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With a deep sigh, Oran once more shoved a rejected book back, from the shelf he'd pulled it off, with more vigour than needed. Yet another wrong book, how the hell a gardening book had got clear across the library and into some of Kaer Morhen's older bestiaries he had no idea.
*Did the wolves employ blind people to tend the shelves?* Back in the ancient days, Kaer Morhen had held thousands of warm bodies. Unlike today, even the combined numbers of all the schools and the growing human staff came nowhere close to the numbers of keep's glory days.
The annoyed gryphon witcher tried four more books before once more becoming excessively frustrated with his task. Oran pushed back his currently selected tome too hard, causing the back of the bookcase to splinter and the offending book to fall unexpectedly out of view on the other side.
"Hur!!" Oran uttered, shocked.
That should not have happened. This bookcase was located flush against the west wall, a flat stone wall. There should have been no way for anything to just disappear.
Confused, he began to remove more books, making short piles to one side, with more tending, he widened the splintery hole. Having made enough room to fit his hand within, a small Igni flame dancing in his palm, lit up the void he could see just beyond.
"Oi Bran, give us a hand moving this," Oran asked the burly bear witcher he knew to be only two stacks over from him.
Together and with a greater amount of force than anticipated, the initial gap was widened. Exposing what had once been an unknown hidden room, complete with a fake door mechanism hidden within the bookcase. Now standing broken and fully exposed before both astounded witchers.
Once more, this time a larger Igni flame dance on his palm, Oran went to move forward. Bran fell in beside him, one huge paw-hand hovering over the dagger in the bear's belt, concern showing in the other's eyes at what they might find.
In the dim light, their yellow eyes scanned more bookcases, study tables and once plush reading chairs. Now and then, what looked like a glass box on a plinth was scattered among the reading stacks.
This enigma room was about the size of one of the smaller bedrooms in the keep. Dust sat on everything heavily, the air dry, smelled like a long shut tomb. It was evident that they were the initial living visitors in a considerable amount of time.
"Best let the trainees come to give it a quick dust. Add a few new chairs and boom we got a new cosy nook to read in," Bran spoke in a deep timber all his brother bear's had, lighting the tense mood. Hand now clasped about his medallion as well as the dagger's pommel.
Nothing seemed to be amiss, just a sealed-up room of books. Only a fool witcher would believe that.
Oran put a combo Yrden trap and Quen shield in place, mostly to hold any of the keep's wondering cats at bay. They decided to report their extraordinary find as soon as possible.
****
Both witchers found Eskel in his office, trying to find his desk hidden under its usual mountain of paperwork. Amber-gold eyes looked up, a small smile on his lips and hope clouding his smell at the interruption.
"What can I do for you?" He asked.
"Do you know anything about a secret room off the west wall in the library?" Bran said.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I broke a bookcase. Well, and a hidden door." Oran spoke at the same time as his bear companion.
Causing Eskel to blink. "Hum!! You what?" It appeared this distraction, for Eskel to understand, would need the two men standing before his desk to explain a bit more than their jumbled, blurted-out confessions.
****
Kaer Morhen's slowly growing population of felines was both a miracle and a distraction to some witchers.
Eryk, just bacuse he was a trainee, was no exception, he was currently chasing a ginger-haired creature through the library, delighting in the quick darts and turns the creature could make. Darting forward to snag a fast stroke over the long ginger fur, he let it leap away from him, laughter bubbling up.
Ginger tail disappeared round a corner and Eryk followed, almost stepping on his playmate, frozen in a Yrden trap. Leaping with ease, the young trainee found himself in a dusty room. Coming to a sudden stop, he looked about with curious, wide blinking eyes.
"Oooooo." It was a happy hum.
Looking at the floor, he noticed the clear footprints in the deep dust. A grin spreading across his face, Eryk hopped from print to print like stepping stones, the new game taking him around the room. He was having so much fun until he unfortunately overbalanced, thrashing his arms around for a moment like windmill sails, just to stay upright.
CRASH.
The tinkling of broken glass sounded loud to his still human ears, and Eryk froze on the spot.
His heart going a mile a minute, while he paused.
No shouting angry voices.
No firm hands were grabbing him by the shoulder, pulling him away from the accident.
Deciding not to push his good fortune and most of all, not wishing to clear up the mess he'd made, Eryk retraced his steps out of the room. Leaping once more past his furious playmate. With luck, the poor stuck cat would get the blame and not himself.
****
After explaining the whole situation to Eskel, over again to his mentor. Then one final time to Triss, when both wolves had decided a mage should be included when they went to see a place, even Vesemir the gray, had no former knowledge of.
As a group, they went to see Kaer Morhen's strange, no longer sealed mystery room.
