I would have thrown the book across the room if I had been holding it. Script the skill that I needed to learn so that I could level my class. The same dumb skill that set me apart from everyone else by keeping me from being able to level. I took a long breath in and slowly let it out. Then I touched the books down the line.

The first several books gave me the option to raise my skill level. They were the skills for an enchanter: Enchanting, Script, Ink Making, Etching, Power Imbuing, and Socketing. The other six were skills I hadn’t heard of before, but I understood why they were there. This box was meant to train the boy. The options for skills that I couldn’t learn were: Strategy, Etiquette, Ballroom Dancing, Negotiation, and Verbal Misdirection.

I looked over at Kasidy and said. “Looks like this box was meant to train the Heir. At least that’s my guess.”

Kasidy gave a huge grin. “Arn the worth of that box alone is staggering. If we can get that to the right place we would have all the funds we needed for anything we wanted.”

I chuckled in my mind and thought of all the dungeons and the money I already had from raiding the merchant’s guild. I knew that I wasn’t as wealthy as a king, at least not of a good size county, but I figured that I could get what I needed. Additionally, once I got to Cloudia, I was hoping that Lannah could use her family connections to open doors for more wealth accumulation.

I flashed Kasidy a smile. “Let’s see what this other one has in it.”

I walked around the bed and laid my hand on the box. As I did, we heard the click, and the latch fell open. Then I opened it. Since the box was about the same size as the other, I expected it to hold more skill books. What I wasn’t expecting was for it to be filled with scrolls. There were a dozen scrolls in a bundle. There were at least ten bundles tied with a ribbon of a different color.

I looked over at Kasidy; her eyes were the biggest that I had ever seen; then she said. “If those are spell scrolls, then that one box is worth more than all of Last Port.”

I pulled out the bundle with the red ribbon and laid it on the bed. Then I carefully undid the ribbon holding them. As I did, the scrolls each seemed to puff up a bit. I picked one up, pulling up the interface.

Would you like to learn the Spell

Spark?

YES

NO

I looked up at Kasidy. “Well, it seems that they are spells. At least this one is its Spark.”

I grabbed two more. “This is Smother… This is Manipulate Fire.”

Kasidy reached out slowly and ran her hand down the scrolls in the box with a slight smile. “Arn, I bet that each bundle would be the base spells needed for that school of magic. To have…. Fourteen schools here is amazing. It would have made the boy a frightening mage or could have given him the ability to start a mage corps.”

I shook my head as I tried to re-bundle the scrolls. “I’ve got to learn to read. It would be so much simpler. So Kas, can you use any of these scrolls?”

“I could, but they aren’t class spells, so they would always be weaker. Also, since they aren’t class spells, I would learn them at a lower level. That said, once we are done with the Haunting, I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to go through them. If I could pick out a few, it could help us out.”

I nodded. “Any of the skill books?”

She shook her head. “Nope, they're yours. You got them when you claimed the place. Besides, you are the hero that I am writing about. You likely need all of them that you don’t already have so that you can be a better noble when we get to Cloudia.”

I smiled. “You sure? None of them? After all, we wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for you.”

She scrunched up her face when I said we wouldn’t be here if not for her. “We couldn’t get out if it wasn’t for me. Maybe I could use that Script skill book. It would help in the long run. My Handwriting is at a low level, so I could switch over to Script and catch up to it soon then my songs and stories would look better. This means that they would function at a higher level…. Yeah, I’ll take Script.”

I passed the book over to her. She touched it, and then it began to float in front of her. The book opened, and light started to flow out of it and into her eyes. It was odd watching as I could see the bending of the light, almost like tubes. Then the light started to pulse and flash. The book fell out of the air and turned to dust as it hit the floor.

Kasidy staggered back and sat down on the floor. Then she shook her head a moment and moaned. She pressed her hands on her head and pushed them in tight for a few seconds. Then she slowly started to get up while rubbing her eyes. Once standing, she gave me an unsteady smile.

Kasidy muttered. “Turns out that Script is a higher tier skill. I should have gotten Handwriting higher first. When I learned Script, it dragged Handwriting up to level 10.”

I laughed. “Is that why it looked worse than when you learned that game earlier?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know; I have only ever used those two. They tend to just cost too much for someone like me.”

“Okay, so we know what was in the boxes. Now we just need to finish looking through the place to make sure that we understand everything that was going on here. Let’s head down to the second floor, finish out the solider’s rooms and then make sure that we have the proof we need. Then we can go finish out everything for this Haunting and see about leaving the Lair.”

With that, Kasidy and I headed back to the last few rooms. With me opening everything, it took less time. We didn’t find anything else that would tell more of the story. The rooms were all neat and tidy, with limited personal items. They all had some things but nothing that stood out.

When we finished tossing the last room, Kasidy brushed off her dress and said. “I guess it’s time for the Haunting. His brother kept him from going on the patrol, and it was sold out by the other soldier. That should wrap things up and let him know that he can go on.”

I nodded slowly. “I think we need to check the roof before we go talk with him. I don’t know what’s up there, but if we are going to make sure we can free him, we should look everywhere.”

We made our way up to the mess hall, and from there, I headed over to the ladder going up. “I’ll head up and make sure that the door opens, then you can come on up as well.”

