LAMIAE

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN: A SECRET PASSWORD

"This is it," she said to herself, then looked at Tie. "You led us here, but how am I supposed to get in?" she knew that if it weren't for the cat's help, she would have chosen another tunnel and moved away from the entrance. Not to mention the tunnel where she lost her eyesight, where the cat's help was indispensable.

The animal, which until then had been underestimated by her, gained a lot in her eyes. She felt that from then on there was a bond of understanding between Tie and her. The cat looked at her too, then meowed. He moved closer to the door, as if to tell her not to waste time and deal with it. So she looked at door again.

At first glance, what really caught attention was the obvious lack of a door handle. However, in the very center, the door was decorated with carved motifs, which Victoria also mentioned in her diary. They first showed a young girl standing in profile with long hair tied in half with a bow. She was wearing an ankle-length, flowing dress and a small diadem on the top of her head. There was a chain hanging around her neck on her chest. She looked like she was expecting something, but maybe it was just an illusory over-interpretation on Dagmara's part. Underneath this first image, the next one was entangled as if with a rope. This one depicted a man dressed in a knightly, medieval costume and holding a long sword in his hand. At the very end, the last motif showed the same man, but with a sword raised towards that young girl. They both looked at each other while some people ran into the place where they were standing. Their faces alternated between anger, surprise and fear.

"I guess I have to give the password now?" she asked the cat, who was still watching her closely. "Can't you do it?" she joked, then rolled her eyes, wondering if she was going crazy. "Get a grip," she criticized herself, remembering another important piece of information from Victoria's diary. Her grandmother, who was present with the girl at the time, whispered some words. So the words had to be the key.

"Open up," she said, without much enthusiasm. Of course, she didn't even hope that it would help and the door would spring open. She did it rather out of respect for all those fairy tales that showed secret entrances in this way. "Sesame, open up," she continued thinking, but the longer she stood in front of the door, the more she suffered from a lack of ideas. "Little girl, show the entrance to the chamber, the end of the tunnels, the search for the truth, the difficult journey through the tunnels, the journey with the cat, Dagmara and the cat..." at the last entry she burst into laughter. Her ideas were absurd. No one in their right mind would come up with the phrase "journey through the tunnels" or "in search of the truth". Besides, how could the password itself be used as entry? She began scanning the door again, insisting that it must have some tiny button or mechanism that would open the entrance. The fact that Victoria clearly wrote about words must have been a misunderstanding. Victoria, who had witnessed her grandmother use words to invite her in, must have missed Genevieve pressing the button. Genevieve must have been an illusionist.

And as she searched for the button, she noticed that the strings that wove the motifs together formed words. She pressed her nose against the door, trying to read them.

"Amandio," she almost recited aloud.

Nothing happened, but she was sure she had seen the word somewhere before. She reached for the chain her grandmother had given her at the beginning of the school year. A trazanite chain, exactly like the girl carved on the door was wearing. Dagmara took off her chain. On its back, in elegant font, there was an inscription: Amandio Labadeo. She didn't know where this feeling came from, but it told her that this was the right password.

"Amandia Labadeo," she said clearly. She heard a creaking sound, and then the door she was watching began to swing open slightly, creaking loudly with age. At first she saw only a fragment of what was inside, the solid walls in front of her, only when the door slid open did she realize that it wasn't the end yet. In fact, they were walls, but they surrounded a tower that you had to climb down. The door was somewhere at the very top of the tower, or so she initially thought as she began to descend the winding staircase. Tie was walking next to her, which was more of a hindrance than a help at the moment - Tie was dark and the tower was shrouded in darkness. She felt like she was losing her vision again, like she was in a tunnel again. So she had to be very careful when stepping down, not only for the sake of the darkness, but also for the sake of the cat. Fortunately, she was holding on to the railing, which was slightly damp. Every now and then she heard dripping sounds, as if water vapor was condensing and falling to the floor, but she didn't think about it, waiting anxiously for what she would see at the very end of the stairs. There was a heavy smell in the air of something that reminded her of rust.

She was tired, not only in body but also in spirit. Today was a lot of challenges for her, which drained her of a lot of energy and required a lot of effort. Her head still hurt and her eyes were starting to water a little. Her arms, legs and face were cut in various places, and her spine made it difficult for her to straighten up.

After a few minutes, she finally saw a small glow smoldering at the foot of the tower. As she went deeper, the air became more and more concentrated and the glow brighter. There must have been a room at the end from which the light was emitting. Coming down from the top floor, she could already see this place. It resembled a dungeon in which someone had lit two candles.

She was still disturbed by the smell that she felt more and more intensely, very close to her. And when she ran out of railing and the stairs, she finally looked at her right hand, sticky with moisture, and shuddered. Because it wasn't the moisture that was sticking to her hand, and it wasn't the moisture that was flowing down the railing she was using to secure herself on the way down; the moisture turned out to be blood.