I couldn’t say how long I’d been asleep for, but when I woke up everyone was there in my room. Sophie was cuddled into Paisley’s side, and playing with her tablet. Lacey and Duncan mirrored them, both with a book in their hands, Duncan was reading one of the journals of course. Liam was in a chair, leaning on his hand and staring into space. He was also the first one to notice I had woken up.

“Hey… How are you feeling?” He asked when he got up and got closer. I yawned and sat up, feeling a painful twinge in my shoulder.

“Like crap, honestly. My shoulder hurts but it’s tolerable. What happened while I was out?” I spoke quietly, trying not to alert anyone. Sophie heard me though, and pulled herself away from Paisley and began trotting over. She crawled onto my bed beside me and wordlessly hugged my side. I smiled, and hugged her back almost tightly.

“You passed out in the forest, we carried you back and put you to bed, talked about what happened with Sophie, and tried to figure more out about that riddle.” Liam explained from his seat. “Even went out and picked up a tarot set.”

“Ugh, I think I could do with a bit of a break from the riddle. What happened with Sophie?” Sophie dug her face further into my side as I put my glasses on.

“I don’t remember it well. There was the blue thingy but then there was a dark thingy and it chased the blue thingy and I tried to make it go away and leave us alone but then I was suddenly waking up somewhere else in a cave. It was really pretty in there and there were plants growing in it that I knew I could eat but they tasted gross and it was uncomfortable to sleep. I couldn’t stand another minute in there, thank you for coming to get me.” She explained as much as she could with a whine in her voice.

“I’m sorry that it happened at all. You’re welcome kiddo…” I paused to yawn “how long have I been asleep?”

“We all slept all day- and then some, for you” Lacey informed me. I nodded, and noticed Paisley was still resting by the tell of her eyes being gently shut. She had lifted her head for a moment when I awoke but she’s since gone back to rest.

“Yea well I was asleep for three days straight. Which I wouldn’t recommend by the way, hallucinations started like two and a half days in and it was very disorienting.” I held my hand over my face.

“We could tell, actually. In the library you were looking all around like you were lost and surrounded by ghosts. It spooked all of us, we should have made you go to bed sooner but we all forgot.” Liam showed sincere concern on his features, I appreciated it for a moment.

“If I had gone to bed then they-” I pointed in Paisley’s direction. “Wouldn’t have outed us out there, and I wouldn’t have stormed off, and you wouldn’t have noticed the flower. It makes sense that it all happened in the way that it did.” I told him, hopefully making sense. My brain was still groggy from sleep. No one asked for clarification, but Sophie lifted her head.

“Can you show me the library? Everyone talked about it but said they wouldn’t show me till you woke up because it’s your room.” She pleaded, with big eyes. I didn’t feel like laying in bed all day anyway, I pulled the cover back with my good arm.

“Let me get ready and yea I’ll take you down there.” I said as I walked to my closet for new clothes, and to the bathroom to freshen up at least a little bit. After we all figured out what we were going to do next I could probably shower. I walked back out and took Sophie’s hand.

“I’ll be staying here guys, Paisley probably is too.” Duncan called from his book. Lacey looked at him, patted his shoulder, then stood and walked over to Sophie and I along with Liam.

“I need to stretch my legs. I’ll join you.” She said as she walked past towards the door. The four of us walked down to the library. Crossing under strings everywhere that we probably didn’t need since we all practically memorized most of the basement after three days of searching them.

“The strings make the basement look spookier.” Sophie announced into the silence. I looked at them a moment longer as we got to the door.

“I agree, we should probably get those cleaned up.” And then we were in the studio. Even from here I could see papers and book littering the floor of the library. “We’re gonna have to clean up in here too…” I said as Sophie ran into the room. I followed after her, and picked up a few papers along the way.

“We can start now, maybe not finish, I think everyone’s too tired for everything but we can get started.” Lacey said as she began picking up scattered books and things. Sophie tried to help too, but she was mostly distracted by the room, until Liam passed her a book.

“It’s in Latin so I’m guessing you can’t read it but it’s got a bunch of pictures of flowers.” He explained as she took it. I leaned over her shoulder to look at the nonsensical lettering.

