A House Filled With Night
Secrets by Candlelight

“It’s high time that you stopped, Runa.”

Seconds passed. Pages turned. She didn’t look up.

“Runa…”

“Hm?”

“You need to stop. It’s getting late.”

She looked up. Five pairs of tired, concerned eyes looked back down at her.

“It’s time that we all get some sleep,” Sylvain said, his voice gentle but weary. “We can continue this in the morning.”

“But I just…I…” she sighed. “I know. You’re right. I’ll stop.”

They went upstairs, parted ways, and got into bed.

Two hours and five walks around her bedroom later, Runa was still awake. It felt impossible to sleep, just knowing what might be waiting for her in those books, what she might be just about to discover. She didn’t know how much time they had before Celemine struck, but the clock was certainly ticking. How could anyone afford sleep in a situation like this?

Before she knew it, she found herself standing in front of Torin’s blue door, trying to figure out what to say to him. As difficult as it might be to convince Torin to help, she had a feeling Fiske would be even less willing to participate in any new schemes for a while.

There was no answer the first time she knocked. Nor the second. Nor third.

Runa frowned. “I know you’re in there,” she whispered as loudly as she dared. “And I know you hear me knocking. I think you’re just too afraid to come face me because you don’t want to say no to me.”

Silence. And then, finally, the door creaked open.

“I must admit,” he grumbled through a yawn, “That sometimes you are too perceptive for my comfort.” He cleared his throat, leaned up against the door frame, and ran a hand through a head of shimmery, messy bed hair. “Alright, go on. Make me feel bad for saying no to you.”

“I’ll do more than that.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll make you say yes.”

“And how are you going to accomplish that, Runa?”

His lips quirked up into a smile for one fleeting moment, and then, as if remembering, immediately fell back into a stubborn, straight line.

“Well, here’s how it will go. I’m going to back down to the study so I can continue with my research. You can come and keep me company, make sure I’m well, assist me in my studies—or, I can go all by myself, and probably end up doing something horribly foolish which all of us will regret.”

Torin pulled himself up and crossed his arms. “Really, now?”

“You could try to stop me. But you’d have to tackle me, and I don’t think you’re awake enough, or mean enough, to do that. A better option would be to go wake up your brothers but…”

“But, what?”

“But do you really want to wake up Casimir at this hour? Does anyone want that?”

Torin pursed his lips together, sighed, and walked back into his bedroom. “Let me throw on a robe first,” he called over his shoulder.

—

Runa’s face glowed with yellow light from the two candles upon the old desk. Her eyes had been fixed upon the pages of those books for what must have been hours by now. But if someone asked him, Torin wouldn’t be able to say how much time had passed.

At first, he tried to look elsewhere: at the shadowy interior of the room, the unopened book covers, the candle flame, or just deep into nothing. But his eye kept wondering back to her face. He told himself that it was because her face was the only thing he could see clearly in that dark room, besides the pages of those wicked books; which, of course, would be even worse to look upon. Not that there was anything remotely wicked about Runa’s face, or anything in it that deserved to be compared to the pages of old books. Not that anything at all could ever compare to her face in any case—

“It just makes me so angry,” she whispered all of a sudden, making him blink rapidly and sit up straight.

“What? Angry?”

“The way he talked about…all of you.”

His face fell. “Oh, you mean our father.”

She could hear the bitterness in his voice.

“He…he talked about you becoming more and more powerful as if he was building some sort of armory. As if his sons were just some weapons on the wall. Things to be used. It made me so angry, I—”

She stopped speaking when she felt him ruffling her hair. “It’s nice,” he said with a smile, “Watching you get upset on our behalf. In a way, it makes me—”

He frowned suddenly, pulling his hand back. “Sorry, I…” His eyes wandered away, toward the shadowed half of the room.

Runa felt the heat flooding to her cheeks. She was thankful for the dim light. “Anyway,” she continued, in her most business-like tone, “I think I’ll replace out the most from reading the little things he wrote, even if they’re awful. He mentions Celemine a lot. I’ll…I’ll let you know if I replace something.”

“Good. That seems…like a good idea.”

He set his forearms flat on the desk and rested his head upon them, facing decidedly away from her this time. Runa did her best to pretend she didn’t notice.

“This is interesting,” she mumbled, a couple minutes later.

Torin’s head bobbed up expectantly.

“It’s, um, a note your father made. It says that Celemine was a human too. Now she is a sort of…warped form of her original humanity.”

“So, she can die.”

“From what your father wrote, he seemed to think all of you would be the ones to kill her.”

Curious eyes stared back at her.

“Oh, I never finished telling you before, did I? Your father wrote an awful lot about how he planned on using you to defeat Celemine one day. He even said that Celemine was afraid of you.”

“Afraid of us?”

“He never said anything like that?”

Torin shook his head.

“I’m beginning to wonder…” she went on, “If maybe all of you are a lot more powerful than both your father and Celemine ever wanted you to know.”

“So maybe if we just replace her, we’d be strong enough to face her?”

“That’s the tricky part though. I haven’t found much at all about where she came from. I’ll just have to keep looking for clues.” She turned back to the books, continuing to read. “You know, this would be a lot easier if you helped—”

“No! No.”

“Fine, I’m sorry I said anything…”

She finished the book, then pulled out another. Then another. Finally, she came upon an interesting passage in a book on the use of herbs in sorcery.

“Apparently your father met Celemine at an herbalist’s store,” she commented, eyes still fixed to the scrawled notes on the page. “Was he an herbalist? Or a physician?”

“Well…” He hesitated. She looked up. He shrugged in a pained, uncomfortable sort of way. “I don’t really…know anything about my father.”

“Oh. I see.” She bit her lip, and flipped over to the next page. “Wait a second…”

“What is it?

“I’ve seen this place before.” Runa pointed to the page, where an image of a large cathedral was illustrated. “This is in Eidar.”

“Really?” he asked, leaning in to get a better look. “What do the notes say?”

“Something about a meeting there once. It’s a little vague. But this is the part that really interests me.”

She pointed to something at the very bottom, written in messy, hurried scrawl.

“I have found her weakness.”

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~ A/N ~

What’s at this cathedral???

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~ COMMENT OF THE WEEK ~