The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 5 by Bella Forrest (best biographies to read TXT) 📗

dimly for a second, then faded to its original sheen. Ellabell went second, followed by Aamir, and then Lintz.

Stepping back, they watched with nervous anticipation, waiting for the disc to flash orange, as Hadrian had promised it would. A few minutes passed, and still the disc hadn’t flashed.

Are we unworthy? Alex wondered.

As if answering his thought, the golden disc lit up bright orange, and a loud creak split the silence of the subterranean vault. With a rush of fusty air, the heavy vault door opened. Alex stepped through first, feeling the creep of a cold breeze on his face, as he steeled himself against the unknown. The others followed, and he glanced back, seeing the concerned expressions that rested upon their brows. Nobody knew what lay ahead for them, and that knowledge was petrifying. There were real dangers in this vault—Hadrian had said so himself.

Alex just prayed they weren’t walking straight into the jaws of death.

Chapter 7

The vault door closed behind them with a heavy slam that felt bone-chillingly final. Alex tried hard not to shudder, knowing they couldn’t turn back. It was onward or nothing, from here on.

As the entrance thudded shut, Alex expected it to take the light with it, leaving the group in a dimly lit room. However, the room seemed to be illuminated by a huge yellow crystal that hung from the center of the cavernous ceiling. With its light casting a hazy glow upon everything below, he could get a good idea of the volume and shape of the place. They appeared to be in an enormous room, not dissimilar to the one Caius had shown Alex, where the ominous pit lay—in fact, it was very much like that cavern, though Alex couldn’t sense the swell and roar of anything sinister flowing beneath the ground. The only thing missing was the pit itself, but Alex could sense something strange in the echoes their footsteps were making on the rock beneath their feet. There were echoes that shouldn’t be there. He moved forward tentatively, feeling his way with the toe of his shoe, not knowing how sure his footing was. Although he could see solid ground ahead of him, he knew he couldn’t trust anything in this place, least of all his own eyes.

He paused, trying to peer into the middle of the room in case he could make out the glimmer of a barrier, or something peculiar that might give them more information. Aamir walked slowly past him. Suddenly, he realized why the echoes were so strange, and reached out desperately for the older boy’s arm, yanking him backward, just in time to stop him from going over the edge of a vast ravine that gaped open before them. It was covered in an illusion, made to look like solid ground, much like the glamors Esmerelda had taught them so long ago that would make an object or an image appear to be something it wasn’t.

“Watch out, there’s a pit ahead of us!” Alex called back to the others, his hand still firmly gripping Aamir’s arm. He had found his pit after all, and he speculated that the tests were somehow playing on his fears.

“I didn’t even see it!” Aamir shuddered. “You saved me.”

“I barely saw it myself—we’re going to have to be really careful where we walk in this place,” Alex replied, pushing down a surge of fear. They were less than five minutes into the tasks, and already they had almost lost someone.

Aamir nodded. “We must keep our eyes peeled.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure we can even trust them,” said Alex, trying to slow his racing heartbeat.

With that in mind, Alex and the others began to creep along the lip of the pit. It was easy to see where the rock ended and the illusion began, once they knew it was there, but trying to make out anything they could use to cross it was proving tricky. It was impossible to see the other side, or even to see how far the illusion stretched, and yet Alex knew there had to be a way to get over.

Ellabell stood at the edge, beginning to forge the threads of her golden magic beneath her hands. As she did so, the glittering ribbons crackled, before sputtering out completely. She tried again, only to get the same results.

“My magic isn’t working,” she said, a puzzled look on her face.

Aamir nodded. “Hadrian said it would take some of our power from us,” he reminded them. He too attempted a spell, resulting in the same failed crackle. “Does yours work?” he asked, looking to Alex.

Curious, Alex began to feed the black and silver fronds of his anti-magic between his fingers, only to watch them wither and die with the same pathetic crackle. It seemed they would not be able to use their supernatural talents to find a way out.

We’re at task number one, and already we’re failing, he thought glumly, not wanting to voice his feelings in case it lowered morale.

“Mine isn’t working either,” Alex said, as Lintz’s voice echoed across the cavern.

“Eureka! I found something!” the professor cried with delight.

Alex and the others hurried over to where he was crouched, almost in the center of the ravine’s ridge, his arm reaching down for something below the hazy surface of the illusion. As Alex’s eyes adjusted to the shift in what was real and what was not, he could see a metal bar running across the jagged stone, pressed deep into the rock in a perfectly straight line, gleaming beneath Lintz’s hand. It was wide, several feet across, and looked distinctly promising, though how they were supposed to get it to do something useful was another matter entirely.

“What is it?” Alex asked, bending for a closer look.

Lintz furrowed his brow in contemplation. “I believe it’s some form of clockwork, or there is some sort of clockwork involved, at the very least. You know I love my mechanisms!” he said brightly, running his skilled fingers across the various