The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter Fifteen

Having spent a good ten minutes standing in the quickly dwindling light of what was quickly becoming one of the most haunted places I've ever had the displeasure of being locked in, I finally came to a decision.

I reckoned the King would never find out.

The library was on the first floor so it was unlikely anyone would see me and Ophelos could never tell him that I had escaped a second time. It wouldn't be difficult, I would head back and no one would know.

Being unsure is what lead to me standing frozen for the time that I had so once I made a decision I stood by it until it was too late and the dung was already in the air. It was better to be filled with surety... if I failed I would know it was not because of my own indecisiveness.

The window was locked, obviously. I really wasn't sure how to open it. For a good measure of time, I pondered the locks and tried to figure out what exactly could be done to release their hold.

I realized the latch on one of the windows in the corner was undone, just on the lower half of the window. I wasn't prepared to break anything, in the palace, this would be a death sentence.

The upper latch had a similar hexagon shaped hole and I wondered if something as simple as a quill could fit through it, or if that would even do anything.

The shape of the hole is so that you can stick a metal hexagon shaped straw through it and turn it but in theory, the straw is only what works best. What I'm saying is that there would be a possibility that anything that fits inside it could, with much effort, turn it. It doesn't necessarily require that specific shape.

So I searched for something.

The library was growing quickly darker and there were patches of shadows that I couldn't bring myself to walk near. Despite it being a large and rather airy room the bookshelves were actually placed quite narrowly together. It made me nervous.

Towards the front, I saw a desk that seemed like it might have belonged to some ancient librarian that could not have been present for a while. It was stacked high with papers but some were damp and curved, browning at the edges. There were old bitter ink stains on the sides of the desk and on the floor around it. Messy.

There was a pot of ink which had gone completely solid over time and a wooden quill. That would do.

I walked briskly back to the window. I was desperate to escape, not only a locked room, but also the ever-increasing darkness of it.

If Ophelos thought he was going to give me a lesson in submission he was wrong. Today I was learning how to pick locks.

And to my own genuine surprise, I succeeded. The wood was soft enough with age that I could, with much force, get enough of it inside that it allowed me to turn the lock.

I was amazing.

When I turned around for one last look I swear to Poseidon a shadow swept across the room and disappeared. Like someone had thrown a scarf across the room, a gentle blowing sound followed it into the nothingness.

I stumbled backward, I cannot tell you how numb I went with fear for that split second. But the shock was quickly replaced with... well... shock, as I went tumbling out of the window like an utter idiot.

I flailed uselessly as I fell and grunted like a boar shot by a flaming arrow when I reached the floor.

The ground was not far below the window and this was the best of the news. The worst of it was that I was apparently not alone.

My hands went digging into the wet grass and I slid slightly on the thin layer of mud. My elbows, inexplicably, hurt the most when I went down.

It was now at that time of the evening when the sky was still getting dark so upon first glance, you might think it was still bright out but in fact, you could not read or see a joules worth. It was only slightly past this time. The sky was darkening and I couldn't see too much.