Kasidy smiled and nodded. Then I started up the ladder rungs to the door in the ceiling. Unlike the lower two floors, this one was over twelve feet high, likely closer to sixteen or eighteen. When I got to the top, I pushed as hard as possible, and the door creaked open. It took a good bit of effort, but I got the door to stand up, and then I pushed my body up and through it.

I quickly scrambled out the door onto the roof and moved around to pull the door the rest of the way open. Once it was open, I started to look around the roof. It was what I had kind of expected when I thought of a castle roof. The whole thing was circled with head-height crenellations. In the middle of the roof stood a single catapult on a track.

The only noise that I could hear was an eerie creaking and the sound of metal scraping on stone. The noise, while light, was enough to fill the air around with a sense of sadness and dread. I couldn’t see everything from the trapdoor, but I couldn’t seem to find where the noise was coming from. I loosened the sword on my belt while waiting for Kasidy.

As Kasidy came up on the roof, I made my way around. It wasn’t long before I got to the front of the building. A pivoting crane hung off the front with a rope hanging from it. I cranked up the wench listening to the click and clack of the ratcheting as the machine slowly pulled up its load.

I was putting my whole back into the work, so I didn’t see what was coming up until Kasidy shrieked. I straightened up quickly from the crank. As I did, I saw what made Kasidy scream. At the other end of the rope I had been cranking up was the only thing we had found that the Lair hadn’t fully preserved. A skeleton still somehow held together after years of hanging in a metal cage.

I swung the boom on the crane around, and the cage swayed over the roof. When it came to a stop, I walked towards it. Kasidy moved up beside me, and I could hear her calming her breathing. I stopped just far enough away from the cage so that I could reach out and stop its swing. As I did, the creaking that I had been hearing stilled. Now the only things making noise on the roof were us.

I took a moment to look at the skeleton in the cage. It was odd, and my mind rebelled for just a moment. I was just looking at a skeleton without fear or any feelings of worry. Even in school, there was always a little oddness when dealing with a skeleton in science class. Feeling the bones of a dead person and wanting to treat them with respect as people were passing around a femur. Here, however, I had gotten rather quickly to the point of the dead not bothering me.

I glanced over at Kasidy and asked. “You okay?”

She nodded slowly. “Hanging cages scare me. I know it’s odd, and all, but the men that would be put in them always yelled at people passing by. It turned into more of a punishment for the area around the cages than the people in them at times.”

I nodded slowly. “So why the screaming?”

She sighed. “I just got spooked okay, I know that we have been attacked by things and that there is a haunting down below but skeletons scare me. I don’t mind bodies, but there’s just something about the way the holes in the skull are that makes me feel odd. So when I saw a skeleton, I screamed. Okay, I am just a barmaid; I can scream if I want to.”

With that, Kasidy turned her back and headed toward the trapped door. I shook my head and thought about the dungeons. In any unguided dungeon, the first tenth of it would be natural training. That included beasts and the undead, as those that could worship were never included in the dungeons. Unless that worship was of the dark ones, she would be a problem for the first few floors of a dungeon if I took her in.

I shook my head and moved up to the hanging cage, and spun it slightly so that I could find the opening. When I touched the cage, I got a message telling me that the one inside was derelict of duty. I shook my head and kept moving the cage. On the back was a single rusted lock. With how old the lock looked, I planned on seeing if I could rip it off. As my hand wrapped around it, the rust fell off, and the tumblers clicked.

I smiled as I pulled off the lock and hung it from the cage. Then I opened the door. As I did, the skeleton half fell out of the cage. Its skull bounced and cracked on the stone roof. I sighed and started to pull everything out of the cage. I had my guess as to what I was looking at.

I muttered, “Your the Haunting’s body. I guess I should call you Renfry and not the Haunting.”

I gathered up all the bones and started the dance for a Lay-To-Rest. However, I got a feeling that I didn’t want to do this yet. Like I could somehow mess everything up by laying this guy to rest right now. I knew that the bones weren’t the same as the Haunting, but I just felt like I needed to wait.

Turning, I headed to the trapdoor. Kasidy was waiting there for me. I gave her a slight wave, and she headed down the ladder.

When I got to the bottom, she asked. “Did you lay him to rest?”

I shook my head slightly. “No, I felt like doing so before we talked with the Haunting might cause problems. I don’t know why, but I am going with that feeling right now. So let’s go see Renfry and see about getting out of this place.

Kasidy smiled and nodded. “I like what we have found in here, but yeah, let’s get out. I am sure that Blink is worried sick about us.”

I snorted as we went down the stairs. “Angry at us that we are doing something that she can’t be included in, but I doubt that she has ever worried about a thing.”

“She’s just a little girl. I know that she can transform into a lizard, but you need to remember that she can’t be older than six or seven.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned towards Kasidy. “Look, Kas, you’ve got this all backwards, and it will help you to remember. No matter what Blink looks like, she is a LIZARD. She is a ropola that gained the ability to turn into a lizard girl. She is not and never will be a little girl. She might talk like one, but she is a ROPOLA and a scary one at that. Don’t let her fool you. Besides, she is less than a year old; she might get upset if you call her six. For all I know, that would make her an old lady lizard.”

“What! No! She is too smart to just be a lizard. I think she has you fooled; she is older than that.”

“Sure, Kasidy, keep thinking that. Let’s finish this mess that you got us into so that we can get back to Blink. I’m sure she has something to tell us.”

* * *