Marie stood in the entrance of the half-destroyed library in the ruins of a once-magnificent mansion, and ignored the scrape of bone on bare stone.

  If it registered in her mind at all she chalked it up to the skeletal hound settling down to wait for her.

  She was focused instead on the room in front of her, and how best to approach seeing its past glory.

  Only two minutes I think. The best view would be…well from here.

  Taking a step back, softly, she activated [Glimpse of the Forgotten], and watched the majesty unfold.

  She moved into the room, transfixed, as a picture formed of softly glowing shapes of light wove itself into existence, outlining the library-come-study as it would have been in its heyday.

  Towering shelves stacked with thick tomes. A thick, luxurious carpet with an exotic design. Desks and chairs of the highest quality craftsmanship.

  There had even been rollable ladders to reach the higher shelves!

  The room was large, and she began to move quickly, taking as much of it in as she could before the image faded. There was a quill and inkpot on one of the desks, and what looked like a magnifying glass on another! That was much more advanced than the other things she’d discovered!

  The partially-collapsed wall on the west had once been home to a magnificent bay window. She could have figured that out from the shards of glass in the area perhaps, but not that it had been etched to depict the image of a trio of robed people.

  A small but well-tended shrine or altar with a statue of… something she couldn’t recognise.

  She clambered over rubble and stepped round the end of a bookcase which had swung out of place an inch or two, peering round the corner to see the outline of a glass-doored cabinet, clearly intended to hold something of value, though the space now was empty bar some fallen debris like the rest of the room.

  …

  …

  Wait.

  The bookcase had swung out of place?

  She took a few steps back.

  She’d never have spotted the discrepancy without the glaring dark, barren stripe where the glowing image cut off as it flowed through the stone.

  How had the bookcase shifted away from the wall like that when it was part of the wall?

  Instinctively she knew, but she had to retreat a few more steps and look up to see the hole above the offending stonework where part of the wall had collapsed.

  Revealing the hollow space behind.

  Her eyebrows rose, and as the [Glimpse of the Forgotten] faded, she found she didn’t mind as her brain processed what it meant.

  “Pas possible.”

  Her voice was monotone. Flat, as she strode forward and tried to scale the section of the wall.

  She wasn’t a climber, and the lower shelves had crumbled, on both this side and around the corner, leaving nothing for her short reach to grab on to.

  Marie was a pragmatist. Famously so, in her circle of friends and family.

  But she was also endlessly curious, especially about history, and since coming to this godforsaken city, she’d, quite frankly, had a shit time of it.

  Until today.

  Today had been…almost bearable.

  If you discounted the cold, and the trace of dampness she hadn’t managed to get rid of after washing.

  And the stale taste of the trail-mix she’d been rationing, and the faint gnawing it left in her belly.

  And the itchiness of barely-healing wounds she had to constantly ignore, and the way they tightened whenever she flexed.

  And the fact that after tomorrow she’d have finished the bottle of wine, and the lack of any form of luxury once that was gone.

  And the ever-present bone-chilling fact that she was at all times surrounded by the living dead, most of which wouldn’t hesitate to tear apart, and would if they caught her in any number or in her sleep.

  Really, today had been shit too.

  Except for what she’d found in this place.

  A window into the past.

  And now this…

  Well, it might not make up for what she’d been through, but she’d be damned if she was leaving before finding out what someone had hidden behind this false wall.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Before she could second guess herself, she took two quick steps and willed it to happen.

  [Mighty Leap]!

  She hit the stone bookshelf with more force than she meant to. Her arms scrambled at the jagged broken lip, and she managed to get one elbow up and tried to pull, but as her feet flailed and failed to find any purchase, gravity took its inexorable toll and slowly she began to slip back.

  “Merde.”

  Her arms weren't strong enough.

  She landed back on the floor and fell onto her arse.

  Getting back to her feet she brushed herself off with a grimace, thanking her [Thick Skin] and wishing she had some sort of ability to protect her clothing; the shorts were tough, but her t-shirt now looked more like a ragged crop top.

  Winded and feeling the bruises beginning to form on top of everything else she’d been though, a tiny voice inside her head told her she wouldn’t make it. Her forehead furrowed in anger at the thought. What was the saying?

  “Fuck zat noise.”

  So she couldn’t leap up in a single bound - there must be another way to get into the hidden compartment. She gave the door’s edge a tentative pull, but there was too much rubble in front of it, and maybe behind, and even if she cleaned it away - which would take longer than she wanted to spend in this city - there was no guarantee the mechanism that had opened it once would still be working.

  Glancing down at what she had, and patting her pockets, her hand came to rest on the coiled rope at her waist.

  Rope was used for climbing. If she had something to tie it onto…

  The beam of her headlamp swept across the dilapidated ceiling until she spotted a protrusion not too far from the cracked-open section of the wall. It wasn’t precisely above the area, but it jutted up from the floor above a bit further back. If there was a way to attach the rope it could hang down over the gap in the false wall.

