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She shrugged. “He suggested we go down. He might be cryptic, but I doubt he’d give advice without reason.”

Partway through their trek down the stairs, Alex noticed something strange. “Does anything seem different to you guys?”

The three of them paused and the boys looked at her questioningly.

“Nothing?” she asked. “Never mind, then.”

They continued their descent until her friends finally noticed what she’d already observed.

“Why are there so many stairs?” Jordan asked.

The study level of the Library was only a short trip down from the foyer and that was where the staircase ended. For some reason, even though they were on the same stairs thatshouldhave taken them to that level, they had already descended much further down—at least four floors so far—without passing any kind of exit.

“Fascinating,” Bear murmured, tapping his knuckles against the solid stone wall.

They continued walking down, until finally they reached a dead end.

“I wonder what—” Alex started to ask just as all three of them stepped off the stairs and onto the stone floor. Her words were cut off when the torches blew out and darkness surrounded them.

“That’s just great,” she said. “I don’t suppose either of you brought a flashlight?”

Silence.

“Guys?”

No answer.

“Yeah, okay, you’re hilarious. What do we do now?”

Still no response.

She swung her arms out, fully expecting to smack into one of them, but all she found was empty space. Her heart started to beat wildly at the thought of being all alone in the darkness.

The flames suddenly flared to life again and she felt a hand grab onto her shoulder.

“Thank goodness,” Alex said as she spun around. “Why didn’t you—AHHHH!”

She scrambled backwards to get away from the—thing—that had grabbed her. It looked like a man in a suit of armour, except there was no man inside. There was absolutely nothing above the shoulders, just empty space where the neck and headshouldhave been. It was a headless, rust-covered suit of armour. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, it was also holding an enormous battle axe in the air, as if ready to attack.

She didn’t have a moment to wonder at its strangeness before the axe swung towards her face.

Alex automatically threw herself out of its path, hitting the ground hard. She scrambled to her feet and gaped at the suit of armour which had just—impossibly—tried to behead her. Regardless of how unnatural it sounded, she hadn’t imagined its attack.

Proving her thoughts true, it moved a step forward while raising the axe again, prompting Alex to react instinctively. She didn’t think; she just spun on her heel and ran away as fast as her legs would carry her.

The dead end had transformed into a long torch-lit corridor, but she had no time to question the strange architectural phenomenon as she sprinted for her life down the hall. She could hear the suit of armour coming after her, its heavy metal clunking with every step it took.

In her mad dash, Alex noticed hundreds of closed doors all along the hallway, interspersed between the solid stone brickwork and flaming torches. Each door looked different from the next, with a dizzying assortment of sizes and shapes. While some were completely normal, like those which were wooden and simplistic in design, others were made out of brushed glass, strange glowing metals, and even—in one case—some kind of iridescent rainbow cloud.

As curious as she was, Alex was too focused on running away to think about entering any of them. But when the corridor abruptly ended in what looked like a medieval dungeon, she regretted her lack of exploration, since there were no doorways left and she was now trapped.

She spun in a circle, taking in the cobwebs that covered almost every surface of the room and the slime that dribbled down the walls from the ceiling. There was even a set of rusty manacles hanging from the roof. But the most disturbing feature was the human skeleton perched in the corner. Bony hands held the pommel of a gleaming sword, and the head was shielded by a helmet which thankfully covered the entire skull.

It was a disturbing sight and Alex couldn’t help but stand and stare for a moment. Then she heard the sound of grinding metal as her pursuer caught up to her and she turned away from the skeleton to face the animated armour.

“Now listen here,” Alex said, hoping it could be reasoned with. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I want to know what you’ve done with my friends!”

The suit of armour stopped in front of her and she felt her confidence grow. If it hadn’t been for the metallicscreechof warning then she wouldn’t have had time to duck when the massive axe whooshed towards her head again at an alarming speed.