P.o.v. Yanida Clover
The ride to the forest turned out to be at least 1 hour by carriage. I managed to convince Rogue to not walk to it, which made me very happy at the time but when we actually were moving I felt bad for him.
An old man was kind enough to take us along on his way to the next town and to drop us off along the way at the forest. We were sitting in the back of his vehicle, with only a layer of hay between us and the wooden floor. There weren't any windows so a small breeze lifted up my dark dusty rose hair and somewhat helped Rogue with his motion sickness. The way he handled it was a lot different than Natsu, Rogue tried to hide the fact that he was feeling sick. But his hand was permanently placed on his stomach and his head leaned far back against the old wood, his extreme pale face also didn't help his case to try and hide it.
Because of that Frosch settled on my lap for the duration of our journey. "I'm really sorry for forcing you on this carriage," I apologized to Rogue, I didn't want this adventure with him to be our last one. "You didn't force me, you gave valid arguments and I agreed," his voice sounded deeper and I could tell he was trying his best to not throw up his breakfast.
When I'm back home I will ask Wendy to learn me the Troia spell, for future adventures with Rogue, or other dragon slayers. "We're almost there, it'll be over soon," I told him touching his shoulder to offer some comfort. He didn't answer, and I thought he would probably feel better not saying anything. So I didn't talk too, occasionally I pointed at something in the landscape or asked the old man in the front how much further it was, but other than that I was silent. A comfortable silence with me enjoying the ride, and Rogue trying to imagine being anywhere else than here.
The old man who was riding the carriage set us off at the side of the forest. He told us that a couple of decades ago this was a premise of a rich earl, but one night a big explosion was heard. The people who dared to go near the house saw that one of the left towers was gone, completely obliterated. Going inside, they called for the earl but nobody answered, no noise was heard so they assumed he died of the explosion.
A couple of weeks later thieves dared to enter the old house that started to overgrow. The only thing they managed to steal was a couple of golden candle holders. I asked him why they didn't steal any more objects, while Rogue listened attentively. "They were chased away by a ghost! The spirit of the earl is still protecting his possessions. Say, you weren't planning on stealing anything from him, we're ya?" he asked at the end, and I just shook my head slowly, my lips tightly pressed to each other.
"You don't really think that the house is really haunted, right?" I asked Rogue walking three feet behind him and Frosch frantically looking around, making sure there wasn't anybody watching us. We we're walking on something that looked like a driveway up to the house, but nature seemed to have had his own decorating plans. Several weeds were finding their way between the stones. Bushes, ivy and wildflowers decorated old structures like lampposts, low stone walls and a greenhouse that was already eaten alive by the forest.
Upon hearing my question Rogue stopped walking and turned around, revealing a slight grin on his face; "You're not scared now, are you"? I held my head up high and told him while passing; "Of course not, I was just checking if you weren't," I lied, which made him chuckle lightly to himself.
"Frosch is scared of ghosts," he said with his usual high-pitched voice. I looked at him, and pushed my own scary thoughts away. 'There is no such thing as ghosts, when you die you reincarnate and there is no step between' I thought, giving myself an energy boost. "You don't need to be scared Frosch, ghost do not exist!" I told him with full confidence, now walking 3 feet in front of them.
It took us a good fifteen minutes to get to the front door of the manor. The house had a couple of broken windows and, just like the old man said, one of the left towers was missing. Missing wasn't actually the right words for it, it was rather; blown apart. Big pieces of debris and parts of the roof were scattered around in the garden, I could also see pieces of an old cabinet and other furniture that will never be used again. "Do you want to open the door?" Rogue asked, with glee hearable in his voice. I looked up at him, and then the door; "I thought you weren't scared, and now you're asking me to open that door for you," was the only thing I said, knowing I won.
Rogue knocked first, but of course, nobody came to open the door. So, with an awful creaking noise the heavy wooden door scraped over the planks in the entrance hall. Rogue looked at me, challenging me with his eyes to enter first, it worked.
Inside the manor, it reeked like mildew, as if the entire house was built out of it. I pinched my nose with my right hand, trying to only breathe through my mouth. Although it was midday outside, the old dusty curtains prevented the light to illuminate the interior. When Rogue entered, he stepped on a wrong plank and broke the heavy silence in the house. I prepared myself for an assault, surely if someone was protecting this house they would come out now, trying to scare us away.