  But to do that she’d have to risk exploring the upper floors, and though she didn’t weigh a lot, the holes in the ceiling and the age of the building…

  She looked back down at the rope. Then at the protrusion in the ceiling. Then back to the rope.

  It worked for Indy…

  Taking it in her hands, she began to spin one end, and addressed it with as much confidence as she could muster.

  “You are a whip now.”

  Feeling something switch in her head, she spun it a couple more times and let it fly.

  It missed the first couple of times, but she laughed in genuine delight as it wrapped round her target on the third.

  She gave it a tug and it held firm.

  I can do this.

  The first couple of attempts to climb with the rope made a mockery of her conviction, first when her feet scrabbled and failed to find purchase on the wall, and then when her arms proved incapable of pulling her up on their own.

  She panted as she stood flexing her fingers in her gloves, focusing hard on the task at hand. She’d done it before, as a child, in playgrounds and gym class. She could vaguely remember…

  A piece of rubble shifted out in the entrance hall, and without turning round she called out.

  “Do not watch me, doggie.” Then, in a quieter voice to herself she continued. “This is embarrassing.”

  There was a trick to it. You needed to… that was it!

  She tried again, only this time she clamped the rope between her feet and pushed with her legs as much as she pulled with her arms.

  It wasn’t quick, or pretty, or elegant, but she inched her way to the top.

  Breathing hard, she laughed to herself as she reached the lip of the broken wall and levered herself up to sit on it, and looked inside.

  The bright light of her torch shone on something at the bottom, half hidden by loose stones and crumbled masonry. She pulled up the rope and tossed it down, lowering herself as carefully as she could until her feet stood upon the rubble.

  It was a lid. Definitely not wooden, but also not any kind of metal she recognised. Inscribed with rather originate decoration of some kind which had somehow escaped damage when the hidden chamber had partially collapsed around it.

  Her gloved hands pulled some of the larger stones aside until she could grasp the object and pull it out. She wasn’t overly worried about damaging it given what it had survived already, but she took care not to yank it.

  It was a chest.

  Ornate. Undamaged. About the size of her torso.

  “There is definitely something special about you. Come on. Let us get out of here.”

  It was too cramped to get a good look at it in the crawl space; she’d take it out to examine in more detail.

  She pulled off her jacket and laid the chest on it. It wasn’t especially heavy but it wasn’t so light as to make her think it was empty.

  Unless the material was unusually dense…

  …which it might have been to last this long in this good condition.

  She took her gloves off to tie the jacket up into a bundle for the parcel. It had handles on the side to grip but she wanted to keep it level in case something delicate was inside, and as she crouched and ran her hands along the lid in appreciation and peered closer, her [Basic Appraisal] went off like a foghorn in her head.

  Almost falling over in shock, she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at her temples and tried to turn the Skill off before it gave her a headache, and breathed a sigh of relief when it stopped blaring.

  Then her eyes opened wide.

  “So, you’re not empty then…” she quickly wrapped the jacket around it and tied the end of the rope to the bundle. “...unless the material is that dense, and that is what’s valuable?”

  Alive with excitement she pulled her gloves on once more and clambered back up to the top before hoisting the chest up after her, body flooded with renewed energy.

  Knees gripping the wall tight, she heaved the package across her body and then carefully lowered it to the ground of the destroyed library.

  She was just about to slide down the rope herself when she caught sight of the second book - forgotten about in the rush - and paused for a second.

  But from her vantage point the thing looked burned, badly damaged.

  She might be able to retrieve it and fit it into the protective pocket of her rucksack, but that could wait for a minute whilst she examined her new find.

  Sliding down the rope, she turned to look up to where it was wrapped round the support and, with a few awkward flicks, managed to loosen its grip on the stone and reel it back in.

  Her hands were shaking as she coiled up the rope and fixed it back to her belt, then unwrapped her jacket to reveal the chest within.

  Bone skittered on stone out in the entrance hall.

  “Hold on doggie. I will be out in a minute. This is a big find.”

  It was dark, somewhere between rich mahogany and black, but under the bright light of the headlamp she could pick out swirls of other colours in the material, and the decoration seemed to have some sort of… silver inlay?

  “Beautiful.”

  Running her gloved fingers round the faint seam where the lid met the rest of the chest, she encountered a faint resistance and realised she was feeling the hinges.

  She spun the whole thing around and tried to lift the lid, but it didn’t budge.

  Tilting the chest back slightly to get the full glare of her headlamp, she brushed her thumb over a notch on the front and sighed as she realised it was locked.

  Of course it was locked.

  Who went and made an indestructible chest and hid it away in a secret compartment in their fancy library-study and didn’t lock it.

  Whilst she had it tilted she took the opportunity to wiggle her jacket out from underneath.

  Placing the chest down, she shrugged the jacket back on, then, with a grunt, stood up with the chest.

  She grunted again as something hit her in the shoulder. She glanced down at it.

  The shaft of an arrow was sticking out of the meat of her shoulder, just below her collar bone.

  That is odd. Where did that come from?

  Then she looked up at the skeletal bowman standing in the entryway to the room, and the pain hit her, and she screamed.

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