When John arrived at the front door of the library, he took a moment to calm himself down from his brief attack with that miserable idiot of an ape. However, when he tried the door, it was locked. He swore and hit the door with his palm, wincing at the pain that followed. "She must have left for lunch," he hissed, pressing his ear against the door. Distantly he could hear the sound of some remaining students. Must be those two. "Well," he said, turning to Mary. "There's one good thing. She won't be able to see me mad."

He paced in front of the door for several minutes, occasionally throwing glances at the lock on the door and the floor above them. There weren't any keyholes where the lock could be picked. Words past from his lips like "must be locked on the inside" and "windows unlocked" and "only a way inside" as he roughly ran his hands through his short hair, thinking vigorously. He suddenly smiled that didn't radiate warmth or happiness. It was the smile that he usually smiled when he figured a plan that enabled him to get what he wanted. He turned to Mary and said, "Stay here, I have a plan that'll let us in." He turned to run upstairs but then thought that Mary should at least deserve to know what he was doing.

"OK," he whispered. "The windows in the library are the ones that can open, right? And those aren't locked because who locks windows on an upper story building? So if I go in through the library windows, I should be able to unlock this door from the inside and let you in. Sounds good?"

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I was cured all right.

"You think i'm gonna wait here whilst you get all the action. Plus THEY are in there and they will definately be watching the door to see if we come throug. I'v done the same survival courses you have and i'm perfectly caperbel of climbing to a few windows; just show me the way." She gave a dare devil smile and stood challengeingly.

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Made by Lembas

Larain nodded, as they walked around the back of the library, away from the eyes of anyone, to the steps of the second floor.
"Alright. Then I guess we're in this together," she almost winced at the words, but this was how things had turned out. "So, we have to get the third floor, like I've said already. Shouldn't be too hard, right?"

~~~~~~~

"Who knows. Anything could happen now. The thing that I don't get, is that I dreamed about the book. And the book led to here. I'd had to have known it was here or something, but I didn't. How is this possible?" Don said...

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

John scowled slightly but relented. He ran upwards to the fourth level. As he ran, he pictured the school in his mind and its structure. The library occupied the first three levels of the center section in the eastern section of the school. Most of the windows facing east, to let the sun in better. The fourth level was mainly given over to storage rooms and quarters for the janitors. But as he remembered correctly, there was a window that was directly above the window of the library in the third floor. Just timing it perfectly as the problem.

John dashed his way through the stairs, his rapid footsteps echoing in the stairway. He paused at the second and third floor to let Mary catch up and catch her breath. He wasn't that cold to not give her a rest when it looked like she needed it. When they finally got to the last level and John had whisked Mary into a storeroom that had the window above the library, John explained what they would be doing.

"OK, right below is the library. What we're going to do is jump from this window and grab on the sill to the third level. The window is bound to be unlocked so I can pull myself upward and get in. I'll go first. That way, I'll have opened the window in time for you to jump down? Understood?" He glanced around the storeroom and found a box of T-shirts, bearing the name of the rugby team last year. He took two of them and threw them at Mary. "Wrap those around your hands," he said as he took out two fingerless gloves that he brought with him and put those on. "So you don't hurt your hands when you grab the sill. Make sure you drop straight down. If you see a book fly out, drop down."

He unlocked the window, squeezed his thin body through the window, looked around him before he jumped. He enjoyed the brief rush of excitement that ran through him before he grabbed the sill in front of him on the third level. He groaned as he hung there for a minute before he pulled himself upward. He tangled himself to where he could fit inside the small space the windowsill offered. He looked at the window and smiled. It was the one that you had to pull up, not the one that swung outward. He carefully placed his fingers underneath the window and lifted up. While it wasn't locked, it was still relatively stuck and it took John several minutes to lift it only up by an inch. But it finally yielded as John pulled it up all the way. He sighed in relief and took another moment to regain his breath before squeezing his body in. He took a random book from the shelves and looked at it. Property Laws Pertaining to the Northern Territories, 1765. Well no one's going to read this. He chucked it out the window and extended his arm out to catch Mary when she dropped.

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I was cured all right.

"Uhh...magic? fate? I really don't know," Kathryn replied. "But the way things are happening right now-I think almost anything could happen. I, mean, look what happen with Jacen and Kira earlier. They were led out from the library by Mrs. Allan when we saw them weren't they? Something tells me it may have something to do with this book." She sighed then, knowing that she sounded paranoid, even to herself. But after hearing that Don dreamt about the book, seeing Jacen and Kira in trouble with Mrs. Allan and then finding this passage-none of it could just be a coincidence-could it?

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AWESOME set by the AMAZING Lembas!!!

Mary caught her breath as John pulled her into the closet. However she knew it meant nothing...but she could always hope couldn't she? She watched him climb out of the window and leaned her back against the wall closeing her eyes with a sigh.
Why the hell did it have to be him? Of all people. Her best freind, not even her 'type' when it came to that. Sarcastic, too clever for his own good, often a sexist, completly against her religion, slept around, had the worst anger she knew, was cold...I could go on for hours. She thought. A complete jerk

But then she remembered how he did wait for her when they were running, and the way he made her melt when he smiled at her. The way he'd taken care of her countless times when she'd collapsed on the way back from the pub.
Not a complete jerk then... She smiled and heard a slight thud outside the window. She looked out and saw a book lieing far down on the ground. Giveing a deresive look at the ruby shirts whitch she was sure would just muffel her grip she got out on the window ledge and looked carefully below.
The libary window was directly below. All she needed to do was drop down and swing her self in...easier said than done.

Faceing the window she crouched down on the ledge and hooked her hands over the lip. Then jumped down; praying to God that her fingers wouldn't break. As she jumped she swung inwards and let go; landing crouched down with a thud on the libary floor.

"Thank God in all his mercy" she whispered quietly; then "h'Owwww" pain rushed into her fingers as she realised why John has told her to wrap the t-shirts around her hands. "Ok Ow ow owwwww lets have a look round then" she stood up beside him silently bemoaning her pain.

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Made by Lembas

John watched in slight bemusement as she swung her body in, instead of grabbing the windowsill and climbing upward. He helped her in gently and allowed her to lean against the windowsill to rest as he looked around the library. "Do you remember what the book they were on about looked like?" he asked.

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I was cured all right.

Larain quickly made her way up the stairs, making sure no one was there to see them, and making sure Matt was following. Then she jogged across the second story of the library, and up to the third story. She ignored the fact that Mary and John were already there, and started scanning the shelves.

Her brows were knitt together as her eyes looked at the shelves against the wall. There were figerprints in the dust on some of the books. Like someone had disturbed it just recently. About a quarter down the wall she stopped to look at one bookcase. The trail of no dust ended there.
"Strange," she muttered, dragging her fingers along the spines of the books. She stopped at a red one and pulled it out and looked at it.

Larain turned it over in her hands, and flipped quickly through the pages. "Okay... nothing happened..." she mumbled, expecting something really noticable to happen...