“How’d you know that’s Latin?” I asked him, he shrugged.

“I’ve been taking Latin classes in school for a while now. I’m not very good at it but I’ve learned a thing or two.” He explained.

“Cool, Paisley and I always took French since our mom is already fluent. Never did grasp it quite like Paisley did but I got there eventually.” I told him as I set some books on a shelf. We continued on for a little while like that, idle conversation to pass the time. We eventually gave up though and started heading back. Not before I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. A dark moving mass, like when I was hallucinating from lack of sleep. I looked directly at it but it did not retreat. I stared at it, and it stared right back. I grabbed my little sisters hand, suddenly realizing what this was. This caught the attention of the others who all looked as well. Surprisingly it stayed put. It would be like a black tendril-y mass, if it weren’t completely transparent. Kind of like the blue mist, only this seemed more… malleable. It wasn’t until Lacey took a step in front of all of us, in a protective stance that it finally dispersed. It both seemed to implode and explode all at once before it was gone. We all looked to each other, aside from Sophie, who hid her face in my pant leg.

“We need to go.” Someone said, and we were all running. Fearing for our own lives, or possibly even Duncan and Paisleys. We all raced back to my room and tumbled over each other trying to get into the door.

“Guys! what?!” Paisley’s head snapped up as she stared at us. Duncan was already out of his seat.

“The thing! The dark thing that I saw before I disappeared! It’s back we all saw it explode!” Sophie cried out, fear written all over her face.

“It was a terrible ugly black mass with like tentacles curling in and around itself and it just poofed out of sight. It was like it was scared of Lacey.” I painted as I recovered, I rubbed my shoulder a bit, the tumble through the door banged it a bit. Duncan looked at Paisley, then sat back down.

“So much for a break.” He said, sounding aggravated.

“The riddle did say it was only the start of the quest. Is there more? Will it even end?” Paisley said, woefully.

“I don’t know… let’s go back to the riddle then and figure it out. I don’t think we should stop, I don’t trust whatever we saw in the basement to just leave it alone.” Liam suggested, sounding uneasy. Lacey nodded.

“So if we go back to what it says, there are eight tarot cards, and only six of us.” Duncan has the translated riddle out and in front of us. “I thought it was seven at first but the way they capitalized the World got me thinking otherwise. If we assume the World is all of us then that leaves the Chariot…” Duncan trailed off and looked to Paisley, who lifted a small pamphlet to her face.

“Which means victory and success basically, there’s some other stuff but we are pretty sure it’s referring to this. Yet it still doesn’t make sense if you follow the pattern because all the other ones referred to a literal person or physical thing. It might not matter in this case but that’s something to consider.” She finished Duncan’s explanation. So basically the tarot stuff was going to be a dead end for now, but maybe there’s something else that can be picked out like the flowers were.

“Let me see it.” I held out my hand for the riddle. Once it was closer in front of me I read over it a few times, before I got stuck on what I thought was supposed to be motivation for us. ‘You already have what you need to succeed’ it’s just like the phrase ‘to have the keys to succeed’ my teachers used to try to tell the class all the time. It’s the keys. I went back over to my laundry basket and took the key out of the pants I was wearing yesterday without a word. I held it up to the group, who in turn also pulled out theirs.

“It’s something to do with these, everyone put your key on the table I have an idea.” I said as I walked to my black wood and glass coffee table. When each was placed down you could see small symbols on the top of each key. Everyone already had one that went with their tarot sign. Paisley had the symbol of a moon, and she passed her second key to Sophie, who’s was a picture of a rose. Lacey had a lion, Duncan had a jester’s cap. Liam had a heart, and I had a feather. There was one though that had an infinity sign. Something didn’t really sit right with that. I felt like something was off with it. I held onto it for the time being.

“I think we gotta find wherever these keys go.” I said once we looked over all of them. Duncan is there anything referring to the keys in the journal?

“Uhh, no, but I there’s been a lot of references to the tower, maybe we should double check there?” He tried. I nodded and looked to see if everyone else was coming with. It seemed to go fairly unsaid that we should all be sticking together from now on. So then all of us went.