On arrival, they all had a chuckle, when greeted by a rather pissed-looking ginger cat, the feline held painlessly in Oran's Yrden trap. It was hissing up a storm when it could not run away, tail thrashing back and forth like a snake in its death throes. Like lightning striking the ground, the animal shot away as soon as Oran dismissed his witcher signs and released the cat.
Triss spoke a few elder words, creating a soft glowing light to fill the newly found room, before moving inside.
"I can feel the long-ago residue of magic used within," Triss informed as she looked about the new horde of recorded knowledge.
Moving further within, she wove through furniture on near-silent feet, delicate hands touching here and there.
The witchers fanning out round the area, the sense of a coiled spring to them, as they too joined the search.
Curious, she lay her hands on one of the clear glass boxes. She shudders violently, a look of disgust twisting her mouth. "A containing cube, empty." Her tone, one of evident dislike for the object. "No, I have no idea before you ask." She looked at Eskel who was understandably about to speak his question.
Triss checked each of the six whole cubes to find the same empty feeling, nothing but long-ago traces of chaos. Something rather powerful to have left a mark lingering for so long.
At the seventh plinth, broken glass was sprinkled around on the ground, a small trace of life force quickly dissipating before her green eyes.
"This one was not empty." She paused while trying to identify it. "And not something I'm not familiar with, I'm afraid," Triss spoke.
Acting as one, the witches pull their belt knives, suddenly on high alert. Each called back the lack of tracks in the dust except what they had made themselves.
A more in-depth search began, but to no avail.
Nothing new was learned, the room must have been sealed for aeons, and most of the books seemed to be for chaos users or written in languages long dead.
"Jealous, secretive bastards, always demanding to know our in's and out's. Hypocrites hiding their own hoard." Vesemir cursed.
"Going to be a sod to catalogue, we don't want any more baby Lambert's happening," Eskel added, smirking at his mentor.
With a long sigh, the older wolf pinched the bridge of his nose. "They broke it, let them fix it." Vesemir gestured to Bran and Oran. "No-one else is allowed within, and those two only when under your direct oversight, please Triss." Orders barked out. It was clear Vesemir was not feeling very comfortable around subjects mages might want to hide away from any witcher.
Kaer Morhen now has a new mystery windfall of books, in a keep full of voracious readers.
This could only go sideways and bite them in the butt.
Eskel was hoping Triss' barrier spell, currently acting as a temporary door, would deter the more inquisitive eyes.
Running a hand through his hair and down over the scars on his face, while he walked back to his office. Eskel was now regretting his earlier wish for something to prevent him doing some of the paperwork piled high on his desk.
****
Elsewhere in the keep, high up in the cat's wing rafters, Eryk let his skyrocketing heart rate come back to normal. Lacking the control full witches had over their bodies, he thought it's best to hide while he calmed down.
The trainee began thanking his nine lives, or he guessed now was eight. That he was safe.
No shouting angry wolves ready to turn his buttocks red.
When he had bumped into the opaque glass box, causing it to break, he was sure his hide was toast. There was nothing he could see fall out, which was disappointing. No poof of smoke and a djinn offering him a multitude of wishes, or a wet splat of goop full of tentacles. The last one he had really been hoping for.
Just to be safe, after his fright, he decided to sleep in the heart of the kitty pile for tonight.
****
She was shocked out of her drifting, sleep-like state when her resting place hit the floor in a billion bright shards.
Terror gripped her very core. Breath confined in metaphysical bands of iron wrapped around her chest.
*What kind of evil new game have the mages now thought up?*
Not desiring to endure whatever pain it would no doubt entail. She rapidly left, abandoning where the portals to her sister's domains sat on their plinths, blindly seeking to escape the small room.
Regretful that she was too full of fear to help, should this new game of the sadistic mages, chose to also break the only link she had to their own specific places.
Moving away from the beloved library that was also her duty and domain, as it was currently not a safe place to hide from such vengeful mages. Laying shaking hands on the stone wall of her home, "Please let them not find me." She breathed to the gray wall.
Using as much of the shadows to cloak herself and her understanding of the less used hallways, she moved to find a nook to hide in. *Just for a little while.* She promised the wolves home, just until she could breathe freely once more.
As she progressed further into the high and lonely places, during her flight, she could taste so many of the different witcher school mutagens. During the complex process of mutating the body, to make a witcher of that particular school, the aura took on a distinct taste.
She did not understand why there were so few of her native wolves wet loamy taste on the tongue and so many of the other schools around?
Confusion added to the twisting knot of emotions forming in her gut.
Finding an attic space well away from any life, she began to slowly process to gather her wits and form the courage needed to continue living. *For now, we are free.*