The princess walked to a nearby drawer and took out a fake bottom, picking up a small, glistening key from underneath it. She walked back to the door and used the key to unlock the door, opening it and peering around the corner. She gestured with her hand for Grizz to go forwards as she disappeared behind the door. Grizz lingered in the room for a few seconds before he decided on something and walked outside, searching for where the princess had gone.
They saw a golden hallway with several portraits, including the king and the princess, as well as some others, most likely the queen and the princess’ sister, who she was talking about earlier. Underneath the king’s portrait was written “King Tiar, 530 - present,” and in the middle of portraits was a drawing of the royal family, assembled in its entirety. As Orou looked at the drawing, he felt like there was something missing and when he turned on his spirit vision, he saw that a particular spot of the drawing was simply empty and covered with spirits in a tiny formation which Orou couldn’t clearly make out.
“If you go left and turn the corner, the first door towards the right is the king’s shaman’s room. Be careful, if you make too much noise, the guards from the other room will come streaming in and once they do, I doubt that you’ll be able to escape. I’ll make sure no patrolling guards get in your way,” the princess turned towards the right and after waving Grizz farewell, she disappeared around a corner. Grizz looked at the spot where the princess was and whispered to Orou: “It’s a shame there’s most likely no secret to invisibility in that room. I truly feel sorry for her, she has experienced terrible things and she desperately longs for freedom, though I doubt we’ll be the heroes she needs.”
Orou thought about it from his perspective, if he couldn’t experience the thrill of the hunt and fresh blood and was confined to such a small space, he would likely escape within the first few months, or die trying at least. Of course, if he had an unlimited amount of new spells to research, he wouldn’t mind spending some time in a small room. They were doing all of this simply so Orou could satisfy his curiosity and potentially make a new breakthrough in his research, but he was sure that Grizz didn’t mind it.
Following that train of thought, the two of them started sneaking towards the left. Several more portraits hung on the wall with something scribbled underneath them, and now that Orou could finally read, he recognised them as previous kings in their prime. Underneath what looked to like a portrait of the king’s father was written “King Julias, 493 - 587 After Fall.” Orou tried to get Grizz’s attention, but he seemed to be distracting by his own thoughts. Keeping in mind a note to somehow ask Grizz what ‘After Fall’ meant, the two of them reached the end of the corridor and Grizz, stopping by one of the doors, put his ear against it and started listening.
Simply based on the vibrations, Orou knew it was the room that leads to the outside. Orou sensed several heavy vibrations as he heard various grunts and shouts from the room to his left. Grizz cursed under his breath and after retreating from the door, he said to Orou: “According to the schematics, there shouldn’t be any guards here. In fact, no one was supposed to be there, except for a few servants simply doing their duty. The strange thing is, although I can perfectly hear their voices now, I couldn’t hear anything when pressing my ear to the door outside. We’re going to have a long talk with Mar after this.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Having finished saying what he was thinking, he turned to look down the corridor and after making sure it was completely safe, he started walking towards the shaman’s room. The door itself was nothing special. A wooden door with a metal handle that opened inwards, though before Grizz even got a chance to touch the door, Orou hissed towards him to not do anything. His spirit sight was still in effect and it seemed like the rumors of people not returning after walking into the door were true. There was a strange formation of spirits on the door, a twisted S letter, reaching all the way towards the ground and the ceiling. While Orou had no clue what it did, he wasn’t about to let Grizz walk into a formation without him knowing it.
Grizz stopped and retreated from the door while Orou approached it. He carefully inspected the formation before deciding to do the only thing he thought would help, that is, try and disrupt the formation itself. Just like he would with a regular spirit, he used his will to try and simply force it to move. The spirits seemed to stuck there, as if glued to the spot they were currently at, and while it did slightly move, Orou didn’t think it would be enough for the formation not to trigger.
The next thing that Orou tried was to distort spirits. He concentrated on a particular spirit, situated right in the middle of the formation and started stretching it with his will. While he felt the resistance from the spirit, he didn’t have the added pressure of having to hold down the spirit for it to not move, so slowly but surely, the spirit stretched until it resembled a line. The reason why he could stretch it out so far was that once he stopped, the spirit didn’t return to its usual form. Orou did the same for a few more spirits in the formation because he didn’t know if the formation would work or not, but after a few minutes of tampering with it, Orou flickered his tongue at Grizz.
Grizz’s hands trembled slightly as he touched the door handle and opened the door. Orou saw the twisted S shape try and reach Grizz, but it fell apart as soon as it did, the spirits simply floating there before returning back to where they once came. What greeted them was a clean and tidy room, several stacks of miscellaneous documents organized on the table. Several alchemical reagents and herbs, similar to what he had seen in Dawn’s study, were neatly arranged on several shelves. Several bookshelves with books describing the nature of spirits and spells made Orou practically drool. There were several strange tubes and vials of strange liquid, as well as a white mist that simply seemed to float above a part of the room, but the thing that made Orou alarmed were several spirits, rushing not towards them, but towards the right. Whatever it was, it surely couldn’t be good for them.
Orou hissed at Grizz to hurry up as he started going through the strange vials, wanting to find what the bottled spirit that they needed. Orou searched around to no avail, no vial or bottle seemed to hold a spirit. He was ready to give up when Grizz shouted to Orou: “I found it,” tossing a strange, black cube into his backpack. Orou looked around wistfully at all the strange curiosities around him, probably wanting to pocket them as well, but being unable to do so because of Orou.
As they started to leave, Orou took one last glance around the room and there, from the corner of his eye, he saw a place devoid of spirits, a few documents lying in the middle of it. Orou’s eyes lit up as he wondered if those could truly be secrets to invisibility, and to the surprise of Grizz, he went back to the table and did a motioning gesture with his tail towards Grizz, though all that did was send gusts of wind towards Grizz’s face. With his fangs, he gestured towards an empty spot on the table and as Grizz put his hand down where Orou was pointing, he was surprised to find that there was something there. He picked up the invisible papers and as soon as he did that, they regained their original appearance. Having no time to check them out, Grizz simply threw them into his backpack and together with Orou, they bolted out of the shaman’s room.