Chapter 137 - Speak Friend And Enter

The wall looked like a wall, smelled like a wall and was as hard as any wall I've seen. If not for Desmond's words, I wouldn't have paid it more attention than to any other wall in this dusty room with a blown-up door. Heaps of boxes showed it was a storage unit once, but now it appeared to be forgotten. I was ready to bet it was intentional.

A random forgotten room in an enormous mansion. Who would suspect a secret door into a subspace?

Through my well, the room looked more interesting thanks to the many traces of the demon in it. They felt familiar, and a moment later I realised with surprise that I saw the demon's emotional trail. It was just like any other emotional trail, too. Anger and triumph blast right around the wall Desmond pointed at, then turned into a thinner cloud of eagerness and curiosity until dissipating entirely.

It was strange to see a confirmation that a creature like the demon could feel such human emotions. Strange and uneasy. I shuddered and focused on the wall.

"So, what I'm looking for?" I asked the other two people present. "Anything weird?"

"For a start," Desmond said, impatience clear in his voice. I saw his aura, cold and dead, sprout a thick like two my fingers feeler. Unlike Ghost's and Katya's clear ones, this one was a mix of Desmond's powers. I imagined it wasn't very precise as a tool, but even so, he tried to poke it into the wall. It left a splash of frustration on it after a few pokes and receded back into Desmond.

At my side, Ghost's well expanded, showing that just like Desmond, he was checking the wall out.

Even in aura-vision, the wall looked very much like any other wall from a first glance. I frowned and focused my attention. Closer, closer, as close as I could until every individual grain of cement between its bricks sang about how it was separate yet together with the rest of the wall.

This level of sharpness made it hard to understand what all the aspects meant on the physical level, but it let me see the irregularity. I had to admit, it was masterfully hidden, but it wasn't exactly arch-witch's work. Not that I could hide anything with aspects… But there were elements that are obviously didn't belong, and then there were elements that belong—to the spell, but not to the wall.

The spell itself had a form of an arch in the wall, like a secret door, painted inside the bricks with invisible ink. The aspects that formed it were carefully picked to meld in their colour, texture, sound with those of the wall. Solidness, sturdiness, access—the wall itself had many of these. They were shaped like a seal, too—intricate patterns that meant nothing to me, but did something despite that. Like a pattern on a computer chip does something, even if it means nothing to me since I'm not a computer master.

"I found it!" I pointed at the 'door' with my hand. Then, in a much less elated voice, I added, "I have no idea what to do with it, though. Should I say 'friend'?"

"I don't see how saying random words would help," Desmond cut me down. "Maybe we should ask any of the witches that now listening to us?" he asked with a pointedly raised voice.

Alarmed, I expanded my aura-vision beyond the door out of the room and into the hallway, and immediately felt three blobs of emptiness. And here I thought Desmond scared 'the council' into not following… I guessed they were less afraid of him when he was out of their sight.

None of them stepped out of their hiding, though. I snorted. "Cowards," I murmured, shaking my head. "Ghost, don't you remember anything at all?"

Ghost reached towards the wall and ran his fingers along the door's edges. "I see it too, now. I think I actually remember, that's right! There should be some place to pull at, or push… shift it a little so the rest would activate. Can you find it, Diana?"

"Let's see."

The arch looked pretty uniform at first, but I was ready to say that there were a lot of things to miss. I began to scan it once again, paying close attention to details, from the left end of the contour to the right one. Several times I lost where I was, thanks to the exhaustion clouding my mind, but then focused again enough to keep going.

The lock was at the very top of the arch. Figures. At the very least, it wasn't at the right end of it. As locks went, this one pretty simple. An aspect of inertness put in the scheme where it didn't belong—something to stop it from working when it wasn't needed. I pointed at the place. "Ghost, can you see it?"

"Yes! Great job, my pupil! You will reach great heights one day if you keep like that. Now you just have to shift it a little. Get it out of the portal."

That was easy to do. I left the aspect in the brick not too far from the portal in case I wanted to close it back again, and watched the entire spell come to life with a whoosh of wind.

"Excellent." Desmond sounded awfully pleased, but hell, so was I. "Do you want to walk in first?"

I turned on my aura-vision to look first into his cruel eyes and then into the dark arch of the portal. I could see hints of the room inside with the light that fell through the portal, but the rest of it was dark. Too dark for the calmness of my heart. Scents came from the inside, something heavy and metallic… something like blood.

I shook my head. "The honour is all yours, Desmond."

"Aren't that brave either, girl?" He sneered at me, but then went into the portal.