The Sun Wheel.
One of the most important holy symbols of all times.
The wheel that is present in almost every known civilization in human history.
Many of their incarnations are still venerated by a lot of pagans. A symbol used by many religions, in the present days. Not forgetting to mention the fact that the Catholic Church has its own version of the wheel too.
It is the most known and simple representation of the astronomical year. The passing of time, the changing of the seasons and the movements of the gods of the Sun and the Moon. In their most common form, consist of a simple circumference divided into eight equal parts by eight radial lines that meet in the center of the circular shape.
It is a very powerful catalyst of holy magic.
No wonder, that was the seventh symbol. The one placed above the lock of the spell imprisoning the creature beneath the library.
The Sun Wheel represents both time and space, being immune to dark magic.
When powered by the magic of the other symbols, it can become indestructible.
When in my frustration, by losing the unwanted guest, I looked down, I saw a circumference. It was below the bookshelves. And was almost imperceptible to the eyes, because of the patterns in the tiles around it.
The radius of that circle had the same length of the shelves added to the width of the central octagonal column. But, the bookshelves did not tangence the circle as they would appear in the wheel.
Their borders were three feet away from the circumference' s border.
That was the ingenious secret of the shelves.
I imagined the shelves moving towards the center. Until their borders coincided with the boundaries of the circle. They would, not only tangence that border; but touch the central column.
Thus, completing four diameters and dividing the inner circle into eight equal parts.
Another hint was the fact that the skylight, above the circular pattern, had the same radius.
That seemed to state that some hidden mechanism allowed to activate the symbol. If moonlight bathed the shelves during the Amber Moon, it would be perpendicular to the floor. Thus, making a perfect circle of yellow tinted light.
I' ve seen similar mechanisms before, they always have a non-magic counterpart to serve as a safeguard.
I was sure that some hidden switch could also activate the movement of the shelves.
So I went down the first floor again.
Letting go of my frustration for losing my prey before. Focusing on finding that switch.
I started to examine the shelves and the column, as I climbed down the stairs.
The doctor saw me hurrying to the center of the room.
I ignored him and the men that rescued father Thomas. I only gave him a stare. I was too lost in my thoughts to say anything that would explain my odd behavior.
He became used to that serious look in my face. And understood that I was not to be disturbed by questions at that moment.
I saw him shrugging. Then saying something to the men near him with the corner of my eyes. But, I didn't pay much attention to understand what he said to them.
The shelves were above some kind of rail. That way each one of them could slide three feet forward, as I deduced. Each rail was shorter than the length of the shelf they supported. There was no radial carving in the floor touching the central column and no part of the rails appeared. Only by looking down the shelves, a thin plate of steel appeared. Like a part of the shelves decoration. Also, it would need a closer look to see that the steel folded to hold the base of the wooden bookcases.
The sides of those shelves showed some drawings, carved in the wood. Images depicting a famously known fairy story.
One of them portrayed Titania, the fairy queen; the next one Oberon, her consort and her king.
Following all them clockwise, we had other scenes from that tale:
One with Puck, the trickster; another one with Nick Bottom, with his donkey's head. Other drawings showed Theseus and Hippolyta, and the lovers Lysander and Hermia.
Eight characters from Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
One character for each radial position in the circle.
What would be the relation between that play and the spell locking the prison?
In the central column, one of the sides had all the letters from our Latin alphabet carved in relief.
I touched the carving of the letter R and it moved inside the wood when I pushed. Also, a faint metallic sound echoed close. And it sounded coming from somewhere below my position.
But, nothing happened, and the letter came out of the wood again.
Pushing the other 25 letters of the alphabet had the same effect.
I tried, without success push only the first letter of the names of the characters in the shelves.
Nothing again, only the same faint metallic sound, each time I pressed another letter.
The switches in front of me were expecting the right passcode.
A code that would take hundreds of years to decipher by trial and error.
I had to think back, examine all my clues, try to figure out how they fit in that puzzle.
The problem was that those figures could be a hint for the code. Or, they served as a diversion a way to hide the password better.
Unfortunately, I had no way to tell what was the case. It was logic to me that they hinted the passcode. But that could be wrong.
I also tried other combinations. I typed words like midsummer, dreams, dream. Also used the letters of the character names that had the same initial letter of the symbols found.
Many other different combinations of those; but all my attempts failed.
Tired and frustrated, I decided to give a break and think about that puzzle.
Since I found myself in a dead end, I thought that I should ask for another opinion.
The doctor, being a cult man, could give me a different insight about the secret of that lock.
"Doctor, can you come here for a while? There is something that I would like to show you"
The doctor nodded and met me by the side of the central octagonal piece.
I showed him all my findings, and he looked very interested. It was easy to know about his excitement. He caressed the tip of his mustache with his thumb and index finger, while he listened to my findings.
"I think you are right, those carvings are a wonderful masterpiece. You told me that this place was the home of a European family, right? This is a European play. We can see that those carvings have something to do with the origin of the family in question. What do you think?"
I almost jumped and hugged him!
"You are right!! The family of witches moved to Brazil, but they were from Portugal! I need to think like a European. Doctor, you are a genius! Remember your geography classes. Midsummer is the period of the year when summer solstice happens in Europe. Here we will experience the Amber Moon; but in Europe, it is the summer solstice. The password must not relate to the day of the Amber Moon, but the summer solstice itself."
I thought about how a Wiccan European witch, would think about the summer solstice. The summer solstice is part of the Sun Wheel, in fact, is the lower point of the wheel when it is drawn in a vertical position.
The answer came to me like a lightning bolt striking my head.
"Here goes nothing, L, I, T, H, A*".
"What that means?", asked my curious friend.