"Sorry," was all that Rogue whispered when he stood next to me holding a hand in front of his nose and mouth. "I get why people would think this house is haunted," I whispered back with a weird voice because I was still pinching my nose. I noticed a couple of large holes in the walls when my eyes got used to the dark interior. None of the furniture was standing upright, as if a herd of bulls came in at some point and wrecked everything they came in contact with.
"You reckon we should check the Library first?" Rogue whispered close to my ear. I shivered when I felt his warm breath against my skin, I became better aware of everything Rogue did. I noticed that if I would move my hand just a few inches that I could touch him, I could feel my heart pumping the blood through my body. This must be a real adrenaline boost, all my senses seemed to be a lot more aware of every little thing in the house. "Yes," I finally answered still whispering, not daring to speak any louder. "Although I don't think it will be there, it's probably a very valuable book and an earl would have a special room for stuff like that," I told Rogue, not through speaking but with telepathy.
"It feels better talking like this," I added. "Forsch thinks so too," he responded through the link. And without further ado, we choose to ascend the stairs. I regretted it immediately, the terrible sound made my ears bleed, not really though. "Left or right?" Rogue asked through telepathy, I looked both sides and tried to think of a good argument but found none. "Left?" I said shrugging and followed Rogue through the left corridor. Thanks to several paintings on the ground we had to walk behind each other making sure to not step on any of them. It probably didn't make a difference to the state the artworks were in, but it felt wrong to just stand on it.
I honestly expected the house to be in a better state than this, partly because 10% still thought that there was a possibility that ghosts did exist, and he would've taken care of it. At the end, the corridor had a turn to the right, and we could see a window at the end of that one. In between, us and that particular window were a couple of rooms with heavy doors preventing entry. Rogue and I agreed that a library wouldn't have an entrance door to it so we decided to walk back and try the right corridor.
When we walked back I could hear creaking boards, but it wasn't loud enough for us to have caused it. "Could you hear that?" I asked Rogue, feeling the tension build up in my body. "We aren't alone," he responded and I saw him squeezing Frosch closer to his chest, whispering soothing words to him.
I breathed heavily in and out, trying to get my nerves under control. 'I have to stay focused, the plan is simple; find the book and get out as fast as possible' I clear goal always managed to make me feel better, something to work towards. Rogue made his way between the paintings again, with me not far behind, noticeably faster than the first time.
Without making any more noise, and without hearing any other noise we arrived at the end of the other corridor. On our left side was a big open space leading to a big library, even bigger than the one in Fairy Tail. On most days it would make me smile, seeing so many books together. But now it just made our task harder, trying to find one book between all of these. "Remember, we're looking for a grey book called Fatum," I reminded Rogue while we separated. I scanned the bookshelves as fast and thoroughly as I could, occasionally grabbing a grey book and putting it back because it wasn't the right one.
The smell of mold seemed to be even worse here, I had to gag a couple of times when I didn't pinch my nose hard enough. "Have you found something yet?" I asked Rogue, wanting to have a conversation to distract me from the eerie feeling I was having. "No, I think you might be right about it being in another room," he answered with, his calm and warm voice making me feel a lot better. "We didn't even check half of the library, you can't jump to conclusions," I told him crossing a corner, into a much darker room than the rest of the house, which said a lot. But when my eyes got used to the increased darkness I could define a couple of shapes. It seemed like someone made a tower out of big flour sacks, I walked closer to try and define what it was.
But the theory of it being flour sacks got disregarded fast when something moved at the top. Ears perked up and a head changed positions to settle back down. I backed away as slow as I could, trying to not make a sound. "Rogue, I think we have another problem than ghosts," I told him going back to the entrance of the library. "What do you mean? Did you find a spider in the corner?" he mocked me but I did not respond to that. "There is a nest of some sort of beast here, I repeat; there is an entire nest of beasts in this house!"
The thought of those animals waking up and finding us did not appeal to me. Beasts need to eat too, and I fear that something of that size wouldn't mind a taste of some humans. I would rather not stay around when that happens, we'll have to think of another game plan to retrieve the book we need.
I could hear creaking boards, this time it sounded closer. I turned around to see Rogue approaching me, with Frosch in between his arms. "What do you mean with beast? How big are we speaking." He asked, but he wasn't the only one making noise now. I could clearly hear several feet walking over the parquet; "We need to run!" was the only thing I said when I took hold of Rogue's arm and pulled him with me.