed a knife around her neck and slit her throat. Even worse, he shot her from a distance with a gun. As wild and futile as those imaginations were for a person who had already died, Reina Aurwood soon found herself falling asleep out of exhaustion from imagining all sorts of things without her little lamp in utter darkness. Even though she could not fall asleep in her room at all before...it was truly strange...it was truly strange, she thought.