~~~~~~~~~

"I don't know. I mean, I don't believe in that sort of stuff. But, then again, I could be wrong," Don said, wipping more away revealing a picture of some kind of bird. The shape of it's head almost resembled an eagle...

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

"Neither did I-but you have to admit this who passage thing with all of these runes are a bit odd." she added as she wiped away more dust revealing a partial picture of a winged beast of some sort-something she took to be the interpretation of a dragon or some other mystical beast. "Okay-now this is getting just way to weird,"

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AWESOME set by the AMAZING Lembas!!!

"Hm... it got way too weird when we opened the passageway," Don said, then stepped back to get the whole picture of what they had uncovered so far. He moved the torch to different angles.
"Is it just me, or do the pictures seem to be in a mural kind of way? Like see the creature you uncovered looks like it's on a cliff above where the royal looking dude is standing. And then up here where like the sky is, is the bird. And the script seems to be written around the picture."

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

Kathryn stepped back to examine the image at Don's words. "Yeah, it kind of looks that way," she said. "So either someone was really bored and liked drawing fantasy images or this is suppose to tell us something. Do you think that this image is a clue to the text?" she asked.

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AWESOME set by the AMAZING Lembas!!!

"I don't know, it's hard to tell. We need to see more in order to be sure. I know, how about that jacket I let you use? It's not as cold now as it was earlier. Maybe we can use it to wipe away most of the dust," Don said...

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08

Mary melted inside as he geuntly helped her up. This was the part of him that made her love him. "Red I think. Dark red. I got the feeling that if you say it you knew it." She asnwered softly. "Kira said something about the third floor. So we should start there"

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Made by Lembas

"Dark red, hmmm," John repeated as he scanned the spines of the books. He found one and opened it. He flipped through the first few pages, elation running through him. It certainly had the ancient language that he heard them babbling about but it turned out to be...

"Darn," he swore, putting the book back. "Just the Torah in the Hebrew language." He looked around for a minute and thought of a brilliant idea. "That bloke said the third floor...but not a shelf.." he whispered to himself. He ran off to find the carts that the librarian used to carry the books they were going to re-shelve. "All of these books, just sitting there to be re-shelved, only some of them don't."

He found one and ran his gloved hand through them. No dark red books. Still undeterred by that fact, he ran to find another one, saying madly to himself, "Of course. That makes perfect sense. No one bothers to look at the books in the carts. It's the last place anyone would look." Upon the second cart, he found two dark red books. Well being an artist, he would say it was maroon but it didn't matter. One of them concerned itself with the chemical properties of halogens and noble gases. Undoubtedly fascinating but wasn't exactly on his mind. The last one was well, rather unremarkable. It was dark red but age had given it cracks through it like faults on the Earth. Bits of threads that bound the pages sticked out of the spine. He opened it and aside from a slight warmth emitting from the book, nothing dramatic happened. He flipped through the pages, gently turning the fragile papers and admiring the medieval drawings and inscriptions that decorated it.

Sudden footsteps emitted from the third floor, causing John to slowly close the book. He looked around him like a wary prey, knowing full well that the vultures of the school will be on him if they knew he was here. He had that very nasty nagging feeling that he wasn't supposed to break into the library. Especially in the manner he did.

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I was cured all right.

"Sure," Kathryn replied as she quickly slipped out his jacket. "You want to do the honors, or should I?" she asked him.

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AWESOME set by the AMAZING Lembas!!!

"You can do the honors," he said, holding out his hand in a gesture for her to do it. "I'll hold the torch for you to see."

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(}--{)Imagination Inspires Ideas -Zandain(}--{)
Married Cloud Strife 9/17/08