Before I could answer, a sequence of sounds echoed from beneath our feet.
This time they were not stopping. The shelves began to move forward, one by one, while the skylight was opening in the ceiling.
We moved away from the path of the bookshelves.
Marveled, we watched the central column spinning. It was adjusting their faces to fit the incoming shelves.
When the pattern completed, another different sound echoed in the room from behind us. We turned our attention to a shelf mounted in the wall of the room. It was sliding clockwise to reveal a hidden entrance. It was the wall that opposed the giant broken window.
An acrid smell reminding us of something ancient and rotten filled our nostrils. It was coming from the open door.
Inside the opening, was a total and absolute darkness. The light of the room could not reach inside the hidden chamber in the wall.
It was a good thing that I used my smartphone as a flashlight. Otherwise, we could have rolled down in the narrow stairway in front of the opening.
It led underground, all hidden in that pitch black darkness.
In the wall inside a torch was hanging in triangular metallic support.
However, the flammable combustible of the torch was dry for ages. That torch was so old, and forgotten in time, that the cloth, wrapped in the handle. crumbled into small pieces to the stone steps, just by my touch.
The torch was useless to us, yet the doctor's lighter served as a good replacement. With that small flame and the light of my phone, we lit the path ahead of us. As we moved down the narrow stairway carved in the rock, we saw other torches hanging. But, we didn't bother to try to light them.
We climbed down for several minutes, those rocky steps seemed to never end. We passed a series of curves going down.
As we deepened in that carved secret pathway, the smell of death and decay became unbearable.
It was necessary to cover our noses with our sleeves.
Then, after another curve, a dim purple light began to appear below us.
Our descent took us to an arched opening and a narrow entrance.
"Let me go first, doctor. We never know what kind of tricks we can find in such places."
I got ready to examine inside the opening at the end of the stairway.
Inside, an enormous closed dimensional gate dominated the place.
The purple light was coming from a turbulent surface. The surface showed the movement of colorful shapes and it was floating in the air a few feet from the ground.
The height of that gate was so big that I had the impression that it could reach the ground above us.
I decided that I didn't want to meet the creature that was inside.
It was a natural cavern, so big that resembled the main aisle of a cathedral. Nature built that place, carved in the rock of the mountain.
A stone table laid in front of the giant door. The rotten smell where from a myriad of fragmented bones. Lots of them with skulls and brown rags hanging on some of those bones.
The scene depicting stories of a sacrificial altar.
The table was a simple one. A modest and large rectangular rock on top of another cubic sculpted one, to serve as the support for the top.
A metal knife with a crystal handle rested in the top of the table, waiting to carve flesh again. The blade was also covered in dried blood.
Brown spots of longtime dried blood were also covering the entire surface of the table. Also a part of the floor, near that menacing stone altar.
I didn't need to be a forensic scientist to know that those bones around the gate were human bones.
Most probably, we found the solution of lots of missing person cases, from the past centuries. Resting in that stone cave, in those broken remains of lost lives.
I wondered how many families suffered because of their missed loved ones.
All those suffering laid scattered around that hideous and threatening magic door.
Used, discarded and disposed of like trash. Rotting for ages in that hidden temple.
In the wall behind the table, another shelf, this one carved in the rock and covered in dust and lots of cobwebs. Inside, many different kinds of books and some parchments. They filled only a section of the shelf. The lower ones had a lot of dusty flasks and many different pots.
But, I decided to examine that small library later.
Behind the center of the table, a bookstand dominated the view and a book stood open in that stand.
Didn't Luciano say that the adversary stole the family's Grimoire?
Was that another one of his lies, or did that book in front of us had another purpose?
I examined the book with close attention to the type of writing.
To my surprise, it was archaic Portuguese. That was not the missing Grimoire, rather a chronicle of events past.
It was the diary of a cult that used the cave to do their secret meetings.
I looked at the book cover with care to not miss the page that I found open. It could be important.
In a black leather surface, written in silver metal, I read the title: "We, The Shadow Weavers".
Shadow Weavers? I had never heard of such cult, before, that name meant nothing to me until that moment. If I knew what I was getting into, at that time, I would have been more careful.
I wondered if Ambrosius would know something about them.
That needed to wait. There was no way to contact him, certainly not with walkie talkies; much less with smoke signs.
I opened the book.
The page described events that lead to the sacrifice of the spiritual leader of the village of that time.
It was written:
"The heart and blood of the purest most important leader of an enemy religion. The power to reach the underground. To please thy inhabitants. Enough to make them appear. Behave in a docile and reliable way".
A detailed description of how they lured and abducted some old priest. How they sacrificed him to open the portal the first time: a crime never solved by the locals, by the look of it.
Another old man, missing while exploring the pinewoods.
Following those chronicle's pages, there were descriptions of more sacrifices and rituals. To feed the creature and ensure its cooperation. Healing ceremonies. Sadly, no name was given to the summoned entity.
That was not strange to me. Names have power. It was natural that they avoided writing and speaking that name. It could give to their supernatural partner more power over them.
In the last written page, another unsolved crime. The community spiritual leader. A very important woman in the region. This time her sacrifice served to seal the creature, forever.
My hands trembled when I realized the similarities between the two cases.
My heart raced. Sweet covered my face.
I got worried sick. To my horror, I realized who the next sacrifice had to be.
It was the only person, inside the school that was the main spiritual leader. The only one, important enough to be offered in sacrifice and please the creature.
My mother's death would allow that cursed gate to open again in our world.
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* N of A - Litha is the Wiccan summer solstice festival
We are getting close to the climax, things are getting harder for our detective. Liked the episode click the like button, let me know your thoughts about our story. Comment, share with your friends. See you in our next exciting episode.
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