The Time of the Titans

Chapter 37: The Passage

I thought I heard a sound from where the passage to the cottage was and gazed at the direction in order to see. Then I saw a pigeon take off, flapping its wings quite loudly as it flew over the bridge and disappeared into the crowns of the trees.

"Just a bird", said Max who had followed my look.

"Let's go see the chapel", said Roland. "The place where the Grand Master died."

We walked to the other side of the Secret Garden and to the door, still unlocked, which led to the other passage. Here, however, Roland stopped us and pointed at something inside the doorway. It was something we had missed in the dusk of the previous time when we were here: a place on the wall with a gap suitable for the key card.

I removed my hat and took it out while Max and Roland watched.

"We'll see", I said, and injected the card.

We again heard a humming sound, the card was returned, and then there was light.

In a series of flashes, the passage in front of us was lit, like in a wave, until there was light everywhere, and the previously sinister darkness of the chamber had been replaced with illumination. No lamps were visible – the light seemed to come through the ceiling.

We walked up the stairs in this newly transformed place and arrived in the chamber I took as a temple. That's what it still reminisced, just now it was brightly lit and not so gloomy.

"This is where we found him", Roland showed to Max, pointing at the place where the Grand Master's skeleton had been lying. Max just nodded.

The statues of the three Great Old Ones were there, but their faces plain and indistinct. The structure resembling the pavilion of the Tree of Knowledge seemed like the most interesting construction in the temple chamber.

With all the light, we now quickly found another entry point for the card, which I still held in my hand instead of the hat, and I impatiently entered it.

The results this time exceeded humming sound and light. In the middle of the small pavilion, which I had thought would be a speaker's podium, a mist of smoke seemed to form, and take a shape of a human.

We all stepped back, frightened by the sight.

For my primordial horror, I saw the shape about to materialize in front of our eyes resembled a gigantic serpent, but it had a human's head, hands, and chest. And the face forming in front of us was that of Prince Sen, or Mir, the dead boy.

"What a hell?" whispered Max in agony. "Is it...? Is it a ghost?"

The three of us were still staring at the ghost in fear, when it opened its large eyes, and I saw they were black. The Naga stared right at us.

"Welcome home", the Naga said with Prince Sen's voice.

I had to grab the arm of one of the boys with me – Max happened to be closer – to make sure they were real, and I was not seeing one of my nightmares.

"I'm here", said Max.

"Me too", said Roland. He sounded frightened, too.

Their presence reassured me, and I told them: "I don't think it's a ghost. It's a hologram."

"But what is it?" asked Max.

"It's a Naga", I said. "A mythical guardian serpent."

"But he's got Mir's face and voice", said Roland. "I don't like this."

The Naga still stared at us with his black, terrifying eyes. Then he closed them, and opened them again, and his eyes now looked like a normal boy's eyes. The apparition now seemed far more real, but it stayed, thank God, within the pavilion.