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Letting Lily go first would be the right thing to do. It would be the <span class="mu-i">sane</span> thing to do. She is older, stronger and better trained than you are.
But at the same time… That room down there hasn’t been visited in who knows how many years. You were led there by an ancient light revealed to you by an ancient spirit inside your head. It is the very <span class="mu-i">definition</span> of a Place of Power and by Merlin, literally, you’re going to be the first one to set foot into it!
“No. I’m going first.”
“Elliot, it could be dangerous-”
“I don’t care,” you say, jumping down before pointing up with your wand and saying “<span class="mu-i">Carpe Retractum!</span>”
The beam of sticky light shoots up, grabbing to the ceiling and trying to pull you towards it, slowing down your fall. And so, you come down into a massive, Ancient room. Maybe a dozen or more meters tall. It looks damaged, as if some catastrophe had happened here, large cracks over its surface and floor, including the one you came in through. Great spirally columns reach up into the air supporting the rock above.
On one end, a great door with a symbol you’ve never seen before, like a flame made out of silver metal. It is half open, and you can see that whatever room or corridor was on the other side long collapsed, stones bigger than you blocking the way.
On the other end, four great archways, over six meters tall each. Each one looks like it once held a great painting, but they’d clearly had been long destroyed, only the wood behind it remained with scorch marks of a fire long past. They were beyond saving, you knew, past the efforts of even the most powerful <span class="mu-i">reparo.</span>
But what intrigues you the most is the floor. It looks made from a dark glass, perfectly flat, holding within it small dots of light, all coming together to form… Hogwarts itself. Like some sort of map of the school held within it. Yet as you come down, your perspective changes, and what initially appeared to be flat now reveals itself to be a great staircase down, leading to a door. No. <span class="mu-i">The</span> Door.
It hits you like a bludger as you see the image, coming not from you, but from Faith.
“I see paintings long ruined. I see a stairway down.” She had told you a few days before.“I see a <span class="mu-i">door</span>.”
As you land and dismiss your Carpe Retractum, you feel a dizziness, a pressure, not of air, but of <span class="mu-i">Time</span>. You feel the lines of Fate bending, curving, being <span class="mu-i">forced </span>through this door, Faith’s hand forcing Destiny through a keyhole. All of it to bring you here. No. To lead you <span class="mu-i">there,</span> through that door.
Lily falls by your side, wand at the ready, spinning around and searching for a threat.
“This is still beneath the castle,” you whisper in awe. “For this to remain undetected for so long… Whoever built this must either have had powers unlike any we’ve ever seen, or…”
“Or?” Lily asks.
[Cont.]