I could contact Eric, with Dartix's help -- I knew I could. But it would take some effort, and even though I was so elated at first to realize he wasn't the murderer I thought he was, now I was beginning to feel... a bit... well, stupid. When I thought back on everything he said, everything he asked last time I saw him, I realized just how in the dark he had been about me too.
How must I have looked?
How must I have sounded?
Crazy.
I looked and sounded crazy. And now I knew I had to contact him, but I wasn't sure exactly what to say or how to say it. Should I merely point out that there was a trap, I was free, and that he shouldn't bother going to Gravlor's Peak?
Should I ask if he could come pick me up at the castle and bring me home?
Maybe the question was whether or not I was allowed to come home...
Dartix and I explored the ruins of my old castle, finding that the basement levels -- servants quarters, dungeons, armory, etc., weren't too bad. Above ground, almost everything was gone, but some of the small rooms remained. Some of the turrets were still up to snuff. I found that one of my sister's rooms was still there, but I didn't dare enter -- I couldn't have taken it.
"Dor!"
I shook myself out of the trance I had been in, staring at my sister's door. "What?"
"Come here!" Dartix insisted.
He was around the wing where my parents' room would have been. I already knew it was gone; it was the first thing I checked, and I had turned from it immediately. I found him by a small, fist-sized hole in the wall lining the staircase. "I found something here under the stairs. I wouldn't have noticed it, except what's left of these walls aren't matching up, so I was looking for a door."
"You found it," I replied, immediately remembering something I had forgotten long ago, sticking my hand in the hole and untwisting the puzzle inside. I heard the clunk of the door being unlatched, but it didn't swing open as it should have. I had to put my shoulder against it.
"What is it?"
I smiled then, "Dad's hobby room." --That's exactly what I remembered it as. He didn't let us come in there alone or even often; it was his little sanctuary where he worked on his little projects. But sometimes he'd shuffle one or two of us inside, and he'd make a flying machine whirr through the air or show us...
Wait. Dartix and I entered the room, and though it was exactly as I remembered it, something had changed.
No, the room hadn't changed.
I had changed.
I looked around and I recognized the stuff in there. A lot of it was the same kind of stuff Eric kept in his spell room. Potions, and contraptions, and even --
Eric's little portal thing, the one he used to clean the poisoned shirt I gave him (Oh Somebody, that was embarrassing!); a similar one was sitting on Dad's desk.
Now I was super confused.
Dartix walked around, fascinated. "What is this stuff?" he asked.
"It's, it's... hobby stuff. The Master... Eric has this stuff too though." I picked up a tuning fork beside a small becor. "We use it to make things -- potions, armies, walls, food. I remember Dad having this stuff, I remember it being his hobby room. I just didn't know at the time... and now I do, but I didn't remember until now."
"Ancient history, huh?" He sat in the large chair behind my father's desk. He picked up a large, leather bound book. "What's this?"
"My father's notes," I replied, a little in awe. I wanted to touch them, feel close to him again. At the same time, the idea of remembering him better repelled me -- it might be having my insides ripped from me all over again.
"Think we can use them to contact Eric?" Dartix asked. Thank Somebody for Dartix. I'd been struggling with what I should call Eric since the day he healed my wounds so long ago. But as soon as Dartix had accepted Eric wasn't the bad guy, he was just Eric to him.
"Maybe..." I said, thinking. Suddenly, that little portal thing in the corner caught my attention. I knew I couldn't use it to talk to Eric -- I didn't know how. He always said his was off-limits. But I remember Dad saying he used it to talk to the stars. I'd never seen him do it. I'd never seen it work, but...
Eric was from the stars.
